The AI Backlash Just Got Real

Speaker A: People are going to go off the rails if you push them too hard.

Speaker B: People see AI as the boogeyman.

Speaker A: If a male CEO just said, I spend three hours a day with my kids, I feel like they will be applauded.

Speaker B: People are like, yeah, but she had her kids 5 circus, so what? If you could afford to, you would as well.

Speaker A: You can't rebrand a shoe company into an AI company.

Speaker B: Hey everyone, just a quick check in. There are a lot of you listening right now who are not subscribed and it would really mean a lot to us if you could just go ahead and hit that subscribe button wherever you are listening. By you subscribing, it gives us that opportunity to get more visibility, more high quality stories, more high quality partnerships, more holiday guests, and of course, more live shows in more cities. So if you have not hit subscribe, do that now. Thank you.

Speaker A: Yo everyone, welcome back. Brand new Tecish. It is me, Michael. And I'm back once again with the

Speaker B: Amazing Abidesi that's actually on my passport. Amazing Abidesi. It's my full name.

Speaker A: Do I get royalty rates for that? Because I came up with that M. I'm pretty certain I've said that more times than on this earth alive. Nobody said that more than me. So, uh, let's get started with a slightly concerning wave of violence has gone down. Friday, April 10th, a 20 year old named Daniel Moreno Gamma, he traveled to SF from Texas and for a Molotov cocktail at uh, Sam Altman's house. The CEO of OpenAI. He then went to OpenAI headquarters and tried to like break in and he got found of a gun and other kind of flammable materials. He's been arrested and charged. They're saying that he had an acute mental health crisis. But then he's also been a part of a discord group called Pause AI, which I'd never heard of, but you can kind of tell what their view is. He had a, as they always do, not a memo. What's the word I'm looking for? Manifesto.

Speaker B: Manifesto video.

Speaker A: Essentially saying, listen, we've got to stop these guys because AI is going to kill us all. And then separately, a week later, apparently there was a shooting that happened near Sam Altman's house, uh, between two 23 year olds and 25 year olds. They don't know if incidents are linked. And essentially they're saying with this Moreno Gamma guy that if there's evidence to show that he was attempting to coerce policy, essentially say, let me kill Sam Altman to Make changes. He could be charged with domestic terrorism. This is kind of crazy because there was another incident completely unrelated where a young factory worker, uh, tried to blow up a factory recently. Well, he did. He set fire to. Let me get the notes.

Speaker B: Kimberly Clark set fire, correct?

Speaker A: Yeah. And apologies. Actually Almost a near 30 year old. This is based out of California. And he went on Facebook and says, listen, if you ain't going to pay us, we're going to burn this down. And I think they pay their staff members $18 an hour. And it just seems like there's been a switch now, right. In what people consider to be an appropriate level of retribution for their grievances regarding corporations, regarding AI Obviously we had the Luigi Mangioni situation where he shot the insurance company CEO. Um, is this unnatural consequences for corporate misbehavior? Not in a sense of this is deserved, but in the sense that you push people so far and there's going to be a few percentage of people who are mentally unstable who take things in a direction that shouldn't be taken. What say you? Does this, does this feel. Are we going to get more of this? Basically is what I'm trying to ask.

Speaker B: Are we going to get more of this? So this sort of collection of stories and thank God that no one was hurt or injured because you know, history shows us this is not the way that we create systemic change. I mean, at least you're not going to win over any more fans if you're resorting straight to violence. This reminds me of when I was like a really young kid. When I was really young, um, in the 90s, there were a series of incidents. This is in the US where I was at the time of post office workers shooting and killing their fellow workers. Right. So to the point where if you watched late night shows, you know, the opening sketch, like the little stand up set would literally make jokes about people going postal. Like it almost, it became m. A phrase.

