The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Here in the private jet. We're on our way to Ibiza. Got the passport. Got the Prosecco. You wanna be rich like us?

Learn how to do journalism. You take our online course. Publish articles, you get subscribers. It's that easy. Follow us.

Figure out how to learn more. You can be rich like us. Take our online course. Check out the dashboards. I'll show you.

You want proof? I'll show you.

Hello, and welcome to the four four Media Podcast Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four four Media is a journalist founded company and need your support. To subscribe, go to 44media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 44media.co.

I'm your host, Sam. Today, Joseph is out this week. And with me are four four media cofounders, Emmanuel Mayberg.

Hello.

And Jason Kettler.

Hey. What's up?

And we have two crazy wacky cool stories, both from Jason today. Jason is paying penance for being out the last couple weeks. So

I'm gonna I'm gonna grill Jason about this story, which is a fan favorite, and I'm a fan. The headline for it is how I bought a private jet by selling $10 subscriptions to four four Media. First of all, congrats, Jason, on your private jet. I can't wait to to fly it to various festivals and conferences like Davos and such. I think this is I mean, let's just stay at the top.

Jason does not have a private jet, unfortunately. He was doing something called Lark influencing, which I believe you learned about via social media. Can you tell me where you first ran into this?

Yeah. So I guess I've been thinking for quite some time that a lot of the hustle bros, which I guess I'll define as people who are like, I make a lot of money on the Internet by doing something, whether that be making an AI influencer, whether that be, like, day trading, whether that be doing, like, Airbnb hustling, whether that be crypto stuff. Like, I've had the sneaking suspicion that a lot of them are lying and that they are not wildly wealthy. But I think that if you are one of these people, very often you post videos of yourself driving luxury vehicles, being in a private jet, being in like really exotic locations, like, you know, being in Bali, things like that. And the story goes that, you know, they got all this money to buy the Lambo, to buy the private jet by doing some sort of online hustle.

And they can teach you to do that online hustle. If only you'll buy their course, then their course, you know, usually costs, like, $30 a month or a $100 a year or or or more than that. And I I suspected for quite some time that this was fake or that a lot of these were fake that, you know, these people don't actually have private jets. They don't actually have Lamborghinis. And, you know, I knew that you could, like, rent a Lamborghini for a day, that you could, like, ride on a yacht and take pictures of a yacht.

But on my TikTok feed one day, I was basically served a piece of software that allowed you to, like, fake a dashboard for Shopify, for OnlyFans, for Stripe, which are these, you know, different online payment processors and platforms where you can sell subscriptions. And, basically, they allowed you to fix the dashboard, which is like the page that shows you the analytics of how much money that you're making. And I clicked into this account and the entire account was about LARPing, which we can define in a second. But it's basically like pretending to be rich when you're not rich. And so it had all these tips for how to pretend to be rich when you are not rich.

It reminds me of I also ran across this on social media, but there's this company, I forget the name of it, but all they do is sell fake cash and various cases to display your stacks of bills. And it's like, it's their entire business. It's like a pretty high end service. And as you can imagine, it's like, if you're shooting a video and you wanna hold half $1,000,000 and pretend that you have that in cash, you could just go to them and get that. This has been a thing forever.

And music and and and flexing on social media and so on. And I think everyone understands, like, a suitcase full of cash. You've called this in the piece, the new economy, and I think a sign of that is it's not just a Lambo. It's not just a private jet, which we can get into. It's not just cash.

It's these dashboards. And, like, that says a lot about the state of the economy, I suppose. What what what what are some of the dashboards that you can fake? How do you fake them? And I guess, like, more philosophically, what do you think it means that, like, showing the back end of an OnlyFans or a what's another popular one?

But what would we do? A strike. Strike account. Strike. Yeah.

Like, what do you think that that says about the current state of things?

Well, I think that this has so basically, like, for a while, people who were LARPing let's also just say LARPing stands for live action role play, like, historically and is part of, like, gaming culture and is, like, appropriate from gamers very broadly speaking. And then also appropriate from, like, people who, like, reenact, like, sword fights in parks and things like this. Like, what do you guys what do you guys know LARPing to be? Because the the the use of it as, like, LARPing as a rich person is new, and that is, like, gone viral in the last only few months, I think. But, like, it now seems to be kind of the dominant way that term is used at least on, like, TikTok and Instagram.

I mean, you think of, like, Battlefield reenactors. Right? Or, like, sword and sorcery fantasy. Like, those are the two LARP worlds that I think of.

Civil war reenactment, I would say, is like the OG LARPing, but the term itself is popularized by literally taking the rules of Dungeons and Dragons and bringing it to, like, the physical realm. Yeah. And like, yeah, the park. When you go to the park and you see people beating each other with foam swords and saying like, fire fire spell, fire spell, that's that that's that's LARPing.

Yeah. It's it's like famously in the movie role models is like where I learned about it. But

Yeah. There's also like a good documentary, I think, where where it really, like, caught on in popular culture. But I think it just, I mean, to to your question about, like, why it became such a popular term to describe other things is that it's, it's a very powerful metaphor, you know what I mean, for someone pretending to be something that they clearly are not. And like a no offense. I'm into it.

I don't personally do it, but, like, nothing but respect to my my various wizards out there. But it's just like, to an outsider, it seems pretty pathetic to be like, I am a I am a knight, but you're just a guy in a in a

It definitely doesn't it doesn't have a good reputation for sure. It's not like seen it's not looked upon as a cool thing to do definitely, but like people get really into it. And I think it is super interesting that like the there's this emergent, like, modern day LARPing as, like, as an aspirational thing. It's like the new, like, wizard is this dude with a broccoli haircut who's got a really fat Stripe account. That's so strange for me, but I guess it makes sense because that is, like, the status that marker that we have now.

