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[00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by HIMS. Stay tuned for more information.

[00:00:08] Jeff: Hello everybody, welcome to what might be, and I’m not going to explain, might be a kind of a weird episode of Overtired, but doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Why are you asking so many questions? Um, this is Jeff, uh, Severance Gunsel, one of your three hosts. Uh, I’m here with Christina Warren. Hi, Christina.

[00:00:25] Christina: Hello, hello.

[00:00:26] Jeff: And Brett, what are you eating in the microphone?

[00:00:28] Brett: I have a popsicle.

[00:00:31] Christina: They’re homemade, huh?

[00:00:32] Brett: Yeah.

[00:00:32] Jeff: they homemade? What’s the, what’s the, what’s the flavor?

[00:00:35] Brett: This is like lemon echinacea.

[00:00:39] Jeff: Nice.

[00:00:40] Brett: weird organic juices, that’s what I get, and I make them into popsicles, and I eat them when I’m drunk.

[00:00:47] Jeff: Oh, that’s all right. That’s got nothing to do with anything. Um, you know, I started that with what’s the flavor, which reminded me, have you ever had a long term situation where you would clearly, um, have the phone number that’s [00:01:00] being given out by a drug dealer? Um, which has happened to me. Uh, and for a glorious two years, I would get these calls and they’d be something like, here’s three of my favorites.

[00:01:10] Jeff: Okay. One was, I answer the phone. Hey, what’s the flavor? That’s it, right? The next one is, uh, Hey, you still at Taco Bell? Right? It’s looking beautiful. And then my favorite was Christmas Eve. And it was just a text that said, I see you over there, Negro.

[00:01:26] Brett: I cannot relate to this at all. What,

[00:01:29] Jeff: And I wrote back and I was like, I just, I can’t really, it’s hard for me to explain, but I know You have the wrong person.

[00:01:36] Brett: how did you end up with these numbers?

[00:01:38] Jeff: don’t know if it was a number that was just too close to a, uh, what is clearly a drug dealer’s number, because it wasn’t just that. There was a lot more of like, what’s the flavor?

[00:01:45] Jeff: Like, like a lot more checking in on Fridays, like.

[00:01:48] Christina: Somebody gave the wrong number

[00:01:49] Jeff: Somebody gave their own number out, it got passed around, you know, call this guy and ask what’s the flavor, you know, and I loved it, loved it, and, uh, and I missed those calls, I wish I could figure [00:02:00] out, I blocked everybody because you’d keep getting calls, my block list is just epic, in fact, I could probably give my block list to the Minneapolis Police Department and, uh, get some sort of reward, but I wouldn’t do that.

[00:02:10] Brett: What, what drug is it they would ask what, what’s the flavor?

[00:02:15] Jeff: I don’t know, maybe it was just like, what’s going on tonight? It’s also possible this was just a guy that, like, maybe this was a guy who made promises. And he knew he couldn’t keep them, and so he gave out the number. But it wasn’t just men, or just women, right? Like, it was a, it was an interesting mix. And it was mostly calls, and not texts, which is, I think, data.

[00:02:33] Jeff: But I don’t really know what to make of it. I just miss them. I miss my community.

[00:02:37] Brett: I have had, I’ve had a lot of drug dealers phone numbers in my life, and my

[00:02:44] Jeff: still in your phone?

[00:02:45] Brett: No. My texts to them have been mostly about, like, where you at? Uh, you coming?

[00:02:53] Jeff: You still a Taco Bell?

[00:02:54] Brett: I can’t imagine what the, what the answer to what flavor[00:03:00]

[00:03:00] Jeff: What’s the flavor? No, I mean, that’s just a thing to say, too, though. Like, what’s the

[00:03:02] Brett: is

[00:03:03] Jeff: Yeah, but like, I was, yeah, I don’t know. I was always very polite. I didn’t put anybody on, because I don’t know who’s listening. Um, you know, like, that’s all. So anyway, welcome, everybody. Here we are. Um, and, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna start with Graftitude again, aren’t we?

[00:03:22] Brett: Are we?

[00:03:23] Jeff: I thought we said that when we were coming in. I’m gonna ask Christina. Christina, we’re

[00:03:26] grAPPtitude at the top!

[00:03:26] Jeff: starting with Gratitude again.