Speaker A: That's the origin of the phrase. I didn't even know that was the origin. I know the phrase, but I didn't know really that crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah. Going postal. Like this idea of someone, you know, almost really practically losing their mind and behaving in this crazy, violent, berserk way. But the origins of it were these series of violent attacks where people, postal workers who were criticizing working conditions, stress, overwork, exhaustion, burnout, would take it out, you know, on, on their fellow employees, on, on their managers, et cetera. When I started hearing about this, I was like, oh my gosh, like, is this the same Sort of trend playing out and it, it is a very US worker reaction, right? This, you know, in a country where it's quite easy to access guns and like other weapons, you know, just walk up to Walmart, get your supplies and then go to the place that makes you angry. I don't think, unfortunately, based on history, it's going to be the last that we see of this. Like people see AI, you know, going back to the first story as the boogeyman, it's coming for their jobs. It's, it's also going to destroy the world, you know, based on the sci fi they've read and stuff like that. So, you know, the outlet of this fears and anxiety is to go straight to the source. I don't know. What do you think?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the AI CEOs have fed into that narrative of like AI is going to be so monumental we're going to need UBI Universal Basic Income because no one's going to have a job. And it suited them because it's led them to raise enormous amounts of capital. Because if AI is this game changer, then you really should be investing everything you can into it. Right? So they have fed into that narrative and people are listening. People are scared. They're scared that they're going to have no job. They're scared that data centers are going to destroy the environment as well. And they're scared that there could be something where AI goes out of control. Right. This is the sci fi that we've all been raised with. But it's not something that the AI CEOs have played down.

Speaker B: It's not the responsibility of like us as a public to protect, I um, don't know, industry leaders, right? Like they've got private security, they can do that very well themselves. It is our responsibility as participants of a democracy to push our legislators and power figures to call these industry leaders to account if we feel they're behaving in a way that threatens, you know, human existence or in a way that feels unethical. You know, I think it's also kind of like worth touching on how the Internet does radicalize people. And it's not just about, you know, the old fashioned ways of come and join our religious extremist group and wrong the rights, right, the wrongs of the past. The Internet is pulling people into extremist views with regards to, you know, human existentialism. And I'm not saying that it's extremist to believe that AI is a threat to humanity. I think that's just a Known fact. Right. That's just something that's accepted. Thropik just in the last few weeks has talked about shutting down some of its large language models, uh, because they thought that they could be dangerous. And we've seen it happen before. So many companies have done the same. Meta shut down a contracts app, we get it, but I think the Internet is a place that still is such a wild, wild west. And what's happening about that, what's being done about that? There's no pressure on the likes of, you know, Google, Reddit, 9gag. I don't know how you dissect this, but there's no pressure on them to, like, be more active in policing it. If there was a slum down the road from where I live in London, where known extremists were meeting and colluding and planning acts of violence, my local police wouldn't just let that place thrive. They wouldn't just let these groups continue to meet and continue to plot. Right. They would, like, shut it down. But in the virtual world, when these conversations unfold, whether you call it right to free speech or whatever, like, we just let it happen. So I do think that we should be putting pressure on legislators around that. And then the second thing I think is we kind of need to remember that there's power in collective action. And that's where that online convening sort of like starts to fray. Like if all the people that were meeting on the message boards talking about their discontent with OpenAI actually started marching or, uh, actually started, like, sharing information with people, getting people to delete their accounts, disengage with the platform, or at the very least, you know, push the platform to higher safety standards, whatever it is. We could be having a very different conversation right now. They could be engaging people in this conversation in a different way. I think there are some countries that do industrial action really well. Like, you always hear about France when they're trying to, like, make bread more expensive or like, make wine more expensive. Everyone's just like, I'm gonna go to

Speaker A: work the pension age. You know, increase the pension age.

Speaker B: Increase the pension age. Exactly. I mean, you know, this is a country that invented syndicalism and they're really not letting history down. But they're just like, nope, we're not going to work.

Speaker A: No one's interesting, because that, that is often collective violence. Because they do riot. They do, it does manifest in rioting. Always the recent one with the pension age, they burned that city down. I mean, not in a good way, obviously. I don't support that. But like, you know, that's an interesting phenomenon where we look upon, yeah, we look at a riot maybe as a political act. Mhm. Yeah, it's difficult. I agree with what you said about platforms monitoring not the mental health of their users, but like if you can clearly see someone spiraling, there should be some guardrails there. And the Internet not only attracts mentally ill people, it creates more mentally ill people, especially with like short form content. Because I would say this person has been radicalized. And I say that in a way where, although AI is concerning, it's, it's, it's not there yet. We don't need to be doing all of this like AI hasn't led to that much, that many layoffs. We're not talking, talking about a situation where 10 million people have lost their jobs. You're probably talking maybe like, you know, it's debatable, 50 to 100,000 people maybe have had an AI related layoff here. So I think this person has been radicalized and was mentally unwell. Um, the other thing with the factory situation, that's a bit different because that was primarily related to pay and like living quality. But yet again the answers are unions, the answers are government policy changes and unfortunately the people do feel powerless. And you're going to get a few people who are crazy enough to do something silly like this. But this can't be the answer.

