Chasing Vanity

Ian

Hello?

Aaron

Hello. You're already smiling. What what's what I don't even wanna know. What what is it?

Ian

You just got a smile on my face. I just look at you there

Aaron

Sure.

Ian

Across the Internet. It's just Yeah. Just glory.

Aaron

That's that's gotta be it. What is it really, though?

Ian

What a great pod.

Aaron

What a

Ian

great time. Bad gallbladders out.

Aaron

Everything's You're making me nervous, Ian. It's giving me nervous energy.

Ian

Too much happiness? Too much,

Aaron

too much. Happiness. It's it's out of character. I don't love it. What what's what's on your mind?

Ian

I don't know. How many thing really? I don't know. I'm gonna create I do. I went and played a glorious, glorious poker session on Friday.

Fabulous. And I was thinking we gotta get you playing poker, man. We gotta get you playing poker.

Aaron

I I was briefly, for maybe a year or so, part of a monthly house game and played some poker.

Ian

There you go. So you know the rules.

Aaron

I know the rules. It's a lot of fun. There are there's a lot of culture around it that I don't I don't I don't quite get. It's like the best part. In the house.

These guys are talking about, like, limping in and doing bets and hot odds and all this stuff, and I'm like, y'all, this is I'm just kinda here to eat the pizza and lose $50. So, it's it's it's fun, though. I think, given given time so that's that what's out, you know, so it's not gonna

Ian

happen. I believe we're done.

Aaron

Yeah. Given time, I think being really into poker would be a lot of fun.

Ian

Yeah. There you go.

Aaron

This, you know, this may shock you. I think I'm smarter than a lot of people, and I think Yeah. I think I can take their money. I could use that to my advantage, which is always a master. You know?

Ian

And it's like the purest form of that. You know? It's not, like, abstracted through products and all this value creation. It's like No. No.

No. No. No. You verse me, man mano a mano. We're we're seeing who's better at this.

Aaron

Yep. One of us

Ian

walks away to the chest. Gotta get some

Aaron

win? How much did you make?

Ian

I won, $4,700.

Aaron

Woah.

Ian

Yeah. It's a nice little run.

Aaron

That's amazing.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

That's a lot of money.

Ian

Hot limit Omaha, which is probably not the version of poker you played, but No.

Aaron

Legally, you're only allowed you're only allowed to play Texas Hold'em down here.

Ian

In Texas. That's true.

Aaron

That's right.

Ian

They like the PLO in Texas. It's my understanding that I haven't played there. Hold them is good. I like hold them. The competition's a little stiffer nowadays.

People have the tools are better. People are more trained. But, yeah. Sorry. But, yeah, I don't like home games.

I don't trust home games. Like, what you're talking about is like just friends playing. I believe it sounds like that's like a whole that's fine. Like, whatever that was what it is.

Aaron

You don't trust an underground game.

Ian

Yeah. I don't trust the underground game. Like, if I'm going to play poker for any real amount of money in a casino or with card room in Texas or something like that, got security, got cable. You don't wanna

Aaron

get you don't wanna get your knees broken. You know?

Ian

Oh, everybody knows where those home games are. There's just people waiting. And then plus the you're gonna get scammed. That's the other thing. Like like, the scamming, it's too irresistible.

There's a lot of money there. Dealer's gonna be scamming you. The shit runner's gonna be scamming you. Both of them are gonna be scamming you. I don't wanna be I don't wanna get scammed.

Aaron

I hate getting scammed. It's one of my least favorite things getting scammed.

Ian

I don't mind doing the scamming, but I don't wanna

Aaron

I was doing a scam. Selling some oregano as weed. That's a good scam.

Ian

Oh, yes. Exactly.

Aaron

I'm not I'm not getting scammed. Get out of here. No way. Exactly.

Ian

So, anyway, you gotta learn to play poker. That's on our list. Maybe for retirement

Aaron

For retirement. That sounds great.

Ian

Fabulously wealthy. This is what I always tell Jamie. I'm like, retirement. I'm cruising on poker with the four one k, all that stuff. That's there.

Poker bankroll.

Aaron

That sound that sounds great. I realized I realized this, this weekend that many of the things almost all of the things that I want to do require time or money, and I don't feel like I have enough of either of them.

Ian

Look at you hitting the wage.

Aaron

You're hitting the wage. I hate it. I hate it. It's awful. It's so bad.

Ian

Yep. Yeah. I don't have any advice for you on that one. That's just like, yeah, it's just hitting you now. You're like, oh, shit.

Time is not infinite.

Aaron

You thought it was infinite. To be infinite. It used to be infinite. No. You're not.

To be man, when Jennifer and I first got married, we would wake up on a Saturday at, like, 10AM. Mhmm. We would, like like, wander out of the bedroom and get a Keurig coffee

Ian

Oh, man.

Aaron

And then watch Shark Tank for, like, an hour.

Ian

Shark Tank.

Aaron

Yeah. And then probably catch an episode of, like, Brooklyn nine nine or The Office or something. And then it's 12:15, twelve thirty. We're still in our pj's. We're like, so what are you gonna what what do we wanna do today?

Ian

You're already bored.

Aaron

Yeah. I don't know.

Ian

You have so little to do. You're bored.

Aaron

So When's

Ian

the last time you were bored?

Aaron

Oh, I haven't been bored in years. So many years. Yep. And I look back on that, and I think, man, time was infinite. We would go to Papa Murphy's, grab a drive through Zaa, come home, throw it in the oven, watch a movie or two at night.

Ian

Oh. And,

Aaron

it's the freaking best. It's unbelievable.

Ian

I don't know what Papa Murphy's is, and I don't know what the Zah is, but it doesn't even matter. I didn't want you explaining it.

Aaron

Matter. You understand directionally. Yeah.

Ian

I understand the vibe. Yeah. Me and Jimmy, we had this favorite restaurant right, actually, down the street from where my office is, and we would go there. And we wouldn't even go there till nine, which is just in plan.

Aaron

Can you imagine? I was in bed last night at 08:00.

Ian

And then we would just have a two and a half hour dinner. We'd have all the courses. We'd have two bottles of wine. We're just hanging out. It's great.

We're everybody knows us. The waitress loves us. The whole thing.

Aaron

The whole thing.

Ian

We we were just mayors of this little restaurant.

Aaron

You know what restaurant I'm the mayor of? The breakfast place where I take my kids on Saturday night.

Ian

Taco place. Exactly.

Aaron

Yep. We go and we get these this terrible coffee and these little waffles, and the waitresses all know the kids by name. And it's it's great. It's adorable, but it's not it's not going out at 09:00 and having two bottles of wine. It's going out at 07:30 on a Saturday morning.

And the only other people there are parents or old people who just got done running. There's just, like, all these runners clubs for 60 and up, apparently.

Ian

Interesting.

Aaron

Yeah. So it's me and all the babies and old runners that are all sweaty. It's like, that's it. That's the only people that are up on a Saturday morning at 07:30 going to a restaurant.

Ian

I tell you, I miss, so I gave up the coffee, like, twelve years ago or something like that. I think we touched on that here before, but and I don't miss the poofy coffee, whatever. It's nice. I don't care. I do miss when you're at just, like, a sleazy diner y kind of place.

Yeah. Just that cup of drudge, like, just gross filthy coffee. Like, that stuff that burns a hole in your stomach. It's kinda like

Aaron

a sourdough starter. The pot never empties. They just keep putting new stuff on top of it and mixing it up.

Ian

Been cleaned. Right? Like, there's still

Aaron

a million been emptied. It's just yesterday's plus today's forevermore. Burnt. It's

Ian

just like if somebody didn't order coffee for a while, they're not, like, dumping it and making a new one. It's just they're cooking.

Aaron

No. No. That's the charm. Densey. That's right.

Ian

Yeah. So I do sort of miss the that vibe of that is one of the few coffee experiences I do.

Aaron

I'm surprised you missed that and not when you said sleazy, I thought you were gonna say sleepy. Going to, like, a sleepy little coffee shop and getting a little, like, you know, just a little cappuccino or something small

Ian

and hot

Aaron

with a little bit of foam and just sitting there and thinking about life and how time is passing. Uh-oh. Whoops. Oh, pull back. Time is passing.

Let me go there. But that that sounds fun. Right? Yeah. A little coffee shop with a book or

Ian

a I used to

Aaron

do that. Documentation for a database

Ian

or something. You know? Yeah. But, see, I can still do that. Like, I still occasionally will do that.

It's like, whatever. They have alternatives. I'll have my

Aaron

tea. I'll

Ian

have a steamer. So I really want that, like, milky thing. It's not the same as a nice latte or, cappuccino, I I must admit. But

Aaron

I, you know, I used to get a lot of steamers when I was in tenth grade. We'd go to Starbucks, and I was like, oh, coffee's terrible. You know what's great?

Ian

Give me the sugar.

Aaron

Or gingerbread steamer. Right. Just like candy. It's just warm candy milk. It was great.

Ian

82 grams of sugar in this little thing. Yeah. That's what I want.

Aaron

Also before I had diabetes. So, yeah, that checks out. Yeah. Life was a lot easier back then. Times of time and no diabetes.

Wow. We gotta talk about something else. What's going on?

Ian

This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap, an email delivery platform that developers love. An email sending solution with industry best analytics, SMTP, and email API, along with SDKs for major programming languages, and twenty four seven human support. Try it for free at mailtrap.io. Let's talk about something wonderful with the world.

Aaron

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Ian

The big guy over here

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Made his way to blue sky.

Aaron

I did.

Ian

Blue ocean, a blue sky where everything's new and wonderful and fabulous. You're there.

Aaron

Yes.

Ian

You're you're a little cynical on it. You always say you're not cynical. You're a little cynical on the blue sky. I still see it. It seeps through your tweets, which I still call them tweets.

Aaron

They're definitely tweets.

Ian

Yeah. So what's going on?

Aaron

Alright. I got a lot of thoughts. Okay. I joined the blue sky. I'm not cynical.

I am not enjoying it very much. I will say that.

Ian

That that

Aaron

is not

Ian

what I'm saying.

Aaron

Interesting. So I said all along, if it's still around post Thanksgiving, I would join. Black Friday hits still a thing I joined. Man of my word.

Ian

Man of your word. Yes.

Aaron

Man of my word. Frankly, I didn't think it was gonna last, and so I thought I was in the clear. Right? So I thought, I'll just I'll just put it off until it goes away, which is what I do with most things. Just put it off till it goes away.

That's why I haven't ever learned Docker or Angular or any of these other things. I'm hoping to wait out React until it dies. Same with TypeScript. Just put it off. It'll go away eventually.

Yep. That didn't work out so well this time. It's still around. So Friday morning, I, you know, I fired up the old laptop browser, logged in, found out I already had an account, which is nice. So I tried to sign up.

Ian

Yes. I saw that.

Aaron

You joined it. Like, hey. You already have

Ian

an account.

