Joe Rogan Experience #1855 - Chris Best

1. 0:00 – 0:12

   Intro

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

   2. CBChris Best0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)

2. 0:12 – 2:47

   Why Substack Exists: From “Media Is Broken” to a Practical Alternative

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      What's up, Chris? How are you?

   2. CBChris Best0:15

      Good.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      What's going on? (laughs) Have you done podcasts before?

   4. CBChris Best0:19

      Uh, nothing like this. I've done a few.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      Yeah? Okay, cool. Um, so tell me... First of all, tell me, what was the inspiration to start Substack? Like, how did it, how did it come about?

   6. CBChris Best0:32

      I've always been an avid reader. Uh, my dad was an English teacher growing up. We had books around the house. And I've always thought that what you read matters. Like, it shapes who you are, it shapes how you think, it creates, like, who you are as a person. And so great writing matters a lot. Right? I'm a- s- I- in my other life I do software. Software's this magical thing where you can run- write a piece of code and it does something for a million people. If you write a great essay, a great book, a great thought, you can change who a million people are. And so great writing is this valuable thing. And when I took s- a sabbatical from a company that I'd done, I was like, "I should be a writer. That would be good. Like, how hard could it be? Um, these guys are doing, doing good things." And I started writing what I thought was gonna be, like, a essay or a blog post or a screed or something, outlining my frustration with the state of the media industry, the state of incentives on the internet. Basically, complaining, uh, "Wah, wah, wah. Social media's breaking our brains." You know, this kind of shit. And I sent it to my friend Hamish, who's really a writer, and he told me, like, "Anybody can complain about this stuff. You're not as original as you think. All of my friends who are writers know all of this stuff. The more interesting question is, if all of this is true, what could you do about it?" And that bec- that turned into Substack.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:54

      And what year was this?

   8. CBChris Best1:56

      2017.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:57

      It's really perfect timing for when everything started getting really heavy in terms of censorship and also the, the chaos that came about because of the pandemic and journalists getting canceled. And th- there was so much weird stuff in terms of what you were allowed to write about or not allowed to write about. And then, of course, the Hunter Biden thing, the laptop. Like, all that stuff, like, came about in the first few years.

   10. CBChris Best2:24

       A lot of the best writers in the world, in my estimation, were getting kind of tissue rejected from the places where they would have been before.

   11. JRJoe Rogan2:32

       Tissue rejected?

   12. CBChris Best2:33

       Like, uh, it's an, uh, an analogy. Like, they're getting... Like, an organ transplant that fails-

   13. JRJoe Rogan2:38

       Oh. Oh.

   14. CBChris Best2:38

       ... kind of thing. They're getting sort of pushed out from the, the places that would have been their home and where they could have done the thing that, that mattered f- to them before.

3. 2:47 – 6:24

   Attention Land Grab: How Social Platforms Reward Outrage and Division

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:47

      What happened? How did, how do you think that... Like, what, what steps fell into place that caused all this?

   2. CBChris Best2:55

      My theory on this is that it's a combination of natural human affairs. Right? Like, there's human nature. People act in certain ways. There's dark tendencies that come out when you get people together at scale colliding with the consequences of the first generation of the internet revolution, basically. The way that the first generation of the internet played out was this massive land grab for human attention. So first of all, the computer, and then even more so the smartphone, kind of gobbled up all of this slices of people's lives that were just sitting there. People used to get bored, and then the smartphone came along and that just didn't exist anymore. And in that phase, the things that won were the things that were the most efficient at gobbling up everyone's attention. And so you had this sort of com- The, the game that everyone played was like get everyone's eyeballs, and the things that you do to, to win at that game create an incentive landscape that drives everyone crazy.

   3. JRJoe Rogan3:55

      Yeah. The, the way to win at that game is be outraged or get people outraged.

   4. CBChris Best4:01

      Yeah. The way to win at Twitter is be bad in a lot of ways. And if you don't want to do it, somebody else will.

   5. JRJoe Rogan4:06

      Be bad?

   6. CBChris Best4:08

      Well, I mean, bad in some, like, be outrageous, be the, the, the ultimate tweet, as I've found out (laughs) myself sometimes, is not the thing that everyone agrees with or even the thing that everyone hates. It's the thing that maximally divides people, the thing that most separates the people that are in your tribe on your side and makes them kind of like cheer, and at the same time spits in the face of, of the other people. That is the, the recipe for a successful tweet because that's the incentive landscape that makes Twitter succeed.

