[00:01.620 --> 00:04.400]  First, welcome to HOPE!
[00:07.620 --> 00:13.060]  I've been coming to HOPE and I've been pretty much giving a lecture at every single HOPE since 2006.
[00:13.440 --> 00:14.820]  So, hello family.
[00:15.320 --> 00:20.460]  Some of you are pretty crazy and strange, but you're family, you know, that's what it is.
[00:20.760 --> 00:24.560]  So, yeah, my name is Johannes Grenzfurtner, long and complicated Austrian name.
[00:24.560 --> 00:31.060]  But as of today, you can also address me as Little Lord Fuckaroo if you want to do that.
[00:31.300 --> 00:41.260]  So, I'm part of Monochrome, which is an art technology philosophy collective active since the early 1990s or the late 1900s.
[00:42.540 --> 00:46.040]  We are dabbling in art and all kinds of stuff.
[00:46.040 --> 00:55.900]  The main problem with art for us is a lot of facepalming and art is a special place for special people in a really bad font.
[00:56.380 --> 01:07.840]  So, we are trying to apply what we think could be political art or could be interesting for humanity in different ways.
[01:10.120 --> 01:13.580]  We also encounter more facepalming doing that.
[01:13.780 --> 01:30.960]  So, we coined a term called context hacking, which tries to combine two things, like knowing what the context is that you're doing stuff in, like art, activism, whatever it is, and applying certain rule sets from hacking culture onto that.
[01:30.960 --> 01:36.560]  And I really like the old term definition that a hack is a pretty good prank.
[01:36.860 --> 01:49.120]  That in the 1960s at MIT, when they were referring to a hack, it was something where you would put a Volkswagen Beetle on the roof of the biology department or something like that.
[01:49.220 --> 01:50.980]  And people would ask, what the fuck is that hack?
[01:51.220 --> 01:53.880]  And so, that's pretty much like one of the oranges of the term.
[01:53.880 --> 01:56.240]  And I like that a lot.
[01:56.600 --> 02:03.860]  So, sometimes you need a lot of adapters to get a message across, but eventually it will work.
[02:04.620 --> 02:13.480]  So, as part of Monochrome, I've been organizing a conference called Ars Electronica, which is a festival on sex and technology.
[02:13.560 --> 02:18.160]  We just published a little book this year about it.
[02:18.160 --> 02:19.920]  I have two copies here with me.
[02:19.920 --> 02:39.200]  We're doing a conference about alcohol and technology, about cocktail robotics, where we invite people since 1999 to build machines that serve or mix alcohol or have bar conversations or have other interesting technology in the realm of cocktail culture.
[02:39.500 --> 02:43.000]  I just recently made a film called Solvent.
[02:43.640 --> 02:46.180]  It's a very political film about the Nazi demon.
[02:46.180 --> 02:50.540]  It will be on major streaming services in the U.S. in October.
[02:51.320 --> 02:54.460]  If you want to know more about that, you can take a picture of this.
[02:55.000 --> 02:58.880]  And more interesting probably for you, I also screened it here last year.
[02:59.180 --> 03:08.300]  I made a film called Hacking at Leaves about American colonialism, about the Navajo tribe, about hacking and hacking culture and hackerspaces.
[03:08.880 --> 03:17.540]  I couldn't find a publisher to publish the film because all people said it's too weird and direct quotes from the publisher.
[03:17.840 --> 03:19.400]  It's about Native Americans.
[03:19.660 --> 03:20.980]  Nobody is interested in that.
[03:21.180 --> 03:22.780]  So that's America in 2025.
[03:23.220 --> 03:27.860]  So I decided to release the film for free on the Internet Archive next week.
[03:27.860 --> 03:32.360]  So August 29th, you can download it there.
[03:32.520 --> 03:35.740]  And thank you, Jason Scott, for making all of that possible.
[03:36.180 --> 03:44.540]  So if you want to see a countdown with milliseconds when it will be launched, you can go to that website here.
[03:44.540 --> 03:47.060]  Okay, so why am I here today?
[03:47.160 --> 03:50.720]  How to be positively transgressive?
[03:50.840 --> 03:56.980]  So when I wrote the description for the talk, I kind of liked the idea.
[03:57.200 --> 04:03.160]  And I liked it that it's in the vein of a couple of talks I've been given before at HOPE.
[04:03.420 --> 04:11.480]  But while writing it, I realized it's like, ah, like not another talk about why the fucking yesmen are so fucking great.
[04:11.480 --> 04:17.180]  So hacking culture for good was still my premise.
[04:18.540 --> 04:21.300]  Talking about transgression and subversion also.
[04:21.540 --> 04:24.500]  But I wanted to find a different way to frame that.
[04:24.700 --> 04:26.360]  Because what is subversion really?
[04:26.840 --> 04:31.520]  Historical tactics, data, situationists, hackers, pranksters, culture, cinemas.
[04:31.880 --> 04:36.880]  Subversion is a way to expose power, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[04:37.460 --> 04:41.100]  When the trickster turns fascist, we have that around a lot.
[04:41.100 --> 04:47.940]  Rise of the old right prankster, trolling, irony, weaponized aesthetics, memes, disinfo, blah, blah, blah.
[04:48.220 --> 04:49.420]  Okay, boring.
[04:51.040 --> 04:52.180]  We have been there.
[04:52.320 --> 04:53.000]  We have done that.
[04:53.280 --> 04:58.300]  So my approach today is to talk about language.
[04:58.620 --> 05:03.980]  Because I think the main problem nowadays is like, how do you get concepts across?
[05:03.980 --> 05:05.600]  How you talk about stuff?
[05:05.600 --> 05:07.800]  Just a couple of examples.
[05:08.020 --> 05:09.320]  I like words.
[05:09.540 --> 05:10.620]  I'm a human.
[05:10.900 --> 05:13.740]  I'm also a pattern recognition machine in a sense.
[05:13.920 --> 05:15.100]  So I like words.
[05:15.240 --> 05:16.540]  I play around with them.
[05:16.640 --> 05:19.500]  And sometimes I make them up.
[05:19.660 --> 05:23.280]  For example, the mythical hormone of testosterone.
[05:23.280 --> 05:32.860]  Testosterone, whatever gender you might apply yourself to, you think you can fix home appliances, but you fail.
[05:33.040 --> 05:35.300]  That's the hormone of testosterone.
[05:35.800 --> 05:35.900]  Okay?
[05:36.540 --> 05:38.840]  Just like a silly little word I came up.
[05:38.840 --> 05:41.800]  But of course, there is also the whole debate about pronouns.
[05:42.180 --> 05:44.480]  And my approach to that is, fuck them all.
[05:44.820 --> 05:45.380]  Easy.
[05:46.280 --> 05:47.080]  Abolish them.
[05:47.300 --> 05:52.380]  One personal pronoun is enough to address any life form capable of producing language.
[05:52.380 --> 06:00.420]  And it should still be possible to identify people by sex or gender, but only as a linguistic exception, not as a part of everyday speech.
[06:00.560 --> 06:03.480]  Minds matter, not reproductive glands.
[06:04.080 --> 06:07.460]  So, I mean, I try to solve things easy.
