a16zMarc Andreessen on how the internet changed news, politics, and outrage | The a16z Show
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
85 min read · 16,824 words- 0:00 – 0:36
Intro
- MAMarc Andreessen
Each viral social media meme explosion is like a two-and-a-half-day panic cycle. It was not that long ago grown men in serious positions of power and authority in the US got mad at each other and would literally have a physical duel, and that was, like, a normal part of life. If you're sitting at home scrolling social media getting mad, at least you're not out on the street, like, hurting people. The fact that political violence is at, like, an all-time low in Western society is something that people really don't talk about. The news is called the news, not the importance. If you can imagine a version of the news that's called the importance, and, and the newspaper is like, "Here are all the important things that are happening today," nobody would buy it 'cause nobody cares. 'Cause people want the news. They want the hot thing. They want the outrageous thing.
- 0:36 – 5:18
The CNN "Random Ammonium" Origin Story
- ETErik Torenberg
Marc, thank you for joining Monitoring the Situation.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Good morning. I could not be more excited. Let's monitor some situation.
- ETErik Torenberg
[chuckles] Excellent. Well, first we'll, we'll get a bit meta here, and, uh, we'll talk about media. We've been, uh, talking about this idea, Monitoring the Situation, we've been talking about i-investing in it for almost a year now. Um, and when we were first talking about the idea, uh, you had brought up the, the book about the history of CNN, and you actually, uh, you talked about this concept that they had called randomonium. Uh, w-what did you find so interesting about the, the founding or the history of, of CNN and how, how it could apply to what we're doing here or, or this broader media moment?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah. So, uh, so one is I'm old enough to remember when CNN started. [both chuckling] Um, although I didn't actually have cable TV at the time, so I didn't see it. But, uh, I remember it and the impact that it had. And then I... Because I'm an obsessive, I... There's this book at one point that nobody's read, but it's, it... The book is called Me and Ted Against the World, uh, which is a great title. So it's, it's, uh, the founder of CNN. It's this guy Ree- Reese Schonfeld. Um, and, uh, he, he basically-- He, he's actually the guy who, who convinced Ted Turner to go into the, go into the satellite business, which sort of created, you know, mo- essentially modern, you know, cable TV, uh, satellite TV, and then, uh, you know, led downstream to streaming and everything else going on today. And so... And, you know, this has been kinda lost to history, but Te- Ted Turner was, like, a great, like, amazing example of, like, exactly the kind of, you know, great founder that we work with, like, just this, like, incredible will to power, you know, very controversial character. Like, every other thing out of his mouth, like, horrified, like, j- you know, he generated a huge number of headlines of, like, you know, "I can't believe Ted said that," um, like over and over and over again. So, like, one, one of these, one of the, one of these real characters in the, in the history of the media business. Uh, and then, and then this guy, Reese Schonfeld, who was originally the lawyer that, that wired up, uh, Ted's first, first, first, first satellite deal. And, and so the, the two of them came up with this crazy idea in, like, I forget, like, 1981 or something. And they said, "How about having a twenty-four-hour news channel?" Right? And, and, and this, at the time, was, like, just, like, a, a completely loopy idea. Um, actually, uh, uh, Ted, Ted, Ted Turner wanted it to be a fifteen-hour-a-day news channel 'cause he assumed that there would be nobody watching overnight, you know, the, the nine hours overnight. And Reese was like, "Nope, twenty-four hours. People are gonna stay up all night to watch this thing." Um, and the idea was, uh, by the way, completely alien to what C- [chuckles] CNN is today. Uh, the, the idea was, was, was this concept that Reese Schonfeld came up with called randomonium, whi-which basically says at any point in time, there is, like, whatever... Th-there, there is something happening in the world that is, like, the most amazing, interesting, controversial, bonkers, compelling, transfixing thing that you can imagine. Um, and you know-
- ETErik Torenberg
The current thing.
- MAMarc Andreessen
The current thing. The current thing, exactly. The current thing. At any moment in time, there's the current thing. And so he's like, "What should a twenty-four-hour news channel be? Obviously, it should be the thing... It..." Right? "Obviously, what it should do is it should lock onto the current thing. It should then cover the current thing continuously," right, "for as many minutes, hours, or days as that thing is the current thing." Uh, and then he called it randomonium 'cause he basically said, "For that period, you just put whatever you get, you put on screen." Um, and so you get whatever fragmentary reports or man-on-the-street interviews or, like, you know, what-what-whatever it is. You just, like, slap the thing on the screen and, like, if, you know, if you get it wrong, you apologize later. But, like, you know, we're, you know, this is, you're real time, it's live. Um, and then you just... People are just gonna be glued to this thing. And actually, that w- so, okay, so that was the original CNN business plan. They, they then, they then, you know, they took a while to get up and running, but then they, they actually did implement this. And the, the, for, for our older viewers will, will remember, as I do, the... It was the real breakthrough point was the 1991 Gulf War, uh, the, the first invasion of Iraq. And the, and th- that was the thing that really caused the whole thing to punch through. And there was, like, a week there where basically just, like, you were just... People were just glued to CNN around the clock 'cause they had, you know, it was, like, l-l-literally live on-the-ground coverage of, like, you know... Th-they were in Baghdad, you know, with, like, bombing raids happening and all kinds of crazy stuff, and the Iraqi government and, like, just the, the whole thing. And so, and so it was just, like, the most incredible show in the world. And then, and then quite honestly, they spent the next, you know, whatever, twenty years, you know, basically trying to, trying to, you know, repeat that experience. And they, they repeated it every now and then with, like, the Monica Lewinsky thing was that for a while, and the OJ tri- OJ trial was that for a little bit. But, um, it was just kinda hard to come up with, with, with the next thing like that. And then, and then, you know, over the last twenty years, you know, CNN has kinda become something, you know, completely different, uh, today, let's say, uh, that's not that at all. Um, and then basically what's happened is the internet reinvented randomonium, right? And so, right, the experience of monitoring the situation on, especially, you know, on, on social media and especially, of course, on X-
- ETErik Torenberg
Right
- MAMarc Andreessen
... right, specifically, right? Um, uh, and then by the way, also streaming, right? The, you know, the other, the other part of it is streaming, and now there's obviously streaming on X, but also, uh, you know, there's streaming on other platforms, you know, YouTube and Twitch and so forth. And so the internet reinvented this, and right. So, so, so randomonium turned into, you know, the current thing, um, and then monitoring the situation, you know, legitimately, justifiably became a, a, a giant meme. And so, uh, it is time. Yes, it is clearly time to monitor the situation.
