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How Cult Classic ‘John Dies at the End’ Kicked Off a Literary Career

October 6, 2022
Notes
Transcript

On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Jason Pargin for a wide-ranging and freewheeling discussion about, among other things, the propriety of jokes about nuclear war, how a cult classic movie kicked off his literary career, and the ways in which social media algorithms have possibly led you to believe that your favorite writers have disappeared and/or died. (As the former executive editor of Cracked dot com, Jason has some experience with this.) Oh, we also talk about his new novel—If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe, out October 18—and why you don’t need to read the three previous books in the series to enjoy it.

That said: I would recommend reading them! The first, John Dies at the End, is probably the easiest to skip since you can get the basics by watching the movie (streaming now on Hulu) but basics are, well, basic, and you don’t want to be Basic, now do you? (You can buy a new copy here and a used copy here). The second, This Book Is Full of Spiders, is my favorite of them, a deft deconstruction of the late-2000s-to-mid-2010s wave of zombie movies, shows, and video games. (New here, used here.) What the Hell Did I Just Read is perhaps the funniest book about depression I’ve ever read. (New here, used here.)

One of the things we talk about in this episode is Jason’s dislike of live events, meaning readings/signings. Which in turn means that if you want to get a signed copy of the new one, well, you have to preorder it from Parnassus Books in Nashville. And you have to do it by October 17, a scant 11 days from now. So … go get it, I don’t know what you’re waiting on.

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:06

    Welcome back to the Bullwerk goes to Hollywood. My name is Sunny Bunch from Culture Editor. At the Bulwark, and I’m very pleased to be joined today by Jason Pargin, who is the New York Times best selling author of of the John dies at the end series as well as the award winning Zoey Ash novels. His previously published work was under the pseudonym David Wong. I wanna ask you about that in a minute.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:26

    Because I I I I think it’s interesting that you have gone to your real name now on your books and it it is a which I understand has caused some issues with you in the world of people trying to find the sequels, but we we’ll talk about that as well. His essays at crack dot com and other outlets have been enjoyed by tens of millions of readers around the world. Jason, thanks for being on the show today.
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:47

    So as I sit down to this, on Twitter trending is, I guess, Russia has sent like a nuclear a train full of nuclear material, some kind toward Ukraine. And I just had the thought while you’re reading the intro, I’d better not joke about nuclear war because if there’s a nuclear war in between the time we record this and when it goes up, people are gonna be mad.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:15

    Well, they’re gonna be mad. It will or it will make me have to edit it out, which is a house
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:19

    Yeah. Whatever. They could be inconvenient for somebody because it’s I’m just imagining. But then again, I don’t think any kind of an outrage campaign, it wouldn’t trend because I think the fact that there’s a nuclear war would probably dominate trending list. So maybe I don’t need to worry about it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:37

    But either way, it would be tasteless, I I guess, but that’s something because, yeah, I can just imagine like, civilization collapse. And then on top of that, I’ve got people yelling at me on Twitter, and I’m having to craft some sort of an apology. Like, that would just be one more thing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:54

    Well, as an author, it has to be kind of a pain in the ass for you to worry about nuclear war while you’re trying to sell your book.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:00

    Because I’ve been promoting by six months. So imagine if now at the finish line, like, finally, finally, finally. Because being an author is the the reason it’s so hard in your mental health among the other things is that you are alone with this book for years. And then, you know, because of the way publishing works, you have to promote it for months and months in advance because it’s all based on preorders these days. Yep.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:24

    And So the idea of, you know, you’re living with it for a couple of for two years, and then you promote it for most of another year. And then like a few days before it comes out. It’s out October eighteenth. I don’t know what day this goes up. It doesn’t matter, but a few days struggles out.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:41

    Civilization ends,
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:43

    nuclear
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:43

    war.
  • Speaker 3
    0:02:44

    And no
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:44

    one so now you’re traveling across, like, the wasteland with the books in, like, a a canvas bag, just trying to hand them out to to refugees. And it’s it would I would be the biggest victim in all that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:58

    What? I’m I’m imagining, like, a book of Eli situation where you have to just through oral history, you have to, like, recount the tale of John and Amy. I and Dave.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:08

    I have no memory of any of the stuff. I know. That’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:12

    gonna be a problem. Alright. So the new book is, if this book exists here in the wrong universe, it is the fourth book in the John dies at the end series. I I was just telling Jason that I reread all of them as prep for this, which is the most prep work that I’ve ever had to do for a podcast like sixteen hundred pages. Of reading.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:30

    It’s like being in college again. I’ve been cramming these books, which is but it’s fun because I enjoy them. I enjoy the series. I was very excited when Jason’s publisher reached out to me and was like, hey, you guys follow each other on Twitter. Would you like to have them on your show?
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:44

    It’s like, yes, I would. I would like to do that. That would be that would be fun. But before we start talking about the newest book, I wanna talk about an old book that you wrote years ago and are not here to promote. John dies at the end, which I wanna talk I wanna talk about the writing that, but I also wanna talk about how that book how that book found fame really is how did how did that book find the audience that allowed you to, like, turn
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:11

    this into a whole series? So one weird thing about the modern media environment and how fragmented it is. I have no concept whatsoever of what percentage of the people listening right now have heard of a movie or a book called John Dies at the end. It is, you know, for example, yesterday on Twitter, it all day, trending all day was that a celebrity named Dream did a face reveal. Do you know who that is?
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:43

    I only know who it is because I saw people talking about how they don’t know who it is, because I didn’t know who it was. But
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:48

    Yes. But he was dominating the trending list all day long. Turns out he’s one of the most famous people on Planet Earth. He has a Minecraft streamer.
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:55

    Mhmm.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:56

    I guess who’s popular with the kids. So we’re in an era when among children, the most popular celebrities are people you and I don’t know. So in my case, if it’s I always have to think in terms of should would it be smarter to proceed as if, of course, Everyone has seen John dies at the end, and you’re all curious to know, that way, if someone is out there hasn’t seen it or read the book, they will feel stupid. For having not seen her. They don’t feel like they’re out of loop.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:29

    If you and I just proceed as as if this is an extremely famous book and that you should actually be ashamed if you if you haven’t if you haven’t read it. But but here’s here’s the situation. Here’s the background for both old and new people, like, this is a Orchid, this is kind of inspirational. It’s not extremely inspirational. It’s kind of inspirational.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:50