Speaker B: I'm going to make a prediction. The best indicator of the future is the past. M so what's going to happen is we are going to see more and more AI teams under threat from these agents of havoc. But they're increasingly going to start appealing to members within these teams. People in these teams are, as a result of the increased violence, attacks threat, are going to start putting pressure on leadership to say like, hey, maybe these people have a point, like are we doing enough to protect the safety of human beings? Are we doing enough to like consider the existential threat? What should we do? Very similar to like women's issues, EDI issues or DEI issues, whatever you want to call it now, AI companies are just going to start inventing teams like safety and existential whatever, threat teams, right? And it's going to be like the new hr, the new csr. There's going to be an employee resource group that's formed around it. There's going to be some talks, there's going to be some workshops. We're going to reach like peak AI Safety, Protect Humanity forum, um, moment in history, I don't know, maybe 810 years. If the bubble doesn't burst before then, and then if AI is still making people enough money, they're going to be like, this is costing us too much money. I can't be bothered. There'll be like a huge new market rebound, reset, and then that will all come crumbling down and no one will care anymore. And then we'll be worried about the space colonization companies because we pissed off some aliens. Something like that.

Speaker A: You know what? I disagree with your prediction, actually. I think it's a clever one. I just feel like they are, uh, more likely to put money into PR. I saw a stat here about how 10% of, only 10% of Americans are more excited than worried about AI. So only 10% are pro AI. And I don't think there's been a technology wave that's been this unpopular. When the Internet first came about, people were like, yo, this is it.

Speaker B: You know, people were distrustful too.

Speaker A: They were distrustful, but I don't think there was a paranoia to this extent. It was more like, I don't want to put my credit card on Internet. Am I going to get frauded? But the Internet was very popular. People were like, oh, this is a brand new world. I'm surfing the web. Right. You know, all the kind of cliche ads. And I think there will be money invested in PR in order to have to demonstrate what is AI good for, why it's good for everybody and why we need to invest so much more. Because everybody is not in favor of a data center getting built in their area. Everybody is worried about potential layoffs for their careers. And it clearly does seem obvious that this will benefit a few. Will they put money into, like, teams that will apparently be like safety teams? They could do, but they're not going to throttle the innovation. They're not going to throw anything that does that gets in the way of making money.

Speaker B: Yeah, it would be performative. But I like your take. So you're thinking more go down below, like, thank you for smoking. Thank you for smoking. Vibes, lobbying.

Speaker A: They're gonna throw money into PR and be like, yo, this is why AI is great for you. Adverts, TV adverts, they're gonna probably like bribe creators with money and throw. Yeah, like, you know, this is, you know, we'll see. But, um, hopefully, you know, there's no

Speaker B: more AI for Good Open AI's new campaign. Hopefully there's no more in Africa.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that part too. Okay, cool. So switching taxes. Let's talk about Emma Greed. So Emma Greed is the CEO Of Skims? No, she's a co founder of Skims, CEO of Good American, which is the other Kardashian jeans brand denim company. Black woman, shark tank shark. And she's a 43 year old mother of four. She recently had an article, I think she's promoting a book and she mentioned in an article, three hours a day is enough for her kids basically. And that essentially she's trying to be the mum of the moments where like, I'm going to be there for the major moments. I'm going to be there for, you know, the good times. But like, yeah, I'm not here to plan out my kids day to uh, you know, a micromanagement level where yeah, there's almost this pressure now that you have to, you know, put them in classes and the kids can't be bored. We've got to do this. And she's like, listen, I need to do things that are going to fill up my cup. And people are saying that it's tone deaf because of she obviously has the resources to have the nannies and the chefs and whatever. And clearly she m doesn't hide away from the fact that she's rich. Her net worth is $400 million and she's been quite transparent and she does have all of those things like chefs and housekeepers. Yeah, but what say you, like, if a male CEO came out and just said, um, I spend three hours a day with my kids, I feel like they will be applauded. I think it would be like, yeah, for sure, Bezos. Like, wow.

