Korean 'Dopamine Sites' Let You Shop Without Shopping

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Future Commerce. This is for all the bots out there. I feel like they expect. The agents expect an opener now. I think we were doing, like, just a dead open.

Speaker B: What does a bot opener sound like?

Speaker A: Hello.

Speaker B: We're all going to do commerce.

Speaker A: What a boomer way to do a bot voice.

Speaker B: The year 2000.

Speaker A: That year 2000. The distant future. Actually, that's not in the distant future so much anymore. Every day I'm feeling more like a boomer, though, because every day I'm.

Speaker B: I mean, millennials basically are what boomers were.

Speaker A: It's so true.

Speaker B: They ran the world.

Speaker A: Oh, man. Uh, we're not going to get into it today, but I am jamming on a bunch of AI stuff, so I will. I will say I'm very much trying to stay ahead of becoming the boomer in the room.

Speaker B: Well, no, but boomers are using AI more than Gen X. Yeah,

Speaker A: I think so. It's one, two, skip a few generations, right? Because that's sort of like weird scotch generations. It really is. Gen Xers uh, are not into AI and then gen zers not into AI. That's how we're going these days. Uh, welcome to Future Commerce. We have a pretty full docket today. Um, and as we're recording this, I'm getting ready to be at, uh, the Cannes Lions, uh, International Festival Creativity. We'll be bringing you a bunch of content from the festival, uh, there, and I'm excited to, uh, sit down with a bunch of our partners. So, uh, you'll hear from some folks. Uh, we'll be sitting down with fluent and PayPal, uh, ads and some friends of ours, uh, over on the other side of the pond. So next few weeks, we'll be creating, uh, a little bit of content and give you a little bit of perspective on what that show is all about. Um, as you know, uh, and Brian, we've experienced this quite a bit. Uh, the world of, like, retail, media, commerce. Media has drawn the world of commerce deeper and deeper into the world of advertising, uh, and media. Uh, and so, well, as the point,

Speaker B: uh, of transaction gets closer to, like, intent and, uh, desire. Stoking. Yeah, it's natural. It's only natural.

Speaker A: Creator economy and social, um, commerce and the, uh, world. Traditional advertising media and brand, they've all sort of converged. And that's the place where it's been the traditional place where it happens. There's been a lot of criticism. We covered it last year on the relevance of the event in the modern times. I want to go see for myself. I'll bring back a report and digest on what's going on there and we'll see uh, looking forward to that. And uh, then we'll be in just two weeks time at the end of June we'll be uh, joining up with our friends at Klaviyo and covering their London event again this year. And I hear that there's some really interesting developments in the world of AI for uh, automation, marketing automation CRM. And I'm excited to understand how some of the biggest brands in the world are using that to change their business uh, for the better. I've got a lot of interesting conversations lined up with some really interesting brands. Can't tell you who they are just yet but uh, that's going to be a great week of content uh as well. Um, so a lot of great stuff coming up there and I've had some really cool stuff happen lately while we've, while we've been on a bit of a spate in a bit uh, of travels. Brian, we've published a bunch of exciting content over on Future Commerce Insiders. Um, I just want to point your attention. If you're not subscribed go over to futurecommerce.com there's a whole world of content over there, uh, including one of our most recent insiders, uh pieces. It's um, an incredible follow up to our annual prediction this year and it's called the Process is the Product. We'll link it up here in the show notes, uh, by contributor uh, Sophia Epstein. And she makes the case and shows us uh how this year alone the backlash against AI and slop are uh, because we desire to see the work from humans. And basically proof of work is what we're looking for now from brands and from creators and artists alike. And so uh, work for work's sake, you know, ah, intent of work and putting in human work, uh, going over and above just for the sake of the art and the creative, uh, for its own merits is like the value of waste. That is a thing that we highly prize now in the age of AI when anything can be generated with a few prompts. And I think it's a phenomenal piece and you can easily digest it nowadays because there is a very quick and easy button you can click that says listen to this article. Uh, so thanks to our partners over at Levin Labs who are helping us to generate that kind of content. Um, go check it out futurecommerce.com and we'll link directly to that piece the process of the product in our show

Speaker B: notes it's such an interesting viewpoint. You know, it's interesting. It's been the show your work, build in public thing for a long time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But even that felt kind of performative. Right. And now it's like, all right, people agree. You made something cool. Show us how you got there. There was the whole Lady Gaga thing, controversy that happened regarding her trailer for her show, her live show. Right. And, like.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And it's like, you know what? Maybe the things that we thought were cool online, like, we no longer can trust that there actually is some sort of, like, human, like, effort behind them, and we want to see the suffering artist, you know, make it and pour themselves into it as opposed to have it just be some gloss. Which, the funny part about that is, like, we've been doing this with human labor for a long time. Like, we've been glossing pop stars with, like, the best producers and, like, this whole machine around them. A machine of people. And now the machine is no longer a machine of people. And all of a sudden we're like, wait a minute. Maybe what we thought was cool wasn't cool all, ah, along. Um, I don't know. It's interesting just to see how when people aren't making up the machine, we start to question everything now.

