The Gargle - Pothole revival | AI girlfriends | TikTok tarot

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Guest editors Tom Neenan and Alison Spittle join host Alice Fraser for episode 146 of The Gargle - the sonic glossy magazine to The Bugle, with one rule: no politics! Pothole revival AI girl...friend bots TikTok tarot Creator unions ReviewsStory 1: https://k1047.com/2024/01/16/man-comes-back-to-life-after-ambulance-hits-pothole/Story 2: https://qz.com/ai-girlfriend-bots-are-already-flooding-openai-s-gpt-st-1851159131Story 3: https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/61767/1/could-tiktok-tarot-fix-your-broken-heart-readings-card-claim-psychic-algorithimStory 4: https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/13/the-creator-economy-is-ready-for-a-workers-movementHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels
Starting point is 00:00:22 or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.
Starting point is 00:00:49 Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.
Starting point is 00:01:20 Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. of the days when AI data scraped the dregs of the web for its training information. Now each ship is trained on the human life of a single person, observing them from cradle to grave and then carrying the imprint of their personhood out to the vastness of space. It's a technological version of life after death in a way, except now when Disney Plus has discovered, buried in their old terms and conditions, the simple fact that if you ever signed up for their service, both you and all your descendants' digital imprints are indentured to them for life. You and a small, ragged crew
Starting point is 00:02:09 of rebel ships are attempting to gather a resistance as Disney copyright strikes your very personalities. What can you use to fight such a multi-planetary empire? Only your wits, your ships, the love of your human crews, and the gargle. This is the gargle. The is the gargle.
Starting point is 00:02:28 The sonic glossy magazine to the Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Woo Sayer, Alison Spittel, and Nay Sayer, Tom Neenan. No, no, no, no, no. Hello. How are you no, no, no. Hello. How are you both? Good, good. And you helped me a lot. I had quite a dirty web camera lens,
Starting point is 00:02:53 which, that feels more disgusting than anything else, is to have a dirty web camera lens. But we've got through it together. I think I'm in focus. You're also the first people I've ever spoken to today. So my voice is like, I can hear it, you know? I'm like, hello! So yeah, it's very nice to be sharing the morning with you.
Starting point is 00:03:18 A privilege and a delight. Thank you. Before we put our hands on each other's shoulders and get into the massage chain that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover. The front cover this week is Ryan Gosling as Ken getting nominated for the Oscar for the Barbie movie, a movie about feminism in which both the female director
Starting point is 00:03:41 and the female star have posed provocatively in support roles. Is anyone outraged about this? I'm not. I haven't seen the movie, but apparently a lot of people are. I'm not outraged. I'm not surprised. I did think, leaving the cinema,
Starting point is 00:03:59 that the Ken role was the funniest role, and it is a comedy, so the funniest person has got nominated and the other person is America Ferreira who was in Barbie but she wasn't Barbie she was the emotional heart of Barbie and Barbie is the
Starting point is 00:04:15 plastic surrounding so like the heart and the funniness has got nominated but not the actual thing that got people into the cinemas to watch it. So I don't think I mind that much. Also, Poor Things. That's my Barbie.
Starting point is 00:04:31 An amazing film. An amazing film. Mark Ruffalo is in Poor Things. And he's a better Ken. He's just a funny fop. He's very good. Very enjoyable. He's the thinking man's Ken. I've seen neither of them. He's the thinking man's Ken I've seen neither of them
Starting point is 00:04:45 he's the thinking man's Ken sorry Alice I didn't actually hear the question I just found out that me and producer Ped have been nominated for some audio awards for this podcast we're recording right now so I'd like to thank
Starting point is 00:05:02 everyone who voted that's really kind of you I've never won any awards It must be great to be round gazing, you get nominated for awards but you also can be seen as the cool guy, going oh I'm really sad that my colleagues didn't get nominated either
Starting point is 00:05:17 you know he wins both ways I would also, this is a pet peeve of mine because also I think that I'm not going to delve too much into different aspects of feminism but I think there's a habit of people to downplay
Starting point is 00:05:33 achievements and I would point out that as a producer Margot Robbie is nominated for her role as a producer of Barbie and that Greta Gerwig is nominated for writing Barbie so they are both nominated for Oscars for the Barbie movie and that we should
Starting point is 00:05:48 celebrate that but yes not in the main two categories and what is an Oscar but a Ken exactly it's buff it hasn't got a dick
Starting point is 00:06:00 I don't know I don't know what more you need to make a Ken the satirical cartoon this week is an advertising pitch meeting where they're trying to jazz up the image of the old-fashioned bathtub. One executive says, let's call it an immersive bathing experience. Just because I saw someone advertising an immersive bathing experience and it made me really enraged.