Speaker B: Three hours.

Speaker A: Three hours. Three hours. Like so it's just interesting what gets, what gets backlash and what doesn't. Like, what did this story, you know, bring to you?

Speaker B: She's a person that certain people love to hate. But I think more often than not people just admire her and like, the reality is most people want to be her. Probably even the people who are hating on her. Right. Like, who would want to be someone who is, you know, ambitious, business savvy. Yeah. You know, focused on goals, has reached international acclaim. You know, think of who's in her contacts list. If she sees it, she gets it. If she wants it, she achieves it. And you know, she's actually sharing the playbook for it. Uh, a lot of people are out there making money, they ain't telling us how to do it. They're not writing books, they're not getting on social media and like giving a bit of insight. The fact that she's actually like trying to like give people a bit of insight into how she actually does it and in her life. Like, if you don't want to be her, then you don't have to listen, you don't have to pay attention. But if you want to get a bit more insight, then just shut up and take notes. You know, ready it down. She's only a few years older than me, and I'm blown away by what she's been able to achieve. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of privilege in the conversation, right? Like, she's married to an incredibly wealthy man. She had children through surrogates. She didn't necessarily need to, like, take time off the way other women who would have actually, like, been pregnant with four kids and had, had those children might have had to do. And I'm not trying to diminish or judge in any way. I'm just trying to say that, like, the circumstances of which she has reached where she is are not necessarily universally applicable to everyone. But to your point, gender standards and stereotypes are just so alive and well still in 2026. And, and it's this double standard again. Like, if a woman is successful but she doesn't have a family, they'll be like, oh, well, you know, she. She didn't even have. She didn't even get married. She didn't have kids. She's probably one of those, like, crazy cat lady people like, oh, wow. Yeah, exactly. And then if a woman, like, gets married, has kids, stay out of the workforce, like, oh, well, women fought and died so that you could have, you know, the right to work. And now you're just sitting on your ass on the sofa, blah, blah, blah. And then if you're trying, you're like, well, listen, I'm going to build an ambitious career, but I am also going to be a mother. I am going to do that. But something's got to give. It's like, you don't care about your kids, so.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Shut up. Like, you know, just do your thing and let people live. Like, yeah, but people do love to hate her. And I think, you know, criticism I've heard of her time and time again is, um, that people almost feel that, like, she's like, oversimplifying it and, and she glosses over the privilege that she's afforded and able to do. And, you know, you know, maybe she does. But I'm sorry if you think that someone that's, like, run all these companies and has this lifestyle isn't going to lean into all the resources they have available to build the life that they want Like, Kim Kardashian also said, kids via surrogate. When people are like, yeah, but she had her kids by surrogate. So what? If you could afford to, you would as well. You think I'm not going to pay someone else, like, go through that process so I can stay in a workforce that has proven to punish me for leaving it. Like, and, you know, you don't know what medical stuff's going on. Like, we have no idea. So it's all these assumptions that we make and project. And the reality is there are people listening right now who are just like, oh, well. But abides, you wouldn't do that. Or I like Abidesti. She's so honest, she's so real. You only know what I have let you know about me. You don't know what else is propping this up. You know, I've got a husband that's willing to cook dinner. I've got a husband that's willing to, you know, empty the dishwasher, do cooking. But we're also two people who can let our flat turn into an absolute mess. Like, I could see the Daily Mail headline now. Like, at, ah, face value, she looks, uh, shot's fired. But it's like, but can you imagine, like, Daily Mail comes into your house. Daily Mail comes into the house, takes a photo of, you know, your laundry that you still haven't put away. You this, and you're like, oh, so and so tech CEO who can't be bothered to put her laundry away. And then imagine the comment section like, she's a slob, she's disgusting. Why is she standing on a stage doing a keynote speech when she can't even hang her laundry? And it's just like, because this is reality. It's ugly, it's messy, it's complicated. Like, if you want to win, there's only so many hours in a day. Something's got to give. How are you supposed to do eight hours of childcare or whatever the hell these mad people think she's supposed to be doing whilst also running multimillion dollar global businesses and standing on these stages, giving you the advice that you're soaking up, appearing on the TV shows that you are binge watching? Uh, do you think she's supposed to stop sleeping? Is she supposed to stop sleeping? And what, keep her children up all night? Because she just got home from work and now she needs to spend the required X hours a day? Three hours is a lot, yo. Three hours is. I need to spend three hours with my husband. Three hours with my husband. Like, I've been with this guy 15 years of my life, like three hours a day, guaranteed. I don't even see. I, uh, can't think of anyone other than me, myself and I that is guaranteed that much time. What about you?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, she runs or co runs five companies, so what the hell.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Are people thinking, do you know what I mean, in terms of how she lives her life? I think also the Internet is, uh, this thing where we're eavesdropping on conversations that we're not really meant to be part of. So like, exactly. This conversation is targeted. Yeah, this conversation is targeted at a certain kind of person, is probably targeted at super, uh, successful and super driven mothers who are trying to balance exactly their drive to build massive wealth and raise their children. And she's saying you shouldn't feel bad if you're not, you know, there for every little thing. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's a conversation for certain people. It's not a conversation for everybody. That's okay.