Speaker C: The 11 Labs SoHo popup was an incredible success. It closed its doors. But I keep coming back in my mind to how the whole thing actually worked. Because when I walked in and I visited, I put on my headphones, I started talking to a voice agent, and it was very close to how I would talk to an actual retail sales associate. Just like being in a store, I might not have had the product name. I didn't have a SKU in mind. I didn't know what I wanted. But I had a loose idea of what I usually wear, what I already own in my closet, and what I tend to reach for, and what kind of a piece I might actually use. Living in South Florida, I think that's how most shopping starts for most people. You show up with some intent, but you don't always know exactly what you want or how to express it. And the agent asked me a few questions, like, what are you shopping for? What do you already have? What are you usually drawn to? And then it did what the best of retail associates do. It, uh, connected the thing in my head to something that was actually available on the show floor. And a few minutes later, I was trying on a short sleeve crew neck that I would not have found on my own. And it all started because I was Talking to an agent. And that's the moment that matters. Because for every brand there are shoppers that are arriving every day with intent and they're ready to buy. But they don't know your taxonomy, they don't know which collection page to visit, they don't know which filter to use. They don't know whether the answer is buried in a PDP or a size guide or a support article. There is somewhere that your merchandising logic is breaking down, that only your team understands and they just know what they are trying to solve. And 11 Labs gives brands a way to meet that intent via conversation. Klarna is using 11 Labs infrastructure to support 35 million customers. Revolut deployed it and cut resolution times by over 8x. And it's live right now at store elevenlabs IO where 11 Labs own e commerce store is up for you to talk to a voice agent for yourself. The Soho pop up might be closed, but the experience is open. Go try it and bring voice agents to your brand. Start at ah, elevenlabs IO Future Commerce. The future of uh, voice agents are here for your brand at elevenlabs IO futurecommerce.

Speaker A: Uh, it's so interesting, right? Ah, the organism that is the corporation. Right? We've talked about this. Um, uh, there's a book that ah, I read a couple years ago that blew my mind. Basically everything is sentient from some observer's point of view. Everything is organized and everything is alive from some observer's point of view. Um, it just depends on who the observer is. Right. And so a corporation is an organism, right? It is, it is alive and it is, it has a will. Um, it's just made up of many parts and. Right. So um, it just depends on who the observer is.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: If we are working within the corporation, we don't see it as such. But if you are, you know, if you're some sort of like um, omniscient, um, omnipotent being sitting outside of who we are and we're, then we're observing something like a corporation, then it seems to be highly organized and you know, has it's, it has a goal, it has a purpose, it you know, has a will. Um, and those are really interesting things to think about. Um, when you start to think about life in terms of things like AI and how you start to classify uh, things like that in that world. Um, but I do think that um, like your, your point is like the Overton window has shifted on what is cringe, right Versus what is. And uh, maybe Crass.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. And now what is just required as we, we demand this of you in order to, to participate. And uh, some of those are set up in this piece. Um, like Ke$ha basically did the exact same thing that Lady Gaga did. And if you separate them by a sufficient window, uh, it doesn't matter what the technological medium was. You know, one was a 3D, uh, model. Um, one was questionably AI. Who knows, it could have been a 3D model as well. One was actually a 3D model of Kesha's head and then potentially actual wax pour and then a melted wax. But it doesn't really matter how it was done. Anything that's plausibly AI today, even if it's not AI is derided. Right. People don't want it. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, they don't want it.

Speaker A: So seeing the process is the important part, and that's the thing I've been arguing for, is it's not even just. And this is where brands need to get the story and the PR right is it's not enough for Hermes to put out a website that is created entirely by artists and. Illustrative. Right. That's interesting. It's the entire PR campaign around it that shows you all of the discarded drawings that weren't used. It's showing you all of the art assemblage and the behind the scenes that shows you that it's real artwork by a real person. It's sitting down with that person and showing you the, the process by which they come up with it. And, and you're seeing this more and more in build outs, like what Stripe City did for Black, uh, Friday. Uh, you're seeing it in like, what Apple TV did for their new, uh, like sound bumper that they do at the beginning of their shows. All of those things are elements of craft that isn't just the outcome of the product. It's showing you the process that went into it.

Speaker B: There was a moment when HBO switched every single show to have a making of that just rolled right into right afterwards.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I remember that.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that that's part of it. There's a set of people. It's not everybody that wants this. Right. And there's some people actually don't want to see behind the scenes. They just want the finished product. And if it hits for them, it hits for them. And they don't care how it's made. And actually there are a lot of people like this. In fact, I think that there are still, uh, like maybe more people that just don't care. In fact, I think that the online crowd, the very or even terminally online crowd, they're more. They care more about this than the average consumer does. And there's also, like, the nerds for any given, you know, thing, the ones that geek out, the ones that are passionate about it, and they end up having a really loud voice when it comes to those things. And oftentimes that voice can set perception. And the overall perception, you know, it's built off of the super nerds that are super into the thing. And not everyone can be a nerd about everything. So, uh, you know, some people try, um, and so they're willing to either do one of two things, just enjoy the finished product or listen to the nerds that are really in the industry and trust what they say. And so I. I think there's. There's a. Uh, There's. There's an interesting thing here, like, where a certain amount of the process has to be built in just to satisfy those people that actually care and then to satisfy the people that care about what they say.