[00:03:28] Christina: Yeah, let’s start with Graftitude, let’s do it.

[00:03:31] Brett: I have

[00:03:31] Jeff: take, and then we’ll take calls. Let’s just get right into it. I mean, I got the lights are all blinking on my phone and callers are ready.

[00:03:38] Brett: I have a very important graft.

[00:03:41] Jeff: Okay, let’s, let’s do it, man. You’re a very important man.

[00:03:44] Brett: admittedly, I’m a little drunk. If you couldn’t tell from the way I said the word admittedly, um,

[00:03:52] Jeff: Or from the point at which he told you he only eats popsicles when he’s drunk or likes to eat them when

[00:03:56] Brett: Like, there have been plenty of clues. If you’re not following along [00:04:00] at this point, I can’t help you.

[00:04:02] Jeff: I’m just going to go ahead and put this in the topic list. Just gonna,

[00:04:08] Brett: So,

[00:04:09] Jeff: it’s like when you, when you add a to do that you’ve already done, I’m just going to add this to Brett’s Brett’s drunk. That’ll be number one.

[00:04:15] Brett: this is, this is kind of a post mortem graftitude. Um, I have loved, if you ask me for the last five years, what’s your favorite? Mind mapping application. I would have told you iThoughts. Both for,

[00:04:33] Jeff: you that before you even said it.

[00:04:35] Brett: both for Mac and iOS. I have been a huge fan of iThoughts. And Craig from iThoughts has just declared he’s done.

[00:04:46] Jeff: That’s very sad.

[00:04:47] Brett: Yeah. So my gratitude is, uh, historical. Like, I have loved iThoughts so much and He’s going to maintain it for [00:05:00] as long as it works without any upkeep, which on macOS probably means two, maybe three OS

[00:05:09] Jeff: Yeah, I was going to say, what does that? Yeah.

[00:05:11] Brett: On iOS, nobody knows how long that’ll last. It could be the next, the next iOS version could kill the iOS version of iThoughts.

[00:05:23] Brett: Um, but iThoughtsX is. My favorite mind mapping application. And I will be, I will be bitterly disappointed to have to switch to another. I mean, MindNode is a great app. I love the guys from MindNode. I’ve met them. I have talked to them. They’re great people. iThoughts has always had my heart. Um, so this is actually in memoriam. A, a gratitude in memoriam because [00:06:00] I, thoughts has declared the end of to head aware and the i thoughts application.

[00:06:07] Jeff: I’m going through the Twitter feed, which is very old at this point for reasons that aren’t going to be hard for us to understand. But there’s an amazing update note from December 8th, 2021, where iThoughts has added latex support. And. It’s funny because I’ve never seen LaTeX look ugly. It definitely looks ugly in a PurpleMind map.

[00:06:30] Brett: Yeah. I can’t imagine check looking good in any kinda visual application. Sure.

[00:06:37] Christina: No, but like, but also This is why we’ll miss the app, because like, who else is going to, you know that, you know that like five people were incredibly vocal about LaTeX support, like five, like maybe three, like, but that’s, that’s it. We’re incredibly vocal and, and he like took the time to be like, okay, you know what, even though this is not going to be attractive and will not apply to [00:07:00] 99.

[00:07:00] Christina: 999997 percent of users, I’m still going to do the work and do it.

[00:07:05] Brett: he was, he was a nerd’s nerd, developer.

[00:07:08] Jeff: Is. I mean, he’s not dead. He is a NerdsNerd

[00:07:11] Brett: not. And I checked in with him. I’m like, Hey, man, you okay? And he’s like, Yeah, I just, I’m just done with the app thing. And He’s, he’s okay, but my favorite app is not. And so I feel a sense of loss. I swear, Craig is okay. Everything’s fine.

[00:07:33] Brett: We’re just losing an app over the next few years. It’ll continue working. I guarantee it’ll continue working for a few years, but, but it’s dead

[00:07:45] Jeff: this is sweet. So I’m, I’m putting this stuff in the show notes, but I’m at, I’m on the site now looking at like sort of the posts over the years. And there’s a June 2008 post that just says, started playing with iPhone development as a hobby. And that is such a beautiful, [00:08:00] uh, thing to look back on, given the history of this app, which is a

[00:08:03] Christina: It really is.