    But This is a book I wrote as a series of blog posts in the early two thousands over the course of about five years. This is before there was any kind of a fiction writing scene on the Internet. This is before the word blog existed. This is before social media. This is a time when maybe about half of the households in the United States even had an Internet connection.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:12

    That’s how long ago this was. So back then, I had a what would be called a vlog today, but it was just a website goes back then. It’s the only work we had for them. Right. I was just publishing in my writing.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:24

    It was called pointless waste of time, which was A lot of websites back then had names like that. They were all emphasizing how bad they were. And I started writing every year on Halloween, I would switch from my normal step, which was just I did, you know, movie reviews and parody stuff and essays and columns and whatever I felt like writing, but every year in Halloween, I would write fiction story. And it was a story that each time had the same format where it would start out seeming like a very typical horror story. A very typical horror set up.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:58

    So a woman comes to these two guys who says, I think there’s a ghost in my house, will you come and stay up with me and just see if it appears to see what you think it is? And then each time you start with that and then each time it just goes further and further off the rails until by the end it’s so stupid that you’ll you’ll be angry that you started reading it. That was the idea. That was the that was the format of the site. The the article will start normal and then it would just keep getting reeburger.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:27

    And then you you would realize at the end, oh, this person has wasted my time. Well, this story went viral kind of it gained its own audience, got to the point where this kind of dominated my my year. Starting from about early summer on, writing that years how we end up date became like a big deal on the site because people eagerly awaited the next chapters in section of the story that I would come to call John Dies at the end, as a joke that they were reading a serial that telling them this is how it’s going to end, even though it didn’t. So
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:04

    Spoilers. Yeah. Spoilers for John dies at the end.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:06

    Yeah. And so it came to a natural closing around two thousand five or so. And then I at the time, I people were asking me they were, like, printing it out on their computer so they could read it like, in a giant stack of paper. And so I was trying to find ways to, like, get printed copies to them. And I did, like, a print on demand thing through cafe press.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:25

    And then there was an indie horror publisher called Promuted Press that came along. And they said, we will do sell, like, print on demand copies of this if you want. In this way, it actually gets it up on Amazon, things like that. But at no point, did I work with like, they had a copy editor look at it, but at no point that I have an agent or an editor or any of that stuff. They were just taking the PremOn Demand version and it’s like we will publish a nicer edition so that people and we sold a couple thousand copies of this.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:56

    And somehow, one of those copies wound up in the hands of a famous horror writer director producer named Don Costarelli. He did the Phantom series. He did a movie called Bubba Hotep. A lot of people out there are fans of his. He gets hold of one of these copies and says, I want to buy the film rights to this.
  • Speaker 3
    0:09:17

    And this
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:19

    among my loyal fans, this is an old story. But to all of you, our ice and we’re hearing it for the first time. And I when he contacted me, I didn’t answer his email because I thought it was like a like a fishing scam or something. If you’re a writer, you get you you would or at least I used to get you get messages from, like, the entity presses where they want you to pay thousands of dollars to sell your book for you. Like, it’s just purely so you can claim that you’ve got a book and print.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:45

    So I thought it’s something like that. It’s gonna be, guys, and hey, I can get your book into the hands of Hollywood producers. Just give me some money. And I didn’t answer it, and he was persistent and then actually finally got through to me. And again, I didn’t have an agent.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:02

    I didn’t have anything. At the time, I was the writing was the highway I was doing inside is working at an insurance company and not as like an agent or something. I was doing data entry. And a cubicle like the claims had come in and I would type them in. That was my job.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:18

    So this, not only do I sell the film rights, but it becomes a film, which is deep. This is the part that has spectacular long odds because it’s fairly easy to sell the film ice to something. Having it turned into a movie or a show, is. But it did. He got Paul Gimati on board as a producer and and cast several other famous people on the roles.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:43

    Movie debuted at Sundance in January twenty twelve. I flew out there, did a Q and A with the cast. And from that point on, like, that was the last those are the last normal days of of my life. That would be the movie getting done would get me another fairly huge book deal, and so I wrote a sequel to it. And that made the New York Times bestseller list, and that’s that’s how where we are today.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:07

    The the movie has a huge goal following, not from theatrical release, but because it is played on cable and Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime and steady rotation for all these years?
  • Speaker 3
    0:11:19

    Howard Bauchner:
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:20

    Yeah, I mean, it’s on Hulu right now if anybody wants to go watch it. And like you said, if by Don Koskarelli, who is a famous cult horror director of folks who may have seen Bubba Hotep, the Bruce Campbell movie, will recognize him or phantasm, of course. I I I’m curious when you say that that was the last normal day of your life. What is it like to be the author of a not not just a bestselling novel, but like a bestselling cult novel. Are you, you know, on the road to conventions all the time?
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:51

    Are you are you fighting off tourists at your home with a stick? What are what are you What are what are your days like when you’re not, you know, sitting around writing? I
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:02

    don’t do in person stuff. I could use the pandemic as an excuse. But in reality, it just seems like a lot of trouble to not sell very many books. And I don’t know. It’s I think I’m the only author who doesn’t like the idea of going out because I’m I’m the type of famous where once every five years somebody will will stop me on the street and say, oh, you’re because they’ve somehow seen my face on a video or on TikTok or or whatever.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:36

    And then, like like, twice in my life, people have shown up at my house uninvited fans who’ve tracked down my address and shown up. But I’m not famous, but because of what I joked about at beginning this of this podcast. I’m famous among a group of,
  • Speaker 3
    0:12:53

    like, I
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:54

    don’t know, fifty thousand people. Like, among those people, they would be extremely excited to meet me. And among the other eight point something billion people on earth, I could just I could die and they would they wouldn’t care. I could die right at their feet and move a step right over me. So if you do, when you do, like, a book tour and I’ve done appearances before, you can pack a roomful of people
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:17

    where it’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:18

    like in this room, I’m a celebrity. Because all they feel like they’re winding up to talk to you, and you could see they’re, like, nervous to meet you. And then the moment you step out of that room, it might go next door to that seven eleven is just nobody in there. Like, you could just die. You could just fall over dead.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:34