Speaker A: Oh, that's all. Yeah. That's 100% something. Something. The man in the arena.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay, hold on. This is going to drive me crazy. I'm going to look for this book. Stay there. All right, here we go. It's James Bridle. Ways of Being Beyond Human Intelligence by James Bridle. That was his follow up to New Dark Age, which was a book that went, like, viral. It was written in 2018. Um, new dark Age gave me severe panic. Uh, attack. I stopped reading that one. Um.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. This reminds me, though, of, like, the new Platonic movement that's happening. Ah, right now, too. Like the Ian McGilchrist sort of crowd, um, that believe that, you know, there are ideal forms for sort of things, since that those things will eventually kind of emerge, if you will, um, based off those. That. That existence that's sort of beyond. It's in some other space. And those things are going to eventually find their way, you know, out potentially, um, and emerge and we'll see them for what they are. Um, but, yeah, I. Yeah, that. That. What an interesting thought. And it makes you think, like, maybe there are brands that represent the ideal form better than others, uh, for the category that they're in. And Hermes may be a good example of that. They sort of perfected the handbag, if you will, um, and. And have stuck to that. Um, and, uh, you know, there's. There's probably an ideal material. It's made out of an interior, an ideal production process. And um, yeah, this might frighten some brands, the idea of having to show their work. And if it frightens you, that's probably a really good sign that you need to make some changes. Um, because you've been winning off of sort of the secrecy component, which means you feel like you have a competitive edge. Actually, this leads me to the discussion about the whole mythos fable coming off the market idea because. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's, uh, yeah, in many ways, like the US Government is saying, don't show your work. We don't want this in the hands of everyone. We don't want this to be something that can be reverse engineered or leveraged by other people. And they have to guard it. Kind of like a brand guards their trade secrets.

Speaker A: It's a nuanced discussion because I think that there's a lot of takes here that become a little, uh, we could probably, uh, have 20 different, uh, types of conversations here. Um, so pick the conversation you want to have about, I don't know, did anthropic do too good of a marketing job on how dangerous their model was? Uh, is it a regulatory capture conversation? Yes and yes, probably.

Speaker B: Um, it's certainly an attention capture conversation.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Um, but I think the bigger, interesting, the more interesting conversation here is the unbelievable power that the Department of Commerce has sequestered unto itself, um, or has gathered unto itself for the past two administrations for sure. But maybe for three, I think, since Penny Pritzker and the Obama White House. The Department of Commerce, which used to be sort of a backwater, like note, like sort of an runner up consolation, uh, prize. If you didn't get the Treasury Secretary job, you got the Department of Commerce job. It has a lot of authority or has a lot of jobs underneath it. A lot of things that nobody wants gets shoved in Commerce, like, I don't know, the post Office or the Patent Trade Office.

Speaker B: I feel like this happens in software too, and also for brands. Like, oh, 100%. A job that. Nope. Like they're like, uh, give them e Commerce.

Speaker A: Oh, 100%. It's like there's so many people that this. And talented people too.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker A: That like have, you know, that probably want some other job and then they get someone, but then they try to do as best a job as they can. And uh, what has happened is, um, actually we wrote this up. We can link this too. Uh, but you get someone who's pretty ambitious and wants to make a name for themselves, like Howard Lutnick and, uh, has tried to make Commerce the m. You know, the most important newsmaking agency.

Speaker B: Tried is probably the wrong word.

Speaker A: Um, has made first in being the enforcement of the tariff policy and rollout of the tariff policy, and also the spokesperson for the tariff policy for the United States government, um, which after it's been a failed policy, uh, and unenforceable, apparently, and potentially having to refund. Yeah, not a good look. Now switching, uh, over to being the AI guy. AI enforcer. And you'll notice that, uh,

Speaker D: they gave

Speaker A: like, 90 minutes for anthropic to, you know, to answer their order of an export ban, basically on this. And so I think it's just throwing their weight around is what this story is really all about.

Speaker B: Yeah, probably. Uh, who know? Who knows? Let's just, let's just step back a little bit from it, though, because it does get to, like, if we're in a software race, Right. If that's what the race is about, protections are pretty weak. Like, protections on something that can be immediately copied upon. Like, it's digital. It's digitally instantly everywhere. Like, the moment you get one leak, you get. You have instant leak for everyone. Um, it does beg the question, is software actually the. The moat? Like, is that the thing that sets people apart? Or if everyone's sort of going after it, is it pretty much guaranteed that the moment you release it, you then give up the ability for it to be your mode anymore? Um, and so I actually think a lot of this is a little bit of, like, a red herring, a little bit of a distraction. It's. It seems like software actually isn't the moat. It's like all the things that are really, really hard to make, to make software possible for people. Um, yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, if all of software is being eaten by AI, then AI is the software. It's the uber software. Right.

Speaker B: So it's still the software, though. Like, the models are digitally constructed. It's algorithms.

Speaker C: Ah.

Speaker B: And so that doesn't change my point at all, which is software is no longer a moat when it comes to, like, your, Your. Your country's dominance. It's not.

Speaker A: There's no software race. Yeah, there is a chips race.

Speaker B: There's a chips.

Speaker A: Right. And then. And there's a power race.

Speaker B: There's a power race.

