Culture Study Podcast - When Convenience Actually Kinda Sucks

00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone. Here's your regular update on upcoming episodes so that you can submit your

00:00:04.220 questions. So first, what's up with influencers? Broadly, what are trends that you're seeing? We

00:00:10.380 can go anywhere with this one. Second, book trends right now. What's going on on BookTalk? What are

00:00:16.300 all your friends reading? What's going on with book covers? Again, so many different things that

00:00:21.160 you can do. Three, deterioration of work communication. Basically, why is everyone so

00:00:27.240 bad at emailing, texting, slacking, all of these. What's going on? Four, journo influencers. Think

00:00:34.440 like the people who reported from outside Mitch McConnell's hospital for weeks, like people who

00:00:39.020 have become kind of amateur, popular Instagram, TikTok sort of journalists. What's going on there?

00:00:46.840 Women leaving the Christian church en masse. What's happening? And Venmo culture. This is 0.99

00:00:54.520 inspired by a conversation that we had in the comments a couple weeks ago about people who

00:01:00.980 will Venmo request you for $2 or people who refuse when you say, I got it, like they continue to

00:01:07.660 Venmo request you. We're going to see if there's enough for an episode here. So if you think that

00:01:11.920 there's more to talk about in terms of Venmo culture broadly conceived, please send us your

00:01:17.820 questions. And as always, we are open to your ideas for future episodes. You can submit all

00:01:23.840 of these at tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod. And just FYI, you can submit questions for

00:01:30.740 multiple episodes at once. No need to fill out the form a bunch of times. All right, on to today's

00:01:36.480 show. This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. And I'm Gabe Bullard,

00:01:49.120 author of the book Against Convenience, Embracing Friction in an Age of Endless Ease.

00:01:54.420 The first thing I want to say is that like everything that we're talking about today is very much in line with things that I've been thinking about, things that I've been writing about, people, other people I've been interviewing.

00:02:05.400 So it just like brings it all together in a way that is very compelling and cohesive.

00:02:10.300 So and also you did you started writing it like way before this was something that seemingly everyone was thinking about.

00:02:16.700 So good job.

00:02:18.160 Thanks. Thanks.

00:02:18.820 Yeah, it's been a long process.

00:02:20.900 I bet your editors are like, good job us as well for understanding that this would be well-timed. But I want to go to like the very important moment that all of us as authors have, which is like the moment when you realize like this could be a book. And sometimes it's this could be an essay and then that turns into this could be a book. But was there like a specific moment or moments in your life that you were like, I want to dig into this more?

00:02:47.940 Yes. Yeah. So it started, I mean, years ago, gosh, like almost a decade ago, I was living in Washington, I was working as a reporter, and was really thinking about how certain tech platforms had started to transform the city.

00:03:03.980 I remember hearing from a friend who at the time, the big trend in DC was restaurants that didn't take any reservations for seating.

00:03:12.420 So people would line up outside and somebody, a friend was saying he had been waiting outside and then a car pulled up and people got in and just sort of traded off position.

00:03:20.460 They had paid the blind waiters through an app to wait for the restaurant for them.

00:03:24.620 And I thought, oh, that's interesting.

00:03:26.020 And then was thinking, well, they had pulled up in a ride share, too.

00:03:29.780 And then hearing more about kind of the conversation that a friend had overheard and I realized

00:03:35.020 is like, you know, third hand at this point, it turns out that they were also tourists

00:03:39.060 in the city who were staying in an Airbnb in another cool neighborhood.

00:03:42.160 And it's this idea of, wow, like I would go places and see, you know, every car kind of

00:03:47.360 has a person driving and a person sitting in the back.

00:03:49.500 And there's this idea of everybody was kind of, it seemed like taking this opportunity

00:03:53.920 or many people were taking this opportunity to sort of pay people to do things they didn't want

00:03:59.800 to do or to outsource a lot of things. And I was wondering, you know, is this turning people into

00:04:04.800 just little bosses, like all the time thinking, you know, like every everything around me, every

00:04:10.060 car, every apartment can be rented, every task can be hired, that sort of thing. That's like living

00:04:14.940 this through apps, this sort of like aristocracy type thing. Yeah. And then as I was thinking

00:04:21.060 about it more to just encountering a lot of little changes here and there. I thought I really don't

00:04:27.600 like the way a lot of this stuff works. Like I don't like using apps to do things that used to

00:04:32.680 be possible in person. I never wanted to link my transit to my phone, like my transit pass,

00:04:38.720 because it's like, well, no, I have a physical card. It's so much easier. My phone battery's

00:04:42.640 dying all the time. I might drop my phone. I might get rained on and there's no way I can,

00:04:47.240 you know get around without that so i was always sort of wary about that and then at a certain

00:04:51.340 point i was talking with my book agent about sort of various ideas and this this name against

00:04:56.140 convenience came up and i was thinking you know i kind of have a take that would that would move in

00:05:02.200 this direction that would that would do this but it's not going to be about you know the value of

00:05:07.640 doing things by hand it's not going to be about the the rewards of of collecting records so i do

00:05:13.480 collect records or, you know, using fountain pens or typewriters or anything like that.

00:05:17.500 Like, I think it's more about how so many conveniences just aren't really any sort of

00:05:22.540 a better experience.

00:05:23.820 And and we we went from there.

00:05:26.460 Yeah, I just I think that there's a take that could be and that maybe like 10 years ago,

00:05:31.680 you could write this piece and it would be like maybe in Slate would be like a very Slate

00:05:35.600 take, like kind of contrary and old man, like waving fisted sky version of like.

00:05:43.480 everything's so easy these days, or like, I want to, you know, take pleasure in difficult stuff.

00:05:49.520 And it's not that, right? Like, that's not the crux. It's more that all of these things that

00:05:55.820 are supposed to make our lives more convenient, or the way that we have outsourced our lives

00:05:59.960 is also not enjoyable. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, it was around maybe a little

00:06:07.820 over a decade ago when just story after story is coming out about the way that a lot of these

00:06:14.020 things work, what being in the gig economy is really like, what pushes a lot of people into

00:06:18.840 the gig economy, the actual pay that people are getting, the conditions in warehouses,

00:06:23.500 like all of these stories were coming up. And also then just the sheer environmental toll of

00:06:28.320 so many electronics and needing to replace electronics so much. It also started to become

00:06:33.180 this exercise and in just looking the other way at you know it's so it's an unpleasant experience

00:06:38.540 first off and then there's that guilt of knowing i really like is it on me to to make sure i'm

00:06:45.080 tipping enough that this person is really going to be getting anything close to a living wage for

00:06:49.560 this brief amount of time that that i have hired them to do this you know job for me or to drive

00:06:53.700 me somewhere or something like that and you know i wish these things worked better i would love to

00:06:58.560 be able to enjoy a lot more conveniences. I would love to not do the chores that I do,

00:07:04.100 but the progress sort of stopped at the same time. Anything that does advance ends up just

00:07:08.780 offloading this, not just work, but frustrations to other people in a way that at a certain point,

00:07:16.260 you know, how much of your conscience can you shut down after a while before you realize

00:07:20.300 how much just as an individual, you're sort of contributing to a lot of these things. And,

00:07:24.880 And, you know, opting out isn't going to stop them entirely, but it does sort of stop that kind of constant guilt when you're riding in the back of a ride share or getting something delivered.

00:07:34.880 You know, we're going to talk a lot more, too, about like how we're not against people paying other people to like we're not against taxi cabs.

00:07:43.020 Right. It's more like the convenience of an Uber that depersonalizes the experience and also like turns the job into a job that is not a living wage.

00:07:52.660 Like there's all sorts of like this meta conversation. But I do think we are at this point of kind of collective desire to add friction back in our lives. And almost a year ago, my friend Catherine Jezzer Morton, who we're going to have on the pod soon, wrote a piece for New York Magazine about friction maxing is what she called it.

00:08:15.940 And like it just like it was a prescient piece for something that would come up again and again over the course of the year.

00:08:22.460 And that I've seen a lot in the comments on culture study is just like trying to return to a more embodied experience.

00:08:31.100 And actually, a couple of weeks ago in the newsletter, I interviewed Ian Bogost about his new book.

00:08:35.720 And he talked a lot about dematerialization and how we have lost, like, the experiences, the tactile experiences of daily life that gave us gratification in some way.

00:08:47.880 And that could be something like pressing the buttons on a phone, on an old school phone, or it could be walking to go get your lunch, right?

00:08:58.060 Like, there's all sorts of things, ways that our lives have been dematerialized.

00:09:01.740 The biggest example that he uses is the fact that, like, we don't drive stick shifts anymore in the United States in particular.

00:09:09.480 But what do you think, like, what are the forces coming together that make this a particularly conducive time to talk about being against convenience and just friction maxing in general?

00:09:22.020 One thing that I land on a lot is, well, two things I land on a lot.

