The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:04

Hello, and welcome to the four zero four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four zero four Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.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 404media.co.

Joseph: 00:32

I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are two of the four zero four Media co founders and a special guest, the first of those co founders being Sam Cole.

Sam: 00:41

Hello. I'm back.

Joseph: 00:43

And Jason Kepler.

Jason: 00:45

Hi. You sound sad. Are you sad?

Joseph: 00:48

Yes. Because also our regular contributor, Matthew Goldt said, no. I'm very, very happy

Matthew: 00:53

Oh, that he's wow.

Jason: 00:54

Thrilling.

Joseph: 00:55

I'm trying to bring the segues in. No. I I just didn't sleep well. That's all. So I have my I have my raspy voice, but I'm excited to get into these stories.

Joseph: 01:06

Matthew, we brought you on to talk about this one that you wrote. I think Jason edited it or maybe wrote some of it as well. But the headline is Iran is winning the AI slop propaganda war. So obviously we'll get into it, but there is a particular viral video that this article starts with, LEGO themed. Can you describe just what happens in the video?

Joseph: 01:33

Not even what it means, not even who made it, just literally what happens in the video.

Matthew: 01:38

So LEGO Donald Trump is gambling at a casino, and he rolls the dice, and they come up a Ron. The way that dice may come up snake eyes and you know that you've lost, these dice come up a Ron, and then a rap song kicks in, and it is a rap song about how Donald Trump is a loser, and that kind of plays against a bunch of Lego footage of Trump being, like, sucked further and further into hell and having to face, like, armies of dead soldiers and drown in a river of blood and see, like, a bunch of dead children and be controlled on puppet strings by Benjamin Netanyahu. Then we cut back into the real world and see Iranian missiles destroying American military assets. And that's like three minutes of that, basically.

Joseph: 02:29

That's a lot. Three minutes.

Jason: 02:32

It's it's very catchy though. It's like mean, that's

Matthew: 02:35

really makes it all move. It's I was because I was watching it before we jumped on again just now, and I was like, this real like, the song really makes this work in the way the propaganda works.

Jason: 02:46

Do you still feel that it's Hamilton esque?

Matthew: 02:49

I do. I I I stand by this. As a musical theater nerd, as someone who who has seen Hamilton many times before, unfortunately, Yes, I feel like the LLM that they used to pump out this rap song sounds like it

Joseph: 03:05

was trained on Hamilton. Sounds like there may be disagreement from the editor being Jason there. How about the I don't think I've actually heard it. Let's play a small clip right now so the audience can decide for themselves whether this is Hamilton themed or not. Yeah.

Joseph: 03:47

Okay. So please don't write in or whether you think that is the case or not. Just keep that thought to yourself. But these and other videos are made by Explosive News Team. I guess before we talk about some other videos, what on earth is Explosive News Team?

Matthew: 04:11

So as far as I've been able to suss out, which is really interesting, again, thinking about this as I was reporting on it, how hard it is right now to suss out the truth of, like, what is going on in any one thing. It's always difficult during the war, but, like, this particular administration and this particular country, it's not super easy. But as far as I can tell, they are Iranians that are running a news agencypropaganda team, and primarily on Telegram seems to be where stuff goes first. So you see the Lego videos that go viral on other social media sites, Instagram and Twitter especially, x.com, but they also have like a guy who does like face to camera, tells you what's going on, like kind of walking around outside explaining like the war and like the minutiae of the day to day, But it's the LEGO stuff that that people really love from them.

Joseph: 05:13

Yeah. We'll we'll get to the LEGO stuff in a minute because that definitely is frankly the most interesting part. Do we have any idea? And I appreciate, you know, there's there's already a fog around this, and then there's the fog of war as as well in a way. But do we have any idea if the explosive news team is, part of the government or it's just sort of random people or it's an offshoot?

Joseph: 05:37

Like, is there any indication, or do we kinda need researchers to look into that more before we have a better idea of exactly

Matthew: 05:44

sources I think we need we need Yeah. Like a Farsi speaker and someone who's an expert in Iran to, like, watch all of the videos and look for the tells, which I am not. Sure. So, yeah, I don't I don't know.

Jason: 05:58

Yeah. I mean, I think this is one of the problems with AI slop in general is that it's hard to tell Unless there's something extremely distinctive about it, it's hard to tell who is making it, where it's coming from. It's it's also usually pretty hard to tell which tools are being used. So I think in some cases, it's obvious. In this case, I'm not sure what they're using.

Jason: 06:21

No. That's not CDance, but I'm not sure.

Joseph: 06:25

Yeah. On that, what are some other examples of videos that they're making, Matthew? And I mean, from the LEGOs. Because this isn't like this Telegram channel was community just sprung up and only make LEGO stuff. There's other sort of AI slop propaganda as well.

Joseph: 06:43

What what other stuff are they making?

Matthew: 06:45

I mean, the the Explosive News team, like, is pretty heavy on they they figured out that the Lego hits, and so there's a lot of Lego. But the other things that I'm seeing, that maybe not always necessarily from them, but is like Iran centric. I also see a lot of stuff kind of starring Ali, who's the founder of Shia Islam and is really important to 12 or Islam in Iran, depicted as a superhero pushing back American forces. I also see a lot of There's anime, the news. Surely y'all have seen versions of this where it's important news stories done in an anime style.

Matthew: 07:31

I've seen a lot of that to AI generated Iran war footage, but in a style of anime, and it's always kind of depicted in a hellscape and the American soldiers are losing. And then just kind of a lot of stuff that I would almost classify as like past generation five years ago. It kind of has that weird, like gross sheen to it that is From earlier models, you mean? Yeah. Earlier model looking, like very quick cuts, you know, like Trump kind of doing this and then like an American soldier leaning over and dying.

Matthew: 08:08

It kind of runs the gamut. The LEGO stuff is really what seems to be hitting.

Joseph: 08:12

Sure. I mean, I guess there's two questions there. I'm more interested than the latter, but why do you think the LEGO is hitting? But I think more importantly, like, why do you think they're doing LEGO? Because I think you made some pretty good points in the piece itself.

Matthew: 08:30

So there's some stuff I was thinking about that's not in the piece, but it is culturally ubiquitous on a worldwide level. So I think propaganda works best when it's simple and easily read and understood, and LEGO is kind of beloved the world over. It's one of the most recognizable IPs outside of Mickey Mouse. And I think it's easily animated. It seems to lend itself to this kind of AI aesthetic.