   7. JRJoe Rogan4:41

      Yeah, it's just... I go on Twitter once a day, maybe twice a day, just to see what kind of shit the monkeys are throwing at each other.

   8. CBChris Best4:49

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan4:49

      That's... It seems like a, like a mental institution sometimes. I see people arguing over things and things that are trending that have zero impact in my life, and I, I don't understand why people are putting so much attention to it. But it seems like the recreational outrage that comes about wh- for... because of Twitter is one of the most addictive things I've ever witnessed people take part in. I mean, I say people. I've, I took part in it a little bit for a while, but now I don't engage at all. I d- Literally, I don't read my mentions. I, I occasionally post things, and then I just get the fuck out of there. I, I just think it's too... It's just too poisoned.

   10. CBChris Best5:30

       Yup. You're a wiser man than most.

   11. JRJoe Rogan5:34

       Well, I just see it. I see it in other people. I see what it does to people, you know? I, it's just... It, it's very strange, because I never thought Twitter was gonna become that. I always thought Twitter was just, like, some innocuous thing when it first came around. It was silly. A lot of comedians loved it, 'cause it was a great little, uh, because the, in the beginning it was only 140 characters. That's great to keep your jokes succinct in little short little blurbs and try to fun, find fun, funny things to say. But then it just became...... some, some strange way for people to expose their mental illness.

   12. CBChris Best6:09

       Yeah. And none of that stuff is new. None of the, the bad things that people do on social media are a new facet of humanity. It's just, it amplifies it and it creates this, like, false reality that everyone sees that slowly drives us crazy.

4. 6:24 – 8:53

   Building Substack Early: Convincing Themselves, Then Recruiting Writers

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:24

      So how difficult was it to, A, start Substack, and then B, get journalists to come on board?

   2. CBChris Best6:31

      The hardest part of starting Substack was convincing ourselves that it could work. 'Cause it started as, I was literally writing this essay, and Hamish and I were talking and we just came across this idea of like, "What if we let writers go independent themselves? What if we let you start your own thing, you get the email addresses, you own everything, people can pay you directly. Now you're getting hired and fired by your readers." It's this super, it, it sounded too simple to possibly work, where like if this thing could work, somebody would have done this already. It seems stupid. But we kinda talked each other into it. And, you know, I'm a tech nerd, I'm a product guy. Hamish is not that. He's a writer, he knows that world. And we kinda both thought that it could work, and so we just sort of, like, slowly talked each other into it. He had a friend who was a writer who, like, needed it right away, basically. Um, had wanted something like this and became our first customer. Uh, a guy called Bill Bishop writes Cynicism, it's a newsletter about China that everybody in business and government reads.

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:26

      Why did he need it right away?

   4. CBChris Best7:28

      Well, he, I mean, he ... So he'd had this newsletter that he'd been writing for free and paying for the privilege of sending that was just like, "What the hell is actually going on in China for anybody who needs to actually know." And, you know, lots of business people, government people all over the world would read it, and he's been like, "I should char- instead of paying to send this thing out, I should charge people for this, obviously." But I couldn't figure out how to get the, you know, wire up the payment with the sending, and the, like, he just needed someone to handle the details of it. And we were like, "Great, we'll do that for you. We'll, like, we'll do everything for you except the hard part."

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:05

      And then, so, you got him, and how did you get the word out? Like, how did it, how did it start to really become a player?

   6. CBChris Best8:14

      A lot of it was we started with Hamish's friends, like people he, who he knew, and we would just go and talk to them and ... Especially early on, a lot of it was just telling people about this, why we were doing this thing and what we thought was wrong, and how this fairly simple platform we were building could help. And if people bought the s- like, believed in the things we were saying, then they would s- think, "Oh, maybe I'll try this." And it really started with just great writers that Hamish knew or that people that we brought on knew, and we just were like, "Here's what we're doing and why."

5. 8:53 – 10:57

   “No One Will Pay” to “It’s Working and It’s Bad”: The Backlash Cycle

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:53

      Do you guys get resistance? 'Cause I, I know there were some people that were writing bad things about Substack or saying that Substack is a bad idea. What, what was the argument?

   2. CBChris Best9:06

      There's been a f- there's been a few. I mean, one that comes up a lot is (laughs) well, there's been a few generations of it. At the very start ... You were asking how we started. The argument was like, "No one's gonna pay for anything, you idiots."

