Episode 90 features Craig Burgess, a marketing man, a creative designer, and someone who is creating things for the right reasons now that he’s seen the light, which we’ll discuss along with plenty of buzzwords that we don’t like; such as thought leader, guru, content creator, and well, where have all the mavericks and renegades gone?
Throughout the conversation, we discuss:
- The Authentic Self
- Snake Oil Sales
- The Content Wheel
- Playing the game
- Consistency
- Thought leaders
- Art vs. Content
- Intent
- Algorithm
- Professional Contrarians
- Creativity
- Recovering your attention span
- And much more
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
The Wednesday Audio (Yeah Wednesdays)
Craig’s Cabinet of Meagre Offerings (This Is Not Value)
Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.
–End Show Notes Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:03 – 00:00:27:41
Agent Palmer
Previously on agent Palmer dot com. My love for Jurassic Park series is anything but extinct. 30 years on, Brooklyn Beauty’s Margo Donohue’s book is a love letter film study. And if you heard last episode, I’ve become a fan of Star Trek. At least the original series. But I don’t think I’ll be joining cam at a convention just yet. This is The Palmer Files episode 90 with Craig Burgess, a marketing man, a creative designer, and someone who is creating things for the right reasons.
00:00:27:43 – 00:01:12:32
Agent Palmer
Now that he’s seen the light, which we’ll discuss along with plenty of buzzwords that we don’t like, such as thought leader, guru, content creator, and well, where have all the mavericks and renegades gone? Are you ready? Let’s do the show.
00:01:12:37 – 00:01:30:38
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Polymer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic. Also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 90th episode is a man in marketing called Craig. Craig Burgess, to be exact. He does marketing for Genius Division, a marketing agency. And when he’s not doing that, he’s creating stuff for his two sub stacks. This is not value.
00:01:30:39 – 00:01:57:13
Agent Palmer
And yeah, Wednesday’s I met Craig on Twitter and that’s where, as you’ll hear shortly, our digital and creative marketing perspectives aligned a bit. You’ll hear about that alignment, but you’ll also hear us discuss the content. We’ll the authentic self consistency thought leaders and how the world probably doesn’t need another one of those or even another guru. Plus, we dive into content and algorithms, curation, attention span, and much, much more.
00:01:57:18 – 00:02:17:54
Agent Palmer
Before we get going, remember that if you want to discuss this episode as you listen or afterwards, you can always find the contact information for Craig and myself in the show notes. You can visit either of Craig’s two sub stacks for his content or for more about him at either. Yeah wednesdays.substack.com. That’s y e a h Wednesdays or you can visit.
00:02:17:55 – 00:02:42:01
Agent Palmer
This is not value.substack.com. This is not value.substack.com. Don’t forget you can see all my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. And of course email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com. So without further ado, let the conversation begin.
00:02:42:06 – 00:02:52:58
Agent Palmer
Craig. It is very rare in this day and age that I find somebody online who I basically agree with.
00:02:53:03 – 00:02:54:49
Craig Burgess
And you just flattering me already, are you?
00:02:54:50 – 00:03:33:28
Agent Palmer
I think I am, because I see you and what I in what I would, describe as ranting on Twitter about the authentic self and the. Well, I don’t think I’ve seen you say this, doing things for the right reason. Like, creating content for maybe creating content sake. Not to make money. And, and I as a, you know, podcaster and as a blogger for over a decade, that is not making money.
00:03:33:30 – 00:04:02:02
Agent Palmer
Like, I just want to share things with people, and I am who I am. I, I, I applaud you, and I try not to retweet everything I see of yours because I’m like, people are going to think I’m stalking him, but like I do tend to agree with, where you come from and I, I, I want to tell you that while I don’t maybe interact with everything like I 100% agree with all of it.
00:04:02:07 – 00:04:11:31
Craig Burgess
Now, anybody who listens to this, they’re going to go, right, I need to check this Craig out on Twitter. And they’re going to look at it and go, oh, well, that’s not that interesting, is it?
00:04:11:35 – 00:04:19:24
Agent Palmer
Well, I there are there are too many people who are snake oil salesmen for lack of a better term.
00:04:19:28 – 00:04:21:38
Craig Burgess
I agree, I think that’s the correct term to use.
00:04:21:50 – 00:04:59:20
Agent Palmer
And I just, I’ve, I’ve been a quote unquote consultant for people that were looking to either get into podcasting or, blogging or content. And they are always astounded when I go, when I sit down with them, I listen to their story and I go, you don’t want to start a podcast because everybody they’ve talked to has said you should start a podcast, podcasts or in that’s what you do or like, you should start this, that and I, I’d love to tell you it’s ego and like I don’t want more competition for my show.
00:04:59:20 – 00:05:07:10
Agent Palmer
But I think generally speaking. People that follow fail.
00:05:07:15 – 00:05:16:09
Craig Burgess
Yeah, I have I guess we should rewind just a touch. To say what these controversial opinions are that I’m sharing.
00:05:16:14 – 00:05:28:34
Agent Palmer
I don’t think they’re controversial. I think you’re just you’re you’re you’re basically alone because there are so many people out there that are like, I have the ten things you need to do for successful content.
00:05:28:39 – 00:05:37:11
Craig Burgess
Yeah, I this I I’ll give you a tiny little bit of backstory to put to put some context to this for anybody that’s listening though. Like what the can I swear by the way.
00:05:37:13 – 00:05:38:07
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:38:12 – 00:05:59:04
Craig Burgess
I, I could choose that’s what the book, we actually talked about. I’ve got a soundboard next to me, by the way, that I may use my own amusement. That’s. Yeah. Yeah. So where to start with this, right? I, I am in market, and I am a man hollow on the person. That’s another thing that might happen as well sometimes.
00:05:59:09 – 00:06:24:25
Craig Burgess
My, voice changer. I am a man in marketing called Craig. I, run an agency, and I am objectively a market. And that is my job. So I see a lot of content, quote unquote, content, every single day of my life. I see podcast, blog posts, tweets, LinkedIn posts, email newsletters. I’m responsible for creating some of them as well.
00:06:24:39 – 00:07:05:47
Craig Burgess
So, I, I in in terms of the word content, the word content is a very loaded term for me these days, even though I, I work in it and I do advise clients just like you, I advise clients on how best to make these and things like that. I found myself at the beginning of coronavirus and in March 2020 sat there at home in lockdown, thinking, fuck, I think, I think I need another revenue stream because I had because I’d been on Twitter seeing all these posts about people talking about revenue streams and things like this, but it was a genuine fear for me.
00:07:05:47 – 00:07:23:28
Craig Burgess
I thought maybe we were going to lose business, you know, the whole world was locking down, businesses were shutting down, all that kind of thing. It was kind of a scary time for me. And I thought, I need to consider making myself well known, or at least more known than I was at the time. I had about 500 Twitter followers.
00:07:23:33 – 00:07:58:31
Craig Burgess
So the thing for me I picked just randomly was Twitter, and I began the content wheel, so to speak, okay, of writing ten tweets per day. So I was one of those people that you were talking about at the beginning of March 2020. The disingenuous people, the people who, you know, just just tweet stoicism quotes constantly to try and, inspire people on Twitter and I won’t say too much more about.
00:07:58:31 – 00:08:11:35
Craig Burgess
Yeah, because I’m sure we’ll get into it more. But I got to 5000 followers and then quit the game, so to speak, because it became. It became rubbish. I I’ll say that.