I'm going to answer your question about the dashboards, Emmanuel, but I think first, like, I asked that because now you can, like, LARP as anything. Like, you can LARP you it's like, you take on the role of an OnlyFans model of, like, a, you know, music producer as like an actor, as an influencer, as a celebrity. It's like this idea of fake it till you make it. And the idea of, like, pretending to be someone that you're not online goes back forever to like time immemorial. And for a while, like, when people were LARPing as rich people, like when they were being like, hey, I got rich doing this stuff on

the

Internet. What they were doing was they were downloading these clip packs. And so what that means is they were basically just buying stock footage of fancy places, and then they were like editing TikToks and Instagrams using this footage that either they stole from somewhere else or they bought from someone or that they got from Pinterest. And what happened was people started being like, you bought that, like, you're LARPing. This is fake.

Like, where's the proof? Where's the proof? And so what has become the proof has been like, I will show you a screenshot of my account, and my account will say that I have tens of thousands of subscribers. It will show that I'm making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. It will show that I'm making that I made a million dollars last year on OnlyFans or whatever.

And, like, honestly, when I was writing about AI slop and people making a lot of money on Facebook and that sort of thing, a lot of the times, people would be like, I made $20,000 by having this image on Facebook go viral. And then all the comments would be show Dash, show Dashboard, show Dashboard, like where's the Dashboard, like where's the proof? And so the rise of this, like, dashboard, like, faking has been in response to that. Where, like basically, what the software is is it is a modifiable back end that looks like Stripe, that looks like Shopify, that looks like OnlyFans, and you can type anything you want into it. You can type that you sold $3,000,000,000 worth of whatever product yesterday if you want to.

You do it's literally just typing stuff in. There's graphs, and you can, like, click and drag them to show whatever. So if someone was, like, sees a footage of you on your yacht and they say, like, where's the proof? You can show them this. And not only can you show them a screenshot, but you can show them a video of your laptop because it's literally software that is emulating and mocking the actual back end.

And so, I mean, I think one, it's like a culture where the where people think that it's like cool to be on a yacht, but they also think it's cool to just like show screenshots of their bank accounts or their, in this case, like their Stripe accounts or whatever. But also, the LARPing has like gone so far. The faking has gone so far that they're like, people are creating fake software to fake this so that people can fake their their lifestyle so that they can sell a fake course and presumably try to make some real amount of money by doing a pyramid scheme where it's like, look, you wanna get rich? Just emulate me. Buy my course.

And then, like, of course, their course is bullshit, like, almost always.

Yeah. I think before we move on to some of the more old fashioned physical LARPing you did to just, like, linger on the on these fake dashboards for a minute, I think it's interesting that people are not saying, oh, like, let me get a fake Capital One dashboard to show you my bank account. It's about these platforms. Everybody's aware of the rich people or the people who are getting rich on these platforms, like whatever star on OnlyFans or whatever star on Twitch or people on Stripe or Patreon or, you know, even something like Ghost that we use. Everybody wants to get rich that way and that is the fantasy that is being sold to you, but it is if you if you spend, like, just, like, two minutes thinking about it, you can come to the conclusion that it's a scam because the the numbers of how many people get that wealthy from these platforms is kind of out there.

And they're all extremely lopsided in the sense that there's, like, 1% or half a percent of people who make a lot of money, and then the rest of them make no money. Right? It's like this is why you see OnlyFans stars say in their bio that they're, like, top 1% on OnlyFans, or, you know, everybody talks about how much most Twitch streamers have, like, under five or no viewers watching them. That's, like, the vast majority of people on the platform. And I'm guessing it just like is this what you're referring to by the new economy?

It's like this idea that people are not getting rich by getting a great job or even owning a great business. It's just like, am the winner in this dog pile on OnlyFans, which, I mean, if you get rich, great. Most likely, you will not, but I feel like the the effect of, like, these fake dashboards is, like, net positive for all the platforms. Right? Like

Well, it's become a I mean, it's become a flex to show this, and I think it's become more of a flex to show your OnlyFans back end than it is to show your Chase account back end or whatever. Because I think I think it is because there is like some sort of cache that comes with like, I am a self made person who like made this money because I'm popular on the Internet versus like, I don't know, a Chase account, like maybe you inherited that money, maybe it came from working a cringe w two job, like a nine to five or something. And here it's like, I created something out of nothing like on the creator economy, like on YouTube. I became a big YouTuber. I made like all this money.

Like, here's why you should trust me versus like, if I was just showing you, hey, I have a lot of money. It's like, well, maybe it's your dad's money. Maybe it's like, maybe someone died and you inherited it, like, whatever. And here, it's like, well, I'm like a self made person who like figured out the secret to the internet. Like, I figured out how to game the algorithm.

Or like, if you're making a an AI OnlyFans model or actually they sell fan view dashboards as well, which is like what AI models are using because OnlyFans doesn't allow AI models, at least last I checked. Sam, do they allow now?

I mean, you have to you have to have like a a real ID attached to your account no matter what. Yeah. And it has to match the content that you're making. So

Yeah. Technically, no. So, basically, it's like, it's like I made I made an AI girl who's, like, so hot that, like, all these people wanted to subscribe and, like, here, you should you should listen to me. And that I think that's kind of, like, why this has so much cache behind it. I'll also say that, like, after I published the story about these fake dashboards and things like that, I I didn't write about this because I just got the tip, and I I think it's maybe too small to do.

