37: Trevor McFedries - Creative People Should Be Rich

[00:00] The broken and immature is the alpha and what artists are great at. This is like maybe as bizarre as like Duchamp's urinal. Duchamp being like this thing you piss in is art is not something that a market would value. You know, like Warholian tin can. That is effectively what what bonding curves allow people to create a market and be like, no, actually, this is important. And you know, that isn't important. That's slop. And you're like, no, trust me. I think what like great collectors have been able to do historically is like take the side of that bet and be like, yeah, I want all these Warhols.

[00:30] I think it rocks, actually. And I think that is the opportunity on both sides of that market. I've been doing these kind of like gatherings in my home to connect Silicon Valley friends and artist friends. And I brought all these artists together who aren't in those X feeds and aren't aware of this stuff, but have... [00:45] you know, being Ali, being really important work. They were here, and the AI people were kind of assuming that they would agree with that sentiment. But they were like, you know, the AIs don't have intuition, which is why they can't do great art.

And all of the artists were like, I don't know, I think a lot of that stuff is really good. And they were kind of like, wait, what? Whoa. And so I do think there's absolutely going to be a moment where slop is punk. But I also think what's clearly interesting now are the models themselves. [01:15] the big labs to be like, I'm the artist. [01:18] Welcome to Dialectic, Episode 37, with Trevor McFedrys. [01:22] Trevor has lived a few different lives, including as a musician, an entrepreneur, a technologist, and a curious internet person, among other things.

He's also spent much of his career trying to help creative people get rich, which we talk extensively about. That balance between music and entrepreneurship has extended throughout his career to this day. He's part of electronic dance duo Soft with his fiance, and until recently they were touring. [01:52] attention and prediction can affect culture and creativity. Runner will be launching soon. Looking backward on the music side, he started off as DJ Skeet Skeet and joined rap group Swayze when he was about 22 and had a top 10 album in America. He's been a longtime producer and been involved with all kinds of musical acts.

And then he's also started multiple companies, including Brud, whose flagship asset, if you will, was Lil Mikaela, who was one of the first digital creators. You could call her a CGI influencer if you wanted to, but what Trevor was really getting at and what he pitched me, [02:22] when we met around 2016 was that he wanted to create Marvel for pop stars. Brood created several characters alongside Michaela and explored what it would mean to have a creator who wasn't bottlenecked by just a single person with an ego and everything else.

Brood was acquired by Dapper Labs, where Trevor went on to run Dapper Collectives. And Trevor also, while running Brood started FWB or Friends with Benefits, which was a kind of novel type of DAO focused on building a community, maybe even new type of city. [02:52] in the past, both when I interviewed its former mayor, Alex Zhang, as well as when I interviewed Reggie James at FWB Fest, their in-person music culture and crypto festival in Idlewild. As I mentioned, we talked about how creative people can capture more of the value they create, including about how that might require new instruments.

We talked about high and low and the ways that culture and capital intersect. I asked Trevor about [03:16] the ways that he continues to just have a remarkable nose for weird and be ahead of cool, and also what it means to be on time when it comes to cool. He argues that unlike 20 years ago, it might actually be punk to sell out in the modern world. And he talks about why, how despite it being so low status, he continues to return to crypto as a new way to explore how all of this might fit together.

And he's particularly interested in prediction, the value created from it and how value is captured there. I also pushed him to talk about [03:46] or even inaccessible to the rest of us. We wrap up by talking about optimism, particularly for the next generation as Trevor is about to become a father, music and how it's been such a core part of his life, and even the brief period of time where he worked with and was bewildered and yet amazed by Kanye West. I hope you are inspired to be as vigorously curious as Trevor is as he spends his days.

I know I was. Before we get into the episode, I would like to thank Notion, the presenting [04:17] Notion is a collaborative workspace for teams and people doing their life's work. And these days, it's never been higher leverage and more powerful thanks to AI and the agents that take away the busy work and allow you to focus on the important, creative, collaborative work. Notion's how I prepare for all my episodes. I throw ideas and quotes and clues and excerpts into a big document, and then I synthesize them and try to find the patterns and the interesting points of conversation or questions that I want to dive deep on with my guests.