[06:07.720 --> 06:08.820]  So, why not?
[06:08.900 --> 06:10.020]  We can talk about that later.
[06:10.160 --> 06:16.580]  But, like, I'm trying to play with language and thinking about how language is changing reality.
[06:16.800 --> 06:21.360]  And we have been in this debate for at least, like, 15 years.
[06:21.760 --> 06:22.180]  Hardcore.
[06:22.440 --> 06:23.760]  So, Internet.
[06:24.300 --> 06:26.540]  Nice little cat.
[06:27.360 --> 06:33.280]  There are many, many, like, clickbait sites out there throwing glossaries at you.
[06:33.280 --> 06:39.760]  Like, the glossaries of dating terms and all that kind of stuff that people like to click on.
[06:39.900 --> 06:43.220]  And then you learn about, like, this microaggression or this or that.
[06:43.360 --> 06:46.680]  And whatever term they come up with.
[06:47.100 --> 06:55.060]  And so, for example, I came up with the term for cheating and I called it engaging in emotional scaffolding.
[06:55.300 --> 06:56.000]  Why not?
[06:56.000 --> 07:02.040]  I could probably sell it to one of those websites and make a bunch of money with it.
[07:02.140 --> 07:04.020]  Just, like, coming up with ridiculous terms.
[07:04.440 --> 07:07.120]  Or, like, problems in polyamorous relationships.
[07:07.540 --> 07:08.980]  Google calendar fatigue.
[07:09.300 --> 07:09.920]  Why not?
[07:11.520 --> 07:15.040]  So, our brain is capable of shaping reality.
[07:15.920 --> 07:26.020]  And all the debates about subversion and how to reach people is pretty much like trying to reach the emotional side of humans.
[07:26.400 --> 07:30.000]  So, we need to kind of, like, redefine things.
[07:31.020 --> 07:39.560]  For example, there's global warming and climate change are the main terms about the quagmire that the planet is right now.
[07:40.220 --> 07:44.200]  And I was always saying, like, why not calling it atmosphere cancer?
[07:44.200 --> 07:45.920]  It sounds way worse.
[07:46.140 --> 07:51.500]  And it's communicating, not sounding like fuzzy and warm, global warming.
[07:51.740 --> 07:53.640]  People are not against warm stuff.
[07:53.920 --> 07:55.860]  But they might not like cancer.
[07:56.080 --> 08:05.800]  So, what I'm saying is, the way that you frame something, that you call something, has an immediate impact on how the world will react to it.
[08:06.040 --> 08:09.860]  The whole stuff with artificial intelligence that we have right now.
[08:09.860 --> 08:11.280]  I mean, it's not intelligence.
[08:11.280 --> 08:12.300]  It's statistics.
[08:12.680 --> 08:14.100]  It's boring statistics.
[08:14.380 --> 08:19.260]  It's an autofill stuff, pretty much, like, going on.
[08:21.060 --> 08:23.080]  So, why even calling it intelligence?
[08:23.480 --> 08:30.200]  So, and I think that the journalists and people in the media sphere are to blame about a lot of that stuff.
[08:30.380 --> 08:33.540]  Or, for example, a long, long time ago, someone called it email.
[08:33.540 --> 08:39.700]  And just by calling it email, the term becomes charged with symbols.
[08:41.800 --> 08:43.820]  Email advocates, like, mail.
[08:44.060 --> 08:46.580]  And mail, there is a privacy about mail.
[08:46.940 --> 08:49.240]  Like, you don't open other people's letters.
[08:49.440 --> 08:50.400]  You don't look into them.
[08:50.460 --> 08:51.760]  There's privacy attached to it.
[08:51.840 --> 08:56.100]  If you would have called it e-postcards, nobody would have a problem with that.
[08:56.200 --> 08:59.660]  But it's more likely to be an e-postcard than an e-mail.
[08:59.660 --> 09:15.540]  So, what I'm saying is, like, whenever you come up with something and there might be some interesting people in there who come up with new products or new techniques or new algorithms, whatever it is, just, like, think twice about how you call them and what that means to people.
[09:15.540 --> 09:20.500]  So, cloud monopolies, why not call it server feudalism?
[09:21.140 --> 09:25.660]  Or terms of service is more like constant leeching.
[09:26.780 --> 09:31.460]  Or AI art is dream cannibalism for me.
[09:32.440 --> 09:35.780]  So, I think there is power to that.
[09:36.180 --> 09:38.800]  Doomscrolling, I think we can do better than doomscrolling.
[09:38.800 --> 09:45.580]  I think it should be feed leprosy or maybe ulcering or something like that.
[09:45.700 --> 09:46.120]  I don't know.
[09:46.240 --> 09:48.460]  But let's think about that.
[09:48.560 --> 09:50.120]  I'm just, like, spitting stuff out.
[09:50.560 --> 09:52.380]  So, ah, the computer.
[09:53.020 --> 09:53.880]  I like it.
[09:53.980 --> 09:56.640]  I've been living with it for so many, many years.
[09:56.640 --> 10:09.200]  So, I've been trying for this lecture to talk about what's important in the year 2025 and find 15 terms I made up just for you.
[10:09.860 --> 10:12.000]  And you'll probably need them, maybe.
[10:13.360 --> 10:19.720]  Because I think it's 15 terms that might be valuable for the hacker community and in general.
[10:19.720 --> 10:32.480]  And they also might be valuable in general to talk about subversion and what we can still do to change the planet and the mindscape around there.
[10:32.580 --> 10:38.600]  For example, I would call for a new term called manufacturing dissent.
[10:38.600 --> 10:42.980]  Because there is this old term of manufacturing consent that came from Noam Chomsky.
[10:42.980 --> 10:47.420]  And in the meantime, what's going on, and we see that especially in the U.S.
[10:47.920 --> 10:54.960]  with the political establishment and the right-wingers out there, they are actually manufacturing dissent.
[10:55.380 --> 11:04.760]  And they are using certain terms and concepts from lefty politics in 1960s, 1970s activism.
[11:04.760 --> 11:13.640]  So, not all dissidents... dissent is grassroot and some of it is manufactured by cheap plastic toys in a factory.
[11:13.860 --> 11:21.000]  Corporations, state actors, political lobbies can generate fake movements that look like rebellion but are actually just controlled opposition.
[11:21.660 --> 11:27.100]  Example, AstroTurf campaigns against climate science, QAnon as a mass-produced insurgency.
[11:27.580 --> 11:31.180]  It's not dissent, it's dissent as a service.
[11:31.180 --> 11:37.700]  So, I think this one could actually be helpful to explain it to some people.
[11:37.960 --> 11:43.680]  And my next term is what I would call toxic distrust.
[11:44.420 --> 11:53.120]  Toxic distrust is something that is especially prevalent in communities like the hacker community.
[11:53.120 --> 12:02.960]  Because there is, of course, a really necessary level of paranoia you need to deal with all the shit around us.
[12:03.100 --> 12:11.360]  But sometimes that stuff can flip and we have been seeing that, especially like with the high point, of course, the deep pandemic.