00:09:25.920 one is the the isolation i think we're starting to feel it more and more as as more things happen

00:09:33.180 especially coming out of the pandemic uh just the fact that so much less of life needs to be lived

00:09:41.040 in any sort of public way with other people like even even small interactions of just kind of seeing

00:09:48.900 other people on the street or uh or talking to someone when you place an order all these things

00:09:54.400 kind of went away. And I think that to some degree, a lot of people started to feel that

00:09:59.660 weight and realize there's sort of this sense of disconnection. I think on the sense of

00:10:05.240 dematerialization too, this sort of lack of permanence that started to seep into everything

00:10:11.120 really causes me a lot of dread and anxiety and was something on my mind as I was thinking,

00:10:16.360 you know, is this a book? Is this something that I could turn into a book? What is the feeling in

00:10:21.120 me that's, that's, that's driving me to keep thinking about this. It was this idea of, you

00:10:26.200 know, I don't feel an attachment to my phone as an actual object, even though that is probably the

00:10:32.100 most important device in my, in my life. Like it controls everything, even as, as much friction as

00:10:38.540 I embrace, like I still have so much running through my phone and I don't care about it as

00:10:42.860 a device because I've been through so many of them. It's, it's sort of insane that, that all

00:10:49.400 these really important things are so disposable now versus something that that could be held on

00:10:55.400 to something that would last something that would be repairable all of that and i think to that

00:11:00.600 point too something else that has maybe put this into the air is that feeling that that things

00:11:05.960 aren't really getting better like i think the the the spread of uh of cory doctor and his writing

00:11:12.400 about incentivization i think is a big part of this uh too but i think that a lot of people

00:11:16.500 whether or not they were actively thinking about, well, why is online shopping less reliable now?

00:11:21.440 Why is my phone not lasting? That sort of thing. I think that even without thinking about that,

00:11:27.900 you do start to notice. And you might even start to notice what has really changed with these

00:11:34.240 devices. It used to be exciting to upgrade a computer or something like that or get a new

00:11:38.260 phone, that sort of thing. And now it's just sort of like, oh, it's another chore. It's another

00:11:42.040 thing I got to do to make sure I can log into my bank account. It's another, you know, I'm just

00:11:46.800 paying my fee to participate in the world now and getting this new device that's going to that I'm

00:11:51.700 going to carry around till I have to get another one and nothing dramatic really changes. Like the

00:11:56.080 camera gets a little sharper. The form factor changes a little bit. The headphone jack goes

00:12:00.800 away. So now you have to buy additional headphones and that sort of thing. And this is like it just

00:12:05.200 like the the progress just seems to kind of stop i have a stronger sense memory and relationship

00:12:13.060 with the phone that i had like the physical you know the phone phone uh the telephone that i had

00:12:22.700 as a teen than i do with any of the smartphones that i've kept on my person for so long like that

00:12:30.680 is such a good point or even like i could draw a picture for you right now of the vacuum that my

00:12:36.180 family had when i was growing up and i have broken like seven vacuums as an adult and part of it is

00:12:45.480 that i kept buying things that had to be replaced like they were just not high quality vacuums and

00:12:49.800 they broke and i think part of what we're talking about too as you said like just this feeling that

00:12:55.320 things aren't getting better like everyone in the united states in particular right like we make

00:13:00.560 more money than any other country like we're the richest country in the world and yet we are also

00:13:06.040 dissatisfied all the time and some of that has to do with striving and individualism and all these

00:13:11.740 things that we're going to touch on today but also it has to do with the fact that like we're spending

00:13:16.760 a lot of money on things that suck yeah yeah it's uh something that has been on my mind a lot too

00:13:24.340 I was going through, so in the late 1960s, my dad ran a record store and I found an old

00:13:32.620 ad that he had run in the local paper where he was selling at the end of 1968 on sale

00:13:37.680 the White Album by the Beatles for like $8.95 or something like that.

00:13:43.500 And I was blown away at that price because that's like $85 today.

00:13:46.580 That's a ton of money and that's at a huge discount.

00:13:49.400 And I was thinking, man.

00:13:50.420 Double album.

00:13:51.300 Hello.

00:13:52.000 It's a double album.

00:13:52.840 And I was thinking, you know, that's, you know, almost as much as you would pay for a year of a streaming service now.

00:14:00.340 I guess it's like 60 or so percent for one album.

00:14:03.180 And I thought, but then again, you know, that's going to be an album that you're going to hold on to.

00:14:07.540 If you don't like it, you can resell it.

00:14:09.720 Eventually, you could make tapes of it.

00:14:10.980 It's like it's a thing that you will own forever.

00:14:12.540 And I actually own, still have my parents' copy of the White Album in the collection.

00:14:16.760 And it's like, it's this permanent thing that it seems like money well spent versus I sort of had this shock, you know, when I think mortality was on my mind and the pandemic.

00:14:26.760 And I write a little bit about this of, you know, what is going to be left behind when I go like is my like because I have a niece and nephew and I think like what they're not going to want my phone.

00:14:38.980 They're not going to want. Meanwhile, like I have all this stuff that was like my parents and my grandparents, like pieces of furniture, clothing, like decor, antiques, like all this stuff that that really has held up and and that I value so much.

00:14:53.100 And I was like, I don't know what is actually like physically going to remain after I go that that anyone would would remember me by that might be sort of a keepsake.

00:15:01.980 Right. And this is not about nostalgia. Like that's kind of an existential crisis. Right. This is a much larger thing than just like in my day, I had a like a phone that I can remember. And I think that's what we want to expand and have this conversation really grapple with. It's like these are much larger questions about what it means to be a human in the world, not just about like I order my lunch every day or something like that. Right.

00:15:27.520 Yeah.

00:15:28.780 So we got so many questions and we want to try to get to as many as possible.

00:15:34.160 So we're going to start with this one from Allie that I think is really interesting.

00:15:38.040 I used to resist convenience culture, taking pride in getting everything I needed on foot in a city where even big box stores were a 10-minute walk away.

00:15:47.280 When I unexpectedly became disabled, doorstep delivery became a necessity.

00:15:51.560 I wonder, did convenience culture evolve from services originally designed for elderly and disabled people, much like curb ramps, which benefit far more people than the wheelchair users they were designed for?

00:16:04.720 So Allie's referencing to universal design here, right? Like the ramps. This is the most classic example that the ramps on curbs, like on a sidewalk, helps people who are in wheelchairs, but it also helps people who are pushing strollers, people who are on bikes and need to like get up onto the curb.

00:16:23.460 It's things that are created to help people who are disabled actually help everyone. And that's why we should think about it a lot more.

00:16:31.660 What I see in your book is an incredible lineage of how so much of convenience culture is derived

00:16:38.040 from getting people to spend more money. But I would love to see how you think about both

00:16:44.000 of these things in concert. Yes, yes. I really love this question. And that was something as

00:16:49.820 I was writing that I was really careful about and grappled with a lot, which is this difference

00:16:54.460 between convenience and accessibility. And that's going to vary by individual. It's going to vary

00:17:00.780 you know, based on your situation where you live, all these other factors, you may not have access

00:17:05.140 to certain services and goods without an app or subscriptions or platforms or anything like that,

00:17:11.800 that for somebody else is just going to be a convenience, something that they don't really

00:17:15.220 need to use, but can. And I really don't like this situation because it's a world where basically

00:17:22.020 private companies running platforms are in charge of some pretty vital accessibility issues.

00:17:27.580 And I mentioned this in the book, but when when Uber was pushing against some wage legislation in Seattle, they published this blog post where they say so many rides come from poorer neighborhoods and were for essential trips like getting to the doctor or getting to the store.

00:17:41.940 And I reached out to them for comment and they said something to that effect.

00:17:46.080 And to me, that is an outright failure of government.

00:17:49.980 Like no public transit.

00:17:51.200 it, right? Yeah. No person should have to hire a private taxi driven by a gig worker who is using

00:17:58.120 their own car, giving a cut of the money to a company in Silicon Valley to get food. And having

00:18:05.680 what you need in your home doesn't need to, shouldn't have to rely on a giant warehouse

00:18:10.200 full of workers putting their safety in danger. And it's a shame that not everyone has a choice

00:18:15.480 in how they use some of these conveniences, I think the comparison to curb cuts is really

00:18:21.800 interesting because there's a long history of protests and fighting and community action to

00:18:27.000 get those done. You know, the movement in Berkeley in the 1960s, and those were mandated in law

00:18:32.180 with the ADA, which passed in what, 1990 and had pushback from the business lobby. Like it was

00:18:39.080 a controversial bill in some corners that this would pass to mandate that. And so, you know,

00:18:46.100 I think the answer to that is not to ensure that everyone can get a rideshare, that everyone can

00:18:52.620 get food delivery. It's to build a solution that works equitably, to have, you know, buses and

00:18:57.440 transit that's reliable and safe and accessible. And, you know, I think having conveniences that

00:19:03.300 do improve accessibility at the same time can cloud this and lead to accepting a lot of trade-offs

00:19:08.500 that shouldn't be trade-offs, but something like DoorDash is miles away from Meals on Wheels.

