The Fall of the Metaverse and the Rise of the Run-fluencer

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3:37Alice Fraser: Ladies and gentle pods, octo-things and monsters of the deep, make sure you're seated comfortably in a bubble of whatever you breathe. Put your bits together and welcome to The Gargle Me. Your host, Alice Fraser, the host of The Gargle, and our sister pod lover, Realms Unknown, where we talk about science fiction and fantasy, and it's lots of fun for nerds. Open brackets, interrogatively closed brackets. Unlike here, where we talk about science and technology, the realm of cool nerds. Nerds, open brackets, complimentary, close brackets. Our guest host for today, she's on the cutting edge of edgy cuts.

4:09Alice Fraser: It's writer, actor, comedian, and all-round glamour, glamour, zama, ding-dong, Tiff Stevenson. Hello. Thank you for referencing me by my full name, glamour, zama, ding-dong. I don't feel very glamorous. I'm on my fifth cup of coffee, but I'm making it happen. I'm in a lobby which you can probably tell by the echo here But give this man its head It's the headiest headless horseman And captain of a boat on a doomed quest John Robertson Hooray Delightful I really enjoyed that in a primarily audio medium A reference to my massive forehead Still somehow managed to get in there Thank you That was not at all intended But I'm glad to have accidentally interrupted you Oh Alice, I have incredible only child syndrome I can happily take an insult when none is intended It gives me something to do with the rest of my day Well, we are going to plunge into this week's top stories Hold on to your perineums, or is it perineae?

5:12Alice Fraser: The metaverse is our lead story Apparently the metaverse has fallen at last much though it straddled the minds of anyone who used the internet over the last 700 years at last the colossus has collapsed into the sands of time john robertson can you tell us a bit more about this story well there isn't more to the story a a thing that no one was using wasn't used and now won't be able to be used again that's that's pretty much it it's it's the poem aussie mandias but nobody bothered to look at the statue also there were legs in ozymandias so the irony of that's quite strong um but yeah look a a man who had a hit ripping off some friends of his at uni had another idea which was we're going to bring vr to the masses which has never worked i have lived through that four times i think and now once again 700 billion dollars spent and it's over and And the nicest thing that they've done is one of the founders at Meta apparently received an email from maybe the single user of the Metaverse who said, look, I'm terribly upset that this is being shut down.

6:30So they said, all right, we're not going to shut it down immediately. That's about as good as it's gotten. So that's the story. If a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does Mark Zuckerberg still lose$700 billion? That's like losing a fiver down the back of the sofa. It is, it is. But then you look down and your legs aren't there either. I didn't know, Alice, you said we're going to lead with the metaverse. And I was like, I'm not because I had no idea what this was. I was like, I thought the metaverse was the one after the bridge before the chorus.

7:10Metaverse, I hardly know a verse. it's the verse that talks about the verse that talks about the verse it's like inception but for songs right yeah it's the thing that happens when you're listening to a leonard cohen song and you go oh this bit's about joanie mitchell as though that makes it inherently good yeah um so i so it's virtual reality platform because i mean i have a vr headset here that i think i I bought my stepson for his PlayStation and we got really into it for like a month over Christmas. And the main joy about anything virtual reality is watching someone else on it. It's not really even being in the virtual reality.

7:52So putting the helmet on my dad and sending him on illusion, watching him go, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking. Leave it all out like, oh, fucking. And my mum going, shut up, Ron, stop swearing. And he was like, well, you beat on it. I feel sick. and that's enjoyable for me but actually being in the virtual reality less so to me the tragedy is

8:12Alice Fraser: less that the metaverse fell than that they spent 80 billion dollars on a volley that was never going to work if you talk to one single person about what being a person is like they would have they could have told you in fact they did tell you but you decided that you knew better yeah yeah the the The idea as well, because it was just another attempt to reinvent the chat room. And this just goes on and on. You know, like there's this odd idea that tech bros always have, which is what would make the human condition better? The thing I've got shares in. That'll do it. Well, I mean, all the money's in platforms now, right?

