#81: Zack Telander: We Don’t Need More Content, We Need More Humans.

0:00They want you to be creative, but they want you to post all the time and they want you to follow the what works. And so people can say they're just good businessmen. They found what works and they're just pushing it. Great. Good for you. It's not for me. And I know it's not for a lot of other people. If you are a highlight reel, you're not acting like a human being. I will not resonate with you. Period. Today's guest makes music, lifts heavy, he's a father and he calls out the noise polluting the fitness world. But in this conversation, we went deeper into the addiction of capturing every moment and why it's time to put your damn phone down and actually live in the moment.

0:33Please welcome to the show, Zach Talender. Authenticity is the most attractive thing in someone. The only thing I care about. I don't have any social relationship to you if I'm following you on Instagram. Yet your authenticity draws me in to be like, we are friends. If I do that good enough and I don't actually mean the things I say, I can trick you. But at the same time, oh, that guy could be so good as long as he realized his potential. That's the dumbest thing you could say, because not realizing his potential is who he is. Do you know how much more attracted we are to flaw than we are to perfection?

1:06It's exponentially. You said criticism isn't the problem. The awareness to criticism is. What we have offered people is a constant stream of being able to give criticism with almost no recourse. That in the human world has never existed before. I think that when you look at the way Gen Z interacts with the world, it's very hesitant in real life. It's very scared because...

1:33Everything is content. And if everything is content, then nothing is content. You said that. And what does that mean? Experiences aren't special if all you're doing is looking for your phone to record. If all you're doing is looking for the next content opportunity, the experience is not going to be great. And so by virtue of that, like the other way works too. If everything's content, if you're documenting everything, the content that I see might not be special. You know, I feel like sometimes I'm recording things. I'm like, this is not special. So you're only recording for the sake of recording and being able to potentially use it for some form of content online.

2:13Yeah. You remember the thing was like, document, don't create or something. that was gary consume no it was gary v's thing was like document everything right and i kind of i see what he's talking about to a certain extent the problem is if you document if you content everything it pulls away from the value of that this is this is like the the harshest thing about being algorithm algorithmically driven is that you don't get this opportunity to share art uh somewhat sparsely and the value like if i increase the supply the demand is going to go down and that's what i'm doing on instagram is just like more supply more supply more supply but that's what they want they want more and more of the same thing you know yeah and i guess the great thing about artistry is a lot of the best stuff is the raw one take stuff that came straight off the mind yes and so when you're following algorithmic preferences and you're posting at the right time and you're doing all of this stuff there's all these other considerations nothing is content yes that's that's what that's what i'm getting at with that it's like a it's like a what is it the oroboros or a boris i don't know what the snake eating its own tail it's like cannibalizing itself it's like that's this is it's a symbol um and everything kind of leads to its own problem every process that you that you have in social media and all of this they want you to be creative but they want you to post all the time and they want you to follow the what works and so you put constraints on creativity it's it's yeah that's all do you think though uh it's allowing more people to be artists sure i you know it's funny i so i started editing and wanting to be creative when I was like 14.

4:09And at my high school, we had, um, a really good program for kids who wanted to like shoot video and edit video. And, um, that's where I learned like most of my craft. And I remember one day I went home to my dad. I said, uh, cause they let us rent cameras and it was a mini DV camera. So like the, the small cassette tapes, I don't know if you've ever seen those. And it said it shot in 1080p, which is just high definition. I told my dad, I go, look, I can hold a camera and shoot in, in high definition. He goes, how are you going to be a, like a creator? How are you going to separate yourself when now people can shoot in high definition?

4:53Uh, like everyone can do it. The market's going to be saturated. You know, like this, we all have 4k capability in something that is minuscule compared to what I had in high school. um and i remember saying this and i thought it was one of the wisest things i've ever said i was like yeah that means a lot of people are going to be putting out bad stuff and all i have to do is be slightly better than them do you know yeah yeah do you think though we were chatting about at the gym earlier the thing around the more i know the less i know and how he was saying like the more i learn the less i feel like i am educated because we open all these other can of worms it's like if we look back in the day when there wasn't the capability of a phone that we had in our pocket, we can pull out 4K.