    And they would they would forget about you five minutes later. Unless you die in like a really entertaining way, then they would have a funny story to tell. So that thing of, I think, a lot of authors like to do the in person’s up and do the tours and even if if they’re paying for out of pocket. Because I think they love that connection to the fans and that, like, it rejuvenates them because it’s like it it’s a reminder that, oh, these people who read the books, these are real people. Here’s their faces.
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:01

    And here’s their excitement. Like like I I’ve got a genuine human connection with these people and I just don’t feel bad at all. It that that emotion doesn’t it’s just me being nervous about. There’s no way I’m as interested in person as the the book is, like whether the books are good or not. It’s I in person am less good than whatever you think the books are.
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:24

    If you think the books are trashed, well, I ain’t even worse at because the the book, those sentences have been rewritten twenty times, and it took me two years to get all that together. And if you just ask me to my face, about my opinion about something or or, you know, and you want me to speak about the book. Well, that’s not gonna be as good because I just thought of it on the fly. And I’m probably just trying to get out of the conversation. So it always feels like
  • Speaker 3
    0:14:52

    I don’t know. It feels
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:53

    like it would be feed my ego to go out and do like a signing or whatever. But I don’t know that it would have any other benefit. And honestly, I don’t
  • Speaker 3
    0:15:03

    If
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:03

    I got famous famous famous, like like Steven King famous, I probably would have to withdraw from society. Like a thing where you have to live in a gated home to keep people from showing up. I probably couldn’t do that. I I don’t I’ve never aspired to that. That’s my role to understand them for all these years.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:25

    Specifically, I didn’t want anyone associating the work with me. I wanted them to be fans of the work. I didn’t care if they were fans of me. And I certainly didn’t want this thing the way it operates in social media age where it’s all about you and your personality and and you being an influencer, and it’s all about building a personal brand. I wanted the work to be a brand, not Jason Hargent because I’m an objectively unremarkable person.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:53

    You
  • Speaker 1
    0:15:54

    mentioned the pseudonym. I wanna ask about that because it it is interesting me. To the extent that I literally looked up I remember this happening a couple years back. I literally looked up the wrong name trying to find the rest of the books in the series. I was like, wait, where where did David Wang’s books go?
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:08

    They don’t exist because it’s Jason Pargent now. But the you do you’ve the name of the main character in John Dyes at the end of the rest of these books is David Wong. And there’s there’s kind of an interesting I don’t know. I I’m curious from your perspective as as the writer, as a writer, how how much of that is you trying to either identify with the character or to simply disassociate entirely from character. Like, this is the character in the book.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:37

    He’s writing it. This is him. This is a professional thing. First person thing. It’s not me.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:42

    Or is it the opposite?
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:44

    Well, it’s You have to rewind about twenty five years to start to get the words into that because the character David Wong, I created in, like, in high school for short stories. And he was always a white guy who has chosen this alias because he has enemies. He doesn’t want them to find him. And he looked up and found out that that’s the most common surname in the world.
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:08

    But he
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:08

    lives in a small mid western town that’s like entirely white. It’s like an incredibly misguided alias, and that’s the joke because David Wong, the man is an idiot. He’s he’s he’s he’s smart in a way that’s not useful at all.
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:21

    So when I
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:22

    started writing online and got my first Internet connection nineteen ninety seven. Something like that. Got a a free AOL desk where it used to
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:31

    come with
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:31

    yet it’s they had, like, the number of hours of Internet on it. Yeah. Do the kids these days know that the Internet used to become, like, per minute? You
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:39

    know what? Or that it would come on a disc. Like, you would have to put a disk in a thing, and then you would get the
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:45

    An AOL floppy disk, and they would mail these to you. And it’s like there’s a hundred and twenty hours of Internet on here. For free and then then you have
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:53

    faith. So I
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:54

    got my first Internet account in the late nineties And again, as someone who had written as a hobby, but never for one millisecond ever contemplated that I would be a professional writer
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:08

    or that
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:08

    there was even a way to become a professional writer. I I had gone to college for journalism, but it was it was for TV journalism. And I worked at a local TV station after graduation. But in terms of being a writer that wasn’t again, I didn’t have an English degree. I wasn’t I had no connections on publishing or I had no agent.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:26

    Like, to this day, I’ve never, like, sent a query letter to an agent or to an editor or done any of that stuff. I I only sat down at a computer and realized, oh my gosh, whatever I type here
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:38

    appears on
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:39

    the screen and it’s and other people can read it. Like, this is incredible.
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:43

    So
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:44

    but in that era, everyone I mean, to my knowledge, basically, one hundred percent of the users use as soon them.
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:53

    Or
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:53

    or a handle or because it was going back to the old chat room using that day. Sure. Yeah. And most people have, like, one word that was like, you know, demon sword six six six or whatever, you know, a band name or something that it was a no one posted as Bob Williamson unless they were, like, very old and confused or whatever. So I was using the name David Wong because that was this character I had created.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:18

    So it was literally a pop culture reference that only me and two friends would would get. That’s how I’m not just like I was in continuing to be as a person. So when I start writing I’m writing in first person as this fictional character. And every article is written, and he is the opposite of me in real life. Like David Long is he’s drunk, he’s lazy, He’s depressed, he’s cynical, but he was a very funny character to write ass.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:50

    And he was like, some criminal history, all these things that are not true that are not true of me at all. So when it came time to write these stories, they were written first person as, like, David Long speaking. Like, here’s the thing that happened the same with all the rest of it. But they had no point The idea that this is, you know, a guy speaking first person about his experiences, these are ridiculous cosmic horror stories. Like, the things that happened in the story was in the first paragraph.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:17

    You know this is not actually he’s not claiming this is his history, his family. This is something extremely stupid. And so when when I published it as in the paper version, it
  • Speaker 3
    0:20:29

    just made
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:30

    sense to put his name on the cover. And at the time, it’s like
  • Speaker 3
    0:20:34

    because you
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:35

    read it and in the book he says, he he tells the guy he’s talking to, he’s telling the story to, this is an alias David wants, not my real name. And the understanding is, you don’t know who wrote this
  • Speaker 3
    0:20:48

    book And it doesn’t
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:49

    matter. This is this fictional character is telling a story to a reporter in the book, and so his name is on the cover, and that’s as far as he gonna get. Now, once I actually became a real like I made a did a book deal, then my real name was like on the flat. Like, the first edition of John Diastien that says in the about the author, David Watson, student named Jason Parsons, and and so on. And then when I got the job at crack, that’s the only thing we haven’t mentioned yet that at crack dot com is the the executive better there for thirteen years.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:21