[00:08:04] Brett: even the, yeah, so I love it on Mac OS, but even on iOS, it was such a great, it was a nerds, nerds app. Like you, you had to appreciate, like you could create a mind map and output it to a word document, like natively in the app. And like, that’s just, it’s for nerds. It’s a, it’s an app for nerds and I’m going to miss it.

[00:08:34] The future of “nerd” apps

[00:08:34] Jeff: That’s amazing. Can I ask you a question as a developer? Is there, is there anything about your understanding of, of him having to shut this down that says anything at all? And for Christina, for you too, this is anything at all about the current landscape for

[00:08:48] Christina: I was gonna, I was gonna say, I, I, like, I was gonna ask the same question, or like, have some of the same thoughts. Like, what does this say about how viable this making a nerds, nerd, nerds app is?[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:09:01] Brett: That’s a really good question. So I make an app called Marked

[00:09:06] Christina: Mm hmm.

[00:09:06] Brett: and Marked has gone from, in the time that Gruber would talk about it, it has gone from 3, 000 a month to 500 a month. Okay. Nine, nine. 900

[00:09:25] Jeff: This, if we were in the same room, I feel like this is a good time for me to just take your wallet, actually, now that we’re talking about money.

[00:09:32] Brett: But, but my sales have gone down significantly and I can’t speak to the general, I don’t know what apps like Better Touch Tool and, uh, Hazel and you know, like these real nerd apps are doing. I don’t really know how they’re doing these days. Um, I know how my own nerdy apps are [00:10:00] doing. Um, I know that even Bunch, which I give away for free, has been down lately.

[00:10:07] Brett: So, I don’t, I honestly don’t know what the future of nerd apps is.

[00:10:16] Christina: hate saying this because people are going to get mad at me or whatever, but I think that it’s subscription, right? It’s subscription and it’s Sass, because that’s the only way you can make it work, and it isn’t like developers want to turn everything into a subscription, it’s that that’s the only way they can do it.

[00:10:32] Christina: Make something sustainable, like, because otherwise it’s, I think that, you know, the number of people who are willing to install a new app is difficult. I think the barrier to entry is harder than it has ever been before. Um, and you have so many other people who you’re competing with free on the surface, right?

[00:10:54] Christina: So like, it’s not actually free, but it’ll be free and, and then it’ll have, you know, some sort of hidden [00:11:00] payment thing. But yeah, I am. I worry the same way you

[00:11:06] Brett: Define hidden payment thing.

[00:11:08] Christina: Well, what I mean is, is like, you’ll download it, and it’ll be free, and then it’ll be like, oh, if you want to continue using this, you’ve got to pay X dollars a week or X dollars a

[00:11:16] Brett: just to be clear in the Apple ecosystem, that is the only way you can offer a

[00:11:24] Christina: I know.

[00:11:25] Brett: if you want people to be able to try your product for free,

[00:11:28] Christina: I know.

[00:11:29] Brett: you have to offer that in that purchase after a week and say, now you have to continue paying like there’s like back in the days of like shareware, you know, like we could offer.

[00:11:41] Christina: you don’t sell on the Mac App Store, right? Like, it, like,

[00:11:44] Brett: We can offer seven 14 day trials and you can choose to pay.

[00:11:49] Christina: which to be clear, I don’t think anybody, for any reason, like, other than they want to just maybe be as expansive as possible, I don’t know anybody who’s like, Oh, I have to be in the Mac App Store.

[00:11:59] Christina: If I’m not [00:12:00] in the Mac App Store, I’m dead. Like, fuck that. Like, no actual

[00:12:03] Brett: For, for a couple of years, that was true

[00:12:06] Christina: I know it’s not anymore though, but it’s 2024. It’s not 20 It’s not It’s not

[00:12:09] Brett: it is not true anymore. Exactly, exactly. And for a couple of years, it was true. If you weren’t in the Mac app store, you were, you were trying water. Now most income, like set up gives me more income than the Mac app store

[00:12:27] Christina: Oh, yeah.

[00:12:28] Brett: And,

[00:12:29] Christina: they have better discovery and they have an actual captive audience of people who actually want to use apps, whereas like the

[00:12:35] Brett: and a more, and a more curated selection

[00:12:38] Christina: well, well, that’s, that’s kind of my point. Like the discovery is better, right? Because if you open, like I’m opening up the Mac App Store right now and I’m looking at it and here’s when I click on discover, here’s what I see.