00:08:11:43 – 00:08:43:21
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I Twitter is the, the social network. I chose because as a, as a marketer, I just the moment Facebook stopped being what it was originally, the moment Facebook was like, you’re going to have to I know 100 people are following you, but you’re going to have to pay me $5 to reach ten of them, as opposed to just maybe five of them, was the moment I saw off Facebook.
00:08:43:21 – 00:09:01:40
Agent Palmer
And that was in like 2016 or something like that. I didn’t swear it off professionally, because I feel like that’s not something that you and I can do. We’re stuck based on clients or, you know, you know, if we ended up in a corporate world, you end up having to do those things, so I can’t swear it off completely.
00:09:01:40 – 00:09:25:30
Agent Palmer
But personally, I did, and I chose Twitter at that time, and, I got a lot of followers from being involved in Twitter chats, which I don’t even know if people still really do them to the extent that they were there. There was basically one happening all the time, and there were about 4 or 5 really good marketing ones.
00:09:25:41 – 00:09:55:43
Agent Palmer
But my favorite part about the marketing ones was, and this was before 2020, but I would say I always took a piss out of your 2020 persona, basically, because there would be those people that are like, oh, marketing Twitter chat. And they would be like, how do you handle, e newsletter sign ups? And somebody would be like, you have to create a funnel.
00:09:55:48 – 00:10:17:55
Agent Palmer
Like, because that’s that was the buzzword at the time. You have to create a funnel. And I would be like, you have to create good content so that people share it organically. And I, I, I just, I never played the game because I was sick of it just looking at it. Which is why I’m on the outside.
00:10:17:55 – 00:10:28:10
Agent Palmer
It’s why I, I, you know, I only got so far, but I can sleep at night. I’m not lying to anybody. And I feel great when I hit publish.
00:10:28:15 – 00:10:49:37
Craig Burgess
Yeah, I, I guess that’s where I found myself at when I was at 5000 followers. About a year and a half later, I’d spent a year and a half on Twitter, 2 or 3 hours a day, growing this following. And then I kind of took a step back at it because, you know, if you go to my Twitter now, you’ll see the pinned tweets.
00:10:49:37 – 00:11:14:38
Craig Burgess
I want to start in perfect Twitter. And it it’s yeah, it’s it’s it’s very, you know, quote unquote authentic. I had the word but I don’t know what other word to use. It’s just me basically me being me online. And I looked back at that and thinking, I have not been me online for the last year and a half, and I think I tweeted something around the time that, in fact, I think I put it on LinkedIn.
00:11:14:39 – 00:11:40:49
Craig Burgess
If I remember rightly, I tried, I tried to to word this. I don’t know whether I successfully did it. I it this is what I said something to this effect. I said that there’s two sides to professionalism. One side of it is bullshit, essentially, and the other side of it’s important. Professionalism means being good at your job, which means turning up on time, which means being truthful and honest to clients, which means doing a good job.
00:11:40:49 – 00:12:10:49
Craig Burgess
All those things. That’s professionalism. Yeah. Professionalism. Being professional online is not right in boring, sanitized content is not making boring, sanitized videos, is not making boring, sanitized podcasts. You don’t have to be professional, and often that is seen as being staid and boring. You don’t need to be professional online to be professional. Yeah. And that was kind of the the flip point for me.
00:12:10:54 – 00:12:30:00
Craig Burgess
A year and a half later life. Fucking fucking hell. What have I been doing all this time? I, I just, I didn’t get to the point where I couldn’t sleep at night, but I wasn’t one of those people who was necessarily lying. But I was finding stoicism quotes and tweeting them. But really, I believed in a lot of the stuff.
00:12:30:00 – 00:12:57:40
Craig Burgess
I believe I spoke a lot about consistency, which I still think is important, but I kind of exclusively spoke in that style of guru, basically. Nobody needs another guru. That is the the whole problem with a lot of this kind of content online, and I think has got worse in the last year. Everybody’s I hear this word all the time because I’m in marketing, thought leadership.
00:12:57:45 – 00:12:58:23
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:12:58:28 – 00:13:17:03
Craig Burgess
Everybody is trying to be a thought leader. If everybody is trying to be, a thought leader, well, nobody can be a thought leader. Canva, because there’s no leader of thoughts if everybody’s trying to do the same thing and people are trying to be leaders of thoughts, as I saw. So what I’d Twitter the other day, some guy selling, seed oil.
00:13:17:03 – 00:13:34:33
Craig Burgess
Yeah. Seed oil free. Some kind of nonsense about seed oil free. And it was selling tortilla chips that were that was free of any seed oil that he was trying to make himself into a seed oil thought leader. I thought, what the fuck is this is how how niche do you need to go on this ridiculousness of it?
00:13:34:38 – 00:13:45:47
Craig Burgess
The the best, the best way to go around this? I still think now, when I’ve seen the other side of it is to just be yourself online, but that seems to be so terrifying for so many people.
00:13:45:47 – 00:14:16:30
Agent Palmer
Well, I, I think that, there is a distinctive generation gap online for it. And most of the thought leaders are either in and around 40. They’re like younger generation X or elder millennials, right. Of which I fall into that category. And they are people that either grew up in an era before the internet and remember what it was.
00:14:16:30 – 00:14:46:34
Agent Palmer
So if you’re like me and you got on to IQ and IRC and before ehm, and then eventually ehm, and we grew up in this world where we didn’t use online to recreate ourselves, we used online to just extend ourselves. Craig, you are, I don’t know, in the dorm room next to me and I’m just you can check my ehm out of a way message to find out where I am.
00:14:46:34 – 00:15:09:03
Agent Palmer
Instead of just going out into the hall and knocking on my door. That’s just an extension of who I am and and how we used it at the time. But then there’s the generation that came after us that was like, oh, I can reinvent myself online. And it is kind of bled upward where they’re like, oh, other people are like, oh, I don’t have to be myself.
00:15:09:08 – 00:15:21:35
Agent Palmer
But at a certain point, and this is where I think it all falls through, most of the thought leaders I know that recreated themselves online get to a point where they.
00:15:21:40 – 00:15:42:56
Agent Palmer
I, I’m going to put them all down in a very bland generalization, but they’re all shit writers. If they were great writers, they could continue the charade. They could continue up the this is who I am online, and this is who I am in the real world. But at a certain point it breaks down because they’re just not that imaginative.
00:15:42:56 – 00:16:15:09
Agent Palmer
And that’s how we end up with the same cat memes and the same fortune cookie wisdom that they just Google it to try and keep up appearances as the thought leader or the guru, or my favorite. Well, I was in, tourism marketing for a while, and, I got to choose my own title, and there were a few, I’m I’m a geek, legitimately, by every sense of the word nerd, geek, dork.
00:16:15:17 – 00:16:41:50
Agent Palmer
I probably fit some. I know there’s, like, those graphics that determine what you are. I fit into every category possible. And so, like, guru was passed around like, you could be the tech guru. Jedi was passed around, and I was like, I know, know at the time my boss was calling me a web geek, and I said, I’m just going to go with that, because that’s how I get introduced when I speak.
00:16:41:55 – 00:17:08:56
Agent Palmer
So that’s just what I’m going to be. But that’s who I am, and I’m not. I’ve seen people try what you tried that behind the scenes. I don’t know how I can keep it up. It’s like, well, why do you and I, you turned a corner. Do you look back and you go, what the hell was I doing?
00:17:09:01 – 00:17:29:22
Craig Burgess
I’m to some extent I do, but I think it was. It’s a necessary journey that everybody goes through. Sure, I’m to to discover who they want to be online, which they eventually realize I’ll do. I’ll just be myself. And that’s easy. But I think it’s a necessary journey. I’ve seen it with a lot of friends, and I’ve got a lot of content friends.