00:19:15.320 And I guess the other thing that kind of strikes me with curb cuts is those are about being able

00:19:21.460 to navigate the world, making public spaces more welcoming for everybody, something that,

00:19:28.640 you know, universal design that improves everything for people to sort of be out in the world.

00:19:33.980 delivery and these other conveniences are all about being able to stay inside alone and purchase

00:19:39.260 things like they're they're inspired by marketing they're inspired by the like you said the push to

00:19:44.040 make money the push to keep selling things and the push to just find the easiest possible way

00:19:49.040 to get people to give up their money and what bums me out about that too is that you know social

00:19:55.280 isolation is this huge problem especially for the elderly yeah but you have places where you know

00:20:01.040 according to uber which provides these rides you have places where people have to hire a private

00:20:06.440 taxi if they're going to get to the doctor which you would presume then you know they would also

00:20:11.340 not be able to get to a place to get food get to a place to to see friends perhaps and everything

00:20:16.260 and you know i think the good convenience is one where things are made more accessible uh both

00:20:21.800 physical spaces and and just a wider variety of food and products and services and options

00:20:26.760 and all that, but done in a way that's not going to harm others or destroy things that are good

00:20:32.900 or further inequality and sort of lead to this world where you have to use them because maybe

00:20:38.520 there's just not a store in your community anymore. Yes. And we should emphasize that

00:20:42.200 the first line in the book is, this is not a book about how life should be hard.

00:20:46.240 Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's, yeah, like we get so many, we got so many questions from

00:20:51.440 people saying like, actually, a lot of these conveniences are really important to me as a

00:20:55.900 disabled person and i don't think any of us would argue with that in any way exactly it's more that

00:21:01.120 like a lot of these things that that everyone now uses are there in large part to uh facilitate

00:21:10.380 individualism and not having to do things that would put us in contact with other people

00:21:14.320 and to allow us to work more like i always think about the things that i used when i was in new

00:21:21.720 york like every single one of them was facilitating a life not that not a fuller life not a life where

00:21:28.220 i had a lot of time for myself or for hobbies or relationships it was a life where i could work

00:21:33.040 as much as possible yes yeah yeah i going back to you know the the frustration of just buying a new

00:21:40.360 smartphone the idea of i think for a lot of jobs the last few full-time jobs i had the expectation

00:21:46.460 was that I was providing my own phone, that I would have a smartphone, that I would therefore

00:21:52.220 then be able to get emails at all hours, that I would install Slack on my phone, that I would

00:21:57.520 have all these other ways of being reached that, you know, when I first got them were

00:22:02.820 tremendously convenient and seemed, you know, even kind of fun slacking with colleagues and

00:22:07.080 that sort of thing. But then it became, no, you will have Slack installed on your phone. You will

00:22:10.860 have Microsoft Teams installed on your phone. You will be reachable in these hours. And it's like,

00:22:14.940 oh, and I'm also paying money to do this. Like, I'm paying for the data plan, I'm paying for the

00:22:19.440 phone. And, you know, there's this device that really should be, you know, my connection to the

00:22:24.080 world and could be a lot more fun is also the thing that is enabling me to constantly be working.

00:22:30.480 Well, and the point that you made earlier, like a lot of these things are about

00:22:34.140 putting the cost of convenience onto the individual consumer instead of having it

00:22:42.060 something that is collectivist in any way, right?

00:22:44.500 Or part of public infrastructure.

00:22:46.740 And then also the profit then going to private shareholders, right?

00:22:53.400 Like it is a very different scenario than like, how can we make something convenient

00:22:57.460 for all people in a way that is not intended to create profit?

00:23:02.180 Exactly.

00:23:02.660 Exactly.

00:23:03.140 Yeah.

00:23:03.300 But it's just so easy to end up, you know, privatizing these little conveniences or creating

00:23:08.760 a business out of some everyday activity.

00:23:10.960 Yeah.

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00:26:00.260 And they're in really cool colors.

00:26:02.880 What did the chic ladies sunglasses look like? 1.00

00:26:05.700 Well, they had like this rainbow reflection situation going on. 0.93

00:26:10.740 And then the top didn't have anything on it, which is something that you often see with cycling glasses and more expensive ones.

00:26:17.660 And then the like the plastic part was around the bottom.

00:26:20.580 Is it the Astro G?

00:26:22.260 Yeah, it's the Astro G.

00:26:23.660 Those are really cool.

00:26:25.040 I've worn Goodr for years, basically since like it was even a thing that you could possibly buy or that people in the United States were buying.

00:26:33.080 I was like, I want a pair. I love them. I wear them running. I wear them gardening.

00:26:37.520 So if you're ready to join our Goodr fan club and change your eyewear to something functional, fashionable, fun and affordable, head to Goodr.com slash culture to claim $10 off your first order.

00:26:50.400 That's G-O-O-D-R dot com slash culture.

00:26:54.720 So this actually is a great segue into a question from Stephanie that gets at this tension between collective versus individual stuff and how it attaches to inconvenience.

00:27:10.320 I think a lot about how things that benefit the collective aren't necessarily the best for

00:27:15.380 convenience. Some examples might include how every neighbor with kids has a trampoline instead of

00:27:20.680 getting together and agreeing to share one, or doing books or games or toys or puzzles or tool

00:27:26.180 swaps instead of everyone owning their own version of everything, or the inconvenience of car sharing

00:27:31.500 instead of owning your own car. I believe in all of these things in theory and participate when I

00:27:36.900 can, but in a world where there's so much additional labor to life, adding more and

00:27:41.440 more administration can feel insurmountable. Not to mention, everyone is socially awkward these days,

00:27:46.640 so taking community action is even trickier. How do we balance the competing desires for

00:27:51.460 convenience with the collective good? I love this point about everyone is socially awkward,

00:27:57.360 and I think part of the reasons we're socially awkward is because we're not doing things like

00:28:01.420 this. Yeah. Right. It's chicken or the egg. Like, yes, it's hard because we're socially awkward,

00:28:07.040 but we're socially awkward because we're not doing this. Exactly. I think all these forces

00:28:11.240 of kind of commercialized convenience push toward this level of isolation. You know, don't have

00:28:17.240 I get into laundry in the book and how there were these experiments for a while into socialized

00:28:23.540 laundry, like collective laundry. There's some great old newspaper articles about, you know,

00:28:27.720 in like Minnesota farm towns where these sort of community cooperative laundry facilities open that

00:28:33.820 provide jobs to people who need jobs in the community that provide laundry services to

00:28:38.020 people, because the idea was laundry is one of these chores in the home that could be

00:28:42.800 automated away or somehow solved. And they were solved in this collective way. But now it's,

00:28:47.480 you know, well, what went away with those was, well, no, now you have a home machine and now

00:28:51.500 you do laundry at home whenever you want all the time and you pay for the water and you pay for

00:28:55.620 the electricity and you don't see other people like it's good that laundry is not done the way

00:28:59.980 it was done before laundry machines. Like, I don't think anyone wants that type of laundry

00:29:04.860 experience. It's miserable and was physically damaging. But at the same time, like the solution

00:29:12.200 ended up being could have been a more communal one and ends up being this really isolating

00:29:17.120 antisocial one. And another thing that struck me, too, was talking to people who work in places

00:29:23.400 where they get orders from apps and how rude customers can be cursing at people, yelling

00:29:30.780 at them, even when they're getting exactly the thing that they had ordered on the app,

00:29:34.260 just the amount of anger and frustration that comes from that.

00:29:39.640 And it's like, when did that happen?

00:29:42.480 When is it ever okay?

00:29:45.040 It never is okay to curse at someone who made you something that you asked for because you

00:29:49.680 don't like it or because you don't like one little aspect of it.

00:29:52.440 And so, yeah, I think that there is this sort of isolating, antisocial aspect to it. I wonder in thinking about, you know, what could be done about this, how to spread it around. I do like things that I sometimes see in neighborhoods of like, oh, here's the shared tool library that anybody can do because, you know, somebody moved to the neighborhood and they have this huge craftsman set of tools that really not everyone needs in their garage, but everyone could borrow or like even a little free library.

00:30:18.540 One thing I settle on a lot, too, that I would like to see expand and think maybe could expand is the way mutual aid works, where, you know, you can participate in a very passive way in mutual aid by donating something, money or goods or that sort of thing.

00:30:33.980 You can participate in a really active way by helping to organize other volunteers, by providing rides, all of that. And I think that, you know, there is some administrative side to that that's going to have to be done. But it would be great to see that kind of spread out as this way of not having to opt into to all this essentially buying things and shopping and everything like that.

00:30:55.500 You know, even if it's as simple as, you know, giving somebody a ride to the store or something like that, like trying to trying to spread that into more areas of life.

00:31:03.980 I think about this a lot in connection with our difficulty with friendship, especially as 30 and 40 year olds.