Matthew: 09:04

When you see it, you don't read it necessarily as like AI slop instantly the way you would like some of these other videos, like the anime videos and some of the more realistic quote unquote stuff that I've seen. And I think that Iran has known that America is its enemy for a long time and has studied us and watched us and knows that we respond to cartoon characters. Right.

Sam: 09:32

Was the

Joseph: 09:32

big finding.

Matthew: 09:33

A lot of our cultural heroes are comic book heroes and mythological figures and that we love that stuff. And I think that this Not all of the Lego propaganda is designed for an American audience, but a lot of it is. A lot of it is. And I think they want Americans to see it, and so they make it into a simple cartoon that they know will kind of like be instantly recognized and go viral.

Jason: 09:58

Well, I know that we are going to get into this more, but I think this is a good time to say like the message in this is targeted directly at Americans for the most part. And it's like, it hits the high notes of the sort of criticisms of Trump and this war where it's like, in the Lego videos, it's like Trump is going to Iran to take Iranian oil. Trump is doing this as a distraction from the Epstein. Like, Epstein figures very heavily into the propaganda. Like, I think that the fact that it's like destroying the economy, like all of this sort of stuff like plays into the type of AI propaganda that's coming out of Iran.

Jason: 10:42

And so I think it resonates not just on a like, oh, Lego and is like a, you know, a very famous brand, but it also resonates on the level of like, this stuff that it's saying is hating these like, the criticism that people have over this war. Have you seen the the new one? I don't think so. No.

Matthew: 11:05

No. So it's it's everything that you're just saying, like, times a thousand. So it's LEGO Trump in the Oval Office. This time they've got a bandage on his left hand, which is like a reference to, you know, these bruises that keep showing up and that people kind of spread around, every time they pop up. And the there's a No Kings protest on the the lawn, and he's looking at it, and they are playing on a stereo the loser song from the previous video.

Matthew: 11:34

It's like part of the No Kings protest. They're they're building these Lego videos are building their own lore.

Joseph: 11:39

Yeah. There's a a throwback.

Matthew: 11:41

Like, that's previous video. Yeah. And then, like, he turns around, and it keeps cutting to, somebody in Iran making a coffin. It says loser on it. They ship to him.

Matthew: 11:53

And there's a shot where the coffin is, like, open and it says loser and Donald Trump is screaming. And the coffin is surrounded by, like, the dead bodies of, like, blonde haired children, which is what they which is like every time they reference Epstein in the videos, like that's that's what they use.

Joseph: 12:13

So so there's Epstein in here as well, just to be clear, in some capacity. Right.

Matthew: 12:17

Oh, yeah. They they often hit that over and over and over again. Like, even, even if it's just like a departing shot on the last title card, be like, remember the Epstein files? He's in the Epstein files over

Sam: 12:31

and over

Matthew: 12:31

and over again. Right.

Joseph: 12:35

That all makes sense. On sort of the flip side, there is obviously a lot of US American AI slop propaganda, right? It's not so much about the war, right? It's much more domestic stuff. Like there was a White House video things about the new farming initiative or something.

Joseph: 13:00

It looks like Trump is in Animal Crossing, and it'll be interesting to see if Nintendo does anything there considering, you know, it's very aggressive legally against sometimes children who are pirating games and stuff.

Matthew: 13:14

Oh, fact check. He's in Pokopedia, actually.

Joseph: 13:17

Wait. Really? It looks I swear it was Animal Crossing. I'm gonna check.

Matthew: 13:20

It's pretty awesome. Pokapedia looks a lot like Animal Crossing. They're and Pokapedia just came out. They're capitalizing on the on that release.

Joseph: 13:27

On the new Pokemon game.

Matthew: 13:28

Right. On the Pokemon game, which is basically Animal Crossing with Pokemon. Gotcha.

Joseph: 13:35

Then we also had a ton of others that I'll let you explain. But what about America's AI slop? Like, what have US agencies, like, been up to in in that world?

Matthew: 13:47

So it's interesting because Iran is trying to, like, signal to American audiences, and it really does feel like, Trump's stuff is very narrowly focused on the 30% of America that still supports him, just barely. And even within that coalition, it is very narrowly aimed at the people that have been extremely online on 4chan for a long time. It's a lot of old video game memes. You know, they're cutting together Call of Duty killstreak cams with missile strikes from Iran. There's another one where they have CJ from Grand San Andreas like, walking into the background, like, oh, no.

Matthew: 14:33

Here we go again, repeatedly cut with Iran drone strikes. And then the White House comm director retweets this with the code for infinite ammo from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I'm just thinking about, like, there's like so many shibboleths in that. Like, you have to understand like, I've played too many video games, so, like, I I instantly got all of it. But, like, if you're just, like, a dude, in, you know, Southern California that is mad that gas is $8 a gallon, and you see all of that and you don't play video games, none of it makes any sense to you.

Matthew: 15:07

It just looks like nonsense. But you see the Lego video and you instantly know everything. All of it makes perfect sense. All of the images are clear. And I think the week that I wrote this, it really all culminated in the White House and a bunch of the other accounts retweeting these pixelated images of Trump and Vance and other, I will say, regime figures that ends in them releasing a White House app.

Matthew: 15:41

So like this is not like the propaganda is not hitting. Right. Not hitting in quite the same way. And even their uses of AI that we've kind of seen are, it's like the Pokapedia thing. They see a trend popping and they kind of jump on it and they ruin the joke for everyone.

Matthew: 16:04

They'll take Studio Ghibli and give ICE deportation photos of Sheen. You know, Jason's written about people kind of manifesting using or using S. To manifest these like ice detention like these ice deportation videos that never really happened. It all just feels very like, very narrow, playing for a very narrow audience, whereas the Iranian stuff is hitting wide and deep and getting very popular. So popular that they're referencing past videos.

Joseph: 16:37

Right. Right. So I'm gonna take your fact check, and I'm gonna UNO reverse card it because I'm looking at a Gattaca article. Headline, President Trump is now posting Animal Crossing AI slob. I'm looking at the image right now.

Joseph: 16:50

Maybe there are two. Maybe you can search, and then you can double UNO reverse card me. I can hear your mechanical keyboard going, trying to But outdo I'm looking at it. It's definitely Animal Crossing, but maybe there's another one

Matthew: 17:06

as well. Okay. That's that's definitely that's definitely Animal Crossing from March 20 Dude,

Joseph: 17:11

I've played freaking

Matthew: 17:12

that out. Great again. Okay. I think we're referring to I think we're both correctly be both correct because if you scroll down, you see the Make America Great Again.