00:17:29:22 – 00:17:55:35
Craig Burgess
That’s another phrase, a content creator. But I’ve got a lot of friends who make a living from making stuff and putting it online. Specifically content in all kinds of mediums. And you see the evolution all the time. You see the very professional, very, very, you know, straight forward, look at them very serious when they first begin. And then slowly the jokes start to slip in.
00:17:55:35 – 00:18:24:40
Craig Burgess
If they’re a funny person anyway, if they’re boring, they don’t do this. But if they’re a funny person, it starts to slip in. And eventually, you know, after a few years, they either quit because they’re burned out from pretending to be somebody else online. Sure. Or they change and they become themselves. I have seen that with everybody. When you get to a serious amount, followers on any medium, whatever that might be, on Twitter, it might be 50,000 100,000 followers or something like that.
00:18:24:45 – 00:18:47:32
Craig Burgess
You can only do one of two things. You can either completely detach from your online personality. This is if you want to stay sane. You can either completely detach from your online personality or be yourself because there’s no other options available to you. Like you said, you run out of cat memes and tweets and platitudes. You’ve got none of the stuff left.
00:18:47:37 – 00:19:10:04
Craig Burgess
The only thing that is in endless abundance is being you and just saying the thing that you want to say right at that point in time. And, I thought about this quite a lot because like I said, obviously I do this as a job and I try to help clients be a bit more genuine, too, and not fall into the same traps.
00:19:10:09 – 00:19:15:53
Craig Burgess
And I used to think, somebody like you familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, you’ll know what Gary Vaynerchuk is.
00:19:15:53 – 00:19:29:06
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I remember, I don’t what was it? I remember when Mashable was still like. It was breaking news. Whenever Gary said something on Mashable before they became like a pop site.
00:19:29:11 – 00:19:56:11
Craig Burgess
Yeah, I always think of somebody like Gary Vee as he’s not online generally and he always used to talk about the the idea of having a team behind him, and he was quite transparent about that. And I think his team’s like 20 or 30 probably more people now. He’s got a team behind him where he basically goes out and he might record a video, and his team chops it up and decides what to put out, and they write all his tweets, his emails, everything.
00:19:56:11 – 00:20:26:26
Craig Burgess
He doesn’t do much with his he’s online persona, so to speak. So then it begs the question, doesn’t it? Who really is that person? Like if there’s a a 30 person team behind you, carefully creating and curating, undecided and editing everything that you say online, that’s almost like a dystopian black Mirror shit future, isn’t it? You’re in, you’re in no control over your your image online.
00:20:26:31 – 00:20:45:19
Craig Burgess
It sounds good on the outside, but when you actually really think about it, how is not not really so good. I mean, it’s it’s one on one in a lot of business. He’s got a very successful social media agency on many other businesses, but the question comes, is it really him? I don’t I don’t think it is.
00:20:45:24 – 00:21:20:55
Agent Palmer
I, I also wonder like I, I, I like you also hate the word content creator. However, it’s what best describes me because blogger slash podcaster is a mouthful. But I I’ve been asked before like, what do you want to do? And while I do want to say what I’m doing like, I’d love to just keep writing and recording.
00:21:21:00 – 00:21:44:20
Agent Palmer
It would still have to be me, because at the end of the day, somebody could edit this show for me. However, I can’t give up that control. It would no longer be my show. And I have a few people look over my writing, but at the same time, I still it comes back to me after somebody takes a look at it.
00:21:44:24 – 00:22:10:46
Agent Palmer
There’s only so much control I’m willing to give up. I could never be garyvee if I want to tweet something because I watched a sporting event, a movie, or had a fun conversation, then I did, and then I’ll either share it or I won’t. That for me it’s binary. It’s not okay. I want I want to talk about the end of this game.
00:22:10:50 – 00:22:19:22
Agent Palmer
What should I say? Committee of five on my you know, like I can’t imagine what that would be like.
00:22:19:27 – 00:22:47:12
Craig Burgess
It’s the more I think about it, the more it’s it’s starting to feel very old school now that that kind of approach, whilst it saves you a ton of time getting somebody else to do your socials for you or your online creation, it it isn’t you and I. I don’t think you’re building any real value in and by passing it off to somebody else because like I said, somebody else is editing it and curating it.
00:22:47:17 – 00:23:09:37
Craig Burgess
Yeah, I think that one of the, one of the joys of the web, and really there’s not many of them left. One of the real joys of the web is that you kind of get to craft who you are online. In a good way. I don’t mean being somebody else. I don’t mean faking it. But I mean, when somebody Googles you, you get to decide what they’re going to find.
00:23:09:44 – 00:23:29:49
Craig Burgess
Yeah. Why the hell would you want somebody else in control of that? I, I, I want to that’s why I use Twitter. I want to be able to write things, and people can go to my Twitter and go, yeah, that’s what that’s what he believes in because he’s putting it on his Twitter account. I wouldn’t want to give that over to to anybody else.
00:23:29:49 – 00:23:48:49
Craig Burgess
And then the same, the same goes for the podcast that I create, the the things that I write these days, two ways. It’s all the same. When you said, I don’t know if there’s a better term than content creator, I, I just tend to use the term art art artist, any of any of those kind of things.
00:23:48:49 – 00:24:16:39
Craig Burgess
I, I think the the time is nigh the we need to take that word back and, it has a very different connotation, a very different feel to it than content. I think content is, is to, to level, to generic maybe, where when you are making it for, for the right reasons, which I think you and I do, the only term really for it is art.
00:24:16:54 – 00:24:43:16
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I would, I think the podcast would be art because I’m trying to for I guess I’m trying to resurrect the art of conversation who like, you know, I am my mother’s like, I can’t listen to your show for an hour. I’m like, yeah, but it’s just a real conversation. I know it goes all over. I know there’s a question or something you said, or I said that we will never get back to.
00:24:43:27 – 00:25:11:41
Agent Palmer
But that’s like sitting down and having coffee with somebody without having your phone to interrupt you, where you’re just both sitting in a booth looking at your phone for 20 minutes, and there was a high. And then there was a, oh, look at this. The blog, on the other hand, that I think it’s a little less art, maybe more critique, but I treat that in a way that I wrote one negative book review.
00:25:11:46 – 00:25:38:00
Agent Palmer
Now, if I don’t like a movie or a book, I just don’t write about it because I don’t need to do that. I don’t need to tell people why they won’t like it. In fact, the the the longest running draft of a blog post, which is still basically an outline, is don’t shit on that. It’s somebodys favorite. Yeah.
00:25:38:09 – 00:25:58:35
Agent Palmer
Now, outside of that, I haven’t come up with any real examples because I don’t know how to determine what’s not good because it’s good to me. And if I don’t like it, I don’t watch it. But the idea being that don’t put that book down because that might speak to somebody else, it just doesn’t speak to you. That movie isn’t for you.
00:25:58:35 – 00:26:19:52
Agent Palmer
Then maybe and. I’ll be honest, it’s been kind of like elevating in a way where it’s like, I, I don’t like that. I don’t have anything to say about that. Next. I don’t feel the need to be like, oh, I got to tell everybody this sucks.
00:26:19:57 – 00:26:40:56
Craig Burgess
I sat in a bit of a weird place, really, with that, because a lot of the things I do say online is critique. And, a lot of the things I write online is calling out the bullshit of a lot of things other people write online. And I do get those comments back from people sometimes, you know, why do you care?
