All Episodes
Previous Next
May 17, 2023 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
35:01
Fear Goggles

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit radixjournal.substack.comOn the eve of Apple’s announcement of a new headset, Mark Brahmin, Charles Johnson, and Richard Spencer dive into the “metaverse,” and they don’t like what they see. Other topics include Elon Musk, “Sludge” as cinema, and much more.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
I don't know if everyone else is going to be excited to talk about this, but I actually wanted to talk about the rumored Apple headset, which apparently is going to be announced in June.
And I think this is real.
Now, a lot of things get...
There are a lot of rumors about...
Things that Apple's going to produce that never come about.
But the headset is real.
So I have to say, I am rather shocked in a way that Apple is doing a headset.
And I do sense that it might very well be a disaster because I think the...
Metaverse or virtual reality has been a kind of long-term disaster.
I think it goes against a lot of what Apple has sought to do in the past and how it's built up its brand.
And again, I know this sounds like we're talking about tech now or whatever, but I do want to get deeper into the concept of virtual reality.
So it all does relate to something bigger, but I think it's good to set it up with how this is relevant to the current day.
So I can remember even when I was a kid wearing a virtual reality headset.
I think I was actually at Dave and Buster's, which I don't know if they have those all across the US or Europe, but it's basically like a big arcade and restaurants and they've got some pool tables, but it's pretty nice.
And I would go there.
I actually played pool with my grandfather.
I remember tons of birthdays were there.
So it's kind of like a...
Adults or classy version of Chuck E. Cheese, I guess you could say.
But I remember they had this VR headset station in the arcade.
I remember putting it on.
It made me dizzy.
You were in a kind of Tron-like environment.
And there was the promise even then, this is probably in the late 80s, early 90s, that this is the future and blah, blah, blah.
And VR headsets have definitely been discussed and talked about in science fiction and so on.
I think often, very often, in dystopian ways, there's actually a pretty good film that came out five or so years ago.
It was based on this kind of bestselling book that I think was almost like a self-published bestseller or something.
It's called Ready Player One.
Spielberg directed it.
And I think the image of, like, online gaming and virtual reality was extremely dystopian, and I think properly so.
So it was, you put on these, you're living in these tiny, like, I don't know, 50-square-foot apartment stacked on one, you know, it's almost like you're living in a mobile home stacked up like a skyscraper.
And you have the real world sucks, everyone's poor and unhappy, but you can kind of escape into these virtual realms with your headset where everything is like a, you know, fantastical heavenly version of Las Vegas or something like this.
So it was a kind of dystopian and the image of virtual reality was, properly speaking, false.
It was a way of not touching grass or gaining human connections.
And I think at the end of the film, the madman who invented this game, who is a kind of, I don't know, like Steve Jobs slash Einstein figure.
Actually ended the game to some extent.
And they reduced game usage to two hours a day or on the weekends or something.
And the hope was that you would actually connect in the real world.
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg has pivoted to virtual reality in a way to try to That
it is on its way out.
There's going to be something that replaces it.
The thing that he found was the so-called metaverse.
And he actually renamed the entire company and suites of apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and et cetera, that this will all be meta.
But he was really making this huge bet on the metaverse.
A year and a half later, this has been a complete disaster.
I don't even know what the numbers are.
It doesn't matter.
He has simply lost billions.
There is no excitement for the metaverse outside of a few early adopters and various tech nerds.
It has not captured the imagination of the public at large.
And I can see why.
The introductory video for the Metaverse was just totally bizarre, and it's like you can have some Tony Stark home that you can live in with all your stuff, and you can walk around in this Pixar version of yourself.
And I remember looking at this thing where, you know, this was how they were pitching it to the public.
And it was just all these just kind of weird Silicon Valley nerd types who are disconnected from reality and rather contemptible people, ultimately.
I mean, Zuckerberg being paramount among them.
And they were like meeting up in a space shuttle to play cards or something like this.
And one of them was a robot.
And it just, there was, I don't know how to describe, I can't put into words.
I guess Uncanny Valley is one of them where it's like you're, it's like bad technology, but then bad real life.
It's like the worst of both worlds.
Like you're not.
You're not even seeing technology as something that's advancing your life.
You're seeing technology as this dorky, scary and creepy, in many ways, replication or re-presentation of real life.
It's just extremely unattractive.