Joseph: 17:22

Uh-huh.

Matthew: 17:23

That is Pokapedia. You can see the Pokemon in the upper, like, kind of right hand corner, upper center. That is a is a Pokemon symbol on that building. Is a Pokemon, like, what do they call them? Health clinic.

Matthew: 17:38

So we're both technically grade. Is the best is

Joseph: 17:42

the best kind. So now that we know no one won that battle between Joseph and Matthew, who is winning the AI slop off between America and Iran? I mean, it seems pretty clear from what you just said.

Matthew: 17:57

Iran. If you've got I mean, the fact that we're having a podcast discussion about Iran's Lego videos, like it's over. Right. Like they won. They won the Propaganda War.

Matthew: 18:09

They know us. They know what we want to watch, and it's a Lego slop. We'll eat that up. Set it to a Hamilton song. You've got us.

Matthew: 18:20

You won.

Joseph: 18:21

Again, disputed. So Jason.

Jason: 18:25

Well, so I was just gonna say, I mean, I I edited this piece. It was great. And I I, like, added a paragraph, to Matthew's great article, which is basically that, you know, it's hard to say exactly what's going on here. Like, I think that, obviously, the Iranians have been studying America and American culture for a long time, like all the points that Matt made. But also with AI Slop more generally, the social media platforms have really incentivized people from other countries to pay attention to America and American culture and American politics in a way that they might not otherwise.

Jason: 19:06

Because as we've reported before, it it's like, if you can make AI content that's viral in The United States, you can make more money that way. And like, obviously, the Iranian propaganda is not intended to make money. It's not a it's not a, like, money making, you know, thing. It's not they're not trying to collect bonus program money, etcetera. But, like, what has happened is social media companies and AI companies have incentivized thousands, millions, who knows, like many, many, many people in other countries to practice making AI generated content that resonates with Americans.

Jason: 19:44

And so therefore, you have, like you're basically, like, training a workforce to, like, do propaganda to The US, and that is what has happened on social media more broadly. And then here in The US, it's like, I don't know, we just have a bunch of fucking shit posters who, are trying to talk to their own insular communities and it's like not, it just doesn't resonate as well, I don't think. And it's like, you have like a bunch of people on truth social and on x who are just like laughing at their own jokes over and over and over again. They can't really see like the broader context of what's happening here. They can't understand how, like, the world sees us or they don't care.

Jason: 20:31

And I think that's that's like one of the reasons why I think, like, the propaganda that's being made by this administration and the propaganda that's being made within The US just like isn't hitting as hard.

Joseph: 20:44

Yeah. That makes complete sense. Alright. We will leave that there. When we come back after the break, we're gonna talk about something entirely different about AI strike zones in baseball.

Joseph: 20:58

Baseball is back on four zero four Media. We'll be right back after this. All right. We are back. This story written by Jason, Quote, you can't defeat the robots, end quote.

Joseph: 21:23

Baseball's AI strike zone is must watch television. Let me just read this sentence of your piece, Jason, to contextualize it for everybody to understand that, you know, this is much broader than baseball immediately off the bat. So you write this very human, very emotion driven mistake then set up a series of events resulting in the first ever manager objection for arguing about a robot's decision, perhaps a glimpse of the future of baseball and if you squint, a microcosm of various human AI beefs in society more broadly. So what episode were you talking about? Like what specific mistake happened here?

Joseph: 22:06

And then we'll talk about the system.

Jason: 22:08

Yeah. In the Orioles game on Sunday, the twins manager, who's a new manager, whose name I'm blank, Derek Shelton is his name. In the ninth inning of the game, basically, like, the pitcher used this new ABS system, which is automated ball strike system, like a an AI automated challenge system for the strike zone, which we will talk more about. He argued with, like, the umpire over the decision that it had made and sort of like the specifics around whether the Orioles player had challenged quick enough. And the Orioles announcer, who's this guy Kevin Brown, said this.

Matthew: 22:59

And Helmsley drops in a slider that is called ball for I don't think Adley Rutchman I think he probably did challenge.

Speaker 6: 23:08

The pitcher is challenging.

Matthew: 23:09

Oh, the pitcher is challenging.

Speaker 6: 23:10

Yeah. He put him right to his hat.

Matthew: 23:12

Ryan Helsley with the first pitcher challenge. The first challenge by an Orioles pitcher and Derek Shelton is incensed. He didn't think Helsley got that off in time.

Speaker 6: 23:27

Well he went right to his half. Came off the mound and tapped his half. Diaz is yelling at Derek Shelton to get back and the runner Keysha will be sent back

Matthew: 23:40

to first and Derek Shelton has been thrown out. He's arguing with the robots. You can't defeat the robots.

Speaker 7: 23:48

I think he's arguing that Helsley took too much time to challenge it. That's what he's arguing. You throw a

Speaker 6: 23:56

pitch you think to strike you kind of walk off the mound waiting for Adley and he dropped the ball a little bit.

Speaker 7: 24:02

I thought Adley when he dropped the ball, turned to the umpire verbally because you can verbally

Speaker 6: 24:06

challenge. Exactly.

Speaker 7: 24:08

I was not watching Helsink.

Speaker 6: 24:09

Yeah. Well, he's tapping his. And

Jason: 24:11

then this clip went like extremely viral, like millions and millions of views on different social media platforms. Like, it definitely broke baseball containment and that sort of one. I was like, oh, I should write about this. Because I was watching this in real time, which was very exciting.

Joseph: 24:27

Sam, I feel like you probably weren't watching in real time as well. I feel like

Sam: 24:31

you've I was been sadly.

Joseph: 24:33

Okay. Have you followed ABS at all? No. Or you're still old old school, not giving into the robots?

Sam: 24:41

The I this is the first time reading Jason's piece was the first time I had actually heard of it. I'm a I'm a fan of the Orioles only, and I do not follow baseball beyond what the Orioles are doing. So this is how it entered my stratosphere Right. Discovery.

Joseph: 25:00

Well, now as as Jason said, now it's broke containment. So not only to you, but to, you know, the website as well.

Sam: 25:06

Yeah. The clips are great. Like, all the clips about, like, the clips that are in the story that, you can go on the site and see from Jason's piece are just so fantastic. Sure. It's like rage bait and ejection from ABS is are some of the captions.