8:52Alice Fraser: You no longer have a business. That's a business that's just millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars. But if you want tens of billions, hundreds of trillions of dollars, what you want is a platform where you can get businesses and customers to match make with one another and then you bring them together and then you tear them apart and make them pay to get closer together and then you tear them apart and make them pay more to get closer together and then you give people a platform where the only thing that the platform offers is the opportunity to buy stuff on your platform instead of the places that they normally buy stuff and it turns out it doesn't work because it also gives you a headache

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11:00Alice Fraser: And that brings us to your ad section Your ad section now Because you can't be what you can't buy And this section of the show is brought to you by the name Liz Is it short for Elizabeth Or could it be short for Lizard Give her a fright Find out if her tail falls off Liz And are you being attacked by a man in armor If so, the best defense is rust. Rust. All you need is half a glass of water and a time machine. And that brings us to our next story, which is people fighting the good fight in Odessa. Old people getting dressed up in fancy clothes as a way of expressing their defiance against the grim dreariness of ongoing war.

11:46Alice Fraser: if students and you're the most glamorous person in this uh zen cast of room can you tell us a bit more about this story sure i mean i'm definitely the fashion correspondent uh whenever i appear on any of the bugleverse podcasts let's just say it that way um but this is basically the ultimate in dopamine dressing and if you don't know what dopamine dressing is it's it's it's where sad women in their 30s and 40s, I include myself as one of those, you put on a rainbow because everything's a bit shit. So this is just like next level of that where people are actually dying. I think the only humane thing to do is wear a hat at a jaunty angle whilst missiles are flying over your head.

12:32And we should all just start wearing the best clothes that we have in our wardrobe every day as the apocalypse is coming. There's just no rules anymore. I think we should all dress up like all the clothes we wanted to wear as kids i'll start getting on the tube in my tutu until they release the unredacted files uh my spandex avocado onesie until they they sort out the straight of hummus you know we just need to think about like dressing like the end is coming

12:58Alice Fraser: yeah i mean look it can be positive it can be negative whichever way you put it you know i think if we if we believe that this is as good as it's ever going to be and it's all downhill from here what are you saving it for? Just go hard and go out looking sexy. Well, like, I quite liked it as an expression, you know, of hope and of humanity. But then I scrolled through the article and I had a look at what they were actually wearing, and I've been to Camden, you know? So there was a thing where I was like, if there weren't missiles flying into your house, you would be the most tiresome hipster f*** with.

13:36But what a wonderful idea. it but they can't be hipster when they are the ogs oh be hipster in your 70s and 80s which was the people that i saw in the article so anyone who is hipster is a young person trying to replicate that it's kind of like when we bring back the old-fashioned names you know like elsie and and doris and edith and stuff you know that's a slightly more hipster version isn't it oh i don't know i think i think you can absolutely be an og hipster because you you tell me that those people who have survived that other people around weren't just going, take that f***ing cravat off.

14:14Who is that for? The only virtue of that in a war zone is it already looks partially collapsed. You could use it as a tourniquet if you've got a cravat. That's true. Multiple uses for these kind of things, you know. And also slightly more classy, expensive fabrics are much more breathable. There we go. So you just, it's, it's, they're working in harmony. I think stick your lippy on. Yes. And face the day and go, yeah, I'm doing this. I'm wearing, I'm wearing the entire, you know, wear your bondage gear if you want, whatever it is that floats your boat. I have done that. And it does work as a degree of self-defense on the main streets of London.

14:55If you, if you're like, I've done this, it's a wonderful thing to do. But if you go downstairs, because I've, I've, where I've lived, we've had various assemblages of street gangs over the years. But if you go downstairs in the latex dress with big boots on and just maybe a stick and just greet them with a hello, boys, they part. They just part like Moses is here. It's wonderful. Yeah, yeah. Why meet it with aggression when you can inflict confusion? Exactly, exactly right. It worked for Psyduck in the Pokemon games and it'll work now.