But, like, one of our readers, like, figured out that you can just, like, break into these dashboards and not pay for them because they're vibe coded, and they're just, like, really shitty. But, like, they are being put together to like fill some sort of like hole in the market. And so it's like not clear how many people are doing this, but they're quite expensive. It's like the the Shopify fake dashboard is a $149 a month. And it's like, you gotta sell a lot of

That's so much.

It's so much. It's crazy. And it's just like, it's unclear, like, how many people are doing this. And it's funny because on the website itself, they're like, we're almost sold out of these dashboards because we're keeping them really, you know, like exclusive only and only a few people are allowed to buy it because we we wanna keep this secret. And so, like, there's an air of exclusivity to all of that as well.

It's it's very silly. And then I I wanna talk about one other piece of software before we talk about, like, what I did in real life, but there's another, one called fake notifications. And I bought this one on Telegram, and this one was a bargain. This was, I think, a $100, but it's a lifetime use. So I don't have to I didn't have to cancel the the subscription.

But, basically, it's a web app that you install onto your phone. So it's a mobile website, but then you install it as a bookmark. So it looks like an app on your phone, and you give it notification the ability to send your phone notifications. And it spoofs notifications from Shopify or from Stripe. And you can make that notification say anything, and you basically, like, go into your into this little app.

You type what you want it to say, and then you type how many notifications you want it to send your phone. And then you can also have it generate random email addresses presumably using AI, like fake email addresses. And so I can, like, click a button on my phone and I can just send myself tons of notifications that make it look like people are, like, buying my product. And so this also allows you to be like, I am making so much money that I am like getting notifications as we speak. And I'm I'm pulling it up on my phone right now.

I can send myself like hundreds of notifications. Like, I'm gonna send myself 300 notifications right now, and it's just like, this is the back end. You can maybe see a little bit of it, but it's like

You're blowing up right now.

I'm blowing up. It's just like new subscriber, new subscriber, new subscriber, and it's it's that it's like even that can be faked, you know.

I want that. That would, like, fix my social media addiction, I think. My little pacifier of dopamine.

Honestly, I felt something Yeah. When I was using I was just like, oh my god. Like, yeah. Yeah. Here we go.

Like, we're making a lot of money. Because as as we'll talk about it, it's like I I turn this into a fake four zero four media subscribers, and then I clicked a button. I was like, wow. New subscriber. New subscriber.

New subscriber. To be clear, like, we use Stripe as our back end, and this is the notification looks the exact same as the real one is fully fully spoofed. I was gonna say, should we take a break there to talk about the physical LARPing?

Yeah. Let's take a break.

Jason, please tell me about your private jet.

Yeah. So I learned that these fake softwares existed and this, like, notification app existed and all of this. And I started sending myself notifications, making myself feel like I was making lots of money. And I was changing the dashboard to, like, look like I had a lot of subscribers and I, you know, typed four zero four media in. But I was just, like, sitting in my bedroom while I did this, and it didn't feel very luxurious.

It didn't feel as though I were rich. And I had seen enough of these TikTok accounts where I was kind of like, you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna go try to get some content. I'm gonna go try to film some content, show people that I actually am rich, that and just basically copy what these guys are doing to see, like, how difficult it is. And because I live in LA and so much of the economy of LA is influencer focused and also Hollywood focused.

There's a lot of photo studios. And so I googled private jet photo studio, and there was one. And it's never it's almost never booked out. It was $60 for an hour. And I was just like, I'm gonna book I'm gonna book this photo studio.

I'm gonna go take pictures in a private jet. And so to be clear, it's not actually a private jet. It is like a warehouse in a, like, relatively poor part of LA that you are basically like, you book it, you're sent a code to enter, the code didn't work. Like, it was a nightmare getting in and out of this place. And you, like, open this creaky old door, and then there is, like, the interior of a private jet and lights there.

And you can just, like, take photos in there pretending like you're rich.

What do you mean by the interior of a private jet? Like, what what is it actually?

That's a very leading question. It is it is just like a a room with some shitty pleather couches in it. And, like, some circle, like, some air airplane window, like, cutouts, but they're just they're not actually windows. They're made to look like windows, but they're just LED lights that are in a circle form.

Right. I'm just saying, like, there's actually there are real either for movies or for whatever. There's, like, decommissioned jets that people use for this purpose. I was with PA once in a production where we had to wire a decommissioned jet to look like a functioning airplane for a movie, and we did it on an actual decommissioned air this is not that. It's like there's no part of an actual it's like, it's just a piece of plywood

You're in an you're you're in an un air conditioned room in a warehouse that has been built like with two by fours and like Styrofoam. And it's funny because a few weeks ago, my brother was visiting and I went I went on a studio tour. Like, that's another popular thing to do in LA is, like, you go to the Paramount Studio, you go to the Sony studio. So we went to the Sony studio and, like, they let you see some of those sets that they build for, like, Hollywood movies. And the entire time, like, the tour guide is like, yeah, it's all made of Styrofoam.

It's and you can just, like, you see this, like, load bearing wall, like, and he just, like, shoves it over. It's, like, weighs nothing. And it, like, basically, was that. And I mean, I think that's one of another reason why, like, LA has so many of these is that it has tons of people who work in film who make different sets for movies and TV shows. And so presumably, that skill transfers out to, like, building a fake private jet interior.

And, yeah, you like walk in and and it's like concrete floors, and one side is like a dressing room where you can like get ready to go in your private jet. And then the other is just like an open like, there there's a partition and there it's open and it's just another room. And it has, like, a little bit of a lower ceiling and it has, like, airplane signs in it where it's like, don't bother the pilot. Like, it says on the wall and things like that. But, yeah, to be clear, like, you can go to the Santa Monica Airport, for example, where there's there were there's real private jets and you can, like, take photos there if you pay someone who has a private jet, which is something that that's like other advice given in the LARPing community is that, like, can pay actual, like, significantly more than $60 to do this.