Sam: 25:18

It's just actually must watch TV. So I think I will be tuning in more to see the to watch the ABS drama unfold.

Joseph: 25:27

So we've been saying ABS a lot. Jason, what is ABS for those who don't know? Automated ball strike system.

Jason: 25:34

Yeah. Let me explain how baseball has worked for hundreds of years. Like, a hundred and twenty, hundred and

Joseph: 25:40

thirty years. Way.

Jason: 25:43

That's no. So so, like, very famously, in baseball, you get four balls and three strikes per batter as called by the home plate umpire who sits behind the catcher. And the pitch comes in, if it crosses over the plate, you know, within the strike zone, which is defined as, like, the area above the above home plate, and then also, I mean, it sometimes changes, but it's basically, like, from the letters on a player's jersey to like the bottom of their knees so that a pitch can be like high, outside, low, whatever. And the umpire who is a human has judged that. And the umpire for, you know, since baseball's inception has been the final arbiter of what the of whether a given pitch is a strike or not.

Jason: 26:32

And over the last few years, they have put like, Major League Baseball and the teams have put, like, all these sensors and cameras in their stadiums, usually for, like, broadcasting purposes. And so if you've been watching a baseball game at any time over the last, like, decade, there is a box on the screen, like, while you're watching TV, and it shows what the strike zone should be. And then multiple times a game, every game, a ball will either be thrown outside of that zone, and it's called strike by the umpire, or it'll be in the zone, and it's called the ball by the umpire. And that is like a very common experience where it's like, oh, the umpire got this call wrong, and there's nothing that you can do about it.

Joseph: 27:17

But everyone can see they got it wrong.

Jason: 27:19

Everyone can see that they got it wrong and it becomes this like, I mean, a super annoying part of baseball, honestly. It's like some people are very into the human element is what it's called where it's like, oh, well, when the umpires fuck up, that's just like part of the game. And, like, sometimes it goes for your team and sometimes it goes against your team. And there's, like, there's been a rise of analytics in baseball over the last, like, twenty years, where they try to codify everything and and try to, like, measure everything that's happening on a baseball field. And one thing that's been happening over the last few years is is this thing called umpire scorecards, where like after every game, there's a Twitter account and a website that is like, here's how many calls the umpire got wrong and here's which team it favored and here's how much it favored them by.

Jason: 28:15

They Is

Joseph: 28:16

that very much an unofficial thing? Like

Jason: 28:17

somebody's It's unofficial. Doing Yeah. But it but Major League Baseball also measures this. It's just Major League Baseball keeps it like somewhat secret, but like, this is like baseball nerds on their own are doing this. And then you can see like, oh, there was like a really critical call that an umpire messed up in this very important situation, and it totally changed the course of the game.

Jason: 28:42

And like, theoretically, you want the calls to be correct. Like, that that's sort of, like, what you want to happen. And so baseball knows this. People like, the players have been bitching about this for years. Like, the fans are apoplectic about this, like, the missed calls and stuff.

Jason: 28:59

Like, I'm super mad about it all the time. It's like one of the main things that I'm like mad about about baseball. And so they have implemented for this year something called the automated ball strike system. And this is not fully robo umps, like, the balls and strikes are not automatically called by, the robots. What happens is the umpires call ball or strike like normal, but then if a player disagrees with that call, they can challenge it.

Jason: 29:32

And the way that they challenge is they tap their hat helmet or their hat, and they have to do it immediately. And then up on the jumbotron, like in the stadium, the box that people see at home Yep. Like the ball is superimposed on that. And then the scoreboard calls it either a ball or a strike. And what has happened is like, this has become a huge thing at the stadium in the kind of like in the first few days of the season.

Jason: 30:05

And so, like, whenever there's a challenge, basically, like, the fans in the stadium will lose their shit. They'll like either cheer when the challenge is right or they'll boo if it's wrong or whatever, and it's become like this big thing. And then I think very crucially, teams can only get a challenge wrong twice per game. And so if you challenge and you're wrong, and then you challenge and you're wrong again, you can't challenge anymore.

Joseph: 30:32

Yeah. You can't spam it because that would get abused. Right?

Jason: 30:35

Yeah. And so what's happening is basically, like, some players are really good at challenging of at knowing whether, like, a call is wrong or not and others are not. And what happened in that Orioles twins game was there was a pitch that was thrown, like, right down the middle, and a twins player challenged it because he was pissed that he got called out and he was wrong. And everyone knew that it was like a terrible challenge, but he was like an emotional little man baby in that moment and he was pissed off and he challenged it. And that was like the last challenge that the twins had of the game.

Jason: 31:13

And then immediately in the next inning, the umpire messed up a call, obviously, but they were not able to challenge it. And it was like a huge thing. Like, the the Orioles got a walk out of it, and then the Orioles scored a bunch of runs and they ended up winning the game. And like so that that happened in, the eighth inning. And then in the ninth inning, this moment happened where, the Orioles closer, who's, like, their their last pitcher in the game trying to finish the game, threw a three two pitch.

Jason: 31:47

So it's either a strikeout or a walk, like a very important pivotal play. And it was called a ball, and the pitcher challenged it. And Derek Shelton was arguing that basically, like, he didn't challenge it fast enough, like, blah blah blah. And he got ejected from the game for arguing about this entire, like, process.

Joseph: 32:09

Oh, wow.

Jason: 32:10

And it was very funny. There were, like, numerous moments over the course of the weekend in other games where, like, the automated ball strike system was, like, very important. There was there's this umpire named CB Buckner who is hated by everyone because he's statistically the worst umpire. Like, he he gets something like 85% of strikes and balls called correctly, which is very low. Like, 80 if that means he's missing, like, more than one in 10 pitches, which is very bad.

Joseph: 32:43

Right.

Jason: 32:44

And so what happened was he he call he called this guy, like, strikeout, like, two pitches in a row. And he they do this whole, like, animated things, like, strike three and, like, makes a huge, like, you know, deal out of it. And then the player challenged it twice in a row and, like, the umpire was wrong both times. And so it's become this, like, humiliation ritual where it's, like, the players are like, fuck you. You're wrong.

Jason: 33:11

And the umpire gets called, you know, is wrong, and they have to, like, keep playing like nothing happened. And it's added this whole, like I don't know. It's just added I think it's added more to the game, like, an actual human more human element, even though it is this automated system, because a lot of it is about the strategy of when to use a challenge and which players you trust to use a challenge and also which players can like hold their emotions in check and realize like, maybe that pitch was borderline, but it's not the best moment to challenge this because if I'm wrong, it's gonna hurt my team in some way.