5:37It's basically these devices and these different things that are making it more convenient and easier to produce something at a higher quality. It's basically opening another can of worms that we can then go, okay, now we can actually shoot quicker, edit in different ways. It's a whole just different world of videography, creativity in the aspect of video, if we're talking about video content, because the ease of being able to do it is there. It's kind of like a progression. Yeah, if, dude, if creative people can weaponize whatever it is, I'm for it. I think creativity is God. I think art is God.

6:12I think that that's just how I am. That's how I'm wired. So if there's a point where creative people feel like they're stunted versus the people who are business-minded, I would love the scales to be tipped the other way. And immediately when I thought, okay, you know, hearkening back to when I was in high school and my dad goes, everyone can, has a camera, everyone can shoot. And I go, well, yeah, but the create, that just means the creative people are still going to rise because the playing field is now even again. It's like, it's not like, you know what I mean? It's still even as long as, as long as there's like no system in place to stunt creativity.

6:47Right. So I guess it's making it easier for business people to be creative or play in the creative realm sure technology is basically allowing more creatives to be a thing because frictionless for friction reduce friction for creative people to do creative things that's like what honest to god that's what i stand for period and i'm in the fitness space and that's like that's why i go after some people and concepts and ideas and i want people to examine what's actually happening in the fitness space like what's actually productive speech or what is it a content funnel to get you to buy something that's actually not going to be effective i love i would love to have people examine those things why it's i i honestly i'm interested in it it's fucked up like people go why do you why do you care so much it's like i can't answer that why do i care so much i love to you know if i get a piece of hate i love to examine it and talk about it and people go don't talk about it ignore it it's just the haters ignore the haters like i would actually rather sit here and like psychologically try to understand the person that does that because that helps me kind of like place it in my brain somewhere uh and if i just ignore the haters i go i become resentful of the haters i like say fuck that person they're stupid they don't know what they're talking about and in this way i can kind of like um what's the word i'm looking for like if you if you go to the hospital diagnose you know i can like diagnose them and i can maybe understand like a meta concept that is hurting me i can diagnose myself i can be like this hurts me when i see a lot of people do this and that this this triage of like figuring out what makes me hurt is so much more cathartic than going, ignore the haters.

8:48And this frustrates a lot of people. This is like the antithesis of what you're going to hear to a lot of creatives, right? Or a lot of people who are on this show, I would imagine. You know what I think is fascinating is your disagreement to the haters comment or the person posting the content with the funnel or whatever is completely valid. And you're completely entitled to that opinion. what would be awesome and powerful would be if the opposing person came back and had a discussion about it. Inherently, they won't, though. That is the point of this. Okay. So let's elaborate why they won't.

9:26Because it is not, this is not, they're not a human being. They don't portray themselves as a human being. It's as simple as that. They're using social media to display this sales tactic. And any bit of personality in there is pure trickery. they completely have separated out you know the the concept of parasocial relationship okay so that is just i don't have any social relationship to you if i'm uh following you on instagram yet your authenticity draws me in to be like we are friends and to a certain extent if i do that good enough and i don't actually mean the things i say i can trick you but at the same time, I really do like this idea that any one of my followers or anyone who comments, I could sit and have a beer with.

10:17I genuinely like that. And if somebody comes in and they're just like, fuck all these people, they're all dollar signs. Um, and I'm going to do all this that, and they just ignore any parasocial thing. When you say, I'd love for you guys to have a conversation i would too but it's it's inherently not what that person does if that makes sense well i guess their social media channels is they're just using it as a marketing tool if we if we strip back before social media was it before social media was a thing big brands and advertisers would then go to billboards and go to the newsletter and go to the news channels and they would use that as their form of marketing yes they would exchange dollars for that placement and then the big companies would then have that placement available to be able to sell.