I found one that does photo shoots in real private jets for influencers and for, like, engagement photos, things like that. That was like a few $100. I could have easily done that, but I was just like, I'm gonna do this as shitty and as quickly as possible and see what it looks like. Yeah. It's like basically like trick like, they felt like Amtrak tables, like the cafe car of a of an Amtrak, and then like these white, like, cracking pleather, like ottomans, basically.

To be fair, as bad as that looks and my favorite part is that it's just like yeah. It's like somebody bought some loveseed on Wayfair and put it in the room, and that's like the the airplane seat. But when when you the final product, like, thing that you use these photos for, these photos and videos, it doesn't I mean, I don't think you need a private jet. Like, it it works. You know what I mean?

Like, on camera, it looks like a private jet. It looks like you're you're living you're living the dream.

Dude, I think it turned out pretty good, honestly. Like, if you put up really shallow depth of field, like, background is blurred, and it's like, I I put on a suit top. I put on the suit top that I wore to Sam's wedding, and I brought a bottle of Prosecco that I had in my house that was, like, leftover from a party. And I was like, I don't know. I feel like I'm feel like I'm on a private jet.

It's like 8,000 degrees in here. And I had to keep, I had to keep stopping filming because I could hear a power saw going, like, because they were building another set, like, next door, and these things are not soundproof whatsoever. And so I was like, not so luxurious. I also was fully by myself, which I think made it a lot funnier, because, like, these exist so that you can show how much fun you're having with your friends. It's just like, I was, like, by myself with a tripod, like, using the self timer on my camera.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think the reason it works is that you sold it and that you looked really happy. I was like, damn, Jason is really he's really feeling it. He's living the life.

I was really happy because sometimes I start working on a story, and I'm like, this is so ridiculous.

Like, this is, like, so stupid.

And I was like, I I am having a good time legitimately.

So let's play a clip of it before we move on. Let's play a clip so people can hear the joy in Jason's in Jason's voice and see the the the jet that we're talking about.

We're here in the private jet. We're on our way to Ibiza. Got the passport. Got the Prosecco. You wanna be rich like us?

Learn how to do journalism.

So there's no point in you shooting in this fake studio if you didn't post it somewhere. So tell me how you actually produced this, like, sizzle reel of your rich lifestyle and, you know, your pitch to to do journalism and get rich?

Well, let me tell you the other two things that I did because they they were good too. I'll I'll be quick. I went to the jewelry district in LA, which is like uncut gems vibes. Like, there's this kiosk and, like, tons of gold there and stuff. And I I had bought some jewelry there, like, five years ago.

And when I talked to the guy, he was like, you ever need anything? Like, come back here. And I told him I was a journalist and showed him my Instagram. Like, I don't know. That that's just like he was like, oh, cool.

Like, you wanna do a photoshoot sometime. Come back. And I was like, maybe he'll let me hold a bunch of gold, but he wasn't there. So I was leaving kind of like dejected. And right next to the jewelry district, there is a jewelry box wholesaler that just sells jewelry boxes and jewelry bags.

And so I bought empty empty jewelry boxes and empty, like, fancy bags to put the jewelry in for, $8. And I put I just, like, carried them around and filmed myself as though I had just, like, bought bought a bunch of jewels. And then I went to a marina that's kind of near my house where rich people have yachts, and I just, like, stood outside of it filming myself. And I did this all in one day. I was just bopping around.

But I say that because I basically, like, filmed a bunch of videos of myself, and then I just dumped them on a person that I found on Fiverr who does this for a living. As in, like, Fiverr, which is the gig work platform, has an entire category of people who just make, like, hype videos on Instagram. And

Is that the category? Is that is that what we're talking about? Is that what you made?

I I yeah. It was like vertical video advertisement category, editing. Like

But like hype video is the genre. It's like it's it's the it's the thing.

I'm I'm calling it hype video, but, like, basically, everyone on Fiverr, like, you kind of, like, click through different profiles and people show examples of the type of video that they make. And some of them some of them make, like, straightforward advertising for malls or, like

Mhmm.

I I will do, like, I will cut down a clip of your city council meeting for the public access channel or something, and that those are, like, boring ones, which are very thankless and that sort of thing. But then there's some that are, like, action like, they they advertise in their Fiverr profile that they they do, like, high energy Instagram videos editing,

basically. The the person what's their name? Let's give it credit.

Ejaz.

So Ejaz clearly understood the assignment. It did not feel like the first time that he made a video like this. Like, I've definitely seen this type of video on Instagram. It seems like he has made something like this before. Did you give him special instruction or you would like make me one of those?

So I made a Google Drive of footage. I dumped it in there. And honestly, I was it was late at night and I was like, I don't really know what to say. So here here's what I wrote. I said, hi.

Here's a lot of footage. Basically, I want a few videos that highlight the private jet, the jewelry, and becoming rich. It is very important that the notifications and Stripe dashboard are shown. The video should also feature quick scrolls of four zero four media dot c o, our website, and a lot of transitions. And that's all I said.

And he turned around three incredible videos based on like, they they were like, they were great. They were really great. And they're all like sixteen seconds long. And they're full of like cuts and sound effects and things like that. And they are basically exactly the type of video that I've seen all of these LARPers and Hustle Bro influencers make.

So, yeah, he understood the assignment. There was I had no edits for him. Like, it was truly one of those things, no notes vibes. I think I think I paid $60 for three videos. I got the sense that he did this in his sleep because, like, he sent me one, and he was like, is this good?

And I said, yes. And he said, okay. I'll do the other two. And then, like, twenty minutes later, he sent me the other two. So, I mean, hopefully, it's something where he just gets a lot of work from from doing this this sort of thing.