Starting point is 00:06:25 Wow. Wow. Wow. It's like a fog machine that you put on. Basically, it's like a fog machine that makes your bath feel spooky. I don't know. That's what I want when I need to wash, is a sense of panic. Yeah. I'm on tip-off time.
Starting point is 00:06:40 In and out of the haunted bathtub. No relaxation. Do the crevices. Get out. that haunted bathtub. No relaxation. Do the crevices. Get out. You're gone. Our top story this week is a man who came back to life after the ambulance he was riding in hit a pothole. Tom Neenan, you've done unholy experiments on the living and the dead.
Starting point is 00:07:04 Can you unpack this story for us? Yes, certainly. So this is a gentleman who I'm going to try and pronounce his name right. Is it Darshan Singh Brar? Brar. B-R-A-R. He was pronounced dead and was then taken, was being transported back home where the ambulance hit a pothole and the subsequent juddering meant that he was revived.
Starting point is 00:07:24 It's the kind of cartoon logic that means that, yeah, if you hit your head and you have memory loss and then you hit it again then all your memories will return and then subsequently if you hit your head again all your memories disappear again. Or like that joke about the fly that has
Starting point is 00:07:40 a heart attack millimetres from the fly zapper and then as it hits the fly zapper, its heart restarts and from the fly zapper and then as it hits the fly zapper its heart restarts and actually the fly zapper does the opposite job that it needs to uh so you know it's wonderful it's a pothole that has um saved someone's life uh and actually i'd like to share a personal story uh which is that my grandfather died in 1980 when he was run over by a Citroen Zara Picasso. But he came home three years later when he remembered that a Citroen Zara Picasso
Starting point is 00:08:09 hadn't been invented in 1980. And that's the first example of someone being saved by a plot hole. Hey! Come on. I thought you were going to say he got hit by a citron Zara Picasso and came back with all of his eyes on one side of his face like a soul fish yeah
Starting point is 00:08:33 but I want to know basically what the period at this is so effective I want to know if there are you know if there are hearses being driven over that that pothole and and you know people having to like be reimb over that that pothole and uh and you know people having to like be reimbursed for their funerals because there's knocking on the inside of the coffin um i think that this magic yeah they should see how magic this pothole is uh
Starting point is 00:08:55 because it could be this one pothole i don't know could be like lazarus and could be the key to immortality in which case we should fill it in at the council way. But it's like in Ireland, we have these things like holy wells and stuff that's supposed to heal people. It would be amazing if it was a pothole that did this. And it feels like God is just slapping out the batteries out the back of the remote control, giving it a rub,
Starting point is 00:09:24 and popping it back in and hoping for remote controller. You haven't had a rub. I'm talking to the back end. I hope you feel best. You'd feel incredible. I mean, in this scenario, he's an octogenarian who was on a ventilator for four days and then was pronounced dead and was presumably not being revived for some period of time. So he's still in what we would call a serious condition.
Starting point is 00:09:41 So it's sort of like where you've taken the back off the remote and then you pull the batteries out and you've blown them and you've got another, whoa, half a day. Half a day to get to the shops, you know? It's a band-aid, isn't it? It's a band-aid rather than,
Starting point is 00:09:56 he's not running any marathons anytime soon. I don't know though, he is a man, so he is much more older. Isn't that what society says hang on a man has died no no no no we must sort this out immediately he could still marry
Starting point is 00:10:15 he could still win an Oscar your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy people are always complaining about mad scientists Your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. People are always complaining about mad scientists. Why only scientists? Why not mad bakers, mad accountants, mad dog groomers? It's prejudice, as simple as that.
Starting point is 00:10:38 Mental health awareness is important in every industry, not just science. So no matter what your job is, if you're mad, seek a support system of loving friends, get medicated if you need to, make sure you're getting enough sleep, and if you're overwhelmed by the desire to create a human monster Yay! That's the most wholesome half a glass of water ever. Lovely. You want to sound authoritative, but science is such a drag with all its methodology and rigour. If only there was something like science,
Starting point is 00:11:11 but without the boring bits. Now there is. Pseudoscience. Don't let the truth get in the way of your truth. And... Do you remember when kids used to be kids? No video games, no TikToks, just the great outdoors
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Starting point is 00:11:48 Get yours today. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has...