    Same deal. Like like on my profile there, on my social media, at that point, there’s no hiding who I was. But in those early days in the early two thousands, I did not want anyone like, especially at my job, like, I didn’t want anyone knowing I was writing these stories or that website. These incredibly crude jokes or these graphic scenes or any of this. I just didn’t want them finding out.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:44

    And I was perfectly happy
  • Speaker 3
    0:21:47

    Mike,
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:47

    I was never jealous that all of the attention is going to this fictional character. I I didn’t want it. I I I still I
  • Speaker 3
    0:21:56

    don’t
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:57

    the Internet now where it’s all about, you know, it the we’re in the social media age where everything is being sold with your face, your voice, you know, I if I could rewind time and everything is behind a username, I would do it. I I don’t this isn’t my this isn’t my thing. I don’t I don’t like relating to people this
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:18

    way. Yeah. I mean, that’s I I I just imagine the all of the the would be novelists out there hearing this play out and wanting to jump off a bridge. Like, oh my god, he just he just wrote and somebody wanted his book. This is how why can’t this happen to me?
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:36

    So congratulations for inspiring many. Suicides in this in this episode. I And let me
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:42

    acknowledge my good fortune. Because this is that movie deal like, I’m writing books full time. That is a makes me a unicorn among authors. That only is possible. Because the it’s not just that the movie got bought not just the movie got made, but the movie was good.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:59

    And then after it percolated through DVD and and cable and streaming, it’s just gained such a fan base that it’s still I mean, John Dice at the end is now available. And I don’t know, like, a dozen countries and, like, ten languages. It’s for sale all over the world. It’s I have I have framed frame photo of a bunch of the covers from other countries and I don’t have them all on there. They wouldn’t fit.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:26

    So that was an extreme stroke of of good fortune and also, you know, it was Don believing me and and all that. So when other people asked me, well, how did you do it? So much of my advice is useless. Because all other authors are like, well, you know, here’s here’s how you get the attention of an agent. And here’s how you get the attention of an agent.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:48

    It’s like, for me, it was all backward I had to go find an agent because McMillan and their it was an Imprimarily Saint Martin’s press. They came to me saying, hey, we saw you sold the film rights to this book. We we would like to do a hardcover run. Do you have an agent? I was like, no.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:07

    Do you know any agents?
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:09

    And
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:09

    so I had go call an agent. And then by date, I gave me the name like this guy represents a bunch of writers we work with and say, hey,
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:18

    I’ve
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:18

    got a
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:19

    book deal apparently, but I need somebody to do the paperwork. And then, so And then and then for the now again,
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:31

    I also
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:31

    was working, like, a hundred hours a week because I had a full time job, and then I had a part time job and I’m just running my blog and writing these stories as my third thing trying to make an income. Like, because writing on the Internet has never been profitable, presumably never will be the the blog in writing for the first five years. Again, I was giving the story away for free. There were banner ads that barely cover the cost of, like, the hosting fees. So I if I wanted to emphasize the hard work aspect, I would say Well, I I had, you know, a full time job at an insurance company, and then I had a night part time job at night at another office, and then I was on weekends and in evenings, I was riding and tried to to to hone my my craft and I was sleeping like five five hours a night and I had no friends.
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:19

    And that it was the hard work that made this happen. But the truth is it
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:24

    was it
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:25

    was both that the hard work is kind of like a base line that’s assumed and then other people who are working hard, a certain number of those will meet the right person and and become successful. So I
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:36

    you’re
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:37

    working the exact same amount of hours or whatever, I fully get that if I had to replay this a hundred times, like ninety nine times, it still wouldn’t play out this way. Because again, Yeah. Maybe there’s another reality where he stumbles across the book and decides not to buy the rights or he buys the rights, but then instead of doing this, he decides to do you know, above a hotel sequel instead or some other project, which is what happens with most movies that get bought or most TV shows that get optioned is that they just never get then ever come to fruition. Everything just fell fell into place, including me
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:08

    having
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:09

    an Internet connection and getting in on the ground floor of blogging that I was blogging before they had a word for blogging. I was one of the early writers on the Internet. Well, who knows how much to success I would have had if I’d been born fifteen years later and came into a scene that was already crowded Like, I I came into the Internet when sometimes you would come on and just look for stuff and be like, oh, there’s no new stuff on the Internet today. I guess, I watched TV. Like, that’s there was nobody was using it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:39

    This this was an errand. You could go to mcdonald’s dot com or Nike dot com, and it was, like, some Random Yoko had the website because companies hadn’t bought those domains because nobody at McDonald’s knew what the Internet was yet. Like, that’s how early this was when I was on there, you know, just out of out of college. It was to Wild West.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:58

    Yeah. No.
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:59

    The early mover phenomenon is I mean, I I remember those days. I remember going to websites that I won’t I won’t name now because God only knows how embarrassing there. But being like, God, there hasn’t been an update in a month. Why haven’t I? Why isn’t there any new stuff here?
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:12

    I guess I’ll go watch TV, as you said. The There’s there’s in in the forward of the, I think, most recent edition of the book is full of this book is full of spiders, which is the Second book in the in the franchise of the n series. You mentioned the difference between, you know, kind of compiling a series of blog posts into a novel and sitting down actually write it. And I I wanna get your just your your your look back at that and kind of how different that was for you as a writer. In terms of your process and all that stuff?
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:48

    Well, that was the first time I actually set down to write a book because, again, John dies at the end was my writing school. And by the way, for young writers out there, I still think to this day,
  • Speaker 3
    0:27:58

    I mean, now
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:00

    I probably don’t need to say this because I think every young person gets their start doing like fan fix, stuff like that, which I fully support that, you know, there’s entire communities of of, you know, whether you’re doing erotic fan fiction or horror or whatever. There’s all sorts of outlets that there’s entire scenes now or people that hang out there’s ways to for your stuff to get traction and all that. But writing online and seeing the feedback, like, that’s your writing school. This is what wouldn’t have been available somebody fifty years ago or forty years ago or or even so pulsing stuff a bit at a time and not just seeing the feedback but seeing where people stopped reading it. Seeing what page they left off on.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:41