- 5:18 – 10:02
The Internet Reinvented Random Ammonium
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. And, and why do we think the amount of current things or randomonium or situations just is continuously accelerating? Um, it, it, it seems like, uh, it's, you know, just the a- the amount, the sh- the, uh, s- your velocity of, uh, of these moments just keeps on increasing. H-H-H-How do we make sense of that?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah. So I think there's really two, two things that have happened that are really different and even, you know, different than in the days of cable TV and twenty-four-hour news. Um, so one is just, like, the internet, for better or for worse, like, the internet plugs you into the world, right? Like, it, it, the internet plugs you-
- ETErik Torenberg
The global village. McLuhan's, yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
The global... Yes. Uh, Marshall McLuhan. Okay, so let's cite Marshall McLuhan actually for both of these. So Ma-Marshall McLuhan, he was the great media, media theorist of the 20th century. Yeah, he had two key concepts, so, that, that are relevant here. So one is the global village, and so he had this concept of the global village. Um, and the concept of the global village, by the way, he did not view as a positive. Um-Like he, he was not endorsing it. He was just, uh, in, in his mind, he was making an observation of what was happening, which is basically... You know, basically what he meant by that is you, you need to conceive of what he meant by village to start with. So, so village basically means a community with a small enough number of people where everybody knows everybody else. So like think about a small town or, you know, a lit- a literal small village and everybody knows everybody else, and as a consequence of that, there's no privacy, right? And, and, and basically everybody's up in each other's business all the time. Um, and I, and I, and I grew up in a small enough town, uh, you know, in a r- rural town where I, you know, I, I experienced this. I, I saw what it was like, and this is like that. Everybody knows who everybody is. By the way, it's the same people year after year after year. You like get to know them like way too well. Everybody's completely up in each oth- up in each other's business, like there's basically no privacy. Um, and so, uh, you know, and, and by the way, one of the reasons people leave small towns to go to the big city is 'cause they wanna get, you know, they wanna get away from that. They wanna, they wanna get to a level of anonymity and, and, and have a lot more p- you know, people running around. But, but the village kind of ha- has that specific thing. And what he said was basically modern media is gonna turn the entire world into a village. Um, and so you're just gonna be connected, and this is, you know, pre-internet when he said this, right? Um, uh, but, you know, it's, it's really happened with the internet, where it's just like, okay, you're connected to everybody all the time. Um, and, and, and, and by the way, like by default, um, you know, he would find this to be like a, a very entertaining thing that this is actually happening 'cause he, he would say, "Of course, you're getting all the downstream effects that you're getting," which is by default it's gonna, it's, it's gonna melt your brain, right? Like the, the human animal was not evolved... The human animal was evolved to have like, you know, there's a Dunbar's number. You can basically have a direct relationship with like 150 people, sort of fa- famously called the Dunbar number in sociology. Um, but the global village expects you to have a Dunbar number of like eight billion people, right? [chuckles] Like, like just 'cause they're all right there, and they're all up in your grill, right? And they're all telling you what they think of you, and they're all like cursing at you and calling you names. Like, and so it's just like this like really, really brain-melting experience. Um, so, so that, that's part one. Um, so w- we just, we experience reality differently, uh, as a result of that. And so the, the, the thought experiment I, I always have is, you know, we, we talk a lot about the impact of the internet and social media on politics. It's like, uh, well, okay, like imagine having social media during World War II, right? Like we would have had a completely different national, uh, experience, um, you know, had like Pearl Harbor happened with like Twitter. Like it, it, like it would, it would have been a completely different experience than the way people lived through, you know, Pearl Harbor in, in, in, in, in actually in 1941 with, you know, with w- primarily with TV and radio. And so anyway, so there, there's a global village thing, and then there's this other thing that he said, which he originally said about television. He made this key observation. He said... This is part of his thing where he said the medium is the message. So the, the actual medium of the, of the, of the media technology actually determines a lot of the message of what's received, um, a, a lot of the content. And, and, and specifically he said this thing. He said, "If it's on television, it's a television show." Uh, and what he meant by that is if something's gonna be on television, it's gonna end up being turned into the equivalent of like a half-hour comedy or an hour-long drama, right? Basically the, you know, the two native media forms of, of television are the half-hour comedy or the hour-long drama. Um, and so you're, you're gonna get this basically very emot- You're gonna get this very polished and sort of glossy and produced thing that's gonna, it's gonna be a story, and it's gonna run the way that a television story runs or a television show runs. Um, and it's g- and, and like, and every television show is like a m- it's a, every television show is like a morality play, right? Ev- every television show basically tells a moral story of basically people behaving badly and then, and then learning the error of their ways, and then, you know, then famously you have like, you know, the happy ending, right? Um, where everybody, you know, kisses and hugs. Um, r- and, and remember, Seinfeld was like a huge variation of that because remember the, the motto of Seinfeld, Larry David's motto for Seinfeld was, "No learning, no hugging." Um, a- and it was, it, it's what made Seinfeld so unique 'cause every other television show up until Seinfeld always ended with everybody learning and hugging, right? You learn the moral lesson, and then you, you, you sort of reconcile with, with the people close to you. And so every, every real-life experience would get wedged into the format of a television show and would be turned into like this basically, this basically th- this morality play. Okay, so the internet version, I be- I believe, the internet version of if it's on television, it's a television
- 10:02 – 17:25
If It's on the Internet, It's a Viral Meme
- MAMarc Andreessen
show, the internet version is if it's on the internet, it's a viral social media meme. Uh, right? I- if, if it's on the internet, it doesn't matter what it is. By the way, if an alien invasion happens later this afternoon, it will be turned into a social media meme. Like, like, like, and it will go viral. And tha- and, and that's what will happen, right? And it will be turned into a viral meme, and it will spread virally across the thing, and then, and then, you know, human beings what they are, that will turn into a moral panic. You know, that, that'll turn into full-fledged like outra- you know, outrage, and how dare you, and people will line up on each side, and sort of tribes will form, and then people will go to war with each other on social media, and you'll have all these, you know, basically back and forth. You know, all, all of this, all of this, you know, all, all, both all the humor and all the rage of, of kind of how, how, how meme culture works. And so, so everything on the internet basically, w- whatever happens in the real world becomes like a social media, basically social media viral moment, um, meme, uh, complex, and then, you know, basically a moral panic, um, and, you know, search for scapegoats. Um, right? Like a moral emergency. And, and the, and, and that happens to every single new event that happens, right? And so, and then you combine these two, and it's like, okay, for better or for worse, we're all in the same room now. We're like literally in the same global village, and we're sort of surfing controversial internet meme moments over and over and over and over again. And a- as far as I can tell, like if you look at the numbers, basically what happens is each viral social media meme explosion, it, it basically is this huge spike up, and then it's like this half-life decay, and it lasts about two and a half days. Uh, right? And so each social media basically experience is like a two-and-a-half-day basically panic cycle. Um, and, and then what happens is the, the old one isn't necessarily ever like resolved or reconciled, but what happens is a new one appears, a new current thing appears, right? And, and just takes over the, the, the, you know, takes over the outrage, right? And all the emotional energy that applied to the old one appl- applies to the new one. Everybody forgets the old one even happened. Like a week later, you can't even rem- Like what was the social media like craze of like seven days ago? I mean, it might as well have been like a thousand years ago. Like lost to the mists of time. Nobody knows. Like seven days ago, whatever it was was the most important thing that's ever happened. And seven days later, it's like it never, it never, not, not even a peep. Like nothing, it's, it's like completely gone, right? Um, and so you just, you're just gonna have this like basically repeated sort of, you know, emotional shotgun blast over and over every two and a half days, you know, essentially forever. By the way, this is like f- this is why one of my theories is like it's now possible to predict the outcome of politics. So like it's everybody thinks they know what's gonna happen in the midterm elections in November. And I'm like, "Okay, it's now whatever. It's, it's, it's April 20th. It's April 20th that-"The election is whatever, November 6th or whatever. All right, how many two and a half day cycles are there between April 20th and November 6th? And I, you know, the, the math majors, you know, will be able to calculate that in their head, but it's, I don't know, 100 or something, right? Or 120 or something like that. Like, whatever is the thing that we think is the thing that's gonna tilt the election today, it's gonna be 100 social media meme cycles old. Like, nobody's gonna remember anything that's happening right now. The election is gonna turn basically on, like, whatever's happening in the economy, and then it's gonna be whatever is, like, the viral meme panic that's happening, like, that day, right? And, and so, and, and you could say, like, is this good or bad? I don't know. Is this better or worse than television? I don't know. By the way, is this better or worse than the days of radio or the days of, you know, I don't know, the printed, you know, the, the, the, the revolution that followed the, you know, the arrival of, of good- the, the printing press. Is this better or worse than the days in which, you know, we were all reciting epic poetry around the campfire as our form of media? I don't know. You could have, like, a big value discussion about, you know, which is better or worse. Um, I, I have an argument I will make that this, notwithstanding all the craziness, this is better. But, like, th- this is the nature of the world we live in. Um, and it, it -- let me put it this way. This is -- we're now on autopilot. Like, the, the, the, the shape of the media determines the behavior basically from here on out. And, and until there's something that fundamentally displaces, uh, social media, like, th- this is the world we live in, hence the need to monitor the situation.
- ETErik Torenberg
Am- amen. Is the reason why you think it's better is because even though there's more noise, there's more signal, and as kind of a collective global brain, we get closer to the truth or...?