Aaron

I was like, oh, I wonder what that's all about. And I was, Aaron f dot whatever, beast guy dot social. So I I must have gone in early to, like, claim my, username and then never came back.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

And so I got this nice, you know, this nice little bit of lore or aura that I have this blue sky elder badge despite being notable holdout, which is kinda fun. Accidental, but we'll pretend it's on purpose. So, just, like, just a few thoughts and then and then we can riff. One is, I am trying to use the platform, and there there are just a lot it's like a it's an early platform. Right?

And so there are a lot of things that aren't quite there yet, which is totally fine. I get that. When asking how to use the platform, I'm getting a lot of you're doing it wrong. Like, don't do it that way. Why are you doing it that way?

You shouldn't want to do that. Don't super love that. Don't, yeah, don't, like, don't really appreciate coming in and be like, hey, guys. I'm here. How do I do this?

And everybody would be like, You're here. You're doing it wrong. And so, like, you know, I joined and some people were like, I see you finally caved. And I'm like, that's a fun way to welcome someone to a party. Like, hey.

Come to the party. Come to the party. Come to the party. And you get there and be like, you're an idiot. Why'd you come to the party?

Like, okay. I thought you wanted me to come to the party.

Ian

So Right.

Aaron

Don't super love that. You know, the the one the one that kinda just, like, got away from us was I was trying to figure out how to mute a bunch of people. Right?

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

Yeah. Because that's a key strategy of mine, is muting a bunch of people about whom or people that I don't care about. Primarily, federal politicians or state governors. I have zero interest in what they have to say on a social media platform. If I want news, I will go elsewhere.

I rarely want news. Also, professional sports teams and, like, ESPN and all their affiliates because, you know, despite, like, not following those teams, a lot of people like to retweet or

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

Re re sky, a lot of that kind of content. I'm like, I just I don't I don't ever want to see it, and that felt like a safe place and a safe thing to say out loud. I wanna mute these people without saying who I, you know, who else I want to mute and accidentally getting dragged. And everybody's like, don't use Discover. Why would you ever use Discover?

Nobody uses Discover. And I'm like, okay. That's fine. I want to use Discover. That's my favorite thing about Twitter is the for you tab.

I absolutely I know. I've never even

Ian

heard anybody say that. I've I've I know. Being totally honest here. That's why.

Aaron

Love it. It's a serendipity machine. Yeah. I just absolutely

Ian

love it. Something.

Aaron

Sure. It is. It is. And so I'm coming I'm coming over to this, Twitter clone. Let's be frank.

It's a Twitter clone, and there's a discover tab, and I'm like, great. Let's try to make this. Let's try to put in a good faith effort and make this what I want it to be. Yeah. And I'm just getting, like, lambasted for trying to use the product as it is presented.

Mhmm. And so don't super love that. I think it is I think it is objectively a better product. I think if Twitter had adopted even half of these things, nobody would have really left even with all of the the Elon backlash. I think they just totally fumbled the bag on that one.

So I think it's objectively a better product. That being said, I don't think it's gonna win. I think it's gonna I still think it's gonna die out. I think

Ian

Interesting. I

Aaron

think I am, relatively smart. I am average or above average intelligence, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to use this thing.

Ian

Interesting.

Aaron

It's like there are there are feeds. There are labelers. There are starter packs. There are moderation lists, which are different than label or different than starter packs, which is frustrating because some people will make, like, a starter pack that's like, I saw one that was like, loud Democrats ready to take back our country's starter pack. And I was like, oh, that's a good one to mute.

I wanna mute all of the people who identify as loud political advocates on either side of the aisle.

Ian

That's right.

Aaron

Because loud and political is is, like, the thing I don't want in my feed. Right. And you can't mute a starter pack. You can only follow a starter pack. And so you have to, like, use these external tools to convert a starter pack into a moderation list and then mute the moderation list.

And I'm like, this feels weird, doesn't it? So some of these are, like, maybe, rough edges as they're building it out. So I don't think it'll win because I don't anticipate normies, like, finding it terribly easy to onboard. That's that's one thing.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

And then and then finally, may maybe finally, I think so you hear a lot of this conversation of, like, oh, it's just more fun over there. It's just so much more fun over there. And so then you go over there, and the stuff that people are posting, like, let's just constrain it down to our circle. The stuff that people are posting is just it's just more fun to them, more fun stuff. Right.

And my question is, like, alright. Justin Jackson, for example. You're posting on Blue Sky, how much peanut butter do you eat? Right. Right?

That kind of content could be posted on Twitter, and you could have fun over there.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And so that's the thing where I'm like, is it more fun over here, or are you just being more fun over here? Right? And I think what has happened, I think, I think what has happened is when Twitter introduced the, views statistic, it just gave everybody anxiety all the time. Yeah. And so Justin, let's say, he's got 40 something thousand followers on Twitter, and he goes on Twitter and he posts how much peanut butter are you eating, and he gets a thousand views.

That is probably not great. That feels depressing. Mhmm. Right? So he's over on Blue Sky, and he has no idea how many views an individual tweet gets.

And he posts how much peanut butter are you eating in, like, fifteen, thirty people reply. And he's like, this is great. I'm having so much fun. But it that could have happened on Twitter as well. And so you see a lot of these, like, Justin in particular Justin in particular has done these, like, AB tests where he'll post the same thing across a bunch of different platforms.

Yeah. And the actual engagement seems about, you know, seems about the same, but the view like, it's always compared against so I have this many followers on Twitter, and it got this many, views on Twitter or this many even this many replies. It should be more based on how many followers I have. And I think that is, like, I think that is what's, introduced anxiety in a lot of people. It's like, oh, the platform's dying.

I've got 40,000 followers, and I get a thousand views. And I just don't think, like, I don't think that that matters very much. I think introducing views was a huge a huge disaster for Twitter as a platform.

Ian

I don't know about the views part. I mean, all those every comparison I've seen that praise anybody's done, it's like the likes and the replies are almost always significantly higher on blue sky just as a ratio. Now, obviously, we all know that, like, the Twitter number of followers is, like, totally artificial, like, because of, you know, whatever. You've been on there fifteen years, and lots of people were just gone even before Elon and lots more of less since. Mhmm.

So, like, the number of real followers you have is way less than the number that that says in that screen there. But

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think the more fun part is though to me is a more that's a a little more subtle than that because it's, like, the main use case like, I agree with you. You could post about peanut butter in both places. Right?

Mhmm. But the main use case was like

Aaron

just pause and say, what a wild question. Where did that come from?

Ian

I love peanut butter.

Aaron

What in the world? Justin, why did you why are you asking how much peanut butter we eat? That's so much out of left field.

Ian

Something I could not eat while my gallbladder was bad because a lot of people

Aaron

Oh, no. Sorry to hear that. That's you should have labeled that as offensive to Ian. Yeah. That's yeah.

That's inappropriate.

Ian

I don't worry. I muted peanut. Don't worry. Oh, that's good. See that anymore.

Aaron

See? That's good. That's great. Good. I'm eating

Ian

peanut butter now. It's fine. Yeah. So the thing is like, so there's the things let's just take tech Twitter, tech, blue sky, Twitter, right? So tech, blue sky, Twitter, I want to be working on something and post a link to the thing itself.

Right. I want to post links to other people's things. That to me, the link is the core of the whole thing. So like, so with my day in day out, I want to read other people's links and I want to post my own links and I want them to be usable in how that's done. Right.

It's far superior on blue sky, even though it's just subtly different, it's far superior. So that to me is that's the whole thing. And then like, yes, so now I'm here and I like this experience better. So now if I'm gonna talk about peanut butter, I'm going to do it here because this is where I am versus yes. I could talk about peanut butter on Twitter, but my day in, day out things I more seriously discussed or more seriously want to read Mhmm.

Are far worse on Twitter. So I'm not gonna do it over there because it's worse. So that to me is the thing. That's the part. It's not that, like, the peanut butter post in and of itself is better on Blue Sky.

It's that I'm on Blue Sky because the core experience is better. And then that then leads to than me sharing all my other takes or whatever is going on on Blue Sky.

Aaron

Yep. I agree with that. I think the I think the link demotion is maybe the the death knell for for Twitter. It should it should it die out, I think that is gonna be one of the inciting incidents because it's so bad. It's like It's so bad.

Fundamentally broke the reason most of us are here, which is to discover new things outside of this little bubble. So I I fully I fully agree with that.

Ian

That all leads back, like, to Elon's motivations. Right? Which I think it's like you can't totally escape the Elon factor because he wants to be able to control more thoroughly what is delivered on the platform. And so, like, yes, things like linking outside, he doesn't want to happen, which is also true of other The linking part is true of other platforms too. Right?

Yeah.

Aaron

I don't think that's an Elon thing. Everybody want everybody that owns a platform wants you to stay on the platform. Sure. That's just, like, that's economics.

Ian

Mostly, that's true. Yes. So Blue Sky so far isn't taking that angle, which is great. And I think, you know, then the push to algo. See, this is where I think also it's like the it's not the same because Twitter forces you into the algo very often, unless you, you know, again, like, the very technical people, right, are gonna install minimal Twitter or whatever that thing is called so that if you

Aaron

You can also just swipe over the following in Twitter. You do

Ian

have to do that over and over.

Aaron

I think it's relatively persistent.

Ian

No. No. No. I find them always in the for you until I install that, you know, the Chrome

Aaron

extension forces

Ian

it to never do that. So and, obviously, there's, like, dildo ads and all the other stuff that's on Twitter now since they don't have any real advertisers. But so that all experience is bad. Again, if you're super technical, you can have your ad blockers and things that remove all that stuff. Fine.

But, yeah, I don't know. I think I I I definitely disagree with you on the onboarding. I think it's actually a much better onboarding experience. I think you're coming at it from sort of a weird angle to me. It's like you're coming in and being like, I need to block everybody and everything instantly, which is not how you join Twitter.

Right? Like you didn't go join Twitter and like start with like 20,000 people blocked and all that. Right. So that's not how anybody else is gonna approach it. That's how you are because you're a power user of Twitter and all that kind of stuff, but I don't see the regular person coming in and being like, I'm looking to block 50,000 people day one.

Aaron

Well, I think the regular user is gonna come in and spend their time on the discover feed. I think that's what the regular user is gonna do.

Ian

I don't know about that. See, I think that this whole build out, the whole what's got the momentum of this is the starter packs. Like, that is what has created this momentum to me. Like, that was the key that has

Aaron

Right.

Ian

Kicked us off. So that's all about the followers. So now I'm following a bunch of people I find interesting and I can do that very quickly rather than, you know, just having to like dig around and find people organically. Right. And so now I'm instantly following a bunch of people.

The following is the default tab. Yes. You can go to discover, but you don't, if you come into a starter pack or a few starter packs or whatever, or blue sky directory, and you're following 200 people, you already have a bunch of stuff showing up for you. And yeah, you might go to the discover tab and then you'll find feeds and you'll find different algorithms besides discover. And if you wanna do an astronomy algo feed, you can do that or whatever, all the different algo feeds.