11:05And then that advertisement money will fuel the shows that everyone's watching and the billboards that everyone's seeing. The progression has come into being social media and then they're now using the algorithm as their marketing funnel because, you know, I was listening to an interesting podcast around how they were saying the follower is dying and it's this interesting concept where most people are consuming the social media platforms, not on their following pages, rather their discovery pages. So the playing the game of the algorithm to discover people is the way to be discovered because the followers aren't even watching their followers content.

11:44And this is why you can have 300 ,000 followers and get 30 ,000 views on your video because it's not getting pushed to the algorithm, which is where people are consuming. And so perhaps all the people that you're referring to and i'm in that in that space probably too we all are to some degree of in terms of like trying to be seen on on social media it's like the marketing for the business and then the business pays the money which then allows us to do the marketing and the business full-time in a sense the what i see though is like this potential for the nastiness to rise to the top because you're just simply playing the game so like this is like inherently what i i don't like i just i can't help myself i can't i don't like it and i'm gonna say i don't like it i'm not gonna sit back and be like well that's just the way the world is i don't like this idea that you know um at all costs get a view and authenticity only really matters if it's seen and authenticity is the most attractive thing in someone period it's actually probably the only thing i care about it's the only thing yeah and i care about individuals i like looking at people's eyes and seeing something different and you know what's fascinating is a lot of the time and i wrote about this the other day about we may overextend in hopes of being seen, but by overextending, we're losing our authenticity, which may result in us being seen in the short term, but not liked in the long term because people don't think we're real.

13:27And it's this weird thing of how can we just remain being authentic with everything that we're doing? And it may not result in being seen instantly, but we'll actually be able to be liked long term because we're being ourselves people feel like we're being real yeah um so sorry you're you're saying like we you have to overextend no i'm saying that i think i've caught being caught in the trap of it's not a question it's just an open discussion i've been caught in the trap of uh trying to kind of search for external validation right so i'll like overextended on who i am maybe i'll be extra bubbly in person or maybe i'll show up extra loud so i can be seen but what that's doing is it's actually taking me away from my authentic self and who i am which is the actual thing that people like right and well what if what if doing that is an exercise like it's actually an exercise so you went you went a little too far now you self-assess now you go back to being authentic it's like playing like i was we were talking earlier at the gym like undulating your intensities of different characteristics of what you do.

14:35So like you can, oh, I went a little bit too hard. I, you know, I'm going to pull it back and I'm going to do what I like to do. Yeah, perhaps though, when we're talking about the charlatans and the people that we're referencing here in terms of using it solely as marketing and seeing dollar signs, and that's the only metric that they're kind of judging as success. Perhaps they overextend, make some noise, be seen, get addicted to the feeling of that so then that's when the it all becomes system orientated it all becomes a business it all becomes this operation because it's like they first start they get a little lick of the ice cream of what's possible in terms of maybe the business opportunity through the creative pursuit of posting content um so then they just get over obsessed to the point where it's just a full-blown system i i this i'll always come back to every bit of expression is creative expression like for me so even though what these guys are doing and if we want to talk about charlatans i can do that all day i feel like i feel like i'm a black belt in discussing charlatanism on the internet what they're doing is essentially they're like well this isn't real my social media is not real so i can say whatever i want make the dollar use it as a business and then I can live my life on the side.

15:57And more power to you if you can do that. However, I don't agree with it. Because again, I believe that what you put out is creative. It has to have some idea of creativity. And if it's creative, it has to be authentic. You see, like you don't get to just be inauthentic on a platform that I think is creative. In my opinion, in my opinion, for other people, they can be like, I don't give a shit. This is a business platform. This is so I can do free advertising for whatever I'm selling you. Fine. Go do that. But I have an issue with that. Period. Like that's just how I am. Like and I like to discuss it.

16:33If we take it away from social media though. Sure. Isn't this what all the big companies are doing as well? Oh yeah. And I'm allowed to be like hey that's kind of fucked too. Yeah. And so because I think it's powerful to treat social media to some degree as a business as well. Definitely. Broke influencer syndrome is a real thing. Like there's people that are spending all their time doing this thing in the hopes of achieving this thing that everyone praises, which is social status. I am that guy. But then I'm not making money off of Instagram. I'm not. And I'm going harder on Instagram than I ever have before, because there's a chance that maybe somebody says, I resonate with what this guy has to say.