   3. JRJoe Rogan9:18

      Right.

   4. CBChris Best9:18

      Right? It's like, you know, writers on the internet, social media's bad. Yeah, all sounds good theoretically, but I'm never gonna pay for anything, never gonna work. Good luck. And the ... I had this parlor trick where I'd run on people. I'd just be like, "Well, who's your favorite writer?" After they just told me they would never pay for a writer. And then I'm like, "Who's your favorite writer?" They'd say, "Oh, it's so-and-so." I'd be like, "Would you pay five bucks a month to like get their stuff directly?" And they'd be like, "Yeah, I probably would, but that's different. It's that person, it's this thing." And so we sort of ... There was this weird thing where nobody thought it would work in the abstract, but it worked once you had something that you cared about. Um, so we kind of crossed the like, "It's never gonna work," thing, and then immediately got into the, "It's working and it's bad," time (laughs) for a bunch, for a bunch of things. Uh, probably the most prominent of which is we started with this really strong commitment to free speech. If we think that we're making a platform for writers that is, you know, can, can be a positive force in our intellectual climate, we just think that's table stakes. That's something that's an important principle. And we came up in a time that not everyone believes in that at all. Um, we took a lot of shit for a bunch, a bunch of different times for, "Well, why do you let this person send emails to people that want to get it from them?"

   5. JRJoe Rogan10:30

      Like, what, specifically, like, can you say like what writers were problematic?

   6. CBChris Best10:36

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan10:36

      Or would you like to avoid that?

   8. CBChris Best10:38

      Um, I'd-

   9. JRJoe Rogan10:38

      We could avoid that.

   10. CBChris Best10:39

       I don't, I don't wanna put anyone on blast. I'll tell-

   11. JRJoe Rogan10:40

       Okay, let's just talk about like subjects.

   12. CBChris Best10:42

       Sure.

   13. JRJoe Rogan10:42

       Like, what would you do? Like, here's a question. What if you had ... I mean, I think Substack is like ... How many, how many people do you have on it right now?

   14. CBChris Best10:49

       How many people? There's-

   15. JRJoe Rogan10:50

       In term- in terms of writers.

   16. CBChris Best10:52

       How many people? There's like, tens of thousands.

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:54

       Wow. That's pretty cool.

   18. CBChris Best10:56

       It's going.

6. 10:57 – 13:08

   Free Speech and Boundaries: What Substack Will and Won’t Host

   1. JRJoe Rogan10:57

      Yeah, it's wild. It happened so quickly. Um, what if you got ... s- like, a Holocaust denier starts publishing stuff on Substack?

   2. CBChris Best11:05

      We ... So we have a Terms of Service that we set out that has a couple of like, really strict, really, uh, tightly construed things.

   3. JRJoe Rogan11:13

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CBChris Best11:13

      Most of it's like, you can't spam, you can't do these things. Um, we do, I mean, we, we do have a couple things, like there's no porn. Um, you're not allowed to, like, advocate for literal violence. Uh, there's a few things that, that are sort of just like bright lines that are intended to be kind of like a really high bar and allow for space where there's a lot of shit on Substack that we ourselves disagree with and find awful. We try to take ... You know, we think that sign of the old school ACLU approach on this-

   5. JRJoe Rogan11:42

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CBChris Best11:42

      ... is correct, right? Where they're protesting to like help the Nazis have their free speech rights.

   7. JRJoe Rogan11:47

      Right.

   8. CBChris Best11:48

      Um, not because we think those things are good, but because we think that airing them, uh, is more valuable and in the long run better than trying to solve the problem by censoring them.

   9. JRJoe Rogan11:58

      So there are people that are on Substack that everybody sort of agrees are gross.

   10. CBChris Best12:04

       I mean, I don't know if there's anybody that everybody agrees are gross, but for-

   11. JRJoe Rogan12:08

       Like you guys?

   12. CBChris Best12:08

       ... for any individual, I think anybody that exists could find someone on Substack that they think is the greatest thing ever, and they could find someone on Substack they think is terrible, and we take that as a sign that we're doing it right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan12:19

       So, eh, no porn. What about, what are the other ones?

   14. CBChris Best12:24

       ... I'd have to look it up. It's like ... Yeah, no, I think there's a doxing thing, there's like, uh, advocating violence. There's a few, like, kind of things that just break the edges.

