Press Start to Steep - In Conversation with Zoyander Street

Welcome to The T-Party, this is Zoyander Street, Doctor Zoyander Street.

You and I met on, I think, I think it was on TikTok first.

Yeah. Well, I started on TikTok about 2020,

so I think it was probably maybe 2023, 2024,

some more than that range. Yeah, that's that's what

I think as well, but I kept watching your posts.

This is a person that I really kind of vibe with

in terms of social media and where it's heading

in that type of thing. Did you see the, I sent

you a message on Mastodon about what we were

going to talk about. Did you get that? Yeah.

So you kind of have an idea. For me, the first

where I want to start out with is kind of who

you are and what you do. So I am an artist researcher.

I have a PhD in sociology.

For my PhD, I submitted video games that I made alongside a thesis.

My supervisor revealed, sorry, this has

been bragging, but this is like one of the only like

unmitigated successes of the last five years.

So I'm going to, I'm going to indulge in it a little bit.

My supervisor revealed like right at the

end that I didn't need to submit the video games

because my thesis was for full length thesis.

She'd been the one pushing like it needs to be a

little longer, it needs to be a little longer.

And yeah, then it turned out a bit of full length thesis.

So I did both. I did the traditional PhD and a PhD by practice. But yeah, preparing,

yeah, yeah, I certainly did because it was a part

time distance learning PhD that took me a decade.

I had no funding. I had to self fund it

through, you know, the other work I was doing.

And somehow it happened. It came together in the end.

And then like in 2022, I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which massively cut

down my capacity for work. And somehow I finished

the PhD despite that. I think largely because my

supervisor who was an incredible like world leading

research called Lucy Suchman, she's known for

her work on like critical techno science of robots

and things like that. She's known for a

paper called plans. Was this a New York City?

No, it was a Lancaster. Well, I was, it was distant.

So I was living at first in California then in

Canada, then for most of it in Yorkshire.

And I would just visit Lancaster occasionally.

One of the mistakes I made was not spending more

time at my university. I think I should have

kind of pushed to get myself a teacher job because

now it's harder to get work because I did it

part time and I had no teaching responsibilities.

Anyway, Lucy, I'll stop going on about this in a bit.

Lucy is known for a paper called, she's known for a paper called plans and situated

action, which was then expanded into a book

around the year 2000 Plans and Situated Actions was

published in the late 80s to rotate after working at Xerox PARC.

And it's a fascinating paper about how that does continue to be very, very relevant

about their asymmetrical understanding between

a human and a device, you know, specifically at Xerox, so specifically photocopiers.

But she gets really irritated because a lot of the citations

of Plans and Situated Actions had not based on any

understanding of what's in the paper.

It's just someone says the word plan and they're like,

oh, I can put that citation in there because it's plans involved and it's really a

rotate to it because it's not about, it's not

really about plans like situated action is the more

important part of that. But yeah, so like there's

the most memorable part of that paper, I think,

is her pointing out that when a human comes

to a photocopier with a multi-page document,

the photocopier cannot see the multi-page document.

The photocopier expects the human to use a

specific language, like through its interface, to

communicate to the photocopier what the document,

like what shape the document is in and how it should come out of the other side.

And Xerox will really proud of themselves that

they've put all these different features in

to allow you to like collect papers in different

ways and like scan both sides or scan only one

side and print on both sides or print on

only one side and all of that. And they don't

understand why the user is having any difficulty

because it's like, we put all of it there for you,

all everything that you need is right here.

And what the photocopier can't see what the user is doing.

So there's this huge gap in communication.

And I think that's still the case, even as they tell us that the tools that we're

using are more situationally aware and they,

you know, are approaching cut like general intelligence and all that kind of thing.

It's like, no, there's still this massive gap between what

the user is experiencing and what the device is

actually able to detect. So anyway, yeah. So I'm curious kind of because, you know,

being a woke scold on the internet that I am,

what is your take on AI? I mean, I think my take

would have been more nuanced without the

industrial context that it's developed in, right?

Like, I was, like, as a person with access

needs, I was an earlier doctor of some tools that

got labeled with as AI, right? Like, I was using

Otter back in like 2018, maybe a little earlier than that.

I was using Descript very early because

before that, I was using this tool to try and make

a copy of my own voice for an art project.

And then the company that created that tool got bought

out by Descript, which is an AI video editing software, which I loved.

Like, it was so cool to be able to like put in some video footage, get a script,

move the script around and edit it like a piece of

writing and then get edited video that follows your edited script.

So you don't have to use video editing

user interface to produce that result.

But that was before 2021, right? It was before the data center rollout.

It was before the, you know, this thing

turned into a bubble with a lot of mystification.

And, you know, complete nonsense behind it to

distract us from the real material cost of what

they're doing, including, you know, the theft

of people's work. Because back before 2021,

these companies, I mean, you know, that Descript

buying that voice tool is a great example.

What they were buying was a data set, right?

All of us are using that tool, a given that tool, our voices.

They had, you know, companies had to work to get

hold of a data set. And then a bunch of dudes

just decided I were just going to steal shit.

And it won't matter. Like, and we'll get away with it.

And they have. So like this, the theft and the

environmental cost and they're just outright lying

about what this is. I mean, they're either lying

or they're cultists, right? Like, we've come from

no one really has a complete explanation or even

definition of human consciousness and intelligence

to where 100% convinced that we're on the

verge of artificial intelligence, like general,

general artificial intelligence. And it's like, I

don't, I feel insulted that they're even telling

us that like, how do they think with that gullible?

How do we think with that easily persuaded

by a science fiction story? But apparently we

are because a lot of people are into it. So,

yes, this is something that I kind of want to

transition into another part of this. Because

again, you and I found each other on TikTok.

But essentially, you and I have been kind of pointing

ourselves away from TikTok. And wouldn't you

say that you use basically what is a posse,

post everywhere? Yeah. I use a mixture of, so

there's two sides of it, right? That's posse in

this piece. And I kind of, I use a mixture of the two.

Like the, so these terms for people who

don't know, like they call from the indie web movement.

And kind of the gold standard is posse, that you post on your own site and then you

set up tools that automatically syndicate that

to various other platforms. The reason this is the gold standard is because then you

own your content. And everything else is just

a copy of the original, which is on your site,

which at the very least, you manage and control

the, you know, you're renting the domain or

something like that. And you can manage that yourself.

And it won't change unless you change something.

Ideally, yourself hosting, I'm not smart enough to do that.

The downside of that, I think, is I don't think it considers the unique context

of each individual social media platform.

And so there are things that I say on Mastodon

that are specifically for the audience there.

And so I don't always post on my own site or on my microblog,

knowing that it's going to go to Mastodon and

it's going to go to Bluesky and all of that.

It's not a Bluesky conversation.

It's further permacomputing, like ecologically conscious,

hands-on, hackery types that I'm connected to on Mastodon.

I just don't think the Bluesky people are going to respond to it.

That said, I'm not actively on Bluesky. It's only a place

that I syndicate to. And so I find conversely

that I get almost no engagement on Bluesky.

I'm not personally investing in that culture. And it shows, right?

And it's not. So I think, yeah, yeah. So like, I think that's the strength of pesos

that like actually each social network is

generative in its own way. And so posting elsewhere

and then capturing that and bringing it back

into your own site, which is what I do on TikTok.

And you and I are the only people who know who do this. I post on TikTok and have my

PeerTube automatically capture that and mirror

it. And I think everybody should be doing this basically.

I caveat around like a cost money.

So we need to make the funds available to cover

the cost of a platform so that people can do

this without paying like $10, $20, like dollars

and one for more depending on how much they post.

But fundamentally, I think it's really

important for us to archive the things that we

post on social media because all of these platforms

are ready at the drop of a hat to delete everything

we have ever done because they don't like us.

And the more marginalized we are, the more

likely that is to happen. And it can happen for

frivolous reasons. That blind guy on TikTok had four

strikes on his account, a fifth one and it would

be gone because at his username is that blind guy, he's blind.

TikTok was going to remove his account

because all his videos look the same.

And then not the same video posted over and over again.

He's bearing a body cabinet walking the same

route every day. And now rating his experience

learning because he's recently blind, learning

to use a cane to navigate his environment.

And we can see what's going wrong. We can see where he's

ending up in danger. And he benefits from people

giving feedback saying, Hey, when you felt you

felt okay, knock against this thing and you said,

oh, I wonder if that's a planter or is it a random piece of concrete? What is it?

That was actually a parking bar lot or something like that.