00:26:41:01 – 00:27:01:05
Craig Burgess
Why? Why are you wasting your energy on this? I quite like this. You know, one of the things I always say on one of my many podcasts, I always take the piss out of atomic hop is Atomic Habits by James Clay. I’m constantly taking the piss out of it, and I am constantly taking the piss out of it on Twitter, too.
00:27:01:10 – 00:27:35:00
Craig Burgess
And. Right. I kind of agree with you too. To some extent, yes, but if it’s somebody else, if the thing was made with the right intent and artistic intent, which most movies fall under, unless we’re talking big modern Hollywood blockbusters like fast and Furious or some of the, when somebody makes it for the right intent. Yeah, I don’t think it’s right to critique it as such, but when somebody isn’t making it for the right intent in the first place, when they’re just making the thing.
00:27:35:00 – 00:27:57:55
Craig Burgess
And this is often what you really see online these days, when the thing that making online is purely made to point to another thing, to either get more sales or to get you to sign up to their email newsletter or whatever that may be. The intent wasn’t for pure, creativity. You know, to make something that was good, that wasn’t the intent.
00:27:58:04 – 00:28:22:14
Craig Burgess
Then I think it’s fair game. And you’ve you’ve got to some. Well, at least me anyway. You, I have to call out that shit because we. Oh, we are certainly slipping on some platforms too far over that way. Everybody wants to be the classic idea of a content creator, and when you really ask them what that means, they want to build a big TikTok account.
00:28:22:19 – 00:28:52:08
Craig Burgess
They don’t consider why they want to do it or how they want to do it. They don’t want to make good content. They don’t want to make art. A lot of the time, they just want to be well known online. And the if you’re doing it for the wrong intent, that’s when you slip down those rules. And, I have to call out, despite people who get in touch with me and say, you know, you’re fucking wrong or you’re wasting your time to do this, that, that there needs to be more people calling that kind of thing out online.
00:28:52:08 – 00:28:52:32
Craig Burgess
I think.
00:28:52:43 – 00:29:20:24
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I think I, I think I would if I saw it, but I think one of the things about at least and I’ll thank you YouTube, because it’s the most obvious algorithm. At the beginning of the pandemic, I fell into watching Minecraft videos, hermit craft, empires, this kind of stuff. And hermit craft is like 20 plus creators.
00:29:20:24 – 00:29:52:36
Agent Palmer
Empires is like 13. So it’s 30 some creators, some that overlap, that are creating stuff. And their popularity kind of soared during the pandemic. People were home. People could consume a little bit more than they were, but some of them got burned out and some of them went away, and some of them come back, some take breaks, they take hiatuses, they whatever, or they or they move away from the Minecraft content that they’re quote unquote known for, and they go do something else, and then maybe they come back or whatever, and all of them.
00:29:52:41 – 00:30:22:03
Agent Palmer
And this is why I don’t have a chance to call it out as much, because my algorithm is filled with these kind of people who are honest. They’ll come back and they’ll be like, I just I just needed a break. I just needed a break. And if you curate an authentic audience with your authentic voice, you can say, even though I have a million subscribers on YouTube because of Minecraft, I think I want to play Warcraft for a bit.
00:30:22:16 – 00:30:48:55
Agent Palmer
I want to step away and you can do that. And maybe those million people don’t watch your videos anymore, but they’re not going to unsubscribe. What you’ve done by being open and honest is not enough to make them go and unsubscribe to you. And so I ended up somehow surrounding myself in this bubble of what I would call authentic artists.
00:30:49:00 – 00:31:19:27
Agent Palmer
Who are making an attempt. I think that the, the, the weird thing about falling into that particular like Minecraft place is that almost all of it’s collaborative, which I end up watching with a tinge of envy. Not maybe. Maybe not a tinge. How about a huge, massive pile of envy? Because they get to make videos with each other, whatever they want.
00:31:19:27 – 00:31:49:07
Agent Palmer
They’re in a shared space, a shared universe. Whereas I’m having a wonderful conversation with you. But after this call that ends and now I’m by myself editing, and when I write, I’m, you know, writing or reviewing something else. And it I don’t have that shared space as much. And collaboration for me. Is not easy to come by.
00:31:49:12 – 00:32:05:47
Agent Palmer
And so I do kind of watch these videos. I’m like, it would be great if somehow like, there was like a podcast server and just I could be like, hey, you sure you want to want to do a thing together, isn’t it?
00:32:05:47 – 00:32:28:54
Craig Burgess
There’s an interesting term use when you was talking about about two things, because you said at the beginning, I just don’t see the kind of things that the use. So I don’t want to call it out, which is one good point. But then you also mentioned about curating your algorithm. I think to be honest, the issue is question to you.
00:32:28:58 – 00:32:52:41
Craig Burgess
I most people don’t know that they have to curate these things. Most people don’t know or understand the that they have to be careful what they not only like online, but look at online. And because the algorithm is always competing against you, you know what I mean? So the question really is, do you think most people even know you’re a techie guy?
00:32:52:41 – 00:32:58:57
Craig Burgess
You know that? But the most people even know that being manipulated to some extent by algorithm.
00:32:59:02 – 00:33:31:30
Agent Palmer
I will tell you, I am amazed by the people that should know that. Like, I understand that not everybody’s going to understand that, but in our in marketing, I’m amazed at the amount of people that don’t that that use the tools. Right. They’ll talk about AdWords or like, you know, anybody who likes this video or this Facebook page or this Twitter feed, my ad to those people so they understand how to use the algorithm.
00:33:31:35 – 00:34:03:59
Agent Palmer
But then when they become just consumers, when they take off their marketing hat, they completely forget that, right? I, I will be honest and tell you that I maybe curate my YouTube algorithm a little too much. So, for example, a buddy of mine was over and we’re all just hanging out and we were talking about the way music videos used to be, and we wanted to watch music videos.
00:34:04:04 – 00:34:32:40
Agent Palmer
Now I’m logged in on my YouTube, on my big TV, in the living room that we’re hanging out in. However, I went and went to my quote unquote guest YouTube account, which everybody has access to, and I played all the videos there because the last thing I want is a bunch of nine, you know, a week later when the conversation’s over, I don’t want those music videos now in my recommended because I’ve got it curated fairly well for me.
00:34:32:45 – 00:34:36:59
Craig Burgess
Yeah, you don’t want whoops, I did it again by, Britney Spears on the idea.
00:34:37:04 – 00:34:50:39
Agent Palmer
I mean, it’s fine when I’m looking for it, right? But I and I don’t know if it’s better or worse that I go out of my way to do that. But I know it exists.
00:34:50:44 – 00:35:20:01
Craig Burgess
That’s this. That’s the slippery slope that people don’t understand, though, isn’t it? The you you understand the algorithm. So really, what we what we’re talking about here is that everything you look at online, regardless of platform, is creating a profile of you online and some platforms like Facebook, they’re creating what’s called a shadow profile, where if you don’t even have a Facebook profile, they are creating a Facebook profile without an account and they’re doing that.
00:35:20:06 – 00:35:35:11
Craig Burgess
Yeah. Just so they can build up like a, like a credit card statement, but way more advanced. They’re building up your online habits, essentially. So when you go back to that platform, they’ll show you things that you will definitely like, which are.
00:35:35:11 – 00:36:05:11
Agent Palmer
Creepy or things that you will just engage in. I mean, one of the things that we posit. Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s that’s the thing we learned about Facebook in the wake of a few of the last major US elections, is that they would be sure if if you were someone who couldn’t hold your keyboard, so to speak, when you saw the opposition flash in front of you, they would give you more of it because they want to give you that.