But the the reason that I did Fiverr and not like edited myself or had Evie on our team edit it is because I wanted to be true to form because that's what a lot of these people do is they go on Fiverr and they find people to edit their footage for them and make them look rich, basically.

All this reminds me of do you remember, like, two or three years ago? I think it was, like, 2024. You wrote about the fake livestream viewers and how you could, like, create, like, a fake stream where it's just like you're getting so many views all the time.

That is so true. I do remember that. I I should have mentioned that in the article. But, yeah, basically, there was, like, this fake app where you could, it looked like you're on a live stream, and it had AI generated comments and AI generated, like, usernames and things in that. And, I mean, that was really gross for a million reasons, but it was specifically gross because it was, like, made by a pickup artist vibes.

And the whole point of the app was for you to, like, show people at bars that you were popular and had, like, a lot of had a lot of streamers watching you and

things like that. But, yeah, like, yeah, it totally works. That's yeah. Chicks love that shit. When you and you're like, look how many viewers I have.

And now I'm streaming you through my Meta Glasses. That's something that we can do now. Yeah. I don't know. That just came to mind.

It's like this whole culture of, like, the new markers of success are social media success. And really all they're doing, I mean, I like the point of all of this, which I guess we haven't like explicitly said yet, is to buy your course. Like that's the whole idea is like this multilevel marketing idea of like, buy my course, buy my course, and be successful like me, which is another thing. And you guys mentioned this earlier, but it's another thing that if you take two seconds to think about, doesn't make sense because the idea of it is to be the standout in a very crowded field. So why would you want more people to know how to do this?

But the point of all this is to buy my course not to fake being rich, but to actually, like the idea is to tell you how to get rich, which they're not. So they can't tell you how to be. But also yeah. I mean, do you wanna just talk about just like the end goal of all of this, I guess, is to to sell more grit?

Yeah. I mean, it's like it's pure it's a pyramid scheme on top of a pyramid scheme, like, actually. So where it's like, nominally, there is the, like, I am gonna teach you how to make an AI influencer by my course. Like, that is a type of person on Instagram now. There's, like, a lot of them.

And all of them have these, like, $30 per month course. You get, like, a PDF that shows you which software to use. It usually includes like prompts and things like this. Like, we've done articles about these before, and they usually like come with access to some sort of Discord or something like that. And there are that that's one of those examples where, like, the person making that is not getting rich with the AI girl.

The person making that is getting rich selling the course for how to make the AI girl. And it's not clear whether they're getting rich or not, but it's like that is their business model. Their business model isn't like, I'm good at making the AI girl. It's like, I'm good at making marketing for my course. And often the course is like shitty and AI generated everything.

Like the PDF is AI generated. I bought like 10 of these by the way, like over the course of four zero four media just while like reporting on these things, and they're always terrible. So there's like that. That is a pyramid scheme. And now there's a pyramid scheme beneath that where they are people are selling the dashboards and software and, like, the LARPing toolkits and all of this for that guy so that guy can make a pyramid scheme and a course and all of that.

And so, I mean, it does earlier, Emanue said I call it, like, the new economy. I think I actually called it or I think it's like part of the depravity economy is is what I was calling it where it's just like really depraved. It's like scam on scam on scam. And it's every like inch of the market that is like underserved, something will arise to, like, fill it, I think. And so, like, that's kind of, I think, what is happening here where it's like, I'm gonna go go make this, like, whatever.

I'm gonna make these tools for for you to make your tools, for this to make another tools, and it's like, it's just all, like, so fucked up, honestly.

I feel like eons ago when there were ads for, like, shady, here's how to make money schemes on TV, it was like, I don't know, go to trucking school, go to video game development college, and and it and it's like, they're kind of fake. Right? It's like your chances of becoming a very successful video game developer, especially now, are not really good. But at least the the dream being sold is like, hey, you get a job and you learn a skill and that's how you make money. And now it's like, I'm thinking about one person he wrote about a couple times, think, is his name is Musa.

Right? Like, he he does, like, a short form video, and, like, a whole part of his pitch is, like, he described his day, and he's like, I woke up, I posted a video, it took me five minutes, and then I went back to bed, and I made $15,000 that day. It's like the idea is you don't work. Right? It's like and I think that is part of the the fantasy being sold.

Like, showing your bank account, showing, your Capital One bank account, that suggests you got a job, maybe you went to school, maybe you build business relationships, and now you work really hard and you make money. And it's like, who cares about that? It's like, that's that's not real. I just wanna, like, you know, post images or videos to social media and get rich that way. And I think that is really indicative of, like, obviously, this is not this is not real, but, like, the economy or at least what people wanna do is kind of pointing in that way because nobody has faith in the idea that you can, like, get a job and build wealth and yada yada yada.

The the story is always like, it's so easy. If I'll show you how and you can do it from your phone and it's like, once it's like a set it and forget it, like automated recurring revenue, like all of this sort of thing.

Passive income.

Yeah. Passive income. And I guess the the thing we didn't even really mention is that, like, on in all my videos, it was like, I'll teach you to get rich by being a journalist and blogging and all of that, which is really that was part of the joke because it's famously very difficult to get make a sustainable journalism business, let alone, like, get rich doing it, like selling blogs on the Internet. And I was like, take my journalism course. I didn't make a journalism course.

There was no course, but maybe we should do that. That could be fun.

What's our three step journalism course? What are the three steps to becoming a successful journalist?

Dude, I don't know. Write down

It's non blogging.

Think it's like, pick the worst profession in the worst time, quadruple down on your bad decision. Yeah. Have no

other student loan debt.