So he gets that feedback from people.

It's really helpful for him. And it's fascinating to watch.

And it's always wonderful to what

someone gradually build up a skill and overcome a challenge.

Right. And TikTok thought he was just posting the same video over and over again

because they all superficially look the same.

So like, there's so many reasons why you can

lose your account, why it can be taken down.

And there's real, we're super aware of all the prohibitions on political speech there.

But we're using it as like our primary place of activism.

I think it's, I think it's ridiculous and it's really holding just black.

And that's like the example that you used was very benign

in terms of politically. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. When it comes to, I mean, there has been a

change between now and five years ago when TikTok

wasn't owned by the head of Oracle, you know,

and who is, who is a Zionist. I mean, trying to

riff off Bill Clinton, but you know, it's capitalism

stupid literally is why I mean, it was, I

think it was around like 2013, 2014 and Twitter

switched to instead of being like, I post and then

you post and that you know what I mean, it was

just kind of, it's how Mastodon is right now.

Yeah. Like totally chronological. Yeah.

When that switched, it was done for one reason. It was done for money.

They could figure out a way to monetize Twitter.

So they, what they ended up doing was making an algorithm

that essentially kept you glued, kept you there.

It's keeping you there. And I think it's also

something I keep thinking and wishing I could

like get out there is the, have you heard of the

race, the purpose of a system is what it does.

So just, it's, they call them. Yeah.

So they call they call these algorithms content recommendation

algorithms, which foregrounds that you, the user

get content that is tuned to what is what you're

interested in and what is going to keep you there,

right? But the reverse side of that, which is it

through, I think, is that the purpose of a content

recommendation algorithm is to suppress content.

You go from, you know, 100% you post something,

it's going to be shown to your followers and

everyone who is repost every, you know, the followers

of everyone who reposts it to something less

than 100%, maybe 10%, maybe way lower than that,

right? Like the, the, the purpose of a content

recommendation algorithm is to suppress your content

unless a certain number of conditions are met within 30 minutes of you posting.

It, it's, it's all about keeping, I mean, it's continue.

Maybe it's because I've been working on my home lab a lot, but I think it is almost

like Docker containers. It's taking communities

and shoving them together. And like, I probably

have the same 300 people that are reading my posts

on, on TikTok, right? Um, typically it's about, I

get about 300 views and I think it's the same 300

people, but they make these little echo chambers

and it literally, it, because I have this kind of,

I don't, I'm sure somebody else theorized this, but

I feel like when it comes to this kind of thing,

they're, I think of myself pre-transition and

post-transition. I had kind of a seminal moment

for me, and I think everybody's different, but my,

when I decided to transition, I kind of had this

light bulb moment that everything that people say, genders just a construct,

sex is a concept. I mean, all these things in

our lives that we think that are super real

are really just constructs that we accept as being real.

And when it's, it's, it's odd to say, but at the same time, I was reading a Mark

Twain book called Letters from Eve, I think,

or letters from the earth. And one of the things

is that it's the, the, the person that's the

narrator is Satan, and he's talking about how

illogical God is that he can kill all these children.

And at the same time, I was going through a

really bad divorce, and I was deciding that I was

going to, what road I was going to go down as far

as my transition goes. And all these things kind of

converged into me realizing that life wasn't this concrete thing.

It was a, for the first time in my life, I was self reflecting, because before that,

I literally, I'd been a conservative.

I, before I transitioned, I was going to Bible college.

That I was like, when I wrote, I wrote about this on

your TransAdvocate.com, but I was an evangelical,

a former trans person. I was an ex trans person

for a while in like 2000, 2001, when I was trying

to suppress all that. Anyways, regardless of that,

I, I think like pre-transition, I was one of those

reactionary people that would just kind of not

think of that about things. And if people made me

think about them, I would get angry.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Whereas now I'm like, if somebody

says something that pushes that button inside

of me, I go, why, why does that bother me?

Do you know what I mean? And there's a fundamental

difference between those two people?

Because me, me pre 2000 would have been on Twitter.

Do you know what I mean? Being, you know, either a

troll or, but never having that realization that

I am being monetized and I am being used, because

there are a lot of these people that are just

fodder for other people's, I mean, what, especially

being in the UK right now, I came here in 2016

and seeing like, I'm not kidding you, I feel

like I've never seen a country repeatedly kick

itself in the nuts. Do you know what I mean?

With Brexit? Yeah. People with reactionaries, and this

is kind of what I'm getting at, you have reactionary

forces, and then you have people that self are

able to self reflect. You know, I grew up in a

family of people that were just totally reactionary.

There was very little self reflection going on.

There was little, very little inquisitiveness,

and I think that that is a thing. Yeah.

You know, there are people, especially in conservative

areas, where if you pull apart like my brother

at one time, you know, if you told him, you know,

if he said gay marriage was wrong, if you said,

well, why, then he would get pissed off?

Well, it is stupid. Do you know what I mean?

He would have this visceral reaction, but if you ask him to

explain it, he couldn't. And that's, that's kind

of where I think a lot of this kind of stuff

around social media, and it's not just conservatives.

I mean, because I've seen it on our,

you know, on the left, more, more liberal than I

would say than the left, but we won't go there.

Yeah. I feel like I've seen quite kind of similar things on the left, right?

When the, when the left argues about sex work, right, you

get, you get that anti-sex work Marxist who are

very black and white about it, right?

I feel like you do see that sort of black and white,

like I've already sorted things into what's good and what's bad.

And don't tell me to rearrange them again.

I feel like I see that attitude in when, yeah, when Marxists are against sex work,

like specifically rather than against any form of.

And that's it. That's literally it.

It's just like it makes me uncomfortable, and I don't want to talk about why. Yeah.

And that that all labor is coerced, you know what I mean?

So yeah, or other forms of labor,

like, you know, you'll have people that'll sit

there and talk about, well, it's, it's unique

in the way that we're about people's bodies and intimacy.

And I'm like, what about football?

What about rugby? All these sports where people

literally die in their fifties, because they

and again, like this. Yeah, this industries and

forms of labor that are considered completely

normal that have like incredibly detrimental

effects on people's bodies. Like, if some there's

some statistic about like people who work as

roofers, well, like, you have a really high chance

of a life altering injury when you work on roofs.

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, take it from a radiographer.

This is true. Right. Um, I, I, uh, one of my

close collaborators is an artist called Jennifer

Booth, whose work deals with, um, and she's

doing really well at the moment, she's currently

doing a monflung residency in Venice for the Biennale,

um, which is like a huge, like a huge pleasure

to see, um, her work deals with, um, uh,

reproductive cancers and relations to like, um, like

material harms in the world, um, because she

grew up in an agricultural community, um, just

getting pesticides rained on you from the sky as a child.

And funnily enough, there's a much higher rate of like non-hunching insulin foam

and reproductive cancers in that area.

And that's what she ended up developing. Um, uh, uh, so

probably at some point a class action lawsuit

will result, right? But it's hard work and she

stopped following it because it's been decades. And

it still hasn't happened, right? Um, so again,

like that's, and, and she, what her first job was

sorting potatoes and she was like everyone who

worked to that job, the skin would just peel right off your hands.

Like you could tell who worked at that factory just like walking around town because

like no skin on their hands basically.

Um, like we have all of these massive, um, like threats to our bodies.

But also like something about like the interference with our bodies that labor does.

Um, yeah, there's something really like generative

about like looking at it and investigating it

and thinking about our own relationship to it and

how much our own lives depend on that happening

to other people. Um, but you know, it feels like you don't have to do that if you just

sequester off certain areas of work as being the

bad work where that thing happens and the rest of it.

Um, bad because of alienated labor, but work itself is honorable and noble.

Well, yeah, exactly. I feel like too that you

get a lot of people that are like they don't

realize that they're being just like conservatives.

When you get into this reactionary mindset,

where you're not examining these nuances at the

end of the day, I feel like when you're talking

about because sex work, sex workers are a

marginalized community. And when you're talking about

marginalized communities, the people that you

should focus on, the people that you should center,

the people that you should listen to, are the people

at the center of the work, not previous workers,

not anything like that. I mean, as far as centering, those voices can be listened to,

but they shouldn't be the experts.

The experts should be the people that are doing it and that

are having the harms done to them. You know, but so

often those people are left out of conversations,

you know, even more and more because what

we're talking about, these algorithms, they are

containerizing these communities as well.

I mean, I see it on TikTok all the time. The only time

that they're not is engagement. Yes.