17:15I will give his music a listen. Yeah. And, and like, that's okay with me. And I am a broke influencer. I am. And so I'm not afraid to be like, hey, I don't like these things. Again, the argument against me is very clear. It's clear as day. I realize this, but I'm still going to, at a certain point, I want to decide the type of person I am and the things that I believe to a certain extent. I'm very nuanced. I'll like play the middle a lot. but there's parts of me that like I, as I've gotten into music, it's like, you know, up until I had my, my kid, I would open my eyes in the morning. It was like, I'd be like music, you know, it's like, what am I going to do?

17:56How am I going to make this song? Like, I, I love it. Like it's, it's my lifeblood, you know, it's like everything to me. It's, it feels like a, I'm like a zealot, like a religious zealot. When I think about music and the way that I talk about it, and so that's such a powerful feeling to me that when i see somebody who completely treats it the opposite it's like okay well i don't like that i've been using nose strips and mouth tape religiously for over three years now and this may sound dramatic but it has quite literally changed my life i have a deviated septum which means i can't really breathe out of my nose properly.

18:36And for a long time, I would wake up feeling extremely tired. My brain was foggy. I had zero energy. And come to find out, when you're snoring and breathing through your mouth all night, you're not truly allowing your body to rest. Your mouth isn't made for breathing, your nose is. And we can go without food for weeks. We can go without water for weeks. But we can only go without breathing for minutes. I think it's important that we prioritize breathing correctly. I use Dream Recovery's mouth tape and I also use their brand new Second Wind nasal strips every single day. I apply them just before bed and this nasal strip stays on well throughout the day.

19:17The next day it is 2 p.m. right now and I am still wearing this thing from last night. Right now if you go to the link in the description or the show notes below or go to dreamrecovery.io and use code GRIFFIN you can get 15 % off your entire order. That's dreamrecovery.io or go to the link in the description or the show notes below and use code GRIFFIN. That's G-R-I-F-F-I-N and you'll get 15 % off your entire order. Let's get breathing correctly. Let's get sleeping better and let's get right back to the show. The way someone might think and the way that you're perceiving how they might think are probably two different things as well.

19:57And the thing for me is I went on this bit of an interesting journey where I first started gaining some traction and I would sell that$80 program or lack there if I even struggled to sell the$80 program. And then I remember I went in this phase where I'm like, nah, like all the big famous people in the world, they don't really sell anything online. So I'm not going to do that anymore. If I want to be the biggest in the world, I'm not going to. So I remember I took all the programs out and I stopped doing any of that. And I was just like, I'm just going to focus on just giving as much value. And then I know if I can make someone where it will change for me was when someone like stopped me on the street and said that I like saved their life on multiple occasions.

20:35I remember it hit me more than anything else. And from that moment, I went, I just need to keep making people feel like that. And if I make people feel like that, I'll make the money. And I remember doing that. And a few months went by, got so much traction, podcast blew up, and then I started making all this money. And it was this weird thing where I went, okay, I went away from that. But then what I thought was, okay, well, why am I shutting down this alternative of, of actually providing my value and education, the lessons that I'm learning to other people so that then other people can hopefully make people feel that way and get the same feeling I get because the feeling of saving someone's life made me feel way better than any other shekel, any amount of money that I've ever made in my life.