[04:46] AI and agents are tremendously helpful for helping me find those patterns and make sense of it all. And Notion obviously becomes so much more powerful when you're working collaboratively with a team. It's no coincidence that so many startups and the world's best companies turn their ideas into action thanks to Notion. If you don't use Notion, you can check it out at com slash dialectic. I'm so grateful to them for supporting the show, and I'm thankful to you for listening. [05:16] wherever you're listening or watching. With that... [05:19] Here is Trevor McFedries.

[05:21] Trevor McFedry's, we made it. We did it, buddy. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming by. I'm very excited. This is overdue. I think we were going to try to do this like six months ago. Yeah. Here we are. We made it. I love it. [05:31] We're going to start with [05:32] I think one of the main through lines of your life, or at least your working life, which is, I think is a tweet from you. I think creative people should be rich. [05:40] Yes. [05:41] I think it's like kind of like your big quest almost or one of them.

[05:45] Yeah, I think it's probably because I'm old enough that when I'm, so when I was 22, I joined this like rap group called Swayze. Yeah. We put out a big album, a top 10 album in the States. And I was kind of thrust into the dying corpse of the music biz. And I got to see a taste. Yeah. You know, I remember going to this record producer, I won't name, who had like one kind of hit in the 90s. And he had this like $5 million house in the hills in this thick studio.

And it like didn't really compute because we had like a kind of hit and I was still fucking broke. [06:15] And so there was like a taste of what could have been with this – [06:19] deep desire for information to be free that I had as a product of the internet. And so there's always been this tension. And I think that probably encapsulates it. [06:27] Why aren't creative people rich? [06:30] Or richer. [06:31] Richard, I mean, there's probably a lot of reasons, but I think at – [06:36] In my heart, I believe there's an instrument problem, right?

There are like creative people producing a ton of value in Williamsburg 20 years ago, but the instruments that captured that value were properties. And so if you were a real estate developer or someone who owned a nice amount of properties, you got very wealthy. You didn't produce any of the value in the day-to-day life of Williamsburgians. And I think as a result, that's probably why I got deeply into crypto, is it was like, here's an opportunity to create new instruments that can capture value and pass them back. [07:03] How do you think about the instrument thing?

[07:05] in the kind of more traditional, like, capital versus labor thing? Is it the same? Or are you getting at something more specific? Historically, you know, I was kind of extremist. Grew up super poor in the Midwest. Discovered Rage Against the Machine was radicalized. Like, reading Eldridge Cleaver in my, like, fifth grade English class, teachers were concerned. I was very interested in kind of, [07:26] socializing things, by bringing, redistributing all that wealth, not actually almost like [07:32] true like a creative supremacist you know where i'm kind of inverted and i think creative people should be billionaires and people that are effectively participating in this forever 21 economy of just ripping off things and like you know should be minimized and and it's probably been uncomfortable to become explicit but like ultimately i think the idea of labor versus capital is is a limited framing i think i'm interested in playing the game on the field

[08:02] revolution you know it's probably like crass for folks out there who are familiar with literature like a planet says like modern venture-backed technology environment but i think there's an opportunity to effectively play the game on the field and to create instruments that can pass value back to the people that make life worth living not just those who know how to trade derivatives or bonds or stocks or whatever it is [08:22] Is the internet, like... [08:24] What do you think the Internet's role has been in this? And to what extent?

Do you feel like the Internet has missed out or failed its potential? [08:32] Or was this the inevitable or most likely outcome where we are now? [08:36] I'm old enough to recognize that it's probably the most likely outcome. I've been through a few cycles that this is going to change everything, whether it was dance music with Blog House. We were like, we're going to reinvent dance music and change everything. It was like, wait, why is am here? You're like, oh, shit. He kind of took all this out and made millions, and my homies are still broke driving DoorDash or whatever.