And that's great. But I think that's gonna be how, like, 90% of people will approach it. And that's how it push that's how it pushes you into it. It's not pushing you out of

Aaron

the first. I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding. I think to the extent, I think I am a power user. So I'm Yeah. I'm further out than you.

I think you're slightly in for me, But the rest of the world, I'm thinking about, like, if my wife joined blue sky.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

There's, like, a very minor chance she's gonna join via a starter pack.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

Because that that's kinda like, that's kind of like, domain knowledge. Right? Like, oh, I have to, like, know that starter packs exist. Yeah. Go find one that, like, like, speaks to me.

Ian

Shows them to you when you sign up. No. I think I think that's maybe.

Aaron

I don't know.

Ian

I think it lets you know about starter packs. I think it lets you know about starter packs pretty early in there at some point. But

Aaron

But then but then, like, the the normal person is gonna sign up.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

Maybe they follow a starter pack, maybe not. So maybe they get between, you know, ten and fifty people to follow. Right? Mhmm. But I think the normal person, the the person that uses Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, they're gonna go for the feed that shows the that just surfaces content for them, which is the discover feed.

Because I think most people use it that way. They don't have this feed completion syndrome where, like, I gotta see what all my friends are saying. They're just like, alright. I'm gonna open the app, chill for a few minutes, and then I'm gonna close the app, and I'll come back at some point in the future. And so the the use case for that is the Discover feed.

And I think right now, like, I know you have to see it.

Ian

Just the default. Like, you could be on

Aaron

any The default is the only thing that matters for the normal user.

Ian

Sure. I guess. But, again, yes, you could That's the

Aaron

only thing.

Ian

Again, just tuneable. Tune it.

Aaron

Yeah. You can. And that's what I was trying to do before everyone told me. Don't use discovery.

Ian

Pre tuning it. Yes. I don't know. See, I just think it's not so there's lots of places to get algorithm. If you just want the pure algorithm algorithmic vibe.

Right? Like, you could be on Facebook. You could be on Instagram. You could be on Twitter at this point. Right?

So, like, I like this is, Twitter's always been Twitter's problem is like, they're like, boy, we can't grow as fast as Facebook grows because at its core, at least in originally it didn't have, it wasn't algo driven in that same way as Facebook. Right? And so there's only a certain percentage of the population that's actually interested in the pure Twitter like experience that's less algo and more following base.

Aaron

Yes. And so is a niche. I agree with you. It's a niche. Important point.

Ian

That is

Aaron

a niche that people there are certain people that only want for you. I think that is a niche.

Ian

I think that's the majority of people. Right? That's why I'm

Aaron

saying that only only a few people want want following. Yes.

Ian

Yes. I think it's a smaller

Aaron

percentage for you.

Ian

Yes. I agree. So I think that most people are fine with the algo just dumping stuff on them and that's Sure. Fine. And that's but, yeah, there's tons of options for that.

Right? The thing that always made Twitter unique was that Twitter was the only place that wasn't pushing that angle even before the algos got more advanced. Like that was always true since Facebook started the algo based feed in 02/2008 or whatever that was. So now, so then Twitter took that away effectively and now Blue Sky has brought it back. So I think that is, like, a big part of it.

It's, like, I just wanna follow my follow. Yes. Sometimes I dip into the Algo stuff, and it's really nice now that I can have ones that aren't just the generic one. And

Aaron

That is nice.

Ian

Great. And so I'm gonna follow my followers. I'm gonna find stuff which I think is way more effective than a for use experience, which is via the people I trust to follow that their taste is going to be similar enough to my taste that they're gonna surface things for me. Right. But yeah, if you wanna delve into the pure algo, it's there.

I don't think I think they'd make a mistake if they made that more prominent, because I think Twitter already does that. If you have somebody new to social media, which is rare at this point, I guess, but, like, I feel like the ongoing experience of blue Blue Sky is gonna be way better. I mean, if you what I can't even imagine what the onboarding experience of Twitter is right now. It's gotta be, like, just crypto stuff and No. I think it's things.

You know? I I think you just end up in there raw with nothing. Your your default for you is gonna be be full of crazy stuff.

Aaron

You're I think you're prompted to follow it's, like, famous famous people, Elon and Yeah. Sure.

Ian

I mean, you'll follow a few people, but the for you tab is gonna be full of madness.

Aaron

Yeah. Which is what the blue sky tab is. It's just a different type of madness.

Ian

Not. It's default, state. Do you know what I'm saying?

Aaron

Disagree. It is the default state. I think

Ian

that's why everybody yelled at you because they're like, that's this is not the default state. You're trying to make it the default state, but it's not the default state. It's not the first tab. It's the second tab for a reason because it's not the default state.

Aaron

Yes. I don't want to just follow like, I don't want to just get content from people I follow. But see And I think everyone thinks I'm crazy for that.

Ian

So much of your problem. Yeah. I mean, it's not it's not totally crazy, but it solves a lot of your problems if you do that.

Aaron

But it but it eliminates the upside. Like, if I only saw content from people I followed, I would not have to mute I mean, I would have to mute a few people that I follow, which is something else we gotta talk about. But

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

It would solve the whole, like well, it would solve most of the content I don't wanna see problem. It would solve most of that. There are still people that would I can't believe you can't turn off retweets from individual people on Blue Sky. That's crazy. Right.

But it there are still people that would retweet stuff into my feed, and I'm like, I don't ever wanna see anything you retweet because you've got bad taste. But I

Ian

I'll see.

Aaron

I'm I'm well willing to follow along. So wait. Wait. Hold on. Yeah.

Okay. So it solves it solves 95% of my, seeing content I don't wanna see. There are still people that I follow that have bad taste that would retweet stuff. Sure.

Ian

Sorry about that.

Aaron

Sorry about that. Oh, yeah. You. You, for example. Yeah.

You. That's a great example. I wanna turn off your retweets. Yeah. I don't care.

I don't care.

Ian

Yes.

Aaron

The but so that solves that problem. But it it, it takes away 95% of the benefit that I get from Twitter, which is discovery. Like, I see things

Ian

I can't imagine it's 95% of the benefit you get. I can't imagine it.

Aaron

Easily. Easily.

Ian

That can't possibly be true.

Aaron

It is a %

Ian

true. Can't possibly be true.

Aaron

Because a lot of, like, a lot of this the the benefit of Twitter for me is the algorithmic feed, which does a few things. It resurfaces or rather surfaces stuff that I may have missed from the people that I follow. Sure. So I don't have this feed completion syndrome where I have to, like, see whatever scroll to my last save point. Right?

Ian

Right.

Aaron

So it resurfaces some stuff. It might not surface how much peanut butter do you eat, and I am okay with that. Right? So that that that part is fine with me. But it does resurface stuff from, like, eight hours ago that's like, oh, wow.

That's really good. But more importantly, it surfaces more stuff like the stuff that I like. Right. And that's why I like the discover on blue sky or the the for you on Twitter. Mhmm.

It's because I like a bunch of stuff. I bookmark a bunch of stuff. I respond to a bunch of stuff, and then I get more stuff like that. And then I find new accounts outside of this little this little Laravel bubble Mhmm. That I get to follow.

And so my Twitter feed is just, like, full of interesting content and the random, you know, rage bait or engagement bait, and I have to, like, fine tune my, you know, mutes and stuff like that or just ignore it. And that's frustrating. I agree. But I don't wanna lose all of the benefit of this serendipitous discovery of stuff.

Ian

Okay. And I think Blue Sky I don't think obviously, I would say for sure that, like, I'm I'm sure the Twitter algorithmic feed is superior to Blue Sky just because it's been around longer in terms of just forget the, like, the headings and stuff it sends you. Just if we put that stuff aside and just the good stuff it does occasionally bring up, it's probably more sophisticated feed right now. So And

Aaron

Twitter has way more data on me. So blue skies

Ian

make it better. Data. Right. So that's where, like I guess that's what that's I think people's core pushback of what you were attempting here is that, like, you've jumped into the way deep end of the pool when all you it seems like you actually need is a bunch of mute words, which you famously have, like, the 3,000 in Twitter or something. Right?

So if you get those out, which Twitter probably won't let you do, but if you could, then you could dump them into blue sky's mute list, and that's, like, 99% of what you want.

Aaron

Maybe. I I think I think

Ian

that would I think

Aaron

that would help.

Ian

Yeah. Like, it's like the the official accounts, like, every account out there is talking about Trump or Harris or, the the Yankees or whatever. And it's not the official accounts. It's all the other accounts, which is where you actually see the content from. So you just wanna mute Yankees.

Right? Like, that's what you need to do.

Aaron

But I also wanna mute, like, I also wanna mute, There's this one account on both platforms. I don't know who he is, but his his handle is Brooklyn dad underscore defiant. Okay. And, like, he is a political activist, and I want to mute him. And so that's what that's what I'm looking for is, like

Ian

Yeah. But, like, there's infinite I think approaching it that way seems a little bit wild because, like Right. There's millions and millions of accounts, and you're got Yes.

Aaron

There's, like,

Ian

two out of 24,000,000 accounts, you don't wanna see 22,000,000 of them. So you could just block them all.

Aaron

Three and a half million. Yes.

Ian

So you wanna mute word instead. Right. Just block the people who show up that are you see live in your feed, and they go, oh, story. Boom.

Aaron

The whole the whole promise of Blue Sky is, like, the moderation tools are incredible. Bro, you're gonna love it, bro. The layered moderation. I mean, it's hot springs. And so I show up to the platform

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And I'm like, hey. Happy to be at your party. I heard the moderation tools are incredible. Can anybody point me in the right direction Yep. For some of these, like, I don't know.

Let's start easy, sports teams and politicians. What's the best way to, like, mute all of those people? And I get a dunce cap and shoved in the corner. But that's like, even moderation.

Ian

I don't know. That's like

Aaron

a weird moderation. I don't know if I'd call that moderation. Layered moderation. There are moderation lists. There are mute lists that other people maintain.

You don't

Ian

have to do

Aaron

all the work by yourself.

Ian

Think that's a huge negative. No. I think that's actually a tarot. I I actually really dislike that whole aspect of the system. I think that's a mistake and that they're gonna regret that, actually, because I could put anybody on the moderation list, and then they build up.

So now I can just put Aaron Francis on one. Aaron Francis on all of them. Aaron Francis is getting screwed. Right? Yep.

So, like, I put Aaron Francis on angry Democrat list, and Yep. He's getting filtered. Right? So, like Yep. I think that that's not gonna probably go away, honestly, because it's just gonna it's obviously the most obvious thing in the world to abuse, and I think it's just gonna get abused.

So

Aaron

Yes. It's gonna come out of revenue for vendettas.

Ian

Quite a bit, Michelle. I have no idea how you even I don't really get your style of using Twitter for sure.

Aaron

I know.

Ian

I have, like, five mute words, and I blocked, like, seven people ever. And I don't until Twitter kinda went off the rails on the algo side of things, I never had any trouble, like, seeing stuff I didn't wanna see.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

And I feel like the same way at Blue Sky. Like, I follow the people I wanna follow. They surface stuff to me. I very rarely see stuff I don't wanna see. And if I do, I could either mute it or I could block the account, which I've done maybe once on Blue Sky, I think, so far.