[12:12.480 --> 12:14.500]  So, hackers thrive on skepticism.
[12:15.100 --> 12:25.380]  But there is a line where healthy distrust mutates into paranoia and nihilism and conspiracy thinking or conspiratorial agendas, let's call it that way.
[12:25.380 --> 12:38.500]  And once you no longer trust any institution, maybe even your own hackerspace or expert or your neighbors, you're like in a swamp of toxic distrust where it's kind of hard to get out.
[12:38.500 --> 12:46.340]  Because if you erode the world in your mind, you're just like stuck in filth.
[12:46.580 --> 12:53.700]  You're stuck in the eroded leftovers of what used to be something like critical thinking, hopefully.
[12:53.920 --> 12:58.580]  So, examples for that, of course, like the anti-vax movement and flat earth forms.
[12:58.740 --> 13:01.840]  But there are so, so, so many examples for that.
[13:01.840 --> 13:08.260]  I think it is important to have a certain form of grounding of your paranoia.
[13:08.540 --> 13:19.360]  I know that sounds weird and strange and contradictory, but paranoia is nothing to be like happy about.
[13:20.060 --> 13:37.060]  Paranoia is like a strange, like it's almost like if you're in a relationship and you're constantly jealous, like paranoia is the toxic variant of having something like a skeptical mindset and trying to analyze the world around you.
[13:37.700 --> 13:44.320]  Okay, so question authority, yes, but if you are questioning penicillin, you're not a rebel, you're like...
[13:44.320 --> 13:45.660]  Okay, good.
[13:48.040 --> 13:53.120]  There are two computers making love to each other and they sing a love song to each other.
[13:55.140 --> 13:56.780]  It's a beautiful love song.
[13:56.780 --> 14:03.680]  So, I would call the next concept Zumbas or Zoomer boomers or Zumbies.
[14:04.620 --> 14:07.700]  And not all Zoomers are radical progressives.
[14:07.860 --> 14:13.840]  Some are recycling authoritarian politics of their grandparents, but with TikTok filters and meme aesthetics.
[14:14.260 --> 14:24.600]  So, Gen Z, Treadwives, young crypto bros quoting fascist thinkers, quote, meet the Zoomer who thinks they are edgy for discovering 1950s gender roles on Discord.
[14:26.140 --> 14:32.140]  So, there is, of course, also a technological side to that.
[14:32.360 --> 14:38.820]  I see a young generation at the moment looking at iPhones like they are magical talismans.
[14:38.820 --> 14:40.940]  I have a specific word for that later on.
[14:41.440 --> 14:50.440]  But in general, we have to talk about how to reach young audiences as hackers.
[14:50.440 --> 14:57.900]  And the question was already put forward during the previous panel.
[14:58.140 --> 15:03.600]  So, how can we reach people out there who are not really interested in what's going on?
[15:03.600 --> 15:15.600]  or have nothing learned anything like Normcore or that are just like coming out pretty much like of the trauma of COVID.
[15:16.360 --> 15:19.900]  People who were like 12, 13, 14 years old during the pandemic.
[15:20.180 --> 15:25.300]  I have friends who have kids of that age and they are a little bit lost.
[15:25.300 --> 15:32.180]  So, just like don't lose them to becoming zombies or something like that.
[15:32.420 --> 15:32.700]  Okay.
[15:32.960 --> 15:33.200]  Hmm.
[15:33.320 --> 15:34.320]  So friendly computer.
[15:35.360 --> 15:38.320]  That goes right into techno naivete.
[15:39.720 --> 15:45.140]  And I'm talking about young people who look like digital natives, but actually are technologically naive.
[15:45.460 --> 15:50.300]  They know how to swipe and scroll and stream, but not how systems or infrastructures really work.
[15:50.520 --> 15:57.600]  So, an example would be able to summon an Uber instantly, but help us when they are trying to configure a Wi-Fi router or a printer.
[15:57.600 --> 16:04.020]  It's a strange form of what I call the Zoomer boomer before or something like that.
[16:04.140 --> 16:13.760]  Because I see that young people treating their iPhones like magic talismans, like little black boxes.
[16:13.760 --> 16:15.200]  They have no idea what's on that.
[16:15.240 --> 16:20.600]  I had a conversation with the kid of a friend who is 15 or 16 years old.
[16:20.660 --> 16:23.480]  And he didn't know the difference between software and hardware.
[16:24.520 --> 16:32.260]  I tried to explain to him, you know, like there are programs on your cell phone and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[16:32.500 --> 16:41.740]  But we cannot forget that we have a generation out there who are pretty much like at the same technological understanding level as my dad.
[16:41.740 --> 17:00.840]  So, it's strange that I'm in a special strange generation as Generation X that I was able to go through all the iterations of technology and seeing a typewriter and using a Commodore 64 and getting a first PC and having to install Sound Blaster.
[17:00.840 --> 17:07.400]  And kind of like learning by putting the stuff into sockets that what 8 and 16-bit means and all that stuff.
[17:07.540 --> 17:09.840]  I mean, I'm not telling you anything new here.
[17:09.940 --> 17:10.020]  Yeah.
[17:10.580 --> 17:22.580]  But we are in a very like interestingly privileged position of that generation that we really can offer advice and offer knowledge to younger generations.
[17:22.580 --> 17:28.480]  who sometimes don't want to tell us that they don't understand what's going on.
[17:28.620 --> 17:33.680]  We had the same stuff going on at the Hackerspace in Vienna where there were a couple of people hanging out.
[17:34.200 --> 17:44.020]  And after like half a year, they finally kind of like felt comfortable enough to ask us like really basic questions about programming and stuff like that.
[17:44.920 --> 17:47.400]  And before that, they were just like posing.
[17:47.640 --> 17:49.260]  They were just like, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[17:49.600 --> 17:51.420]  And like, let's help.
[17:51.800 --> 18:06.920]  Let's help those little, those younglings looking for advice and maybe not all the time being able to ask for it.
[18:07.460 --> 18:09.080]  Oh yeah, the younglings.
[18:09.200 --> 18:10.920]  Let's go to the next one.
[18:10.920 --> 18:14.840]  It's a generational knowledge, not knowledge, but knowledge.
[18:15.180 --> 18:22.020]  It's that each generation thinks it's reinventing resistance, but forgets the lessons of those who fought before.
[18:22.300 --> 18:26.500]  It's cultural amnesia, history erased by the scroll.
[18:26.780 --> 18:32.660]  So TikTok activism repeating 1960s sit in tactics as if it were new.
[18:32.960 --> 18:34.660]  There's nothing wrong with that.
[18:34.780 --> 18:39.880]  Of course, like everything is just like a repetition of stuff that has been happening before.
[18:39.880 --> 19:05.080]  But I think we could be so much more, let's call it exact about what we're doing, way more efficient about what we're doing, if there would be a form of being able to bridge the generation of knowledge and help those folks with that stuff.
[19:05.080 --> 19:15.020]  So in a certain way, I guess the last three terms are introduced are kind of like going into an overall problem that I see or some people see.
[19:15.160 --> 19:18.940]  I had a couple of discussions about that here at HOPE already.
[19:18.940 --> 19:20.860]  So punchline.