He's somehow everywhere. But there are effectively those kind of participants in all kinds of culture, and I think you recognize it in Silicon Valley. You see it in Hollywood. You see it in C. [09:06] that can kind of like, you know, understand what's next and ride the wave. So obviously, Internet devalued media. Like, that's like table stakes for anyone who's a dialectic listener. I'm sure they can appreciate that. But I think the things that are underappreciated is that there are kind of these – [09:22]... [09:23] And charlatans oftentimes will recognize an emergent trend and accelerate it and create all this pompous amount of radical it can be, knowing that it will effectively change things more or less 5%.

And if they can insert themselves into that 5%, they can get ludicrously wealthy. And I don't want to sound like some doomer, but I think that that's ultimately the game on the field. I think the people that are coming up with net new ideas and innovation should be that 5%, not the charlatans that insert themselves. I think we'll come back to that. [09:53] you are decidedly not a doomer so i think it's important to establish that up front um [09:58] Maybe on that last note, like the extractor thing a little bit, like a different take there would just be like, [10:04] So there's a cynical view that just says, like, the reason creative people aren't rich is there's these extractors, there's these opportunists who aren't even the creatives themselves.

There's a maybe less cynical view that says, like... [10:14] Drake's super rich. - Totally. - And depending on the medium, like, [10:19] Music's complicated in a lot of reasons, but there are... [10:22] very clear ways to get rich in music in a way that's probably less legible or less obvious if you're doing something more esoteric. If you're a ceramicist or you're a fine artist, like, [10:30] So maybe the less cynical view is just like medium matters a whole ton, and some mediums are much more commercial than other mediums. Certainly, yeah.

And I think the word creator is thrown around a ton right now. And I think I like to decouple this idea of like creative supremacy, whatever I'm coining now, from someone who is grabbing Tumblr graphics off the Internet and throwing them on T-shirts to someone who's like truly innovating. And when I talk about creative people, I mean founders. I mean scientists. [11:00] that are advancing this thing we call life. And so the challenge for me has always been that even in the culture industries, there were this commercial space, and then there was kind of more institutions that recognized that their role was to recognize things that were advancing this thing called life that wouldn't necessarily play nice in the commercial marketplace.

Now you can go to a museum and see a Cause show. [11:24] Cause has done his thing. I won't go there. But Cause has done financially really well in the commercial marketplace. [11:30] a Uniqlo in CECAWS? Do you need to go to a museum in CECAWS? I don't think so. And so you've kind of seen that proliferate everywhere across the culture industry. So the challenge for me now is saying, okay, if we have this opportunity to rethink what we're doing, can we find a way to repatriate attention and value to people that are making these like net new things, and maybe not the people that have found a way to just package them and repurpose them and...

[11:52] user distribution to capture the upside. Again, I recognize that probably isn't going to happen, but if we can move the needle 5%, I would be elated. [12:02] You have a line, I think you mentioned to me, we were talking a while ago, that it's easier for someone to raise $3 million than to raise $300,000, especially for creative people. Yeah. Yeah. [12:14] Maybe this is getting at part of your last answer, which is like you're almost talking about creativity through the lens of like ignition or like that that kind of like genesis of things or originality, whatever you want to call that.

Like, why is that? [12:26] Maybe that specific example isn't quite the point, but why is that? [12:30] 300K over 3 million, an important... [12:33] Like, what are you pointing at when you say that? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things. I think one of the things we don't recognize, I think, is that catch-22, where in order to be given opportunity, you need to prove that you can do things. And oftentimes that challenge and that chasm prevents a lot of really brilliant people from being able to capitalize and provide value to all of us more broadly.

And so you often get this conundrum where, I don't know, I grew up in Iowa, and, you know, lucky enough to move to Los Angeles and encountered all these people who were celebrated. It's supposed to be really special. [13:03] they were not that much different than my friends I grew up skateboarding with. But because they had peers, friends, uncles, they could get their foot in the door in a mailroom. Infrastructure. Infrastructure. They could prove something and then be given a little more rope, and be given a little more rope, and all of a sudden they're able to go raise a million and a half dollars seed round and take a big swing.