    Like, I had data. The writers didn’t used to have data. You said you sat alone and wrote for five years and sent off to a publisher and they sent it back — Yeah. — and we’re not we’re gonna pass. And that was it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:50

    You know, the the only way you could get feedback was to show up to your friends and they’re not gonna read it.
  • Speaker 3
    0:28:56

    They’re gonna
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:57

    say, oh, it’s really good. And, you know, like, you can’t ask a friend to read a hundred and fifty thousand words of of your manifesto. Well, I had this miracle of like because I had a message board on my website because it had there’s free software you can install and people can can shout a swears at you. But I could post every Halloween and see people and I post a section of time and I could look at the data and I could see where people were getting bored. I just that was my novel writing school.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:22

    This was the first long form story I’d written in my life. You know, that this the first big long story I ever wrote became the movie and the best selling book series. That’s how, again, how unusual I am. So then after you know, it it was working out so that around when the movie was gonna come out is when the second book would come out under the deal I signed to write a sequel. And that was that was terrifying.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:50

    I had never sat down with the blank page to write a story before, a novel before. And so I had that was where all of the processes I have now, like I outlined extensively. In advance. A lot of authors don’t do that. A lot of authors say it’s a terrible idea, including the most successful authors out there.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:10

    I’ll say, don’t do it. That I do. And that was that that started with this book as full of spiders. Me, sending down and saying, well, I can’t write
  • Speaker 3
    0:30:18

    this I can’t write
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:19

    the beginning of this unless I know the ending. And I can’t write, like, unless I know where this character’s arc is going, I can’t write I can’t write the starting part. I can’t introduce them without knowing how they’re going to die. So I outlined the whole thing in advance and that gave me like the comfort to sit down in because now I wasn’t scared of the blank page anymore, which is debilitating to a lot of authors. Like, just looking at a blank screen and you have to just, like, where do you start?
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:47

    Well, I had this outline. It’s like, well, I I gotta start with some of this stuff. It’s like having a recipe. Other authors
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:53

    say
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:53

    it makes the your work to, like, I don’t know, like, too organized or too clockwork or whatever it’s not organic enough. But I I I I don’t I can’t imagine mine either way. The way they write the way Steven King writes, the way George r Martin writes, Looks like I’m gonna create these characters. I’m gonna put them in a room. I’m gonna just see what they do.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:17

    See what they save each other. Let them surprise me. And like, no, I’m I’m on a deadline. I don’t I don’t I don’t have time I don’t have time to be surprised by this character that that I assumed was gonna be there through the end of the story. It’s like, oh, that character surprised me by committing suicide.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:35

    Mhmm. I admire right as it can do that. They are probably just way better writers than I am. I have to outline, but all of that I I only learned by doing it and and then, you know, and then just wrote the the method that I have now where I will write a bad paragraph and just revise, revise, revise until I’m happy with it. And right like including, like, when I finish the book, like, I will rewrite the beginning, the opening chapter right up until I send it off because it’s not a linear process.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:10

    I’ll I’ll circle back and — Mhmm. — you know, and adjust or or whatever. But it’s it’s just writing and then rewriting I just entered it to to death.
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:21

    Do you if if when you have the structure kind of laid out, do you ever skip ahead in the story if you get stuck somewhere? I mean, I’m or is it just straight
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:32

    through? I mean, I write straight through as as I can, but I, the whole advantage of having an outline is if you get bored with one part and you are, like, eager to go write this action scene later, you could just go write that
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:43

    scene. And then if when you circle
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:44

    back, if something has changed a little bit or the tone is a little bit different when you reach it, you can always adjust it. But, no, I I totally right out of order. And this is why again, this is where I’m a big believer that technology kind of shapes your brain because I was raised on work process I’ve never written anything on a typewriter in my life. That’s sort of like in high school or, you know, we had a class on on using a typewriter. And for the kids out there, don’t know what a typewriter is.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:13

    Probably, they’ve seen them in old movies. But the idea is the authors when we put it this way, it was extremely difficult to revise on a typewriter. So authors that used to write everything typewritten, that is all authors who are not writing long hand, it almost had to be a more linear process because the sheer labor and cost of retyping, pulling out the sheet, crossing out through it, and then typing a new sheet, whereas if you look at the books I’ve got in progress, like the one I’ve just started right now, it’s just this. The Word doc is just this patchwork of notes and paragraphs and lines and jokes
  • Speaker 3
    0:33:52

    and observations
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:54

    and little interesting little bits of narrations that I’ve thought of, stuff that I’ve kept notes on, and I’m just gonna copy and paste and move stuff around. And up till the very, very end aisle decide, oh, this this conversation really should be moved much earlier. And it’s just
  • Speaker 3
    0:34:10

    I think
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:12

    when you’re writing and ways it works much more laborious to undo it, I think a lot of the writers who you see becoming too verse to deleting or or getting rid of scenes is because it’s so much actual labor to redo it and to get rid of it. Whereas in the work process era, somebody raised on work processes like me, it’s all ephemeral. It’s just real easy just copy paste, cut, you know, delete or or delete the whole section. And save it in another doc. And then if I decide six months later, I I want it back in, I just grab it, throw it back in.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:50

    Very easy. And it takes what would have taken them hours, takes me half a second. Well, my entire creative process was shaped by that technology. Being able to move stuff around. And I I think I would if I had been born a hundred hundred years earlier, One, I clearly would never have been a published author because how would that even have worked?
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:11

    But but I think if I try to write on our typewriter, I think you would see me working in a more linear fashion. And I would be really interesting to see people who are just starting writing now in their their nineteen or twenty or just at a high school.
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:24

    Somebody who’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:24

    raised on phones, IBM should see how they write. That for example — Yeah. — I worked with cracked a lot of our young writers or young columnists would compose their column on their phone. They
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:34

    would write a
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:35

    two thousand word column, including doing the research and everything, be able to do it all on their
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:40

    phone. Man. As a as a fellow word processor person that is a terrifying prospect. Do you do you use did you just use micro upward? Do you scrivener?
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:49