So I don't know. I don't know.

Aaron

Here's another here's another great example. Yeah. Here's another great example. Last night or this morning, I don't remember which. I think it was last night.

I said, hey. Is there no way to bookmark stuff over here? Because I love using bookmarks. And the first reply first reply, nobody reads bookmarks.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

And my response was, well, that's factually inaccurate because I do. I read bookmarks. I I joke bookmarking tool. Constantly.

Ian

Why do you want your bookmarks just hidden in Twitter or and or blue sky, though?

Aaron

See, this is what I'm talking about. This is minimizing. This is the minimizing.

Ian

I don't even understand. Why would you have a bookmark tool that's got all your bookmarks from everything so that, like, you could find anything across all your services?

Aaron

Sounds great.

Ian

Yeah. I wanna I

Aaron

want I want to use I want to bookmark things on blue I want to be in the blue sky mobile client Uh-huh. See a tweet that has, like, a a link to this this this Postgres, you know, this Postgres performance thing. Right. And I wanna bookmark it and come back to it later.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

And so my question

Ian

tools for that.

Aaron

Mhmm. My question my question for the peanut gallery was, hey. Is there no way to bookmark over here? I love using bookmarks. Nobody uses bookmarks, bro.

Ian

I I

Aaron

just super fun. Love being here. This is great. Thanks for inviting me to your party.

Ian

If you went to Twitter and asked them for and asked out into the ether, right, for features Twitter doesn't have, I feel like you're gonna get a very similar response. Like, why why aren't followers the default over here? Why aren't don't we have tiered moderation lists? And you're gonna get a bunch of people who are like, you are a freaking idiot. Like Maybe.

Don't don't be like that. Whatever. But Maybe. You know? It's like, this is a social media thing.

Aaron

Like cool, fun, chill vibe, though. It's supposed to be like, hey. We're all in this together.

Ian

I don't know why you would think that that's the case. It's

Aaron

Because that was what was sold on the tin. Well, I

Ian

don't think that it's sold out.

Aaron

Here. Everyone literally Definitely said that.

Ian

A %

Aaron

have to do that. Sold that.

Ian

That's not even It's happier

Aaron

over here. It's rinder over here. You know how many times I got pitched? Oh, it's so much grinder over here.

Ian

That's totally been true for me, but I don't know how you're using it. You seem to be using it oddly. So that's to

Aaron

use the thing

Ian

You're not. But I'm asking questions. Going into it super No. No. No.

Using it against the sort of default way, which is sometimes cause with all applications. Right? If I go into it and I'm like, I wanna use this app I we see all the time in HubSpot. People come in and like, hey. I wanna put my personal email in HubSpot.

I wanna connect my personal private mail into HubSpot and have it suck it all in. We're like, you shouldn't do that because it's a bad idea. It's not built for that. Other people are gonna see your email. If you have if you have other staff, they're gonna see your private email when your wife emails you.

They're gonna see that. Don't do that. Right? And so but people people wanna do it. So, like, you know, you're kind of you're you're you're you're you're coming in a little bit at a at a side angle, I would say.

Aaron

I'm coming in in good faith trying to use trying to make this platform into something that I Okay. Can use.

Ian

Hold on. Let's okay. We so we covered all that part. Now my thing is kind of who cares? It's like the people who didn't want not about you personally, but, like, people who didn't like Twitter for whatever reason.

It could be Elon, it could be links, it could be all the there's plenty of terrible things Twitter does that are just purely of Twitter the product, And then obviously you can layer on the political stuff. That group of people has for a long time been looking for an alternative. Mhmm. Right. Because they're jumping to threads, jumping to Mastodon.

They're like, trying to find something that sticks and works the way Twitter works, which everything else has kind of had its own weird take on it. It actually hasn't been like Twitter. And that's why I think it doesn't, hasn't really stuck the way this group wants. So now there's blue sky, which is absolutely a Twitter clone from 2011 or whatever it is. Everybody who wanted that experience has now is moving, has moved or is moving and is happy with that experience.

Right. And so from there, I kind of feel like blue sky now has I I disagree also that it's gonna go away. I think it's got sort of enough people there now that, like Mhmm. It's fine. And if it stops growing at the rate it's growing, that's fine because there's enough of a core group that people are gonna be happy there.

Aaron

It's self sustaining.

Ian

It's self sustaining. Just like, I mean, Twitter didn't grow for fifteen years or whatever. Like they basically stopped growing in 2013 or something. So it's the same thing. Like, maybe it's not as many people, whatever.

Fine. Mhmm. But, like, it's self sustaining. Yes. That's great.

And so now if people want the Twitter experience, it's just like some people want the the Facebook experience. Right? Like, we're not those people. The I don't want the Facebook experience. It's more than there to be.

Or what? Great. There's obviously, I'm in the minority there. Lots of people like the Facebook experience. 3,000,000,000 people like the Facebook experience, so they're on there daily.

Right. And then you'll have Twitter for people who want the, like, Elon flavored text based social media. Great. You got that. And then if you want the more, you know, links were more, I would say, like, Internet y social media experience, then you have blue sky, and that's great.

And people could go there and that. And, like, that's it.

Aaron

I think You

Ian

know?

Aaron

I think blue sky could remain as a, subculture.

Ian

Yeah. And I think people got overly or people wanna bring their friends there. So they're like, Aaron, buddy, we need you there. Right? Like but maybe it's not for you.

Right? And that's fine. Yeah. Maybe it's not.

Aaron

Twitter. Yeah. Maybe it's not. Or maybe

Ian

it is in another year. Right? Like, in a year from now, you'll be like, now I get it or whatever. Or they add bookmarks and other features or Twitter totally dies off or whatever. Who knows?

Anything could happen. So

Aaron

Yeah. I think it could remain I think it could remain as, like, a viable niche platform. I I would be very surprised if it reaches mainstream adoption. I would be very surprised if my wife ever signs up for Blue Sky. I just cannot Yeah.

Imagine your wife handles .bsky.social. That's just that's just a barrier to most

Ian

people.

Aaron

I just don't think that that is gonna become mainstream.

Ian

But is your wife just actually signed up for Twitter either? Like, I know she's technically signed up. I know she's technically signed up for Twitter, but, like, I think she had, like, one tweet from years ago. I mean, she doesn't

Aaron

she's not actively She consumes.

Ian

Does she regularly consume?

Aaron

She does because I get DMs from her all the time with funny tweets.

Ian

I saw it. So I know. Did. Yeah. Okay.

There you go. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, but that's always been true of Twitter.

Right? Like, Twitter was never mainstream. That's a million earnings calls of Twitter being like, we're trying to get mainstream, and Right. We're trying to

Aaron

add this thing

Ian

in that thing. I mean, I don't think that's true. It's still

Aaron

absolutely true.

Ian

That's definitely not true. If you by mainstream, you mean most normies have an account, that's definitely not true. It wasn't true before, and it's still not true now.

Aaron

It is not it is not as mainstream as Facebook. Agreed. Living is.

Ian

It's not. I'm on Facebook's hiney.

Aaron

Behind hiney. Behind the big three, so Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Twitter's Twitter's up there. I mean, lots of noise happening.

Ian

No. It isn't. It's like literally one tenth the size, if if that. It might not even be one tenth the size. But it's still way smaller.

Aaron

Still way more normie than something like Reddit or Blue Sky or anything like that.

Ian

I think that's interesting. I wonder I don't even I don't know if I agree that it's more normie than Reddit. I don't think that's true. All of

Aaron

all of my offline friends, you know what they don't talk about? Reddit and blue sky. What they do talk about is Twitter. That's just, like,

Ian

all of my offline friends little friend group. Like, who if who who would ever think anybody who's used Facebook. Right? Would you ever think if you were in there that this application has literally half of all the humans on earth using it? Would you be like, this is such an amazing experience to of course

Aaron

not. No.

Ian

Everybody has a Facebook account. Right? No. You would be like, nobody

Aaron

uses it.

Ian

Terrible. Right? Terrible. No. Half of the humans on Earth have a Facebook account.

So and not just have an account. Use it.

Aaron

Daily. Post slop. Yes. Daily.

Ian

So so I think that's way, way smaller mainstream than Facebook.

Aaron

You know what? All of them are

Ian

like the same thing. I mean, it's the same company. Like so between Facebook and Instagram, it's the

Aaron

same company. Company, totally different things.

Ian

They are different, and I greatly prefer Instagram. But in terms of user accounts under a company's control, you know, now you're at 4,000,000,000 people of the seven. Right. In one company. And then Twitter is gonna be like of real users.

It's a hundred million, maybe a 50,000,000.

Aaron

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So go give mail coach a try at mailcoach.app. Okay. Back to the show. The thing that the thing that all of this has made me feel, like, going to Blue Sky, all of this has made me feel like I don't wanna be a part of any of this.

Ian

Like, I don't wanna be a part of Twitter.

Aaron

I don't wanna be a part of Blue Sky. I I don't wanna be online at all. This all sucks. That is the overwhelming feeling coming out of the weekend of trying to see this blue sky. It was like, I don't like it.

I hate it all. This is all terrible. And I think one, like, one, I think, one thing one, like, philosophical or meta commentary about the rush to blue sky Mhmm. Is an overwhelming, maybe a majority at least at least a big portion of, what people are saying they like about blue sky is that they're getting followers. And that to me is like, guys, this is not This

Ian

is very interesting.

Aaron

This is not this is one, it's not gonna last. Like, you're getting you're getting followers because it's a it's a land grab, and people are coming over, and they're trying to figure out who to follow, and they recognize you, and so they follow you. Mhmm. Two, like, it is not some it is not in in the majority of cases, it is not some quirk of historical timing that big accounts have a lot of followers. Like, that that may be true in some cases.

Like Mhmm. Kevin Rose was maybe on the who to follow list when Twitter started, and so we got a million followers. Like, okay. Yeah. That that that's a quirk of historical timing.

But in terms of, like, normies, so let's say not Kevin Rose, everybody below. Right. It is not it's not that, like, so they had some unfair advantage that they got followers. It was, in my opinion, they did something and talked about it in an interesting way, and people wanted to follow along for that journey. And so now people are going to blue sky, and they're like, I can just get followers for free.

Like, I don't have to, like, I don't have to do anything. I just get followers. It's like, that's not gonna last. And I'll Yeah.

Ian

I don't know

Aaron

about that. Think it's worth I don't think it's worth it, guys.

Ian

Very this whole thing is we could go a very interesting metaphor here. Right? Which is, like, in obviously, in America, but in the whole world right now, you have this like populism movements. Right. And the sort of rich are getting richer and you have all that kind of stuff going on.