Joseph: 33:48

Yeah. It's like tactical, like an extra layer, as you say, not just of the human part, which it sounds like the human part hasn't been replaced. It's just been like shifted to to this sort of dynamic now. And then again, there can be a tactical bit. It was like, well, when am I actually gonna use it?

Joseph: 34:04

Which sounds sounds interesting. You know?

Jason: 34:06

I think it's literally like they've added, like, a turn based strategy game, like, on top of baseball, which is already, like, an extremely strategy heavy game. But this one is like a a straight up, like, mental game only. Like, it there's no physical aspect to it. It's just like, oh, are you good at deciphering whether that was a ball or strike, and and are you gonna challenge it or whatever? But anyways, this has been as I said, like, baseball's been done in one way for, a hundred and fifty years, and this is the first time that they're kind of adding something like this to the game, at least in in terms of strike strikes and balls, which is like the core element of baseball.

Jason: 34:51

And so it is kind of like adding it's adding robots to the game. Like, is an automated system. And there is thought that like this may eventually automate umpires out of the game in terms of like, maybe all of the balls and strikes should just be called by robots. Like that's been a huge debate in baseball for a long time.

Joseph: 35:14

Which would get rid of the human element or more so, obviously.

Jason: 35:17

It would get rid of the yeah. It would. And, like, the argument for it is basically, like, this technology is very close to foolproof at this point. And it's this is, like, something that comes up a lot. It's, like, it's not generative AI.

Jason: 35:32

It is like machine learning and positioning and sensing and all of that. It's auto it's an automated technology that's very adjacent to AI and it is like robotic in nature. And so, I don't know. We call it AI. Some people were mad about that.

Jason: 35:47

It doesn't matter really. But Yep. It is like it it kind of mirrors this debate that we've been having in society about should we let human beings do jobs that robots are better at if even if they lose their job and things like that. And it's like, I mean, I don't think I think that even if they go to a full automated ball strike system, like, without the challenges that they will let a human being stand behind home plate and, like, make the call so that there's the appearance of a human being still being there and they'll have the job. But, like, I don't know.

Jason: 36:25

It's kind of it's kind of similar to like a lot of what we've been talking about over the last, like, little bit. And I think I don't know. It's like, I think we try to be fair here about AI, and it's like we criticize AI all the time. But also as a baseball fan, like, when umpires make the wrong call, it doesn't enhance the game in any way. It's just like wildly frustrating.

Jason: 36:54

Yeah. And this system, I think in the first few days is like, this is better. It's like a better system and I'm happy with it. And I think most people that I've seen do seem happy with it. There's some people who are like, it's too distracting.

Jason: 37:09

There's too many challenges. I liked the the old system, but like, that's baseball. It's like there's a lot of people who love the tradition of it and all of that. And so they get mad when anything changes. But I think that this rule changed, I don't know if baseball, like Major League Baseball, like, very thoughtfully came to this decision where it seemingly, like, adds adds a human element to it, versus takes it away.

Jason: 37:41

But in some way, they've, like, lucked into, like, what seems to be, like, a really fun system that's already led to, like, all these viral moments, which the criticism of baseball over the last decade has been that it's too insular, that it's boring to watch, that there's not, like, these viral moments and it's

Joseph: 38:00

like Viewership is down. Right? Yeah.

Jason: 38:02

No. Baseball's like in a good spot overall, but like compared to the NFL, compared yeah. To like It's just like, it's been considered for so long like, oh, America's past time, blah blah blah. But it's like, people don't know the most famous baseball players or they But now over the last few years, it's like Chohay Ohtani and like there's kind of a lot of new there's a new wave of like MLB talent that has made baseball more popular than it's ever been, but it still lags like far behind in like cultural relevancy to like the NFL. And so to even have like these viral moments over the weekend where millions of people were looking at them, like, I think that's probably good for the game.

Joseph: 38:44

Yeah. I agree with the, you know, systems like this can better the game and make it more fair. I mean, you know, back when I watched a ton of football or soccer for a lot of people, you know, having a call of a offside that was incorrect, it was basically the same sort of discussion, right, in that, well, the ref didn't see it or the linesman didn't see it, and maybe that's an interesting human dynamic to the game, but it's like, we're playing a game with rules. It's like messing up in the parameters of those, and it's like harming the game. So I basically echo what you're thinking.

Joseph: 39:22

Sam, what do you think?

Sam: 39:23

It's also I mean, it's something since you mentioned football, it's something that's happening in many different sports right now. This is not like, oh my god. Baseball is the first sport to use, like, AI, which AI as a term is whatever. But they're they're using AI cameras, like, quote, unquote, AI cameras in Wimbledon in the last year. Mhmm.

Sam: 39:46

There was a whole thing where they replaced the line judges with the AI camera, and it was calling shots. And there was the the main complaint people had about that was that it was too quiet and that the the line judges were much louder, and that the players and the people in the stands couldn't really hear what it was calling. It's just funny. They weren't even like, this is gonna replace like an important part of the game. They were like, actually, I think that just should be like, turn the volume up a little bit.

Sam: 40:13

And then, yeah, like soccer has or football, as Joe would say, I assume you're talking about football soccer. Yes. Yeah. Football has the this whole, like, thing going on with there was like a couple years ago where they were the cameras were mistaking bald heads for balls.

Joseph: 40:29

Oh, that's good. So funny. That's good.

Matthew: 40:32

And then there was, like Everyone's upside.

Sam: 40:34

Yeah. Everyone's yeah. And then there's, like, the World Cup, I guess, is also talking about bringing in more, like, ref cams and things like this. It's just like sports in general is such a heavily, heavily surveilled and and recorded and tracked space anyway. If you're gonna go to a game, you're gonna be it's like one of the most surreal places you can be as an NFL game or a stadium like that.

Sam: 40:59

So I think it's just it's an interesting conversation to be had about like, oh my god. There's there's AI cameras in here now. And it's like, well, yes and no. Like, they were here already, and they're in every other sport. You're just hearing about it more, I think, because baseball does actually lend itself to, like, some pretty funny clips on social media.

Sam: 41:18

So it makes sense that a lot of these these calls are going super viral, and that's how we hear about it. But I think the more, like, demure, I guess, sports like tennis, it's like they're just not complaining about it and there's no chance to challenge it. So, I think that's, like Jason said, that's a big element of it. It's adding something to it, I think, is is rather than taking away another part of it.