   15. JRJoe Rogan12:34

       Do you allow erotica? Like if someone-

   16. CBChris Best12:36

       Yeah. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan12:36

       ... published, like, Bigfoot porn-

   18. CBChris Best12:38

       Yeah, we kind of, we do-

   19. JRJoe Rogan12:39

       Do you ever read those?

   20. CBChris Best12:40

       Our, our, our genius, our genius take on this is that we disallow porn, but we allow erotica. And it turns out-

   21. JRJoe Rogan12:45

       Hmm.

   22. CBChris Best12:45

       ... that's like a, (laughs) that's a non-trivial thing. But the intention is like, look, there's already OnlyFans. If you're just doing that-

   23. JRJoe Rogan12:52

       Right.

   24. CBChris Best12:53

       ... there's a, there's a place for you. Um, and we're not, this, this, you know ... I don't even think, I don't have a problem with it. I don't think that's wrong, but that's just not the, the thing that we're trying to serve.

   25. JRJoe Rogan13:03

       Right. But so, but people are allowed to do that. They're allowed to, like, write ...

   26. CBChris Best13:08

       Yeah.

7. 13:08 – 22:08

   Censorship in Practice: COVID, Berenson, the Hunter Biden Laptop, and Truth Social

   1. JRJoe Rogan13:08

      Yeah. And so when, when it comes to, like, controversial things, like, uh, I'm sure a big controversy, I know, uh, Alex Berenson was a controversy because he was publishing a lot of, uh, negative studies and things on, on COVID vaccines that a lot of people didn't want him to talk about. And this is how he got kicked off Twitter, and this is how he wound up suing Twitter and actually winning and getting back on Twitter, which is pretty fucking crazy.

   2. CBChris Best13:38

      I could not believe they let him back on.

   3. JRJoe Rogan13:40

      Well, he was right. The problem is he's citing-

   4. CBChris Best13:43

      Right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan13:43

      ... scientific studies, you know, from other countries that they don't like how, what the data represents. And there was also the CDC study where they were talking about boosters for 18 to 49 people, and they didn't want to release the data because they felt it would contribute to vaccine hesitancy. And he's like, "What the fuck are you doing?" And that kind of stuff, like publishing stuff that makes people uncomfortable but it is actually accurate, it's a big part of journalism, and he wasn't able to do that, uh, in these public forums like Twitter.

   6. CBChris Best14:20

      And I would, I would go a step further. I mean, I think publishing things that are true but uncomfortable are, is obviously journalism and there's-

   7. JRJoe Rogan14:26

      Yes.

   8. CBChris Best14:26

      ... the, the value to that is obvious, and the, it's, it's ... History is exceedingly clear that you can't always sort out at the time-

   9. JRJoe Rogan14:33

      Yeah.

   10. CBChris Best14:33

       ... which is which. And the thing that that leads us to is that even things that aren't, like, we don't want to be in the business of trying to adjudicate what's true. And so we don't even have, we're not like, "Well, you can publish things that are true that make people mad." We're kind of like, "Look. This is, you can publish things. This is your thing. People are trusting you."

   11. JRJoe Rogan14:51

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CBChris Best14:51

       "You're not subscribing to Substack, you're subscribing to some writer." And we think that it's better to allow the stuff to be p- like, to have people have a platform and have freedom of speech and let that stuff get sorted out because all of the alternatives that sound really good end up in disaster.

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:12

       Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. I mean, a good (laughs) yeah, funny example is Trump's Truth Social, right? So he, he puts out this new social media platform, Truth Social, and then they start censoring people who talk about January 6th.

   14. CBChris Best15:30

       (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:31

       Like, apparently, they're ... (laughs)

   16. CBChris Best15:33

       Like, like, like you talk about it in a negative way.

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:35

       Yes.

   18. CBChris Best15:35

       If they're like, "January 6th might not have been great," they're like, "That's, you're banned. You're not a-"

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:38

       Well, I don't think it's that simple. I think when they start talking about people who, uh, either incited or were saying things or, uh ... F- let's find out, find out what ... 'Cause Truth Social does censor things on the January 6th committee and all the, uh, investigations that are currently underway. They, I don't think they want to shine a light on the fact that, you know, that not only did that happen, but there's some really troubling things about a lot of the people that were involved in it.

   20. CBChris Best16:14

       Yeah, and as soon as you get, as soon as you get to the place where you think your job as a platform, as a, as somebody that's making the things where people are publishing their ideas, is not to let people publish what they want and let it, let the market sort it out, but instead to push some narrative. Even if the narrative is right, even if you're like, you know, doing stuff, trying to push something that's unambiguously good and true, by trying to publish it through censorship and through forced conformity, you end up doing more harm than good, at least we believe.