00:31:11.040 And part of it is I think that like we, as I was saying before, a lot of us work so much that it's hard to feel like there's any time to make the sort of loose connections that would make sharing a trampoline feel less weird.

00:31:27.020 Right. And I have to push back against myself all the time when I need something.

00:31:33.300 And like, I live in a tiny community where people lend people things all the time. Like, I am in the perfect place to feel comfortable asking for things. And the other day I needed a power washer and several friends on the island, like actual good friends who have power washers, who would not think twice about lending me a power washer.

00:31:51.380 But there was part of me that was just like, oh, I could just buy this right now and it would come to my door. And I borrowed the power washer. And then later I was like, I got to get it back to them. Like, they're probably like annoyed that I haven't gotten back to them. And of course, they're like, who cares? I would ask you if I needed the power washer. And then I would drive two minutes to give you the power washer.

00:32:14.400 And I think that like part of the problem is that we don't have these loose ties and we also don't have a lot of mechanisms for facilitating and sustaining and communicating through these loose ties like an app like Nextdoor is intended to facilitate this but then devolves into political fighting and like racist is something happening in this neighborhood sort of reportage.

00:32:38.660 But we used to have organizations where you could like if you went to, let's say, a church service or you went to an Elks meeting, like you would make these sorts of connections that then would make you feel comfortable saying, oh, like, I'll give you a ride.

00:32:55.980 Yeah. Yeah. The social experiences that were just a little bit more built into into day to day life.

00:33:02.800 Yeah.

00:33:03.280 I always think of this a few times because you mentioned next door when I lived in D.C.

00:33:09.400 The number of times I would see somebody post on next door that they might need something.

00:33:13.520 And I knew they lived in my building.

00:33:15.020 And I was like, oh, I should just go knock on their door.

00:33:18.100 I know who that is.

00:33:19.400 And then I stopped myself because I'm like, ah, that's kind of creepy.

00:33:22.340 Like, I don't I don't know about doing this.

00:33:23.800 And it's like, well, do I reply in the app and say like, yes.

00:33:28.040 And then we DM and I say, by the way, you know, I'm like three floors away in the building.

00:33:34.800 I don't know.

00:33:35.540 I just yeah.

00:33:36.200 Like, I mean, I even felt that that level of awkwardness of trying to of, you know, offering to help or to ask or anything like that.

00:33:43.240 I totally feel that.

00:33:44.200 And also it shouldn't be creepy because then you could become the person for one another that like, oh, there's a delivery coming from me.

00:33:51.380 Can you bring it in?

00:33:52.280 Or like I'm talking about like a package delivery or like, can you check in on my cat?

00:33:58.040 Like all sorts of things that are the things that people crave in terms of like neighborhoodliness.

00:34:03.920 But I love that, like the fact that it was on an app made it feel awkward to you.

00:34:09.580 Yeah, it seemed like all of a sudden it's like, well, wait, we exist in the app and then we also exist in real life.

00:34:14.460 But like we don't we don't share like the app is some like separate space from the building and it can't cross over, even though it's ostensibly an app about, you know, connecting neighbors or something like that.

00:34:24.040 I think also, you know, you mentioned next door devolving into into a lot of abusive and toxic stuff. I think that also really did shape an opinion of certain neighbors, too, where it's like, I don't know, which I guess maybe feels some of the thinking on on the antisocial thing of like, why would you feel comfortable posting this?

00:34:42.720 especially like like who are the people who are who are you know posting kind of these like

00:34:48.020 toxic and trolly comments on next door where the whole point is it's people who are right around

00:34:52.900 you you know it's like maybe there's you could vaguely understand some of the psychology if

00:34:58.120 it's a bunch of strangers on twitter or something like that but like just to to put it out there in

00:35:02.560 the neighborhood like that's such a i don't know well it's predicated on the fact that you are not

00:35:08.340 going to have to interact with those people, right? Like I said, disembodied, like consequence-less

00:35:14.020 discourse, which I think is very corrosive. Our next question is about something that you write

00:35:20.620 about in the book specifically, and it's about food apps, but especially pre-ordering. This is

00:35:26.060 from Allison. Why do we keep pre-ordering food? There are so many fast casual spots around my

00:35:33.400 office where I could stand in a pretty fast moving line, order exactly what I want and have it made

00:35:39.000 in front of me. And yet nine times out of 10, I opt to place an order on an app. It's usually not

00:35:45.920 ready when I arrive or I ordered too early and it's cold by the time I grab it. It's also my one

00:35:52.040 time out of the office in a typical workday and I spend it waiting for overworked employees to get

00:35:57.140 to my order behind the 10 people who pre-ordered before me. Clearly, I am buying into some illusion

00:36:03.280 of efficiency but even when it proves me wrong time and again i opt for the app what gives

00:36:10.040 so you talk about how you used to like pre-order your starbucks drink and then you would feel this

00:36:16.340 moment of dread before you stepped into the this actual starbucks because it was going to be this

00:36:22.360 conflagration and yeah yes yeah it was uh i would i would order and it was you know it seemed really

00:36:29.800 easy. It's like, all right, I'm getting this drink. It's going to be great. I can stay at my

00:36:33.840 desk and work even more. I don't even need to go wait in line or talk to a human being or anything

00:36:38.260 like that. And yeah, then you go in and it's just a mass of cups on the pickup counter. There's

00:36:43.820 people everywhere. The only words I would exchange to people are saying, excuse me, to kind of like

00:36:47.920 pass through. And then you have to touch all the cups to see what's going on. And it was just

00:36:53.280 really an unpleasant experience to have to go through. And I had talked with a few Starbucks

00:36:59.040 employees for the book, too. And the thing that kind of came out of that is the app ends up adding

00:37:04.820 this extra line to the store. The store was not remodeled to accommodate the app beyond shifting

00:37:11.080 the counter around a little bit. It's still the same physical building that was built to have a

00:37:15.260 line where people would walk in. And the app not only adds another line, but then it removes so

00:37:21.480 many of the frictions that might lead to ordering a really complicated, a really, really hard to

00:37:26.900 make drink because you can just tap them. And there's literally billions of different combinations

00:37:31.100 that can be made. I was doing the math. I worked for the fact checker on this. And we were going

00:37:35.600 back and forth on, you know, how many combinations are there really? And I was like doing the formula

00:37:40.440 and writing it out. And even to the point where like on the calculator, it starts doing the

00:37:44.600 exponent. And it's like, all right, there are so many combinations. And the company has since

00:37:49.160 limited it and, you know, introduced a few things to deal with some of that overflow. But I think

00:37:55.000 with any of the app ordering, it ends up just sort of creating this additional line in a store

00:38:00.200 where people now have to tend to that while there's also this big line of people in front of

00:38:05.120 them. And, you know, we talked about sort of work and jobs and everything earlier. You know,

00:38:11.140 every job should be a job that comes with dignity. And I think, you know, from talking to people who

00:38:16.340 assemble a lot of app-based orders, it's just kind of like being a robot of, you know, here's

00:38:21.900 this list of things that i must do i must press these buttons and therefore i have to you know

00:38:26.940 and that's going to do it and uh one you know getting into into sort of the the deeper economic

00:38:33.580 theory even uh there was some back and forth i'd had with different economists about this of

00:38:37.980 you know is this something that is just going to be replaced by machines in the future and there

00:38:42.960 seem to be some attempts at certain fast food places and the bleak side of that is perhaps not

00:38:49.440 because you can always just tell a person to go faster

00:38:52.760 and eventually they might go faster

00:38:54.760 than a machine is built

00:38:55.800 until you perfect the machine

00:38:57.500 that puts everything together,

00:38:58.540 which is just a really bleak way

00:39:00.480 to think about the future of work

00:39:02.140 and how you don't even get to interact

00:39:04.720 with a person who's going to point at the things

00:39:07.200 to put into a salad bowl or something like that.

00:39:09.700 The other side of this,

00:39:11.080 I worked in a place in an office

00:39:12.560 that had one of those systems

00:39:13.680 where you order the salad on the app

00:39:15.240 and they deliver it in the office to the shelf.

00:39:17.420 and it was kind of a dystopian thing of at a certain point everybody's phone buzzes and

00:39:23.400 everybody gets up from their desk and we walk and we go to the shelf and then we come back to our

00:39:27.720 desk and maybe there's a little chit chat and it's always just about like the thing that we bought

00:39:31.620 and then we just go immediately back to work i i guess you know in in talking about like why

00:39:37.300 why opt for the app too there is an appeal to it like there i didn't want to have this sort of

00:39:44.580 of self-help pop psychology element to the book, because I thought, you know, one, I'm not a

00:39:50.560 psychologist. That's not my field. I'll talk to psychologists. But also that itself can kind of

00:39:55.240 be a convenience to think like, oh, my brain is hijacked. I can't control it. You know, I'm just

00:40:00.360 compelled to do to to find the most convenient thing. And there is, you know, some compelling

00:40:04.820 evidence that that the term is cognitive miser. It's like we're always trying to save save energy,

00:40:10.400 mental or physical whenever we can and so it does always seem a little bit easier that it's so

00:40:15.280 tempting to think like no i just have to tap this i don't have to go wait in line waiting at my desk

00:40:20.740 is going to feel better than waiting in line that sort of thing so i think there is some psychology

00:40:24.300 at play but but also i don't know just over and over and over the experience ends up being so

00:40:29.220 miserable and it's so easy just to keep opting for it right well and i think that sometimes like

00:40:35.200 Starbucks is a great example here because, like, it is something that has this app that a lot of people use.