Starting point is 00:12:15 Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com. And now it's time for AI girlfriend bots news now. And unfortunately, unlike in the olden days when you say,
Starting point is 00:12:58 my girlfriend has a great bot, it does not mean... that she's endowed in the trunk junk department apparently ai girlfriend bots are already flooding open ai's gpt store uh allison spittle yeah nobody could make a better girlfriend than you if they tried it in a lab can you unpack this story for us oh my lord thank you that genuinely took that as a compliment i was like i was like i felt like i was 13 again seeking validation i was like oh my god ai chatbots are breaking open ai's uh usage policy rules right and how they're doing this what i love is like one of the first questions you get asked is what does your dream girlfriend look like right which uh as a as a person seeking a girlfriend you're like oh that's
Starting point is 00:13:45 a cool question next question what's your deepest darkest secret no and i'm not first of all not at all it is not a cool question i know if you think about the kind of girlfriends you have in dreams they have way more arms than they should yeah i want six arms, two badges. Yeah. And the face of your year three gym teacher. Yeah. Who in my case was a man that we called Mr. Muscles, but turned out in the end to be Eddie Jones,
Starting point is 00:14:19 the coach of the Australian and then UK rugby teams. Whoa. It's just true. Nice. Holy moly. He used to be my PE teacher. That's amazing. What I love about the second question of, like,
Starting point is 00:14:31 tell us your deepest, darkest secret. Am I on a date or am I getting a personality test from Scientology? What is this? You know? But, yeah, it's a scary kind of glimpse into uh the way that we are uh kind of algorithmically toying with people's emotions there's ethics anyway i don't know why you have to create a dream girl um because you know dream girls are not real girls and they'll just make you frustrated with real people um you know AI doesn't have childhood trauma AI it should I would love that I would love the AI stop talking for 10
Starting point is 00:15:13 minutes and are you like are you okay AI and they're like yeah yeah I'm fine I'm just gonna get angry with you for about 10 minutes and then apologize that that is a real relationship do we know if this works like all other ai and basically they're they're ripping off the copyright of all other previous girlfriends that exist online so so like if you're if you're a girlfriend who's existed and ever existed online your your data is being mined like anything every time that yeah you have uh i don't know you you've looked at another guy in a restaurant or something like that it's all in there and you are you are owed copy you have a copyright claim on any girlfriend that is created by your ai or like you know the way a lot
Starting point is 00:15:54 of ai stuff is is gone very problematic do you think your ai girlfriend would be a white supremacist well i mean most AI at the moment is being scraped all the data is from like public sources so you have to think that these AI girlfriends are being trained either on like performative online influencer relationships or
Starting point is 00:16:17 Reddit forum questions about whether you're the arsehole or not so they're either referring to you as this one or you know and constantly holding up a ring finger yeah oh my god permanently in front of a sunset that is just you can never exist outside of that those three minutes where the sun is setting oh god oh that would be amazing that would be amazing oh my lord yeah that that is horrific alice that is genuinely horrific that is the public how do people publicly perform relationships i'm trying to think of uh it's either like uh 70s level my wife tweets about how horrendous
Starting point is 00:17:00 women are and how much you don't like them or Or it's Andrew Tate trying to train young men into becoming horrendous criminals. Oh, God. Oh, yes. Oh, God. Oh, no. Andrew Tate, because Andrew Tate has that mid-Atlantic sort of marble mouth thing going on, he does sound like a slightly scrambled,
Starting point is 00:17:20 fake sort of accent, doesn't he? Because he sort of has that way of speaking in the middle of the United States. It's's very weird and he does sound very robotic so i guess it all maybe he could have an ai girlfriend and actually be happy oh wow yeah just a just a sentient flashlight yeah two googly eyes that marble mouth thing that andrew tate does is just him gargling the balls of the man he wished he could be. That would be a great book title for Andrew Tate.