I'm surprised Meta hasn't collapsed more than this.
As you can see, there's also been these crazy stories of people getting sexually harassed in the metaverse, or there's actually a rape in the metaverse.
I read about this last night, and there's actually a video.
There's not a video of the rape itself, there's a video of what happened before.
And, you know, obviously it kind of sounds bizarre about this notion of, you know, if you get raped in the metaverse, is it a crime or something?
And this is either theoretically interesting or completely ridiculous, depending on your perspective.
But, you know, to be completely fair, and in many ways to defend the victim of this, I watched the video of what happened before the rape, and it actually looked like any other...
They were drinking, I guess, metaphysically drinking vodka and harassing this woman and trying to push her into a private room.
And I think if...
So in a way, I mean, again, I won't...
Is this legal?
Is this legally an assault or something?
I don't know.
But in a way, it kind of was, actually.
It was reproducing in the metaphysical realm all of the Vulgarity, stupidity, and violence of the real world.
There's this notion that we would change in the metaverse, and we'd all become cool, peaceful, consensual, Silicon Valley nerd types.
But in fact, you're just reproducing in another realm all of the problems of contemporary society.
And you're not...
In that video that Mark Zuckerberg promoted, where he said, "Our mission has not changed at Facebook.
It's still about connecting people." And it's like, does anyone feel like we're more connected now after this social media revolution?
I mean, to be fair, in many ways, we are.
Many people on this call, we probably would not have gotten to know each other if it weren't through the magic of Twitter or Substack or even, you could say, email or websites.
We wouldn't have connected.
And so that is kind of an amazing thing.
Obviously, the serious issue of living in a post-social media environment is loneliness, sexlessness, and suicide.
I saw a lot of people attacking that Facebook whistleblower who spoke before Congress.
It might have been a year ago or two years.
I mean, okay, everyone deserves to be criticized, but I think what she was saying was completely real in the sense that Facebook knows that young girls on Instagram are becoming depressed as a direct result of using Instagram.
And that on some level, Instagram has killed people.
In the sense of inspiring, on an actuarial basis, inspiring more young, particularly girls, apparently, to kill themselves than otherwise would have.
So, I don't know.
It's like, these things...
Yeah, there are obviously great things about the internet.
I wouldn't...
My entire career has more or less been on the internet, but it's like...
I think we need to recognize the horrible quality of this and the way in which the metaverse is just putting all of the awfulness of social media almost on steroids.
So there's actually an Israeli psychologist named Sam Vankin, V-A-N-K-I-N.
And I don't think he has a book out about this, but I know he was doing research, and you just reminded me.
So there was a study, two studies done, one in 1985, that basically just surveyed some, I can't tell you the college, they surveyed and asked, you know, X amount of college students, you know, do you feel anxious often?
And okay, these kids are college age, more likely for, you know, Anxiety or depression in your 20s or whatever, and then usually you level out as you get older.
And I think it was, I believe it was 15%.
I know it was less than a quarter.
And in 2015, they did the same study, and it was, I want to say, like over 50%, maybe 55, 60, something like that.
So it's anecdotal for me to say this, but I mean, I'm not...
It's not an exaggeration.
And it's just, he said, what has changed?
And here we can say, okay, maybe a little bit of that is the spiteful mutant theory or whatever.
Just the fact that medical technology is keeping otherwise sicker people alive.
Okay, that's one thing.
I think that's pretty minor in comparison with this technological transformation that's occurred.
Yes.
Yes, and that's what he was saying.
He goes, what else has changed?
I think the funny thing, or sad thing, is at the time of him saying this, it was probably about four or five years ago that I was listening to this interview, and he said something like, the most popular video on Instagram is of a woman eating a banana.
I think it's the most watched video on Instagram.
So is she eating it in a provocative way?
Is that what is going on?
Or is it actually more mundane?
He didn't expand.
I just assumed it was provocative.
I'm going to need to see that video to make a determination about its quality.
This might be old at this point.
This was probably about four or five years ago that I was listening to this interview.
He said something like, every time you post, it is a, like, signal.
You're signaling something.
Like, you're always telling the world, like, you could say, like, you know, rest in peace, mom, or whatever, but it's always, fundamentally, he was saying, it's always, like, a me thing.
And there's always anxiety-related...
There's always a release of dopamine, and therefore anxiety, and what a lot of people, like...