15:36Alice Fraser: And that brings us to the news about looking as good as you possibly can. Peptides are everywhere. John Robertson, you have put some suspicious substances in your body before. Can you unpack this new craze for peptides? About as much as anyone can comprehend the thoughts of a man with a worm in his brain, I certainly can. And whilst I don't want to sound political in any way, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguably the deadest of the Kennedys, has sort of just come forward with, well, here's a bunch of stuff that under the Biden administration was declared deeply unsafe. And the way that we're going to get around that is just to declare it safe.

16:21um so yeah there's just been a recent spike of people who um were very very afraid of getting injections of uh covid vaccines getting very excited about putting research drugs into themselves in the name of weight loss um and muscle rebuilding and i was um the only part of this that charmed me in any way is i learned the word peptide as so many of us did from star Trek The Next Generation. In an episode in which Deanna Troy becomes a cake, she is a cellular peptide cake with mint frosting. But this somehow is even worse than eating a nightmare version of your counsellor during Worf's weird alternative universe birthday.

17:07This is just more odd stuff from people with a financial interest and some bizarre desire just to jam horse sedatives into

17:16Alice Fraser: themselves i mean look i didn't know what peptides were i sort of assumed it was when you uh when your energy levels go up and down and your vim and vigor for a day received from the peptide going out but uh i the peptide rally yeah basically all all science now is people on reddit forums telling each other what happened when they put something up them is what we call double blind testing in that people shut their eyes before they inject themselves twice. Yes, and they end up somehow blind in two parts of their body. Yes, I'm with you. Look, Alice, just in terms of time and tide, to be honest with you, right, do you remember about a decade ago when the thing that was being considered increasingly stupid was people were just eating tide pods?

18:07You know, you remember this? This is the equivalent, but then they have the gall to write a faux scientific treatise about it to their friends and try to sell it, you know? You did mention there JFK's brain worm, but I think we haven't fully investigated what kind of worm it is. What if it's a bookworm? It's actually really clever. More likely the tequila worm or maybe the glow worm. I don't know if you had glow worms, but it was like a toy that would tuck you into bed at night. I had a father.

18:45sorry but but bear that in mind it just we don't know you know and um i know that they're they're on this maha journey of make america healthy again and and we saw jfk jr and kids stay under your rock uh doing sorry i'm whence you crawled um but you know they did a video where they were in a sauna for unknown reasons or unspecified reasons wearing 501s in the sauna taking a cold plunge and everyone was like name this band and i think i went with not wet wet wet i'm dry dry dry that's what i feel like right now um so i mean it's well in the wellness arena the biohacking and look I have to say I do I do have an interest in in a side of the you know I take a collagen supplement and you know I'm sort of interested in NAD supplements and all this kind of stuff and I do think that there is some I mean it needs more money and research into it I think so much health care and that is here and I would say in America as well is based around the idea of treating stuff when it comes up as opposed to longevity or like general health.

20:04So it would be good, but it'd be great to not have absolute lunatics at the forefront of it, you know. But people are just buying it online. You can get something called Glow Stack, Wolverine Stack. So you've got peptide stacking, creatine loading, salt oil flushing, biohacking. I'm a nightmare. Thank you very much. yeah look all of this all of this is the latest face of um the weight loss pills that i used to take in my early 20s um because you know the the media does a terrible job on everyone's sense of self and the only thing that made those good is they were obviously speed and i loved them

20:46amphetamines they were amphetamines that's exactly what they were i don't it was on it And I'll tell you what, he would like really go around and hoover the flat. So I was like, I'll take it. The washing up's all been done. Yes!

21:01Alice Fraser: So we've taken this massive swing from people in power pretending to be more serious than they actually are and having all of these revealed depths of depravity and hypocrisy under the surface to these people who are performatively trolling, putting on jeans and getting in the sauna so that you can pay attention to that and assume that that is a presentation of their authentic self. They have to be presenting their authentic self. It is so deranged. It has to be their authentic self. But in reality, it is just another smokescreen in order to do whatever it is they're doing in the background, which is, you know, fiddling with the Bill of Rights and the children and the peptides and the whole bloody thing.