Jason: 41:40

I'm not gonna pretend to fully know, that much about soccer, but I know that they added VAR. So there's video assisted review. And as Joseph said, it was like, I believe for offsides, but then they also do it for like goals where did the ball fully cross the goal line? And I know that that has been pretty, controversial in some ways because there'll be like this thrilling moment and then it'll be called the goal on the field and it will be taken away.

Joseph: 42:08

Right.

Jason: 42:08

And I think that there's been some again, don't write. I know I don't know all the specifics, but it's just like, I think there's been some backlash where they're like, we should get rid of this because it's like ruining the game to some to some way.

Joseph: 42:23

It's it's the same argument basically. And I think where a lot of people would fall down on is the way it currently works in football, which is that it does assist the refs and the linesman. Like, it does it does not replace them. Like, they do still make, you know, the final call. But when the computer is like, pretty sure it's there and, you know, it's pretty accurate, the ref would be insane, obviously, to go against that.

Jason: 42:51

Yeah. One thing that I, I was worried about this, because I knew this was coming, they announced that this is coming like over a year ago. And so I was like, oh, next year this will be better. Good one. They, like, calls went against, the Orioles last year.

Jason: 43:05

But I was worried that it would have that effect like it does in soccer where I'm like, oh, something exciting happened, then they take it away, and you're kind of like feel like you have been something's been stolen from you as like a fan or whatever. But I think watching it on TV, because the box is already there, you can see whether a pitch is a ball or a strike basically immediately. And so in my head, I'm like, they should challenge that. They should challenge that. And so I don't get, like, excited when, like, the umpire makes a wrong call.

Jason: 43:38

Like, oh, they that was called the strikeout. I'm like, that was a ball. I should challenge. Like, it's kind of like a in a in the moment, I'm I sort of am already thinking like, oh, they should challenge this. It's gonna get changed.

Jason: 43:49

And then it happens so quickly that it doesn't it takes like five seconds. And so it doesn't really impede the flow of the game. And I think that that's like pretty critical, because in, like, football, American football, and then also baseball does have challenges on, like, judgment calls in the field. They've had that for a while. It's like all the umpires or referees go and like they hug each other and they look they look at the video screen and then like they do a commercial break and then like five hours later they start playing again and it's like that's super annoying.

Joseph: 44:24

Yeah. Yeah. With tennis, when I used to watch a lot of, Wimbledon, it would always be, okay, let's see it on the big screen, and then as the ball was going towards the line, the crowd all in units would go, it's slightly longer than five seconds, I seem to remember. But, yeah, it's a fun part of it as well. Alright.

Jason: 44:44

We'll leave

Joseph: 44:45

that there. If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying four zero four media subscriber, we're going to talk about a very bizarre sex app that Sam tried out. I think Jason tried it out as well. No specifics here.

Joseph: 45:01

You have to listen to that in the next section. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co. We'll be right back after this. Alright, we're back in the subscribers only section. I edited this one today.

Joseph: 45:28

It's the funniest thing I've read in a while, Sam. It's really, really good. We haven't confirmed the headline yet, but the one in the Google Doc is I tried to find the arousal intelligence in an animated augmented reality porn star. So you've been away for a while, you come back, you have a mountain of emails, usher us into sort of your thinking into deciding to do this when you've just come back and you have all of these emails. Walk us through it.

Sam: 45:59

I had the time. I don't know. I mean, I so I was going through a bunch of emails that were, like, important and, can you can you meet me here? Let's do a call, and I was doing them. And then this came in yesterday, so it was Monday morning at 09:45.

Sam: 46:16

And the headline is a redefined kind of digital intimacy just went live, which is normally an email that I would ignore. I get a lot of these sort of pitches, they're usually pretty crap. But I clicked. The pitch is and join me now is a mobile website that places a photorealistic three d character in your real room using augmented reality. The full experience six so it's six d o f, which stands for six degrees of freedom, which is like an animating term.

Sam: 46:47

Arousal intelligence, IK responding, character animation, real time physics, streaming in full engine from a global delivery network.

Matthew: 46:57

So

Sam: 47:00

this is an adult product, but the engineering story is a browser based is a browser capabilities story. So they're claiming that all of this is happening in the browser and it is.

Matthew: 47:09

I'm sorry. You even before you even get to

Joseph: 47:11

that, could you literally just like, break down the words of so it puts a three d guy in front of like, literally, what is it saying? Because it's so over the top.

Sam: 47:22

Yeah. So you know how, on a lot of shopping, like, retail websites now, you can choose, like, view in your room, and you kind of point it at the floor. You point your camera at the floor and you point it at the wall, and it puts, like, the thing that you're trying to buy in the room with you. Uh-huh. So you

Matthew: 47:37

can kinda get a sense of, like, how it'll look or what

Sam: 47:38

it is, how big it is. That's what they're doing. That's it. It's just it's mapping it's mapping the space that is available in your camera, and putting a three d character in it. And we can get into what that three d character looks like, but that's it.

Joseph: 47:56

And you were then gonna say this is all in the browser. Yes. I just wanted to clarify what the hell we're talking about. Yeah.

Sam: 48:01

Yeah. And, like, I mean, I think that's maybe why I clicked is because they were like, this is amazing that it's all in the browser because I was like, there's no way this is gonna be good at all because usually, I mean, you use VR headsets, Joe, but like and I do too. Like you you usually need like some pretty serious hardware to put anything photorealistic in like a three d space and be able to manipulate Even with like blender and things like that, it's like you can't just do it on like a tablet or your phone or an old phone especially. You need like for it to be good, you need it to have some kind of like hardware capability. So I was like, there's no way this is gonna be good.

Sam: 48:41

Let me just check it out and see. I usually check them out. It's like when I get a pitch like this, I don't immediately write it off. I usually do look and see or I even try it. There was a pitch a couple years ago from a company that does VR.

Sam: 48:53

It was like the pitch was like VR porn for women. And I was like, there's no way this is gonna be good. And I wasn't into it personally. So I was like, I'm just not gonna cover it because this is weird to me, and I don't like it. So I don't really know how to cover it without being too mean to people who might like it because I could see how people might like it.

Sam: 49:12

Yeah. This is with this. This was just flat out really bad. Yeah. So I What what what I walk through?