- MAMarc Andreessen
So, uh, I would say this. Um, we get -- So a couple things, yeah. So one is, look, I would say there-- You could say this: there are more truth and more lies, right? So, so I would say that it's, it's both of the following statements are true, which is there's more truth on social media than we had in previous forms of media, and there are probably, probably... I mean, old media had a lot of lies, by the way, so it's, it's hard to say there are more lies. But let's just say there are plenty of lies in social media. Like, there are plenty, you know, plenty of ops. And, well, in fact, one of, one of the, one of the native forms of entertainment of social media is trying to spot the ops, right? Um, by the way, maybe I should pitch you a, a show for, uh, uh, on MTS, which is, you know, maybe every day we shoot an hour on, on let's spot the ops, right? Like, what, you know-- whi- which ones are real and organic, which ones, you know, which ones are staged bullshit-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... you know, with somebody getting paid behind the scenes. Um, and so, you, you know, and everybody, of course, focuses on the downside, and so they focus on the fact that there's all this, all the, all the, all these ops and bullshit, which is certainly true. But there's also just, like, y- the ability for somebody to tell the truth is, like, much more direct and clear, uh, than it was before, right? Because of, because of the, you know, the colla- the collapse of the gatekeepers. And so I, I, I, I think both of those are true. So I think that's true. And then, but the, the slightly different argument that I would make, um, is that, uh, previous forms of media were really good at generating physical violence. Um, and so, um, the, the, uh... I mean, there's many, many examples of this in history, but the Spanish, the Spanish Civil War, um, which was kind of the, the, the, the war that kind of pre-forecasted everything that was gonna f- all the sort of tragedy of the, of the 20th century that followed. Um, you know, the Spanish Civil War was kinda basically the test bed for both communism and Nazism, uh, in the modern world. Um, and, um, uh, and, uh, you know, it, its native media format was posters. Um, and so you-- Li- literally, it was like the idea, the, the ability to do co- printed color propaganda posters was like the new media technology at that time, like, right before radio. Um, and the Spanish Civil War was, like, super violent. Um, and then radio was the technology that led to, um, you know... Radio was, was, was the Nazi regime's native media format. Radio was the way that the, basically, the n- the, the fascist regimes got established. Um, uh, a- as well as, by the way, as well as FDR, uh, you know, was, was, was primarily a radio phenomenon. Um, you know, kind of the rise of modern, you know, kind of mo- you know, it's kind of modern, modern liberalism. Um, and then, you know, television, you know, was the native med- medium of, like, you just, you know... Television kinda kicked in starting around World War II, so it played a role. But it, it then, you know, television had a huge role to play in, in the Vietnam War, um, and then in all of the violent riots of the '60s and '70s, you know, which were kind of, you know, super crazy, both, you know, across the US and Europe. Um, and so, you know, tel- television has a long history of, of leading, leading to downstream violence. Um, you know, the fact that we haven't actually had, like, the, the, the, the fact that, like, political violence is at, like, an all-time low in Western society is something that people really don't talk about. Um, 'cause, and it feels like we must be in this, like, super politically violent w- w- world because everybody's so angry about politics all the time. But, like, measured political violence is at, is at, like, an all-time low. And so my, so my theory is the, the ability to directly participate in online virtual combat, uh, is shunting away a lot of the energy that in the past would have, would have translated to street violence. Right. And so, and so I, so it's, it's sort of this thing is if, if the, the virtual world can become arbitrarily rhetorically violent without people actually getting physically hurt, and that gives people a way to exercise all of their anger and rage over politics and to be able to attack, you know, the ha- the hated enemy, uh, without having it actually be something that translates to physical violence. Um, and so, so yeah, my-- It's, it's like, I don't know, social media war is up, you know, physical violence down. Nobody wants to hear that 'cause everybody's so mad all the time about what's happening online. But, but I think that that's chara-- Like, if you're sitting at home scrolling social media getting mad, like, at least you're not out on the street, like, hurting people. So that's my, that's my moral defense of the
- 17:25 – 29:48
Is Political Polarization Overstated?
- MAMarc Andreessen
whole thing.
- ETErik Torenberg
Well, it's fascinating because there's kind of a different kind of ideological sorting happening 'cause, 'cause people u- you say things like, "Hey, you know, now they can't even talk to their own families 'cause they've sort of found their tribe online that, that agrees with them. Uh, and, uh, you know, it's, it's no longer the people they [chuckles] you know, it's, it's no longer their families." And, and back in the day, you know, you didn't have as, as much, uh, po- po- as sort of the, the logic goes, as much political polarization of the idea that I can't even talk to someone not, not from the same side. Pa- part of that perhaps is because the internet allows them to find their tribe so s- you know, so strongly and so clearly that they're able to, uh, you know, have an exclusionary t- tribe as well. But I guess one response to political polarization argument, uh, is that, hey, at least it's not going to, uh, you know, leading to physical combat. Uh, w- what might you say more broadly is, is it just overstated in general? Because people also have this idea of filter bubbles too, but, uh, of course, it, in some ways it's the opposite in the sense that the internet exposes you to ideas that you wouldn't have seen otherwise.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Right. Yeah, so I think people just have a really rose-colored glasses view of the past. The, the past gets sanded off, like, in, in part 'cause we only interpret the pa- you know, number one is we, we weren't there.And then the modern interpreters of the past, you know, are often quite honestly not telling us the truth about what happened because they, they have their own modern kind of, you know, gloss or spin they wanna put on it. Um, and so, uh, y- y- but just the edges of the past get sanded off in, in, in retrospect. But it's just like it's really significant. Like if you just... Like the easiest thing to do, the easiest thing to do is just go, go on YouTube and watch old episodes of a TV show called All, All in the Family, um, which was a, which was a, a very, uh, a very famous, uh, successful TV show when I was a kid. Um, and All in the Family was a microcosm, a fictional microcosm of basically the culture wars, political wars of the, of the late '60s into the 1970s. Um, and it was lit-- You know, so, so, so there's famously this, this character, Archie Bunker, who sort of represented, you know, it's this white guy, and he, he basically represe- Great, brilliant actor named Carroll O'Connor, uh, played him. And he basically played a retrograde, basically Republican, you know, Nixon-supporting Republican, and this would be in like, I don't know, 1972 or something, 1974, um, who just basically was, was, was painted in the show as like the most backwards, like basically archaic, you know, knuckle-dragging, racist, sexist, just like the worst possible person in the world. And then there was his, uh, son-in-law, um, played by a young Rob Reiner, um, uh, who, uh, uh, who, uh, uh, who, uh, uh, Archie Bunker nicknamed Meathead, um, uh, which is what the character became known as. And, and, and Meathead was basically just the arch progressive liberal, right? Um, uh, you know, sort of like, you know, think, I don't know, young Gavin Newsom or something, right? Where just like he had just like the exact politically correct, uh, approved view of the time. And so he's like, you know, sup- at the time, you know, s- the equivalent then of super woke, super progressive, you know, super liberal, super enlightened on, uh, on all these issues. And, and the, the con- the conceit of the show, you know... A- a- and the guy who did, created the show is this famous, uh, television producer named Norman Lear. And the conceit of the show was supposed to be a moral, it was supposed to be a moral lesson of Meathead giving basically moral lectures to, to Archie Bunker, uh, every week to try to get Archie Bunker to stop being such a backwards-looking, like 1950s retrograde, basically racist, sexist guy and, and come into the modern world. And of course, what happened was Carroll O'Connor, number one, the actor was just like super funny. Uh, but the other was the, the political environment was super heated at that point. And, and of course, it turned out Archie Bunker ended up being the star of the show. Uh, a- a- and, and so th- the sh- the show ended up being the opposite of kind of what, what it was intended to be. Um, tha- that happened later in the '80s. That happened with a show called Family Ties, um, which was, uh, again, it was a very similar thing, which it was, it was, uh, s- these two parents, baby boomer parents in the '80s. Um, and, uh, they were like super, you know, it was very left-wing producers who made the show, and the characters were like super proper left-wing progressives. And then there was this character in the show, Michael J. Fox, their, their son, who was this teenage kid. Um, and, um, he played the, I forget the name. I'm blanking on the name of the character, but he played, played the son. And the son basically was a Reagan Republican as a teenager, right? And, and literally the son would like wear like sport jackets and ties to school and carry a briefcase. And they kinda wanted to make him into like a stereotype of like basically a, you know, sort of a weird Republican, you know, kinda weirdo. Um, and, and again, the sa- the same sort of weird thing happened, which is actually the Michael J. Fox character became... Oh, Al- uh, Alex, Alex Keaton was, uh, Alex, uh, was the character's name. Uh, Alex P. Keaton. Um, y- you know, he essentially became, became the star of the show. And so I bring up both of those shows 'cause you can see in those shows, you can see the culture wars of the '70s, which were actually like super intense. You can see the culture wars of the '80s, which were super intense. You go back before that, and you have the Vietnam War and the, the, all the campus protests and the civil rights movement and all the riots and all the forced out, you know, everything, you know, dropping the 101st Airborne into, you know, rural, you know, the rural South to, you know, basically, you know, desegregate the schools at literally at gunpoint. Um, you go back before that, you had the Cold War. You know, you had the Red Scare, um, you know, what's now known as the Red Scare, but you had, you know, communists all through the U.S. government, and you had all kinds of freak outs about that. You had the risk of nuclear annihilation. You go back before that, you had World War II, which was like this like just like incredible global orgy of violence. You go back before that, you had the Great Depression and the f- you know, the New Deal, which was hugely controversial. You go back before that, you had World W- World War I. You know, and then you go back, and then, you know, if you keep going back, it's like you have the Civil War, and then you have the Napoleonic Wars, and then you've got the French Revolution [chuckles] . And, you know, and then you go back further than that, you've got the, you know, the, the democratic revolutions, uh, all through Europe. And then you've got the, you know, the, the Gutenberg printing press kicking off all kinds of violence, you know, throughout Europe in the 1600s. Um, and so y- I just think like y- the history of Western civilization in American and European society is just like constant strife and warfare to like an absurd degree, um, over this entire period. And we, we go back and we study the history, and we're just kinda like, "Wow," like, "those people were like really, really, really violent, like really crazy and really violent, and boy, did they really like killing." Um, it was not that long ago, and I don't think it's anybody alive now, but it was not that long ago that like grown men, like in serious positions of power and authority in the U.S., if they got mad at each other, they would literally have a physical duel, right? Like, so, you know, you and I, you and I start going at it on social media, and we get to a point where we get really mad, and I challenge you to a duel. And like we show up in a fucking field in a fucking park, you know, at like 6:00 in the morning with guns, right? And we like square off and march off, and we turn around, and we try to like literally shoot each other to death as like a thing that they did and that was like a normal part of life.