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:49

       Do you think that social media was the driving force for these ideologically driven journalists now? Instead of being a journalist that reports uncomfortable truths even if they don't agree, uh, e- even if the, the side that they're supposedly on, whether they're conservative or liberal, whatever tha- those uncomfortable truths are that fly in the face of whatever the narrative is that that side is pushing. Like, is, is it social media and the echo chambers and worried about the blowback from either followers or other journalists? Like, what caused that?

   22. CBChris Best17:30

       I think it's definitely part of it, and I think, you know, it's not a new thing, right? If you look in every a- in every age, people who are telling, saying things that are true and are uncomfortable to some dominant narrative, that's always, like people always take flak. There's always efforts to censor them. You can go back and look at, you know, people w- who were accused of being communists in the-

   23. JRJoe Rogan17:52

       Yeah.

   24. CBChris Best17:52

       ... in the '60s and '70s. Like-

   25. JRJoe Rogan17:54

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CBChris Best17:54

       ... um, in every age, that thing exists. I do think that social media amplifies that impulse and creates a, uh, situation where a few people who are displaying being very upset can create a false sense of consensus.

   27. JRJoe Rogan18:14

       Yes.

   28. CBChris Best18:15

       Right? There's this, there's, there's, like, the w- you know, Twitter and some of these platforms, you can get like 100 or like even like t- 30 or 40 people that are just really mad, can make it look like-... the whole world is coming down around you, and that everybody hates you and wants to burn you as a witch, um, even if that's not actually true. Even if that's- just a small fraction of people feel that way. And if either you aren't strong enough to deal with that or, more likely, if you're part of an institution that doesn't have the fortitude and the principles to push back against that, um, that's where I think that force can cause things to crumble in a way they ought not to.

   29. JRJoe Rogan18:53

       Y- and that is what we're seeing. Yeah. And, and it is- Well, it's an increasingly growing number of people, but it was relatively small initially, and now it seems like there's these mobs of people that hop on any- any narrative to try to enforce, like- It's almost like they're just trying to get a win for the team, you know? And it's- it seems very strange that that- that's taking place in journalism. Because it- it's always disturbing to me that people don't remember the lessons of the past, and we have to, like, keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Like, the example that you used with ACLU, how they were literally defending Nazis and their right to free speech, because their perspective was free speech should be an absolute thing, and your in- their- the- the correct response to that is not to censor these people, it's to correct them with- with correct speech.

   30. CBChris Best19:51

       The optimistic take on this is that every generation has to learn this for themselves.
8. 22:08 – 41:53

   Discovery Without a Rage Algorithm: Recommendations, Network Effects, and Bari Weiss

   1. JRJoe Rogan22:08

      And with Substack, do you have an algorithm, like say if you enjoy Bari Weiss's work, I recommend this?

   2. CBChris Best22:18

      So this- the way we do this is very thoughtful because on the one hand, we wanna have a network effect for the platform, right? We want it to be true that when you come to Substack, you know, yes, it's a great tool, yes, it's all these good things, it's free until you take money and then we charge you 10%, um, but we also want it to be like you're gonna grow, right? You're gonna find people who would love your stuff are gonna be able to find it, and by being here, you get more benefit than we're asking in return. On the flip side, all of the obvious ways that you would do that, if we were to copy the way that Twitter does this or the way that YouTube does this, um, we would just be recreating some of the things that we kind of like set out to- to fight against.

   3. JRJoe Rogan22:57

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CBChris Best22:57

      And so as we build those features, we do have a thing that introduces you to recommended writers. The difference is it's not Substack or Substack's algorithm that it's recommending, it's the writer that you already subscribed to that's recommending.

   5. JRJoe Rogan23:09

      Oh.

   6. CBChris Best23:10

      Um, and so-

   7. JRJoe Rogan23:10

      Well, I like how Bari uses her page because she uses her page to promote other journalists and other writers.

   8. CBChris Best23:16

      Yeah. Yeah, and we also have that- she has the guest post and she's sort of like- the same way that people coming on here can be like a career-making thing, like people going on Common Sense can be like a major turning point, and she can bring somebody into the world that the world needs.

   9. JRJoe Rogan23:29

      The- when I say the pushback against Substack, like has- have there been major critical articles written about Substack?