Speaker A: Right. And I think there's a data center race.

Speaker B: There's a lot of other races, but the software is actually not the race.

Speaker A: So that's. Well, it is when. Don't make me argue the inverse. Don't make me make their argument for them, but it is when you have been told and you've been uh, and it's been proven, you've been pulled into like a consortium, like a private consortium, uh, and working group with 36 companies and, and shown that you have built a super weapon that can hack every single piece of software and create complete, basically disclose a massive supply chain risk. Like this is they pulled the Department of Commerce into this thing. So I mean that is so. Okay. But putting all that aside for a second, this is where this story I think makes perfect sense. In our coverage coming out of the semaphore world economy, uh, summit, there's a lot of conversation about the role that the US Government does take in trying to regulate these sorts of areas. Right. Like dynamite used to be sold in hardware stores. Right. So um, there's, there's just a, A, uh, level at which we have to make a decision to like there's, there's weapons grade tools that could be available at some future state that we have to make a decision as to uh, what gets evaluated and cleared by some government agency. And Anthropic has been making a, really beating the drum and making a case for a very long time saying we should be regulated in the same way that aviation is regulated. And that's what they've been arguing for. And it's looking like that this because it would benefit them greatly to, to be the de facto provider of that. It would also kill the open source industry which by the way I think would be the main competitor to anyone who is getting hammered on token pricing. Like if you can own, if all you have to pay for is power and you can own hardware and let's say hardware gets better and better and better over time. You don't need to pay someone to generate tokens for you. And um, they know that. So. Okay, so I think going back to the history lesson here, this kind of comes back to the CHIPS act and it kind of comes back to the establishment of the um, national uh, AI Safety Institute, which was then renamed and rebranded um, because the Trump administration didn't like the word safety in AI. Um, so, uh, but they uh, both of these were situated, both of these programs were situated under the Department of Commerce to be carried out by Gina Raimondo's Commerce, uh, Department and now are being, you know, are now programs that are being administered by Howard Letnicks Cox

Speaker B: CHIPS act was effectively discontinued. Like it. No, I mean it wasn't, it wasn't,

Speaker A: no, but the dollars. No, not really. So you have TSMC is building fabs here in The United States. Um, they've used some of that money to invest in U.S. corporations. Like they're buying a good portion of like Dell or IBM. Um, so there's like they're buying their way into and they're like quote unquote investing in the United States. Um, we actually have a hub, uh, that we're launching. It'll be live, I believe by the time this comes out. We can link it up here, but it's futurecommerce, uh.com AI-agentic-com it's terrible URL. Great for SEO terrible URL to tell people, but there is a whole AI policy. Uh, read back. But basically, you know, the Commerce Department itself has a lot of dollars invested in US policy and we have a whole hub around that which comes back to like chips act dollars but also dollars that they have. They're, they're getting other companies like TSMC to invest in fabs in the United States. And then Masa, remember that whole thing vaguely where um, when Masayoshi of SoftBank was like he was going to commit some like was it $200 billion, um, in investment into the United States for AI? Um, and uh, it was 100 billion and then it was going to be doubled and it was going to be uh, AI infrastructure in the United States. It was, it was like the week after Trump took office and it was like Sam Altman was there and Tim, Tim Cook was there. Like everybody was there.

Speaker B: That's right, Elon was there.

Speaker A: Um, that's not happening now anymore. I think we're just buying companies now. Um, what's up next?

Speaker B: I mean you had an interesting chat with the uh, Patent Office today around.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, this is wild. Um, so okay, there's ah, here in Florida. Florida is one of the rare places where um, uh, there's a lot of tech innovation happening. Um, you could say that it's probably because there's other places in the country, um, that are creating tax, ah, policy that other people are deciding they want to leave and move their businesses here. Maybe temporarily, we'll see, who knows. But something that really interesting that's happened is in the last number of years they've opened sort of a field office for the USPTO in Florida. And there's a, it's not like an official uh, field office, but there's sort of a southeast regional, um, outreach, um, and uh, Florida Atlantic University is one of those areas that has a tremendous amount of technology oversight and leadership here. There's a technology innovation hub, um, and a AI Research lab that's based now out of Florida Atlantic. And, um, so boca's become this sort of, like, place where a lot of innovation's happening and, uh, it attracts a lot of folks to come through. Um, and today, uh, I had. I got the awesome opportunity to sit down with the USPTO Undersecretary Director Squires. And John Squires, uh, was sworn, uh, in office back in September of last year. He hasn't been around too, too, too long, but he's the 60th, uh, director of the U.S. cEO. And um, he talked, uh, extensively about the department, uh, inheriting a wild backlog of patents, uh, um, that had the prior, um, leadership and administration had just been backlogged with. I'm gonna have to go back to my actual notes, but something to the tune of like 75 or 80,000, um, applications that just they couldn't get out in front of. They're now using AI to help to clear the backlog. They've built their own LLM within the U.S. patent Trade Office, which, by the way, USPTO, the largest, uh, budget line item in the Department of Commerce, and seems pretty important. Yeah, it is. It's $5 billion organization. They have 8,500, um, examiners now. Um, that's up from 5,500 examiners about 10 years ago. And they're working really hard to keep ahead because, because of AI, they now have a deluge of innovation that's coming their way. Just to. I think he said just two years ago, President Trump signed the 10 millionth patent in the United States. Patent number 10 million.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: Today they're on patent 12 million.