- ETErik Torenberg
Wait, Marc, I, I thought the past was all matriarchies and everyone just so peaceful and-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Oh, everybody was so wonderful. Everybody got along. Everybody all... Yes, until social media, everybody thought the same thing. Yes, exactly. And everybody was all, yes, everybody was all calm and happy all the time. Um, and so you look, the, the, the, the, the, the way, the way, the way the world is conflict. I just historically, the way the world is conflict. And, uh, anyway, not to, not to beat a dead horse, but the, um, you know, the c- th- th- there was plenty of conflict in the past. Uh, there were plenty of heated disagreements on the future shape of society. There were plenty of political wars. There were plenty of violent wars. By the way, just politics itself was much more violent. Like, if you go back and you read about political movements 100 years ago, like they would literally form up in the street and like fucking try to kill each other.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, like it was like a common thing. Um, you know, strikes. I mean, j- even the history of the labor movement is full of this. Like, strikes became super violent. Um, and, you know, management would l- literally, you know, the, the strikers would try to attack their plants, and the management literally would have like machine guns, and they'd be like machine gunning their striking workers. Crazy, crazy stuff. And so like w- we just, we, we live in a much crazier world than we wanna give ourselves credit for, and the idea that like the current level of conflict is something new is just not true.
- ETErik Torenberg
And, and just to that end too, when people say, "Oh, ever since two th- 2008 or, you know-Your smartphone sort of, uh, you know, propagating that, um, it's led to increased depression or things like that. Is that a-a-also another example of, hey, we were underestimating how depressed people were prior, and it's kind of a measurement thing? Or is it, oh, but there are lots of other things happening in 2008 too, like, you know, political extremism and, and other things that, that make people m-more depressed or h-how do, how do you en-engage in that, that topic?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Well, so the funny thing is different Western countries have different... that show different data on the, quote-unquote, "rise in, in depression".
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, and it basically, basically it turns out it correlates to social benefits programs. Um, and so basically, if you get paid, uh, or if you get like special dispensation at school for having, you know, psychological issues, all of a sudden you see a massive spike in those psychological issues. The countries that don't have that, the other Western countries that don't have that, don't show the same results. And so I, I actually think that's a statistical artifact o-of literally like government benefits programs. Um, so I, like I, I don't even... Yeah, I would, I would say I don't, I don't, I don't even, I don't even, I don't even concede the, uh, you know, con-concede the premise of the question, but that's, that's, that's a longer debate. Um, I would just say in general, like, uh, I guess what I'm saying. I'm, I'm, I am prepared to say that basically call it since, I don't know, 2014 or something. I'm prepared to say like it does feel like things have intensified, right? It, it, it does feel like things are like wilder, um, you know, than they were before that. Um, I think the most that I would be willing to say though is I think we might have lived through an era of what you might call suppressed volatility. Um, and call that maybe from like the end of the Cold War through 2014, um, where basically it just looked like the West had won everything. Um, and then also it was sort of... By the way, it was sort of the peak heyday of centralized media. Um, so it w- if you just like, if you basically track, if you track like how distributed is media versus how centralized i-is media, like centralized media sort of peaked somewhere around 1970, um, where, you know, literally like all the newspapers in every city consolidated down to like a single newspaper, and then you ended up with only three television networks and all the radio stations, independent radio stations got bought up. Uh, uh, let me give you an example. So historically, so historically, like if you go back to the days of the American Revolution, it was common in, in even like mid-sized cities, you would have like ten or 15 different newspapers. Um, and each newspaper would represent like a different political point of view. And then the, the newspapers would have these like furious, you know, they'd just like, just like you, you would do today online. You, you, they would just have these furious, constant political, you know, fighting and accusations back and forth and arguments. And of course, the newspaper owners would be trying to egg all that stuff on because it sold papers. But it was like very common to have like many newspapers per city that would all fight with each other. And then ec- the economics of centralized media meant that those all rolled up into, into a single newspaper. Um, and, and then, and then that single newspaper, you know, at least for a while, tried to be nonpartisan and tried to be even-handed because it was trying to appeal to everybody. Um, and then, and so, and, and again, same thing of just like, you know, like when I was a kid, it was three television networks that were all basically the same. Uh, they were all trying very hard to be even-handed, at least, you know, kind of as best they could. Uh, there were like three national news magazines. Um, you know, there were like, I don't know, there was a small number of national radio networks. Um, you know, there were two, you know, news wire services. And so I... Like I, I will concede, like I think we lived through a period of suppressed volatility as a consequence of the fact that we had overly centralized media. I think if you go back before that, like if you go back to before that, if you go back to like the 1930s and before, like media was much more fragmented. Um, it was much more like it is today. And then if you, like I said, if you go all the way back like two hundred, two hundred and fifty years ago, it was like extremely fragmented. Like if you read the accounts of like Ben Franklin as a newspaper publisher and like the, the, the stuff that he got up to with his newspaper. So, okay, great story. So Ben Franklin ran one of the newspapers in Philadelphia originally as a, as a printer. Okay, so what would happen is Ben Franklin wants to become a pr- he wants to become a commercial printer. He buys a printing press. He advertises the whatever. He tries to get like all the local businesses, print pamphlets in the printing press, but he doesn't have enough business for the printing press, and so he starts a newspaper to have something to print. Um, and so he starts this newspaper. There's like 15 other newspapers in Philadelphia at the time. But he's got to fill the newspaper with something. And so, and he's Ben Franklin, he's very creative, and so he creates basically sock puppets. He, he does basically, he does basically alts. He alts, alts. He does alts. So yeah, yeah, exactly, alts. Um, uh, and they're all under pseudonyms. Um, and so he do- I forget the, all the names now, but he had, you know, he had all these different, he had all these different n- different names for them. And I think at one point in his own newspaper, he had like 15 different alts, uh, going at it. And he, he, he, he wrote them all but un- under different names, and they all had like very different points of view. And then he would basically set them off to have these like raging arguments with each other i-in his newspaper, and people would buy his, people would buy his newspaper to cover this. And then that, that culminated in the election of 1800, uh, which was the famous election of Thomas Jefferson versus John Adams, which was sort of this newspaper-centric election, which was characterized by a level of slander. Like the, the, the degree to which partisans of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams attack each other in the 1800 election is like way beyond even what we see today on social media. Like they accused each other of the most horrible shit you can possibly imagine, um, and it became like this giant scandal. And so like this is not... The, the idea that there's like whatever rhetorical combat or like that there's like this virtual environment, uh, in which there's lots of points of view and there's lots of, you know, again, both lots of truth, truths, lots of lies. Like this is not new. In fact, this, this, this is the natural order of things. We just lived through a period of artificial volatility and that, or artificial vol- suppression of volatility, uh, with media becoming over-centralized. And, and, and obviously those days are over.
- 29:48 – 39:04
What Makes Something "The Current Thing"
- ETErik Torenberg
I wanna return back to, uh, w- we were talking about the current thing and how that's accelerated over time. W-we previously h-had a conversation a while ago where we were talking about sort of the attributes of a, of a current thing, and I remember you had this one theory that it can't be something too believable. It has to be almost surreal. Uh, or it... Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm curious if we just talk kind of what are the attributes of something that becomes sort of the, the current thing or sort of the m- the, the topic that people can't stop, quote-tweeting, sharing, etc.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah. So a-a-again, it's kind of this thing, you kinda reverse engineer it. It's like, okay, to be a current thing, it, it has to, if, you know, again, to, to, to be this thing of if, if it's on the internet, it's a viral internet meme kind of outrage cycle. Um, so it, it has to be something that like a- it has to be something that activates outrage. Like it has to be something that activates the emotional kind of valence, um, of, of... You, you have to get like the emotional reaction off of it, right? Um, and so it, you know, it's, it's just like, by the way, this is just like also the history of the press in general. It's just like whatever, you know, I always say, the news is called the news, not the importance, right? Like-It, like you can imagine a version of the news that's called The Importance, and, and the newspaper is like, "Here are all the important things that are happening today."