[19:21.060 --> 19:26.640]  They think they've invented protest, but they've discovered cardboards and Sharpies.
[19:26.820 --> 19:31.080]  Of course, nothing wrong with that, but I think we could be way more ahead.
[19:31.620 --> 19:41.940]  And we need it, especially in times of like fascism, like really showing its ugly little face more and more.
[19:43.880 --> 19:46.280]  Painting by numberism is the next one.
[19:47.060 --> 19:48.600]  Rebellion becomes a template.
[19:48.980 --> 19:50.300]  A kit you can buy at the mall.
[19:50.400 --> 19:55.380]  The aesthetics of the version stripped of meaning reduced to gestures anyone can mimic.
[19:55.600 --> 19:56.620]  We know it all.
[19:56.780 --> 19:58.240]  The punk fashion at Hot Topic.
[19:58.340 --> 20:00.400]  My favorite little shop at the mall.
[20:00.400 --> 20:04.320]  But also corporate pride floats, all that kind of stuff.
[20:04.620 --> 20:10.100]  So I remember back when No Logo by Naomi Klein came out.
[20:10.180 --> 20:11.740]  That was like 20, 25 years ago.
[20:12.000 --> 20:19.620]  I remember that the first people who read No Logo by Naomi Klein were the marketing agencies.
[20:19.620 --> 20:35.480]  Because they wanted to find out how to create new marketing strategies without looking like they are colonizers of our minds.
[20:35.840 --> 20:44.400]  So it's quite interesting to live in a world that's dominated by late stage capitalism.
[20:44.400 --> 20:49.640]  And it's, by the way, late stage capitalism since World War II, because so many people use that term.
[20:50.080 --> 21:00.760]  But knowing that there are people out there trying to milk subversion, trying to find interesting people, interesting concepts.
[21:01.280 --> 21:10.300]  I mean, one of the first big graffiti campaigns in New York City was paid by Nike.
[21:10.300 --> 21:13.480]  And I'm, of course, not talking about the early days of graffiti.
[21:13.660 --> 21:24.760]  But the very moment that graffiti became something interesting and marketable, Nike paid graffiti artists to go out there and make a Nike graffiti campaign.
[21:24.900 --> 21:25.880]  So I mean, of course, it's happening.
[21:26.000 --> 21:27.400]  It's happening all the time.
[21:27.560 --> 21:28.980]  Just be aware of that.
[21:29.740 --> 21:34.760]  It's DIY, except somebody did it for you in Bangladesh.
[21:34.760 --> 21:49.420]  So we have to think about interesting new ways to be subversive, but at the same time, almost like incorporate interrupters into our strategy.
[21:49.700 --> 21:51.180]  So like, how can we do something?
[21:51.300 --> 22:00.900]  How can we create something subversive that is not at the same time the next marketing fad that can be used by big companies?
[22:03.180 --> 22:11.020]  So, outraging for me is part of the content industry.
[22:11.280 --> 22:16.640]  Instead of rebelling against injustice, we just keep feeding the algorithm rage clicks.
[22:16.940 --> 22:23.580]  Outraging is when your anger is no longer political fuel, but someone else's monetized engagement.
[22:24.060 --> 22:32.120]  For example, of course, Fox News, Twixer, OnTheLibs, YouTube channels, all that kind of stuff.
[22:32.260 --> 22:35.400]  But it's also happening on the left and in progressive circles.
[22:36.080 --> 22:43.260]  So how do we actually really reach people?
[22:44.060 --> 22:46.300]  Maybe we have to do that with our own infrastructure.
[22:46.320 --> 22:49.300]  Maybe we have to do that with our own software, our own service.
[22:50.180 --> 22:51.840]  But I mean, I understand it.
[22:52.040 --> 23:01.920]  I mean, I had like 10,000 or so followers on X until like a couple of weeks ago and then X decided to kill my X account.
[23:01.920 --> 23:04.220]  I have no way of getting that back.
[23:04.660 --> 23:08.040]  And there's this like slight moment when I thought like I should have known better.
[23:08.040 --> 23:11.260]  I should have known like it doesn't really work that way.
[23:11.360 --> 23:19.260]  You can't build an audience or you can't build a critical audience on the backbone of someone else's business.
[23:19.260 --> 23:26.760]  But in a certain way, I'm not really calling back the World Web 1.0.
[23:26.940 --> 23:45.140]  But I think it is very much important to find ways to kind of like merge the world of engagement of social media with something that is more stable and reliable and can be controlled by people you know.
[23:45.140 --> 23:49.740]  So I can't call anyone at X and say like, hey, that's probably wrong what you did.
[23:49.960 --> 23:50.840]  So let's do it.
[23:50.920 --> 23:54.740]  But I mean, they don't have money for that and they don't have interest in that.
[23:55.340 --> 23:57.680]  OK, so punchline.
[23:57.880 --> 24:02.300]  They don't care who you hate as long as you keep hitting refresh.
[24:02.460 --> 24:06.500]  Just keep that in mind and reach out to your fellow robots.
[24:08.340 --> 24:09.240]  Disruptor porn.
[24:09.860 --> 24:18.480]  Disruptor porn for me is the fetishization of disruption as an aesthetic, sexy, provocative, but ultimately empty of political or social substance.
[24:19.300 --> 24:24.660]  I see that, of course, a lot in influencing out there.
[24:24.660 --> 24:33.980]  So and there, but of course, also a lot of startups claiming to hack housing or health care while just like repackaging the good old exploitation.
[24:35.920 --> 24:42.240]  It's porn for venture capitalists, all T's, no climax, and somebody else pays the bills.
[24:44.640 --> 24:46.380]  The dial up process.
[24:46.640 --> 24:47.720]  Well, I have to wait for a second.
[24:48.000 --> 24:48.940]  One, two, three.
[24:49.200 --> 24:49.760]  There we go.
[24:50.320 --> 24:51.200]  Attention scraping.
[24:51.620 --> 24:53.100]  So what's attention scraping?
[24:53.280 --> 24:59.300]  Attention scraping for me is like data scraping, but for your eyeballs.
[24:59.540 --> 25:04.620]  It's platforms and influencers harvesting micro bursts of attention and sell them on the open market.
[25:04.920 --> 25:08.060]  It's extraction capitalism applied to your focus.
[25:08.060 --> 25:15.280]  So TikTok's infinite scroll or clickbait farms, your attention is their API call.
[25:15.780 --> 25:26.020]  So in a certain way, it is tied into the disruptor porn, but I think it targets a little different segment of the problem.
[25:26.360 --> 25:30.840]  And we just have to be aware that we might be caught into that.
[25:30.840 --> 25:37.820]  And then mom looks at you in the way she looks at you in this little picture and says like, no, don't do that.
[25:37.940 --> 25:38.480]  Don't do that.
[25:39.340 --> 25:40.360]  Idolatry politics.
[25:40.560 --> 25:50.480]  I mean, I can talk about I can talk about identity politics a lot and the problems with it and the positive aspects of identity politics.
[25:50.480 --> 26:01.780]  But what I found really interesting is that a lot of identity politics in recent years has become idolatry politics so that politics mutates into mere fandom.