Speaker B: Mom being there. I'm fine. My mom had to work. My parents split up when I was a baby.

Speaker A: No, yeah, go on, carry on. Sorry.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, but I was just gonna say, like, my mom wasn't there for me and there was, you know, only a few moments, well, maybe more than a few, where that hurt. But over the long arc of time, I recognize what that sacrifice was. And we have a fantastic relationship now.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I do think she is railing against the over parenting culture, which I think does need a bit of a pushback. Um, I was reading about, you know, there was always these articles about South Korea and the falling birth rates in South Korea and like, why is it happening? Apparently one thesis which sounds a bit true is that people tend to have one kid because South Korean society is so competitive in terms of like, your children need to have a certain amount of education. They need after class schooling. They need, they need this, they need that, they need to be the perfect child that you can only invest so much and only have one child with that level of investment. So it's like we're in a culture now where even me, like, I don't have kids. But you know, talking about having kids one day and there's plans of like, yo, how many languages should they learn? And how many things? And it's like, to a certain extent, sometimes kids needs to just. It's okay for them to be bored. It's okay for them to run around a little park and just have an apple in their hand and run around like it's getting A bit much. And I think she probably is in the epicenter of that culture. Somebody who brought wealth and means. And I watched her on the Breakfast Club and she's like, it's okay for kids to be bored. It's okay for them to figure out something fun for them to do. Like, it doesn't need to be like six to nine after school, five to seven. And if you're doing that, then I can imagine that what she's saying makes no sense because you're like, well, my kids need to be optimized to the maximum. And I think that's a culture that is relatively quite new. Like, most of us didn't have a world like that. Especially if you're raised by immigrant parents or from working class parents. That wasn't possible. So, yeah, lots of interesting points. The other thing about her, uh, that I really respect, but I also find slightly concerning is that even people who are like, mega wealthy and mega successful want to be known. That's the interesting thing. She was the behind the scenes person, right behind the Kardashians. The Kardashians were the kind of content creators. And she was the business person who came in with operations and made them, you know, taught them how to run a business and help them scale up. She was essentially the. I hate to use that word, but the brains of the operation. Right, the business brains.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: But then it's like, you've got 400 million net worth. Like when, uh, she started getting, like, really public. No, do what you want. Of course. You know, I love seeing black women come, come at her and tell their truth and give us her knowledge. But it's like the famous people want to be rich and the rich people want to be famous. It's like everyone. Do you get what I'm saying? It's like, yeah, it's like, I'm more.

Speaker B: I know I'll be keeping my mouth shut.

Speaker A: Let's do, let's do a podcast. Like, why, like, why do you need

Speaker B: to be too much?

Speaker A: Like, because now you're getting headache. People criticizing how you raise your children. It's like, you didn't need that. You're worth like a boatload of money. But it's like everybody wants what they don't have. So I don't know.

Speaker B: Do you find that the cost of attention.

Speaker A: Yeah. Do you find that to be concerning? Like, that everyone who has the. Has what we dream of, which is that you are anonymous and rich and now you want to be famous and rich too.