- ETErik Torenberg
[chuckles]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Right? Um, and yeah, of course, nobody would buy it 'cause nobody cares, right? 'Cause people want the news, right? They want the new th- they want the new thing, right? They want... or, you know, or they want, they want the hot thing, they want the exciting thing, they want the, they want the outrageous thing. And, and so the, the internet version of that is, right, they want the, they want the outrageous meme. And so, so it's gotta be something that provokes. And, you know, and there's something about this, you know, this, this is... yeah, other people made this observation, but, you know, it's like, y- you know, the, y- y- you know, kind of the ultimate male-coded version of this is professional wrestling, right? The ultimate female-coded version of this is like "Real Housewives," like, y- you know, re- reality TV, like, y- you know, or, I don't know, and then "The Apprentice" maybe somewhere in the middle, wh- wh- you know, it's just like reality TV. Like, there, there has to be, there has to be sparks. Like, it, it has to generate a level of emotional intensity driven by some level of outrage. And then, and then I think it has to be the kind of thing where you can have tribes that form up and square off against each other, right? So, um, so, you know, there's a little bit, little bit like, like West Side Story dynamic to it or something, right [chuckles] , where it's just like, okay, you, you can imagine, you know, there's, there's something that's worth arguing over, um, where, where there's, you know, where there's a real argument to be had. Like, there, you know, there's, there's some underlying thing that actually, like, really matters. Maybe, maybe this event doesn't matter as much, but, like, the actual underlying issue matters a lot. Um, and then it's gonna, it's gonna activate this tribal effect, where you're gonna be able to basically scr- you're, you're gonna become part of what they call a moral tribe. The, the people on the other side are gonna become part of a moral tribe, and then you're gonna kinda go to war with each other. You're, you're gonna have a rumble, like they would've said in the old days. You're gonna have a rumble, a rumble in the streets. Except you're not gonna have a rumble in the streets, you're gonna have a rumble online, right? And you're gonna go at it. And so it has to lend itself to that kind of basically tribal formation, um, and, and, uh, and, and, and, and kind of that beating back and forth. And of course, you, you, you, you... the tribes then attack each other, you know, on the issues, but then they also attack each other's values, um, and they accuse each other of being horrible people. And then when it gets really into it, they start to dox each other and try to get each other fired, right? And it all becomes, you know, very exciting. Um, and so, so, so it's gotta have, it's gotta have the... it's basically, it has to have the formation of a, of a, of a moral tribe effect. It, it, it's, uh, the, the ps- psychological lens on this, they call moral tribes, and then there's this concept, right, of moral panic. Uh, it, it's gotta lead to a moral panic. It's gotta lead to this kinda thing of like, this is indicative of how society is going to shit, right, in, in, in, like, some important way. Um, and by the way, this is why you can have, like, many, many, many, many different examples of current things that end up revolving back around the same handful of, like, underlying political or moral questions, right? 'Cause, 'cause it's really, right, it's really not about the... you know, what happened, you know, I don't... Jussie Smollett. W- w- I, I just wanna say, there's this new, uh, there's this new, um, uh, there's this new, uh, um, Keanu Reeves movie on, on Apple TV, um, where, uh, Keanu Reeves plays a movie star who gets canceled. Um, and he has a crisis lawyer played by Jonah Hill. Um, it, it turns out during the course of the show, I'll, I'll just spoil it, uh, in the course of the movie, it turns out his, his crisis lawyer, uh, set up the, uh, uh, the, the Jussie Smollett, uh, was, was, was op. It was, it was a produced op. Um, so, so, so in the movie world, the lawyer came up with the idea, um, that there would be a Black celebrity who would get attacked on the street by white racists, and that would be, like, a viral social media outrage thing. And then, and then literally the lawyer says, "Well, then we, of course, we went out and cast, and Jussie Smollett had the best pitch for why he should be, he should be the Black guy." Um, and then, um, and then, um, there was one of his underlings he, he's still mad at because, uh, the c- uh, to, uh, the, um, the underling w- was, was tasked with the assignment of going out and hiring, you know, the attackers. Um, but, you know, this is in the heyday of diversity, and so he hired two Black guys to be the attackers, right? And he's, like, all confused 'cause he's like, "Am I supposed to hire Black people or not hire Black people?" And it's like, well, not in this specific case, you weren't supposed to hire Black people [chuckles] to attack Jussie Smollett. Anyway, so the Jussie Smollett thing [chuckles] is fresh in my mind. Um, but it was a great example, which is like, what happened on the street in Chicago that night during the whatever, whatever blizzard, cyclone thing it was, like, kind of matters, kind of doesn't matter. Whoever really knows, who knows, whatever. We've got weird grainy video, whatever. People say different things. I mean, I think we now know what happened, but, like, i- in these events, like, what actually happened on the street? Who the hell knows? But the, the fight, you see what I'm saying? Like, the moral tribes that were able to form up on, you know, one side where people are like, "Of course, this is what, you know, this is what happens to people all the time," and the people on the other side of it were like, "Of course, this is all fake and bullshit," right? Y- you had this, you had this chance for these moral tribes to, to, to, to pair up and fight. Um, and so, so I think, I think it basically ha... I think it basically, it, it, it basically has to have that.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah, and sometimes it's very serious, uh, and, and the stakes are very high, and sometimes it's, uh, just an episode that's so, you know, funny. And the astronomer, uh, CEO, HR as a, as an example, uh-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Okay, so well, this, okay. Th- that's a very important point. So very important point. So I would say two things. So one is, um, the truth or falsity of the actual event doesn't seem to matter at all.
- ETErik Torenberg
[chuckles]
- MAMarc Andreessen
A- a- and I think this is, I think this actually throws people 'cause you start to think these are all fake, and they're not all fake. Like, actu- actually bad things happen, right? Actually bad things happen, and it, it's actually, like, fully legitimate to get outraged about those things. But also, people are gonna get outraged about a lot of things that actually didn't happen. Um, a- and so, so, so for the purpose of the discussion of, of the media, a- again, this is the Marshall McLuhan thing. If it's on the internet, it's a viral social media outrage cycle. Like, whatever are the facts of the thing, it doesn't really matter. And in fact, it's probably best, to your point, it's probably best if it's actually hard to tell what actually happened. C- 'cause, 'cause that makes it something that you can more easily argue about. And so that's one thing. And then to the point that you just made, I really agree with that also, which is, um, the d- the degree of importance of the actual issue doesn't matter that much, right? And so i- if it, if, so if something happens to a single person, you can... a- and then something happens to 10,000 people, you can have the same level of outrage in, in each case. Like, the, the outrage doesn't scale with the number of people affected, right? In a lot of, and in a lot of ways, maybe the outrage is even higher when it's a specific person 'cause it's, because then it becomes personalized, right?
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
And then, and then you get in the old, uh, what is it? The old Stalin thing, which is the single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a st- statistic. Like, may- maybe it's even the small scale horrible things that happen that, that are the most emotionally intense 'cause they're the things that you really, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna react to a person, uh, you know, kind of, kind of the most intensely. And so, so and I think that's the thing. If you're, if you're doing the meta observation of this, it's like, okay, you're, you're just gonna, you, you basically, you just have to expect this same phenomenon, this outrage cycle to play out every time, regardless of truth or falsehood and regardless of the actual magnitude of the underlying issue. Because-Because again, what's being argued about isn't the specifics about what actually happened. That's not the point. The point is the ability to form up moral tribes and then, and then, yeah, and then have the rumble.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Uh, uh, th-there's a, um, um, there's a, um, uh, Orw- George Orwell, um, actually has a, has a great thing on this, uh, 'cause George Orwell, um, famously covered the Spanish Civil War, whi-which was, as I said, is kind of the, it's kind of the original where a lot of this stuff sort of played out for the first time in the 20th century. And he, he, he did, he did this thing one time where he talks about hi-his version of this. He talks about the role of the atrocity. Um, and he said, basically the, the, the, the key point of propaganda in any war, um... So you, you get two countries that go to war, and, you know, they've each got a moral claim of, like, why they're the justified, you know, it, it's like nobody ever attacks. Everybody's always defending, like, "And I only attacked him first 'cause he was gonna attack me otherwise." And so every, uh, each side in a war, each country has its own basically m-moral position why the, why the war is justified. But he said, he said basically, Or-Orwell said, like, it's hard to sell, like, high... It's hard to sell, like, these high-blown, you know, these high, high-flying kind of abstract ideas of, like, why we need to go to war. And so he said what, what happens is the, the propaganda efforts of each government in a war become basically looking for atrocities. Um, and, and so specific point events. A, a famous one is the My Lai Massacre in, um, in, in Vietnam, but you, you could, you could, we can name many, many other examples. Um, uh, and, and so you're looking for these very specific events where something very specific and concrete happened that's clearly over the moral or, or beyond, beyond the realm of, of, of moral, uh, acceptability, right? Just clearly, like, in, you know, in, usually involving in-innocent people getting killed, right? Um, and in the Spanish Civil War, it was like, you know, nuns getting killed or something like that, right? Um, and, and, and again, it's the, the point of the atrocity, the point of the atrocity is not that it affected 100,000 people. The point of the atro-atrocity is, in fact, maybe the best atrocity only affects a small number of people 'cause you wanna personalize it. Um, and then he said, he, he, he says this. He says, "The truth or falsehood of the atrocity doesn't matter at all." L-like, it, it, it, the atrocity, if the atrocity is made up, it, it, it, it, the, the, the political value of the atrocity is just as high, r-right? And so it, it doesn't matter. Like, once the atrocity cycle gets running, um, it doesn't matter whether the underlying thing is true or false because the, the, because the point of it is to have the, have the atrocity be a propaganda win, uh, for, for mo-for moral, for moral justification and then, and then for moral demonization of the other side.