[00:12:48] Christina: I see games that we love and I’m seeing, um,

[00:12:52] Brett: Bullshit games that charge you for upgrades.

[00:12:56] Christina: And I’m seeing like, you know, I’m seeing like, uh, like you’re a cat, you know, in Cyber City [00:13:00] and Stray. And I’m like, oh yeah, because that’s really going to make up for being cyber, the fact that cyberpunk can’t be played. Like, fuck that.

[00:13:05] Christina: And then I’m like, oh, what’s to watch? I can watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Amazon Prime. Okay. Like, I really like, um, um, What’s His Face, um, Childish Gambino, but like, I don’t care. And then I finally see, Oh, get started with Mac Essentials. And I, I click on that. And the first three things, the first, here, here are the five, here are the five things that I’ve got listed for essential business apps, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, PDF Expert, and Highlights, PDF Reader, and Notes.

[00:13:33] Christina: Like what the

[00:13:34] Jeff: more.

[00:13:35] Christina: And then it gets even worse when you go to must play Mac games, which this is just sad. Lies of Pea, Stray, Grid Legends, okay, Return to Monkey Island, like what year is this? Honestly. Evil Village for Mac, Resident Evil 4, these are Both old, you know, um, Disney Dreamlight Valley, like, what the fuck?

[00:13:55] Christina: SnowRunner, which is a simulation game, like, these are, you know, like, not [00:14:00] good. Um, and then for, for photos, I’ve got Lightroom, Pixelmator Pro, Affinity Photo 2, Acorn 7, Photomator. So, like, photo, you’re finally good. Then, like, you’re finally, like, scrambling down, you’re like, okay, well, then you’ve got, for managing time and tasks, you’ve got Things 3, and Fantastical, and Agenda, and

[00:14:17] Brett: Okay.

[00:14:17] Jeff: I, you know, what was awesome is I was looking at the app store and I would never know about Office.

[00:14:22] Christina: Right? That’s what I’m saying. Like, all of this stuff. This is just ridiculous.

[00:14:26] Brett: Pixelmator showed up on the list with Adobe apps at all.

[00:14:33] Jeff: Yes, but here’s the thing.

[00:14:34] Christina: me too, but it shouldn’t be that far down. Like, I shouldn’t have to scroll down through, like, 15 things.

[00:14:38] Jeff: The thing about Office, and also their thing of adding like, um, narrative stories where they talk about apps and whatever, that didn’t help, like some of them were good, but it didn’t help, right? It didn’t help this problem. They were well done, they were whatever, but you still feel like you’re, it feels like you found like a really cool shell on a really big beach, like it doesn’t feel like

[00:14:57] Brett: so my app, Mark, got featured a [00:15:00] couple of times in these app stories and, and app, like, top picks for the, like, staff picks and, and it was a boost in sales. But I look at it now, a year, two, two years later, and yeah, their top picks are occasionally indie developers that I, I truly admire and respect.

[00:15:26] Brett: Increasingly rarely so.

[00:15:29] Word vs Pages

[00:15:29] Jeff: Uh, this, the, I, I don’t mean to keep going on the Microsoft Office thing, but I was once visiting a friend in Portland in like, in like 2003, and he’s like, he’s like, Hey, you want to go? We got a new Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood. I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s go. We walk, we walk a few blocks and it’s a P.

[00:15:43] Jeff: F. Chang’s.

[00:15:44] Christina: I was going to say, was it a P. F. Changs? I was like, hell yes.

[00:15:48] Jeff: And I love P. F.

[00:15:49] Christina: but I’m just, me too. And, and honestly, Microsoft Office, it’s, if you’re going to use an offline

[00:15:55] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:15:55] Christina: it’s the best one. Like

[00:15:57] Jeff: I use it.

[00:15:58] Christina: me too. Ain’t nobody [00:16:00] using pages. Ain’t nobody using, um, uh, you know, like numbers.

[00:16:03] Christina: Um, uh. Brett has his hand raised, but Brett, you don’t count. And honestly, you’re not using numbers if you’re doing real spreadsheets. Like, no one

[00:16:11] Brett: true.