   10. CBChris Best23:37

       Yeah, I mean, we've had a few. Uh, th- there's been a series of fun ones from the New York Times. Um, there was one that was like, "Is the Substack economy bad for democracy?" Um, which we thought was good. There's been a few critical ones and my s-

   11. JRJoe Rogan23:51

       What was their argument? How could you be bad for democracy? That's a f- first of all, what a loaded thing to say.

   12. CBChris Best23:57

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan23:57

       Is it bad for democracy? Is it the end of human civilization?

   14. CBChris Best24:01

       Yeah. (laughs) Will Substack kill us all?

   15. JRJoe Rogan24:03

       (laughs) Yeah, that's- that's it. That's it.

   16. CBChris Best24:05

       Subscribe for the next year to find out.

   17. JRJoe Rogan24:06

       That's the boiled-down headline. (laughs)

   18. CBChris Best24:10

       (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan24:10

       You know, like YouTubers do that? They'll have like a- like a title to the video that's just pure clickbait-

   20. CBChris Best24:16

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan24:16

       ... with a crazy photo on it? Like-

   22. CBChris Best24:17

       Well, it's- You know Betteridge's law of headlines, which is if the headline a- asks a question, the answer is just always no.

   23. JRJoe Rogan24:23

       (laughs)

   24. CBChris Best24:24

       (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan24:25

       Right. Right.

   26. CBChris Best24:26

       UFOs, are they real and among us today? No.

   27. JRJoe Rogan24:28

       Uh, probably.

   28. CBChris Best24:29

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan24:29

       Maybe. (laughs)

   30. CBChris Best24:31

       (laughs) Yeah, maybe- maybe I picked the wrong example there.
9. 41:53 – 1:09:21

   Business Model as Alignment: 10% Subscription Cut, No Ads, and Avoiding Lock-In

   1. JRJoe Rogan41:53

      Yeah, for sure. What do you do, like, when you, when you guys have meetings, and you look at, like, "How do we make this better? What are our problems?" Like, what, what are the, the dilemmas that you guys encounter?

   2. CBChris Best42:09

      So the big thing we've done that's good is we picked a business model that aligns us with the pe- with the people on the platform, right? So it's free to publish. Once you start charging money, we take 10%. So if you're a writer, when you make more money, that's how Substack makes money. When you're a reader, when you find stuff that's valuable enough that you actually want to choose to pay for it, that's also how Substack makes money. And so th- that sort of, like, guides us in the things that we want to build. It's like, "Hey, we wanna do the things that help writers, which are the things that help readers, which are also the things that help Substack." And the dilemmas end up being, like, "Okay, how do we do that? And how do we do that in ways that don't, uh, erode the fundamental value that we're creating?" Right? 'Cause there's lots of, there's lots of sort of, like, short-term things that we could do that would seem like really great ideas. Like, why don't we just, you know, show you eight recommendations of, like, cool things to click on-

   3. JRJoe Rogan43:03

      Right.

   4. CBChris Best43:03

      ... that the algorithm thinks are good? Or why don't we, like, start to erode the direct connection you have with the writers, because, you know, we could ...... do this more efficient thing. Um, but we know that the, the reason the thing works at all is because of the trust and because of the direct connection. And so it's sort of like, how are we, how can we do the thing that brings the power of the network, the power that all of these social media platforms has, have harnessed, but do it in a way that puts the people in charge, puts the writers and the readers in charge? There's not really a blueprint for that because that hasn't existed, I don't think, f- fully until now.

   5. JRJoe Rogan43:36

      Yeah, what do you do other than an algorithm? And, and people are terrified of algorithms because they've seen the effect that it's had on Twitter and YouTube and, you know, it's, it's unfortunate but it does sort of highlight the worst instincts in human nature in terms of like accumulating information. You, you go towards things that are outrage oriented.

   6. CBChris Best43:59

      Yeah. And the algorithms, it's a, a bit of misnomer too. I'm, I'm a software guy and a, a nerdy by this stuff, and it's sort of like everything's an algorithm. It's like-

   7. JRJoe Rogan44:07

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CBChris Best44:07

      ... are you using an algorithm or are you using electricity? Like, of course you are.

   9. JRJoe Rogan44:09

      Right.

   10. CBChris Best44:10

       When we say algorithm we mean like something that is showing you stuff in a way to achieve some goal that it has.

   11. JRJoe Rogan44:19

       Yeah.