- 39:04 – 52:38
Ops, Availability Entrepreneurs & Dark Money
- MAMarc Andreessen
And by the way, lest, lest people think that I'm being cynical when I go through all this, I'm not saying I think this is all good. Like, I, I'm not saying I think that this world is great. I'm not saying that this, I think that this is all positive. Um, I, I'm saying something different, which is I think it's very important to understand how this actually works. Because when you find yourself in the middle of one of these things, I, I think it's very useful to have at least a slice of your brain that's basically saying, "All right. I need to be aware of the fact that I'm getting pulled into something," right? "That I'm being triggered by emotion, and I'm being triggered, and I'm being slotted into a m- a, a moral tribe, and I'm, and I'm mounting up to go to war with the hated enemy, and it's on the basis of something that very well might not be true."
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Right? And I, and I s- and this, you know, this is a, the Rene, Rene Girard thing, which he says the, the scapegoating cycle always works because people always forget that there's a scapegoating cycle. Like, like, whenever you have to, like, crucify the scapegoat, it's always the most morally important thing that's ever happened for the duration of that cycle.
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Right? Un-until it's forgotten by the next one.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
And so, and so a big part of what I'm trying to do is explain why, like, as, as, as we surf all of these current things, that we, like, at least keep part of our brain that basically says, "Look, th-this is the state of the world we live in. This is the state of humanity. This is the state of the media. Like, th-this is what's happening. We can like it or hate it, or we can de-debate the pros and cons, but it is what's happening." And all objective events are gonna be filtered through that. And to the extent that you care about objective truth, you have to get through that, and you have to get to the other side and be able to actually still deal with objective reality. But, but to do that, you need to understand the, the cycle.
- ETErik Torenberg
And it's also important to understand 'cause if, if people are ever involved in the cycle or implicated in it, they typically say, "Oh, but I'm innocent. Once everyone finds out the truth, they're, they're gonna exonerate me. They're gonna clear me." And they, of course, don't fully appreciate that people don't give a shit. [laughs] People are, you know, predisposed to, to, to hate you, and they'll just find any sort of reason, uh, you know, or, or certain people perhaps.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yes, yes, yes. If, yes, if you are, yes. If you are actually in a, if you are actually innocent, and if you're caught up in one of these things, it's, it's horrifying.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
It's terrifying. I mean, look at cancellation.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
I mean, this, this happened to a lot of people over the last decade.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
You know, people, people would get canceled for things they literally never did and for, you know, for, for, for people then imputing beliefs or, you know, some, I don't know, stray comment or misreported comment, and then it gets imputed that, you know, this person is a horrible racist, and off and away it goes, and they have to get fired and purged from society and, you know, have no way to come back or, or, you know, or whatever the issue was, right? Um, uh, and you know, we, you know, there were these m- you know, these viral videos or viral video, you know. Oh, that's the other thing is like, okay, the, the viral videos. The viral videos, right? So viral videos have, viral videos have become so much... Like, the, the, by the way, the first viral video that mattered was actually, uh, Rodney King. Um, and it w- and it actually inaugura- and I'm not gonna, I don't wanna litigate Rodney King good or bad or whatever. It's a, the whole separate conversation. But, um, it, the, the Rodney King video starts with the beating. Um, so it doesn't show everything that led up to that. And, and, and that set the pattern. And again, I'm not, I'm not excusing anybody for anything or whatever. I'm just saying, like, the video started midway through the event. Um, all of the really effective viral videos basically since then, including the ones that have been really important over the course of the last decade, they've all had that characteristic. They all start halfway through the event. Um, so you, you don't see the run-up. Um, and so you don't, you know, the Central Park Bird Watcher was the famous... Yeah, like, you don't see the run-up of what happened before the, before, before the video started. Um, what was the other one? Who was the other, uh, person who got, like, brutally canceled based on a video? I can't remember. I mean, there have been a whole bunch of them, but, um, this is the things. And right, and so you, you get a viral video, and it kicks off halfway into the event. Why does it ki- by the way, why does it kick off halfway into the event? That's because that's when the event became interesting enough to be able to put on video. L-l-l-like, that's when people don't just, like, walk around with their phones out. That's when they pull the phone out.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
But by that point, you've lost all the context.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Right? And so, so th- and again, this is one of those things where, okay, you're watching a viral video. You can feel yourself getting outraged. The key question ought to be, all right, what happened before that? Right? And you, and th- and that takes work.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Right? Like, 'cause it's not, it's not right there on the screen, and you have to, like, really try hard to, like, go back and, like, figure out eyewitness reports. And by the way, like, if it's a criminal thing, half the time you don't find out what happened until the actual trial happens, so you don't find out for, like, another year.'Cause they don't put the evidence out until the trial. Um, and so that, that's another thing where people get, get basically gi- people get used, basically. People get ginned up into these out-outrage cycles without actually having the context of what happened.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. The... I wanna go back to this conspiracy. You know, we have a, a friend who thinks everything is an op, and maybe I'm naive and I miss out on, on the ops that are actually there. But I'm, I'm curious what, you know, a mental model one might have to think about how much is coordinated ver-versus not. I-I've, I've been inspired by the idea of, um, a decentraliz- or emergent collusion, uh, just sort of, um, this, this idea that a lot of people have incentives to go in the same way that even if they're not coordinating explicitly, they almost might as well be. Or so, and that, that... Or it might explain w-why so many things seem, uh, coordinated. But, you know, ever since joining a16z, so many people have impugned onto us things that we're not doing, and so it's made me skeptical of, uh, of people calling for conspiracy. Or, um... And, and so I'm curious what, what sort of mental model you, you might have for, for, uh, for the idea of ops and how that might help, uh, one understand the, the, the social platforms today.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah. So I think as best I can tell, and it's tricky 'cause it's hard to tell, um, and there are, you know, some real experts in this that really, really focus on this. But, um, as far as I can tell, like, there, there's some, there's, there, there's some truth on both sides. Um, the, the, the, the answer is, is the answer is messy, and it's messy for two reasons. So messy number one is just, like, there are a lot of things that I think are happening that are truly organic, and then there are a lot of things that are happening that are ops. Um, and I, I think, I think there's a combination. And then, and then I think maybe you were alluding to this, and then there's this thing which is like something can start as an op and then become real. Right? Um, which is kind of the point of the op, right? The, the, the, the right? The... If you, let's say, if you and I were gonna be Machiavellian and we wanted to start a movement, right? And, uh, we wanted to start a moral outrage cycle 'cause we had some underlying goal, 'cause we were either trying to win an election or trying to get a political something, you know, uh, law passed or something like that. We were gonna, like, we're maximum, like, Machiavellian deviousness, and we're gonna, like, have a black budget, you know, and we're gonna pay influencers to, you know, da, da, all this stuff that people say. You know, bot, we're gonna have our bot army and so forth. Like, the point of it is not to just, like, have a bunch of propaganda online with a, with a bot army behind it. The point is to get people to actually believe it, right? That, that is the goal, right? [chuckles] And so... And, and, and, and then, you know, you don't wanna have to pay for, like, every post, right? At some point, you want them to be happening organically, even just out of, out of self-economic interest. And so you, you actually, you're actually trying to generate, uh, you're actually trying to generate, uh, the thing. Actually, there's, there's a great paper on this, um, it's ago, uh, Timur Kuran and, and, uh, who's the famous, uh, sort of a guy who talks about, uh, preference falsification, and then, uh, Cass Sunstein, um, wrote this thing years ago, uh, where they, they talk about this phenomenon relevant here. They call it availability cascades. So, so their term for this kind of thing that we've been talking about, which is like a viral outrage cycle, uh, their term for it, they call availability cascade. And what they mean by availability cascade is sort of cascade means basically the process... It's the sociological term for sort of an, an idea or concept kind of cascading through society, kind of building up momentum as it goes. And then availability, they, they, they, they call is based on the idea of availability bias, which basically is we tend to over-focus on the thing that's right in front of us. Um, and so we, we tend to over-focus on the thing that's basically present in our mind at that time, which may or, may or may not be as important as other things that we're not focused on. But, but in the paper, the significance of it is in the paper, they identify the role of a specific kind of person they call availability entrepreneur. Um, and the, the role of the availability entrepreneur is to try to inject into the public consciousness availability bias as a deliberate exercise to basically say, "This is the specific thing that you should be focused on right now." Like, this is the specific person who's been hurt by something. This is the specific whatever, you know, moral event that's happened. This is the specific issue. This is the specific thing. And, and basically what they say is, like, every time you see an availability cascade, if you trace it back, there was always what they call the availability entrepreneur, which was basically the person who was like, "Aha, I am going to put..." Uh, oh, I'll give you the classic example and, and again, this is not a value judgment and, you know, this, this was like, you know, fantastically good that this happened, but Rosa Parks was a classic example of this. Like, Rosa, like, [chuckles] the story that we all got told in school was Rosa Parks was just like another ran-- you know, some sort of a random person, you know, with, with the thing on the bus. Um, Rosa Parks was like an ash-- She was a trained activist. Like, the, she, she went to, like, the... There was this whole, like, school of activists, and they, like, she was, like, a specifically trained... It was an a- it was, there was an availability entrepreneur, uh, uh, who set up an availability cascade targeted on Rosa Parks that ended up causing f-fundamental and obviously very, very positive changes to American society. But, like, it started as an op. Like, she started as, she started as an op. But the point of the op was not to be the op. The, the point of it was to be what happened, which was to become a nationwide movement that, that ultimately led to, led to fundamental change. And so, and so anyway, the point is, like, just because things start as ops doesn't mean they're not real, right? A-a-and, and if the, and if the op leads to real outcomes, then y-you might as well consider, you know, y-y-it's like a, at some point, it's just a matter for historians of how it started. Like, it's a footnote to the Rosa Parks story today that she was a trained activist. It doesn't really matter because she, because that op unlocked a broad-based actual movement in American society that led to actually profound change. Um, and so this is the problem with this topic, which is, "Oh, th-that's just an op," is basically, like, cope. Like, okay, right? It might have started as an op, b-but if it ends up in a real thing, it doesn't ma- You see what I'm saying?