21:16So I was like, let's focus on that and the money will come. So then, then, then I reintroduced more like education and helping other people. And the only thing is, and the way I view this is the transaction of someone paying me in exchange for the education, the transaction is the commitment from both ends. And we're then exchanging that in terms of like, it's fair exchange, because I'm not looking at it as like, I'm taking this money from you. It's like, no, I've done this and you're inspired by that. And you would love to do something similar. I can help fast track that for you. Do you want the outcome this is the price yeah and i kind of and i kind of saw it as this way of the transactions actually just the commitment from both ends yes that's that's i've i used to coach online yeah for years and uh i just it wasn't that i grew out of it i just wanted to try new things do new things and then now music has taken over my life you know i i love that though as well and i think it's the only reason i was sharing that perspective is because for me i i'm trying to remove myself from the the the the money part and i just look at money as like a stored time this this thing that sorry it's a commitment like it represents it's like a yeah yeah so but i what i sorry to interrupt but like the commitment exchange it it's very interpersonal and the person that is using this they're creating this persona online that you like don't really know much about but it's attractive and now you're doing that commitment to that thing that's not actually them yeah like like chris griffin like if i commit to you i'm actually committing to you like not just my highlight reel exactly yes and that's the thing that i don't agree with this the same as you i i'm the same it's like i don't want i don't want my instagram page to be a highlight reel because i think that's a it's an unfair judgment of the life that i'm living it's not authentic And if you're buying into me because of the life that I'm living, but you're actually buying into my highlight reel, not my reality, that's unethical for me.

23:25Because I'm selling you on a life that's actually a lie. It's not real. It's only a piece of it. Man, I'm interested in sharing just like really just sides of me that are, they're not nasty. They're just like, oh, wow. Like this is the grittiness of it, you know? And I'm considering doing stuff like that online. Cause like, I just, I want to push that a little bit. See, like there's this thing, I'll just say it here. I've never said this on, on any form, but I, when I'm locking up at night to go to sleep, I have this thing where it's like, I'm always just rechecking the doors to see if I locked them and like, I'll do it over and over and over again.

24:08And like, if I, if something, if my mind goes elsewhere while I'm doing it, I'll start at the beginning and I'll fucking lock all the doors again and again and again. And I realized there's something wrong with that. It's like a slight OCD thing. Um, and I don't want to take, I mean, I can't, I don't want to diagnose myself people with actual OCD. Like it's horrifying of a disease. It's terrible. And I think about that and I like, it hurts me that I do it, you know, but I recently had a kid and I started to tell myself you you have to be tough for her like you have to be tough for your kid be tough for your kid you can't just be a scared child who's scared that you didn't lock the doors all you know you can't have these obsessions with anxiety and all these things you can't ruminate on these things because it's different now you gotta be a tough guy for her and like i've never in my whole life ever been like oh shit like you know i can't be a kid anymore i just can't and it's it's moments like that where it matters not like or moments like that that are like untalked about super flawed what i do at night every night you know has that been one of the main lessons you learned since being a father yeah yeah and it's all very recent but it's like um i can liken that exact feeling to being when i i've been broke relatively recently i've been broke not not like really really broke just like fuck i gotta pay rent and not gonna have that much money this month and all that and it's it's funny how your habits uh really lock in when you're broke because your options are limited so i'm not gonna go like i remember i was vaping all the time it's a terrible habit but i was broke so guess what i stopped doing vaping because i couldn't buy one i would rather buy groceries and it was like oh that's a that is me saying be tough you fucking you know what i mean i didn't have the option the illusion of choice was i mean it was taken from me and so now it's like i don't have that option of being anxious and being this weird like doing this weird ocd thing at night you have a daughter now dude like grow up so tell tell me about the ocd piece has it gotten better since you've been a father or are you still struggling yeah just because i tell myself you just got to be tough like you have to there's certain things that like you don't get the luxury of stressing out how long did that go for what just being stressed out about stressed out about like the locks and because i've heard that story before i believe someone shared it on like a really famous person shared on diary ceo one time about how it was the same thing the locking of the doors at night it was like multiple checks time and time again well it feels good that's why i do it i'm anxious why is it being anxious like almost feels good because it's like my process of like just hanging out in a certain space over and over again checking the locks making it happen you know do you think i can kind of flow in this anxiety space do you think that's you said it's like avoidance of tough things avoidance of hard things i think do you think that contributes to the lack of sleep you said you struggle to sleep probably i've always had a tough time sleeping even as a child why so do you think um