Speaker B: Oh, wow.

Speaker A: And so the scale of innovation that's, uh, fast, that's, that is happening is at such a pace that they like them keeping up, is it can't be done by hand really anymore.

Speaker B: Actually, the backlog doesn't look that big now compared to accomplished.

Speaker A: So, yeah, what they're really working through now is, uh, they. He said, um, they hire 900 or so patent, um, examiners, which are all specialized lawyers. You know, they're all these patent examiners.

Speaker B: I wonder the budget line's so big.

Speaker A: Yeah, but these people are working for the government, remember? And they're passing up, like, other jobs in legal professions to do, to work for the US Government. I mean, you have to be convinced of some sort of like, duty to the United States. Um, and, uh, really interesting stuff, by the way. It's something I should probably write up for future Commerce insiders because I learned a lot today and sitting in the round table with him. Um, but the uh, first patent, uh, was signed by George Washington. It's covered in the U.S. constitution. Um, is written in the U.S. constitution that inventors and authors are granted patents. And uh, Thomas Jefferson was first patent examiner. Um, these are, it's just something that's unique to the United States. And I think that it's a, the fact that they're building LLMs within um, patent Office. Uh, but also trademark. Trademark has it even worse because trademarks are about two and a half times the backlog. And what's crazy is.

Speaker B: Makes sense.

Speaker A: Um, it does make sense. Um, and this is the thing that I really wanted to get more information out of him on. I really want to. We should probably try to figure out if we can get him to sit down with us. Um, Director, uh, Squires. But uh, most of what our audience deals with is most of their brand, like most of their IP is the brand, like most of what our.

Speaker B: Some people have patents on products, but mostly very few.

Speaker A: Right. Most of it is wrapped up in the brand. Right. And so, um, but as the cost for a patent is driven down to zero, not just intellectual property, but actual like invention. Because now we have this capability of maybe researching things that don't exist now, um, or the labor at which to help to create new things is deferred or driven down by this innovative tool with AI. Um, but also he says that over the last five or six years we have the number of people that are named in a patent filing has gone up and up and up where there's 50 or something to tune of like um, 10,000 patent applications. Had three or four named, uh, like co inventors, which was rare 15 years ago, but there are some with as many as 10 now. And that has never happened before, like invention by committee. That's just a thing that never ever existed in the past. And that can happen now today because of tooling. Um, and also you can. Before you even get to the point of filing a patent or putting together a patent, you can find people with prior invention and prior art that you've been building on that you didn't even know that you would name in your patent application. And so these are things that are uh, that are really interesting. And I also think that it's sort of a precarious place because, uh, the same tools that the patent office would be using and trademark too, to combat all of these deluge of filings are the same tools that inventors and brands would be using to create new filings. So, um, I think that at some point you have to also think, and I don't have a satisfying answer yet on this. And again, this is why I think we should probably sit down with someone from Commerce on this to talk about it, because I think it's an interesting challenge. We should be promoting new, like new founders, new creators, new innovators in the United States. But what ultimately will probably happen is the system favors people that are incumbents with large amounts of capital, with legal frameworks and legal backing behind them, that uh, have defensible frameworks that can get to, that know how to use the system. And AI does not make this more of a level playing field. If anything, it makes the incumbency allow them to sort of like, you know, maintain their lead.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Uh, maintain the lead. They can box, uh, the small guys out even more effectively. They can basically carpet.

Speaker B: This has sort of always been the case in the filings in many ways. Like it's always been sort of a way to maintain leads. And if you have a factory focused on creating patents and trademarks and so on, you can sort of stay ahead and get ahead of like upstarts. Anytime you see a bubble of something, you can get ahead of it. Yeah, uh, it's hard to know if the tooling will actually empower people because I think it will get easier for a single person to go after, you know, this or if it just means that people who have like the ability to spend on tokens at a max level, actually the tooling just makes them stronger and it's harder to get ahead of them. And speed to market actually is a symptom of scale and not what we typically think where scale actually prevents speed to market.

Speaker A: Something that I'll be um, spending a little bit more time on looking into. Again, um, um, this is a, probably an undercovered topic in our space, especially around the elements of trademark. And I think it's such an interesting area. It's one that I think folks probably don't uh, consider to be very important just because it doesn't, it doesn't impact directly the, the point of transaction. But I do think that when it comes down to like defensibility and the um, and the enterprise value in your company and your, in your brand, like it means everything. And so I think especially when you're in the startup space or if you were in um, in the enterprise space, these are things that those folks think capital allocators, they think a lot about this sort of thing. It's probably something that deserves uh, a little bit more coverage well, you know

Speaker B: what's really interesting is this isn't that far from the taste discussion, because in many ways, like, people that have taste get copied so fast, you can't trademark taste. Um, and so this whole discourse around tasteslop actually has some parallels.

Speaker A: That's, uh, so true. That's. That's true. Have we talked about taste slop yet on.

Speaker B: Uh, not really, because I don't think we've podcast that since this really kind of blew up and Emily Siegel wrote that. Her.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker D: Do the.