And so the... [13:22] The challenge for me is that getting that initial approach, [13:26] like $30,000 to create a t-shirt company to prove that you can build something is really hard. And people often don't cross that chasm. And so the idea that it's easier for folks, you know, even an established creator to go as a million and a half dollars to go do something really big and ambitious and fail, right? And just do something small and prove it out and be able to increment it there is this interesting, you know, I think thought that to me provoked startup ideas and other things that people could be solving for potentially, because there is probably something [13:56] - Yes, yeah, I think agency is this sort of like, it's almost like an escalator or something where like, [14:03] there's this reciprocal relationship.

One of my favorite ideas is this guy, T. Nguyen, he talks about games, and they're like, what a game designer's doing is that [14:11] they're creating a tension between your abilities and your goals. That's like not too far out of step. Yeah. Because like, um, if you play a level one of the video game and it's really hard, you're going to get bored. And if it's too easy, you're also going to get bored. And it's like, [14:24] There's a sort of like [14:25] part financial, part the world helping you, but it's like, yeah, those two things – [14:30] $100K to go do a little bit.

Even if you're Elon Musk, by the way, building SpaceX, it wasn't like, here's a billion dollars, go nuts. Totally. Yeah, I've always appreciated... [14:41] complex video games that are able to introduce complexity to you step by step and walk you through. I remember when Game of Thrones was massive, there was this kind of dominant narrative that there's no more attention spans, people can't focus on anything. And I watched the first episode and it was like the white wolves of the north. I had to take notes and I was like, complexity done well is the most powerful thing.

People have decided to decline to even attempt. And so I love when games and films, those things introduce all of that. [15:11] um, [15:11] You have, there's this quote from Yancey Strickler that you quote tweeted that I think is pointing at something really interesting. I'll read Yancey first. He said, the idea of quote unquote selling out implies a hopeful nostalgia of choice beyond market pressures. Among younger creators I talked to in whose brains the algorithm is directly embedded, not selling out feels like an impossible luxury from a faraway time too risky to attempt, but a fantasy they dream of one day indulging.

And then you quote tweeted and you said, increasingly feels like artists who opt out of the algorithm [15:41] isn't algo-friendly are seen as posh slash nepo slash trust fund. Playing the algo game to survive is optically punk and honest. [15:51] This is really interesting to me. First off, when did that change? [15:57] Thank you. [15:59] When did it feel to you that it changed? I mean, it's been a slow boil. Like, again, I'm old enough to remember, like, the Beastie Boys being upset their music used in adverts. And then, you know, in kind of my gen, I remember hearing, like, Santigold in Budweiser commercials.

And there being a gen above me that was like, this is fucking still on out. This is terrible. Why would you do that? And then living this moment where it's like, I can't afford to own at home. I don't, like, have a family. Of course I'm taking the Budweiser check. Creative people should be rich. Creative people should be rich. [16:29] I think especially in the last... [16:30] three to four years, the kind of [16:32] dominant understanding of how aesthetics flow and how ideas [16:38] populate has really inverted from the kind of like Bushwick model people are familiar with, where it's like some interesting art person makes something and it gets its way to some Bogue person gets Anna Wintour.

She says it's important and it gets pushed down to a soccer mom in the Midwest to now this more middle out thing where, you know, effectively, I remember like, I forget which TVs I could have talked about making television that was the least inoffensive for the, you know, like the most inoffensive television you can make was the one [17:08] for you algorithms perpetuate a similar idea, where you can go to East Berlin, you can go to Bushwick, you can go to Beverly Hills and see the same aloe yoga outfit on the street.