[00:16:12] Christina: a real spreadsheet

[00:16:12] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

[00:16:14] Christina: It makes a really great, easy chart, but like, nobody who has actual data needs would ever even come close. Like, you would

[00:16:20] Brett: Well, if I have actual data needs, I’m working on the command line. I’m working with CSV and JSON data and actually processing it. If I, if I need to do, if I need to do a,

[00:16:32] Jeff: when he’s drunk.

[00:16:33] Brett: if I need to do a mail merge, fuck,

[00:16:36] Jeff: Mail

[00:16:37] Brett: fuck numbers, um, yeah, no, I understand what you’re saying. It’s,

[00:16:42] Christina: I’m just saying like, you know, but like, but still no one’s using pages for anything. Like even, even people who use pages, like honestly, like, like no one’s using that. Um,

[00:16:53] Jeff: once in a while I get a pages file

[00:16:55] Christina: me too. And I’m like, what the

[00:16:56] Jeff: the fuck? It’s like you just sent me the British Pound. What am I [00:17:00] supposed to do with

[00:17:00] Christina: And like, and I had the same reaction and I’m like, and I literally have, you know, pages installed on every single device I own, but I’m still like, what is this bullshit?

[00:17:09] Christina: Like,

[00:17:09] Jeff: someone’s gonna come at you with the British Pound and you gotta be ready.

[00:17:12] Brett: I would, exactly. I would never, I would never send anybody a pages file. Or, or numbers file, like I would always export to DocX or export to like just CSV or, or like a compatible format, because I am fully aware that the rest of the world does not use Apple products, even and,

[00:17:36] Jeff: an idea

[00:17:37] Brett: It’s so nice,

[00:17:38] Jeff: colleagues sadly, are not textile people. And by not textile people, I mean, not even really willing to take a minute to think about why I might always say, oh, I have it in a text file. Right. I just, I just, I’m ex, I’m eccentric, which I am. I’m

[00:17:53] Christina: For them, it’s Google Docs or nothing.

[00:17:56] Jeff: Yeah. And so I think now though, I think I troll, um, better [00:18:00] than just sending a text file and I could start sending pages, files. Especially to my, to my PC friends who I do not look down on. Um, but maybe that’s a good bit to do. Like, Oh, I’m really into this thing, pages. It’s an

[00:18:11] Christina: Oh, yeah. I mean, that would be hilarious because at that point, because the thing is it like, at least like, like OpenOffice or Libre Office or whatever the fuck it’s called. Um, I always forget that it’s Libre Office now because the OpenOffice thing, there

[00:18:24] Jeff: Right, right, right,

[00:18:25] Christina: Um, but, uh, but like, those formats suck, but like, you know, you can save it in a doc or docx, it’ll be, your formatting will be fucked.

[00:18:35] Christina: And you absolutely don’t want to open a spreadsheet at all. But you can get by with it, right? Like you just definitely don’t add any comments or, or, you know, expect, um, your very carefully Um, like if you’ve got a very specifically formatted thing, don’t expect that to survive, but whatever, you can open it, but a pages file, I don’t even think Apple allows a pages viewer to exist.

[00:18:54] Christina: I don’t even think like you can get one on Windows because, and that’s Apple’s fault to be very clear. Like that’s 100 [00:19:00] percent on them. I think that they, like, I don’t understand why that is a product that ever existed to be honest. Um, because like Apple works, Claris works, there was a Windows version, so, you know, I don’t know.

[00:19:12] Christina: Like. But anyway, but also to me, I’m kind of like, I get it. You didn’t have Office on the iPad, but you know, was, was, was Pages really worth it? Like, even like 20 years ago when they

[00:19:24] Jeff: You know, what would be amazing is if there was just an Incredible Pages app on Apple Vision Pro. Just, I don’t even know what incredible would mean in that context.

[00:19:35] Christina: Oh, I actually, what’s funny, I think the only native one is Keynote.

[00:19:39] Jeff: yeah, that makes sense. I

[00:19:41] Christina: I think all the other ones literally just run in iPad mode,

[00:19:44] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, I think that’s right. Yeah, that’s

[00:19:46] Christina: is funny.

[00:19:47] Jeff: Uh, can I ask you all, since we’re talking, since we’re talking about, um, Word documents and documents in general, I have this Problem I’ve been really trying to figure out how to rein in, which is that if I am getting, and I have [00:20:00] great relationships with all of my colleagues, okay, so I’m not, I, I, despite what I said earlier, I’m not actually trolling people on a regular basis, but I am tired of hearing about how I’m eccentric because I like text files and read CSVs sometimes in a text editor.