Don't talk about when they talk about dopamine is that it's basically increased in anticipation when you are feeling anxious.
Or, I'm sorry, let's just say this.
It increases...
With the dopamine increase, I believe, there is an increase in anxiety.
But basically, every time you post, there's this like, oh, who's going to see this?
Oh, how are they going to react?
Kind of thing.
And it creates like...
Obviously, unhealthier people, but also very narcissistic people.
Or it at least selects for these kind of people.
Yeah, there's no question.
I think it has obviously increased anxiety, and it has increased a certain type of narcissism as well.
The caring about what happens on social media and how you're viewed on social media as opposed...
To the real world.
I mean, yeah, it's kind of created a certain dysphoria, I think might actually be the right word.
And it's certainly been connected to the increase in gender dysphoria.
Again, I think the spiteful mutant thesis is something that everyone should pay attention to.
There's no question.
But I think it is just like...
Dramatically overshadowed by technological changes.
And I don't think it's just that, you know, these people who are sickly who would have died before the Industrial Revolution are now walkie among us.
I mean, I think it's that kids are being exposed to social media so early on and they are, you know, the world is inducing dysphoria.
Yeah, I definitely agree.
I'll have to dig up that interview, but he was basically saying the same stuff that you've been saying.
They all know this.
Mark Zuckerberg and company know that this is just a disaster for people's mental health, etc.
You know, in a lot of ways, it's a, I mean, it's obviously a monkey, a monkey, moneymaker, rather.
And it kind of ties in with the, I don't know if you're at all familiar with this, but like the surveillance capitalism, kind of the aspect of this.
There was a book that came out about four years ago.
Yeah.
It's kind of another topic.
But anyway, you know, just as far as like the data mining is concerned and all that.
I'm derailing now.
No, no, it's fine.
Yeah, I have not read that book.
It's actually quite humongous, but that notion of surveillance capitalism has entered the discourse and we all know what's happening.
Yeah.
Okay, let me talk a little bit about Apple and I guess kind of like why I am I'm surprised that they are doing this.
Now, again, we don't know what this thing is.
I think it is pretty much guaranteed that it is going to be announced in the next two weeks or so.
But that is a headset of some kind.
But we don't really know what it is.
I actually listened to a kind of podcast with this guy named Mark Gurman.
I remember hearing about him.
It must have been a decade ago.
At the time, he was this kid.
Now he's a Bloomberg columnist, and all he does is Apple leaks and rumors and discussion.
But I remember he was this kid in college, I believe.
And he clearly has some friend of his family who works at Apple who's giving him these leaks.
Because I think he was in college in the Midwest or something, and he was getting all of these leaks right.
He pretty much told you what the outline of the new iPhone, the iPhone 7 or whatever, was going to be 10 years ago.
And so he kind of was one of these creatures of the internet who then went to an institution like Bloomberg.
But anyway, he has said some interesting things.
I mean, first off, the price of the headset is very high.
Supposedly, the price is like $3,000 to $4,000.
So it's a big...
Purchase for a product.
And it's not something that you need.
He also mentioned quite correctly that I am not alone in being just at best indifferent and at worst antagonistic towards the notion of VR.
This is the public's opinion.
And that is very different towards the public's opinion towards, say, a smartphone or a tablet.
When the iPhone was announced, I was a very early adopter.
I actually had the first iPhone.
But the public was at the very least curious about it and kind of excited for it.
It's like, oh, it's like a cell phone.
It's like a BlackBerry, but it's a lot better.
It's just one screen.
You can look at the internet.
I don't think there was really any negative energy outside of...
Oh, it's too expensive or that kind of thing.
I mean, that was the only criticism.
Everyone is excited about it.
Ditto the iPad, less so the Apple Watch, which I do see people wearing Apple Watches.
I have basically no interest.
It seems like an interesting device health-wise, but I don't really have any health concerns.
Anyway, it's just I have no interest in the Apple Watch.
But I can see how people are.
And I don't think there's much negative energy around it.
But there's a tremendous amount of negative energy around a VR headset, and particularly one that costs $3,000.
And so they've got to overcome this huge obstacle.
And it does kind of ask, why?
So I don't know what this is going to be.
There was a lot of speculation.
Could it be almost like wearable?
Mixed reality or augmented reality glasses where you can see the real world but tap into your text messages or whatever mapping.