And I think it's because culture is now middle out. You know, it's just the most... [17:22] inoffensive person is going to capture the most mind share and people will optimize for kind of being that person in order to get opportunities with influence whatever else that isn't groundbreaking um but i do think as a result of that the only people who have been able for the last four or five years to play this kind of art game and opt out of the algorithm are effectively trust fund kids like i don't need to name names but i do love that meme where it's like never ask a woman her

[17:52] Boob link on Wikipedia or whatever, like to be truly indie and like participate in a purely artistic environment while playing the culture industry game, you need to survive. And it's just gotten so dire now that the only way to do it is to effectively be a trust fund kid. So [18:08] The most punk kids I know, you know, are playing social well, whether it's like Ammo and the Sniffers, you know, Australian, like, you know, or like turnstile. Right. Like they've been able to, like, capture these mediums on their own terms, but they haven't opted out entirely.

[18:23] Yeah, it's interesting. It's like... [18:26] One question that's really dumb that I found myself wondering as I was thinking about this is like, [18:31] Are we going to get to the point where like, [18:33] Slop is punk. [18:35] Or like you're sitting inside of this tension, which is like at what point – [18:41] can you like play the algo game and still do all that other stuff we were just talking about, about creating something actually new and still be like, by the way, regardless of what you think about Warhol, what are like, like, [18:50] Being commercial can be really interesting.

Certainly. I think it's funny. I had a conversation. I've been doing these kind of like gatherings in my home to connect Silicon Valley friends and artist friends. And there's this theme in Silicon Valley about taste and how taste is so important. Yes, yes, yes. And I brought together – Which is almost becoming slop. Like that narrative at this point is so regurgitating. Exactly. And I brought all these artists together who aren't in those X feeds and aren't aware of this stuff, [19:20] important work and they were here and the AI people were kind of assuming that they would agree with that sentiment.

But they were like, you know, the AIs don't have intuition, which is why they can't do great art. And all of the artists are like, I don't know, I think a lot of stuff is really good. And they were kind of like, wait, what? And so I do think there's absolutely going to be a moment where, you know, slop is punk and interesting. You're seeing some interesting, [19:50] models themselves and like, you know, creating in latent space. And I think that as people begin to appreciate that, as they have the kind of the contextual awareness of how these models work, they're going to really appreciate some of those things.

And I think it will be probably uncomfortable for researchers at the big labs to be like, I'm the artist. [20:09] I'm making the most interesting cultural work? Or at least I'm making the medium or whatever. Yeah, I'm making the most interesting cultural work of the moment. And I think a lot of artists would be like, yeah, absolutely. Like, I clearly made this cool wall work, but like, what you're doing is absolutely the most important reflection of this current cultural moment. I think it's really interesting. [20:25] I think... [20:26] Maybe I'm just too on Twitter.

I would be shocked if most people... [20:31] would have any intuition that like [20:33] quote-unquote real artists or serious artists felt that way. Like, and maybe part of that is that, I should probably be careful here, but, like, the sort of mid-wit artist on the internet is just complaining about it. Like, you say the words AI, and they're going to, like, have a meltdown. Yeah, I would say, like, capital A art world versus, like, [20:52] in our world that [20:56] This is dangerous as well. I really wanted to go to design school.

I went over to RISD. That was my dream. I was a football player, and I could go for that for free, so I ended up doing that instead. But I would take these summer programs. So many possible timelines in your life. Yeah, bizarre. I remember I went to Otis, a design school here in Los Angeles, for a summer program. And I was just really intrigued as to how I was going to meet these artists that were just like me. And when I was confronted with the people that would just draw like, [21:25] anime and hentai and dragons and they were really good at drawing dragons but there weren't really any new ideas and where i found the people that i was drawn to were actually in like you know the corners of 4chan or like random streetwear stores places that were emergent and actually quite interesting and people that wanted to find like new forms of expression would kind of huddle around yeah [21:48] Yeah.

What do you think the relationship, I think this is very related to, [21:52] And it also a can of worms. Like, what do you think the relationship between authenticity and creativity is? Is authenticity... I think one thing I felt myself feeling is like authenticity is almost like ridiculous. Like, at least when it became an aesthetic, like, is it even worth talking about? Like, maybe the other part of this question would be like, is there such a thing as like pure... [22:11] art or creativity originality, [22:14] I would say there is conceptually, but when I talk about creativity or even authenticity, it's like talking about nirvana.