27:46I don't know. I don't know. I just say it's not something I could diagnose. It's like almost any time I try to diagnose myself or understand my brain, I always feel like, oh, I'm going to have a big bias here because it's me. Yeah, that makes sense. Obviously, you've been doing music for quite a while and some of the pieces you've been doing recently, you've been doing this like poetry kind of writing these awesome messages you did one that i absolutely loved the other day i'm gonna read i'm gonna play it um on the pod and and uh and then we can unpack it i i just think there's there's something so cool about these i mean the running part is just it is just it is what it is but like the actual message is the thing that i love but this one's called the millennial yeah

28:38I'm tired. I'm tired of the upkeep. I'm so damn tired and there's never enough sleep. What's my hook? Why should they care? I'll unlock my phone and I'll commence a 12-inch stare. I'm hungry. I'm hungry for more, so I'll do what they say. I'll push harder than before. It'll cause me stress. It'll cause me pain, but I'll create more and I'll become more vain. I'm a talented person, but I don't think anyone will notice Content before craft, don't you know this? I'll delete all the apps, yeah, that'll show them And I'll work like a dog for an inflating token I'll go to my job, I'll rent my place I'll go to the gym and I'll wash my face I'll re-download the apps, I'll find a date I'll count up my macros and I'll finish my plate I'll watch my show, then I'll scroll on my phone Remember, it's my house, but it's never my home I'll watch them yell, I'll watch them debate Whose side are you on?

29:32Oh shit, it's getting late. So I'll set my alarm five hours from now, and when it rings, I'll give anything just to lay back down. But I'll get up quickly, and I'll hop in the shower. I'll get rid of my debt in 10 ,000 more hours. I wish I did it differently. I wish my brain was rewired. But instead, all I'll say is, I'm tired. Fuck, dude. Yeah, I wrote that at like 2 a.m. Why? uh well i don't know it's kind of how when i write songs too it's the same process of me writing a song it's it's like part of its anger part of it is release you know um but that you know just something about being distinctly millennial and just like examining where we're at like this is a lot of the things that i talk about it's just like hey look at where we're at are we okay with it are we cool with it that's all do you relate to that and that's why you wrote it or are you trying to put yourself i relate to it and okay my favorite thing to do is talk about the way things are and how it sucks, but also talk about how you suck too.

30:51You know, that poem is, people can hear that and be like, oh, you're complaining about the world. But there's a lot of moments in that where I'm talking about my flaws as a human. And both things can be true at the same time. And that is what's crazy. People can complain about systems, society, whatever but you also better take action for the type of person you are and try to become a better person they don't have to they're not so opposed that they can't happen at the same time so this is one of the great things about fitness is like i can be like hey you can change your life today and you do this it's on you and there's also things preventing you from doing that at the same fucking time.

31:38Now, a lot of people are one or the other. And what I love to do is examine how the life is not one or the other. Life is not cut or dry. It's not black, black and white. It's both. And that poem represents like, again, being distinctly millennial. I always, millennials rent more than any other generation. They, uh, you know, we're the first generation at 30 years old to be in a worse off place than the previous generations at 30 years old. That's a known fact. now um we spend how do they define worst place like economic freedom the dollar moves way less like it's by by all of like the big metrics of like economy and ability and motility as a you know be able to move around and do things that we that our parents did we can't do um to the same extent not that we can't do it permanently it's always like here's where we're at so get better but where we're at sucks and uh yeah that's why i wrote that poem i was like just is there a problem with the because obviously you summed that whole poem up with i'm just gonna say i'm tired yeah so all of that stuff is what's going on in our life in our mind but then when someone asks how we're going we say i'm tired or i'm okay or i'm fine or whatever it might be is there Do you think there's a problem in the, just the overarching terms we give our status in life or our state?

33:09Or do you think it's more about like, we're not aware of all those things that are happening, but all those things are making us tired. Like, say you, like you look at that poem. The reason we're tired is because of all of the stuff that's going on, but maybe we're not actually aware of, of the impact it's all doing. We're just labeling that as like our life. And it's just this rabbit hole that we've gone down. and then we're not really assessing it all. We're just saying we're tired. Yeah. Again, like people just, I don't know how much it helps to understand where we're at, but I'm going to point it out.