[00:20:12] Jeff: Fuck you, man. That’s just how you got to live. But anyway, it’s how the ancestors did it. But like, I cannot, if somebody sends me a document for review, There’s I literally cannot even take in the content until I have normalized the formatting and especially normalized whether there are periods or not at the end of bulleted list items.

[00:20:34] Style Guides make the world go round

[00:20:34] Jeff: Do you have this problem or are you able to just go ahead and read? I can’t read until I like smoothed out the sheets. I’m like, I’m not going to lay in a dirty bed.

[00:20:40] Christina: I mean, I think that I think that I can read without it, but I definitely do go through like that jarring thing, which is like, okay, what is our format here? Right? Like, are we Oxford comma people? Are we not like, are we period of end people? Are we not, are we capitalizing, you know, in headlines or not?

[00:20:54] Brett: in any given list, if there are periods at the end of [00:21:00] every list item, okay, if, if the first two list items end without periods, and then suddenly like a two sentence list item that has two periods in it, I have a problem. Like, consistency. That’s, that’s my goal.

[00:21:18] Jeff: Yeah. It reminds me, did you watch the, um, Netflix series Moe? Uh, it’s a Palestinian American dude. Uh, what’s his full name? Muhammad. I’ll get it, but he, it’s amazing. See, it’s very funny. It’s very poignant. It’s amazing. But there’s a scene where he walks into a grocery store and this woman tries to give him a sample of chocolate hummus.

[00:21:39] Jeff: And he goes, It’s fucking war crime. That’s like a little bit how I feel about what you just described.

[00:21:46] Christina: I agree with that. Um, that’s, and this is because we are, we are like newsroom people, Jeff. Like we, like we have to, I mean, like you too, to a little bit, to, to, to, um, you work with documentation and stuff, so you too, Brett, but like we all work, [00:22:00] like you have to have consistency. You have to have a style guide.

[00:22:02] Christina: There’s nothing worse than when you have the style guide and then you have people who refuse to adhere to the style guide and you’re like, what the fuck are we doing? And I don’t always agree with the style guide. Like Mashable didn’t believe in the Oxford comma, which I hated. And then we, we did a, we varied with our headline thing.

[00:22:19] Christina: I think we were capitalizing for the most part and then we switched to not. And what was hard, though, is I went to Gizmodo where we did have the Oxford comma, Praise Jesus, but then it was lowercase headlines. So,

[00:22:31] Jeff: yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:33] Christina: and so it was just like a weird muscle memory thing, like, what are you getting used to?

[00:22:37] Christina: Um, but the thing is, even though I don’t always agree with it, like, I’m like, okay, if we, you know, just be consistent, like, that’s the only thing. Like, I don’t have to agree with it, but I’ll follow it.

[00:22:47] Jeff: Totally. And also Style Guide’s like, I’m okay with the Style Guide being a living document. I’m even okay with people not using it if the way they don’t use it is totally consistent throughout the

[00:22:56] Brett: Yeah, totally. 100%. Yes.

[00:22:59] Jeff: I’m putting [00:23:00] something in the show notes, it’s Muhammad Amr, it’s Moe Amr, uh, it’s a clip of this hummus moment, it’s really incredible.

[00:23:06] Jeff: Anyway. Alright, thanks for, I mean I would love to talk about style guides and making one right now with a copy editor, fuckin love it. I have Brett’s Markdown style guide from his, uh, Oracle thing, which I bet nobody listens to, nobody uses, cause what the fuck is a style guide, I’m in a hurry!

[00:23:21] Brett: It’s true.

[00:23:21] Christina: I mean, people who do documentation definitely do.

[00:23:24] Jeff: Yes! But here’s the thing, right? Like, for me, so we do a lot of work where it’s like we send something to a client. We might send an outline to a client, right? An outline is easier to make a fuck of than a document. And, and it is, I just feel, I feel like such an old man, because I am 10 years older than anybody else in my organization.