You could wear glasses that could show you where you're driving to.
I don't know.
That's kind of interesting.
It's basically what Google Glass was pursuing about 10 years ago.
And that turned into a comical disaster that everyone made fun of.
Google has not...
Pursued it.
They put out a beta that was adopted by super fans, enthusiasts of Google.
It was a disaster made fun of, and they never pursued it.
Could Apple pull this off?
Could you have prescription lenses?
Are they going to work with Ray-Ban?
You could actually have pretty cool glasses, but then...
Like, you could, you know, use your map app on your glass.
Like, I can kind of see this.
But the idea of a headset, I just, like, outside of hardcore gamers, I just don't see anything for this.
And that's, I mean, like, Facebook purchased Oculus, which is what made Palmer lucky into a billionaire.
And I believe he was pushed out after he was revealed to be a kind of Trump fan of some kind.
Maybe there are other reasons.
And the latest version of the Oculus, which is I think called a MetaQuest or something.
I mean, I was at Target the other day buying a Nintendo game for my kids.
And I saw that thing, and it was fairly expensive.
No one was looking at it.
No one had any interest.
It's the best-selling VR headset out there.
And I would say that it has no connection to popular culture outside of a hardcore gaming community, perhaps, or someone who really wants to use meta.
I just don't see anything there.
I mean, again, I could be proven wrong.
There were many people who talked about the original iPhone.
Apple's not just going to walk in here and beat Nokia or something.
We've been in the cell phone industry for decades.
And Apple, of course, did do that.
And they dominate the industry.
They dominate in terms of profits.
They dominate in terms of...
What it means to have a phone of any kind.
The iPhone paradigm went further.
I just can't see that with a VR headset.
And I'm kind of sensing that this might very well be a disaster.
I mean, I could be proven wrong and people...
I doubt this would be the first thing on their list, but people could make fun of me for missing this and just being totally out of touch.
But I just don't think I am.
I think this sounds like something that people do not want.
And they would much rather...
I mean, you can purchase a very high-level television for $500 to $1,000 at this point.
And I think for consuming media, they would prefer that or an iPad.
The notion of just that all-immersive experience, outside of a few hardcore enthusiasts, I don't think it's a thing.
And I just think these people who promote this are extremely out of touch.
And I would probably put Palmer Luckey in that category.
Now, now.
Let's be nice to my friends.
Well, I mean...
I think you're not wrong, though.
You're not wrong.
Yeah.
You know?
He's a particular type of person.
And Apple has always been...
It's been fairly niche but mainstream.
I mean, I can remember when in the 90s, when I was at the University of Virginia, late 90s here, and I would go into the computer lab and it would be a, you know, like...
Bays of PCs.
And then in the corner, there would be two Macs or something.
It was separate but unequal.
Anyway, it was curious why you'd use a Mac at this point in time.
And it was a niche enthusiast market of people who probably had been using it for a while.
I remember I was...
I had a Mac SE actually in the late 80s, and I had a Mac Duo, which is like a laptop that you would plug into a big screen.
Very cool.
I was a Mac enthusiast, and so I kind of went through that period.
Now, at this point, the Mac is very mainstream.
It is still kind of like a hipster, quasi-luxury product, but it's just so...
It's so omnipresent that it's become almost innocuous in a way.
So that has always been Apple's constituency.
At least back in the day, more women were using Macs than men.
And that notion of, like, it just works.
It's easy to use.
It's kind of fun.
That was something that was really appealing.
They also always...
I don't think they ever lost the core constituency of graphic designers and more creative types My aunt invented a lot of the fonts for the early iMac.
Interesting.
And so I used to go to those things as a kid with her, all these calligraphy conferences.
And Apple was like, if you were a calligrapher, that was the job.
Right.
And, um, it's really, it's really interesting.
Like I've seen all these fonts over the years that my aunt or friends of hers worked on.
And, um, you know, there was a sort of obsession there with like putting the sex into the machine, you know, whereas that was really a lot of thing with Microsoft.
Well, Steve Jobs did that originally.
I mean, as the legend goes, he studied calligraphy at Reed college before he dropped out and he was very interested in bringing fonts to the computer.
At a time when that was considered, again, kind of niche or irrelevant or unnecessary and so on, now I think people could not imagine using the computer without that kind of basic innovation.
A lot of that came over from the Japanese.