21:38Alice Fraser: It's all being driven by these online memes and Reddit forums and 4chan men who've only grown up very slightly putting their, you know, sweaty little fingers on the levers of power. And then, you know, on the other hand, at the same time, we all feel like we want to be a part of the cutting edge future of technology. And what if we're in medicine? And what if we're ahead of the game? Wouldn't that be fun if we were ahead of the game? That'd be nice. Yeah, it'd be lovely. I have a fun game that I play whenever I see a bunch of people starting to do their own kind of amateur, you know, like amateur surgeries and, you know, just injecting things that are labelled for research purposes only, which is you sit there and you go, give that 10 years.

22:25See you in a minute. Call me when your face has fallen off. That would be great if they just actually listed that as a side effect so you knew what you're in for. Maybe cause face falling off. Well, do you both remember when like the big chemical, like the big sort of chemical health scare was when it was illicit drugs coming out of Russia? Do you remember like illicit street drugs from Russia? Crocodile? Do you remember this? Oh, no, I've not heard of this. Yeah, the big thing about Crocodile was that it essentially had side effects very similar to flesh-eating virus, right? So it was just people going, this is Natalia.

23:06Her nose has fallen off due to Crocodile. And I'm like, my God, if they just let the American government get a hold of that, there'd be millions of people using it now going, this is good for me. I lost about 10 grams. It was all just up here in the nostrils, but nevertheless.

23:21Alice Fraser: I remember when I was four years old and my brother and I found a sun bleached can of Metamucil on the beach. We used it to make potions, which was a great thing if you stirred it into water and then put like rocks and leaves in. It would harden into a sort of a transparent jelly, which was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. But even at the age of four, my brother and I knew better than to eat it.

23:47Alice Fraser: and that brings us to our next story also about beauty this is the rise and fall of the run fluencer uh not not a diarrhea um influencer but a person who goes running in a performative way inspiring others on social media to feel like they also have gone for a run by watching them do all of the running things and as with so many invoices it's a pipeline to monetization of everything Tiff Stevenson uh you you've bought a pair of shoes before can you unpack this story for us I've bought I've I've actually just bought a new pair of running trainers however I was given a running machine I was gifted by Roger Black I think he might even be a Sir Roger Black I don't know uh the olympic medal winning athlete who i did house of games with and i'll tell you what this running machine is a very very good clothes hanger it just has a lot a lot of jackets and jumpers roped over it it's it's incredible for for clothing storage um i have used it a couple it's a really good running machine i like it it's just i don't have enough space here to to do it um but I you know I used to really really enjoy running but I didn't even know there was such a thing as a run fluencer until I I'm in the wrong corners of the internet clearly I don't know about the metaverse I don't know about run fluences but I do know that that's as long as there's been social media one of the points of social media is when you exercise you must share a photo of yourself exercising otherwise it's like the exercising didn't happen and it's actually almost more important to share a photo of yourself going to the gym or exercising than it is to actually do the exercising people will share their entire workouts I don't want to see by the way I don't want to see that I don't want to see you working out I'd literally rather watch you have a wank like it feels less I don't actually no I wouldn't I don't send me your videos if you're wanking I guess I'm saying it feels like it's one of those things you could keep to yourself i don't need to see a video of you working out i'll just i'll just trust well to be fair isn't every video that anyone posts themselves online a video of themselves wanking it's all quite yes it's onanism is is yeah oh yeah oh as a um as a sort of aging um christian schoolboy.

26:20It made me so happy to hear onanism again. Welcome back. Bring it back. We need to start, you know, they're talking about make America healthy again. Let's just bring some of the old phrases. Ah, the sound of one hand fapping, yes.

26:36Alice Fraser: Onanism is where you give a zinger to a noob.

26:43Yes, but it's when you spell onanism with a zero.