Speaker B: I think there's like, in this particular case, there must be like, you know, potentially like a hedonic treadmill vibe happening, because if the people that are in your WhatsApp groups are literally on your TV all the time with their own reality shows and their red carpet appearances, you will start to feel a little bit left out, right? And you know, her co founders and collaborators are some of the most visible people, whether you engage with their content or not. So I think in this particular case, it is also, you know, must be so difficult to even want to try and like, stay out of that spotlight because everyone you're around is always there and maybe you're even slightly like, pulled in without meaning to be, just because they're being followed by cameras all the time. But I do, I do find it fascinating, you know, because there are so many people who have attention, who don't want it, right? Like, who hate that they have to, who almost feel like this yoke, you know, on there that they only monetize through the content that they create, but they would be desperate to switch off, desperate to stop posting, desperate to not have to do these branded posts. And here you have someone that's built Money Empire without having to be the face of it, without having to put her butt in those jeans or whatever it is, and who's still choosing to be out there. And, uh, yeah, it is fascinating. I just think the cult of celebrity is like, incredibly magnetic. People want to be important, they want to feel important, they want to win those awards. They want to feel basically everyone is a little insecure. You can get have all the money and you can still feel like that, you know, is it enough? When will it be enough? I don't know. I can't answer that for her. But I knew this was true when I saw Gozoma Saint John on Housewives.

Speaker A: Oh, boy, talk that talk. Yeah. I was like, that's the head of Apple, former M head of Apple, former head of Uber marketing, former head of like. And it's like, and I'm not even going to chatting to you. Like, I'm starting to argue with people on the show. And I'm like, these people shouldn't even be talking to you. Like, you know, you know what I mean?

Speaker B: And I know people are going to come for me.

Speaker A: Yeah, but you're right, people are going

Speaker B: to come for us, by the way, because people love Housewives anyway. So I'm not going to comment on the show. I don't watch the show. But what I know is when I saw the trailer and I saw her there, I was like, rah. I hope they're paying you well, because I just. What was that? You're like an exec, A chief exec of a big tech. And now you. Okay, so I'm sure a Housewives fan can explain this to you, but that for me was like, I see that as a downwards move.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Personal brand wise.

Speaker A: I can't. I can't explain.

Speaker B: That would be like me being on, like, Old People Love island or some shit. Like, why would I do that? Like, right. I have the intellectual prowess to, like, do things that are better.

Speaker A: I know, but the way you rationalize it would be like, oh, this is about getting your message to an audience that doesn't know you. This is about message.

Speaker B: You're just fighting and screaming and snagging weaves. I'm sorry.

Speaker A: Swing, you say KPI roi. You know what I'm saying? You're, um, doing the. You know what I mean? You're dropping gems.

Speaker B: Genuinely, what career lessons have come out of Housewives?

Speaker A: I don't know. Like, maybe she watches the show and just thinks, I watch the show and I like the show and I would like to get my name out there. You know, people are human too. Right? You know, that's what it is. And I think I've been there where, like, I've had massive business success, but I wasn't really working on my brand. I hadn't really posted that much on Instagram or whatever. And I'd be walking into certain rooms and I see people clamoring around other people. The deep demon in my mind was like, your business is bigger than theirs. Why are they going around them? Like, so you just walk. You know what I mean?

Speaker B: So that's the way.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Right? They're like, everyone's like, my business is yo revenue.

Speaker B: I'm printing paper.

Speaker A: Yo, don't make me bring my accountant in a room so you can tell everyone what I'm doing right now. So you walk into that room and you feel like, I'm not getting the attention that I deserve. And that's the ego. That's ego. Emma Green might have walked into a room with the Kardashians and just saw people going absolutely nuts over the Kardashians. And she's thinking, but you know what? Like, I'm the brains of this operation. Like, why am I. Why is no one showing me love and that that's all it takes? I'm not saying that's what happened, but I'm just. I can imagine that happens. Or person.

Speaker B: It's also. It's Also, what you can convert attention to. And who knows what grand plans these individuals might have, right, in terms of reinvesting in their community, building futures for their children, other industries they are yet to break into, but want to. Maybe they want to be TV producers, movie producers, maybe they want to be, I don't know, goddesses, whatever. Who knows what empires they want to build and have yet to. They're still young, they got time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Who knows what islands they want to be invited to, yachts they wanted to be invited to, I don't know, island

Speaker A: we don't know about. We don't want to go to no islands anymore. The island thing is done. The island thing is done.