    Like, what do do you use a specific programming? Just use
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:51

    word not for any good reason, but just because every time somebody’s tried to explain me something like scribner or any of these other software that help you, like, write or organize your thoughts, it just seems like it’s adding steps. But again, those may be great. I’m not criticizing him as just I’ve never in using word. I’ve never become frustrated with being
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:15

    able to
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:16

    organize my ideas or whatever. Because it it’s for me, it’s very easy to just create a separate Word doc called outline, another Word doc called notes And then if there’s a a a chapter, a section that I’ve cut, and I think I wanna hold, just put it into another word I called, you know, that chapter sixteen action scene. And then I just I it’s easy enough to grab it, but I assume those those softwares makes it much more just easier to move your ideas around stuff like that. But I’ve just got the process
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:44

    down. That’s the
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:45

    same thing. I’m I’m using, like, word two thousand ten, and it’s the same thing. Microsoft is trying to, like, sell me word three six sixty five? Yes. Like, well, what’s better about it?
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:52

    It’s like,
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:53

    well, it’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:54

    you’ve gotta create an account. And as I see, it sounds like you’re see, it sounds like this is harder. Because if I’m just typing text, it already does. Well, you can insert video right in the middle of your words. It’s like, well, okay, but I’m not They’re not gonna the posture is not gonna like that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:13

    So, no. And I guess I’m this is the side of me becoming old because, again, I
  • Speaker 3
    0:37:19

    don’t. Like,
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:19

    I don’t wanna upgrade my phone because I’m afraid it’ll be it’ll be
  • Speaker 3
    0:37:24

    too different.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:24

    Well, I just I just pulled up my version of Word, and I every time I open it, I it’s version it’s Microsoft Word sixteen for the record. Every time I open it, there there’s now a warning. It’s like, this is we’re not updating the security on this anymore. Someone’s gonna hack your computer and steal all your stuff. If you don’t upgrade to the new Microsoft Word, I’m like, that doesn’t make me wanna get another version of Word.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:44

    Hearing all this. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:45

    And I and I think they wanna go to a subscription model where you just pay, like, a monthly fee forever. See, paying infinite money for for word. And it’s like, okay. But but the the book book technology has not advanced that much. So I’m somehow able to still write a book on word and in fact, I think George R.
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:05

    Martin still uses, like, an MSOS word word process to because that’s what he learned on. And like me, he’s afraid that updating would slow him down because this is what this is what you’re faster on.
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:17

    Let me let me ask you what you’d mentioned something interesting about presales on if this book exists. You’re in the wrong universe. Again, I just wanna wanna pitch it for Jason here so he doesn’t have to. The the whole series is very good. You should read it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:29

    It’s like it’s a bit like hitchhiker guy to the galaxy with some cosmic horror thrown in, some Steven King, whatever. But it’s it’s there it’s an incredibly entertaining series of books. Again, the fourth one is coming out in in a week or two here. It’s if this book exists here in the wrong universe, But you’d mentioned presales. You’d mentioned presales, and you’d also talked a little bit about having more data now.
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:53

    And you’d you’d mentioned that normal like, the hardcover sales are about tracking to where you were expecting, but e book sales are down. And audible sales aren’t up yet. So it’s it’s hard to track that. What what is your what what are you seeing in the the book industry right now? Or at least with with regard to your sales.
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:14

    I mean, I I assume that e book sales are down because people are commuting less. Right? Because of COVID or whatever, but I don’t know. I’m curious what your what your take on that is. The theory we have right now is
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:25

    that people who used to read ebooks have migrated to audiobooks. Because audio is exploding and the reason for that is obvious, which is podcast. It’s just another type of podcast content to the kids these days. So the idea of if on your phone in your app, you’ve either got a podcast or you can listen to this book. And and, you know, let’s be frank.
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:47

    If I wanted when I wanted to know more about World War one, I didn’t buy a book on the subject. I listened to Dane Carlin’s podcast blueprint form again. Like, that was the book quote like, it’s twenty five hours long. That was the book quote unquote I read on World War one was a podcast Now, if I was at a party with other smart people, which I never am, I would say I read a book because I I ingested the same amount of information, but I I think among among the youth today is the same category of content. So I suspect that’s what’s happened is a lot of the tech savvy people who have kindles now.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:24

    They just dropped the audio book on the phone. And you can listen to it in your car on the treadmill while moving your lawn or while, you know, all the things you can’t do, you know, you can’t drive your car while waiting a Kendall yet.
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:36

    So
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:37

    but you can listen to a book in your car. So if you got a commute, it’s just very easy. So I think that’s what’s happened I was very surprised because I again, like a lot of people thought that by twenty twenty two, you know, paper books would have gone the way of whatever, the telegram. And that it would all be ebooks now. And what we’ve seen is that that e book adoption completely flattened out.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:59

    And has
  • Speaker 3
    0:41:00

    now started
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:00

    to drop a little bit the paper books, I’ve I’ve sold in advance, I have more hardcover preorders of this book book for than I had of book three at the start. Then by the way, you can come in at any these are episodic. You can start with any any book. They’re all equally compu confusing. Well, I I I appreciate that the host of this show read four hundred thousand words of text before in prep for talking about book four.
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:28

    We are not asking any of you to do that. Now, you can, I I make more money if you do, and to be perfectly frank, if you want entry into the universe and wanna understand the tone, go watch the movie for free on Hulu or whatever device you’ve got or go to a used book Stora and John Diastien, you can probably get for zero point nine nine dollars there. But, I mean, I I would prefer you buy the new extremely expensive one, but I understand that
  • Speaker 3
    0:41:56

    I’m not
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:56

    a fan of people telling me, oh, you’ve got it, especially with, like, Fantasy. I don’t read that much fantasy of people saying, oh, you’ve this Fantasy series is one you’re gonna love. There’s thirty seven books. You do need to start you do need to start with the first one. And it’s like But there’s there are there are videos on TikTok that I decided were too long for me to sit through.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:21

    I realize I’m here asking people to buy a full length novel, but in this information environment for me to go and tell people you have to read the three previous books to enjoy this one. No. This is not. This is not a song of ice and fire situation where one book leads a cliffhanger. You’re waiting for the next one to come out find out who died or whatever.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:39

    No. They’re complete stories, starring the same characters like a, you know, like a Sherlock Holmes novel. It’s just a new they’ve got a new case they have to tackle. Yeah.
  • Speaker 3
    0:42:48