Joseph: 49:22

Yeah. Please. So so you've walked us through how you accepted the purchase accepted. Yeah. Now you you you go to a URL on your phone or you scan the QR code.

Joseph: 49:30

It's all in the browser. What happens now?

Sam: 49:33

Yeah. So you go to a website and joinmenow.com. There's their plug. You click a button that says you're over 18, which is so funny. You choose from a pleasurrette, which is a trademark term as of two weeks ago, and that's what they call all of their three d characters.

Sam: 49:50

And I think it was, like, five women who look like Second Life characters. And this is not no offense to Second Life, but that's the level of graphics capability that we're working with. It's not photorealistic. It's three d models that look very cartoony. And they're all wearing, like, full body thongs and things like that.

Sam: 50:10

And then there's a dude, Adrian, who's wearing, like, tiny little boxers. I think they're pink. And then there's another guy who's, like, coming soon, but it's, like, c u m I n g soon. But the other guy you can't select from yet. It's very, like, like, remember the snowboarding game tricky where you could pick the some orders?

Sam: 50:30

It's like that. You kinda spin them on a on a plate. Yeah. And they all kinda say something. So that's that's what we're what we've got there.

Sam: 50:40

So I picked Adrian first because I was like, if you're pitching me, maybe you maybe probably you know that I'm a female, and this product, I would assume, has the ability to cater to women. I don't unless, I guess, if you're a gay woman, you might be into the other pleasures. I don't know. I don't wanna rule that out. But anyway, so I was like, I'm gonna give it a shot.

Sam: 51:04

I'm gonna give it the benefit of the doubt. I open it up. I open the camera. The first thing you see is like a transparent overlay of a penis. So you're looking at yourself, like, holding your camera.

Sam: 51:16

And then at the bottom of the screen, you're supposed to line up, I assume your own penis to the transparent picture that's under there just so you just so you know where it is, I guess. So you're not putting pointing up here looking for it.

Joseph: 51:33

But but that's to tell the three d model where to sit

Sam: 51:38

or stand or So it doesn't the three d model doesn't enter the picture until you put your hand in the camera. So your it's the picture is really to show you where to put your hand, which again, maybe you don't know. Maybe you're out here grasping. I don't know. But you're you put your hand down by your crotch and the the three d person, you can hit start, and then they walk in.

Sam: 52:00

And that's what it's mapping. It's like your hand is your controller is what they say. So it's it's getting the size and, like, position of your hand right so that the three d model come walks in. So you click start. Adrian stomps in and says something crazy.

Sam: 52:17

What did he say? It's in the story. He was like, here I come. Oh, he said, look up. Here I come in the deepest voice ever.

Sam: 52:25

Look up. Here I come. And I look up. I'm, like, scared. He walks in sorry.

Sam: 52:32

This podcast is now getting really graphic. So, obviously, you should know by now. Just turn it off if you have kids in the car. He walks in deck first. It comes in like this.

Sam: 52:40

Like a shark.

Matthew: 52:41

Like, stage left.

Sam: 52:42

Yeah. And it's, like, enormous, obviously, and like just 90 degree angle, cartoon penis. And walks in. Here he comes, nude, butt naked. I'm like, hello.

Sam: 53:00

And just, like, stands in front of me so that it's like my nose is, like, on his chat, like, on his belly button.

Joseph: 53:05

Uh-huh.

Sam: 53:06

And he's like, look up. And I look up, and it's huge pecs, like, wobbling. Like, the jiggle physics on this man are turned to 11. And then you can see straight up his nose, and you see his big eyebrow or big eyebrows and big eyelashes past the pecs. Then he's like, start stroking your dick or whatever.

Sam: 53:31

And so I'm moving my hand around at the bottom, like, trying to see what it'll do. And he immediately just like starts like squatting, like squat animation. And, like, there's a woman's voice moaning in the background, which I assume is meant to be him. I don't think it's meant to be me.

Joseph: 53:47

But maybe they got that wrong or something.

Jason: 53:50

It's a question.

Joseph: 53:51

Had a deep voice and then it changed.

Sam: 53:53

Yeah. He had a deep I think he

Jason: 53:54

just has a really high voice.

Sam: 53:56

Again, no judgment.

Joseph: 53:57

Or both. Right. Right.

Sam: 53:58

That's fine. Good for you, Adrianne. Express yourself. We love it. So, yeah, that's that's the that's the entire experience, and that's the experience with that's not the entire experience because the premium experience, you can eventually make the three d characters orgasm.

Sam: 54:12

I think I my credit card kept getting rejected. My credit card was probably like,

Joseph: 54:16

stop. I think the bank was like, what

Matthew: 54:18

The bank was like, you need

Sam: 54:19

to stop. The bank wasn't on the verge of calling me. But then the other the female characters does the same thing. It's like they walk in, they kinda like squat on you, or you can watch them pleasure themselves. So they are up on it's funny.

Sam: 54:33

The pleasure themselves version, it's like they're up on massage table with all these sex toys underneath. But you can't like swap the toys as far as I know. Maybe you can. Maybe I didn't play it long enough. Maybe I didn't pay enough.

Sam: 54:43

But

Matthew: 54:44

And the table is

Joseph: 54:45

the table's there as well?

Sam: 54:46

The table's like eye height. Like, you're kinda looking up and they're like doing their thing in front it's like a show.

Joseph: 54:55

That's nice.

Sam: 54:56

Yeah. Lovely.

Joseph: 54:57

Jason, you tried it too. Right? Does this mirror your experience?

Jason: 55:01

Great experience. Yes. Very immersive.

Sam: 55:04

Five stars.

Jason: 55:05

Five stars. Yeah. So I mean, I I did the same. And the first of all, like, one of the women that I had pop up, the the AI woman, started crawling, like, into my face as though she were like a crocodile or lizard of some sort, like a

Sam: 55:25

And she's tiny. Right? Like

Jason: 55:26

She was very small. And then she was very big. Very small and then very big. And then, her arm her arm went, like, through her body. Like, her arm was coming through, like, here, and then it, like, came out of her, like, stomach.

Jason: 55:41

Like, it it was, like yeah. So that was pretty good. It was not it's not, like, the best experience, I don't think.

Joseph: 55:50

Right. Well,

Jason: 55:52

yeah. Sounds I'd say like A for effort, but it's really just not that good of effort. That's

Speaker 6: 55:57

fair. Yeah.

Joseph: 55:58

Yeah. Not really executed well. Well, you both have that experience, Sam. Why does the why is the company doing this? Why do they say they are making this?