   12. CBChris Best44:19

       That might or might not be your goal. And so I think the way to think about it is not like, do you have an algorithm or not, but it's like what is that algorithm trying to do? Right? If the algorithm is trying to get you to use TikTok for as long as possible every day, that's gonna have a different consequence than an algorithm that's trying to introduce you to a writer that you trust enough that you might wanna pay for them and care about them.

   13. JRJoe Rogan44:46

       Right, but how do you do that? How do you, how do you find an algorithm that's gonna introduce you to someone that you would think would be interesting based on who you already think is interesting-

   14. CBChris Best44:56

       Well these are th-

   15. JRJoe Rogan44:56

       ... other than creating an echo chamber?

   16. CBChris Best44:58

       These are the exciting, these are the exciting problems we get to solve. I'll tell you some of the stuff that's working really well so far is this principle of putting the writers in charge and putting the readers in charge. So with, you know, we added a recommendations feature and rather than say we're gonna figure out who you wanna do, we let the writers pick, and you don't have to pick anyone. You can say I'm not gonna, you know, if people come to me I'm not gonna send any- anybody anywhere. Or you can say, "Hey, if you're coming to me, one of the things that I can do for you is put you onto other things that I think are interesting, that I think are worthwhile, and I'm sort of putting my name on that as something that you would check out." Now, that's gonna be less efficient if you just look at the numbers of like how much engagement does that get. It's gonna be impossible to build something that is as efficient as like the YouTube page that's like, "I know what you want better than you do yourself."

   17. JRJoe Rogan45:46

       Yeah.

   18. CBChris Best45:46

       But, as a reader, I'm gonna choose to spend my time on Substack around that stuff because it creates a real alternative, because I know that I'm not giving my mind to something that's kinda operating against me, and I know that if I'm seeing something, I'm, there's like a human being that I, that made that decision and I know who they are and I, it's sort of like about that trusted relationship rather than the algorithm, the scary thing.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:13

       Are you Canadian?

   20. CBChris Best46:14

       I am. Thank you for noticing.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:15

       Snuck it out.

   22. CBChris Best46:16

       (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:16

       A boat.

   24. CBChris Best46:17

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan46:17

       I heard it, buddy. You only had one.

   26. CBChris Best46:18

       It's been, it's been like slowly disappearing.

   27. JRJoe Rogan46:21

       (laughs)

   28. CBChris Best46:21

       There was a period of time when I first moved where I, my ears accommodated before my voice, and so I sounded like I had a funny accent to myself, which was very unsettling.

   29. JRJoe Rogan46:31

       I, I, I feel you 'cause I had a Boston accent for a while, and then I heard myself on television. I was like, "Ew."

   30. CBChris Best46:37

       Can you still do the Boston accent?
10. 1:09:21 – 1:39:59

    Audience Capture and Integrity: How Creators Get Pulled by Incentives

    1. CBChris Best1:09:21

       Do you believe in audience capture? Do you think about this?

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:09:24

       Yeah, that's real. Uh, I've seen it with comedians, for sure. I've seen it with, uh, various, uh, people that are... You know, whether they're commentators or w- you know, o- opinion makers, whatever they are, they, they seem to find there's a thing where, uh, it gets them the most amount of juice, the most amount of traction, and they lean into that. They get love and support from s- I mean, I've seen people convert political ideologies because of it, because it seems like the right... The r- the right is pretty good at that. It's really interesting. Like, they've been... Like, Fox News has said more positive things about me than any left-wing, uh, you know, company. And I think that's, uh... That can be a problem for people is they do switch their ideology because of... They, they find they're getting, uh, a certain amount of love from one direction or the other.

    3. CBChris Best1:10:14

       I was reading a good Substack piece about this yesterday. This guy, Gurwinder, he wrote a... And he... The example he used was this YouTuber who was this, like, kinda normal kid. Um, s- and he has a picture at the start. It's, like, this skinny guy that made these videos and started... He s- he found this... found a niche, like, eating dinner and talking to the camera and people started to watch it. And over time, you, the f- the end picture is, like, years later, he's this famous guy. He's got millions of subscribers, making all this money. But he's, like, just destroyed. He's like this huge, morbidly obese, terrible health problems thing. And the, this post makes this convincing argument that the way he got there was this process of capture and it wasn't, it wasn't, uh, conscious. It wasn't like this guy was like, "I know I'm gonna become this horrible train wreck in order to make money and be famous, and that's a good idea, so I'm gonna do it." But it's the thing that happens where you get these subtle cues. It's kinda the same way that you become the average of the people you hang out with.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:11:17

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CBChris Best1:11:17

       And so you gotta choose who you hang out with intelligently-

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:11:20

       Yes.