Yeah, I was going to say, like, I've always been kind of,

I'm kind of in favor of echo chambers, like to some

extent, we need to create spaces for each other

and to get in depth on the nuances and details of

a specific worldview and set of ways of thinking about things.

We need to have spaces where we are

not talking to absolutely everybody all the time.

But what changed in the late 2010s and the early

2020s is we stopped having, on mainstream platforms,

we stopped having agency over those spaces that

we're creating and instead it's just being done to

us, like, and then suddenly it changes whether it's

TikTok, whether it's Instagram, whether it's YouTube,

it will suddenly change and the algorithm will decide

to start to move something outside of its context,

right? Because context isn't actively constructed

by its users, it's enforced by the algorithm.

And so context collapse happens very easily and

it's hard not to imagine that it's intentional,

that like something will get taken outside

of its context and its spots massive outrage,

and then that person is going through an incredibly

psychologically damaging experience of being stockpiled by people who hate them.

And they did nothing to incite it. They didn't go kick

the horn, it's nest. They didn't go to the

wrong side of YouTube and say, hey, guys, like,

I'm an anarchist trans person, what do you think about that?

Like, they were just doing their thing

and then the machine decided to start showing their content to people who hate them.

And it's a horrific form of like automated violence, I think.

A people that I'll give you, the person that comes to mind for me is Bonnie Blue.

She's a conservative. She's multiple times, she can kind of

shown herself to be a conservative.

That being said, she knows how to push buttons and so

she's the one that gets elevated in the SW community.

And yeah, she's not doing advocacy,

she's rage baiting. Now, I watched her

documentary and it's fascinating how few women

she's friends with, well, how few women she works with.

This isn't like coalition building, it's someone out of that in themselves.

Yeah, yeah. And it's totally, I mean, it is rage bait

in the most purest form. Yeah, she's literally

getting people angry. I mean, the thing that's going

on right now with her is she's brought her child,

basically this baby into something that she's doing.

I can't go, I'm not going to go any

further than that. But yeah, wow. But it's to get people angry.

Yeah, that's literally the whole thing.

Like, she wants to get you as angry as

possible so that you go look at her content.

This is like the most negative part of

algorithms and social media that is driven by

an attention economy. You know, I feel like,

I feel like that so much of it is just a funnel

that goes downward and socially that it really

is destroying. I hate to be barking my day.

I'm like that now as well. But I remember when the

internet was a positive thing and platforms

promoted, well, didn't even really promote. They just

like I said, especially pre 2012, like Twitter

and places like that, there were people that

were doing amazing things. But those people

got elevated because of the work that they were

doing, not because of the entertainment that they were.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't

based around rage bait. No. So much of this is what it's become.

That being said, I kind of want to

kind of one of the things that we haven't talked

about that I want to talk about is Intrapology.

Yeah. Can you tell us about that project?

Intrapology is my queer sci-fi story world.

And it kind of began with the question of like, why do

I have to share a world with people who don't

recognize my existence or would prefer that I don't exist?

It basically starts from suicide

prevention, right? I don't want to be here anymore. Why do I have to be here sharing,

sharing a world with people who want to eraze me and destroy me? And people like me.

It's not personal. I don't have a persecution complex.

It's just, that's how it is, right? And then the answer

that I came up with was like, maybe the alternative is worse.

So Intrapology is a world where

worlds fall apart when they, when consensus is lost. So when someone's world be able to

excludes you, they don't see you and you can't

reach them and you end up living in separate worlds

literally. So worlds can only stay together

through consensus. So I tried to realize this story

world through a series of online interactive performances.

And part of the reason for doing it that way,

oh, so we did this using software that we built

ourselves and worked with an artist called

Squinky who designed a format of interactive

performance back in the mid 2010s for their play

coffee and misunderstanding, which toured a bunch

of like queer games conferences and like it was

performed in like anarchist book sharps and like

radical cafes as well as like things that are

closer to more traditional theater spaces and festivals and stuff. So we adapted it.

We got some funding in 2021 to adapt that format to online

performance because what they did was in person

using a local network. But because of the

conditions of 2021, there was interest in online

performance at the time. So we got some funding

to create to rebuild the software because things

further down the software stack had stopped working.

So it needed to be rebuilt anyway and make it

for online performance. And then I used that

format to create a series of stories set in this

story world where generally worlds fall apart when people don't share a world view.

So the question then is why is our world coherent?

How are 8 billion people who do not share a world view

sharing a world? And we explore that in the first season.

So that felt like the right format to tell this story where if I'm going to tell

stories about that, come from this kind of

collectivist perspective, right, where we can

only have a world together if we all invest in it

together, invest our energies and our ideological

commitments in maintaining a world, then

the story can't be one writer wrote a story about

one hero and it goes one way. So the audience

shapes how the story goes. So we have audience

voting that changes the branching paths of the script

and we have bits where the audience write things

in three form that the actor then performs

as an improvised monologue which can come out

incredibly beautiful because then in that moment

that character is channeling the emotions of

everyone watching and not the emotions but the

thoughts of everyone watching and it's wonderful when it works.

It reminds me of like improv comedy

except for in storytelling form and my God that has to be so both thrilling to perform

and scary at the same. Yeah, in front of you.

Do you know what I mean? And how did you rehearse that?

It's really hard to rehearse those moments.

Like sometimes I'd be frantically writing things in

to try and give the actors something but a lot of

the time we just weren't able to rehearse those

moments and they just had to be ready for whatever would come.

You do have to choose people who

yeah can handle uncertainty and can handle a situation that's changing very quickly.

Also because the technology is a bit fragile so things might

there might be an unexpected pause that they have to fill or something like that.

It did get a lot smoother towards the end but at that point

and I'm going to try to focus on the positive

when I talk about this but at that point like

our last like couple of episodes we had new

technicians who were absolutely incredible.

This translate company called Transcent Streaming based

in New York we're doing our OBS engineering and

they are they're astonishingly talented and it really

elevated the level that we were able to perform

that. I started working with co-writers who were

doing amazing work like I was in much better

writing when I was working in collaboration.

We don't several behind the scenes it's also collaborative

like we do story building world building workshops

together as a team. So rather than me as the

or two going like this is how the world works.

There's certain rules that I enforce but then the

specifics we generate together. Yeah like something

I said no to was someone wanted to do a story.

It's so funny this is before the Stranger Things

finale came out. Someone wanted to do a story where

one world is going to collide with another one and

I didn't quite say no I just was like I need to

know why because I need to know like socially and

emotionally why is this happening to these characters

like it has to have a meaning like the whole

opportunity of a world that runs on these rules

that has this structure where like when that a

world breaks apart because of what happens between

people is that you don't have to separately tell

like the emotional and character building stuff

and the sci-fi exposition. Like these should

be happening at the same time. So I need a plot

to do both of those at the same time.

You need to know why. Yeah so like collaborative world

building like he was way more in line with what

I'm trying to do with this story. But yeah it kind

of almost feels like it didn't matter how good

it was in the end because the audience numbers

were just dwindling more and more each time and

I truly believe except with one exception I think

I tried everything. The only exception is that we

weren't on YouTube. We streamed on YouTube because

that was the most robust technical way to

do it because YouTube has the lowest latency

and latency really matters with interactive stuff. Otherwise I would have used peer

tube but PeerTube's latency is at least five

seconds which is awkward in life performance.

I didn't post our videos on YouTube because I

was already having such a bad time on Instagram

and Facebook which I have a previous experience of running a community bookshop that

did not survive because of Facebook and not

having a you know TikTok I mean I've been like

you in 300 for you jail for a million on time.

I was like I've already I don't need to put it in

such a self-loathing way but I will.

I've already screwed up on all the other algorithmic driven

platforms. I'm not doing YouTube until I have

someone I can hire who knows how to do this properly

like and if that means doing it after we've

done all of the performances then so be it right

but now there's no funding to pay someone to do that anyway.

There's something this probably a

side note that's going to get distracted but something

I keep coming back to you is if these platforms

really worked right if it really was just a case

of I would just follow the formula that this guy

with a workshop is selling you and you'll succeed.

If that was the case there'd be a lot of

managers and producers lining up to find talent

that they can just that they could just give

that that person instructions and tune what they

do and get a cut of this inevitable profit that

will surely ensue if you do everything right.

If all it takes is to know the formula and apply it

someone would be knowing the formula and applying

it and just finding talent to like slot in place

right and then you get 50% they get 50% and

everybody's happy that's not happening it's not

happening because the economy of it doesn't work because the whole thing is a lie.