Yeah. Have no other skills, burn the boats, and get extremely lucky. Those are more than three steps.

Find other psychos.

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. The last thing I'll mention is that, like, when I was doing this, the the story ends on a very wholesome note, I feel, which is like, when I was looking for footage to send to EJazz to make it look like I was rich and stuff, I was like, oh, I like my life. I've had nice time. Like, there's I look like I've taken some nice vacations in my time. Like, I've hung out with friends.

I have been on boats before, like, you know, boat rides. Not I don't have a boat.

In the canal is not the same thing.

I had a nice time. I had a nice time on it. What can I say? And I it made me feel like, oh, I have, like, tricked myself into feeling happy by doing this stunt. So I don't know.

What if the wealth is what you built along the way?

It's very true.

More you

Worth wealth. Your friends.

Yeah. That's right.

Okay. Should we take a break there and, then do another story?

Yeah. We'll take a break and we'll go back for the subscribers, supporters section.

Where we're gonna talk about actual wealth, unfortunately.

Okay. We're back. This is the section for subscribers at the supporter level. This is another Jason story, which these stories go if you've listened to the entire podcast so far, these stories go hand in hand really nicely. I think it's like Jason LARPing as a rich influencer and then Jason entering the reality of rich influencers and advertisers.

I guess there weren't so much influencers, but it's a very different kind of scheme going on. So, anyway, Jason went to Cannes. The headline is inside Cannes, the advertising industry's biggest party. So, I mean, before we get into, like, what you experienced at the festival itself and in the South Of France, can you tell us why why why did you decide to do this? What made you want to do this?

You you mentioned the story that this is something you've been thinking for a minute. It's never crossed my mind to go or to want to go. So

Well, Cannes is the biggest advertising conference, I say in quotes, in the world because it's just a party in the South Of France. It's like insane. It's just an insane thing that people that rich people do, like advertising executives, tech companies, like that sort of thing, and then media companies too. And back advice when we worked there, like, many executives went every year. And I didn't it was usually people who were, like, way above me, but I don't know if this was explicitly said or if it was, like, something I heard at happy hour or something like this.

But, basically, at least at some time that I was there, there was this sense that, like, you should, like, not let your teams fuck up while the executives are in Cannes because they're, like, trying to sell either try to sell the company, like Vice trying to sell itself, or they're trying to sell big deals. And like all the CEOs are hanging out with each other. And if you like fuck up while they're there, like it's gonna one, like ruin their time. Like, they're gonna that you're gonna ruin the executive's time on the yacht. And or you're gonna, like, destroy the company because you've, like, made it impossible for them to sell an ad.

And so I had this, like, air of just being, like, wildly important to it. At least that's what I got the sense, like, while I was especially in, like, the first few years that I was there because it like, Vice was like a a, like, high flying company on paper at that time. And so I I was just and I didn't even know what it was. That's the thing. I was like, what the fuck is Cannes?

Like, I know it is a place in France, but I don't know, like, what it is. Like, what are they doing happens there? And I am a person who like doesn't have any sense for a thing until I see it for myself. And so I was just like, you know what? We have a media company now.

I'm gonna go and see what it's like. And then the other why is that I have, like, some friends who are not in journalism at all, who work in advertising, who are gonna be there. And they were like, we're gonna have a good time. You should come. So I was like, I'm I'm gonna go.

Like, Like my

me think that it was an offshoot of the film festival?

Dude, it's so funny. I told so many of my friends like, hey, I'm going to Cannes and they're like, oh my god. That's so cool. The film festival. I was like, no.

No. No. No. No. The advertising conference.

It's completely unrelated. It just takes place in the same

It's completely unrelated?

It is I didn't

know that.

Not it is not completely unrelated. Okay. It is it is completely unrelated, but it happens in the same place, like the same, like, conference area. And Mhmm. It's a conference area in the South Of France.

So it's like a a convention center, but it's like very fancy and it has like red carpets and things like this. And I believe what happened is basically like the Cannes Film Festival, like this very famous film festival where, like, all the celebrities go, and I think it happens in, like, May, maybe. The advertising industry saw this, and they were like, this is cool. We're gonna copy this. And they copied it.

And so it is unrelated and that they are not like tied together, but the Can Lions is what it's called. It's technically an award show for the most creative people in advertising. And so it's basically like like AB InBev, like Budweiser, basically. Like these, like, alcohol giants and things like this. Like, they basically, like, give themselves awards for, like, you made the best Super Bowl commercial this year, or you made, like, the most creative, like, magazine ad, things like that.

And they give themselves, like, awards at this, and then there's a conference around it. And it's like, the advertising industry was just jealous of Hollywood, basically. And so they're not related, but it's it's a rip off. It's like a copy, essentially.

Okay. I didn't I mean, I was totally ignorant. I only thought I thought Cannes was the name of the film festival thing. I didn't even know it was the name of the place. I'm gonna just show my ass right now.

I didn't know it was a place.

Cannes is a city. I had no idea. It's a it's it's a town. It's like a very fancy town.

Learned a lot

from the story. South Of France.

Including some, some new vocabulary such as the beaches. Can you just say the word? Because I'm not gonna attempt to say the word. Starts with the p.

Pla plaza. Plauche. I mean, it's a French so it's the the French word for beach is plagea. Okay. That's not how it's said, but it's like p l a g e.

But it has a different meaning at the conference because that's where the activations and the brand stuff is happening. So can you explain the system with that? Yeah. Because that was a big part of it.

So if people like me are having a hard time imagining this, imagine any beach that you've ever been to that has a boardwalk. And then, like, instead of shitty t shirts that say, like, I'm with stupid or something that's, like, far worse than that. They're, like, it's like a Versace store, like Hermes. There's like a Ritz Carlton, like, on the beach basically. And then there's a boardwalk, and then there's the beach, like, with sand and the ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, etcetera.