Speaker A: Give us the definition and catch some.

Speaker B: Basically, like using, uh, different items that would be considered tasteful and collecting them and putting out something that would signal taste as a result of having collected those items and shown them off in a specific way. Um, and I think examples would be

Speaker A: like Rimwa suitcase or a fellow's, uh, like a gooseneck kettle. Uh, or potentially like tabbies. Um, something that's like.

Speaker B: The kettle was the one that, like, caught everyone. Like, that was a. That a lot of.

Speaker A: Well, that one had some discourse around it recently. The kettle discourse. Why? It's not. It's not that the kettle. It's why the kettle. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, gag me. I don't want to have that conversation.

Speaker B: It's really interesting because I had had some thoughts right. Right. Right around the time or right before Emily posted her piece. I swear, synchronicity sometimes happens. Of course she published a piece about it. I just thought about it, but I had been thinking about how there are people in my life, actually, I've had this stuff for a while that, you know that most of the tastes discourse is related to online behavior. Like, it is absolutely online signals that are very easy to manufacture.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's performative signaling around you having good taste, because for whatever reason, you.

Speaker B: You are able to.

Speaker A: Everybody thinks is tasteful.

Speaker B: The perfect Instagram. Right, Correct.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: But, uh, it's interesting because I felt this with certain people in. Do you ever encounter those people who have maybe the right clothes and they go to the right coffee shops and the right restaurants and they have, like, they talk about depth. They talk about things of depth and how it affects them or the world or whatever, but for some reason, when you're talking to them, you're like, I don't. I don't feel like this has actually depth. Like, you just get the general sense that this is pasted on stuff that, like, they've. They've collected, and they haven't really grappled with these things themselves or thought about them. In a way that you could call ownership or discovery. And it's funny because they're like, really nice people. Often like, I like, uh. It's really tough because you're talking to this person. You're like, this person's nice. They seem to care a lot about things that are good, but for some reason it just doesn't feel like it's fully. It's not fully there. Maybe they haven't pressed it far enough, or maybe they haven't made it their own, or maybe they aren't comfortable with it, or I don't know what it is. But you're like, no.

Speaker A: Why do I feel like you're talking about me?

Speaker B: I was not talking about you.

Speaker A: Say Sarah's face says it all.

Speaker B: There is an element I think of like adopting. There's so much as it happens online, but I think it's even more pronounced in person when you feel like people are putting something on and they think they've got it, but they don't have it.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, There's always. So I think this sort of thing comes in waves and I. I feel like there's, uh. The. The reason that this discourse hits people in the brand space is because people. You always reach a level of the, like, meta discourse and then the meta. Meta discourse. And I think that we're in the meta. Meta discourse. Like the. The meta discourse is around virality and trends. Right. And the meta. Meta discourse is when virality and trends become a trend unto themselves. And I think that that's where we're trending. Right. Trends are trending. We've had that conversation before. Yeah. And when you want to critique the people who behave in the trends are trending, like conversations like that to. To stay ahead of that, you have to continue to change, like, move the goalpost of the. The nature of that conversation. Because you actually at, uh, your nature, you were the person who used to like those things. So, like, there's a hipster mentality to this is like, the things you used to like are now liked by people who. You don't want to like them.

Speaker B: Totally.

Speaker C: You don't.

Speaker A: And you don't want to be associated with them.

Speaker B: I have a lot of thing. I have a lot of things like this. Dostoevsky trended like crazy. I've been talking about Dostoevsky.

Speaker A: I have you on tape 10 years ago talking about Dostoevsky.

Speaker B: And I'm like, come on.

Speaker A: Um, like people now are talking about the brothers. Cameras off. You were like, you were all over that 10 years.

Speaker B: I was all over that 10 years ago, uh, before that actually. But it's tough when you have something that you know is cool. It actually is good. It is cool. And then it becomes, uh, poop culture, um, if you will like, uh, it becomes part of the slop culture to post about Dostoevsky, which is exactly what happened. Um, and people are arguing about what the role of Father Zossima is. And you're like, did you even read this book?

Speaker D: We'll get you back to Future Commerce in just a moment, but let's clear something up. You don't need more information. You already have a machine that you're sitting in front of right now that can summarize the entire Internet in 3 seconds and confidently tell you the exact wrong thing. What you need is judgment because AI can tell you what happened or what's trending or what everyone else is already saying, but it can't tell you whether any of it matters or whether you'll

Speaker A: regret acting on it in six months time.

Speaker D: That's why we built Future Commerce Plus. Future Commerce plus is the paid premium membership for executives, founders and creatives who are tired of being impressed by the outputs of answer engines and they're more interested in making the right call for their business. It's less about speed and more about vision.

Speaker A: As a plus member, you will get

Speaker D: long form essays and research that connect commerce to culture and psychology, to technology and all of it back to history. You get premium episodes and deep dives that we just don't publish publicly. And you'll get access to journals like Lore, Muses and Archetypes. In our forthcoming journal you're going to get original research and limited releases and you'll get data products like our Word of Mouth Index, which tracks how brands actually move through culture. Not vibes, not dashboards, but, but actual momentum so you can see what's rising, what's peaking and what's already on its way out. Plus members get priority access and preferred pricing for Future Commerce events, salons and summits where ideas leave the group, chat and enter the real world. Future Commerce plus is for people who don't need more answers, they just need better ones. So join us today at Future Commerce

Speaker A: to

Speaker D: and get vision for your business futurecommerce.com/plus. Join us today at Ah, futurecommerce.com+. Now let's get back to the show.