I was doing TikTok Instagram I was posting in every group chat

for like creatives and theater and interactive

and all of that I am in so many discords and every

time we had something to promote I would be going

around and it gets so humiliating posting in

every group chat posting in every discord emailing

every newsletter like sending out you know 100 like

different press releases to 100 different people

and it took so much energy of which you know MS

since 2022 I already had very little I had about

20 working hours a week and I had to make the

thing promote the thing manage about 33 lenses

like it it was completely like unmanageable and

what it really needed to make all of that worth it

was some kind of stable foundation of a community

that will show up for this and I believe we

would have had that in the 2010s like the way

Twitter was in the 2010s this would have worked

the way Tumblr was in the 2010s right this could

have worked I think but now you cannot post

something send it to everyone you know it goes to

everyone you follow and then the people who really

care about it share it with all of that and you

get my reality that by organically I don't think

it happens anymore and I got so frustrated like

I was like there's only two things really that

we can potentially rely upon one is direct word

of mouth like actually messaging individuals

who you know are likely to care about this thing

right and it can't only be me who's doing that

it has to be other people on the team and the

other thing is um if a few of us have even a small

audience that connect with us personally um

then we can share what we're doing with them but

again it I think it was really only just me posting

building and audience to actually talking I mean

I say audience but I'm very community oriented

in the way I use social media but you know like

actually engaging people in conversation and

trying to get the word out that way um and I like

there was this moment where I created this whole

like framework for thinking about online marketing

that's based on like like we can't rely on the algorithm so here's what we do instead

and it integrates this posse and pesos approach um with some automated systems

and shared this with everybody and I got zero

response and I think part of it is the way that

I communicated it like it was very systems

oriented I didn't translate it from like autistic

systems oriented thinking into um that kind of

personal empowering like well it's marketing

but it's it's also like uh there's a way that you

have to talk to teams right to kind of hear people

on board um I didn't do that translation work and

so it just didn't land like at all so it's easy

for me to say well people didn't do it so but I was

right like maybe I was wrong and that's why people

didn't do it right but like it's like we need another

way to think about this and I feel like I'm not

being heard when I tell people this whether it's

within a team or whether it's just like conversations

on social media about social media I think

people still believe that this works because they

think of the outliers they think of the people

they follow or the people they know who have got

on big and they're like clearly it works because

you can get big or like I hear a lot of people

going and well clearly it works because I'm reaching people I wouldn't have reached

without this platform right and reaching people

outside of my immediate circle of friends

so clearly it works and I'm getting so frustrated

trying to tell people like you I don't think

I think these are people who don't know what it

was like 10 years ago like oh slightly more than

10 years ago right um they don't know what it

was like to be on Twitter in 2012 red like find

all these different people and like I had um back

then I crowdfunded a book about the Dreamcast

like 200 not people gave me money so I could

write a book about the Dreamcast there's no way I

could do that now no way I had I started my own

journal of games history um and got like uh I don't

remember how many but like a healthy number of

people downloading it every month I would always

easily get enough submissions to pull something

together um at like very short notice and I wasn't

having to like put things up there repeatedly and

like basically beg and plead people to pay attention

to what I was doing like it was just right there

and it's gone and people don't realize what they've

lost and I think they focus so much on the outliers

that like oh someone can get famous therefore it

works they don't think about the average I was never

Twitter famous I never had more than 3000 followers

I was experiencing the average and the average

was you can put something out and it will reach

hundreds of people and not just idle views like

hundreds of people would pay me money or hundreds

of people would download the thing that I'd made

right like now you can't even link to things on

social media right so like download the thing I

made is a massive ask like you're gonna have to

click five times to get to the thing that I've made

I'm gonna lose you by then so I'm so frustrated

because like we have alternatives you can still

link to things on um community owned platforms

like Mastodon and PeerTube um in fact PeerTube

has a beautiful integrated way of putting your

Patreon right there um or your coffee or whatever

like um crowdfunding uh support thing right there

like in its own special place by the video we have

these alternatives where people don't want to use

them because you can't get famous on them and

people aren't used to thinking about people are so

used to thinking about getting famous and they don't

think about what's the average like what's likely

to happen um I think about how don't you think

it's like a capitalist mindset like uh I'm gonna

become a millionaire you do you know what I mean

it's like that one thing I compare it to in my head

it's like um Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert

um his thing on premium bonds which for people

watching outside of the UK um premium bonds are

a very popular way of um putting money aside in

savings um they are so you have money in a pot

and every it's like buying it a each pound that

you have in your pot is basically a lottery ticket

and so everyone there's a chance that you get

a really big win on your premium bond um or

what otherwise it's zero and so Martin Lewis has

punched the numbers and has shown that on average a premium bond gets you

increase the amount of money that you have you

should put your money in a normal savings account

not in a premium bond but people love premium

bonds because they love gambling it feels wonderful

right and I think it's like that like I I

think we need the social media equivalent of

Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert that like

crunch the numbers think about the average what's

actually likely to happen to you like you want

a good average not an outstanding rare chance

right well the the thing that would really that

really irritates me about it though is for me the

big example is like when everybody left Twitter

they could have went to Mastodon but instead

they went to Bluesky which is just literally

the same guy that created Twitter created massive

army created Twitter created Bluesky it's owned

by crypto bros um but somehow those people are

going to have your best best interests in mind

and it's like why I mean I I keep going why do

you keep doing this you leave one platform for

another and you'd get people that would be like

you know it's too hard to learn blah blah blah

with masses on like literally this is Twitter

like literally I mean it's tweet deck but I mean

yeah do you know what I mean it's not I know

but yeah it's not hard day today I think to be fair to them my when I first moved to