Starting point is 00:17:56 Gargling the balls of the man I wish to be. Well, he might be going back to jail, so we never know what... That's why I'm speaking so freely. I'm like, yeah, f*** that guy guy i'm not going to luton i'll be fine well actually i am i'm gigging there on my tour come see me i mean jail is the perfect place for a guy that believes in a framework of alpha and beta masculinity because that's that theory was built on wolves in captivity and actually doesn't reflect the way that wolves treat each other in the wild or the way that people treat each other in the wild it's actually basically only suited if you're in jail he's just
Starting point is 00:18:35 optimized himself for the best possible outcome well isn't it the thing that if you go to jail you're meant to punch the sort of the the most alpha guy in there first day which if you're andrew tayton you think you are the most alpha guy in there does that mean the first thing you do is walk into the the yard and punch yourself in the face until you're unconscious to be fair that would be a good self-protection mechanism so crazy i am not gonna touch whatever's going on here with a stick. Fair enough. Now it's time for your reviews.
Starting point is 00:19:12 Each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. Tom Neenan, what have you brought in for us this week? Yes, so we were discussing the Oscars. Yesterday, when we were recording this, they announced the Oscar nominations. And I think it's a very, I've seen most of the films. I think it's a really good crop of films.
Starting point is 00:19:31 And it's, you know, it's actually been an incredible year when people keep on talking about the death of, you know, sort of certain media and things and people aren't going to the cinema. There's some amazing films here. However, I wanted to review each film like I'm a sort of angry 14 year old letterboxd reviewer uh so basically just one line that completely dismisses everyone's uh artistic uh endeavors so let's go through them um the holdovers i don't know what a holdover it has over the critics i hated it american fiction that sucks and that's a british fact Zone of interest didn't keep my interest. Barbie,
Starting point is 00:20:05 that film was Ken rubbish. Oppenheimer, stoppenheimer. Poor things, poor movie. Oh! Past lives, past the sick bag.
Starting point is 00:20:17 Anatomy of a fool, anatomy of me falling out of love with this movie. Maestro, my strop. Stop again. Killers of the Flower Moon. More like Killers of My Vibe. One star.
Starting point is 00:20:30 Thank you. By the way, I love all those films. It's a really good crop of films. That is delightful. Alison Spittel, what have you brought in for us this week? I've brought in the experience of a new Chinese takeaway I went to in South London called Winner an amazing place cash only be prepared but
Starting point is 00:20:54 be prepared for an amazing taste experience what I love about Winner is that I don't know what's happened in the past, but everything is blocked up. Apart from a filing cabinet drawer that goes forward that serves you your dinner. It's amazing. It's like being in a steampunk kind of... It feels like buying a Chinese takeaway in a dystopian future where there's a lot of violence or whatever um and it was an amazing amazing it
Starting point is 00:21:29 was one of the best meals i've ever had it reminded me of i used to work in a chinese uh takeaway when i was about 15 and it just kind of i think it is no better place if you go to a takeaway and there's a child doing their homework behind the desk it's a good spot for food they are not messing about you're gonna have the best meal of your life so five stars for winner in uh south london i've just googled winner yeah and it looks incredible it looks like a betting shop that's what i want that's what i want for my takeaway it's a cash economy Alison Spittel it is entirely possible that they randomly assign a good meal
Starting point is 00:22:14 and you just got the jackpot if it is a betting shop maybe you're just playing the pokies here well do you know what Alison because I tried something I've never had before which was roast chicken Chinese style. Like, because why would you buy it? Like, I did it.
Starting point is 00:22:30 I did it. And it was more chicken. It was like, not only was I eating chicken, but it was chicken-y. Everything was so, it was so chicken-filled. I was just like, this is incredible. Genuinely, five stars. It was a beautiful thing. Free prawn crackers, even like this is incredible genuinely five stars it was a beautiful thing free prawn crackers even though this is the other thing so you if you spend 30 quid you get a
Starting point is 00:22:52 free bag of prawn crackers right i spent 28 pounds 30p i was under the i was under the limit i didn't expect free prawn crackers i opened the drawer free prawn crackers that woman is a legend do you know what i mean the thankfulness i have that she gave me free prawn crackers. I opened the drawer, free prawn crackers. That woman is a legend. Do you know what I mean? The thankfulness that I have that she gave me free prawn crackers, even though I didn't hit the monetary limit. It's just, she'll have my field tea forever.