00:36:05:11 – 00:36:24:58
Agent Palmer
I, I, I think it’s scary. I mean, it’s one of the reasons that I pulled back and I was only on Twitter for a while, but, you know, I, I find myself purposefully leaving my phone in the other room now just because I don’t need it.
00:36:25:03 – 00:36:48:47
Craig Burgess
I, I I’m the same. I try I I’m not a conspiracy theorist, not by any extension. But this whole thing of algorithms is a real damn problem that nobody all, at least very few people are actually talking about. And this is where the whole idea of content falls straight into the middle of this. Because what what what is powering these algorithms content.
00:36:48:54 – 00:37:35:25
Craig Burgess
Yeah, yeah. The only thing that’s powering them. What is Facebook? Facebook is well, it’s primarily an ad platform, but what what powers the ad platform content. Who’s creating the content, you and I and everybody else. But that’s where the intent thing comes back again. The, the vast majority, I’d say I, I don’t like throwing out random percentages that are not fact checked, but I’d say easily 80 or 90% of the content that you find on any of those platforms is content made just for the algorithm designed purposefully designed to be engaged with either negatively or positively, and to get, an extreme reaction out of somebody.
00:37:35:36 – 00:38:01:11
Craig Burgess
It’s not a long form conversation like me or you are having right now. It is purposefully designed, and I think that’s important, purposefully designed to get a reaction out of somebody, somebody like Mr. Beast on YouTube. His three hour long interview with Rogan where he’s explaining he is essentially a YouTube algorithm geek. That’s what he is. I absolutely detest his videos.
00:38:01:11 – 00:38:24:11
Craig Burgess
I detest everything that he does online, apart from the fact that he does a bit of charity work. I detest everything that he makes because he purposefully designs everything to do well in the algorithms, regardless of whether it’s good or not. And I think that that part of it there it is, one of the biggest reasons why I rail against a lot of this stuff.
00:38:24:11 – 00:38:48:22
Craig Burgess
When people are making things for the intent to be engaged with and consumed, rather than making it because they want to make it rather than making it because, you know, they just woke up one day and thought, oh, I would really love to start a podcast because I’m really passionate about, I don’t know, Rubik’s Cubes. That’s the right reason to make a podcast or a blog or a Twitter account or whatever.
00:38:48:27 – 00:39:09:01
Craig Burgess
The wrong reason to do it is to say, I want to build an online platform. You know, I want to build an online following. And honestly, that’s the side where a lot of my clients, the business people, will come from. They want to become a thought leader online. So they look at it in that. In that sense, I want to be a thought leader.
00:39:09:01 – 00:39:29:29
Craig Burgess
What does that mean? I need 10,000 followers on Twitter. So what am I going to tweet? Well, I sell I sell plastic cups, so I’m going to tweet about plastic cups all day long and become a thought leader in plastic cups. But the the truth of it is it’s it’s dull and boring and nobody’s going to pay attention to it for very long.
00:39:29:42 – 00:40:09:48
Agent Palmer
Well, I, I think that for me, the quote unquote Twitter exodus at the end of 2022, for me, that was the double down on my platform. That was the yeah, put it all into the podcast, put it all into the blog, put less energy out there because guess what? Whether Twitter exists for another decade or or century or another four months or four weeks or four days, I have no control over that.
00:40:09:53 – 00:40:30:38
Agent Palmer
I do own my hosting and pay for my domain and for my podcast. So these are things that I can control and I can put all my energy into them to make them good or as good as I can make them. And I don’t have to worry about them going away. They’re it’s on me, it’s in my control.
00:40:30:43 – 00:40:34:41
Agent Palmer
And I think that.
00:40:34:45 – 00:41:09:16
Agent Palmer
If the algorithms that exist that we complain about or that we try to cheat in, in some way, I mean, and and I for those of you who aren’t in marketing, AdWords and Google Analytics, these are all things that kind of give you insights to either pay to play and be on top as a sponsored search result, or you learn from them so you can write the content in a way that brings you to the top.
00:41:09:21 – 00:41:39:41
Agent Palmer
But the thing that is the worst kept secret in marketing that nobody talks about is that good content will generally, over the long term, trump good content. The problem is we don’t get paid by clients for something that might be good tomorrow. And five years from now, they want their analytics report at the end of the month to say that we generated 500% more traffic with this ad campaign than we did last month.
00:41:39:46 – 00:42:04:06
Agent Palmer
And so there’s a lot of not marketing wise, but just content wise and creation wise, for the wrong reasons. There’s a lot of making sure it looks good tomorrow. Yes. Well, what about, a month from now? A year from now? Like, what about that kind of stuff? And I will say, having been in a marketing department that was full of.
00:42:04:11 – 00:42:31:28
Agent Palmer
I should really be nicer when I say this. Followers. Not an original thought, but really for a lot of the team I was on. And these are people that really, really, really want to go into the convention circuit and hear people talk. Despite the fact that the people that are talking are talking about something that was successful a year ago, and they’ve spent the last six months talking about it.
00:42:31:29 – 00:42:52:43
Agent Palmer
So now it’s 18 months old that you’re just consuming right now. It was just, I just it’s just frustrating because you go I have an original idea. We can try it. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. But it’s not going to be the same as everybody else.
00:42:52:48 – 00:43:22:57
Craig Burgess
I think what a lot of people tend to forget is, yeah, there’s there’s the priority and the focus on numbers all of the time. I think it’s a scourge in general. Yeah. Focusing on the numbers rather than the actual thing that you’re saying. But another thing that that people tend to forget is the, the, the content that you’re making online, whatever it may be, is a reflection of you.
00:43:22:57 – 00:43:53:47
Craig Burgess
It’s a it’s a way I think it might have even been. Jack Butcher has said this a one time in his early days. It’s it’s kind of replicating yourself. So whatever you believe in, a piece of content that you make is replicating yourself online, so you don’t have to say it again, essentially. And if you get to that, that point where you are saying the things you want to say and you are replicating them out of your head into a video or a podcast or a blog post or whatever, something that’s permanent.
00:43:53:47 – 00:44:13:33
Craig Burgess
And staying online that’s got value regardless of how many people have seen it. Even if it’s two people, even, let’s say, one person, the one person who sees it, they look at that and they go, damn is exactly right, and I’m going to get in touch with them and I’m going to talk to him, whatever that leads to.
00:44:13:38 – 00:44:39:21
Craig Burgess
It’s connected with one person and that thing deeply. Connecting with one person is far more important than something getting 3000 likes online. That leads to zero. You know it. So while it got 3000 likes, that just means that it’s run of the mill that everybody agrees with it. Why do you want to make something that everybody agrees with you completely right?
00:44:39:21 – 00:45:02:02
Craig Burgess
That something a lot of people in marketing, followers and I, I’m constantly surprised by people in marketing, uncreative other creative mediums, how little, how little of renegades are to go around. You know, that’s the way I always look at creativity. And I, you know, I’m a designer by trade. That’s what I spend most of my time doing.
00:45:02:07 – 00:45:19:16
Craig Burgess
And I’m a really a professional contrarian. And it’s insane the amount of people who are in design or marketing who are not also professional contrarians, because the whole purpose of my job is to be the person who says that it doesn’t need to be like this.
00:45:19:21 – 00:45:48:03
Agent Palmer
I, I, I’ve never been, a mac head. Right? I, I’ve, I’ve owned an iPad because it was a gift. I had an iPhone because it was the smartphone. And then the moment Android caught up, I went to Android. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see the value in iOS devices or iOS in general. What I will tell you is.