And this is kind of similar in a certain sense where it's like, I, I think it's quite hard on Twitter at this point to get any kind of following because you have the only way to do it is to play the algorithmic game. Right? You have to be outraged. No, you do. That's how you have to

Aaron

do it. Sam, who who responded to you on blue sky? Sam who said Yeah. That is not true. I have done it in the past year.

Sam went from, like, 800 to 9,000 or whatever. Mhmm. And your response was like, well, is you're an exception because it's such high effort. I'm like, yes. That's the whole thing.

Like, you have to put in effort.

Ian

Sure. But the algorithm angle to it is so much harder to crack. Like, I'm not saying nobody can crack it, but I think it's a lot harder than just people see it. People can retweet it. People can link to it, and people can find your high quality stuff.

For example, his stuff is great. Why do we assume that 9,000 is a high number? But maybe it's 10

Aaron

times bigger than 800 where he started.

Ian

But maybe it should be a hundred thousand. Right? Maybe it hurt him. There there's just the assumption that that's a good number. Maybe it's a bad number.

Maybe because the Algo downplayed him in all kinds of cases. He could be at 32,000, but he's not.

Aaron

Well Do

Ian

you know what I'm saying?

Aaron

Like, I think we're hard to

Ian

share his stuff.

Aaron

We're not arguing an arbitrary point of what is good and what is bad. We're arguing, is it possible to grow? And the answer is objectively yes.

Ian

I I don't think for the average person, that's true.

Aaron

And I also think average person because I've gone from I've gone from two or 3,000 to whatever 40 in the past three years.

Ian

But look at

Aaron

I just am an average person.

Ian

Look at his example. He's already at 5,000 on Blue Sky. And it's not just from starter packs. Right? It's because people have shared his stuff, and they found him like it.

So in a month, he went to 5,000.

Aaron

No. No. No. Here's my take.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

Here's my here's my take that I think a lot of people are missing about blue sky. He can he can go from zero to 5,000 on blue sky because the, the amount of followers is an expression of some underlying action or truth. Right?

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And so it's not that he, he joined Blue Sky early and got a bunch of followers. And I think that's what a lot of people think is the case. If I join Blue Sky right now, when the the wave is happening, I'm gonna get a lot of followers and a lot of engagements. That is the explicit pitch from a lot of people trying

Ian

to

Aaron

get people to come to Blue Sky. The engagement's better. You get a lot of followers. It's a lot more fun. Right?

I think the, when in in the fullness of time, when things settle, the follower count in majority of cases is an expression of some underlying truth. So Sam Mhmm. Can go from Twitter where he has 9,000, show up on blue sky, and immediately get 5,000 because of some underlying truth. And that underlying truth is he creates great content that is very interesting and is, remarkable. People want to talk about it.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And that is the that is the underlying fundamental truth about

Ian

I agree.

Aaron

Why someone has followers. And I think what's being pitched what's being pitched and what a lot of people are believing and saying is we can you can just get followers over there. And I don't think that that that's true right now, but I don't think that that is true.

Ian

Well, again, I think actually the starter pack is very interesting concept and actually does allow people who join pretty newly to possibly build up a a small following, which obviously makes it more interesting to create interesting content. Nobody likes creating content for nobody. Right? Like, so there's, an element to that that I think is useful, but I, I think that the, again, like I can make good content, but do I have to adjust it for the algorithm or not? And so then that filters it down.

I mean, you've done a lot of your content specifically for the algorithm, right. Which if it benefits, that's good, but I don't think that's necessarily true of everybody. And it's also just different types of content. Like I might wanna write technical articles that are not gonna lend themselves to being like, you know, a video with a Beatles song. Like, I just want to have a technical article, and I want technical people to share it and be able to link to it and people will learn about me that way, which is literally impossible on Twitter.

So Right.

Aaron

I think That's a thing. You're you're going you're going back to conflating the issue. I agree, and we can hold constant that links in the top tweet are better than links in reply. That's stupid. I agree.

Ian

That's a huge thing for the following, though.

Aaron

Sure. Fine. Yeah. I but I what I what my my point is Mhmm. People are focusing on the second order of gaining followers and not on the underlying reality of you have to put out something worth following.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And I think the sum like, the putting out something worth following or doing something that's interesting or, creating stuff that people want to see is portable from platform to platform. And any, like, early mover advantage, I think, is not defensible in terms of, like, getting followers. It's not defensible, and it's gonna go away at the margin. So let's say you're in a starter pack.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And you get 5,000 followers from some starter pack, but all you ever tweet about is the fact that the barista messed up your name on the on your coffee. You're gonna lose your followers, or they're gonna stop engaging with you or something. Mhmm. And so then you're just you're just back to the exact same situation that you were in on Twitter where it's like, well, I don't get any followers, and I don't get any engagement. You know, the fundamentals of the platform are still different, and so maybe it's still a more pleasant place to exist.

I I acknowledge that. But you're still back to if you were hoping for unlimited engagement forever, I think that that just goes away if you don't sustain it with, like Yeah. Let's do interesting things or talk about interesting things or share or surface or something.

Ian

Like, you have to have

Aaron

a reason for people to follow you.

Ian

Right. It's like whatever it is. It's like all social media is, like, 5% publishing, 95% consumption or whatever. Right? So I don't see why it would it's gonna be radically different here either, in that regard.

But I still think that there's benefits to having followers. So even if you do occasionally say something, I don't know. I think just tweeting into the void that, you know, literally nobody's gonna ever see is still a different vibe than, Hey, I have 25 followers. I have 50 followers. And, like, I know that they will see this in their feed.

It's just a different vibe than, and it's gonna encourage people to produce various forms of content, which I think is good rather than encouraging them to produce, first of all, being forced to produce a certain type of content to be seen and play all the various games of the algorithm, you know, that it requires. So I don't know. I, and I, yeah, but I do think there's an element. I agree that like everybody sees the rich at the top of Twitter being people with lots of followers and are like, Hey, here's an opportunity for me to stake a claim in a new spot that isn't overcrowded with Aaron Francis and Taylor, Otwell and Adam Wathan, who just dominate everything and also there, baby. We're there.

You're all there now. But, there's some opportunity there to maybe get in the mix early. And that's like I mean, yes. Of course. Like, over time, the early movers usually get advantages in Mhmm.

Every area of life, right? If you're there first, you have certain advantages, which may not be there in five years from now when it's right if it lasts that long and it's stable and whatever it stops growing so fast sure it's You're gonna show up and not have a lot of followers probably it's gonna be harder to get them and all that stuff. Yeah. The core rules of create good stuff are the same.

Aaron

Yeah. I think I think my, like what what I feel in in my heart of hearts is that people are chasing vanity and are gonna be disappointed. Because I think what what people and, like, it it is it is it's happened so much that Steve and I text each other often screenshots of, like, look. This person is saying move to blue sky because you get followers. And it's just like if it fundamentally it belies a fundamental misunderstanding.

And I think they're gonna get over there, get a bunch of followers, and then it's it's not terrible. It's gonna go away.

Ian

Just to stand up for the the little guy here a little bit. I think that the the opposite has been completely true, which is the only people I've seen who say, blue sky. Why should I go there? It's stupid. Whatever.

Literally, the only people have 30,000 plus followers on Twitter. Right? Because everybody's like, hey. I put all this effort in. I got my 200,000 followers.

Aaron

Fully acknowledge.

Ian

Why do I wanna go over here and start again from zero? I don't wanna be like the plebs starting at zero again. I worked for ten years to get 200,000 followers and I don't wanna go there and start again. Right. So their, their motivation is no, no, no.

Like, let's stay here on Twitter because this is where I got my audience. You're all here. I worked hard for this and I don't wanna have to do it again. And which is fine. But again, that's where

Aaron

it's not.

Ian

Like, people are like for the 95 percent, they're like, well, I don't care. Like, if you don't wanna come, don't come. Like, we want you to come because we like you, but if you don't wanna come, don't come. There's nothing there for us. So we don't have the same hold it doesn't have the same hold on us that it might on somebody with 50,000 followers.

Aaron

I I agree that there is a, a sunk cost, we'll call it fallacy, of, like, I don't wanna abandon this thing that I've worked on.

Ian

Sure.

Aaron

But, again, I'll go I'll go back to, the the followers are the followers are an expression of a reality. Sure. So Samhoo Samhoo can go to blue sky. And even though none of it is portable, he can't export his following or rather his followers and go make them follow him on Blue Sky. Even though that's not portable in any sense of the word, it's a % portable that he can walk over to Blue Sky and say, I'm Sam Hu.

I'm here now, and everybody's gonna follow him. And so, like I agree. I don't I don't think that there's, and even even speaking for myself, like, I I like Twitter for reasons we've talked about already. I have more followers on Twitter than I do on blue sky, but still, like, I go over to blue sky, and there are there are enough people that are like, oh, I understand who he is, what he does, the value he provides, and I'm gonna follow him. Like, that that's awesome.

And so it's not even a it's not even like a I don't wanna grind again. It's I think what what I'm seeing is a lot of just a lot of people putting their hope in. If I'm early, I'm going to have followers. It's like I don't

Ian

know if that's what I'm hoping in. Because there is there is a truth to that because you're gonna be it's a smaller pond. And so you're more likely to be seen. You're more likely to get followers. There's some inherent upside as we've talked about to the platform, has some helpers there.

So I don't think they're wrong in that.

Aaron

No. I don't think they're wrong. I think it's it's been

Ian

Can you

Aaron

keep it? Objectively true. Yeah.

Ian

Can you keep it? Of course. Is it

Aaron

can can you keep it? And, I mean, is it gonna make you happy? That's the other question. It's like

Ian

Oh, that's I mean

Aaron

You're going over you're going over somewhere to get a bunch of followers, and you have all these followers, then what? What happens next?

Ian

I mean, I think that there's but there's all these different factors. Right? I think it's hard to I don't think you can pigeonhole it in one thing. Right? It's like, part of it is like, yes.

I want more followers or whatever. I don't personally feel that way, but whatever. I want more followers is one aspect of it. Or but I also don't like the Algo stuff. So I like this is Sure.

Aaron

Sure. Sure. That. Right?

Ian

And, like Yeah. I don't like so whatever. It's not I think this is where, like, people wanna boil it down to, like, the the big accounts that are like, why are you doing this? Wanna boil it down often to, like, oh, well, this is stupid. This one thing here.

Why would anybody care about that? But I think it's more complicated than that. It's like, there's nothing for me on Twitter anyway. That's the first thing. So there's nothing holding me there like you are held there.

And then on top of that, there's whether there's the politics angle, there's the links angle, there's all the things. Right? There's the other little things that are better. And the product is helping better as you've said.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

So I think when you add all those up, that's what makes the momentum to move as opposed to just not just the one thing. It's it's multiple things.

Aaron

So I agree. And I'm I'm not I'm not talking about that. The in this segment, the only thing I am talking about is when people of their own accord Yeah. I'm not I'm not inferring. I'm not applying.

I'm not I'm not

Ian

reading the same lines. I'm gonna get I'm

Aaron

I'm gonna get I'm creating the lines as written on the screen in black and white text Right. That says, I'm moving to blue sky because I'm getting a lot more followers there.