[26:02.080 --> 26:07.500]  Instead of debating systems, people worship personalities, leaders become idols, memes, collectibles.
[26:07.660 --> 26:09.560]  It's religion with with hashtags.
[26:09.560 --> 26:19.260]  So, of course, mega hats, Elon Musk cults, influencer politicians, but also Jordan Peterson and Judith Butler.
[26:19.480 --> 26:22.060]  I mean, it doesn't really matter if it's on the left or on the right.
[26:22.220 --> 26:33.780]  There is a certain tendency to do that stuff because more and more people are reluctant to actually learn about ideology, learn stuff, read stuff.
[26:33.780 --> 26:38.260]  And they just like think of like, yeah, just because that guy or that person says it.
[26:39.020 --> 26:46.020]  Or if I heard like a 10 minute video by someone on YouTube, I understand the world.
[26:46.660 --> 26:50.680]  No, those personalities profit from your attention.
[26:50.920 --> 26:56.180]  Of course, they profit from every second that you view their content or you talk about them.
[26:56.180 --> 26:58.440]  So be aware of that.
[26:59.100 --> 27:13.300]  So the punchline would be we stop debugging the code of democracy or whatever political superstructure we're talking about and started collecting Funko Pops of fascists.
[27:14.060 --> 27:22.720]  I have a really strange relationship to that, especially in the hacker world.
[27:22.720 --> 27:29.460]  I mean, I don't have to remind you of like a wonderful little cult leaders like Jacob Applebaum.
[27:29.780 --> 27:43.180]  But so there is a tendency in humans of liking people who they adore, of people who know something they want to know.
[27:43.180 --> 27:54.740]  But I think we really have to be very much aware of the situation that the hacker community should be more about an exchange of things.
[27:54.920 --> 28:02.480]  Just like because I'm standing here on stage and I have a certain level of power now because I'm holding the microphone and I'm talking something.
[28:02.980 --> 28:07.040]  You still have the possibility to go or ask questions or something like that.
[28:07.040 --> 28:09.840]  And I will be sitting down there and listening to someone else.
[28:09.960 --> 28:16.400]  So we have to remind ourselves that the really important thing about being human is not about idolization.
[28:16.860 --> 28:20.080]  It's not about like, oh, that guy wrote like 12 books.
[28:20.080 --> 28:21.160]  He must be so great.
[28:21.820 --> 28:23.700]  Most of that stuff is pure chance.
[28:24.640 --> 28:40.380]  Most authors, most writers, most people in high academia, they are only there because of certain levels of power, certain levels of privilege, certain levels of chance, that they were at the right time, at the right moment.
[28:40.700 --> 28:52.660]  So just like try to forget all that stuff when you're interacting with people and when you're interacting with knowledge and you listen to people, it's really important to not fall into that trap.
[28:52.660 --> 28:59.300]  So, and especially interesting for nerd communities, there's what I would call the irony drift.
[28:59.620 --> 29:08.980]  And the irony drift is when satire or irony drifts out of context and gets taken literally or exploited by actors who claim it's just a joke.
[29:09.180 --> 29:11.950]  The virus of irony that poisons discourse.
[29:12.720 --> 29:17.360]  And of course, we have paper the frog and edgy memes becoming fascist symbols and that kind of stuff.
[29:17.360 --> 29:23.040]  But we can also see that on a more normal level.
[29:23.040 --> 29:36.500]  I mean, for Peppa the frog and edgy memes becoming fascist symbols, we have, of course, like the Internet is the only place where Nazis can say Heil Hitler and people still argue if it was sarcasm.
[29:36.680 --> 29:37.980]  Of course, that's happening.
[29:38.120 --> 29:38.180]  Yeah.
[29:38.440 --> 29:49.520]  But at the same time, the problem of irony and the problem of like really marking something as irony or marking something as humor is really important.
[29:49.520 --> 29:55.660]  In the meantime, the biggest problem we have is this like tower of Babel that we're in.
[29:55.800 --> 29:57.620]  But it's not a tower of Babel of languages.
[29:57.620 --> 30:00.940]  It's a tower of Babel of emotional states.
[30:00.940 --> 30:12.280]  So, someone might be really into something, adores something, likes something, immediately feels attacked by someone, makes a joke about it.
[30:12.560 --> 30:17.300]  So, there is this like, almost like this like stepping stones of, in German, we call it Befindlichkeit.
[30:19.540 --> 30:37.980]  It's kind of hard to translate what Befindlichkeit means in English, but it's almost like this like zone of landmines that we're walking around in and we don't know on what psychological and emotional level we are entering in conversation with other people.
[30:37.980 --> 30:47.940]  And we kind of have to remind ourselves is we might step on a landmine by doing something or we might actually be able to help someone else remove a landmine.
[30:48.120 --> 30:55.800]  So like, I'm not sure if that's an interesting or positive way of thinking of the world of like walking around and looking for landmines.
[30:55.800 --> 30:56.720]  Probably not.
[30:56.940 --> 30:59.860]  But let's frame it more positive.
[31:00.220 --> 31:02.280]  I think the world is an invitation.
[31:02.600 --> 31:02.700]  Yeah.
[31:03.160 --> 31:10.700]  And the world is an open invitation for discourse, an open invitation for having friendly encounters with the world.
[31:10.700 --> 31:20.040]  And we have to remind ourselves in all the paranoia that this is really, really necessary, even with the little frog who became a fascist.
[31:20.040 --> 31:23.800]  So we live in autonomy prisons.
[31:24.180 --> 31:26.800]  I might call it that way.
[31:26.940 --> 31:30.220]  The paradox of being forced into a total freedom.
[31:30.500 --> 31:36.940]  Artists and hackers celebrated as autonomous geniuses, but left isolated, precarious and powerless.
[31:37.340 --> 31:43.600]  So the myth of the tortured artist versus collective worker struggles in factories.
[31:44.300 --> 31:49.760]  Jason Scott keeps reminding people of like, join your local union.
[31:50.440 --> 31:51.820]  Hello, Mr. Top Hat.
[31:55.380 --> 31:57.560]  Yes, I'm a European.
[31:57.960 --> 32:01.700]  I like the idea of like, we have to all join unions if it's possible.
[32:02.560 --> 32:12.040]  Just like remind yourself that you are being exploited because you love what you're doing.
[32:12.040 --> 32:21.360]  So many people out there tell me they get paid a really, really bad wage just because they like their job.
[32:21.800 --> 32:37.900]  Or they get tricked into like the old problem of command capitalism and the old problem that Foucault talks about that we are all in a disciplinary society.
[32:37.900 --> 32:43.060]  We are all in a society where we understand the rules of society.
[32:43.520 --> 32:49.860]  And the more diffused the rules of society gets, the more flat the hierarchies get in a company.
[32:50.360 --> 32:55.640]  If your boss is suddenly your friend, it doesn't mean that your boss is still your friend.
[32:55.760 --> 33:02.940]  He just plays the friend because it's better psychology wise for the company because you're easier to exploit.
[33:02.940 --> 33:04.520]  Five more minutes?