00:45:48:07 – 00:46:31:21
Agent Palmer
On a whole, I would wager that Steve Jobs, if he was alive, would hate the lack of creativity coming out of iOS devices. Average. The average designer in any capacity is an iOS user, and yet a lot of them are doing the same thing as everyone else. And that was I mean, even if you just watch the buy up, the the movies, the biopics, regardless of who wrote it or what you get the idea that Steve Jobs was an individual.
00:46:31:26 – 00:46:32:11
Craig Burgess
00:46:32:16 – 00:46:57:06
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And he wanted you to express your inner creativity. And if he could make that a little bit easier, that was what he wanted. The apple or the Macintosh or iOS devices to do. And they’re not the people that I talk about at my former job that were the most followers, were also the most ardent people who needed the most recent iPhone.
00:46:57:10 – 00:47:22:41
Agent Palmer
And I find this hypocritical to what Apple originally stood for. And that’s the only reason I bring it up, because it is just so funny that this man who was, against all odds, just wanted to be different and inspire others to be different is now being lauded by people who only want to be the same.
00:47:22:46 – 00:47:33:16
Craig Burgess
Well, it’s funny you should say that, because I’ve got an iPhone software on my desk. I’m using a MacBook right now. I’ve got an iPad somewhere in the other room as well. But.
00:47:33:16 – 00:47:36:36
Agent Palmer
Steve Jobs would be proud of you, is what I’m saying.
00:47:36:40 – 00:48:04:14
Craig Burgess
You’re totally right. I mean, I, I literally use just on the Apple devices thing. I literally use Apple devices because they are easy. I am locked into the ecosystem, and I am constantly complaining about them. I went through a phase of switching between Android, iPhone, Android, iPhone about every six months. I always came back to the iPhone, and now I’ve got to the point where I’m just it works.
00:48:04:18 – 00:48:31:31
Craig Burgess
I’m going to continue using it. It’s got all my data on it fine. And I also like the, the, the pretty security conscious and they don’t share your data. I don’t like the idea whatsoever with any of my data. Being with Google, I don’t use Gmail or any of that kind of thing. So I like that thing about Apple specifically, but you’re totally right about what what Apple stands for these days versus what what they did stand for then.
00:48:31:31 – 00:48:53:38
Craig Burgess
But that leads me back to the point of the the era of Steve Jobs was the era of creatives that gave a shit. People like George Lopez, you might not be familiar with them, but he was, he was an ad man, a creative really, a polymath in every sense of the word, but a renegade. And he ran an ad agency.
00:48:53:44 – 00:49:19:00
Craig Burgess
He ran several other agencies. He’s written and written a bunch of books, and. But really, he was one of the creatives that was true to being a creative. You know, there’s there’s a famous story he gives out of. I mean, you’ve got to take these stories with a pinch of salt. But he was given a and, presentation for a new art that he was doing.
00:49:19:00 – 00:49:43:58
Craig Burgess
And by the way, apparently Don Draper is somewhat based on George Lewis, a madman. He was given a pitch for a new piece of work, and the the client didn’t accept it. He said, we don’t want to go in this direction. So he said, right, I’m going to jump out the window. So he got to the window, open the window and start standing on the ledge and, you know, yeah, to threaten to jump out of the window, you know, 50 storeys up somewhere in New York.
00:49:44:03 – 00:50:05:30
Craig Burgess
And the guys are like, fucking hell, you, you you really buy these companies? Like, yeah, I’m going to jump if you don’t go on it. Those kind of like crazy, maverick, renegade, creative type people. That’s what’s expected from creative thinkers. But some, many, of modern icons in that era. Well, what what do you do if you’re creative?
00:50:05:30 – 00:50:37:33
Craig Burgess
Now, for me specifically, I’m a designer. All of my peers, they set up YouTube channels and do tutorials. That’s that’s all they do. This is how you do the latest thing in Photoshop. That’s that. That’s all they do. That it’s not particularly inspiring, is it? Is certainly not renegade. And you know, there’s there’s nobody really doing anything creative, outside of the norm anymore is really what I’m trying to get out with.
00:50:37:38 – 00:51:11:46
Agent Palmer
Well, and when it does happen, people shit on it. Like, let’s let’s be honest, there’s a reason that people hate independent cinema. It’s because it’s unexpected. They don’t know what to do with it. They can’t comprehend it. Oh my God, the good guy didn’t win and the bad guy didn’t lose. Right. There’s these. You know, stalemates in independent cinema where people, they shit on it because they can’t comprehend that it’s the good guy or the bad guy doesn’t win.
00:51:11:46 – 00:51:20:05
Agent Palmer
They’re, they’re going in with a mind that is closed. And good luck trying to open that.
00:51:20:10 – 00:51:26:42
Craig Burgess
And speaking of that, do you, have you seen a film called Lock Tom Hardy driving down a motorway?
00:51:26:47 – 00:51:29:15
Agent Palmer
No, but I might have to.
00:51:29:20 – 00:51:55:29
Craig Burgess
But that’s exactly that kind of film. I saw it at the cinema. So it’s not truly and not really a proper independent film because it was a chain cinema, but it was a it was an independent film, a small film, and is from, I don’t know, early 2000s or something of mid 2000. And it’s just Tom Hardy driving down a motorway, a highway that you probably know as I think he’s actually driving down a motorway because I’m sure it’s in Britain.
00:51:55:33 – 00:52:30:02
Craig Burgess
Okay. And he’s just talking to I think his, his wife just talking to his wife on the phone. And it it’s just, it’s a, it’s a really good film actually, but yeah, it’s the those kind of things people don’t understand because, yeah, it’s out of the norm. But, I, I honestly believe that that’s the kind of thing that the majority of us should be pursuing and pushing because that, at the, at the edges of these things, if you were a true creative at the edges of these things is where the magic lies somewhere.
00:52:30:07 – 00:52:56:14
Craig Burgess
And if you’re not pushing at those edges, you don’t discover these new things or these new ways of making movies are podcasts or whatever are, you know, are writing things. If you stick within those lines, sticking within the lines, and, you know, coloring in within the lines is not what creative people do, or at least in my opinion, that’s not what they should spend their time doing.
00:52:56:19 – 00:53:30:28
Craig Burgess
I, I and I worry that, we’re in in somewhat of a dirge of that at the minute with the way that things are expected to be online, I take this long form content like like what you said about your podcast, about it. Was it your mum you said your mum, your mum or the one listen that that’s because she’s been trained to only listen to short stuff, because that’s the thing that social media wanted to push short form video, short form content, because they know that people are stealing little pieces of time in their day.
00:53:30:28 – 00:53:51:05
Craig Burgess
You know, they’re waiting for the bus or they’re waiting for the the left or whatever. They’re walking up the stairs. Or like, I see so many blokes doing tilers, taking a piss and looking at the phone while they’re taking a piss. But people are literally making content now for, piss bricks, you know, piss content like five second videos.
00:53:51:05 – 00:54:07:51
Craig Burgess
So while someone has paced five second video and over over time, people become, you know, determined to listen or to read or to pay attention for any longer than like five seconds. Yeah. Which which is.
00:54:07:51 – 00:54:44:48
Agent Palmer
Terrible. My I think I’ve so I’ve been unemployed for a while and I didn’t want to waste the time. So as you can see on my blog, every other post is a book review, every other one. And it’s, it’s new books. It’s old books. Currently. And I think my podcast listeners will get sick of hearing this, but I’m, I’m undergoing this challenge to read every book in my house, because why else is it in my house?
00:54:44:53 – 00:55:10:36
Agent Palmer
And there’s a lot of them in there, like Heavy Philosophy or this, that. And the other thing, they’re not all like wonderful books, but I have them. Why not read them? And I, I recently started watching the original Star Trek as a journey to watch all of Star Trek, because I was always more of a Star Wars guy, and I just never grew up with it.