There's a really great NHK documentary that came out.
It's in English about Steve Jobs in Japan.
And I highly recommend people have a look-see at that.
It's on YouTube.
Yeah.
And Steve Jobs, he said this in the iPhone announcement of we're connecting technology with the liberal arts.
And there was actually an image of a street sign where it said technology and the liberal arts.
And what he was basically saying is that we are innovative and we're kind of creating new paradigms, we're pushing the envelope, but we're not...
We're not going after some hardcore tech enthusiast audience.
We're actually kind of ironically, I guess, kind of reaching everyone or reaching non-tech savvy people while developing technology at a high rate.
That's the kind of contradiction or kind of balance, you could say.
At the heart of Apple, and it's like the iPhone at the time had a great screen and could do all this stuff, but it was really easy to use, intuitive.
These are the common cliches that people say about Apple products, and they're correct.
I just don't see how any of these things are possible.
With a VR headset.
And I just don't think anyone is going to conceivably want to use such a thing.
I think it has such dystopian resonances and is just so unattractive that it's only going to appeal to maybe that kind of tech autistic type who wants to do hardcore gaming.
Which again is a huge industry but it's something that does not reach I'm with you 100% on this.
I think, by the way, people will not want to wear things on their face that makes them less attractive to mates.
I think there's something about being like, you know, it's like an anthropological thing, right?
Where like, you know, you think about like all these people who like the context lens industry or the laser eye surgery business.
And I must tell you a major reason I joined the Apple cult.
It was simply because a lot of very attractive women were interested in Apple.
And that was just not the case of all of the other products out there.
And, you know, I think when you think of the iPhone, the iPhone is a kind of like remote for accessing the world, right?
It's a kind of like, you know, you push buttons and things happen on it.
Or you don't even push buttons, you just push the touchscreen.
And then the watch, you know, as you say, the health outcomes.
But it pains me to see like...
Why does escaping the world, why is that good for me?
I can understand why that's good for people who create fake worlds, but that's just not very useful.
I should say too, Peggy Johnson, who was the head of acquisitions for a long time at Microsoft, she's a good friend.
I actually stayed in her home in Colorado at one point.
She was the highest-ranking Microsoft executive to have a security clearance, interestingly enough.
She worked at Qualcomm.
She works for Magic Leap, which was part of the effort to clean up.
She took over Magic Leap from the weird Israelis that were running it.
And she told me many years ago, she's like, listen, none of this stuff is going to work unless it's actually making you more productive.
Because you can justify the purchases that you make in life if they're actually making your marginal productivity of labor better.
So she's pushed very hard in the AR market, the augmented reality.
And my understanding is the Magic Leap product is pretty good.
And, you know, I don't really have any interest in it because I don't really want to spend any time in AR or VR, for that matter.
And I kind of feel like the cell phone is kind of good enough for a lot of things that I want to do.
Yeah.
That was another kind of, you could say, promise or you could say fantasy about...
An Apple product is that it's going to make you more productive.
You're going to be able to engage and you're going to be able to become a graphic designer.
I remember there was an Onion headline that was like, "Unemployed mid-twenties man justifies purchasing expensive Apple product on the basis that he will be a 'graphic designer.'" And obviously, it's the onion, and so it's kind of funny.
But it's funny because it's true.
And it's promising something else that you can engage in.
Whereas that video that Zuckerberg produced, I guess it was about a year ago or so, announcing the metaverse.
I mean, I just watched that, and I was like, I want to get...
I want to get the hell out of the metaverse.
I never want to go there.
I want to be banned from the metaverse so that I won't even be tempted to check it out.
It looks dystopian, horrible, and just...
Yeah.
It was just a gut reaction of just repulsion, basically.
The question is always, will the ADL govern the metaverse, right?
Will the laws be in the metaphors?
Well, that is the question.
And the answer to that is yes.
You can create a virtual realm where it is algorithmic and it's much more controlled by logic.
And so it's a realm where you get away from the reality and physicality.
And messiness of the real world, and you enter this idealized realm where, yes, the values of liberalism, the ADL, can be literally programmed into this world that you're experiencing.
And again, everything...
I mean, I don't see any redeemable qualities to the metaverse.
If you're a dork and you want to go do some hardcore first-person shooter with a VR headset on your face, then have at it.
Have fun.
▲
Export Selection