[33:04.780 --> 33:05.560]  Okay, wonderful.
[33:06.300 --> 33:07.180]  Let's go.
[33:07.400 --> 33:08.300]  I'm almost dead.
[33:08.440 --> 33:09.280]  Yeah, that's perfect.
[33:10.480 --> 33:23.160]  The willy-nilly nichization trap is that countercultures and subcultures retreat into cozy niches that once promised freedom but end up becoming bubbles of self-glorification and paralysis.
[33:23.160 --> 33:26.700]  And I see that in the hacker community in some points.
[33:27.020 --> 33:32.580]  But the best examples, punk after 1980 turning into a lifestyle enclave.
[33:32.760 --> 33:44.300]  Hacker spaces reduced to hobby clubs and completely losing this like wonderful subversive energy that they had before.
[33:44.660 --> 33:50.380]  Punchline, your safe space became your cage, but at least the stickers are cool.
[33:50.380 --> 33:54.900]  So, are you always there?
[33:55.080 --> 33:55.960]  I'm almost there at the end.
[33:56.120 --> 33:57.660]  Dunning-Kruger warship.
[33:58.040 --> 34:00.440]  I'm pretty sure you know what Dunning-Kruger is.
[34:01.760 --> 34:04.720]  Celebrating loud confidence over actual competence.
[34:04.980 --> 34:09.940]  The cultural elevation of people who don't know what they don't know.
[34:10.200 --> 34:14.040]  So, tech bros explaining economics after reading one blog post.
[34:14.480 --> 34:18.380]  Conspiracy influences with more followers than facts.
[34:18.380 --> 34:25.240]  So, why fix ignorance when you can monetize it?
[34:25.380 --> 34:31.420]  And that's, I guess, a general problem of data capitalism and control capitalism.
[34:32.340 --> 34:35.840]  You don't need any skills to sell a product.
[34:36.360 --> 34:42.880]  You just need to be loud and you just need the perfect tool to get it out.
[34:42.880 --> 34:48.980]  But that is, of course, like not helping anyone besides your own bank account.
[34:49.160 --> 34:51.800]  And we see how that is working out.
[34:52.000 --> 34:56.740]  So, my final term is what I call empathy payload.
[34:57.100 --> 35:01.960]  It's probably the only positive term in my little realm here.
[35:01.960 --> 35:06.880]  And it's... I'm not sure if it's an antidote, but let's call it that way.
[35:07.360 --> 35:09.640]  Transgression with values baked in.
[35:09.880 --> 35:17.100]  The prank, the hack, the intervention that doesn't just shock, but also carries solidarity, care, and progressive intent inside it.
[35:17.240 --> 35:21.520]  That sounds like old fuzzy-duzzy, do-wee-wee, hippie, whatever.
[35:21.740 --> 35:23.520]  But it is true.
[35:23.980 --> 35:26.100]  I've seen things like that happening.
[35:26.100 --> 35:34.060]  I've seen... there's this old bumper sticker, random acts of kindness, you know, like commit random acts of kindness.
[35:34.280 --> 35:35.540]  And I still like that.
[35:35.660 --> 35:42.260]  So, if there's one thing that is left of the hippie revolution of the 1960s, I think it's that bumper sticker.
[35:42.720 --> 35:54.160]  So, we have to remind ourselves that if your hack doesn't carry an empathy payload, it's just skin cancer for humanity.
[35:54.160 --> 36:03.580]  So, we don't want to end up like QAnon, pretty much like racist malware that is trying to install in a lot of brains out there.
[36:03.780 --> 36:06.220]  So, thank you so much.
[36:06.840 --> 36:08.380]  Thank you for being here.
[36:08.600 --> 36:09.900]  Thank you for listening to me.
[36:11.280 --> 36:12.760]  The future is garbage.
[36:13.540 --> 36:15.260]  The garbage is beautiful.
[36:16.040 --> 36:16.680]  Log off.
[36:16.840 --> 36:18.900]  But don't forget to save.
[36:19.100 --> 36:19.500]  Thank you.
[36:30.870 --> 36:31.710]  There we go.
[36:31.710 --> 36:33.530]  Thank you very much, Giannis.
[36:34.350 --> 36:37.170]  We're going to start the question and answer portion of the program.
[36:37.630 --> 36:40.850]  We've got a good 12 minutes for questions.
[36:41.110 --> 36:46.950]  If you are on Matrix, please at tag ManChicken so that I see your question.
[36:50.780 --> 36:51.300]  Hey.
[36:51.460 --> 36:52.100]  Come on.
[36:56.520 --> 36:57.420]  Hey, Giannis.
[36:58.780 --> 36:59.180]  Hello.
[37:00.140 --> 37:00.540]  Hello.
[37:02.060 --> 37:02.460]  Another...
[37:02.460 --> 37:05.980]  I really enjoyed your talk and a litany of all these talks of yours I've enjoyed over the years.
[37:05.980 --> 37:08.520]  And I'm not asking this as a right way.
[37:08.820 --> 37:14.340]  But all these terms are really, really clever and I really enjoy them.
[37:14.640 --> 37:35.560]  But don't you think there's a danger where all oppositional camps, they define the other camp as being more top-down than bottom-up and kind of negate the bottom-up phenomenon that led to the other camp forming and that's kind of like a very powerful dividing force in our society right now?
[37:35.560 --> 37:36.780]  Okay.
[37:37.500 --> 37:40.000]  I hope I understand the question.
[37:40.360 --> 37:44.040]  So, you're talking about the dividing line between...
[37:44.040 --> 37:44.620]  Like...
[37:44.620 --> 37:45.240]  We're looking...
[37:45.240 --> 37:46.680]  The manufacturing descent.
[37:46.900 --> 37:47.300]  Yeah, exactly.
[37:47.480 --> 37:47.620]  Okay.
[37:47.660 --> 38:02.620]  It makes the communication of, let's say, the right wing in many places seem very top-down and manufactured rather than representing any bottom-up grievances or aspirations of like...
[38:03.120 --> 38:03.580]  Absolutely.
[38:04.120 --> 38:07.220]  Honestly, I mean, the whole Pipa the Frog thing came out of 4chan.
[38:07.520 --> 38:08.260]  So, there is...
[38:08.260 --> 38:09.600]  I mean, it is a combination.
[38:09.820 --> 38:20.320]  Of course, what I'm saying with the manufacturing descent element, it is more like that there are a couple of clever guys in those marketing agencies working for those people.
[38:20.560 --> 38:24.380]  And they milk and market that kind of stuff.
[38:24.580 --> 38:29.220]  They discover, oh, there is like a funny little fascist frog and we use that.
[38:29.220 --> 38:53.120]  So, I'm not saying that Pipa the Frog made Trump president, but there is an element of like using meme culture and using what technically would be like subversive culture in the means of like making ultra right-wing politicians like the president of the United States or something like that.
[38:53.120 --> 38:55.380]  So, does that kind of...
[38:55.380 --> 38:58.720]  Sorry, I'm just going to do like one clarification.
[38:58.720 --> 39:20.060]  I guess what I meant is like with phenomenon like Brexit or like recent electoral results, like the danger is that or maybe there's a danger that the terms that we use, they become reductive of the other side, right?