And so all of these tech companies bought gigantic tents as though they were throwing like a wedding, like the a ridiculous wedding and divided the beach so that this formerly public beach for this week is, like, a gated access center controlled by a tech company. And they're, like, themed party areas, basically. And they're like, they build these platforms. They have tents. They and then they have like bars.

They have like coffee. They have stages where they do like panels and things like that. And during the day, there will be like programming where, like Salesforce will talk about how AI agents are going to change how people buy things on Salesforce. Like, I don't even know what the fuck Salesforce does. I'm gonna be very honest with you right now.

Like, they sell they sell like sales software. So it's like, here's how our software is gonna change. If you sell ads, like, here's how it's gonna change. And then like, Yahoo has one and they're like, you wanna buy ads? Like, you wanna do a real good job buying ads?

Like, you should buy ads on Yahoo Mail, and they'll do like a panel about, like, their new products and stuff like that. And like that sounds very boring, and it is. But then there's like a happy hour every day. And then at like 9PM, they'll be, like, the most washed up band playing a concert. So, like, Mumford and Sons played one night.

Central c, who's like a British rapper, played another night. And they play at these different beaches. And there's like maybe 12 or 13 different beaches. And to get in, you have to sign up ahead of time, like and you get a QR code. And when you sign up, you, like, tell them who you are and also what your job is.

And, like, if you have a job that's important, you get to go. And if you have a job that's not important, you don't get to go. And so it's like the one time in, like, Salesforce's life that they're like, you don't get to come to our cool party where we have Diplo playing. And like Diplo, the DJ, like, did play at, like, the Salesforce booth or whatever. And, like, they're quite small, and you're already at this conference that's full of advertisers and tech companies and, like, rich people.

And so there's, like, all this jockeying for, like, who gets a QR code to what, who gets a wristband to what, what color is your wristband, like, color is the wristband that for the Yahoo beach or whatever. And if you have a a good wristband, like, can go to anything, no questions asked. And if you have a bad wristband, like, you have to stand in a really long line.

It sounds like South by. It sounds like South by Southwest, but I get which I guess more people will maybe have been exposed to than going to the South Of France. More people have been in Austin, very South Way.

It is like that, but they're all next to each other, and they're all tech companies. Every single one is a tech company. And so I'll read some of them. There was Yahoo Explorers Yahoo Explorers Society. There was Microsoft Gardens.

There was Canva Creator Cabana. There was something that was just called influential beach, which I don't know what that one was. I think influential is like an influencer marketing company, but they just called it Influencer Beach. There was Spotify Beach. There was Salesforce Beach.

There was Amazon Port. It was like a boat themed Amazon Compound. There was a Meta one. There was a YouTube one. There was like a there was one that was just called Sport Beach, and it was just like, we have, like, golfers come here and talk about their personal brands and stuff like that.

Like, Kevin Durant went there, and he's a basketball player, like, things like this. Yeah. The so it's like that. And yeah. And Cringe are cool.

Cringe are cool.

Oh, yeah. Meta Meta had a panel called cringe are cool, and they talked to they had a Meta employee talk to, like

50 year olds?

No. Because it was specifically with Gen z. It was like it was does Gen z think that this, like, advertising trend is cringe or cool? And they had like two really lame, like, Instagram posters on there. Like, they weren't that popular.

I'm sure they also were paid out the ass. It's like The young people there. Yeah. Just all the people. It's like, I don't know how much Diplo got paid to play like Salesforce Beach, but like a lot.

A lot. So, I mean, I know that this is already running like super long, but and I'm rambling. But basically, like, every tech company sends its top, like, marketing people there. Every publication sends, like, its executives there. Like, New York Times was there.

Insider was there. Fortune was there. Four zero four Media was there. We did not have a compound, but like, like New York Times who rented like a a loft somewhere. Wall Street Journal was there.

Like Bloomberg rented the thing, and it's like they throw a thing and then their executives try to sell ads. And the way they try to sell ads, they just like try to throw a cool party for the other like rich people basically. And so there are those beaches. Then there's also, like, the area that's just, like, regular restaurants within Cannes, which were, like, all quite nice restaurants. And anyone could go to those for the most part, but a lot of the restaurants were actually booked out and closed.

Like, Google bought, like, three restaurants and shut them down for the whole week, essentially. And then there's yachts. And I, like, I I think the yachts are important because the yachts are basically like the plazas that I was just talking about, but, like, they're yachts instead. And they're not themed, but they are, like, owned by different companies or, like, rented out for different companies. And the yachts are open from, like, 11AM to, like, four in the morning.

And it's also similarly, like, you have to be invited onto a yacht, you go onto a yacht, and it's just like there's endless rose and, like, you know, food. And, like, HP, like Hewlett Packard invited me onto one of their shared yachts. Like, HP couldn't afford a full yacht. So they Shared yacht. They, like, they went in on one with, like, five other companies.

And so I'll Catch

me dead on that yacht.

Roommate yacht.

Yeah. So roommate yacht. It did and it was what? It was with it was shared with outside media or, like

Oh, yeah.

Outsider. No. Not not the magazine. It's like a company that sells billboards. They just sell billboards.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. Outside. No. It's, out Outfront. Outfront.

Outfront. Outfront. And I talked to someone on the Outfront slash HP yacht. I only went on there for, ten minutes because I was like, what's going on in this yacht? And he's like, I'm so never mind.