Ian

Right. Or But I mean you need to hurry.

Aaron

That's true. That's fine. You need to hurry because you can get a lot of followers on blue sky. That's what I'm that, like, that's what the screen is saying, and I assume that they typed it. Right?

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And that is the thing that I am not, I'm not comfortable with. I'm not sold on. I don't think that that is a good, investment of your, your emotional state to say, like, I'm gonna go over there.

Ian

State is

Aaron

a I'm gonna go over there because I'm gonna get a bunch of followers. Then what?

Ian

I guess that depends what they're gonna do with it. Right? But I think that there's still the, I have an article I wanna produce and I can publish it to nobody or I could publish it to 400 people. I would still rather publish it to 400 people than nobody here. Sure.

So there we go. Like, that's the thing, like, can I get kick started over there easier than I can on Twitter? And I think objectively, yes. Like you can get kickstarted easier right now.

Aaron

Maybe. Yeah.

Ian

On blue sky than

Aaron

possible to say

Ian

in certain segments or whatever. Right. So, yeah, I guess that's, Twitter is not growing. Blue sky is growing. People lean towards things that are growing.

I mean, it's like BC or anything else. Right? Like we wanna be in the things that are growing, not the things that aren't growing and maybe the things that are growing right now won't grow forever.

Aaron

That's

Ian

true. But who knows? I mean, I I hope it doesn't grow forever. Like, I'm fine with it being small. See, that's where, like, I think Twitter went wrong for so many years trying to be not small.

How do we be Facebook? Led them down a bad path. So we'll see.

Aaron

I think, one interesting thing that could happen

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

Is, Twitter could reverse policy on link demotion, and I think that's just fundamentally gonna destroy blue sky. I think it's just gonna be like, well, that was, like, the thing that we all complained about was, like, the open web, and now they're like, fine. Links are okay.

Ian

I don't I don't I'll be I don't know. I mean, Elon literally just last week was like, this is how it is. No. It doesn't mean he can't change his mind, but he doubled down on it. It was like, no.

No. No. Like

Aaron

Just not doing that. That's basically what he told

Ian

Paul Graham. Yeah. That doesn't seem like it's happening. But, again, he's Elon. He could change mine tomorrow.

I just think that the his goals don't really align with that. And I don't think, I don't think he cares about any of this, the way that the people talking about it care about it. You know, it's like, whatever people who get paid are don't get paid equal amounts. Right. You see all these stories open.

Some people get paid lots of money and other people don't get paid, even though they have way more followers and way more interaction. Right. Because Elon put his thumb on somebody and said, ah, like this one's paying a bunch of money. Okay. Like, because that's, it's his thing.

It's literally if I had my own social network, I might do a lot of crazy shit with it. Right? Because it's like, hey. Let's, like, bump this Laravel stuff. This stuff's awesome.

And let's bump Aaron Francis because he's great. And, like, oh, let's promote Trump because I hate him and, like, all this stuff. Like, I would do all that stuff probably because I have the power to do it. So I think he's probably thinking along those same lines. It seems to be.

So I don't know. I'm not I don't think that there's gonna be, like he doesn't report to anybody. He doesn't have a board of directors who's like, oh, man. Like, our profits are in the hole. Blue sky's eating us up on these links.

We gotta change nobody's going to Elon being like, we gotta change the links.

Aaron

So But he's a sore loser. And so if he finds out

Ian

if he finds out feels like that.

Aaron

I I

Ian

think he feels like he's

Aaron

getting it. If he finds out that people are leaving and one of the main complaints is the death of links, he'll just say, I'm gonna crush you. I'm gonna put links back. It's possible. You have to admit.

It is possible.

Ian

It's possible. He might have I feel like he has other ways to crush them. Right? Like, he He might. Well, it's a governmental organization now, so maybe he doesn't care about it.

Right? So I don't know. We'll see what he does. I think he could just get bored with this. Who knows?

Who knows what he

Aaron

He could. He could get bored and sell it off, and somebody could come in and say links are okay now, and then we're back, maybe.

Ian

That would be something to be bad. Although I don't think I think most people I don't know. I I don't think people are going back necessarily. Couldn't stop the growth for sure. I don't think the link change would send people back because there's so much bad stuff there.

The ads are everything's horrible. So, like, there's a lot of horrible again, it's like multilayer. It's not like just the links. It's like the links are a big part of it, I think, with this early part, but it's more than the links. So I don't know.

We'll see. I think that's I think we're good. I think we covered it an hour. Oh. We do anymore.

Aaron

We covered it. We we covered it. We definitely covered

Ian

it. What about your the are you happy with the fake Aaron Francis on Blue Sky? Is he still active? Or

Aaron

No, I think he's I think he's done.

Ian

He hung it up.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The spirit of Aaron Francis is no more.

Ian

Aaron. Thanks. Lives.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

All right. Well, I don't know. We have this other one. I don't want to talk about this thing right now. I'm gonna demote that.

You want to dig a basement.

Aaron

Let's talk about that. Dig a basement. So, you know, I wanna dig a pool. Right? Yes.

Ian

By hand Also myself.

Aaron

By hand, but myself for the content. I've been thinking I've been thinking we need so we have, like, a one and a half car garage. You know, we live in the big city,

Ian

so we

Aaron

don't have, yeah, we don't have a lot of space. It's I guess it's it's technically a two car garage, but it would be it would be

Ian

too tight.

Aaron

You can't you can't get kids in and out. And when there are two cards, two cars in there.

Ian

Yep.

Aaron

And so, you know, since since we live since we're urban livers, we don't have a lot of, like, land space despite being in the

Ian

tech space.

Aaron

You know? It's all vertical. And instead of going up, what if you go down?

Ian

We've already we this we've talked about this a little bit, but not in the sense of you actually doing it. Not in not

Aaron

in a personal sense, but in the societal sense. Cars belong underground. Hi hi, producer Dave. He's gonna tell me somebody's calling me. Oh.

I mean, it's probably a pharmacy or somebody. Or it's producer Dave saying that I just invented subways.

Ian

It's like, yeah. But it's better. It's cars. Dave loves subways.

Aaron

So cars in in a society, cars belong underground

Ian

in Hold on. I gotta stop you right there for a second. I gotta stop you.

Aaron

No. No. No. That's that's table stakes. We can't wait.

We've gotten to the good

Ian

stuff here. Hold on. Have you ever lived in a house with an underneath garage? Okay. I have.

Does it suck? It's not for the faint of heart, especially with four kids.

Aaron

You gotta go up and down the stairs with a bunch of crap.

Ian

Yes. Lots of crap. What does it when you go grocery shopping and when you have four kids and they get just a little bit bigger and they're eating constantly all the time

Aaron

Always eating.

Ian

Have six people's worth of food. You're dragging up and down those stairs

Aaron

gallons of milk.

Ian

Three times a day or three times a week, I should say. Like, it's it's very terrible. So I I do agree with you philosophically that I would prefer that's a better use of space, shove it under there.

Aaron

So philosophically, cars belong underground. Yeah. So we agree on that. We agree on that.

Ian

Practice. It's it's it's more tricky. But yeah. Okay.

Aaron

So here's here's what I'm here's what I'm, and this is Patriot Comfort. Oh, it's the HVAC company. That's who called. Fantastic. There we go.

We we love a callback.

Ian

Put them on the air?

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So philosophically, cars belong underground. We agree with that.

Producer Dave agrees with that. He hates public transportation and loves private vehicles. Thanks, Dave. Okay. So cars belong underground.

We don't have a ton of space.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

I want to have space. I park in the street like like an animal. Right?

Ian

It's the worst.

Aaron

Yeah. Speaking of plebes No.

Ian

So it's not the worst worst, but still. It's not

Aaron

not great. You know? Dad dad gets the short end of the stick. That's just how it goes. You understand this.

So I'm I'm parking in the street.

Ian

Yep.

Aaron

At the old house, my car got hit, like, four times on the street. People take off the mirror.

Ian

Oh my gosh.

Aaron

Yeah. One time somebody hit and run, hit and ran, hit it hit they hit it, and they drove off. They hit it. And Yep. And, I had to get the frame straightened because they just banged into it so hard that it, like I can just get rid of it.

You just I know. I'm not gonna be able to sell it for anything. So park on the street like an idiot.

Ian

K.

Aaron

I want and I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos about it, so it's definitely possible. I want to dig an underground. Obviously, dig dig an underground garage.

Ian

Oh, good.

Aaron

That's like five car garage underground. For your bras and things. For our freaking kids' Honda Civics whenever they get them. Also, this this is interesting because I don't

Ian

know if

Aaron

our kids are ever gonna have cars because self driving cars are gonna exist. So that's that's a open question. So, anyway, I wanna dig I wanna stop calling me. My mom on podcast right now. Goodness.

Ian

Airplane mode, baby. Yeah.

Aaron

Turn on DND here. So I wanna dig a a garage to go under the house.

Ian

K.

Aaron

Now you got me thinking you got me thinking that a garage under the house is not a great idea, but what about dumb waiters? Did you guys ever have a dumb waiter?

Ian

Well, you could just have one of those car elevators that bring things up and down. Yeah. We

Aaron

could have a car elevator. What's next? Colin Furze Colin Furze is digging an underground, garage by himself, which I wouldn't do that. Really? But he has a car elevator for his DeLorean.

Yeah. So we could do that. We could drive we could drive into the surface garage, have it drop you down.

Ian

That'd be awesome.

Aaron

And then drive into percent. Drive into cold storage. And if you need, like, if you need hot storage, you go back on the elevator and put you back in the surface garage. That's great.

Ian

I mean, honestly, that's actually probably more doable in some because, like, I don't think you can really dig under your house. Like, that's not a thing. So you're gonna have to dig in the backyard.

Aaron

You can. It's expensive, but you can do it. It's a pure beam foundation, so we can totally do it. Yeah.

Ian

I don't know. I feel like they would take it. That's a high risk factor there. I don't know.

Aaron

I know. I know.

Ian

So if you dig in the backyard, right, where it's nice and open, whatever, two days excavator, have the whole thing dug out. Great.

Aaron

Right.

Ian

And now you go into your garage. You have to tear out the garage, I guess, and dig down there too. And then boom, carb later, boom, into the back, into your parking garage. That'd be cool.

Aaron

That'd be awesome.

Ian

Do a ramp.

Aaron

You if you don't wanna spend money

Ian

on a thing, like door, ramp. Right.

Aaron

That's what I was thinking.

Ian

I didn't do it just the house, though. You gotta get out from the house.

Aaron

Yeah. I think under the house would probably be too expensive. I

Ian

think you're crazy expensive.

Aaron

Yeah. Because then they gotta, like, they gotta

Ian

Make sure your house doesn't fall down.

Aaron

Yeah. That's the thing. That's kinda the whole thing. Yeah. They gotta shore up all the piers.