Mastodon it I don't want to be fair to them

when I first moved to Mastodon in 2017 um like

it was all right for a few months and then I

didn't have such a good experience and it was only

in I think 2021 um that I think I posted a

message on that social life this just doesn't

work for me it's not very engaging like it's not

there's a really low or high signal to noise ratio

right um and then uh someone who I had been

friends with on Twitter um invited me to join their

much smaller Mastodon server and it's actually

you know to get into the technicalities it's a

Hometown server which has different um facilities

and settings that are much more geared towards

small and I don't know nourishing communities

um and that was when my experience of Mastodon

massively improved and I realized that Mastodon

is the school cafeteria right like you're choosing

which table to sit at you're all in the same room

but it really matters what table you're at and

that's actually not a technical problem right

that's a social problem like but I get that it feels

like a technical problem because it's but don't you

think the sign up point but don't you think that

that technical or that technical problem is also a

social problem because I feel like this is manipulation

who do you know what I mean I feel like that when

it comes to the social media sites it's almost like

people want to do them scroll they want to be fed

content that feels like they're getting some kind

of dopamine hit from it uh they want they want

to be outraged they want uh it just feels very

intentional the one thing that bothers me about

Mastodon is just I feel like I feel like I'm talking

I feel like I'm going into closet back here and

talking to myself because I might get two or three

people rarely commenting I put a post up on blue

sky or um on TikTok you know I'm getting yes I have

my 300 people but I'm getting 300 people having

a conversation or you know 20 people having a

conversation so I mean it does feel like a bit

of a desert the thing I like about Mastodon is

they there's actually something I can do about

it this week there was two creative prompts

in the same week so I was actually doing two

creative challenges in one week but um it there were

they were basically hashtag campaigns then there

was a week when there were two different prompts

to do a creative activity one of them was um

weak of patching so it's broadly about music or

though I think some people did visuals using some

kind of system that involves patching between

things so like your typical example would be

modular synth but there are softwares that like use

that way of thinking as well um and then another

one was um old computer challenge like get an

old computer and make it work again and so I had

these projects ongoing I was posting about them

every day on the hashtag and people would you

know this is a place where hashtags work the way

they used to work right where like you follow a

hashtag and you get everything that's posted to

that hashtag the hashtag isn't an instruction

to the algorithm it's like it's a link for you

for you to find that content yeah and so then

I got so that because there was a few people

engaging on the same hashtag for an unlimited

period of time that generated some interesting

conversations um and so there's things you can

do like that that are completely human driven

they're actually allowing you to like make

connections and make friends rather than it being

completely the look of the draw like will this

actually get shown to the people that I want it to

get shown to yeah kind of what I'm getting at

though I think kind of the intentionality of

things like Twitter or TikTok algorithmically

driven sites it's a push pull kind of thing

it's to me it is a negative thing but it's also

keeps you there because you have an audience that

is pretty consistent where you know on on mastodon

somebody might I mean they're going to scroll

do you know what I mean you're gonna get lost

in that kind of unless you have people that only

follow four or five people and they're gonna go

in and look at their feed but I mean you know even

on mastodon I'm falling 200 people you know 200

accounts yeah two 300 accounts so like literally

I'm not gonna scroll back I'm not gonna get back

to the beginning which I think that's part of why

my experience improved a lot when I moved onto

a Hometown server where there's a local feed

well as the general public feed so there's a

smaller group of people who are much more likely

to see what I post because some people are

like literally only looking at the local feed

or they don't follow many people outside of

the Hometown server and they're I'm I fantasize

about getting a group of people together who I

know from TikTok to co-design a social network

together using something like there's this service

called Bonfire that allows you to create an

activity pub server that with whatever specific

features and plugins you wanted to have so like

I wish I had some examples in front of me if the different things that a Bonfire

service can do but but basically like you could

then get a group of people together and go how do

we want our thing to work not you should use

this thing because it's more ethical and you

like you know being like digital vegan about it

but like what do you actually want because like

if you already know that TikTok isn't necessarily

giving you what you want because it's oriented

towards making people famous and creating

outreach outreach cycles and that kind of thing

and you're here posting because you genuinely

want community you're not using community

as a synonym for an audience who will adore what I

do but you want something that like is mutualistic

and community oriented okay we've got to create

that world together then right like we need to

engage in some collaborative worldbuilding as well

as like software design and something like Bonfire

would allow us to do that but get Intrapology

and previously the community bookshop that was

running kind of taught me that that initial buy-in

is so hard already and then you've got to maintain

it well I mean you you literally have people

that are still on Facebook yeah you know we don't

leave these platforms um uh Jamie and the chat uh

made a pretty pretty salient comment she says it

feels though as even my own followers are using

Mastodon as a second app or posse syndication

platform more so than a place to talk or interact

on Bluesky and even Twitter there are people

who constantly get responded to see that's the

thing I when it comes to these different places

I want to have the conversation but I don't I

don't think that it generate when it comes to

Mastodon especially again I just feel like that

it's a very quiet place yeah we're you're getting

a lot of stuff thrown out at you I mean that's

kind of what Jamie's saying um but not a lot of

conversations that are happening maybe that's just

me I mean because the difference between you and I

is you are on different servers I've so I'm on Mastodon dot social now but I had my own

instance in man that was that was super lonely

yeah yeah I'm benefiting a lot from like a lot of

work that people are putting in the Merveilles community

um to create something that's that is quite

generative and interactive um I've not done the

work to make that happen I just benefit from it

something else that I don't know how much time you

got but something else that I did want to get to

is um one of the projects that you're involved

with a Studio Voltaire and Desperate Living

yeah um can you talk about that yeah studio

Voltaire is a really very arts organization based in

London um I feel when I talk about like my art

practitioners and kind of the things that have

worked and the things that have gone wrong I'm

really negative about London but actually I think

Studio Voltaire is one of the best partners I've

worked with um so they support a project called

Desperate Living run by um Raju Rage um and one

part of that project was a well it's ongoing a

online archive of trans health resources that I

built uh Raju approached me about this because

they uh seen my piece um Cis Penance which is a

interactive um set of interviews with trans people

and they liked the um that they liked the aesthetic

of it in my approach to it and they wanted

me to bring something similar to desperate

living so I suggested that we um go totally hand

built uh on Neocities um there's this is another

thing where like I care about this a lot and I

feel like I'm not heard on it very much um I

tried to make the second episode of Intrapology

about this and it was really hard to express um

I think there's something really beautiful about

moving down in abstraction layers with when you

make things on the internet like hand coding is

intrinsically a beautiful activity and I care

about more people doing that I care about making

things that someone can imagine making themself

or someone can learn to make them self um much

more than I care about with bang you know you put

on a VR headset and you're like wow um I don't

find that artistically interesting um I care

that we live immersed in multiple socio-technical

systems and we need to have more autonomy and

control over them and so that's a try and make

that happen materially and the things that I make

so Desperate Living um yeah it's completely hand

coded uh website that allows you to navigate a

bunch of um trans health resources that we've

archived um we're still adding new things uh

one of the most recent things that we added is a

community-made audiobook of Stone Butch Blues um again

this is you know Raju Rage put an enormous amount

of work into this project bringing together 27

trans people to reach record a chapter um and doing

the audio editing on that um so I just made a

web page within Desperate Living for that um at

that point I'd learned more about web accessibility

as well um so that prompted me to do a bit more

work you know for for an audiobook it better be

screen reader accessible right um so I made sure that

the screen reader experience at least you think you

know I tested it using Orca which is Linux's

screen reader um so I would still benefit from

some more testing on all the platforms but um I

yeah I made sure that like the screen reader experience

is logical and um actually allows you to access

everything because I've done some and I still need

to work on this on some other pages on desperate

living I did this I have this effect in there where

you hover over an image so it look it it's all

it looks like black large press stuff um which

form of t-shirt is um it's black with like um high

contrast white images right and then you can hover

over an image and the information will appear

and you'll get a link to download the resource um

it's beautiful it's really weird with screen readers

so like this Stone Butch Blues page I'm happy

with how that's working now but now I need to go

back over the other pages because what will

happen right now is the screen reader will read

things that you can't see and that feels so odd um

I mean for so for some blind users that's perfectly

in um but there's a lot of people who like will

find it very confusing because they're visually

impaired to the extent that they benefit from

a screen reader but they can still tell like

this is reading out things that aren't on the

screen what's going on so I need to figure out

how to make that work better but there's something

about like being able to step in and do that right

rather than just shrug your shoulders and go I

don't know square spaces just like that there's

nothing I can do um like well no I just go on like

Mozilla yeah like yeah yeah uh god wigs but yeah

like okay I'm gonna learn I'm gonna actually learn

how this works and so that then I can consciously

think about what I want that experience to be like

and try and implement it and I'm not a computer

scientist I've got no qualifications in web design

I'm in no position to be teaching people how to

make websites but I love it um and I think it's

worth sharing that joy um so Studio Voltaire has

me running a workshop teaching other people how

to make hand-built archives of their activism

and what have you um and that's gonna be in late

November um I think in October um registration

will be open for that that like when I went to

when I visited that site the Desperate Living

and a Leslie Feinberg Stone Butch Blues um page it

had it really for me as a trans person I transitioned

in 2001 so when I started hormones roughly um and

I had discussions with uh we worked I wouldn't say

friends but uh we talked uh Leslie I talked

to Leslie Feinberg and um after Leslie passed

their partner um Minnie Bruce Pratt was out there promoting uh Leslie's work

and put the PDF out for free and it so when

I when I went back last night and was kind of

looking at the site it kind of pinged all these

different things for me as far as like the past

and um like how much of that culture that we

kind of came together and built is still there

but a lot of it disappearing and I kind of have

to laugh because I can't show you it right now

because I haven't put this all together but uh

so essentially back in 2001 September of 2001

to be exact um I was in a chat on uh a website

called GABC and it was an online radio show

for the LGBT community um and this is something

too that ties into what you were talking about

in terms of your frustration because one of the

things that I've told you but I want to kind of

reinforce here is your project is a major and

Intrapology is fucking amazing I just think that

it was something that hit at the wrong time so

much about things like this even like with mastodon

I feel like it's not the time for it yet it's

almost the time for it but not yet and I had an

experience with something like this because after

GABC that's kind of what inspired me to start

this show um I started a website called

transistor radio and I did a show with Becky Duro

who was a trans woman sadly she's fast on but

um in 2001 ish we started doing a radio show

called TSR Live and that transformed into I started

a project with a friend of mine his name was

Christian and who did uh outlet radio which

was an LGBT station and they did circuit candy

was like dance music and that kind of thing had

different sub-channels but transistor radio was one

of those sub-channels did a lot of work on that

but one of the things that I realized especially

like with Christian stuff Christian had a show and

he was brilliant at what he did but it was just who

early uh hit the concept of like what he was

doing he was a master at in fact he took that kind

of experience and he moved Tennessee from Washington

DC where I knew him and we worked together

he moved from Washington DC to Tennessee and took

a job working at the local uh new station he was

a I think he was a producer but same type of skill

set you know he was a creative had to constantly

be going out there and put out stories and stuff

um but literally the product that he was delivering

was fucking solid it was funny it was entertaining

it was engaging it was it was community building

at the same time it was too early it just wasn't

the right time you know if he would have come

out with that show just five years six years later

it would have been the right time but it just

wasn't it wasn't the right time um but what you

put together is kind of phenomenal to a certain

extent I understand your frustration but at the

same time you're doing this for art sake as well as

do you know what I mean so I mean yeah my wife and

I have been in this conversation about what art

is and all these there because I'll be honest with

you I have a very contentious kind of view when

it comes to AI because I'm not totally against

it and I'm not totally for it I kind of have this

middle position on it recently I've listened to

a podcast by Tracie Harris called At Home in Your

Head, she talks about AI and you know her

conversation around that is like a recent episode

she was like you know the damage that something

does to the environment we have this idea that

AI has this huge damage to the environment but

we don't apply that to the vehicles to motor

vehicles we've those that literally is one of the

biggest uh never learned to drive for precisely

this reason though so this is why I've landed where

I have I think um yeah I hear the outlier though

I mean yeah yeah it's not common um but you

know we do but then there are other things we do

to limit the calm done by motor vehicles right

like we have the you know the ultra low emissions

on in London and like we um have not what we tried

to do yeah um but you know there's there's so

much um discussion in um like new urbanism or

whatever in the United States of what we need to do

is build the alternative right and then we can get people out with their cars

when you have really low availability of public transport you're forced into car use