Starting point is 00:23:15 I will die for winner. I will definitely die. I probably will. Alison, are you saying that you had a winner,ner chicken dinner? Oh, buddy, yes, I did. Yes, I did. And I'd do it again, dammit.
Starting point is 00:23:38 Our next top story is TikTok Tarot. If you can imagine someone pointing to the top right hand corner of the screen and saying the hanged man and then the top left corner of the screen and then saying the tower and then the bottom left corner of the screen and saying i don't know any of the other then you have a sense of the flavor of this next top story uh which is the absolute explosion of online tarot reading yeah yeah it's an amazing thing allison spittle you can see the future can you unpack this story for us i do i do i do come from um a big family of psychics and we also have diabetes and severe mental health issues as well i don't know if they're connected but uh this is about this is this is an article it's a really really well written article about uh about the explosion
Starting point is 00:24:32 of um tarot reading on social media and they say that like the generation below us isn't that much more into psychics they're just uh tick tock look it's like i don't think the generation below us are that much more into putting stuff into tortilla wraps than we are as a nation but tiktok has created an algorithm where it really scratches that itch so it's it's there and i i am uh these are people that have taken solace from tarot and I've never really taken solace from tarot just because it was shoved a lot into my face when I was a young teenager like my aunts anytime
Starting point is 00:25:13 that they were having a problem in their marriage they would take out the tarot and read my future and if I'm being honest with you a lot of deflection on their part it was a lot of it was like I was 14 I don't need to kick anyone out I don't know what you're on their part it was a lot of it was like i was 14 i don't need to kick anyone out i don't know what you're on about um so it's yeah it's a great interesting article um but like the thing is with me and my my tiktok algorithms what tiktok offers me is fights in chip shops or fights
Starting point is 00:25:40 in pubs now i don't know what i've done to encourage this probably watched it to its bitter end because i'm always like i'm always like how is this gonna end and it's always someone getting head their head kicked in i'm like well i'm glad i followed that through so um yeah i don't i don't go on tiktok that much because the algorithms of what i seem to like scare me i don't like myself as a person with what tiktok offers me what does tiktok offer you tom like when you go on it great question uh yeah i was thinking the same it offers me film quizzes some fights uh i often get good okay yeah fights and um there's like and stories creepy stories about like people who disappear there and you know because tiktok has those
Starting point is 00:26:24 different voices so there's the guy who does that there's like the ai voice which is like a creepy guy going this is a story of two people who went into the woods and never came back yes uh so those kind of things uh i see a lot of and yeah and and what what used to be called like effing around and finding out which seems to be um people who work in industries that have in countries with lap safety uh who sort of fall into a big grinder and and die and that is uh i don't like that stuff it just kind of like you know it's the it's the bread and circuses it's the rome thing of just going oh i can't stop watching um and that's why we're all doomed as a species i guess but uh but it is fun it is fun i watched I watched one TikTok video where a woman
Starting point is 00:27:05 was outside a priest's house she knocked on his door and made him get a bible and she swore on it that she didn't f*** anyone else in her relationship and she was calling out her husband and the priest is just nodding in the back like a
Starting point is 00:27:22 hype man in a music video just be like yeah she hasn't cheated on you. For me, generic advice given out by psychics in, for example, astrology columns in newspapers and also algorithmic predictions of what I'll like hit the same contrarian button in me, which is that if I feel that they have any accuracy in predicting what I will like or what my life will be like,
Starting point is 00:27:48 I feel like I need to change shit up real quick because it means that I'm generic. Generic advice is suitable to my life situation. I need to mix things up a bit, man, because I don't want to be whatever you think I'm about to be. You want a pumpkin spice latte in spring, like that type of spring. Yeah. Like that type of thing.
Starting point is 00:28:07 Yeah. Yeah. Keep them off. Keep them on their toes. Get the stars confused. But like, do you know, Alice, the gender of your upcoming child? Yes, it is. It is.
Starting point is 00:28:19 Well, I know the sex is it is to be a boy. Right. Okay. At least until it can tell me better fair enough uh i was um because basically what is an ultrasound but you know tarot but like with a science sheen is all i'm saying all he's doing is predicting something that we can't possibly know there's no way of knowing it and it makes you feel like you could know it also with sort of you know science and stuff but still you've basically had a tarot reading for your child i guess in a in a way do you know what's amazing tom is that this year's
Starting point is 00:28:50 traitors there's a lady who's an ultrasound operative and a psychic like she was like i just want to know either through science or vibes i don't want any secrets and she got a spoiler she got knocked out of uh traitors and she didn't find a traitor. Didn't see that coming. No, she didn't have her ultrasound machine. That's brutal. I've never done Tarot, but Tarot isn't... How many different cards are there in Tarot?