26:50Alice Fraser: Basically, what's happening is these run fluencers are getting these large followings by showing themselves in the process of running. But then by definition, you cannot run all of the time. And so they have to sort of start pretending that they're running more than they are running, falsifying results, downplaying injuries. Because eventually, if it becomes your job to be a run fluencer, then you have a cascading pipeline of various products that you're meant to be shilling from day to day. to people who then start to feel kind of overwhelmed and stressed out by the fact that they're not meeting your level of running, even though running is your job.

27:23Alice Fraser: So, you know, not wildly wholesome content, even though it started in quite a nice place. I'm just like, hey, I'm going for a run. We're the victims of our own everything. Well, actually on the video of the woman who's got the stress fracture, which she's described it how stress fracture gate happened and i was like i don't i don't think you can put the gate in there what you're showing me is just a video of how the stress fracture happened not not a conspiracy or a theory behind how you manufactured your own injury gee gordon liddy didn't fuck up a burglary just to hear this ruined oh god she's australian guys i think she's australian the runner in question oh that's of no great surprise we roll in appalling health influences then they make a netflix film about them good god

28:24looking for soccer analysis more knowing than a carlo ancelotti eyebrow raise with the world cup around the corner join me max rushton and the guardians expert soccer journalists on Football Weekly for all the latest soccer action and news throughout the week. We'll cover more ground than Drew Bellingham in a Champions League final with conversations sharper than an Arsenal set piece. For fine margins, fun debates and full-blooded tackles, Football Weekly. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and watch the full episodes on YouTube. Finally, car shopping made for you. Meet CarGurus Discover, a new search feature where you can look for vehicles based on the way you think, using your own words.

28:59No more being boxed in by filters. Whether you want great gas mileage for road trips or extra trunk space for the whole crew, simply type it in and CarGurus Discover will give you real shoppable listings that match. It's the smarter way to find the car that fits your life. With CarGurus Discover, you can skip the filters and describe what you're looking for in your own words. Simply type what you want and CarGurus Discover instantly surfaces real listings that match your exact needs. It's no wonder CarGurus is the number one most visited car shopping site. according to SimilarWeb's estimated traffic data.

29:32Buy or sell your next car today with CarGurus at CarGurus.com. Go to CarGurus.com to make sure your big deal is the best deal. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot com. CarGurus dot com.

29:51Alice Fraser: This is a PSA here. Save the environment. Recycle your jokes. and that brings us to our final story which is a sad one but we have to think here about the impacts that people have had on science and technology uh chuck norris uh has died last week at the age of 86 um so that feels uh simultaneously tragic complicated uh too soon and, like, he should have kicked death in the teeth with a high kick in some way. John Robertson, I know you've watched a lot of Chuck Norris, doing Chuck Norris. Can you tell us a bit more about the life of this man? Chuck Norris is a man who, when he was alive, I once saw referred to by the phrase, a poor man, Steven Seagal.

30:42um so the idea that in death i i've just read the guardians live coverage of him in which somebody talked about his gravitas in film and the way that he was a compelling actor and all of this seems incredibly obscene and a lie he was a a man who once participated in what could be described as only a Caucasian remake of the Karate Kid called Sidekicks, where he was the Mr. Miyagi figure, but was also just Chuck Norris. So it was just a boy in a karate competition. Oh, if only he could find an older man to team up with. Fortunately, international badass Chuck Norris is Chuck Norris in every universe.

31:26Both an indication of his impressive athletic regimen and limited acting range. because, you know, this was a guy who generally people seem to have enjoyed him as a person. He was a person that the internet picked up and made a meme out of back when that was a fun activity and not directly contributing to the downfall of democracy. And as with all, as with all actors, at one point or another, somebody says, oh, and this is that man's politics. And you go, really? Walker, Texas Ranger, has some f***ed ideas? I never would have considered this.