when you have high availability of public

transport car use becomes optional right her her

idea around uh AI was that it's not cut and dry

and it's not like uh this conversation that we

want to talk about the bad things but there's

also a lot of good things around um as far as like

trauma and uh uh you know there are people that

are doing a lot of work around their own trauma

where they don't have people as they can

talk to but they're literally these AI driven

bots that are having that conversation with them

that no one else or you know I mean it's it's a very

interesting kind of opposition to yeah I mean

I think I'm actually I'm just trying to check

in with myself because I hope I'm not like

hardening it doing that thing where like you take

opposite positions and then you're hardening your

position right um but well that's where I was

before so I kind of we've heard this episode

she's Tracie is somebody that I really enjoy her

content I don't are you familiar with her at all

now not told no uh she used to be on the atheist

experience um she had a show called Godless

bitches and uh basically she left because they

platformed a fucking transphobe and literally they

had conversation she has one of the most brilliant

conversations around um trans women in sports

that I think I've ever heard her and gen peoples

but it just it made me think uh it's one of those times where I would step back and go

because I kind of feel like uh I'm not a vegan

but I kind of feel like you know the stereotypical

idea that we have around veganism and people

being oh you're eating me uh huh you know

and I feel like that kind of that kind of one

really important distinction would be that like

veganism is about what you're not doing and we can

talk about our relationship to technology in terms

of um in in a positive sense in terms of what

we are doing right no no no 100% 100% I do think

that comes into play I'm starting to get a more

nuanced kind of not nuanced but just challenging

myself and trying not to be that um you know

I uh essentially uh someone that's a whole

bloodite and did you know that um so because there

are things uh probably the biggest the biggest

thing in terms of um things that aren't needed that we engage in is defense spending

do you know what I mean the world would be a much

better place if we didn't spend as much money

in terms of the United States in terms of the

UK like no one's gonna no one's gonna invade

the UK I'm sorry to inform everyone in England

but yeah I truly believe that like UK defense

spending is about um defending our material

interests in countries that aren't ours right

yes specifically the United States I think um but

in terms of like that example of it's used for

therapy um I think we should be super careful about

that and I that's not where I would go looking

for nuance personally um so what's being described

there is a gap in the social fabric right

there isn't there isn't the availability of

therapy services and socially we we don't have

the capability to take care of each other with

that kind of um mental health issue um for the

most part people aren't able to do that this is why

people don't have anyone to talk to I think when

we use AI to fill in a gap in the social fabric

that's extremely dangerous because that is putting

us at risk of becoming dependent on one of these

corporations on one of these mass surveillance

businesses to fill in that gap and we're

already seeing with social media how detrimental

it is when we are dependent on these corporations

for these social functions that we should have

control over and we should also really question

whether there's tool which is essentially a journal

in that in that application right because the

AI agent is not a person and allowing someone to

believe that it's a person um it seems cruel to

me when they're in a vulnerable position like that

so it's a journaling tool you are writing to

yourself in order to reflect on your own trauma

and process it also journaling tool needs to

be okay no you disagree go on well uh because

if I write in a journal I'm not going to

because I've had an expert I've had experiences

where I've had a self-reflect because of

something that the the the AI came back with

the kind of question I'll give you an example

I've been working on one of my um nass uh

I built it myself uh network a test storage and

I was thinking about just ditching it and getting

another one and why it wasn't working and everything

like that and I was having a conversation with

it trying to work out kind of where the problem

was and it's it wasn't something because I would

have chased this with money putting different parts

and things in that it didn't need um and I kind

of feel like that if you're talking about if you're

talking I understand what you're saying as far

as therapy goes that there is a gap but that gap

does exist and there are people that are being

I agree the caveats to what you're saying but I

also think that the people that are being helped by

having that kind of reflective process um we

look at the negatives of this but we're not also

evaluating I think a lot of times we're not

evaluating and there's there's there's I feel like

maybe it's because I'm old but I kind of feel

like uh there's been this process in my head of

like when I was because I was born in 67 so like

in the 80s you'd have people saying well there's

television is uh brooding children and uh but like I I feel like this is like this

threat that keeps getting thrown at us of like

well people were skeptical of the internet as well

and it's like fight but I don't want to be I I feel

it's manipulative I'm not saying you're manipulating

me I feel like we're being manipulated to be

afraid of being left behind right and it's like I'm

actually I'm very closely engaged with my

technical environment as are you right like I'm not

going to be left behind just because I'm looking at

this thing critically and deciding to move slowly

right well um yeah I agree 100% I just think

there's a tendency for people especially on the left

of the spectrum to kind of um look at these

things in a very black and white way that's not

re I know I'm not even going to say that I myself

personally I feel like I have I feel like I have

said you know this is bullshit you know it's

ruining the environment blah blah blah but in the

context you know that's why when I watched what

Tracie was saying it made me kind of reflect on

my own kind of beliefs yeah I definitely don't

I'm not saying that I think it's the savior

of the world right I just want to finish my point

about that like um so first of all that benefit

can exist but we also should think about how we

want to what tools are required for us to get

that benefit and do they have to be connected

to the cloud do they have to involve extremely

large models that are really energy intensive and

do they have to involve the um the participation

of these massive corporations like at all like

that it seems like the like the technical problem

that you're describing um like using an AI for

troubleshooting I think does require a fairly

large data set right um that said oh god I'm

getting too distracted now right so the thing about

that that example that you gave it's like right

now the machine is tuned to guide you to an

elegant solution that does not involve buying

something that's going to change real fast yeah like

that's going to be one of the first things to change

yeah it's almost like it's almost like Twitter

2012 did or yeah yeah so they haven't yet yeah

they haven't yet made that intervention to be like

oh the AI needs to tell you to buy something but

they will do that really soon um when it comes to

like the therapy application I want a tool like

that to run locally for the users privacy right um

I want it to run as lightweight as possible um it

used to be like 15 20 years ago you would build

software to use as few resources as possible and

we don't do that anymore and that's a terrible

crime right we don't have the resources to pour into this giant machine right now

and a lot of the time it's not necessary and I

think that the new ones and the middle ground on

AI will be and there's a I have seen really good

um arguments against the point in about to make

but um the new ones is probably going to be around

use local models right um make sure you own it

if running on your machine make sure you own

the data um and don't build dependency right um

so now that said there is currently an enormous

divide in the Linux community around this

I don't fully understand the details but um

Linux and Ubuntu um and you know I imagine quite

a few other distros are adopting a middle ground

position on AI where um oh Mozilla as well um where

yes they are using AI but they're making it private

they're making it run locally and all that kind

of thing and there's a lot of people who have

really good reasons to be opposed to that as well um

but yeah I think that's where the new ones is I don't think the new ones is oh well