33:41That's all. Like your simplistic understanding of, hey, I'm tired. I don't feel good. Like it's because of all these things. I don't even know if that's going to help you. I'm just going to point it out. I'm just going to say it. That's why this poem is effective is because I'm just saying it. I think that's the gold with your content though. like we're talking about content earlier like that shit there is like you're saying it you're speaking people's mind like that it's like people feel that and they go okay like it's in like like you go relate smack bang relate oh shit these are kind of problems these are things that i've done um perhaps it's this level of introspection to go all right i've just come across this video this guy's just spoken about half of the things that i'm currently doing and i'm just avoiding perhaps we look at how we can take that message assess our life and kind of do an assessment of our life and go what are the actual things that are serving us and why are we doing all these things like what is the actual main reason because I mean money's one factor and as we spoke about at the start in terms of the the different drivers as to why we're posting content or capturing moments or whatever it might be.

34:54Money is one thing. It definitely does solve a lot of problems, I would say. But perhaps the way you're making the money can result in even worse problems personally. It's like if we do some sort of money-making process and in the pursuit there's like some malicious intent or there's something where, you know, we've gone down this rabbit hole and it's actually got a little bit of evil in it, perhaps at the end of the day it's like we can have a big bank account but the way we see ourselves and the way we view ourselves isn't very positive. I'm just fascinated by like the drivers behind why we're doing everything in life and what the actual goal is.

35:33So the, for me in that, I think the biggest line is I'm a talented person, but I don't think anyone will notice content before craft. Don't you know, this was, that was the big one for me. And so this is the, I don't even want to call it a fight because I'm not fighting. I'm just pointing it out, right? But this is what I brought up earlier in that creative people, talented people, if they're not getting a shot because egotistical narcissist businessman are taking all those shots away, I'm going to say something. On the other end of that, there are very, very talented and creative people who no matter what, they need to take accountability for their own actions.

36:18The system could be holding them down, but they're holding themselves down. Those things both exist. So my favorite thing is, oh, that guy could be so good as long as he realized his potential. That's the dumbest thing you could say, because that to me is like saying, if that guy wasn't who he was, he wouldn't be who he is. It means nothing. because because not realizing his potential is who he is you're not just going to change the very fabric of someone who doesn't want to change their own life who truly believes that the world is out to get them and and you do see they have incredible talents but they but they just again the very fabric of who they are will not realize those talents that maybe you can see slightly but perhaps they they can realize those talents so when they say when people say this and that's that's what i'm saying is like there might be some people preventing that and that's where i go hey that's wrong there's a there's a spectrum here again it's muddy it's not just it's not like if i was here being like all these bad people are not letting the true creatives and true artists shine, man.

37:35It's, you know, I'd be wrong. Yeah. I, I have an interesting thought around this because I guess it's just understanding the society that we're operating in and what we're, we're playing in because it's all just a value exchange. It's like something's working because like everything's the way it is because of the way it is. Everyone's getting paid the way they are because of because of the way it is i'm truly under this this notion of that like everything's the way it is for a reason and perhaps the business people that have come into the creative space and that are doing very well inevitably because they've obviously understood the the way to be able to attract more attention maybe attract more have more influence in what they're saying have i don't know be more seen those people have just played the game better i don't know like like i'm just kind of yeah yeah yeah sure i'm just kind of no but i have no issue with that yeah it's the it's like so here's a great example uh music is a very interesting content form because the content itself is not good enough anymore you can't just come out with good music you have to come out with good content that surrounds that good music you have two layers it's two layers fucking brutal that's true it's brutal and so what you hear a lot is like hey you're a good musician like what's your socials like what's your what's your what you look like what are your what's your content what are your numbers what you know and every musician is like fuck this let me just be a musician and to a certain extent i totally agree with that sentiment this is stupid this is stupid that we have you know you have to do all of this stuff that isn't actually the product um having said that there are ways to quote unquote make content that are so fun uh we i just did one the other day um it's the this song by covet i think it's or it might be called Covet by this band Basement.

39:48That's what it is. And it's like, it was a famous, or it's a big viral sound on Instagram. It's like, when I'm with you, I don't want to be with you. Big Phil.