    Can co sign
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:50

    on that? If you if you go watch the the movie on Hulu, you’ll get the basics with the the soy sauce the drug that, you know, you know, expands the mysteries of the universe. And that’ll that’ll do you okay. But you should definitely look, again, I I don’t I don’t talk to a lot of novelists on here because it’s a Hollywood show and this is why I’ve asked a lot about the movie that that kind of on this whole thing, but I I do really enjoy this series of books. People should check it out.
  • Speaker 1
    0:43:18

    Let me ask do you are are is there any work on a John Dyes at the n sequel? I mean, I you know, we have an endless maw of streaming content. You know, this book is full of spiders could easily be a ten hour Netflix series or or something of that sort. Do you think there’s any chance of that happening here in the the near term. I have to be
  • Speaker 3
    0:43:40

    careful. If
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:41

    you can talk about why I phrase it because
  • Speaker 3
    0:43:46

    It’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:46

    for example, both, you know, my other book series, the Zoe Ashnals, the science fiction series. Like, we we sold the TV rights to that before the first book was even out. And the the same production company still has the TV rights. And the show is in development for it. But that doesn’t the term and development
  • Speaker 3
    0:44:08

    doesn’t mean anything
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:09

    to totally spend money to
  • Speaker 3
    0:44:12

    make a pilot.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:13

    So, Mike, usually, it means, like, people have been brought onboard. There’s writers. There’s a there’s a showrunner or whatever, but it doesn’t what people wanna know is when is this gonna be in front of my face so I can see it. And the answer and the answer is that most shows there to get to to be in development don’t become shows. That’s just the nature of Hollywood.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:34

    There’s a filtering process of it’s once you’re at a level where you’ve got a best selling book, it’s not hard to get a meeting about your books because those meetings don’t cost
  • Speaker 3
    0:44:46

    anything. And it
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:47

    doesn’t cost him anything at the meeting to say, oh, this is great. This is great. It’s so unique. Oh, gosh. This is so great and it’s similar to other stuff that’s happening right now, like Rick and Morty.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:56

    It’s got that talent of it’s like smart, but it’s got really crude humor and, you know, it’s violent, but it’s also full, blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t cost him anything to say that. What what cost him something just to actually fund a pilot or a see a direct to series show for streaming and until you’ve reached that point, there’s kind of no point in talking about the meetings you’ve had because it just doesn’t if someone if someone, yeah, I could be reported care enough about me to do a headline on some entertainment site that’s like, you know, Jason says meetings have been had about John Dostein say, well, it’s like, well guess what? There’s been meetings about every single book that’s been written, every property, every video game. It just doesn’t what people wanna know is when does it come out so I can watch it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:46

    Right. And there’s not a show in production right now. But logically, the way the environment has changed since twenty twelve, like the collapse of DVD, the rise of streaming, You don’t have to be an expert to know that it
  • Speaker 3
    0:46:02

    it would
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:03

    be would be more common to pitch it as a streaming service to one of the eight hundred streaming services, Dan, to be talking about doing, you know, doing another feature film. It’s just this is where stuff show goes. It would it would make more sense to go to Netflix and say, hey, it’s kinda like stranger things except it’s profane and everybody is drunk and But nobody has has taken it that final step yet. Now I could be speaking
  • Speaker 3
    0:46:30

    out of turn as
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:31

    possible that last week they had a meeting at somebody green, but something, then I’m I’m ruling that by but no. There’s not there’s not anything on the schedule to come out. I personally believe that someday it will be it will be something just because if the rate streaming services are being invented, there’s just not enough content for them. At some point, somebody has to come along and say we wanna we wanna do a John Dice theme series or movie error or
  • Speaker 3
    0:47:00

    something. Yeah. I think that’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:01

    a safe. I think that is a safe bet. That was that was everything I wanted to ask. I always like to close these interviews by asking if there’s anything I should have fingers, anything people should know about. The new book, the book industry in general, cult movies, crack dot com, whatever.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:19

    I if if there’s anything if there’s anything you think folks should know about, what what did I fail to ask?
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:25

    I mean, cracked it could be because some of the people listening, like statistically, probably or more likely to have been a fan during the crank dot com years just because of who you are, who your who your fan base is, your audience is, But I was the I was the executive editor there from about two thousand and seven till just to ripe for the pandemic to twenty
  • Speaker 3
    0:47:50

    twenty. So during
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:51

    what some people regard as the the big years when I had a a kind of a giant audience, I was one of the head guys there. And then left, and that was one of the publications that suffered mightily under the way just the information ecosystem changed. This is I don’t know if people realize this. The average person doesn’t know, but in, like, around twenty seventeen, Facebook
  • Speaker 3
    0:48:17

    through a switch and
  • Speaker 2
    0:48:18

    just obliterated the digital publishing industry. This is why college humor had to get rid of their entire staff. This is why funny your guy went out of business. This is why just run down. The chai have had to lay off most people just why buzzfeed and helping in posts played off hundreds and hundreds of people that because the traffic used to flow through Facebook and then Facebook decided they just just didn’t wanna do that anymore.
  • Speaker 2
    0:48:43

    So they flipped the switch and just killed the entire industry. And so crank wound up laying off like eighty percent of the staff in in closing the office in in twenty seventeen that I hung on for a couple years after that. I guess That’s a whole other conversation because I don’t know that the average person realizes the degree to which the information that reaches them and the articles that reach
  • Speaker 3
    0:49:08

    and are
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:09

    governed by these algorithms. Everybody who works in the industry knows because you have to know, because you are totally at the mercy. Of this that in between you and your audience is gonna be some sort of a platform. And that you’re trying to whether you’re trying to use Twitter to reach your audience or use Substack or use YouTube or use any TikTok, any of them. I’m using all of them.
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:34

    You it’s never a case of, well, I’m gonna build up my fan base. I’m putting out good content. It’s not just that. You are trying to work an algorithm that is tuned to to feed the interest of that plant form, not the audience, not the creators, just that platform. And there’s a unique kind of mental torture that comes from that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:59