It's like this end state that I think you can aspire towards, but I'm not sure that it's achievable. I do think authenticity was maybe the buzzword. It was like the taste of five, ten years ago. And because we were doing Michaela at the time, that was often a question I was confronted with by new hires or VCs or whatever. And what I always try to explain to them is that authenticity can take a lot of different forms. [22:44] I think ultimately what I'm looking for in great artwork is, is honesty, like a, you know, a, a, a connection to you who is themselves a divine bridge to something.

And, you know, I actually, this is a bit of a tangent, but I was in that, uh, Timothy Chalamet, Bob Dylan moment. There was an interview with Bob Dylan where they were talking about his songwriting process and saying, you wrote these songs so long ago, you know, and he more or less alluded to the fact he's like not able to do that anymore. You know, I thought it was like really compelling, also terrifying because, [23:14] as someone who like wants to tap into that divine stream all the time, the fact that it can come and go, I'm very aware of it in a songwriting room because you watch writers that are just like, and you're like, [23:27] Whoa, where did that come from?

But in building organizations and these kind of marathon things, it's less clear. That said, I think the authenticity piece and what I would relate that to is there are creative people who do commerce explicitly. And I always think about K-pop. You know, they didn't write those songs. They didn't style those clothes. They didn't choreograph those dance moves. But what a beautiful machine. But what a beautiful machine, an appreciative machine. [23:57] you know, arguments with peers who are like, I don't understand why you love Rihanna, but you hate these imposters and these people that you think are like taking attention from people that are actually creative.

And I'm like, I love Rihanna because she's not telling me she's making the two Michelin star steak. She's like, here's a cheeseburger. And I'm like, I do love cheeseburger. This is fantastic. I get frustrated when someone's like, look at this two Michelin star steak. And I'm like, I know all of those references that you're biting just because you're, you know, repurposing [24:27] borrowed nostalgia right and i like i actually seeing this this thing now which is quite interesting like silicon valley's gotten into cultural critique and consciousness and kind of these more abstract concepts and the very uncool humanities are getting quite cool and there's a there's a new emergent founder who's like seen the adam curtis films who can be like and like paraphrase and these vcs are like wow how you know this maven mccluhan we got it all [24:57] why you're especially able to connect these dots but i think again you can do it in a very honest way where you're learning and it's an interest of learning and there are people that are like i have this new idea yeah this is the thing this is the thing you know and that's the frustration i often have where i'm like if you just want to get rich like sell real estate don't purport to be some poet or philosopher and just repurpose ideas for people that aren't familiar with them that's where i get all riled up jackson why the borrowed nostalgia thing came up a few times in [25:27] that and specifically like [25:30] I think you gave one example of Amy Winehouse, but like what is the line between borrowed nostalgia and like every nothing's truly new, but it can be remixed in a way that feels really new.

Yeah, I mean, again, I think there's like there are people who act as a divine bridge and they're able to interpret their environment and kind of share that moment and reflect on that moment with people in really honest ways. And I think, you know, Amy Winehouse, I always use because people are like, Amy was doing nostalgia. [26:00] you know like talking about rehab you know through a jazz lens is new it's novel she's staying on the shoulder of giants but she's parsing it through her lived experience that's really important I think that the reason the nostalgia piece is so [26:14] tough for me is as a millennial, we had this generation that effectively was able to do that trick at scale.

Yeah. A bunch of Gen X that didn't know anything. And we were like, fuck, I have the internet. I can just put on a gold chain and reference some eighties rapper and some K rock, you know, dude, a and R guy or radio programmer is like, Whoa, this is a hip hop aesthetic with a rock thing. This is crazy. I've never heard anyone say it like that. It's so crazy. [26:42] unbelievable. It was like you got the answers to the test. Totally. And you could cheat in real time on the test and blow minds.