00:55:10:36 – 00:55:40:16
Agent Palmer
But I was like, I, I make references, but I also know its cultural importance. I want to go back and see what it’s all about. Don’t put that on the shelf like if you have an interest. Yeah. Okay. So there’s and I only know this because like I did the research like so there’s three seasons of the original series and two seasons of the animated series and a whole bunch of movies, and then seven episodes, seven series and next Jan and this, who cares?
00:55:40:16 – 00:56:19:43
Agent Palmer
Like, yeah, there’s a lot of it, but I don’t plan on dying tomorrow. And why should I just go up? That’s too much. No, I’ve picked up books that were a thousand pages. Yeah, that’s a lot. But you read it the same way. One sentence at a time. Like it’s not like you pick up a thousand word book and you go, I mean, to skip every 50 pages and then know, just pick it up and go and I, I think that that removal from like, the corporate entity and from all that stuff, especially when I hear from friends that are just overworked in corporate spaces.
00:56:19:48 – 00:56:39:03
Agent Palmer
I think this may be my renaissance. I don’t know what I get out of it, mind you. Okay. Like, I’m, I’m I’m trying to process all the things I’m learning, but I am in that way, watching these old things and reading these offline books, I’m kind of removing myself from the algorithm a bit.
00:56:39:08 – 00:57:11:09
Craig Burgess
Yeah, that that’s where you get it from it. Well, a couple of things. You nourishing your mind. You are not being influenced by all of the kind of content and shit we’ve just been talking about for the last 45 minutes or so. And three and I think it’s the most important thing. And something that I write about quite a lot is you recovering your attention span because you’re, you’re when you go online these days, you are fighting to maintain your attention span.
00:57:11:14 – 00:57:39:01
Craig Burgess
Ultimately that that is what you when you’re in open warfare with your attention span because everybody’s trying to attack it or attack it, remove it, steal it, whatever. The only way, the genuinely only way you can do anything about it is to recover your attention span, is to remove yourself from online and read a book, read a real damn book, a real proper book with pages and words and everything.
00:57:39:06 – 00:58:13:07
Craig Burgess
And if you don’t do that every now and again. You will struggle to concentrate. It’s, you know, there’s there’s been years and years in the US and in the UK and pretty much every developed country of productivity going down, commercial corporate productivity going down. And, you know, they measure it on hours worked and GDP and all these are the kind of things the, the, the real thing that nobody’s factoring in yet because it’s I think it’s it’s probably still still too young.
00:58:13:07 – 00:58:53:40
Craig Burgess
Maybe this will start to be factored in in another 30 years time when everybody’s attention spans have been eroded. Is social media seriously affects your attention span and is the thing that no one is really doing too much research? And yeah, I think you’re doing completely the right thing because the amount of people I was just talking about this to somebody the other day, the amount of people I know, friends who say, I haven’t got time to read a book, and then I’ll be sat in their presence and we’ll be talking about something, and then the conversation will go silent for ten minutes, and they’ll be on Facebook sending me links of things that
00:58:53:40 – 00:59:14:21
Craig Burgess
they’ve seen while that’s that’s ten minutes there that you could potentially have read a book, instead of reading that shit that you’ve just found on Facebook. Everybody, everybody still things reading, reading book books are, you know, actual books with words and paper and things. Everybody still thinks that that’s a high school activity, that it’s somehow homework to read a book.
00:59:14:26 – 00:59:28:39
Craig Burgess
People don’t see in the same way. They don’t see it as a relaxing thing, a lot of people, which is just crazy to me.
00:59:28:44 – 00:59:50:01
Agent Palmer
There was a lot of talk towards the end of this conversation about the algorithm, and we discuss it as such because, well, not all of them are connected. They overlap in such a way that it feels like there is one all encompassing algorithm. There isn’t. But remember, if you’re seeing things on any of your various feeds, you have control over those.
00:59:50:13 – 01:00:10:17
Agent Palmer
You can select to hide them and tell the platform, whatever it is, that those things aren’t for you. You can also choose not to like things or click on things or watch things. If the platform doesn’t allow you to tell it that this isn’t for you, but you do have more control over your algorithm and your feeds than you may believe.
01:00:10:22 – 01:00:33:11
Agent Palmer
The other thing we spoke about that you have control over, well, you could also, if you haven’t already, skipped to the end of your online identity journey and just be yourself. Because while a little journey to discovery is a good way to determine who you want to be, who you are is not only your actual authentic self. It is easier to portray because you just have to be.
01:00:33:16 – 01:00:57:36
Agent Palmer
So, whether it be taking control of your algorithm or who you are online, you are empowered not only with the tools to take control, but with the ability should you choose to wield it. Go forth and perhaps be a maverick, be a renegade, be a true creative. Speaking from experience, it’s a really fun place to be. Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 90.
01:00:57:36 – 01:01:16:30
Agent Palmer
And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can find all related ways to contact myself and my guest, Craig Burgess, in the show notes. There you can visit either of Craig’s two sub stacks for his content or for more about him.
01:01:16:30 – 01:01:48:18
Agent Palmer
Yeah, wednesdays.substack.com. That’s why e h Wednesdays. Or you can visit this is not value.substack.com. Again the name of that is this is not value.substack.com email can be sent to this show at the Palmer Files at gmail.com. And remember your home for all things Agent Palmer is Agent palmer.com.
01:01:48:22 – 01:02:25:32
Agent Palmer
You.
01:02:25:37 – 01:02:28:10
Agent Palmer
All right. Craig, do you have one final question for me?
01:02:28:15 – 01:02:48:25
Craig Burgess
I have one question. Yes. I haven’t at all prepared this question. This is absolutely not prepared. But I’ve stolen it from somebody. Okay. I haven’t just sat there and thought about this for five minutes. That’s not what’s happened at all. It’s it’s from a chap called Mark. Mark Dykeman. He’s got a Substack called.
01:02:48:27 – 01:03:05:22
Craig Burgess
How about this? I’m just telling everybody, so they should check it out, because I think it’s a wonderful question. This is the question. Pretend you wake up one morning and you learn that the internet has been destroyed. What’s the first thing that you do?
01:03:05:27 – 01:03:33:23
Agent Palmer
Probably the same thing I do every morning, which is just make some coffee. Like I should I, I it’s it’s an interesting question, excepting for the fact that I do make most of my living and most of my passions on the internet. I’m still a guy who would turn it off like, I. I would. You’re not going to get me to stop writing.
01:03:33:27 – 01:03:58:44
Agent Palmer
I’m just going to start sending those things to the newspaper. If the internet goes away and I probably move this show to terrestrial radio or my local NPR station or something like that, like, I, I think I have other venues to go on, but if the internet goes away, I mean, I still have my books, I still have physical media.
01:03:58:44 – 01:04:30:52
Agent Palmer
I mean, I know there are people out there that have, like, gotten rid of all their DVDs and their CDs, but that’s not me. So my house is still going to be filled with music. I’m still going to have movies to watch. I, I, I think I would, I would have, if nothing else, I’d celebrate it. To be honest, if the internet goes away, I probably celebrate it because for as great as it’s been, generally speaking, it is absolutely like.
01:04:30:57 – 01:04:53:21
Agent Palmer
You know, you know, the whole, trope in science fiction of like that, those like more advanced races that are like, I can’t give you this technology, you puny humans, you would use it to destroy yourselves. The internet is exactly that. It was something we probably should have never gotten, because we have just used it to destroy ourselves.