Yeah. The beams are good. It's the piers you gotta worry about because if you dig the piers away

Ian

Foundation. You

Aaron

know, there go the beams. So I don't know. As as a house scientist, I know a lot of these things. So,

Ian

yeah, I think So you gave them this some thought. You're actually thinking about this for real? Okay.

Aaron

I'm actually thinking about this for real. Here's what I here's what I one thing, rough weekend. Just long, you know, four day weekend with no no au pair. Just, like Oh. Just long brutal weekend.

Kids are kids are wonderful, but also a little bit tough sometimes. Yeah. Yep. So one of the things that I felt this weekend was very stuck. Like, I'm I'm I feel like I'm just stuck.

And one of the one of the, ways that I feel this is on the house stuff. Like

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

There's a bunch of stuff I need to do around the house.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

And, like, you know, minor stuff I need to do, like, replace the trash can rails because it doesn't pull out all the way, and it's incredibly frustrating.

Ian

A hidden trash can, though.

Aaron

You wanna freaking punch the door off. So that's one thing. But then also, like, are we gonna add a guest room? Because we don't have a guest room. Mhmm.

And, like, once once the au pair leaves and the babies move upstairs, like, we need to redo the upstairs at some point because we have one bathroom upstairs. And, you know, in in, in the vision board, it's a boys' bathroom and a girls' bathroom upstairs.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

Because we got two of each. Perfect. Great. Load balanced. It's gonna be awesome.

I don't wanna do a bunch of stuff that I'm then later gonna come back in two years and just, like, completely undo or redo or destroy. Right? Right. Mhmm. Because if I don't have if I don't have a, like, a plan for what everything is going to be like, if I don't have something that I'm working towards, I I don't wanna do anything because it might go against what I'm working towards.

And so something I realized this weekend was I just gotta call the architect again. And even if we don't do it for five years, even if it is just not it's not immediate, I need to know what is the what's the final plan for this house. Mhmm. And if if, like, the final plan is to build a, you know, a mother-in-law suite over the garage and put two bathrooms upstairs and turn the downstairs baby's room into, like, a sitting room or or or a half bath downstairs, that's great. And then we can we can, like, knock those things off one at a time versus I don't know what's gonna happen.

So, therefore, I'm not gonna do anything, and I'm just gonna feel depressed about it. And that that's where the, like, that's where the garage came into question was, you know, if if it turns out that self driving cars aren't a thing, which they're gonna be a thing, we're eventually hopefully, we're gonna have six cars at this household. You know, we're gonna have

Ian

Maybe. We're

Aaron

gonna have two 17 year olds and two 15 year olds.

Ian

Yeah. But they could share. The twins I mean, I would not go more than four cars with your situation.

Aaron

When they when they go off to college and they come home for Thanksgiving, we're gonna have a bunch of cars everywhere. Right?

Ian

I mean, I guess. I think that they could share all summer. Let me tell you. I had to share a car.

Aaron

Potentially they could potentially share a car.

Ian

I had to drop my mother off at work at 3PM. She was a nurse every day, and then go back for her at 11PM at night Wow. So I could have the car after school. So these kids can share a car, man.

Aaron

These these kids can share a car. But the point is we can't have one car garage. Right?

Ian

You need more than

Aaron

One car garage isn't gonna work because you park all you park five cars in the cul de sac out front, and people start to be like, hey. What's going on? Why you have five cars in the cul de sac?

Ian

Yeah. You don't have a do you have a driveway or not much of a driveway? Like, not really. Not enough. Driveway for parking.

Because of

Aaron

the alley, you can fit one car between the alley and the garage door. And so it's like, there's not there's nowhere to park in the back. It's not a street where you can just, like, park a few houses down because it's cul de sac. Right? And so you got that wonky parking angle where you're like, oh, do I pull in straight?

Do I pull in with the curve? Like, wow. What am I supposed to do here?

Ian

There room for a bigger garage, or it sounds like not necessarily, like, to the side? Could you make it a three car garage?

Aaron

I don't think so. We could we could jet into we could jut into the the backyard, maybe.

Ian

Make a double you know, you could make it double deep. Yeah. That's a thing. No.

Aaron

We can't we can't make it we can't make it longer. We could make it wider. We could go into wider. We could go into the backyard a little bit.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

But the the the lot is angled a little bit such that we couldn't go terribly far.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

And so I'm thinking just get rid of the garage.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Just get rid of the garage. Get more backyard. Put all the cars underground.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

Drive down there. You got you got some woodworking tools. You got a bunch of cars. You got a bunch of hang space. And they got this great big backyard, so you don't have a garage there anymore.

I don't know where the pool goes in that scenario because now there's a garage down there, but still, It's a great idea. Right?

Ian

I don't know. It feels like it should be very expensive, but maybe it wouldn't be. Maybe somehow it isn't.

Aaron

Yeah. That's the old this is the old time and money thing again.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

This one, I can just do with money, but I don't have that much money.

Ian

You could there you have to be able to, like, are you thinking it's so big that you can turn around? I mean, that you have to.

Aaron

Yeah. That's the question. Because I can't have two entrances or or rather two, like, an entry and an exit now.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

I could get a turntable. I could get a car turntable.

Ian

How do they get down there? A ramp or

Aaron

you That's what I'm thinking.

Ian

Lower the grade No. So it can Oh, and I can get into it.

Aaron

I'm thinking, because we our house is on a hill. Yeah. So I'm thinking from the alley, there's just, like, a a ramp that goes down to a garage door that is then you go in underground.

Ian

What do you do you care about resale value? Or are you like, this is the forever house till the kids are big, so I don't really care so much.

Aaron

Well, I don't think it's the forever house. I think it's the house for the next maybe ten years. But, also, I'm gonna be rich in ten years, so I don't care that much. Yeah. Well, I guess I keep saying that, but one of these times, it's gonna turn out to be true.

I said that ten years ago.

Ian

I like this way less if it's not the forever house. Because I think when you start doing weird stuff, it just makes your house so much harder to sell. It's like, I don't want a house with a weird den garage situation that's really funky and, like, a scary ramp I drive down.

Aaron

But imagine it's not weird. Imagine it's awesome.

Ian

Well, is that awesome? I mean, you better get rich earlier than if you're gonna build the awesome one. Because the awesome one's gonna be really big to make it, like, we can turn around and have a woodworking shop and all this stuff. Like, you're talking about a pretty sizable amount of land, I would think. Again $300,000 garage.

I don't know. Maybe. Again, it comes back

Aaron

it comes back to money. I gotta I gotta get more money. That's the problem.

Ian

I think you should sell this house and just move a little farther out to where the Texas houses are Texas big. And it's like, here's my seven car garage.

Aaron

I know. I got eight bedrooms. All above ground.

Ian

Yeah. I got, yeah. It's all just like, I got 20 acres and whatever. Even if you don't wanna go all the way up to 20 acres, like whatever. I got three acres in this nice little community with a five car garage and 10 bedrooms and eight bathrooms and whatever.

That's just what I'm doing. And it's a 1,300,000.0 or something.

Aaron

And Can you imagine? You know?

Ian

That's what you gotta do.

Aaron

You could probably get you could probably get that type of house out out it'd be it'd be pretty far out, but you could probably get that for $1,300,000

Ian

or something. In. That's gonna be way cheaper and easier in the whole thing.

Aaron

Yeah. But then we don't live across the street from our friends, and we don't live, like, in the, like, in the neighborhood where the elementary school is.

Ian

Said you're not gonna be there forever anyway.

Aaron

We might be in the neighborhood forever.

Ian

Oh, okay.

Aaron

Yeah. I know. We We gotta buy the neighbor's house. That's what we gotta do.

Ian

That was what I was gonna say. Like, then I would I like the buy the neighbor's house idea maybe or Yeah. Something is there, like, a tear downable house next to you or no? Not anything There's

Aaron

there's a tear downable house catty corner from us.

Ian

Well, that's interesting.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Make make them an offer. Tear it down. That's a parking lot. Done. That's a parking lot.

Put a garage on that thing, you know, because it's a above ground garage.

Aaron

Having a house that had off-site parking.

Ian

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it's not too far. It touches your lot. Right?

Aaron

No. It doesn't. It's across the cul de sac. Yeah.

Ian

Across the cul de sac. Yeah. That's still kinda cool.

Aaron

Still kinda cool.

Ian

There's no

Aaron

snow there. Know what? I could I could build a tunnel from the parking garage to the house.

Ian

Who's gonna sit there? Let you do that.

Aaron

It doesn't matter. It was underground. It's like international waters. Okay. Once you're underground, you can do whatever you want.

Ian

But this is serious business now. If you can get that house. Right? Mhmm. I mean, for the amount of your underground lair thing, you could buy the house or close to it and renovate it.

And that's the office. That's the office and the garage. That'd

Aaron

be incredible.

Ian

Right. That's two. So you have your garage in your house. Maybe you expand it a little. So it's like two full cars when you get, when you do some other renovation, whatever.

Right. And then across the street, Hey, that's the kids could park across the street. Okay. Like I, you didn't even probably have your own car when you're

Aaron

a kid, whatever. You know what I'm saying?

Ian

Like they can walk across the street to their car. That's where your office is. That's where the studios are. That all works. It's a write off?

It's a write off for sure. The whole thing is a write off.

Aaron

I can make Steve pay for it all. Oh, this is a great idea.

Ian

Yeah. Steve's gonna love that. Yeah.

Aaron

You could work it out

Ian

with Steve. You figure that part out. But the point is it's a write off.

Aaron

Pay, Steve, you pay for half, and you can stay anytime year.

Ian

There you go. You go. I'm sure there'd be room for a little guest suite going

Aaron

in town.

Ian

Yeah. It's on the Second Floor. You have some maybe a podcast room and, like, a guest suite. And on the main level, you blow

Aaron

it all out. Problem the only problem with this is Mhmm. We're not Houston, and we do have zoning in Dallas. Mhmm. And so we're it would be zoned totally residential, and so we'd have to we'd have to play it cool.

Ian

Yeah. But as long as you don't totally blow it out where it's like this room couldn't be a living room and so I mean, like, what do you you know what I mean? Like, I think it's fine as long as you don't I mean, you don't have people in

Aaron

there all the time. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. I mean, who's gonna know, though? Nobody Nobody's gonna know. I like this idea. Or you can get those zoning change.

It's not impossible.

Aaron

In this neighborhood, it would be impossible. Yeah. I feel like there'd be a bunch of NIMBYs that are like, no freaking chance.

Ian

I was told in Texas, anything goes. And now you're telling me there's some zoning regulations

Aaron

that are just talking to you. Sky is awesome, so we're both disappointed today.

Ian

This is ridiculous.

Aaron

It's unbelievable. Bad data being mostly technical pod.

Ian

Oh, man. Alright. So I don't know. Do you have more on building this thing? Are you gonna build it?

Are you digging it?

Aaron

I'm gonna get a quote.