[00:23:43] Jeff: But I’m like Is it a value or not to us that an outline that goes to a client or an email or anything is like, I remember like, was it Jay Rosen who’s, I don’t quote Jay Rosen often, but I remember when he was like, he was everywhere, like in the 2007s, eights, he [00:24:00] had a great line, which I used in the newsroom all the time, which is like, everything’s an editorial product, everything, your

[00:24:05] Christina: Oh yeah, that was

[00:24:05] Jeff: texts, your, your, your, you know, private texts, your tweets, everything.

[00:24:09] Jeff: Right. And I don’t, these kids today. Yeah. Nope, they haven’t heard of J Rosen, which is great. I mean,

[00:24:14] Christina: No, it is, well, I mean, except for him, right, like, I think that, that Jay Rosen probably wishes that, that he were still, like, the, like, he and Jeff Jarvis were, like, the go to, oh, and Ken Docter, right? It was, like, it was, like, Ken Docter, Jay Rosen, and, and Jeff Jarvis were, like, the future of media people that you would talk to.

[00:24:30] Christina: And,

[00:24:30] Jeff: future of media people that you would talk to.

[00:24:33] Christina: Yeah. Um, it was like, you know, the guy from NYU guy from, you know, SUNY and then Ken, doctor

[00:24:38] Jeff: And then throw in Clay Shirky if you’re feeling edgy.

[00:24:41] Christina: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, throw in, uh, clay Shike if you want to, and then maybe even like, mention like, um, um, the, the, uh, information wants to be like

[00:24:52] Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Neil Postman. Not

[00:24:54] Christina: Neil Postman,

[00:24:54] Jeff: Yeah, Neil Postman. Oh, these are the greatest hits. Christina, I love when this happens when we free [00:25:00] associate on the like mid to late 2000s journalism scene.

[00:25:04] Christina: I know, I know. It’s like,

[00:25:05] Jeff: It’s like sports fans. It’s like, do you remember the 2003 Cardinals?

[00:25:09] Christina: What’s so funny is, is um, you know, the Messenger shut down. And, um, which, a friend of mine worked there, and I was very sad for him. Um, but I’m gonna be completely honest. Like, I’m not, I’m not gonna in any way judge anyone who took their first staff job, or like, took a job there, or whatnot.

[00:25:27] Christina: For the most part, for going to work there. I am going to judge people who like, left. Relatively stable places to go work there, because is what was so funny to me, the, the ideas and, um, um, speaking of, um, like, um, journalism type of, you know, talking head types, uh, Joshua Benton, who, who created the, the Nieman Lab at Harvard, um, he, um, um, um,

[00:25:52] Jeff: no, I’m thinking I’m actually thinking of the Civic Media Lab at MIT. Sorry,

[00:25:55] Christina: Okay, yeah, but no, but he created, he created the Neiman Lab at Harvard, um, [00:26:00] he like had been on a tear for like the last year about how dumb and backwards the messenger was, which we were all saying, we were like, this idea is like straight out of 2011, like this is backwards, but what it reminded me of was in 2010, Michael Wolff was hired to remake Ad Age.

[00:26:19] Christina: Like the, the Prometheus and Apollo Global, I don’t know if Apollo was actually involved, but Prometheus, uh, like some private equity fucks, like bought out the, the media group that owned the, the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and Ad Age. And, um, or Adweek, sorry, not Adage, Adweek. And, um, they hired Janice Minn to do, um, The Hollywood Reporter, and she actually did a really good job.

[00:26:41] Christina: Like it, it didn’t save it per se, but they definitely were able to resell that for a much higher multiple than they could have. And she made it into a very good magazine because she’s fucking awesome. And they hired Michael Wolff to take on Adweek. And. A friend of mine who I worked with, she had some feelers out to go get a job there.

[00:26:57] Christina: And then she mentioned me. She was like, Oh, we should definitely hire [00:27:00] my friend. And so, um, the girl who was going to run it, I guess, kind of under him, like his managing person, like she talked to me and she was like selling me on it. And then I get on a call with Michael Wolf and it’s basically a job offer.

[00:27:11] Christina: And I’m struck by a couple of things. First, Michael Wolf clearly has no idea who I am. No idea why he’s even talking to me. He’s just. Trying to hire away people, and I worked at a prominent publication at the time. And, and so, but he has no fucking clue who I am or why he’s talking to me. And the second thing was, is he was just telling me how, like, Oh, well, Mashable’s gonna be dead.