Speaker C: Um, all right.

Speaker A: In an effort to get us to a good place before we have to end, um, I do want to uh, make sure that we mention, I mean like there's uh, there's so many things that we could cover. All right, so here's. Here's. Here's a good. Feel good. Well, it feels good.

Speaker B: I don't know.

Speaker A: It feels good to feel bad.

Speaker B: Bad, man.

Speaker A: It feels good to feel bad. Matthew Benson, uh, writing over at Dexerto, Uh, you ever go to Dexerto.com for your news, Brian? Matthew Benson, uh, writing about, uh, viral dopamine sites, uh, in South Korea that let users, uh, uh, shop without actually buying anything. This is what he writes. He says South Korean shopping addicts can now experience the thrill of online purchases without actually spending any money in a new viral dopamine site trend. And, uh, in fact, actually, you can even get fake deliveries. Like when you click order, a fake courier will accept the order, and the site launches a tracking window. Um, uh, this is amazing.

Speaker B: Uh, it's the new window shopping.

Speaker A: It is, it is. It's a responsive window on your cell phone. Um, one of the sites, uh, we can link here. You can choose your delivery type. Rabbit delivery or turtle delivery. Um, some of the sites are food. Food deliveries. Um, this is a food delivery site. Um, I don't know why food delivery,

Speaker B: of all things, the placebo effect. I ordered food, and it showed up at my door, therefore, I have already eaten. It's a diet.

Speaker A: Yeah, this is like the new viral diet. Uh, I can't even pronounce this, so I'm not even going to try. Um, so, yeah, I'm going to add something to my cart. I'm going to check out place demo order.

Speaker B: It's going to ask for your real credit card. Just kidding.

Speaker A: Oh, customer wallet. There it is. Uh, lightning arrival in eight minutes.

Speaker B: It's on its way. Lightning arrival. Man, that's better than anything I ever purchased.

Speaker A: That was a fast checkout, y'. All. So that's one of the examples. That's an example of a site. Um, I found a site like this many years ago that I wrote about, so I wanted to. I wanted to come back around to. Okay, why are we talking about this? This is something I feel like we need to go a little deeper into.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: there are many examples of this sort of thing, and I want to close the loop on many things that we have actually touched on over the years that cover this. I called this Strawman Brands. Uh, back in 2019, I found a site like this from an Instagram ad that was transactable, but it never actually took your credit card. Um, it let you check out as, like, pay on pickup or pay with cash, but, like, or when you went to check out, it would give you an error. And it was brands that were using meta ads, or at the time, Instagram ads to basically test brand, like brand creative that they haven't committed to yet. So they were, they were spending some money on the platform to see what brands would actually like, what brand creative might work and what brand mockups, like packaging mockups would convert better back when.

Speaker B: Over time took some work to do.

Speaker A: Right now that's not a. Yeah, and it was way cheaper back then too. I mean, you're talking seven years ago. Um, so you probably wouldn't do that now. I mean, maybe, maybe people do that now. If you are doing that and you know of people that do that, it's probably cheaper than actually creating a bunch of product that doesn't sell. Tell, um, me about it. I'd love to hear. I'm sure there's creative strategists out there that do that kind of thing all the time. Let me know about it. Um, but you mentioned this in shop, like it's your job.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, many, many years ago, you, uh, had a piece back in Insiders long time.

Speaker B: Four.

Speaker A: Number four.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was early.

Speaker A: Um, that was not a very good record. Consumption. Consumption is like our hard wiring. Right. And that's basically like consumption itself is like dopamine. It's the path to dopamine and that we buy before we reflect on even wanting the thing. And so dopamine cites, uh, anything that can exist. You make the argument that anything that can exist in service of that, like a dark pattern. In that case, you were making an argument of like, of course dark patterns exist because they serve the dopamine. Um, and so you sort of make the argument that anything that can exist will exist. Murphy's Law and the Murphy's Law pattern. Uh, anything that can exist will exist. It's like the dopamine site is just that same mechanism. Um, but, uh, anyway, I think that this is fascinating stuff. Um, Could this happen in the U.S. do you think people would do this

Speaker B: in the U.S. uh, you know, I think it could, but it's. It would be like we do it in video games, like performative art project more than like an actual thing that people do on a regular basis. Like, we just buy things anyway. You can buy stuff on Amazon hall for like, nothing. So it's almost. We can get the same thing. I think people get the same thing for such a small amount of money that they just buy. Like, this is. You can spend dollars and get the same effect and actually have something show up at your door which we really like. Um, so I think it's not really something that I see taking off like crazy in the U.S. we like to get something for our money and like I. Window shopping itself is interesting. Um, it's its own art form now and I think that a lot of people would just passively window shop on websites like crazy like that. That happens all the time.

Speaker C: But isn't.

Speaker A: Isn't dopamine. Isn't unboxing a form of that? Like isn't watching other people buy things and unbox?