    Because you could put your heart and soul into something and put it out there and see and this happened to crank all the time. You can work really really hard, put tons of money and tons of effort into editing or writing a piece,
  • Speaker 1
    0:50:15

    and
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:15

    put it out there and just dies. It just dies. It it’s read by, you know, a a few thousand people on a site that, you know, once upon a time, you know, it would crack, we had at our high twenty five million unique
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:27

    readers, watchers, listeners, whatever
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:28

    or that’s how bigger audience was. They would just die. And then the next day or or like three days later, you would try posting it again take off like
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:38

    a rocket.
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:38

    The exact piece of content, the exact same thumbnail, title, authors, subject matter, time of day, because the Facebook algorithm decided to push it out to its users and the few days before it it it just chose not to. It’s a random number generator and it’s randomized so that no company or individual can manipulate it. So they, one, they don’t release how it works and two, it’s it’s got an element of randomness because otherwise you would you would build a piece of software that learns how to game it.
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:11

    So that’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:51:12

    why you see people like trying to use hashtags, things like that. You see it everywhere, Instagram everywhere. But we are in an information ecosystem now where there are people you were fans of years ago who you think quit the industry, and they didn’t. They’re still making stuff.
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:33

    The platforms
  • Speaker 2
    0:51:35

    just aren’t showing it to you because you’re following that person on Twitter or on Facebook or whatever. But be like on Twitter now, it wants to default you to the home tab which is where we, Twitter, choose what tweets you see. Yeah. And
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:50

    their
  • Speaker 2
    0:51:50

    home and their algorithm decided that this person is whatever problematic or they just don’t like their their content or they don’t get enough engagement or they don’t post enough photos or For
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:02

    example,
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:02

    Instagram recently decided they wanted to pivot to video. So all of these creators that were doing big business on Instagram posting photos suddenly they’re fine. Found their audience went away. And the reason
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:12

    I bring this up and
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:13

    the reason is relevant, because I’m not asking anybody feel sorry for people who work in, you know, modern Internet content because we’re not an admirable bunch. It’s it’s fine. But you have to understand. The kids today, the teenagers, all the teenage girls on TikTok, they
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:33

    are subject
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:33

    to the same algorithms.
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:36

    Only
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:36

    their social capital is tied to it, like their reputations, their popularity as human
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:44

    beings. So
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:44

    you have right now some thirteen year old who uploaded a video of herself dancing to a song, to TikTok, and she’s used to getting, like, two hundred and fifty views and this one only got twenty five. And she is having an anxiety breakdown saying, why did everybody hate me? Why did everybody hate me? Did I make everybody mad? It’s like, no.
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:06

    I know because I’ve been in this business for twenty plus years that you just were the victim of an algorithm that cited, they didn’t wanna push that song that day. It’s not a song of the viral anymore. So we’re gonna suppress your video. So what well, no one has to feel sorry for me, for like all my friends losing their job because an algorithm changed. You have to understand the mental health of
  • Speaker 3
    0:53:30

    our children
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:31

    Hang on these same inscrutable algorithms. So I I had
  • Speaker 3
    0:53:35

    to join TikTok
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:35

    two months ago. He has as an as an author. He turns out, you have to be on TikTok. That’s where that’s where the book reviewers are, for whatever reason, it has migrated to TikTok. And that’s fine and me being somebody who’s, you know, in my mid to late forties.
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:50

    Yes, it is evident I’m trying
  • Speaker 3
    0:53:52

    to learn
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:53

    how to use TikTok. I’m it it it’s a shameful thing for a man to admit. That I’m coming at it from a as a fully formed adult, and it drives me crazy. And I’m someone coming in who’s been through many, many cycles of Internet stuff. You know, I’m a professional on getting
  • Speaker 3
    0:54:13

    paid. The idea that
  • Speaker 2
    0:54:14

    you have all these kids out there who have no context for this,
  • Speaker 3
    0:54:18

    and they
  • Speaker 2
    0:54:19

    they’re like driving their self worth from these imaginary Internet points of these points are being build out by a corporation that’s purely just this cold engagement addiction machine. It’s kind of scary to me. That but that’s subject. I I’m not trying to fear monger about it, but it’s something I could talk about at length if we had a whole other app. Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:54:40

    Well, I I would I would
  • Speaker 1
    0:54:40

    be happy to have that conversation. And it and it is a running undercurrent through the the John Dyes at the end book. I mean, there’s there’s a lot of interactions, intermediation with the world through social media. That’s how I mean, I I whatever. You you read the books for yourself and you you’ll see it you’ll you’ll see it pop up.
  • Speaker 1
    0:54:59

    And there’s one repeated idea in the first and second books about the the the idea of video games as being introduced by this, you know, kind of malevolent interdimensional force as a way to, you know, kind of desensitize people and and train them to be evil to each other, which I find again, interesting. It could be a whole another hour worth of discussion. But we are running out of time. I’m sure you have more shows to do more more books to sell, so I I won’t keep you here any longer. Thank you so much for doing the show, Jason.
  • Speaker 1
    0:55:32

    I really appreciate it. And again, name of the book is, if this book exists, you’re in the wrong universe, go check it
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:39

    out. It has a big Ygrene, neon green cover very easy to spot if they have it in a prominent place in your book store. If they don’t have an interprominent place, it’s stop shopping there. But that’s the
  • Speaker 3
    0:55:49

    it’s shameful. They
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:49

    don’t deserve your business. They should they should have a face face out on a shelf near the door. They probably
  • Speaker 3
    0:55:56

    won’t —
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:57

    Absolutely. — but find find the bookstore that does and then reward them with their business.
  • Speaker 3
    0:56:02

    Yes. That is a
  • Speaker 1
    0:56:03

    that’s a good idea. My name is Sunny Bunch. I am the culture editor at the Bulwark, and I will be back next week with another episode of The Bulwarkos Holly. We’ll see
  • Speaker 3
    0:56:12

    you guys. Get an inside look at Hollywood with Michael Rosenbaum. Let’s get inside Deborah Ann
  • Speaker 2
    0:56:23

    Wall. If you had to choose between True Blood daredevil to do again. Partially because
  • Speaker 4
    0:56:29

    the Marvel series feel unfinished to me because we got canceled when we thought we were gonna have more. Whereas true blood, we did get to wrap it up. I knew that we were wrapping it up. I could say goodbye to everyone. I stole something from a set I know I didn’t gonna steal anything from our daredevil set.
  • Speaker 4
    0:56:44

    Inside of
  • Speaker 3
    0:56:45

    you with Michael Rosenbaum, wherever you
  • Speaker 1
    0:56:48

    listen.