00:40:41.980 Like, one of the reasons people go to it is because of the consistency.

00:40:45.740 And, like, that's a whole other conversation about chain restaurants.

00:40:49.180 My point is always I always get an argument, actually, with people that I'm traveling with.

00:40:54.860 If we stop at a Starbucks, it's on the way to the ski mountain that we go to.

00:40:57.780 And whether or not to go inside or go through the drive-thru.

00:41:01.060 because the drive-thru is always a faster experience

00:41:06.500 because as you pull up to the drive-thru,

00:41:09.240 in order to get cars going through the drive-thru,

00:41:11.960 they have to make your order right then.

00:41:14.960 Whereas if you go inside an order,

00:41:17.680 you get second, like you are third actually in priority

00:41:22.320 because the app orders and the drive-thru orders

00:41:26.260 are taking prominence over your order.

00:41:28.860 and so so i like like even the experience of like trying to give yourself more of that embodied

00:41:36.460 like friction of going into the store and watching them make your drink is a worse experience like

00:41:44.500 that has made the app has made it a worse experience for other people and so you go back

00:41:49.300 to like i'm going to order ahead and then maybe i'll just jog in and it's always freaking cold

00:41:54.260 or I'm going to go through the drive through, which gives you a little bit more of that

00:41:58.580 interaction. But you also this is so key. You do not see the people making your drink.

00:42:03.860 You do not see the process that is all like alighted from the experience.

00:42:09.340 And sometimes now, because of the experience I've had of like going through the drive

00:42:13.120 through at Starbucks, sometimes I'm like, you go to like a normal old school, no order

00:42:18.980 I had coffee shop and you're like, oh my God, like it's taking forever. And it's not, right?

00:42:26.680 It's not. Exactly. Exactly. It just feels like, yeah, like that. And, you know, there is some

00:42:33.080 psychology behind that too of like, yeah, you're waiting in line. It's going to feel so much worse

00:42:36.780 than that. I like what you have to say too about sort of the store isn't meant for you as an in-person

00:42:42.340 customer anymore. And I think that's true across so many different conveniences is that they

00:42:47.520 completely change what it means to do a thing like you're still accomplishing the same thing

00:42:52.280 you're still getting coffee but in that experience like the coffee shop is now the place that that

00:42:58.800 fields your app order like the the coffee shop is just the it's like a big vending machine or

00:43:02.820 something like that like it's the place where you go and there's a coffee waiting for you

00:43:05.760 because you did it on the app and you know like everything ends up kind of changing you know

00:43:11.320 coffee is now a thing that an app gives you it's not a it's not any sort of you know agricultural

00:43:16.600 product that is shipped around the world and kind of, you know, this this miracle of logistics

00:43:21.880 and everything like that. It's like, no, it is the thing that I tap a button for. And then I,

00:43:26.340 you know, walk across the street and pick it up in a in a really crowded loud store that used to

00:43:31.120 be a place where maybe you would go and sit down that that no longer is like convenience just

00:43:34.960 transforms all these things into just the end result. And, you know, and the money you spend

00:43:40.140 for it, basically. Yeah. This also just makes me think of this larger question of like, why do we

00:43:45.500 want to save so much time like what are we saving it for and usually the answer is more work but i

00:43:52.580 think about something like i used to go on uh drives with my granddad uh like he would drive

00:43:58.820 me to camp when i was growing up in minnesota and we would always stop about halfway and not because

00:44:06.300 like oh we'd driven so long it was usually i don't know like an hour and a half two hours in

00:44:10.800 And part of it is that like he wanted a smoke break, obviously. But part of it, too, was like we would stop and we would go to a diner. Like we would sit down and even if it was lunchtime, we'd have lunch. If it wasn't, he'd have like a slice of blueberry pie and I'd have a milkshake.

00:44:27.200 Like, it was something that we would actually stop as, like, in our trip, pause, and experience as part of the trip.

00:44:36.360 And I think a lot of people have those experiences or have those memories at some point in their life, and especially our parents' generation, of stopping.

00:44:44.720 And, like, that is part of the trip.

00:44:47.000 And now it's like, how can I go, how can I pack enough beverages in my car at the very beginning so that I don't have to stop at all?

00:44:54.880 Like, if I didn't have to pee, that would be great.

00:44:57.200 Right. But why are we trying to get somewhere so fast?

00:45:02.800 I think there's so many so many sides to it. I think that one is just, you know, over time, we just get trained on this idea that that the destination is it like that getting the end result.

00:45:14.580 That's that's all that matters, that anything else that that does that is is getting in the way.

00:45:19.680 And a lot of what we end up being offered, I think, as conveniences are ways to not even to make that pass faster, but to fill the time in these other ways, like more types of entertainment in the car, more options for, you know, like I think one of the top uses for for smartphones has to be just killing time when you're waiting somewhere.

00:45:42.440 Uh, people I talked to for the book to get into this. And it's something that over time has, has come to mean more and more to me. I think there's also a deathly fear of boredom of ever being bored in a way that you really have to train yourself back into like just being able to sit and not have something else to do and just let your mind kind of wander and maybe wander past.

00:46:06.420 you know i'm always kind of going to the most catastrophic thoughts possible uh but like kind

00:46:11.580 of let your mind go past that if you can like just sitting with without something to do i i and i this

00:46:18.640 is you know something that i think is in the ether too where i have seen more and more people

00:46:21.940 commenting of remember when we were kids and how much time we were just bored and it's like i think

00:46:27.500 that i don't know i think being willing to to stop on a trip really does kind of help retrain those

00:46:34.020 muscles and it's like it's not it's not boring it's clearly a meaningful experience to stop at

00:46:37.940 the diner and do these other things like there is meaning in that but there's also a risk that

00:46:43.280 maybe it would be boring and maybe part of the drive will be boring and so it's like every

00:46:46.900 possible minute has to be filled with some sort of activity usually a monetized activity usually

00:46:51.360 something that is that is you know commercial uh that's going to play ads or that you're going to

00:46:56.100 have to pay extra money for something like that but like just that idea of you know there's there's

00:47:01.660 a little bit of silence. There's a little bit of time to not think about something, to not look at

00:47:05.300 something, to not sort of have, you know, constant content input. I have to make like very purposeful

00:47:11.660 decisions about like leaving my phone at home when I'm going on a dog walk so I can just hang

00:47:16.760 out in my own mind. Right. Or I don't listen to anything when I run, which is also another thing

00:47:21.180 that I do very purposely. This actually makes me think of this previous question about the

00:47:25.140 Starbucks app or about like ordering the app by phone. If you know that it's bad and you don't

00:47:30.480 want to do it, I think sometimes the best way to retrain our minds is to delete the

00:47:35.140 app.

00:47:35.860 Yes.

00:47:36.320 It's that simple, right?

00:47:37.720 Like we get so in our patterns of like, well, this is what I've always done.

00:47:42.360 This is what I do.

00:47:43.260 This is what I know the rhythms of.

00:47:45.280 But if you delete the app, it forces your mind and everything to figure out a different

00:47:50.320 route to get to the way that the thing that you want to do.

00:47:53.520 Yeah.

00:47:53.740 Yeah.