    7. CBChris Best1:11:20

       ... because you can't resist that. And when you're on a platform, you get... Even if you don't want to, you get these signals of, like, "What's working? What's making people watch this? What's making the comments? What are people asking me for?" And makes a pretty convincing case that that thing can, like, go really... You know, it destroyed this guy's life, I think.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:11:39

       Well, an, an argument against that is MrBeast.

    9. CBChris Best1:11:42

       Yeah.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:11:43

        You know, MrBeast is the biggest, uh, YouTuber and he could not be a nicer guy. And his whole thing is about figuring out what captures people's attention. But it's all super positive. He's very charitable. He, uh, he has these, like, uh, turkey drives where he gives away free turkeys for people for Thanksgiving and he makes this fun video about it. He, uh, runs a food bank. Like, he, he's... he does so much for charitable organizations. But yet, he's 100% driven in his ab- i- in his idea that, "I wanna make a video that reaches the most amount of people possible, so what can I do in terms of, like, editing? What can I do in terms of the caption? What can I do in terms of the image that I use?" And he's very meticulous about that, but yet is not... He, he... In fact, he's become more charitable, more nice-

    11. CBChris Best1:12:44

        Right.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:12:44

        ... more friendly, more happy.

    13. CBChris Best1:12:46

        It's almost like there's a good version and a bad version of it.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:12:48

        Yeah.

    15. CBChris Best1:12:49

        If you let yourself get captured by people who want you to be your best, the best version of yourself, that's good.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:12:54

        Right.

    17. CBChris Best1:12:54

        And if you're getting more charitable to be massively successful, that sounds great.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:12:59

        Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, if that... But I don't think that's even what he's doing. I mean, he just... He's a, he's a very interesting guy 'cause he's very young and very wise for a young guy, but also, like, silly, he's fun, and he's figured out a way to be successful and still maintain who he is. That's where it gets tricky with people, because some people don't have a rigid foundation. They don't, they don't really... You know, they don't have, like, a strict set of, uh, ethics and morals and, you know, a code that they live by. And so then anything that's successful, they gravitate towards that like metal filings towards a magnet.

    19. CBChris Best1:13:38

        And the irony of that, no pun intended, is that it's... You're probably less successful in the long run. Right? If you have the principles and you know what you're doing, ultimately, that's the thing that people... If you... If that thing is right, that's the thing that people will follow you for. That's the thing that people care about.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:13:52

        It depends on how you define success, right? If you define success in terms of popularity, there's a lot of terrible people that are popular.... you know, because they're, they're popular for talking shit or being mean, or they're popular for-

    21. CBChris Best1:14:03

        Right.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:14:03

        ... you know, causing fights and creating drama. And there's a real currency in drama, unfortunately. There's, uh, a lot of people that that's their main thing, is, uh, just being shitty. So, there's a bunch of different ways you could go, but audience capture, yeah, uh, it's real. And, um, I, I, I try very hard to make sure that I don't get sucked into any of that.

    23. CBChris Best1:14:31

        That's why you only go on Twitter twice a day? (laughs)

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:14:33

        Yeah, I mean, if I go on, I go on every n- I, I go on for a couple seconds, y- really. I go on every now and then to check stuff and see what's happening, what's trending, and then I go, "Uh, let me get outta here before I read something about me."

    25. CBChris Best1:14:49

        (laughs)

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:14:49

        (laughs) And it just, just, I just think that, um, you know, human beings are very malleable. You know, we're very, uh, easily influenced, whether we like it or not. That's why cults exist, you know? You just gotta be meticulous about the way you think about things, and also, you have to spend a lot of time alone thinking. Like, r- genuinely alone, no electronics, thinking about how you view life, how you view yourself, how you view all the, the various projects you have that you're doing, and, uh, w- what are you doing with 'em? Why are you doing it?

    27. CBChris Best1:15:24

        Right. The magic is not, "I'm gonna be immune to the influence of everything that I read and see." The magic is, "At some point, I control where I spend my time and attention."

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:15:33

        Yes.

    29. CBChris Best1:15:33

        "I control whether I'm gonna go for a walk or whether I'm gonna, who I'm gonna listen to and spend my time with."

Episode duration: 2:35:00