Speaker B: But what I was going to say is what the first order effect is attention. The second order effect is power and influence. And I can really relate to that because if I think of like the energy I was given in like 2020, when suddenly every, every brand and business and publishing company and, you know, organization under the sun needed to align itself to blackness as effectively and as efficiently as possible. And you know, deals that used to take me months to close, literally two emails between me and the CEO, uh, yeah, done. Boom. Five figure deal signed. I was like, this is what literally, literally give us your bank details and same kind of thing, like invited to speak on conferences like Hillary Clinton, like crazy impressive. People were sharing the bill like, you know, with me, like sharing the stage, sharing the roster. And when you're in those rooms, you're. You're rubbing shoulders of people who are like, oh yes, and abidesi what's your take on this? And it makes you feel important and it makes you feel powerful and you realize how, you know, enticing it is to feel that important and to have your voice matter in those circles in those spaces. And, um, you know, it's not as warm in the shadows, right? When the shining, when the sun ain't shining on you, you don't necessarily feel as powerful, as important. I've had to do a lot of work on myself to recognize that obviously my voice still matters, whether, you know, a million billion people are listening to it or just Michael, my co host and my loyal listeners. But yeah, I think there's also something in that, where people see that attention can be a commodity that's converted into power and influence.

Speaker A: It's distribution too. Right? You know, I think personal brand is now probably the only moat left in terms of like, she probably thinks to herself, I don't want to have to partner up with another Kardashian to Do a brand. I want to be the brand. I can start my own. I can be the face of it.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, right, MBA school.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And that's. And that's distribution. You know, you don't need to pay Facebook ads and you don't need to have a content creator partner up with you. You can be that, too. So I do get the logic of it. It's just very interesting when you're worth a lot of money, that, that you're making that turn or, you know, they

Speaker B: were like shows, Michael, I'm a celebrity. Get me out of here. Come to the jungle.

Speaker A: So I actually got approached to be. Not on that, of course, but I got approached to be on a few reality shows randomly. I don't know how they're doing it. I think they're looking on Instagram to see anyone who's got like 10, 20k followers. And I got hit up and I read the picture of it and I was like, I don't think I will ever do this because these reality shows are set up to make you look foolish. And I know my personality is kind of like, if you're listening to America, we say. Like. We say. Exactly. We say Marmite, Right? So Marmite in the UK is you either love it or hate it. And I know my personality. You put me in a certain situation with certain people. I'm not going to hold my tongue. I don't want to be broadcasted on national tv and then my life is ruined. The absolute upside and downside is not worth the risk. The downside of going on a reality show and you become the villain or you become the person who is through the center of the controversy, and you're in the Daily Mail. And I was like, hell, no. I like my life. I'm good. I have a nice business, I got great friends, I got a little bit of money. I don't need it. I'm sorry. If I was a young, hungry kid, 18 years old, yeah, maybe I'll do it, but not now, not in my 30s. And I got a little, little thing to my name. No, I don't need that. Um, so, yeah, what about you? Would you do it? Do it?

Speaker B: Of course not.

Speaker A: Which one, though? Is there any shows that you would do? What, the old show from the 90s, Gladiator. Uh, the competing one still on.

Speaker B: Thank you very much.

Speaker A: Is it back on?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's still on. Yeah.

Speaker A: That used to be my favorite show. That used to be my favorite show back in the day, but then I realized some of that was real problematic. Like the black guy was called Shadow. Like, guys, what we doing here? There was a couple of those things back in the day where it was really racialized. Like the black Power Ranger was black and the yellow Power Ranger was Asian. I know what you guys were doing. And then you had man on gladiators calling himself Shadow. Like, like, trust me, man, subconsciously, like, you're not. We're trying it, man. Hidden messaging. But anyways, I digress. Yo, everyone, thank you for listening. That's been this week's techies. Find us on YouTube @TechishPod, on Instagram @TechishPod. All good podcast apps and we will catch you next week. Peace. Bye. Bye. Let's go. Let's go. Patreon. Patreon, people. All right, cool. So let's talk about allbirds. The shoe that was the once the tech, you know, darling shoe of choice. It was a tech darling. It was a unicorn. It's now gone bust. And essentially I think the assets of the shoe brand have been sold to like, another company, but the actual entity is now pivoting into an AI compute company called Music AI with what domain expertise. To watch the full episode, subscribe@, uh, patreon.com techish you'll get access to all full length episodes. No adverts, the chance to submit your questions into the show, and early bird discounted tickets to our live shows. Subscribe for as little as $5 a month.