01:04:53:26 – 01:05:17:17
Agent Palmer
And I’ve I’ve ranted on this show before about one thing in particular. I’m not really happy that the internet’s gone away while I’m drinking my coffee. What I want to happen is I want the technological barrier put back up. I don’t want everybody and their mother and their child to have access to the internet. I want you to have to learn how a computer works.
01:05:17:28 – 01:05:30:25
Agent Palmer
I want you to have to use the phone coupler that we saw in like, wargames. Like I want a technical prowess, because then when you do get online, you don’t take it for granted.
01:05:30:30 – 01:05:37:15
Craig Burgess
So how about we downgrade the internet as well then? What about instead of getting rid of it, we go back to 56. Okay.
01:05:37:16 – 01:06:03:05
Agent Palmer
Oh yeah. No. Absolutely. Because my I’m, I’m set for that because my blog is mainly text. Yeah. I don’t throw in images other than to break it up for to make for usability. But my images are small. So 56 okay, maybe it would take you a minute or two to download my longer blog posts. And obviously this podcast immediately goes to radio because it doesn’t work in 56 K.
01:06:03:10 – 01:06:25:14
Agent Palmer
But yeah, I’m all right with it. I mean, I’m, I’m probably it’s probably the one conundrum about me is like, yeah, I, I make my living on the internet. I’m a digital marketer more than I’m a traditional marketer, and I’m a blogger and a podcaster. But absolutely, I will not stand in your way. I will not chain myself to the the whatever or what.
01:06:25:19 – 01:06:35:47
Agent Palmer
No blow it up. Slow it down, give it a ticket. You know, I, you know, pour some, pour some water on the circuit boards. I’m all right with it.
01:06:35:52 – 01:07:07:30
Craig Burgess
So what about the opposite way around, then? Let me see. I think I can word this. So you wake up one morning and your entire collection of offline media has been destroyed. So no DVDs, no books, no magazines, comics, graphic novels, CDs, records, none of that stuff. You’ve lost everything and you’ve got no memory of it either. So you don’t remember what you had, but you’ve still got the internet.
01:07:07:34 – 01:07:10:42
Craig Burgess
What’s the first thing that you do?
01:07:10:47 – 01:07:28:55
Agent Palmer
I mean, I’m probably still making a cup of coffee. At least until, I mean, I keep reading. This is the one sad part. I keep reading these doom and gloom articles about how we’re going to run out of coffee in my lifetime. So, as long as that’s available, that’s still always going to be the first thing I do in the morning.
01:07:28:55 – 01:07:52:31
Agent Palmer
But I guess it’s going to be, you know, because right now, with my morning coffee, I have, a pad of paper and a pen, and I make a list of what I’m doing that day. So I guess that just becomes a digital list in, like, Google Keep or, like, notepad or something.
01:07:52:35 – 01:08:00:05
Craig Burgess
But in this world, you don’t have any references for that kind of stuff, so you don’t even know where to begin. You’ve got the internet as a tool.
01:08:00:05 – 01:08:33:42
Agent Palmer
But yeah, I mean, I don’t know, I honestly, I feel like I would probably be a little lost because I have spent a lot of energy. Disconnecting is not the right word, but disassociating my life. So it’s not a 100% interchangeable with the internet. So if the if, if that other part goes away, I think I, I think I’d be like one of those people in a movie that gets like transported to a different place and they’re like complete.
01:08:33:44 – 01:08:42:41
Agent Palmer
They have no idea what they’re doing anymore. I think that would be me, because I’ve, I, I’ve tried to separate it on purpose.
01:08:42:46 – 01:08:50:44
Craig Burgess
And then after a few months, you don’t understand all the memes online, but you’d never have seen any of the films. Imagine being that guy.
01:08:50:49 – 01:08:59:28
Agent Palmer
Well, I, I don’t understand have the memes I see now, and so I feel like that that’s.
01:08:59:33 – 01:09:08:09
Craig Burgess
I mean, I mean, the old ones, you know, like Goodfellas memes and. Oh, I think going around and Pulp Fiction and you understand all those.
01:09:08:14 – 01:09:19:33
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I do think that, but you can’t possibly know all the memes, like, I don’t know, there’s, I don’t know anybody because you’d have to watch everything.
01:09:19:37 – 01:09:20:21
Craig Burgess
Yeah.
01:09:20:26 – 01:09:34:48
Agent Palmer
And that seems exactly like I just want to read all the books in my house. Now. I have probably more books than the average person, but, like, that’s an undertaking.
01:09:34:53 – 01:10:16:38
Craig Burgess
It is, I guess the the wider thing I’m getting at is that there’s, there’s two different ways to look at this here, isn’t that. Yeah. You and I, our cultural references are not really dictated by the internet. We probably are more than we realize these days, but we remember a time when the internet didn’t exist. So our cultural references are different, and we, you know, to, to some extent, remember, you know, all Star Trek, all Star Wars, all that kind of thing where things were past different and that they weren’t designed to keep people with no attention spans connected to things.
01:10:16:38 – 01:10:38:36
Craig Burgess
Whereas the other way that we’re talking here is the world where everyone’s cultural references and this is the world that people live in right now, today, which I think is an interesting thing to think about. Everybody’s cultural references come from the internet now, from seeing short clips on YouTube or TikTok or Twitter. It’s a very different world.
01:10:38:41 – 01:10:39:19
Craig Burgess
It’s interesting.
01:10:39:22 – 01:10:51:28
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I think it’s also one of those things where, like, we’re the last generation to have a before the internet memory, when we had.
01:10:51:32 – 01:10:52:08
Craig Burgess
Weird.
01:10:52:12 – 01:11:20:01
Agent Palmer
Or and this is the this is the other thing, right. We’re the last generation to choose something over the internet, because even if you wanted to look at that pornography on the internet in the early 90s, that’s 15 minutes of downloading one high quality image. You could just go out like there are other things you can do with that 15 minutes.
01:11:20:01 – 01:11:42:19
Agent Palmer
And in most cases, and I’m thinking about little boys and and porn like of course that’s an option. It’s, it’s it’s attractive. But I think we just went outside and played tag because it 15 minute like that’s we were the last generation to choose something else. Yeah. Yeah. No matter what.
01:11:42:24 – 01:11:54:50
Craig Burgess
The. Yeah the, the this is why I mentioned the 56 care thing. Because the 56 care thing is, an inbuilt buffer for, for looking at pointless shit on the internet.
01:11:54:59 – 01:11:55:29
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
01:11:55:33 – 01:12:12:46
Craig Burgess
So you couldn’t be having a conversation with a friend and say, oh, it was, you know, it was that, you know, that dude in that in that TV? What TV show? I came out to thousands or whatever. Well, what was it? Oh, it was a survival show. Hold on, I’ll Google it. You couldn’t go survival show 2000s.
01:12:12:46 – 01:12:14:28
Craig Burgess
Guy. I mean.
01:12:14:28 – 01:12:18:51
Agent Palmer
You could, but somebody might remember it before the page loaded like that’s.
01:12:18:56 – 01:12:49:18
Craig Burgess
Yes. And it built buffer for you. Couldn’t wait. You couldn’t quickly waste 30s on the internet, on your mobile phone because you’d have WAP at the best. You’d have WAP, internet, which wasn’t the internet at all in anywhere. So it interesting to think about that. The I wonder how different things could I would be if we didn’t have the internet so readily available anymore.
01:12:49:23 – 01:12:57:40
Agent Palmer
I, I, I, I, I have a hard time saying anything other than it would be better.
01:12:57:45 – 01:12:58:17
Craig Burgess
I agree.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).