00:47:54.060 I have deleted Instagram so many times and occasionally, you know, now with the book,

00:47:59.900 I might need to go on and post something to promote the book, which is also a strange

00:48:03.880 experience. But it's like, all right, I install it. I post. I wait a few

00:48:07.820 hours to monitor the reaction. And then I have to delete it again

00:48:11.900 because I really, it's so hard to help

00:48:15.780 myself with it when it's there. It's like, well, I just want to. I've gotten my

00:48:19.760 home screen down to now, you know, by default, it's basically like a camera

00:48:23.820 music and the weather. And like, I really just want

00:48:27.640 like nothing else on that screen well and i was thinking about this earlier you know there's all

00:48:32.000 these like idealizations of like 90s summer which is actually 70s summer which is actually just like

00:48:38.940 parents not having intensive parenting practices and also like often having at least one adult who

00:48:45.540 is able to provide like a little bit of supervision in some capacity but part of the way that kids had

00:48:51.660 these like creative exploratory summers was that there was just not enough tv to fill our days

00:48:58.840 like there were like some cartoons and then you're like there's nothing for me until like

00:49:03.880 four or five p.m and then maybe it's like a mash rerun and that's it right like so what do you get

00:49:10.220 like maybe there's an old vhs tape that you can watch but otherwise you got to fill your days and

00:49:15.440 now when there's every single children's program ever made available to you at any time like of

00:49:22.040 course there's not a lot of room for kids to cultivate boredom yeah yeah i mean and adults

00:49:27.680 like i yeah i don't know i always think it was such a big deal when we got cable when i was a

00:49:32.040 kid and then not long after even then it's like well you know there's more there's more tv than

00:49:37.540 ever but there's still not enough like i don't i'm not going to watch you know um this episode

00:49:43.900 of the Brady Bunch for like the fifth time and and why 20 years after the show ended do I know

00:49:48.760 so much about the Brady Bunch as a kid like I need to just sort of uh move on and get outside

00:49:53.700 and do something else uh yeah yeah I think that's a big part of it is yeah like just the limited

00:49:59.500 options for for sort of uh content that existed so to speak well and think about all the weird

00:50:05.820 stuff that we were exposed to because we didn't have on-demand television like

00:50:09.920 where there was the Brady Bunch. I watched Nick at Night reruns of My Three Sons. Very obsessed

00:50:16.760 with that show. But also Old School Saturday Night Live. Yeah, yeah. They played reruns of that.

00:50:22.880 But also, like I was saying, I watched MASH every day. What a weird thing for a fifth grader to

00:50:28.600 watch. But out of fine and other ways. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think an interesting thing to

00:50:35.360 this is you know i had such a similar experience watching you know mash as a kid like why watch

00:50:41.020 mash like well that's on it's like the simpsons were on and then the news and then mash and like

00:50:45.420 that's that's you know what's on sort of like the the the local like uh one of the the rebroadcasting

00:50:51.220 affiliates sort of things but there is a bit of a shared experience there because i also remember

00:50:55.580 like talking with other people about uh about these shows and and i do you know get into

00:51:01.320 entertainment a bit in the book but i think there might be when there was sort of fewer options and

00:51:06.480 not to sound nostalgic about it because it's good that there's you know that there are a lot of

00:51:09.980 options but like that idea of like the shared experience that we were all watching the same

00:51:14.780 thing uh has has so gone away now like there it's so rare that i mentioned to someone that i'm

00:51:20.380 watching something and they are watching the same thing right there are so many shows out there um

00:51:25.640 and and so many options it's really hard to even get on the same page with somebody now about what

00:51:31.160 Where what we're all enjoying, even though it's easier than ever for for us to watch the same thing.

00:51:36.140 Right. And also easier than ever for us to find things that are like very tailored to our own personal, like what we have decided are our tastes.

00:51:44.020 And I actually find this a struggle. I wonder if you feel anything similar with doing like cultural journalism, because even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was a lot easier to find something to write about something that an audience could have a collective reaction to because they were consuming it or consuming it secondhand, like consuming the discourse about it.

00:52:07.840 and it is so diffuse now like and this is the convenience the idea that everything is on demand

00:52:14.860 also makes it so that everyone is watching all sorts of different things and that it's not just

00:52:19.760 harder to have like a casual conversation with someone in real life but it's also harder to have

00:52:25.220 a conversation online in a broad way unless it's like a huge piece of monoculture like the odyssey

00:52:33.900 right yeah yeah and and and the odyssey i feel like also with you know um the whole barbenheimer

00:52:40.300 uh was that three years ago yeah yeah one thing that strikes me with that is those were

00:52:45.840 experiences that had to be you still had to go to the theater for it like there was still like

00:52:50.220 that little bit of friction like it wasn't something that was an option to stream at home

00:52:54.440 and and you just decided whether or not to most people would not um so yeah i encounter that too

00:53:02.500 in in culture writing of you know what is the the thing that people are really thinking about and

00:53:06.900 talking about yep that's out there in streaming and then also i think you know there's many reasons

00:53:12.960 for sort of the traffic apocalypse that so many websites are seeing but yeah it's so easy also

00:53:18.320 just to flip away from an article if it's about a show that you're not watching or a show that you

00:53:23.260 haven't heard about like yeah why read it it's like i'm not going to watch this show i have not

00:53:27.940 heard of this show like uh even if you like the writer maybe it's like well let me just move on

00:53:32.360 because there's going to be something else.

00:53:33.520 There's going to be some other thing to look at,

00:53:35.160 some other thing to read.

00:53:36.520 Yeah, like, I don't know.

00:53:37.700 There's almost no friction drawing me

00:53:40.980 to keep engaging with something.

00:53:43.360 And this is like, I think,

00:53:44.340 the tension between the infinite scroll

00:53:47.420 and the idea that like abundance

00:53:49.160 is actually what we want

00:53:50.580 and how constrictions are very useful, fruitful.

00:53:55.460 Like they allow us to sometimes engage with things

00:53:57.880 that we wouldn't have necessarily chosen.

00:53:59.860 Like we don't always know what we want.

00:54:01.600 Sometimes you need someone else to, like, peek some little small thing in your brain and open up a new curiosity for you.

00:54:09.320 But if you're only chasing, like, if you're only making your own pathways, then I think oftentimes you start going in a circle.

00:54:17.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:18.060 There are, I think, problems with the idea of, you know, well, you need to you need to watch this or like you need to be exposed to certain things.

00:54:25.900 But like, there's also some validity, I think, to seeing something that doesn't fit your

00:54:31.720 taste exactly.

00:54:33.620 And then and then thinking about whether it does why it does or does not really engaging

00:54:38.900 with that, you know, rather than just immediately moving on to the next thing, like actually

00:54:43.820 spending time assessing something and not just assessing, you know, whatever it is you're

00:54:48.720 watching or listening to, but then your own reaction to it, I think is tremendously valuable

00:54:52.960 And is also something that, I don't know, I still think about today sometimes where it's like, yeah, I saw all those episodes of the monkeys on Nick at Night or like all these episodes of MASH.

00:55:01.940 Like, why did I have that reaction to him?

00:55:04.320 Like, how does that or like occasionally, I don't know, I'll like laugh at a joke and I'm like, well, that was something that might be like a late season MASH joke.

00:55:11.060 Why?

00:55:11.440 It's like, oh, I'm conditioned to it.

00:55:12.960 Like, and you just learn so much.

00:55:14.440 There was this great quote that I found from the filmmaker Federico Fellini, who was giving this interview and he got very involved in politics, really involved in criticizing Berlusconi sort of in his in his later years.

00:55:29.600 And he really did not like the remote control because he said, like, this is the thing that all of a sudden makes you not have to sit with anything anymore.

00:55:37.660 And it is the comfort that that just leads to people being it.

00:55:41.880 He called it something essentially describing as like almost a tool of small mindedness, like that is going to end up just leading to you never having to take in anything that is not that not only that doesn't appeal to you, that doesn't immediately appeal to you.

00:55:55.540 And so, you know, and he's saying this, I think, in the late 80s or so. And it's just this fascinating idea of like, yeah, as soon as you can switch away from something, then you start looking for and whoever's providing it starts providing for you. You know, yeah, like the thing that will immediately draw your attention and hold your attention.

00:56:14.000 the culture study podcast is brought to you by article so melody you have a book problem

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01:00:15.340 Okay, we're going to take a little bit of a hard pivot here and talk about how this is maybe just a pretty bougie conversation.

01:00:29.820 This is from Leah.

01:00:30.660 How do we prevent friction from becoming another aesthetic aspiration and wealth signifier?

01:00:37.080 It's already heading that way, and I worry talking about it without any in-depth economic

01:00:42.420 and class analysis will push it further in that direction.

01:00:47.540 How do you think about this?

01:00:49.720 I think it's a big conundrum, and it's another one I grapple with because there's two sides,

01:00:56.380 I think, to opting out or two levels of reward to opting out.

01:01:00.680 One is on the personal side that I go do something for myself instead of just ordering from a

01:01:06.020 service. And then I feel a little bit better about it. I think I've gotten a better experience,

01:01:10.860 but that's just me. What does that do for someone else? If I'm not relying on the gig economy or

01:01:15.980 something that is maybe harmful to workers, there's that. But it's like, what does that

01:01:19.760 actually do to make the system better for the people who are in it and the people who have no

01:01:24.200 choice but to participate? And I think it's good that this question asker is saying this because

01:01:29.340 it means going into this with a level of consciousness. One thing that I did was I

01:01:35.700 tried not to describe my own life and my own choices in the book that much because I don't

01:01:40.660 want to present it as this is how you live this life. This is how you model inconvenience. This

01:01:46.260 is the thing that you do. I get into a few things that I do and the thinking behind them a little

01:01:51.220 bit, but I didn't want to present any sort of model for that. I think that there is this element

01:01:57.240 of performing inconvenience that you see

01:01:59.400 that often maybe isn't

01:02:01.340 really inconvenient at all. I think, you know,

01:02:03.120 people posting when they're waiting in a long line for

01:02:05.220 something, which seems to be something a lot of people are

01:02:07.280 talking about. Posting when you're in a long

01:02:09.220 line. Yeah, the long

01:02:11.220 lines. And then the whole, like, sort of

01:02:13.240 trad wife thing, too, I think, you know,

01:02:14.980 or just anybody sort of living that

01:02:17.160 trad existence is sort of performing

01:02:19.180 inconvenience and presenting it as

01:02:21.000 as, you know, like

01:02:22.660 Right, which is like

01:02:24.540 And an aestheticized, like, regressive, like, yeah, that is exactly what we do not want.