Sam: 56:12

So, I mean, and this is part of the reason why when I actually I was I was gonna just kinda be like, whatever. I'm not gonna engage in this today. I have other stuff to do. Certainly, other more important stories to write, but I clicked on the press because they have a whole press, like, FAQ site, which they did put a lot of effort into. And I was like, oh, this looks pretty good.

Sam: 56:35

Let me read what's going on here. And there's a whole section about why they chose to use c g they call it CGI. CGI people instead of real humans because augmented reality porn with real people is a big thing. Like, a lot of people consume that, and a lot of people make like, a few big companies make it. And VR porn has always been like, oh my god.

Sam: 56:57

The VR porn is gonna be the thing that fixes VR, and that's gonna be the the killer app for VR. So I was interested to see why they thought that making it with three d models was better other than it's cheaper, and you can roll out this piece of shit without having people involved. And that is the reason, but the reason that they say is this is from their website, and this is what it looked like. I need to check again before we publish, but as far as it was yesterday, this is what it said. The adult entertainment industry has always relied on real people putting their bodies in front of a camera, and that comes with real consequences.

Sam: 57:35

And at this point, I'm like, let me listen. It says exploitation, coercion, content leak without consent, performers pressured into and control with, and careers that follow people the rest rest of their lives whether they don't want them to or not. Blah blah blah. No one's livelihood is depends on what they're willing to do on camera. The experience is just as immersive, and no real person is harmed or compromised in the process, which is just shocking to hear from a web toy that relies on a man's dick coming in to frame the first thing that you see.

Sam: 58:10

It's just it's all of that is very like, there is there there are harmful things in the industry like there are in any any industry in any kind of labor. But saying that people putting themselves in front of a camera comes with exploitation and coercion as part of the industry is just so harmful and false that I was like, surely, they don't mean this. So I emailed them and I said, you know, this is these these are talking points that conservative anti porn lobbying groups use and politicians use to restrict porn performers' freedoms and all of our freedoms. It's where age verification comes from. So what do you mean by this?

Sam: 58:54

Are you aware that this is what you're saying? And they were like, oh, we don't wanna make a judgment about the adult industry or its performers. You know, it wasn't a moral position even though they had just been moralizing about the adult industry in this press page. They said some people prefer content that doesn't involve real people. We built this for them.

Sam: 59:14

We're updating the press page. As far as I knew yesterday, that still wasn't updated, but it might be now. I'll check again. But, yeah, it like, they immediately backpedaled on it. I was like, why are you just?

Sam: 59:25

Did you fully use chat GBT to write this whole entire press page? Because that kinda seems like if you were like, give me a reason to not use human performers in porn. That's what a a chat GBT response would look like if it was pulling from, like, fight the new drug or something.

Joseph: 59:41

Or they just made a product and then tried to find a reason after.

Sam: 59:44

Right. Or they were like, yeah, they were like, well, let's let's explain why this looks like shit. And then we're gonna throw the adult industry under the bus in the process, which is a tale as old as time. And then you had pointed out the privacy section was also just like total total just like word salad silliness that Yeah. Being

Jason: 01:00:04

Yeah. You sent me pretty.

Joseph: 01:00:05

Yeah. You sent me a bunch of words they said about, oh, encryption, rest here, and industry standard, like a bunch of buzzwords. And basically, it means they use seemingly HTTPS and they don't allow user uploads. That's it. But it was like paragraphs of text.

Joseph: 01:00:21

It was bordering on when people say military grade encryption. You're like, oh, that's a red flag. And they didn't say that, but it was like that vibe. Yeah.

Sam: 01:00:31

And you yeah. And you use that many words and somebody's gonna try to pop it. And we are, like, putting the idea is putting your genitals on camera. Right. And they say they're not recording, and there's no cloud processing, and no data is stored.

Sam: 01:00:43

I've heard

Matthew: 01:00:43

that

Sam: 01:00:43

before from plenty of other apps, and that's not been the case. But, like, there's no reason I think there's no reason I think that it is insecure. But, like, if you're going on that long about how how secure and, like, unhackable your stuff is, I don't know, man. It's like your stuff is gonna get hacked. I probably wouldn't, you know, show my naked body in front of this camera, but I may be more privacy paranoid than some people.

Sam: 01:01:11

But

Jason: 01:01:11

Can I can I just say before we end that, like, Sam, very funny blog? This one was, like, so ridiculous. And, like, you you used it to highlight some some important and good things. This is, the type of thing that we get pitched, like, zillions of times a week. And it's very it's rarely, like, a porn app.

Jason: 01:01:33

It's rarely, like, this sort of thing. But, like, amount of, like, low effort, shitty products that some PR person is like, you should talk to us about this. It's very high. It's very, very high. So I feel like this is like a little bit of a peek behind the curtain at the types of, like, exciting, quote unquote, like things that are being put out there.

Jason: 01:01:58

Yeah.

Sam: 01:01:59

Yeah. And, like, we do show quite a bit of restraint. Let's say that.

Matthew: 01:02:03

I agree.

Joseph: 01:02:03

Agree. We

Sam: 01:02:04

don't actually take every opportunity to dunk. And I don't I I really didn't I say this in the blog, but I didn't go into this thinking, oh, I'm gonna dunk on these guys. I wanted it to be interesting. I want it to be good. And it just was so incredibly weird and bad.

Sam: 01:02:23

I don't know. If you're someone who enjoys enjoymenow.com, and you enjoy three d characters more than you enjoy watching real people, email me. I wanna hear more about that. I know that that's a thing in, like, Second Life, where people use three d avatars for their sex lives, and that's that's involves a person still. So I wanna hear about if you if you're if you get off only on three d characters that have no soul whatsoever, hit me up because that's interesting.

Joseph: 01:02:54

Yeah. Because, I mean, as as you say in the piece, used to write the column wall 34 in motherboard where you would go into other people's kinks and fetishists and it would like, you know, be very, very interesting and for normal readers and then also respectful of them as well. So there is room for that here, but this product was not that. It was weird and it was justified with weird bad points. Yeah.

Joseph: 01:03:16

Yeah. Alright. We'll leave that there, and I'll play us out. As a reminder, four zero four Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to four zero four Media and directly support our work, please go to 404media.co.

Joseph: 01:03:35

You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope and Alyssa Midcalf. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out.

Joseph: 01:03:55

This has been four zero four Media. We'll see you again next week.