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
It doesn't matter that it started as an op.
- ETErik Torenberg
Right.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Uh, and then by the way, conversely, it also doesn't matter if it didn't start as an op.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Because again, it's, it, it, it's the same outcome. And so, so I do think, I, I kind of think both things are true. I do think there's this serious fight. I do think there are serious operators, and, you know, you can go online and you can find out about these things. Uh, this is a big issue, by the way, in, uh, political influencer world right now. This is, this is actually a big thing. So, um, if I, uh, wanna run an advertising campaign to sell shampoo, um, legally in the US, uh, if I hire influencers to say good things about the shampoo, um, they-- I, I believe this to be true. They have to disclose that it's a paid commercial. They can't just, like, pretend that they just happened to stumble on the shampoo. Um, if I donate money, uh, to a political candidate, um, I have to disclose that as part of election, federal election law.Um, if I pay an influencer to take a position on a moral topic that is not a product that is sold or a political candidate, but it's just like a position on a moral or political thing, that doesn't qualify either as an advertisement or as a political donation. It's fully legal to do that in the dark.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. Well, ex-
- 52:38 – 1:05:50
Legacy Media vs New Media & The First True Internet Election
- MAMarc Andreessen
you'll never know.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. The, um, that, that's a great mental model for it. Thinking about last topic for today, I wanna clo- uh, close on this, like, sort of the bridge between legacy and new media because we see, just give some examples. Obviously, the New York Times, they, they've made the adjustment to the new world, um, very well from a business perspective. You know, we had, um, CBS acquire the Free Press, and so there's some, you know, acquisitions there, uh, strategic acquisitions for legacy media companies who are trying to innovate. You know, o- o- on MTS ourselves, we're, we're sort of experimenting with, with players from both worlds. You know, we have, um, New School podcasters and Twitch streamers. You know, Theo is, Theo, are you 21 years old?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
20, you know, uh, he's born to be a, a Twitch streamer, but we also have, um-
- MAMarc Andreessen
I mean, 21, I mean, over the hill.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah, exactly. [laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
But, you know.
- ETErik Torenberg
Has been by now. [laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Gray hair, gray hair. I'm washed.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. Wa- washed. [chuckles] Um, but we also have Mark Halperin who, uh, you know, as, you know, uh, legacy and legendary, um, you know, uh, commentator and host who, who funny enough, uh, you know, we've talked about how Trump is the, is the bridge figure, uh, in that he was successful both in legacy and in, in this new media, media climate. Um, and it's rare for people to do both. Ha- Halperin, of course, interviewed Hi- did a very famous interview with Trump when he was, uh, talking about the Bible verses and, uh, [chuckles] you know, get- getting him, uh, [chuckles] to mention, uh, some specific ones and, you know, Trump of course didn't wanna pick favorites. Um, anyway, I'm, I'm curious how you think about the sort of the bridge, um, ei- either analysis of, of, of, of Trump as the bridge or, or more just h- how do you see legacy players and new media players, um, sort of, uh, you know, playing out or, or even the styles o- of what will work in this new, new format?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah, I mean, uh, so I guess, I don't know, maybe start with data, right? So, um, the data shows that basically, um, so focusing on American data 'cause of what I'm most familiar with. So just in the data you basically see a couple things. So one is, um, trust in centralized institutions of all kinds is, is collapsing, uh, in the US. Um, uh, so basically any, any kind of legacy, um, or, um, uh, incumbent institution, um, you know, tru- trust is collapsing fast. By the way, that collapse in trust didn't start with the internet. It actually started around 1970. Um, it, it, it actually, um, uh, it actually, it's, it's part of this, uh, it's part of this WTF happened in 1971, uh, meme, um, i- i- is when basically, uh, trust in centralized institutions in the US started to fall off a cliff. Uh, that's true for many kinds of centralized institutions, and it's been true for, you know, basically 55 years.Um, but, but media's included in that. Um, and so trust in centralized media is collapsing and, you know, keeps hitting new record lows. Basically, every time they run the survey, it collapses further. Um, and so, so that's certainly true. And then you-- And then e- the, the business version of it is just very clear, which is, you know, we can talk about CNN later. Like y-your earlier, like, you know, ratings for all the centralized media properties are in full-scale collapse. Um, you know, cable news is collapsing. Um, you know, almost every, almost every newspaper has collapsed. Um, almost every magazine has collapsed. Um, you know, basically all the, all the, all the legacy formats have collapsed, um, uh, you know, with only very, very rare exceptions. Um, and so, you know, c- just it's, it's... And then by the way, correspondingly, it's just sort of obvious, you know, the, the rise of podcasts obviously is, is obvious now. Um, and by the way, it's amazing, like the election of '24 was the one where podcasts kind of flipped the, you know, it b-went from being like, "I don't know if this matters," to like all of a sudden everybody's like, "Oh wow, this matters like a lot." Um, and so the rise of podcasts, of course, is undeniable at this point. The rise of social media, the rise of, of live streaming, um, you know, these things are clearly happening. And so like the, the, the, the changing of the guard, reordering of the, the businesses and of the cultural and social phenomena are c-clearly happening, and I think a-are undeniable. Um, you know, if you extrapolate forward, like o-obviously all, you know, essentially all of the remaining old media properties that don't figure out a way to adapt, uh, to the new world are gonna, you know, they're, they're, you know, gonna get basically run out by private equity, and that'll be that. Um, you know, which is kind of the story of the newspaper indus-industry these days. Um, so, so I, you know, that, that, like, uh, it's almost like not even interesting to say that anymore just 'cause it's like it's so obvious that that's happening. And then, you know, obviously social media, you know, continues to grow as a phenomenon, um, uh, continues to be very important. Um, uh, and so, yeah. And, you know, look, we're still, we're still living in this. We're, we're still living in a, in a hybrid world today, right? Um, and so we're still living in a world, um, in which like, you know, to some extent it still matters what's on TV, but like not nearly as much as it did. But, you know, pretty soon it's not, it's not going to anymore. So, uh, you know, so, so, so that world is changing fast. Um, yeah, I, I just think, yeah, the, the, the main thing is gonna be, um, you know, the, the, the, the people who adapt to that are, are... The people who adapt to that are gonna adapt to that. Um, and they're, they're either gonna adapt or they're not. Um, you know, you mentioned Mark, Mark Halperin, you know, who's a good, good friend of both of ours, um, you know, is, I think, is doing like an amazing job adapting to that, and in a way that's just like, I would say, shockingly different, um, and better than, you know, most of his former, former colleagues. Um, you know, there's great examples. The, you know, the New Y- [chuckles] The New York Times has adapted to that in an, in an interesting way.