01:02:33.060 Exactly. And I think, you know, one part of it is, like, to not necessarily, like, post about it, not make a big deal of it. Like, if you're embracing friction or doing something inconvenient, do it for its own sake and for what it brings to you, for what sort of reward you're going to get from it, rather than what it might look like or what it might say about you.

01:02:53.960 So make that personal decision first. I think on the class issue to not having money in the United States or anywhere is extremely inconvenient as a way to exist in society, because there are so many things that that that changes and makes more difficult about your life.

01:03:12.200 And I think it can be really easy sometimes to to sort of avoid that as a person who does have the resources, because so many conveniences do lead to just being able to avoid interacting with another person to take a car instead of the bus to to do all those things.

01:03:27.260 So I think that, you know, just trying not to engage in conveniences that hide that reality from you and also that end up making some of these class issues worse, maybe by furthering the gig economy or hurting local stores, that sort of thing, I think could be a big part of it.

01:03:42.340 But but I think also to avoid making inconvenience into an aesthetic thing, you know, it's good to talk about when you do something that's inconvenient, like, you know, and tell a friend because maybe they would like it.

01:03:54.200 But, you know, you're not going to start a revolution by posting like a cool pics photo of a loaf of bread online or anything like that.

01:04:01.120 Like just one other thing I do, and I think about this a lot is, you know, remember running errands and how, you know, not to sound nostalgic, but it's like, oh, my parents would need to go do stuff and I would go along with them.

01:04:12.920 Or like in college, somebody needs to go to the bank and it's like, yeah, I'll go with you.

01:04:17.160 And it's like there's so much like passive socialization that happens with that, whether you're talking to the bank clerk or just kind of having this time to talk with your friend.

01:04:26.100 Like that's nothing that really seems like anything you'd want to post about, but it is an inconvenience. It is something that's nice for you. It is something that's nice to build a little bit of socialization around.

01:04:37.500 Yeah, I think that like the kind of the flat understanding of embracing inconvenience is just like, oh, well, I'm going to do things that take more time. And because rich people supposedly have more time than poorer people, like then that's a class signifier.

01:04:57.020 And I don't think that it's necessarily that. Like now there's some texture here, but most people who are making a lot of money, they're not like leading a life of leisure. They're just working all of the time. And then they're using these inconvenience, like getting rid of inconveniences so that they can work more.

01:05:16.200 and yes they have like a luxurious life but a lot of their life is also just work in and oftentimes

01:05:23.200 somewhat miserable and don't have a lot of time for relationships and for me like the way that

01:05:30.420 i would like to look at it is in this more universal design component which is like if we

01:05:37.180 if we try to make systems that work better for everyone then they will make everyone have a

01:05:45.020 better life right exactly yeah yeah like if we make the airport better for everyone not just

01:05:51.840 people with clear and lounge access then like rich people will have a better experience of

01:05:58.860 that airport and so will people who don't have as much money you know what i mean like

01:06:03.140 how can we make that more like universalized positive experience public transit is like

01:06:09.660 the object lesson, right? Yeah. And one thing that had come up in a conversation I'd had with

01:06:17.540 one researcher for the book was she mentioned there's a difference between sort of having to

01:06:22.960 do something and using a convenience that achieves that one goal and having the option of how to do

01:06:29.080 it and whether to do it. And I think when you talk about universal design and everything, I think

01:06:35.300 giving people that level of autonomy for how to participate in all these things that they do and

01:06:40.920 not saying, well, no, your choices when you go to the airport are pay a bunch of money to have

01:06:45.800 these services and apps installed and everything, or just be herded around and have a miserable

01:06:52.080 experience. Like being able to sort of have that variety, I think is something that a lot of

01:06:58.420 conveniences end up taking or alleged conveniences end up taking away from us, that it's just sort

01:07:02.360 this prescribed way of consuming something, and you either do it or you don't, rather than having

01:07:07.300 the option for how you do it and what your end result may be, all of that.

01:07:12.040 You know, we had another question that was kind of like, okay, so what? What do we do now? And

01:07:17.780 we've talked a little bit about that throughout the course of the episode, but I do think that

01:07:21.620 thinking less in terms of how do I embrace it just personally, but also thinking on a more

01:07:27.960 societal level is really important here because it gets to that more collectivist understanding

01:07:33.100 of a society that is trying to eliminate inconvenience in all way is a society that

01:07:38.000 is not trying to like allow us leisure. It's a society that wants us to work more.

01:07:44.340 Exactly. Yeah. Work and then pay for anything that you do that is going to be

01:07:48.320 fun or anything like constantly have the experience of either you are working and you

01:07:53.920 are generating productivity or you are, you know, spending and consuming and having this

01:07:58.700 commercialized experience. I think, you know, that's that's something I think about a lot,

01:08:03.780 too, is sort of, you know, how to how to spread this in a way where it's not just going to be

01:08:07.540 your own personal comfort. And I think part of it is, you know, if you're if you're up for it

01:08:12.660 and able to, you know, taking those actions that are going to support collective action,

01:08:17.540 whether that's avoiding shopping in certain ways, avoiding businesses where you don't like

01:08:22.440 the labor practices, uh, making sure that you're putting more money into the local economy.

01:08:26.460 Like there's more activist ways that you can get involved in this in a way that it doesn't

01:08:31.020 mean that you have to live your life perfectly, but that you can, you know, do a little bit more

01:08:36.280 participation. I think there's also a way, you know, beyond sort of getting involved in these

01:08:42.060 larger and larger ways, uh, is also just kind of inviting people to experience things along with

01:08:49.320 you without yeah you know without posting about it without bragging about it anything like that

01:08:53.040 like i love to when i have to run errands invite someone to come along like with a friend like oh

01:08:57.640 hey i gotta do this thing uh or like hey let's meet at this uh you know there's a ton of farmers

01:09:03.260 markets around and there are a ton of uh repair markets around where people will volunteer and

01:09:07.600 fix your stuff uh like if you have something small that's broken and those are excellent ways to

01:09:13.120 one, find some good food and then also get something fixed without having to buy or replace

01:09:20.140 it. Like I like to go get things repaired there, but also they're really good social experiences

01:09:24.740 just to take a friend to, which then, you know, spark something in that friend and maybe they're

01:09:29.120 going to go back or maybe they'll tell a friend, that sort of thing. So I do think there's also

01:09:32.140 this sort of very small scale, but socialized way of, of kind of just introducing people to

01:09:38.760 the inconveniences or the friction that that you find valuable in your own life.

01:09:43.120 I love the errand friend. I love being the errand friend. I love like going on errands with my

01:09:48.640 friends. And one of the things that you always have to do is like go to a place that you don't

01:09:55.060 need to go to. Like, oh, we got to go to the bank to make this deposit. Like, oh, we got to go to

01:10:00.060 freaking UPS to drop off this package. We have to go and make this return at REI. Like, but it's

01:10:06.920 worth it. Like, I'm not like, oh my God, I can't believe that we have to go to REI. Like, it's

01:10:12.420 fine. We're hanging out, right? Like we're getting my errands done and we're hanging out. But the

01:10:17.460 thing that I've had to let go of is this idea that like, I am optimizing my errands and I'm

01:10:23.700 going to go boom, boom, boom, and back home. And it's going to be amazing, right? Like I'm going to

01:10:28.300 do it so fast and then I'm going to get home. But it's a worse experience, right? And it's not

01:10:34.440 hanging out with my friends and I feel like I'm rushing from place to place and like yelling at

01:10:40.180 the traffic at this place. Right. Like just a totally different experience when you do it in

01:10:44.460 a sharing way. Yeah. Yeah. I find when I do things alone, I am constantly in a hurry. Yeah. The point

01:10:50.640 that I'm like, I have to check myself like, why am I in a hurry? Like I was running for a bus the

01:10:54.800 other day to get home after like going out to like pick up a few things from a store. And then I

01:11:02.060 I stopped halfway and I'm like, why am I running for this?

01:11:04.300 Like, there's going to be another one in a few minutes.

01:11:05.940 Like, fortunately, there's a good bus route here, but it's like, yeah, like another one's

01:11:10.720 coming.

01:11:11.020 I've got nothing to do.

01:11:12.180 Like, I don't need to, like, run in the heat through, like, through the streets of the

01:11:17.300 city to catch this bus.

01:11:18.760 Like, why am I in such a hurry?