I won't say it. Basically basically, anyone I talked to who sold billboards there was like, I'm so embarrassed to be selling billboards because, like, it didn't have tech attached to it. It's like, I don't have, like we don't have, like, cool tech. Like, we're not targeting. We're just, like, putting pictures on signs.

And I was like, I think billboards are cool as far as

Grangerful.

As far as these things go. But, like, there's a Mercedes Benz yacht. There was a White Lotus yacht, like HBO, Paramount yacht, things of this nature. And then a bunch of yachts for companies that you've never heard of that do ad tech. Like, there was an IAS yacht, which is Integral Ad Services, and that is or Sciences, something like that.

And they do just like ad brand safety. They do like brand safety, which is like, we don't need to get into it. But there's a lot of companies like that that do like targeting and that sort of thing. And, yeah, that was canned. You basically, like rich people drink tons and tons of rose and try to and like invite people to their parties if they wanna sell ads to them.

Did did you learn anything about the advertising industry or like the why this needs to exist? Or is it as simple and stupid as it looks, which is like a bunch of advertising executives awarded themselves like the nicest vacation in the world because they can can

It's it's nice. It's that second one because 100% of the people go there go there for few days, and then they go to another vacation in Europe. The and they're they're like, every year I come to this, and then my wife and kids join me toward the end of it in Greece on a Greek island, something like that. And it's just like a lot of people fly their business class, you know, it costs like zillions of dollars, and they all hang out with each other. And there is business getting done as in, like, they are forming they're networking, and then they sell ads, like, later in the year.

But I don't know, like, and I I guess, like, when I say, like, sell an ad, it's like when we sell a podcast ad or when we sell a newsletter ad, it is for, like, either a few 100 or a few thousand dollars. I'm talking, like, Disney buys, like an ad from Meta or buys like an advertising package from Meta for like hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars. Like, these are the types of deals that get done there. Yeah. Like Reddit had a huge Reddit cafe, and they did like a million little panels and things where their CEO was like, yo, buy ads on Reddit.

And they were doing it with like, you know, the CEOs of other companies, the chief marketing officers of like fortune five hundred companies. It's like Procter and Gamble sends its CEO there to like or maybe it's CMO. I don't know. But Procter and Gamble had like a lot of stuff there. And they're like, yeah, we're gonna buy like a billion dollars of Instagram ads or something.

And this is like where those people hang out basically.

So we'll be going every year

from that one. Learn a lot about it. Like, it was actually very useful because there were so many companies I'd never ever ever heard of that do surveillance type stuff to do like better targeting, AI targeting, audience segmentation, like all of this sort of thing. And then a huge, like, talk of the entire thing was like, here's how we're gonna use AI to like, generate ads or to like more tightly segment that and, that sort of thing. This, like, first story that I did about going there and how crazy it was, like, that was fine.

I think some people liked it. I thought it I thought it was good. But I I do think that, like, I will have a better understanding of this industry to write about it moving forward, basically.

Okay. So it was worth whatever psychic damage you took by going there. I mean, I not to not to hand it to the execs, the advertising execs, but, like, this this sort of event sounds like hard. It sounds like a lot of work to network in that environment when you're being handed a glass of rose every second. So I don't know.

I mean, I'm sure there I'm sure there is work happening, but it's also it seems like a lot of play. The last thing that that I'm curious about is if you you mentioned the story that AI wasn't, like, the only thing anybody ever talked about in an optimistic way, which is what I would assume would be happening in a place like this based on the last few years. It's like I was like, surely everyone there is gonna just be, like, hyping AI this and trying to figure out how to integrate AI into that. But you said that it wasn't really overwhelmingly AI positive even, that people had some skepticism. So I'm curious, like, what are, like, the big trends that you saw happening?

Like, what if you were like, the next year of advertising is gonna look like this based on what I saw in Cannes, is there something that stands out, or was it just like total

mishmash? I mean, it was the it's interesting because there was just like any company that touches advertising in any way was there and saying that their thing is gonna be the next big thing. So there was like so many people being like, AI is gonna be everything. And like agentic buying is something that they were talking a lot about, which is basically where like, we're gonna stop advertising to people. We're gonna start advertising to people's AI agents, and those AI agents are going to buy our product.

And I'm probably gonna do a story about that at some point. But then there were also a separate track of people being like, the human touch is so important. Like, you should only focus on, like, experiences and events and parties and concerts and, like, influencers and that sort of thing. So it was, like, a little bit all over the place. But I will say that the advertising industry is also quite scared of AI because all these human beings who sell ads are being told that robots are gonna start selling ads for them and do doing targeting better than them and, like, all this sort of thing.

And this is a conference full of people who all think that they're Don Draper from Mad Men, and they're like, I'm gonna get replaced. And so I think that there's like a fair bit of anxiety among the, like, actual people who were there because and that's why it wasn't so, like, pro AI because they're like, we're the creatives who make the cool slogan and the cool logos and whatever that, like, sell products, and they see themselves as, like, quite important.

Nice. Great. Okay. Well, thank you.

So in this next year, more ads. Gonna be a lot more ads.

That's what I heard. That's what I heard. Okay. I guess that's something you can guarantee is gonna happen in next year is you will be advertised too.

Catch us at the for for media cabana in the can next year.

I wanna be in the goatee tent. There's a picture in the article. There's a picture in the article that you have to see. Go click on that, or we can probably put it on I don't know if we can even put it on YouTube. It's probably too graphic.

It's Don't

don't do it.

No. It's it looks exactly like Etsy. To be. Yeah. To be, which is still around.

Cool. Okay. Should we leave it there? Probably. Should I read this out?

Alright. Let me read this out. As a reminder, four four Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to forformedia and directly support our work, go to forformedia.co. You'll get unlimited access to articles and an ad free version of this podcast.

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