this application of this big horrific machine

um has been really positive I think the new ones

is can we get the benefit without the big horrific

machine right well and uh I hate to say this

but uh and this has probably been about a year

or two years ago um the uh China came out with

a competitive product against ChatGPT that ran

better that that is much cheaper and uh I kind of

feel like that I kind of feel like you know I'm

not I'm not going to sit here and say that I at

100% support the CCP uh but I feel like that the

problem in this what you're talking about inherent

in the problem it it draws me back to like when

Brexit happened here there were people saying well

what if it was a left Brexit what if uh but the

reality of the situation is that that's not what

happened because capitalism you know you know you

know I mean this is being used by people in this

country to do what the capitalist people in

positions of power want and I kind of feel like it's

the same thing with AI it's a capitalism problem

um because you're you're right I mean I'll be

honest with you I'm experimenting now with LLMs

that are local I think it's called Ollama

yeah um that's kind of where I want to go in terms of automating I'm using n8n

to automate um one of the websites that I'm

working on right now is called uh StillNotTrans

and and what it is is just posts about pastors

about coaches about all these people that aren't

trans that are going out and being predators you

know what I mean the people that are that aren't

being looked at um but what I'm trying to do with

uh n8n is go in and automate this process

so it will automatically post these stories that I

can go in and then go click click click click click

and and post them uh in a very automated way because

essentially what I want is a big old database

of cis people I can go here's your problem it's

not trans people you know I mean that's the whole

point of doing it I do think that but it's something

that I want to do locally it's not something

one of the problems that I had initially was

that it wanted um meet to put in tokens to from

the company that runs Claude forget the name of

it but um Anthropic yeah they wanted me

to have tokens that way and I was like you know

what fuck this no yeah um yeah but that being said

the intentionality is what's important for me

and uh and apparently from I think that's where

you're going to is the intent with a lot of these

AI especially uh Anthropic and it's capitalism

and you're right you're 100% right that is

where it's going I mean you even have google

Gemini like they're transforming their search

to do the same thing that it's done and doing

but in an AI format so you know the the analogy

with cars I think it's really it's really

generative if read the other way where it's like

the problem with cars is that the world around us

was constructed over the course of the 20th

century in a way that made us dependent on them

and it got to the point where we didn't have

a choice and the cat the antidote to it is us

providing help like mutually to each other to

help each other get around without this same

number of cars and that could even just be

carpooling right um and I think we need to be mindful

of the same thing around AI like the world around

us is being reshaped to um I mean hopefully

they'll fail and the bubble will burst before this

actually gets completely you know embedded into

our lives but I can see everywhere that they are

building dependency on AI so that um we're not just

using their product because it's convenient they they

not using the product is becoming less convenient

right or like not using the product will lose

you your job and that kind of thing um if we

it's not enough for us to just be really angry

about AI and shame each other for using it we have

to make sure we're building and maintaining the

alternative uh one problem that I keep running into

when it comes to like solving a technical problem

is it's always been horrible to ask for technical

help on the internet right like people have always

been rude about it but it feels worse now because

now when someone says this is very googleable I

have to sit there and go well I stopped using google

because I don't want to use its AI right so now

I use start page and when I searched this problem

on start page I only got four results and those

results led me to this subreddit where I asked

to this question so what I'm being told now by

human beings I'm trying to ask human beings for

help for the technical problem because I believe

that that is what we should be doing we should be

reaching out for help from other human beings

and building supportive networks for each other

I'm asking human beings for help and they're

telling me you could use an AI for this why are

you wasting my time so now I'm forced to go and

use the AI because socially we're destroying

the structures that allow us to help each other without relying on this machine

well and yes I think that would I think what you're

kind of pointing to is these abstraction layers

upon on top of I mean you're talking about one

layer is AI but then underneath that is search

you know rather than that underneath that

search there is Reddit or you know an online

forum and what you're looking at so you have these

layers of and it just seems to be getting more

and more I think it's a monetized yeah but I

do think well I mean the hoping they'll get you

want to try to write they're not currently making

money but yeah I do feel like it's it's something

that needs to have a lot more intentional kind

of discussions like we've just had about it so

I kind of wanted to finish up you have talked about the importance of archiving

digital archiving for the trans community for

the LGBTQ+ community can you talk a little bit

about that in terms of because kind of in getting

prepared for the show and I haven't talked

about it much but I I got pretty ill in 2024

and stopped doing the show because of it

but in kind of preparing I'm still working on it as you can tell from

the gelopy that I put together so far it made

me reflect on how you know I've been doing this

for 26 years in some former fashion and it made me

reflect on how how much ground that I've covered

because there's so much about the the website

that I that I found at TransAdvocate.com

it's kind of I don't I I passed it on to a nonprofit

called Trans Houston and Cristan Williams is

the person that took it over but it's been

kind of dormant for a couple years it used to

have a lot more of a voice in the community

but I feel like looking back because I went on

archive.org yesterday was researching my own

website kind of looking at the graphics that I

made I'm kind of glad on some on some level

that they it doesn't exist but sad on the other

because a lot of that history is just it's

disappearing and yeah a lot of the things that

that a lot of the rights that we have today as

much as they're under assault those things were

attained by trans people and those people aren't

talked about they're forgotten and the history

is being rewritten unless we have this kind of

archive of ourselves I mean when I went back

I found recordings from I specifically two shows

but they were both on archive.org in fact

after I get done editing this and putting it to

podcast form I'm going to put every show up on

archive.org so no matter what happens to

this show in terms of hosting if I pass on or

you know I get thrown out on the street and don't

have money for funding by the way you can support

me on Patreon.com yeah links will be in

the show notes um but if that were to happen

there is an archive someplace that's not going

to go away that is so freaking important for us

to know the history that of a community that

I've been a part of for like I said 2026 years

but so much people so much of it that people

don't know about yeah but so in terms of that what

are you talking about you talk about on your

blog about archiving what what what are you doing

around that um at the moment it's my most of

what I'm doing around that is Desperate Living

and um you know doing this workshop in November

to kind of help us make our own personal websites

that archive stuff that's otherwise on these

platforms that can be quite ephemeral um

the other the other cool thing about archiving

the stuff you post on social media is it becomes

more searchable right like it's hard to find an

old Instagram post by search um if you posted

the same thing on your website it'll be a lot easier

for you to fight again for other people to find

it again um what I've done in the past is uh I

used to be senior curator of a site called critical

distance um this was not trans focused although

it was it was trans led um but this was a site

that collects games criticism um and it's

primary purpose which just to help people to find

interesting critical writing on games um because

and this was started back in 2009 um and then

there was a discovery issue uh but back then

discovery issues could be solved by people um and

so we were set up to do that when I took over a

senior curator in 2015 um I got us to start archiving

everything that we linked to using a tool um

a plug-in that was uh worked with WordPress

so it would send a copy to archive to org but also

it would send a copy to our own private archive

and I really wanted to make that private archive

searchable but then the WordPress tool the WordPress

plugin stopped working the people have built it

lost their funding um and as far as I know we're

still stuck there I had I left um at the board of

Critical Distance early this year um because after

Intrapology I hit um really bad burnout um just

before our last performance I got covid and this

bout of log covid has left me completely unable to

work um with the exception of like tiny little things

right like I can do this work shop in November

because I planned it last year so most of the work

has already done right um so I don't know exactly

where we're at at Critical Distance but I do think

that there's a lot of value in doing something in

addition to archive.org uh partly because archive.org

you know has been on direct existential threat in

the past and I think it probably will happen again

in the future um partly because as I say like

when we had our own private archive that had the

potential to become searchable we just needed to

find a software engineer who would work with us to

create that search tool and then we needed someone

to rebuild the broken WordPress plugin which

to be fair was open source so and theory anyone

could fix it um but someone someone has to do it

we spoke to three different software engineers

about this and um uh everyone got quite intimidated

by the task um which is really discouraging um so

there's a there's a problem with this on all levels

right um there's the the social problem of

like um we need people to be doing the work on

recognizing that it's necessary there's technical

problems because the tools that we use to do

the work stop working um there's a funding problem

because the people who were doing the technical

work lost their funding and it we've had a very hard

time finding the funding to hire someone to do it

again there's a skill problem because um yeah a

lot of people who have technical skills far beyond

my own are still looking at this problem going I

have no idea how to fix this um so there's a lot

there that needs solving and where there's tiny

little organization and we're just trying to find

a way through um so the the thing that feels a

lot more manageable to me is let's create personal

websites where we store the stuff that we've done

which is also a really good thing for ourselves

right like psychologically um to be able to

look back at what you've done rather than uh

only be able to scroll on Instagram on your own

page to kind of see it um and also like this

when you create a copy of something on your own