01:11:20.060 Versus if I were with a friend, we'd probably just do what I ended up doing.

01:11:23.980 I'm like, well, no, just walk and I don't know, read a book or something or get a cup

01:11:27.200 of coffee, like kill a little time.

01:11:29.260 Like I had I had no reason to get home, but I just felt that like compulsion of like I have to be home because if I'm home, I'm going to be able to do this and I'm going to be able to do this.

01:11:37.140 And probably if I had like been able to really have like a full conversation with myself, I was probably thinking I would get home and do some sort of work or some sort of, you know, productivity thing.

01:11:46.060 Right. Well, and I think that like small scale stuff has larger sociological ramifications.

01:11:52.480 So stuff like, OK, it does your neighborhood have a tool library? Is that something that you would be interested in doing?

01:11:57.780 Like, what about four families getting together and something that you want, buying it and sharing it?

01:12:03.960 Just did this with a ninja frosé maker with my friends.

01:12:08.700 We don't all need a frosé maker, but what if we had one of them between four families?

01:12:13.940 Yes.

01:12:14.500 On a larger scale, I think sometimes we forget, especially because of the way that the U.S. government works in particular, that there are policy changes that have connection to this, like right to repair.

01:12:26.140 Can you talk a little bit about that and how this connects?

01:12:29.160 Yeah.

01:12:29.460 So right to repair, it can take different forms, but it basically is a law that would

01:12:33.980 say that you have to, if you make a device or make a certain piece of equipment, that

01:12:38.720 you have to make it to where it can be repaired by the buyer or perhaps a third party.

01:12:44.940 The tools have to be available.

01:12:46.520 The parts have to be available.

01:12:48.100 It can't just be this sort of locked box that when it breaks, the person has to go back

01:12:52.280 and buy another one from you or that only you can repair it.

01:12:55.180 Like it has to be something that a person truly can own and and make repairs to.

01:12:59.740 And and there's other sides of that, too, sometimes like legislation that gives a requires a posting sort of the lifespan of of an item on on the box.

01:13:10.040 Like how long is this refrigerator really going to last, which as smart appliances start to infiltrate daily life, you know, like that that becomes really important because those chips don't last as long as, you know, the big metal parts that used to run in appliances.

01:13:26.460 So, yeah, like so there's various things about it.

01:13:29.640 But right to repair basically is, yeah, you have the right to fix or to take your things to be fixed by someone that is not that is not the manufacturer who sold it to you.

01:13:38.000 Well, and I think this kind of brings us full circle to the idea that when we're talking about being against convenience, we're not talking about like, oh, you shouldn't have a vacuum, right?

01:13:52.740 We're actually saying you should have a vacuum, buy it once. And then instead of having to like research which kind of vacuum to replace it with in three years when the mechanisms break and ordering it on Amazon and having it arrive at your door and then having someone haul away all the trash and then like doing the entire process over again in three years.

01:14:14.400 That what if you had a vacuum that when it broke, you had to go and these places still absolutely exist.

01:14:21.600 You go to the vacuum cleaner fixer and you have a conversation with him or her and you learn something about the mechanism in your vacuum and then still have a vacuum.

01:14:32.620 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And and not necessarily even be sold the sort of constant small improvements in in vacuums.

01:14:39.780 you know, reading about the way that that home life existed sort of before utilities and

01:14:43.960 industrialization, like there was this this gigantic, wonderful leap of all these things

01:14:49.140 coming into our homes. But it's like, what has changed with a refrigerator that that is in any

01:14:54.840 way close to the difference between not having a refrigerator and having one like, you know,

01:14:59.260 and a camera in the door or a screen in the door that gives you a recipe is not

01:15:03.900 nearly the advancement of actually having a refrigerator. And I think sometimes it

01:15:09.540 it's very easy to lose sight of that but yeah but can also just be such a downer of just like

01:15:14.700 oh like these machines are basically the same machines they were when they first came into the

01:15:18.540 house but now they i connect my phone to them if not worse oh yes oh yeah i was watching this tiktok

01:15:25.240 of um someone exploring a fridge that was built in the 1950s and it was like such a beautiful fridge

01:15:34.080 just aesthetically, but also just everything still worked absolutely the same way that it

01:15:39.520 didn't in 1950. And part of the reason they stopped making it was because it lasted so long.

01:15:46.920 Yeah. Yeah. Right. That like it wasn't a profit center.

01:15:51.840 It's one of those things where it's like you find it out in real life and you find the evidence for

01:15:55.480 it. And then as soon as you talk to people about it, you start to feel like you're a conspiracy

01:15:59.180 theorist almost no but planned obsolescence like it's not as much as like we sometimes think it is

01:16:05.040 like it's not like the iphone explodes at year three but there are things that make it unusable

01:16:10.260 for sure and the the whole idea like even starting in uh you know with with cars where it's like oh

01:16:16.700 there's this like one minor new feature there's this one or one minor new feature so you're getting

01:16:20.560 a new car every year and the ways that that have been tried with appliances um i quote the historian

01:16:25.520 Susan Strasser, who's written a great book on the history of housework and appliances and

01:16:30.800 everything. And one thing she points out is like, why are there so many speeds on blenders? Why were

01:16:37.560 there like, you know, the avocado fridges, all this? And it's like, well, it's just to make you

01:16:41.480 buy it again, because you think that it's going to be in some way more convenient. But, you know,

01:16:46.580 the difference between the third and the fourth speed on a 20 speed blender is not anything that

01:16:53.580 bringing new convenience into your life you know like the one blender would be good like just get

01:16:58.960 it and let it work and and all that but it's like yeah you have to maximize the profits you have to

01:17:03.620 sort of if not actual planned obsolescence then you know perceived obsolescence because now it's

01:17:09.240 you know no longer this the new convenient thing like you're no longer the convenient uh homekeeper

01:17:14.200 because you don't have uh the blender though now with software it's just like oh we don't support

01:17:18.540 your software anymore and therefore now you have to buy a new thing you have to buy a new thing

01:17:22.100 because you can't update it anymore your fridge no longer gets updates yeah now you have to just

01:17:26.340 buy a new fridge yes the the thing that i've been thinking about something that like people talk

01:17:31.020 about with clothes a lot is that like when something gets cheaper when you think of it as

01:17:35.880 like oh i can have a lot of this thing or it gets cheaper right for like you to have an uber or

01:17:43.240 whatever the thing is like it's not like in almost all cases it's not that they have figured out how

01:17:48.840 to make that thing more efficiently it's that someone else is paying right they're paying with

01:17:55.400 like exploitative working conditions they're paying with uh subsidies from the government

01:18:02.040 they're paying uh with you know vc funding that like kept prices artificially low on ubers until

01:18:09.700 people started using them on mass like someone is paying and that is a useful experiment for me when

01:18:15.540 I'm thinking about a convenience, like, is the time that this is theoretically saving me worth

01:18:22.480 the cost in all sorts of different ways, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I do get kind of

01:18:31.720 bummed out sometimes at just how much it ends up overtaking to the point that, you know, what is

01:18:36.660 the other option? Like, what is the option that is going to be better? What is the thing that is

01:18:41.880 not going to promise to save time and end up eating up all my time with tedium what is the

01:18:46.860 the shirt that is going to be worth the money and not end up falling apart because now all of a

01:18:51.040 sudden like we've all just gotten used to you know really bad material in uh in things and it starts

01:18:57.180 to fall apart after three washes and oh i thought it was a better one but no you know like it gets

01:19:01.840 to be harder and harder to to even know you know what what the good options are or or what is going

01:19:07.340 to be a true convenience. How do you discern? That's my final question.

01:19:13.340 So in the embracing convenience side, I really love list-based thinking. And there's a Wendell

01:19:23.060 Berry essay that I go back to over and over in the book and just even in my own life of

01:19:27.660 what would make him buy a computer, why he would not buy a computer and what a new tool needs to do.

01:19:32.600 And I think about that and then I think about sort of my own version of that and just kind of asking questions. And one is, or the way I kind of think about it is, you know, what is this convenience going to save me? Where is that coming from? And is this something that I actually want saved?

01:19:49.520 Like, is the time that I could save by ordering something instead of going to a store, like, is that time, like, how am I going to use that time? And do I actually enjoy the time when I do it? Like, it is nice to go out and, I don't know, see people and ride the bus and feel a material in the store before buying it. So I always think about, you know, what am I really getting from this? What is this saving me? And do I really want that to be saved?

01:20:12.060 Yeah, I think that's a wonderful place to end. Gabe, if people want to find more from you, where can they find you on the internet?

01:20:19.940 They can go to GabeBullard.com and they can find everything there from links to social media apps that I will delete after a while and not look at, to a newsletter that I write and the website Together Alone about television that I write with my friend Ariel.

01:20:36.060 Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me. This was a pleasure.

01:20:39.080 Thank you. It was great.

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Culture Study Podcast - September 23, 2026

When Convenience Actually Kinda Sucks

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