Starting point is 00:29:22 And how specific do they get? I think there's nine, but I'm probably wrong. Nine tarot cards, oh, that you pull out, yeah. But there'd be more in the deck. Yeah, yeah. Like, is there one which is like, if someone turned it over and it was like me falling off a bridge into water
Starting point is 00:29:40 and then being dragged out by wolves and having my legs bitten off. Like, could that be a card? so just don't cross a bridge soon and that kind of thing or is it more abstract? death, they have one that's literally called death and they're like oh no that's good
Starting point is 00:29:56 that's good actually and you're like well it doesn't look good don't call it death then yeah it's just going to be a change you're just going gonna get a change represented by death change up the card man if this is your relatives allison it's them saying you know that death means you should never let a man tell you that you're not the woman he married and you're like i'm not the man i'm 14 you all think i gay. I don't know what you're talking about.
Starting point is 00:30:31 And in workers' rights news now, this is the story that the creator economy of freelance artists narcissistically pursuing their own goals, presumably at least partially funded by their parents, is ready for a workers' movement, according to some sources. Tom, Neenan, you've got a fistful of hammer and sickle. Can you unpack this story for us? Yes. It seems that a lot of people are slowly waking up to the fact
Starting point is 00:30:55 that basically if you're a content creator and you get billions and billions of views, it's sort of quite clear what happens and they're all very transparent about it. Basically, all of your views go into say for instance instagram or tiktok uh and then um something happens in a big machine and then they spit out 45p and they go thank you we've made loads of revenue off this and here is your 45p and people have started going hey hang on a second hang on we're the ones making your you know your
Starting point is 00:31:26 platform popular and successful with our tarot readings and our uh videos of people getting chewed up in a in an industrial grinder or something um so where's our money basically they can only uh get sort of more money and more content via deals uh which is awful you know the fastest way to the bottom almost as fast as a maserati which can go from uh zero to 60 in uh 0.2 seconds and really worth your time take it for a test drive now um and there is special deals if you put uh neenan13 at the end so uh contact your local dealer now um but um but basically yeah but they're realizing that we're doing all this work it's the same thing that happened in the music industry and we're not getting any money for
Starting point is 00:32:08 it so now they're going to unionize and i think that is going to be because that union is going to include logan paul it's going to include mr beast it's going to be one of the most chaotic awful uh unions ever and if they go if they go on strike would anyone notice would anyone notice that there isn't suddenly a review of or like someone hawking that prime juice or whatever on their on their tiktok listen we're all it's a gig economy we're all working hard to uh to sort of you know pay the bills but i am slightly baffled by how they're going to organize because in my experience um these creators are the least organized people ever by definition this is like trying to get a comedian's union together they this is a union that is built of a contrarians b uh scabs and scum of the earth willing to
Starting point is 00:32:58 stab each other in the back to do a gink for like half as much money as it's just not gonna work there's no alliance there's no affiliation we're not we're not no and it's like it's like like we're of a generation as well of of making content as in like i remember when i first started doing comedy going on facebook was the place that you kind you gathered a group of people that you could maybe tour to and then Facebook changed its algorithms and it became just, it became non-existent then Twitter has been
Starting point is 00:33:33 taken over by Musky Boy and the only interactions I have on Twitter is like with porn bots they're the only, you know know that is my audience now is juicy ass 69 or whatever and um and like you know tiktok i haven't got the algorithm sorted and instagram and like i put up a reel the other day and i got like 400 likes and i'm delighted with that i've had a friend who uh is now doing a national tour
Starting point is 00:34:08 just off the back of uh of a few of a few instagram videos popping off so it's just like it seems like it's to because we create content in the live experience or we create content doing uh podcasts and stuff what the only thing that we're looking to for um social media is to like have a place to gather an audience and then why am i being serious on a comedy show i could have just went musks the dick um but it it is very interesting because i just think nothing is permanent it's made me more buddhist like you know i have friends that had thousands of fans on twitter and their whole careers were on twitter like that's where they gathered their people and that's gone and it's
Starting point is 00:34:57 like the only thing that we have really lads is podcasts and the live experience and i'm fine with that because i love both but also i don't have the discipline to do small jokes. You know what I mean? Well, no, it's completely right because what the content thing sort of makes you do is you get one success, you get one thing that goes well, and then people say, do that forever. And as comedians and as other people,
Starting point is 00:35:22 you want to sort of, you're, dare I say it guys, artists. And as artists, you don't want to evolve rather than going, you did a video where you did a funny Scottish accent and counted to nine. And they're like, well, now that is, you're the Scottish accent counting to nine guy. Now that is, that is what you do. And so you sort of have to find various various slightly different ways of counting to nine in a scottish accent uh in order to keep the algorithm sort of supporting you um that's no way to live guys no one wants to watch that every single time free yourselves or you just put up every interaction you've ever had with an audience like you know comedian mishears audience member
Starting point is 00:36:03 what did you say okay of an audience, like, you know, comedian mishears audience member. What did you say? Okay. I mean, with all these AI-generated comedy specials that are in the works at the moment, I think that's going to, I think the AI is going to get a really weird impression of what comedy is and think that comedy is just asking what people's jobs are. It's a census.