[00:27:31] Christina: TechCrunch is gonna be dead. All these things are gonna be dead. We’re gonna throw so much at this. Like, you, you, you can just forget about it. You definitely want to come here because we’re, we’re going to basically annihilate you. And I’m, I’m like 25. And I’m like, okay, I don’t think you know what you’re doing, because this is insane and this isn’t how media works right now, and this is a ridiculous idea, this is like late 2010.

[00:27:56] Christina: And so I, um, so I guess I was 24, or 26, [00:28:00] and so I, um, I basically was like, I, I, I opted not to continue with the process. I was like, this is weird. Also it was weird to me that they wanted to offer me a job without even like seeing my writing samples, like they were just like, really? The whole thing just felt weird.

[00:28:14] Christina: off. And so I was like, I’m not doing this. And, and Lauren also opted to not do it. And we were very grateful because less than a year later, Michael Wolff was, um, kicked out and the whole thing was a disaster. Well, I went to look back on that and I was like, man, why does the messenger remind me so much of this? I went back to look and the guy who led the investment and who hired Michael Wolff to, to do, um, Adweek was Jimmy Finkelstein,

[00:28:39] Jeff: Oh,

[00:28:39] Christina: the guy who then did the messenger. So,

[00:28:42] Jeff: don’t talk to me. Talk to Jimmy Finkelstein,

[00:28:45] Christina: so like

[00:28:46] Jeff: Jimmy Tentos. Sorry.

[00:28:48] Christina: No, no, but, but like the funny thing is, is I was like, okay, this, this concept, which I should have given some precursor, there was this attempt at making a, like, mass general news site called The Messenger, they blew [00:29:00] through 50 million dollars in under a year, they hired like 200 and something journalists, they had originally said they were going to hire 550, they didn’t hire that many, they They, um, basically, they hired Neitz and Zimmerman, which again, talking about like, like 2010s, like throwbacks, like wait, wait, wait to pretend it’s still 20, 2012, you guys, um, to be like their, their viral person, even though social traffic doesn’t exist anymore.

[00:29:23] Christina: Um, and, um, the whole thing was just like, A throwback to an earlier era, and of course it collapsed and failed, and they ran out of money on January 31st, fired people without any severance, except for people in California who they had to pay vacation time to. And um, the whole thing is just a disaster and embarrassing.

[00:29:40] Christina: But, the thing is that struck me as I was like, Okay. Everybody was like, including myself, was like, oh, this is such a 2010s idea, early 2010s idea. And it, but it also reminded me, and then I found out why, because it was the same people, of, of the, the, you know, ad week, um, attempt. Except even in 2010, [00:30:00] like, my, like, very young, very green ass was like, Oh, this is a bad idea even now.

[00:30:06] Christina: Like, so it’s a throwback to a bad idea from back then. Like, at least the daily, I know why, I know why people took that job and like, it failed, but at least it had paying users. And like, we all thought the iPad was going to be a thing. Like, I understand why people took a job at the

[00:30:22] Jeff: Yep,

[00:30:23] Christina: I’m going to be honest.

[00:30:24] Christina: I don’t understand why anybody took a job at the messenger

[00:30:27] Jeff: it’s pretty crazy. It’s pretty crazy. And it does, it feels so old. Like, I remember when, um, when Al Jazeera America started, like, I, I, um, well, first of all, like, this goes back to, harkens back to a really amazing time, which is that there was this guy, Mark Coatney, who was, who, who originally was working at Newsweek and started a Tumblr.

[00:30:46] Jeff: It was like one of the first Tumblers that are like a news organization. It was around the same time that I started the Utney Reader Tumblr, right? Like when I was working there. And he and I got to know each other online because as he said, it’s like you’re two bomber pilots like flying over the land and you just kind of look and [00:31:00] nod at each other because the only, I think the only other Tumblr for a media organization at that point was like Good Morning America.

[00:31:05] Jeff: Um, and, and so

[00:31:07] Christina: Mashable, but yeah, but

[00:31:08] Jeff: You’re Mashable. Yes, I’m sorry, Mashable. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, well, Utni wasn’t mainstream. But yeah, I, for some reason, I kind of like, Mashable felt like Mashable on Tumblr, right? It wasn’t like, oh, look, Mashable’s on Tumblr.

[00:31:19]