32:04Alice Fraser: It is an extraordinary proportion of men whose job is being action stars who think that they're tough, even though their job is to have makeup on and say things that other people have told them to say. Well, see also the miracle of Dean Cain, who was the least successful Superman, who is now a man far removed from the days when he had to work out and diet and was Superman. and he is now convinced that he is the king of law enforcement. It's like, no, no, Dean, you were an actor and you were barely that. Good Lord. Oh, yeah, he's ice now, isn't he? Oh, sure, sure, yeah. In exactly the same way that, you know, Steven Seagal became a lawman, you know, or tried to do it in real life.

32:47Very sad.

32:49Alice Fraser: Mark Wahlberg said 9-11 would have gone down differently if he'd been on one of the planes. Look, this stuff fascinates me. You know, like when it turns out that the only one who had their heads screwed on even remotely was Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, it is astonishing to me that the Terminator was the one. It was like, I could run a state. I was actually able to run a state. Jesse the Body Ventura was able to run Minnesota, the man most famous for the words, I ain't got time to bleed, you know. I kind of understand it as an actor, thinking, you know, like I've watched, I've actually watched so much Grey's Anatomy I've watched so many medical dramas I actually diagnosed a case of Encephalitis Oh Yeah, on one medical drama Because I'd seen it on another So I do actually think I could be a general surgeon I've watched enough It's interesting how they've described Chuck Norris as well Because it says In this obit of him It just sounds like they're describing a comedian For one, he was a rugged individualist A fighter on an off screen who symbolized the international cultural influences um and and you know that is many many commit yeah uh combined b-movie campiness um and ubiquity that defined a potent form of sweaty masculinity in the late 20th century i mean if that's not describing most american stand-ups Yeah.

34:19Also, I challenge this use of the word ubiquity because it was incredibly easy to avoid watching a Chuck Norris film. They weren't good. No one ever accidentally saw a Chuck Norris film. They were played at about 3am on the television if they're played at all. If they're available on demand, you don't see them because there's no demand for them. You know, God, just when we talk about Chuck Norris memes, they might have been the last incidents of actual jokes being written by the internet because that's what they were. They're all quite charming. Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups. He pushes the ground down.

34:58You know, people are working on their type five here.

35:03Alice Fraser: And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle, a slightly short episode because I am in Melbourne at the International Comedy Festival, I don't have time to bleed. John Robertson, can you tell me, have you got anything to plug? Certainly. My show, The Dark Room, the live action video game, is on permanent tour. It'll be in the UK, the US, and Australia this year. You can find all details at www.thejohnrobertson.com. Just click on live dates. Find me in an area that's near you. All my social media is on there. And Tiff Stevenson, where can people find you online? I will be on Instagram mainly, although I've got to say, posting stuff on there at the moment feels a bit like sort of throwing a penny down a well.

35:52But I'm sticking with it. I mean, you can find me. I'm on TikTok. I got a lot of followers and then stopped posting, which is not really what you're supposed to do. But you can find me on there, on Instagram and various other social media platforms. And I've got tour dates coming up. I'm doing the 10th and 11th of April at Poho Theatre with my show Post Coital I'll also be in Edinburgh on the 4th of April so if you're listening in Edinburgh Easter Sunday I'll be doing my show it's what Jesus would have wanted so you can see it there and I'll be in Belfast on May the 6th so try and come and see me at any of those dates

36:31Alice Fraser: Fantastic I will be in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival running my show A Passion for Passion and my new work in progress which is called Oh Man at 6pm and 9pm every night for the first two weeks and then I'll only be doing the 6pm show for the second two weeks of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival join me in my writers meetings over at patreon.com slash alicefraser at any level you could join my twice weekly writers meetings you're working on anything from poetry to a novel to academic writing it's just a really nice group of people and we get together when we write some stuff together and then we do a little workshop and it's great fun so feel free to come and look for a few sessions until you feel confident enough to join in and that is all i have to plug because this is a beautiful podcast and alice fraser production your editor is harry gordon your executive producer is chris skinner and i'll talk to you again in two weeks unless you listen to realms unknown in which case i'll talk to you again next week

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