Starting point is 00:36:24 Which, to be fair, the girlfriend bot does that too so and you know what some mcs are like please tell me your deepest darkest secret i want to get at least a thousand likes on my next deal i'm taking a bit of a step back from live in order to do this having two kids thing for a while so i'm gonna have to figure out how all the online algorithms work if I want to sustain any kind of level of career. And at the moment, what I'm vibing is that what I need to do is clips of me destroying a heckler by reading their tarot. Until they have a nervous breakdown and then we get into a physical fight. That feels like the game, right?
Starting point is 00:37:06 That's guaranteed. I would pay an OnlyFans account to see you do tarot. Like, see you explain it to people. I would set up an OnlyFans account just for tarot and I will be your subscriber. And that brings us to the end of the show. I'm flipping through the ads at the back. Alison Spittel, have you got anything to plug?
Starting point is 00:37:27 Yes, my tour, Soup, starts this Saturday in the Lowry in Salford. I'm going to so many different places. Liverpool, Pocklington, Leek. It finishes in May. Go to my Instagram, because that's the place where I keep everything. I'm keeping all the eggs in that basket at the moment.
Starting point is 00:37:46 Until I find another social media outlet that will have me but yeah go to alisonspittle.com there's all the information on the tour and that's it really I'm doing nothing else I should get my podcast sorted out but other than that it's all good
Starting point is 00:38:01 I've seen it I've seen the show twice it is so good I recommend it Soup. I've seen it. I've seen the show twice. It is so good. I recommend it highly. Tom, have you got anything to plug? Follow me at tpneenan on Instagram. I don't really post on X or on Instagram much, but those are the places I'll be putting up things
Starting point is 00:38:17 if I am sort of up to stuff. And The Haunting is still available. Penguin Book for Audiobooks if you want to download that also I don't, because there might be some crossover, I do a Doctor Who podcast called Wheezing Groaning Sound which if you like classic Doctor Who or
Starting point is 00:38:34 Filth then you can listen to that as well, I forget to promote that one but it's a lot of fun to record. Excellent and if you want to support The Bugle you can go to thebuglepodcast.com and become a voluntary subscriber, it helps to fund the to support The Bugle, you can go to thebuglepodcast.com and become a voluntary subscriber. It helps to fund the entire family of Bugle shows, which includes The Gargle here.
Starting point is 00:38:50 You can find me online at patreon.com slash alicefraser. That is a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts, blogs, my weekly writers' meetings, which will run through my maternity leave. Two writers' meetings a week. I've got guest hosts for those writers' meetings, so they will continue unabated if you want to work on whatever you're working on. The salons will be off for six weeks.
Starting point is 00:39:10 But go to patreon.com slash alisfraser where you can get my two most recent specials there for free. Or go to gofasterstripe.com and look up Twist to get my most recent special there for £10, along with the one that I did before that. This is a Bugle Podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. Your
Starting point is 00:39:30 editor is Pedhunter. I will talk to you again next week from your perspective. You can listen to other programs from The Bugle including The Bugle, including The Bugle, Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions,
Starting point is 00:39:48 Top Stories, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.

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