[39:20.060 --> 39:28.120]  And because of that, any legitimate bottom-up concerns or phenomenon are sort of not addressed.
[39:28.340 --> 39:38.780]  And, you know, like we don't make the right political coalitions or outreaches that kind of prevent suboptimal electoral outcomes.
[39:40.180 --> 39:43.720]  I'm not even... I'm not disagreeing, like absolutely.
[39:44.060 --> 39:48.740]  So, the main problem we have nowadays is the differentiation between...
[39:48.740 --> 39:59.060]  I mean, in general, we have the big problem of that we have something like micropolitics, politics that we can coordinate on a local level, on a small level.
[39:59.060 --> 40:00.660]  And then there's macropolitics.
[40:00.780 --> 40:04.700]  I have no idea of how to influence what Putin is doing.
[40:05.040 --> 40:07.560]  Like there's no way doing that, yeah?
[40:08.340 --> 40:15.140]  I guess... I think it's probably important to remind people that on the micropolitical level, there's way more stuff that you can do.
[40:16.620 --> 40:25.140]  And there are so many people who say like, oh, they're fearing Thanksgiving because they don't want to talk to their parents because it's all about like, I don't know, like Fox News or something like that, yeah?
[40:25.140 --> 40:30.060]  But I think this is just like throwing away a lot of potential of actual real change.
[40:30.500 --> 40:35.780]  So, there is... I think... I mean, we are all little grassroot generators.
[40:36.000 --> 40:42.560]  And we cannot forget that we are that and that there's potential to that and we cannot just like leave it all to the algorithms.
[40:43.040 --> 40:52.060]  And so, we cannot all blame it on Zuckerberg, but we should also blame it to a certain extent also to ourselves because we are part of that.
[40:52.060 --> 40:53.540]  So, it's... yeah.
[40:54.260 --> 40:54.980]  Thank you.
[40:58.320 --> 41:08.680]  I think it was on the slide titled or the word idolatry politics when you were talking about like ideology and how people don't investigate it.
[41:08.780 --> 41:14.880]  And there was a quiff about Jordan Peterson and Judith Butler kind of being like two sides of the same coin.
[41:14.880 --> 41:16.940]  And I was wondering if you could kind of like explain that.
[41:17.320 --> 41:25.200]  Not two sides of the same coin, but I would call it more attracting certain audiences.
[41:25.260 --> 41:26.240]  Let's call it that way.
[41:26.340 --> 41:31.780]  There are certain audiences that Judith Butler is talking to and there are certain audiences that Jordan Peterson is talking to.
[41:31.780 --> 41:34.600]  I mean, that can't be, I guess, denied.
[41:34.820 --> 41:38.080]  They have their...
[41:39.040 --> 41:40.460]  I took no offense to it.
[41:40.480 --> 41:42.680]  I was just curious because I thought it was interesting.
[41:43.060 --> 41:47.620]  I don't think they are like on one side of the spectrum or the other side of the spectrum.
[41:47.620 --> 42:04.000]  I'm not saying that, but it's quite interesting for me what names come up and what people and what academics are being referred to in something like mainstream TikTok posts or something like that.
[42:04.060 --> 42:06.980]  So I'm not talking about like high academia or something like that.
[42:07.240 --> 42:08.180]  But like who is like...
[42:08.180 --> 42:10.340]  Or Slava Zizek would be a good example.
[42:10.760 --> 42:15.760]  Slava Zizek is this like almost like pop culture Marxist who is just like being...
[42:15.760 --> 42:17.160]  He's just like everywhere.
[42:17.460 --> 42:17.600]  Yeah.
[42:17.600 --> 42:20.760]  And it's interesting to see why those...
[42:21.380 --> 42:29.220]  Why is Judith Butler and Slava Zizek and Jordan Peterson suddenly like so visible?
[42:29.420 --> 42:29.640]  Why?
[42:29.760 --> 42:30.860]  Why did that happen?
[42:30.900 --> 42:32.840]  And I'm very interested in those mechanisms.
[42:33.160 --> 42:40.020]  Like they become cultural references without people really even understanding like totally or investigating what it is that they're talking about.
[42:40.320 --> 42:40.420]  Yeah.
[42:40.800 --> 42:40.940]  Yeah.
[42:41.140 --> 42:41.240]  Yeah.
[42:41.460 --> 42:41.780]  Yeah.
[42:41.960 --> 42:42.500]  But thank you.
[42:45.160 --> 42:46.460]  Thanks for a great presentation.
[42:47.220 --> 42:50.300]  Great list of things to pay attention to and put names to phenomena.
[42:51.220 --> 42:58.660]  I'm just going to humbly suggest that the attention scraping, I think a better definition for that is the things that you're seeing in a lot of these modern...
[42:58.660 --> 43:07.280]  These AI squares on search engines where they keep you from going to a website with the information and they just show it to you on the same page that you...
[43:07.280 --> 43:07.820]  Yes.
[43:08.080 --> 43:08.260]  Wonderful.
[43:08.440 --> 43:08.940]  Thank you so much.
[43:09.040 --> 43:09.520]  Yeah, absolutely.
[43:12.320 --> 43:12.620]  Hi.
[43:12.720 --> 43:13.300]  Thanks for the talk.
[43:13.840 --> 43:16.840]  One thing I was curious about, like you mentioned, you were just banned from X, right?
[43:18.120 --> 43:21.800]  And essentially, it's probably because you were working against their goals, right?
[43:21.800 --> 43:33.380]  And so I was curious if you had any advice on like utilizing these systems built by capitalism to reach a lot of people, but not necessarily reinforcing the business itself, right?
[43:34.020 --> 43:34.660]  Oh, yeah.
[43:35.100 --> 43:35.560]  Oh, yeah.
[43:35.680 --> 43:37.320]  The thing is that...
[43:37.320 --> 43:46.300]  So we are like, as our group, we are still running our own server, like mail server and web server since like pretty much like the mid 90s or something like that.
[43:47.060 --> 44:01.540]  It's so interesting because we are trying to a certain degree to have our own home base to use that kind of stuff to still use mailing lists and something like that to reach out to people because it's a way more direct way of like approaching people.
[44:01.540 --> 44:03.900]  But at the same time, of course, we are on everything.
[44:03.900 --> 44:04.700]  We are on Facebook.
[44:04.960 --> 44:05.860]  We are on Blue Sky.
[44:06.120 --> 44:07.900]  We are like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[44:08.020 --> 44:08.100]  Yeah.
[44:08.960 --> 44:17.300]  But at the same time, I kind of have to remind myself this is not don't build your world on someone else's service.
[44:18.320 --> 44:18.880]  You don't.
[44:18.880 --> 44:19.460]  You shouldn't.
[44:19.580 --> 44:20.140]  You might.
[44:20.300 --> 44:20.980]  You might be really.
[44:21.080 --> 44:30.660]  I mean, Yasmin, who is sitting there in the audience, she's running the porn film festival in Vienna and you couldn't and it's a it's a queer feminist porn film festival.
[44:30.660 --> 44:30.900]  Yeah.