- ETErik Torenberg
[chuckles]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, you know, the s- the, uh, Hassan Piker, um, um, um, uh, apology newspaper, um, has fully committed itself to, um, to the future, let's say. Um, so [chuckles] you know, they're, they're doing their thing. Um, yeah, uh, uh, you know, most legacy properties won't adapt. They, you know, they never do. Um, there's gonna be lots and lots of new things, um, that emerge. Um, and maybe I, I should say here again to not sound, not sound cynical about this, like it is really striking. I would say the following. So like what are the two like mega, mega, mega trends in video, uh, and, and, and, and by the way, also in politics over the course of the last like five years? It's basically two things. It's, it's short-form video in the form of TikTok, Instagram, and, and, and, and X, you know, short-form, you know, reels, uh, or short-form video. Uh, and, and there you get like the full battery of accusations of like, you know, destroying attention span and everything's trivial. Um, but on the other side is the rise of the three-hour podcast. Um, and so on the, on the podcast side, you have this incredible phenomenon with three hours. And by the way, some of these, you know, Joe and, and Lex and others are now pushing this to the point where, you know, Lex now has like, in some cases, seven or eight-hour podcasts, right? I think, uh, but it's Balaji did like a seven-
- ETErik Torenberg
Lex, 10-hour one, 10-hour one on Lex.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah, yeah. So Balaji went for 10 hours on Lex. Um, and so, and it's actually interesting 'cause if you talk to those guys, th-they get data on completion rates. Um, and, and it's actually a very large percentage of their, of their listeners or viewers who actually listen to the whole thing. Um, so like many, many, many Rogan podcasts or Lex podcasts, people actually listen to the full, the full three hours. Um, and so, so it's, it's... The thing I really rejected this idea that like, and I don't want people to think that I believe this, is like this idea that everything is gonna become just like trivial short-form social media bullshit like that. No, not at all. You, you have this correspond- [chuckles] You do have a lot of that. But you have this corresponding thing, which is you also-- It's like a, it's like a barbell. You also have this, you, you have this massive rise in substance. Um, and on the substance side, I would point to the long-form podcasts. I would point to Substack. Um, by the way, you know, there's a big push on X to have long-form essays. Um, I would push, uh, you know, online, you know, online, online, you know, courses, uh, on every topic are available. Um, and, um, uh, you just, yeah, you have this ability. But, uh, even AI. My, my favorite feature of AI is what they call deep research, uh, which is a feature on both, uh, I think it's on, um, particularly on, on ChatGPT and on Claude. But like you set it loose, and it will write you like literally 30 pages, uh, a 30-page answer. You know, that's basically like a textbook on any topic. Um, and so, so I, I think there, there is this other side, which is you, you have this, you also have this growth in, you have this growth in, in d- Oh, the other thing is just, and we're an example of this, the rise of the practitioner media, v-v- uh, practitioner-driven media. So people who are actually doing a thing, showing up and talking about it, right? Um, and of course, you know, that leads to howls of outrage of that's not journalism if you don't have somebody asking like whatever super s- you know, snipey critical questions about it or whatever. But like the idea for somebody who is actually doing a thing, I mean, you know, Andrej Karpathy in AI, right, is, is just like shows up and like explains like, "Here, here is how this all works," um, is, is j- is just like amazing. And, and, you know, in, in, in old media, like basically, like when I, when I was younger, like Charlie Rose did that. But so I grew up actually listening to Charlie Rose, uh, wa-watching Charlie Rose. But Charlie Rose literally was on at fucking midnight. Like [chuckles] he was on CBS at midnight, and he would have these hour-long conversations with these super interesting people doing super interesting things. But he was on at midnight, and you had to stay up till midnight to watch Charlie Rose, right? It was like, it was one of the great things about getting a DVR is you could record, you know, uh, Charlie Rose and watch it during, during normal n-normal daylight hours. But y-you know, we lost that, or we didn't have that for a very long time, and we have that now. Um, and so, so I do think it's worth noting like there is this incredible, in my view, clearly incredibly positive, informative, educational, super helpful, super constructive thing on the other side, which is, of course, a lot of what we try to do.
- ETErik Torenberg
And it, you know, if 2024 was the podcast election, um, it'll be interesting to see what 2028Will, will be-- P-people have been very concerned, you know, or, or sort of predicting, you know, deepfakes for a while, uh, and how that might influence things, but we haven't really seen any, any, anything there super material, it, it's, it seems. But it'll be interesting to see what, what media formats or just how the twenty twenty-eight election is, is different than the twenty twenty-four one in th-this conversation.
- MAMarc Andreessen
We've had deepfakes forever.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. [laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
[laughs] Like, and like, people have believed all kinds of crazy bullshit. Um, I mean, you know, the, was it the, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and, uh, they kicked off the, really kicked off the Vietnam War. Like, I think we now know that that was a fake. Like, it's actually quite well established. Um, then, uh, some people might say [clears throat] Russiagate.
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, was, was... It turn-turns out we now know it was a quite elaborate fake. Um, so I, the, the deepfake thing I find very funny 'cause it's like, it's not like we've been swimming in truth all this time-
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
... and all of a sudden now that, now there's gonna be deepfakes. But anyway, that, maybe that's a, a separate conversation. The, um, I think the, the, the, the, the substantive comment I would make is, um... So, uh, so I actually think we ha- people talk about like famously talk about the nineteen sixty election, uh, Kennedy versus Nixon, where te-te-for famously where television took over from radio, uh, where if, if you... They had their famous debate, and if you listened to the radio, you thought Nixon won, and if you watched it on TV, you thought that, that, that, that Kennedy won. Uh, so, so, so, you know, the, the, the, the au- you know, audio versus au- uh, audio plus video. Um, and so people have been talking for a long... You know, that was considered like the first television election, where television was like the determining factor in who won or lost, um, along with, you know, maybe some shenanigans in Chicago.
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Anyway, um, [laughs] speaking of deepfakes. Um, so, uh, anyway, um, uh, people have been talking for a while about, um, when will there be the first internet election. Um, and, and, you know, people like to point to twenty sixteen being, you know, Trump using social media or maybe twenty twenty-four being the podcast election. I actually think the first internet election hasn't happened yet. I, I, I... Or, or by the way, people even point to two thousand and eight-
- ETErik Torenberg
With Obama
- MAMarc Andreessen
... with, with, with Obama fundraising. So yeah, two thousand and eight, Obama fundraising online. Uh, two thousand sixteen, Trump using, using social media, uh, as a broadcast method, and then, uh, twenty twenty-four, podcasts. So we've had three examples of internet mattering for elections, for sure. Uh, but I think we haven't had the true internet election. And, and I, and, and, and, and as a consequence of that, and, and by the way, we therefore haven't really had the true internet candidate yet.
- ETErik Torenberg
Sure.
- MAMarc Andreessen
And actually, it's interesting 'cause people talk, this is not a pro or negative, uh, pro or con comment on, on, on Trump himself for the purpose of this discussion, but people talk about Trump as the internet candidate, but he, he's really, he's really a hybrid, um, in that he cares, he cares enormously about what's on TV. Um, and he's on, and he's, and he's on TV a lot. Um, and he watches TV all the time, uh, famously, in order to... Because TV is basically how he gets a read on the pulse, um, of, of, of, of, of sort of, of, of what's happening and of, of what people think about things and what peop- And so, like, I think, I think Trump's kind of underlying theory is the things that are on TV are the things that the people running the TV network know that their viewers wanna see. And so therefore, if you watch us on TV, you can get a sense of what people actually think. And I, you know, and, and as TV has been the dominant medium for the last sixty or seventy years, you know, that, uh, you know, it's a pretty good theory. Obviously, it's, it's, it's worked pretty well, you know, quite well for him. Um, and then he c- and then he, he also, like, cares a lot about, like, affecting what's on TV. Um, and, and there's this fa- there's this famous Trump story that lots of people have told where he'll be in a meeting and there'll be a TV on in the background. He'll be watching it, and he'll, he'll have it with the sound off, but he'll be watching the, the chyron, the, you know, the thing at the bottom of the screen, the text that shows what, what they're, what they're saying. And if he doesn't like what's on the chyron, he'll tweet something to change the subject.
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
Episode duration: 1:05:57
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