Ian

I'm gonna

Aaron

get a quote. I'm gonna get the architect out, and I'm gonna get a quote for, like, hey. How do I dig a 4,000 square foot garage basement? And they're gonna say, give us a million dollars, and I'll say thank

Ian

you

Aaron

for your time. Yeah. But, yeah, I need I need to I need to I need to have a plan. I need to get moving because I feel I just feel stuck. And so we're gonna do we're gonna make something happen.

Ian

What's up with the psychology of this, which you have badly and I also have this too, which is like you have things on your to do list. Right? Like, for your house.

Aaron

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Ian

And you could just do those things. Nope. But instead, you're gonna figure out how to build an underground lair.

Aaron

In instead, you need

Ian

what you're thinking

Aaron

about. A unifying theory of of the, like, the universe.

Ian

I need to know this is what happened to this house in the next ten years before I can This is change those light bulbs. I can't change those light bulbs,

Aaron

but I know what's going on. Because what if what if we remodel in here and we put in different types of lights? And so Exactly. This is the this is the problem of, before I can do anything, I have to do everything. That's that's the problem.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

And I don't know I don't know what it is. And and, like, the easy solution well, one easy solution would just be do the do the freaking change the light bulbs. Nah. It's not gonna work. That's no problem.

The other the other easy solution is to sit down for a day, an an hour a day, a week, whatever it takes, and come up with your grand unifying theory of what the house is supposed to be. Mhmm. And then with that theory in place, begin to change the light bulbs. But for some reason for some reason, what I do is I don't change the light bulbs, and I don't come up with the grand unifying theory of what the house is supposed to be. And so I'm just stuck, and it's terrible.

And it it it expresses itself across many mediums. The house, programming, making course, everything. It's all over the place. It's not great.

Ian

It's not good.

Aaron

It's not good. It's not optimal. It's not optimal.

Ian

I also have some bad news for you, which I hate to always drop these things on you

Aaron

since I'm a little bit ahead of you. Bad news. Yeah.

Ian

I know. But it's like the we had a grand unifying theory too for our house, and we built our house from scratch. Right? And we only had one kid at the time. And now you're not gonna be in this situation where you have more kids show up, but we still knew we were gonna have more kids.

So it wasn't like, oh, we didn't even know we're gonna have more than one kid. Like and then when you get in there and how you use it, there's just always gonna be stuff that's not right that you have to go fix and change.

Aaron

I don't like that. I wanna hold on to hope that someday everything will be fixed. Know.

Ian

Yeah. It's gonna happen.

Aaron

That sucks for me.

Ian

Oh, man. I'm looking forward to this grand unifying theory, though. You have to bring this back to the show. I wanna hear what you come up with. Are you gonna actually sit down and do it?

Are you trying to so I guess you're gonna call the architect. That's kinda the Yeah. You you

Aaron

call the architect, and I found there's, like, a there I found a website, Texas Texas Basement Boys or something like that. I'm like, yeah. These these guys these guys know what they're doing. I just know what they're doing. Some good old boys.

Ian

Situation, though.

Aaron

You know what? We'll see. We'll get some we'll get some notes. We'll see we'll see what it comes back at. It's probably gonna be prohibitively expensive.

So I think I don't know. If we can if we can last ten years in the house, that's still pre car. You know, we'll just have two cars the whole time at that point. Yeah. And then by then, of course, I'll be very rich, and I can just buy some other house, knock it down, dig out a dig out a 4,000 square foot basement from from grade, not, like, sneak under the house and build it.

And then, yeah, that'll be that'll solve all of our problems.

Ian

I mean, I really do like that plan better.

Aaron

Like, just It's a lot smarter.

Ian

Get a lot. Build the house you want from scratch. You'll everybody will be bigger. You'll kinda understand the dynamics. And then Yeah.

You can do exactly what you want. You got a whole podcasting studio. You could have

Aaron

Be awesome.

Ian

Whatever you want the garage situation to be, bedroom situation, how the kids act with each other. Like, there's all that stuff too. Are people gonna want separate rooms or do other things like being together? What do you how that's all gonna work. So oh, man.

We got a lot to do.

Aaron

Yeah. Good. So much to do, man. I've got so much to do.

Ian

Alright. So we got one more. We'll do one more meta thing, and then I'll save this other thing for next week. So we talked about ads on here.

Aaron

Your great idea.

Ian

Everybody's heard some ads at this point in the show. Yes. You heard two ads this week already by this point, but we have a different idea for the ads in the future. Yeah. Of them being these am radio spots, short, tight.

We're gonna see how that goes.

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

But much like the conversation we just talked about, we can't just do it. We can't just put up a simple link or just even say, here's our transfer information and manually build invoices. We have to have a system.

Aaron

Yep. We have to do everything.

Ian

We have to have a system. So we have the boys over at Thunk

Aaron

The Thunk boys.

Ian

Building us a system. Texas Basement boys and Thunk together are going to build us a podcast advertising basement management solution.

Aaron

We got universally good feedback about the AM radio reads. We did. Everybody was everybody was like, that's great. I love it. Do it.

Ian

People seem into it. I'll be curious to see when we're reading off these four ads a couple times a show. If I mean, if we get that many advertisers, but, how people are then, but people seem to be into it. I think it it's gotta be better than a minute long ad. Right?

Like, I feel like it has to be.

Aaron

I don't want to swim along. Easy. I think you and I will need to be prepared a little bit.

Ian

A little more prepared than we are.

Aaron

This podcast is brought to you by and just, like, boom, boom, boom Yeah. And keep going. I'm like, you read one, I read one, you read one, I read one, we move on. I think that is gonna be, like, I think that is it's unskippable. It's it's interesting.

It's fast, and then we just get right back to it. I think that's gonna be perfect.

Ian

Yeah. I think that that would be pretty good. So yeah. So we wanna assist them, though, because, like, there is, like, eight if we get up to eight or however whatever the number we do is, you know, which ones are on for this month because they're gonna be month long chunks. So there is a little bit of, like, management that has to happen there.

And then, of course, like, collecting money and letting people buy or people wanna buy multiple months, blah blah blah, whatever. And to make it so we don't have to hand do it all and all that stuff. So thanks gonna gonna whip it up. I sent them a little wireframe, but an idea, Daniel, who was up late last night playing poker apparently, was, gonna be on it. And, yeah.

So it's gonna be a little a partnership with the Funk Pillows.

Aaron

I love it.

Ian

I'm excited about that. It's gonna

Aaron

be great. It's gonna be hopefully some good press for them. I

Ian

hope so.

Aaron

Put the name on it somewhere, you know, talk about them a little bit.

Ian

Put their name built. They're gonna get some credit for building it. We're gonna talk about it on here. We're gonna talk about it

Aaron

right now.

Ian

What can be better

Aaron

than that? Stunk.dev. I hope. I hope that's their domain. We'll see.

Y'all find out. Let me know.

Ian

I think that's right.

Aaron

Yeah. I love it. I think it's a great idea. I think it's a spectacle, and I I think that's gonna be amazing. And Thank you.

It also like, you were correct. Even even some I know. Write it down in your journal.

Ian

Broke

Aaron

people. Time you're gonna get it. I think you're correct in that it enables small advertisers

Ian

I'm really excited.

Aaron

To participate.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

And that makes it more interesting. So we don't have to talk about Squarespace or Eight Sleep. We can talk about whatever random person wants to pony up however many dollars. We talk about them for a month. That's great.

Ian

I do like I do like Eight Sleep, so we should talk about them. But yes.

Aaron

Like yes. Yeah. Eight Sleep. If you wanna buy out the whole thing, just let us know. We are 100% for sale.

Ian

But, yes, I do. I think that's gonna be awesome, especially since our pod is very to a pretty specific audience, and there's a lot of people in that audience with interesting products that aren't necessarily, you know, at the $10,000,000 a year and up sort of range. So I think that'd be really cool. It's gonna be totally affordable to get in front of our audience with a product that is likely appealing to that audience. So, anyway, I don't know.

It's always dangerous to go too meta on these things, but I think this is kind of interesting for us to talk about a little bit as it goes. And since we have this kinda unique angle on it, it's kinda cool to cover a bit.

Aaron

Yeah. That's gonna be fun. I'm glad I'm glad you thought of them to to build that because I I we can't build it. We'll we'll have time to do that.

Ian

We'll speak to you. That's why I approached you. I was like, this is like I know I know this is, like, eight hours of work or whatever, but I just I don't have eight hours, like, or sixteen hours or whatever it is. Like, I don't mentally have it. I have all this other stuff to do.

You have 48,000 other things to do. You definitely can't do it. So we need we need help. So we we put up the bat signal, and they came in like Batman. And they're punching the bad guys in the face, and they're gonna get it cranked out.

And it's gonna be awesome. And hopefully, you know, next week or two weeks from now, whenever it launches, we'll be out there. And you guys can sponsor us, and that'll be awesome. And we will be grateful.

Aaron

I'm excited for that. That's gonna be fun.

Ian

Aaron's children will eat, and it's gonna

Aaron

be glorious. You can you can sponsor one cubic meter of dirt removal from the Francis

Ian

household. Yeah. That would be

Aaron

really for?

Ian

Oh, for food. But, well, also, building an underground lair.

Aaron

With a car turntable. Please. Please help me. Car turntable. My my family is dying.

Please help me.

Ian

That is the solution. A turntable. Oh, I love it. That is totally the solution.

Aaron

You really lose the man of the people vibe when you install a car turntable. That's the only problem.

Ian

You might have to give up that shtick a little bit there. I know. At the point you get a car turntable, probably

Aaron

Kinda hard to say it with a straight face. Yeah. I'm one of you. Step onto my turntable, please.

Ian

That is the tightest way to do it. Just a four car wide turntable. It just rotates when you wanna go out. When you wanna come in, you pull right in and park. Man, that's Not crazy.

That's a really good idea.

Aaron

It's not crazy. Man. It's crazy, but it's not crazy. You know?

Ian

I wonder what the mechanism involved in that. It's gotta be I mean, you need something pretty heavy duty to turn four cars. Right?

Aaron

I think you just turn one.

Ian

How are you gonna just turn one?

Aaron

I don't know. You just but you just have, like, you just have a a one turntable that turns you so you don't have to, like, turn around in the underground garage.

Ian

You know

Aaron

what I mean?

Ian

There's, like, parking spaces you back up even if it's a weird backup onto the little turntable

Aaron

turntable and it points you and shoots you like a rocket out up to the hope

Ian

that your 16 year old kid doesn't leave the front wheels, like, off the turntable

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

And drag the car around. Rip it in half. Yeah. Right.

Aaron

You hope. One hopes. Okay. I like that. We can do is raise them right and hope.

You know?

Ian

That probably is better. Alright.

Aaron

That's a good idea.

Ian

That's a good idea.

Aaron

Sponsors for the show.

Ian

Sponsor the show. Compelling pitch. Alright. Alright. We're gonna leave it on Aaron's turntable.

Yeah. Alright. Follow us. Mostly techno.com. Mostly tech pod on Twitter.

Mostly technical dot com on blue sky. Mostlytechnicalpodcast@Gmail.com. We will be back next week. See you. Bye.