Speaker B: Yeah, totally the same thing. Part of the window shopping experience? 100%.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think that it's uh, like maybe just a little bit too much of a stretch for a lot of us shoppers like to like we. I could see that being an installation at uh, a museum like or an art show. In an art show, sorry, ah, where someone created like a, a shopping app terminal that you can walk up to and do a fake purchase. But I don't see it as like something that people would do on a regular basis to get dopamine from.

Speaker A: Yeah, there's a um, we just buy something. I'm going to look a little, a little deeper. I'm, I'm very certain that I have had a um. We did some insights work back in the agency days about um, cart abandonment behavior and especially with certain types of sites like footwear in particular. There's certain footwear, um, intimates and I think we would chalk it up to oh, these are complex purchases or they have to, they're experiential. Like you have to feel them. Right. Like um. But in some customer surveys when we talk to people, you actually talk to an actual person and some people will say no. I like to just add things to my cart. Like.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: It's window shopping. I like putting things in my cart. It's not that I have an intention to purchase it. I just like the feeling of putting

Speaker C: it in my cart.

Speaker B: They may eventually potentially or maybe or they may not.

Speaker A: Yeah, well not with the E Commerce platforms we were using back then. They come back and that thing is gone, baby. It's not going to be in your cart.

Speaker B: Sitting in my like saved cart in Amazon that just got. I pushed out. Like uh, it's probably a pretty big number of stuff that just got. I just hit save for later.

Speaker A: Oh, I have hundreds of items in

Speaker B: safer hundreds for later and that are

Speaker A: like probably 10 years old.

Speaker C: Eight years.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Totally.

Speaker A: Yeah. I'm never buying that crap.

Speaker B: You know it's interesting though. I think the dopamine hit that we're getting now in the US is like these bidding sites, like, uh, a lot of whatnot. Yeah, whatnot. And now ebay has their version. And I think that we're getting so much dopamine from that sort of behavior.

Speaker A: So the structure maybe is that we're more. We're more of a consumer society just by default.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: We consume more by default. So we don't need the synthesis of it.

Speaker B: We don't need the synthesis of it. Yeah. But we've got the real thing that we're in the potential to buy something.

Speaker A: Gaming is the synthesis of that. And I think that. Right. So the buying of things in the gaming environment, to me is that synthesis.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, I think we might have talked about this at some point. What?

Speaker B: Well, it just kills me. We're just training.

Speaker A: Oh, I've. I definitely written about this about like the, the training of the young consumer is to. To be a gambling addict. Yeah. Well, no, not to be. I need to be a consumer.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You'll learn to consume and you learn to online shop and your first experiences by. Through gaming now, like, um. And I've written and spoken a lot about that specifically in a bunch of our Roblox coverage.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, anyway, uh, dopamine sites get on them.

Speaker B: It's interesting what trends make their way over. Um, you know, from Korea and from Japan like this. This is one that I don't. I don't know if it will make its way over.

Speaker A: Yeah. I, um, mean we've got Studio Ghibli.

Speaker B: Uh, exactly.

Speaker A: Stores now. Uh, that's something that is opening up, I guess, pretty, uh, soon. We've got a.

Speaker B: That's pretty cool.

Speaker A: That's pretty cool.

Speaker B: I'm into that. The number one, I have to say, like the Giblification thing that happened, I think that was. That paved the way for this actually.

Speaker A: Yeah, probably. I could see that. Like the, the image trend on ChatGPT.

Speaker B: Yeah. It was a cultural moment that drew a lot of awareness to it. But

Speaker A: the last thing I'll say, and right as we wrap, um, we are our culture now especially I think the gross generalization. But I think Gen Z in particular is they're coming into their peak spending years. Um, they're getting older, they have more discretionary, uh, income. Uh, they can spend those dollars on whatever they feel like it. Um, they grew up with anime. They're spending money on anime.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: Things are like $500 million global box office for things Like Demon Slayer, you have the worldwide phenomenon and things like K pop Demon Hunters, um, like the rise of experiential, like Asian dining all over the place. I mean this is anecdotal at best, but uh, these conveyor belt sushi bars are popping up all over the place now. Um, but I think it's just fueled by folks who are just primed to ready to spend dollars on it. And um, we're just. Yeah, there's an audience now for this specifically. Um, and so yeah, not everything leaps over from in Asian culture.

Speaker B: Artwork does, music.

Speaker A: Yeah, potentially. I mean stray kids is huge right now. But if you look at what does leap over when it leaps over, it has a big cultural impact. And yeah, maybe dopamine sites is the.

Speaker B: I don't know about that.

Speaker A: I'm the guy who's been saying live just because livestream happen in Asia won't happen here.

Speaker B: So yeah, uncut Gen Z.

Speaker A: All right, on that note, uh, is that it? All right, thanks for watching this episode of Future Commerce. If this conversation sparks something for you, like follow, subscribe everywhere where you get your podcast. It helps more people to join the conversation. If you want to bring more future commerce into your world, we have beautiful print books. Go check them out@FutureCommerce.com and we have, uh, our brand new book, it's called strata, uh, 10 aesthetics that are impacting culture and commerce. You can go get that@FutureCommerce.com shop. And remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We will see you next time.