[44:31.160 --> 44:35.420]  And you wouldn't believe how many times her social media accounts get deleted.
[44:35.700 --> 44:50.040]  But at the same time, the target audience of what she's doing is like, you know, like 20, 25 year old people who might be interested in that stuff, want to go to see like a queer porn film in the cinema in Vienna.
[44:50.200 --> 44:50.260]  Yeah.
[44:50.560 --> 44:52.020]  So how do you reach those people?
[44:52.240 --> 44:53.560]  They are on TikTok.
[44:53.800 --> 44:54.620]  They are on Instagram.
[44:54.620 --> 45:00.780]  So it's kind of hard to bypass something like that because it has such an accumulative force.
[45:01.160 --> 45:02.420]  So what do you do?
[45:03.200 --> 45:06.900]  It's it's very like it's a Sisyphusian.
[45:07.940 --> 45:08.720]  What is it?
[45:08.720 --> 45:09.480]  Is that the term?
[45:09.740 --> 45:09.940]  Yes.
[45:10.160 --> 45:10.700]  Sisyphusian task.
[45:11.300 --> 45:11.440]  Yeah.
[45:11.900 --> 45:13.220]  It sounds weird.
[45:13.500 --> 45:14.440]  It's Greek probably.
[45:14.940 --> 45:15.120]  Okay.
[45:15.580 --> 45:16.300]  But yeah.
[45:16.460 --> 45:17.400]  So what do we do?
[45:17.400 --> 45:31.560]  In the meantime, we realized that we even have the problem running our own mail server, that my email address, like the Monochrome IT email address, gets blocked by so many mail services because they think it's a spam email address.
[45:32.340 --> 45:34.180]  I mean, we never send out spam or anything like that.
[45:34.260 --> 45:36.380]  It's just like, you know, oh, it's not a hotmail.
[45:36.460 --> 45:37.100]  It's not a Gmail.
[45:37.440 --> 45:38.720]  It might be spam.
[45:38.820 --> 45:39.960]  Let's pre-flag it.
[45:39.960 --> 45:48.000]  So I sometimes don't even know if people get my emails because it might end up on some spam filter.
[45:48.720 --> 45:52.800]  So running your own infrastructure, running your own stuff is a lot of work.
[45:53.180 --> 46:05.980]  It probably takes 10% of our workloads in our organization to run our own infrastructure, but we wouldn't want to miss it because there's no alternative to some of the stuff.
[46:05.980 --> 46:19.060]  We cannot publish some of the work we do on other platforms than our own web servers sometimes because it's just like, oh, jail time, sweet jail time.
[46:20.020 --> 46:21.000]  So, yeah.
[46:21.360 --> 46:22.780]  So there is another way.
[46:22.940 --> 46:39.100]  So, I mean, I think just like my point would be just to remind people that they should probably build a second standing, like maybe a second or third leg of digital presence that is very important.
[46:39.900 --> 46:40.580]  Thank you.
[46:40.740 --> 46:41.400]  Good question.
[46:41.640 --> 46:43.900]  Does anyone do that here already?
[46:43.900 --> 46:54.740]  Who has like a second or third leg of digital presence besides mainstream social media platforms?
[46:55.020 --> 46:55.400]  Okay.
[46:56.820 --> 46:57.260]  Huh?
[46:57.920 --> 47:01.260]  I'm disappointed that not more people do that, but we'll see.
[47:02.060 --> 47:04.480]  Maybe next year when you're all in camps.
[47:05.280 --> 47:05.560]  Okay.
[47:06.020 --> 47:06.220]  Yeah.
[47:06.960 --> 47:12.300]  Speaking of, if all the feds in the room could plug their ears for this next question, please.
[47:13.000 --> 47:15.360]  I'm very excited to read this question to you, Johannes.
[47:16.620 --> 47:18.840]  Johannes, how did you even get into the U.S.?
[47:19.160 --> 47:19.640]  Seriously.
[47:20.000 --> 47:28.280]  You've got to be like the most wanted target number one for CBP and the Trump meme administration.
[47:29.280 --> 47:31.040]  Oh, I'm on vacation.
[47:34.680 --> 47:35.320]  I mean...
[47:39.360 --> 47:41.300]  I'm not getting paid for any of this shit.
[47:41.480 --> 47:43.000]  So, like, I'm not even lying.
[47:44.140 --> 47:45.840]  But honestly, I mean, there is...
[47:45.840 --> 47:53.180]  A couple of people ask me, like, it is already my second time in the U.S. in 2025, and people ask me, how is this impossible and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[47:53.820 --> 48:02.480]  So, just remind yourself that you're talking to an officer and an officer is a hammer and the hammer is looking for nails.
[48:02.740 --> 48:05.600]  So just, like, be precise, be short.
[48:06.820 --> 48:11.400]  Don't engage in any more discussion with a border control officer than necessary.
[48:11.900 --> 48:12.000]  Why?
[48:12.260 --> 48:18.700]  There are so many stories in the last couple of months of people who got, like, in detention or something like that.
[48:18.700 --> 48:27.800]  And if you look up and see what those people did, you just, like, think to yourself, like, there needs to be something like power literacy.
[48:28.120 --> 48:35.340]  People have to be told how to talk to officials, how to talk to police officers, how to talk to Customs and Border Patrol.
[48:35.340 --> 48:39.160]  And I'm not even saying, like, lying to them or anything like that.
[48:39.260 --> 48:51.320]  Just, like, there is a certain level of courtesy, strange form of courtesy, but also a strange form of, like, cultural grammar, I would call it, in interacting with those people.
[48:51.820 --> 48:58.360]  Because they do a job that is trained to specifically filter out things.
[48:58.920 --> 49:03.760]  They try to look for things, and the moment they find it, they will not let go, of course.
[49:03.920 --> 49:07.760]  Yeah, so just, I think it's not a big problem to get into the U.S.
[49:07.940 --> 49:15.400]  Just, like, be aware that any crossing of a national border is a major act in your life.
[49:15.560 --> 49:16.600]  Just be aware of that.
[49:17.400 --> 49:18.400]  Stuff can happen.
[49:19.000 --> 49:25.040]  Remind yourselves that we have the nation-state since the Thirty Years' War in 1648 ended.
[49:25.040 --> 49:38.960]  And the nation-state is a pretty solid concept, and it wants to solidify itself and grow and do all the wonderful things like wars and taxes and all that stuff.
[49:39.080 --> 49:39.940]  So, but that's it.
[49:40.140 --> 49:43.420]  We're not gonna see an end to that in the near future.
[49:43.700 --> 49:47.720]  So, live with it and be semi-happy.
[49:49.580 --> 49:50.880]  Thank you so much, Johannes.
[49:51.100 --> 49:53.180]  Let's everybody give him a warm thank you.
[49:53.180 --> 49:53.500]  You definitely, thanks�.
[49:53.520 --> 49:53.640]  Thank you.
[49:53.660 --> 49:53.720]  Thanks, hacemos.
[49:53.740 --> 49:53.780]  Thanksay.
[49:53.800 --> 49:53.880]  Thank you.
[49:54.100 --> 49:54.140]  Thank you.