personal website you get a lot of control over

the way that it's presented and the way it's

contextualized right that's why I think I mean just

having this process over the last couple days

going back and trying to find because I'm trying to

do make drops and stuff out of my old content um

and having hard time finding it um having those

backups I'm doing a lot of automation with backing

up everything I totally understand what you're

saying as far as that goes because there's so much

history I'll give you a small example um every time

on my phone every time I took a screenshot it

was saving it to iCloud and that's been happening

since I think the last time that I had I have I

have an Android phone in addition to my iPhone

but I think the last time that I just was

strictly Android was probably there was a note

three if that gives you any idea there was a

long time ago um uh the first iPhone that I had

was an iPhone 8 plus so it's been a long time

ago um and all those screenshots uh have been

uploaded and a lot of those screenshots tell

a story from the trans community because I was

you know I'm pissed off and I'm taking a screenshot

but like literally like there's so much of

that history that isn't just in those screenshots

you know and if I had not archived those they

would just be gone you know that conversation

you know I can have a conversation around

anti-trans people that have uh that are trans

themselves trans turf tokens is what I call them

but I could have that discussion because I

have the screenshots from you know 2013 2016

that kind of and you know I went and kind of

did a little digging and I'm like oh this person

still identifies uh in the gender that they transitioned

to you know they were full of shit basically

but having having that and having the posts that

I've written kind of backed up to an XML file

or something like that and WordPress has been

really valuable to me and I feel like I feel like

especially with the way that what we've talked about

how trans content is being funneled more and more

out of the conversations and out of the history

you know history is being a fucking re-written you

know yeah it's not being rewritten by trans

people you know it's being it's being written by

people that have capitalism at the center and

doing the bidding of capitalists I hate to go

back down all the time but I do feel like that

that is the core of the problem in terms of that

so I think man when it comes to history

especially when you get when you get your my age

and you you start seeing how things have changed and people don't know the history

yeah and I think it's it's bad for us like it's

bad for us um I don't know history makes you

less alone in a way right like when it feels

like everything is just what's happening now and

the people who you can turn to for wisdom or

only the people who are talking really loudly on

social media right now um there's something

about that that are very alienating and isolating

right whereas when you can look back and see

trans people from decades ago saying the things

that you need to hear right now then you know

you're not alone and you there's this resilience in

that right having even just going I went on archive.

org and searched my name and found episodes

of another show that I was on oddly enough

we used the T word a lot more back in the day

sure yeah I was part of a part of a show called The Radical Trannies

don't really say that much anymore but but that

being said having that to kind of reflect on last

night I was listening to an episode where I was

talking with my co-host Ethan and Ethan St.

Pierre and he reminded me because he he was like I can

remember when you were out going door to door

at the time I was trying to get Obama elected in

the States and I was he's like I remember when

you were going to door to door and you would call

me because you were in Indiana going door to door

talking about a black man did you know what I mean

in a very conservative state very conservative

area and he's like he's like I remember you

would call me and just because you needed to feel

safe because of where you were and I was like

holy shit I don't remember that but him saying

that made me kind of reflect on that and know

that you know I've come a long way and and it made

me remember history that I'd forgotten so I think

I think it's it's important for the community

but it's also important for us you know me

yeah to remember that I'm not in this by myself

and I did the the road that you know what they

say about is paved on the backs of of giants

in the community especially you know there's so

many people that that I was in community with

that have either passed or kind of they're you

know have moved on retired that people don't know

about and this is kind of like a test episode

for me to kind of get myself back into I wanted

to talk to you but what the shows going forward

I really do want to talk to people that I've come

across in that journey that I had my trans

activism and talk to those people one person I in

particular that I want to talk to is Monica Helms

I've interviewed her quite a few times I don't

know if you know who she is but she's a person

that created the the trans flag the trans flag

as we know it she's the creator of that and

those were the kind of people that that I was

in community with that a lot of people don't know

the history and if you go ahead and you search

her name a lot of the things are Christian

websites that have kind of burned her history into

something perverted that it's not you know but

it's just really vile but people don't have

the context of the history of that experience

that I had and I kind of want to revisit that

and talk to people in my past that kind of a

part of that history that people don't talk about

I think it's really the any kind of trans archive

work is invaluable for not just you know me

feeling good about what we did but at the same time

about people that are coming into the community

now understanding the context of where they came

from and what you know so the same things that

the problems that we had aren't repeated or because

I mean one of the episodes that I listened to

was during the Bush administration and how corrupt

and what a dark time that was like literally I

talked in the one of the episodes where I was

like I don't know if I have two part-time jobs

and I don't know if I'm gonna be able to keep

one of them because of a no match Social Security

letter that where my driver's license was different

from my Social Security gender those things

two things didn't match so my employer was like

I don't know if we're gonna be able to keep you

the only reason I think I kept that job was

because I had been a delegate for Obama and I made

it pretty clear that I was gonna make a fuss

if they didn't straighten it out so that it but

like that is there are so many people that didn't

that or you don't have that kind of connection

yeah and privilege is what it was but that history

of those people needs to be recorded needs to

be talked about needs to be known about and

that's why I think it's important to do this again

yeah you know not just because I like it but

also because knowing that history helps us know

who know the community that we're in and what

we're doing I guess also like it makes that

conversation more concrete right because we're going to keep having the debate about

whether official state recognition of our

gender is the right thing to fight for right

and I think we if we can have that discussion

with the with that historical referendum behind it

I'm like yeah cool in theory it would be great

to be able to exist without state recognition

but in practice this is what happens people lose their jobs like in theory like

you know it's very it's very limiting to how to pick a gender to put on your

official documentation at all we should campaign

to have it removed okay but where are we right now

like are we gonna be able to achieve that or is

that going to lead us to further disenfranchisement

it's if we're not looking at it brand new

each time then we're gonna be a lot stronger

and conservatives do this a lot they care

excuse me they care more about hypotheticals

than they do actual lives yeah they care they care about the hypothetical baby

but once that baby is born they don't give shit yeah that's your responsibility

you know yeah they care about the hypothetical sex worker

but when the when that sex worker once the

actual sex worker wants a voice I'll fuck you

you know yeah I wonder if like those issues

in conservatism are about like the horror of

interdependency with other humans right um like people identify with the unborn baby

because they were once dependent on someone

carrying them to term as a pregnancy and they hate

the thought that they wouldn't exist right um

like and so what they so it is at the end of

today about controlling women's bodies because

it's so terrifying to them that they are dependent

on women's bodies is there anything that you want

to promote anything else you want to talk about

um follow my uh blog I guess um if you're on Mastodon you can follow me at

@zoy@merveilles.town I'm sure that I'll be linked somewhere around this

in the show notes when I do them yeah um because

that's a hardware just well but it'll be it'll be

there somewhere um are you are is everything

that you're doing is it uh who's it can people

find it from Intrapology i'm just curious um

it's I think it's easiest to find from

zoyander.cc because Intrapology is focused on

like that one project um but yeah zoyander.cc

has a um feed from my blog with like the most

important updates and it's also got links to all

my socials um with explanations of like which

ones are actually a priority and which ones are

syndicated um uh so yeah that's probably the best

way to stay up today um the uh when registration

opens for the workshop i'm doing in November that

will go on my main blog and that you'll be able

to see that on zoyander.cc you can also

subscribe to my blog which is blog.zoyander.cc

um using RSS or email um similarly i'm working

on uh zine for Fede zine fest which is a project

that mails out um or emails out you could do

the digital version only um but uh you can buy a

bundle of zines by lots of different artists um

so i'm doing a zine for that um it's like i'll

i'll put that on the blog as well um yeah i think

that's that's the main way to stay up to date

so this thing that's happening in London are

they going are they going to have any kind of uh

streaming presence those first i'll go yeah um it's

so it's hybrid uh so i'm going to do it remotely

um and there's going to be a presence physically

in London at Studio Voltaire but you can join

remotely you don't need to be in London surely

okay because to be honest with you like i move

from uh for those of you that don't know i'm at i

live in the uk now but i have for about the last

decade but i lived in the southeast for quite

a long time i lived in chat of mite in it uh

southeast like a kent basically is uh in the

southeast uh so i could be on a train and be in

London pretty quickly if i wanted to be but

now i live basically outside of new castle so

yeah almost since got one yeah um yeah trips

to london are a huge uh huge pain for me um

when i when we last time we tried to do this

workshop in january Studio Voltaire we're amazing

and like they um they've been the best of

recognizing my access needs of like any org that i've

done work with um so they like covered my hotel

and stuff um because in theory i could travel

down and back on the same day but like it would

completely wipe me out for like a month to do that

um so yeah it is rough attending things at london

when you live outside properly outside of london

like not in its um feeder network thank you for

coming on the show uh thank you it's been a pleasure Thanks so much for inviting me.