And so there were all these people that effectively got to LARP [26:55] all these different eras people weren't familiar with and kind of passed through these gates. So everyone wanted to tear down the gates. Like a bunch of millennials, we were like, this sucks. I want to make the decision because I can tell this is dishonest. And then we removed those gates and we were like, maybe some, maybe some of the gates were good. The gatekeepers, can you bring them back? But that's, that's my war on nostalgia. Yeah. [27:14] Before we go into the next thing, I just want to mention the Bob Dylan thing.

I think the optimistic part of that... [27:23] would be... [27:24] I don't know, you hear so many artists, so many musicians in particular, they just like, the songs come from God or whatever. Like, it came to me in a dream, whatever. Whether it's Bob Weir or Rosalia or whatever. [27:35] There's this loose grip on that. I think that I'm Bob Dylan and I did it in the past and I can't do anymore. That's pretty tragic. But I wonder if you have a looser grip on just sometimes they come and I want to be ready for when they come.

[27:48] But, oh, man, it's got to be hard when you... Yeah, I'm kind of on two minds. I don't know much about soccer or football, but my friend Alonzo was talking to me about Messi as being this just, like... [28:00] this gifted savant and ronaldo being this like workhorse i find a lot of that in songwriting and artistic practice you know there are founders you talk to a colis and you're like oh i don't have that gear you know like i just i don't i'm not gonna get there but maybe if i find other ways to create edge i can i can get to this thing that i'm really proud of and and i and i respect both and to me it's almost like a spiritual thing right like there are monks who i imagine have like this [28:30] immediately.

And there are people who have to spend a lot of time getting deep into themselves and closer to God. And that's how I interpret the practice. And I want to honor both. I'm actually probably more aligned with the Ronaldo. [28:42] Because I find myself, I'm not a gifted musician. I just poke buttons and turn knobs until it sounds cool. And it's a struggle. And when I go into sessions and people say, oh, that flat fifth is in that chord. I'm like, I don't. Is it this thing? Or like-- and it's heartbreaking.

But it's also this blessing. I get to find something and let it kill me in a lot of different areas. Yeah, it's almost like you're not a native speaker, but you're trying. The other thing that's interesting to me is-- [29:10] Um... [29:11] You, like Jerry Seinfeld comes to mind, but there's so many creatives who talk about this sort of like... [29:16] I was talking to Gabe Whaley actually about this with the stuff they do at Mischief too. Like they scheduled their brainstorms. It's actually this like Seinfeld. It's like, he goes in the room and he has felt is the old legal pad.

He doesn't have to write, but he's not allowed to do anything else for like three hours. And it's like discipline, discipline, [29:31] scheduled discipline sort of is like giving you the best surface area for the inspiration to happen. Agreed. Which is maybe more Ronaldo. Like maybe you're not walking into the room as messy or whatever. But there's something I think beautiful about that too, which is like I'm ready for the inspiration if it ever comes. Yeah, and it's interesting because you could kind of argue both. Like, you know, what is it, Buffett and Bill Gates, so they don't have calendars or whatever.

And like they're effectively doing the work. They're creating space to do the work. But they're also creating space for like the divine lightning to strike. [30:01] And so, yeah, I think a lot, again, to me, it is probably very spiritual. And the older I get, the more I could probably relate a lot of these things to spiritual practices. But ultimately, they seem to be reflections of reflections. You can see the fractals in all of these things. [30:15] We talked about instruments at the very beginning. I want to talk, maybe to set up our conversation about crypto.

There's a couple of quotes from you. And that I think are particularly interesting against this backdrop that like, [30:24] Depending on when you cut, slice it. Although for many people, crypto is like always low status. And just there's a lot of disdain. This is you. Then this thing about blockchains, about tokens, the hyper financialization of our lives. I've had such disdain for it. But if you invert that and try to create better instruments for capturing value, you can attribute that value and pass it back. Part of what you were just saying.

And then another section from you. After reading Debt, the first 5,000 years of money by the late anarchist anthropologist David Graeber, [30:54] And he followed that destabilizing thought to a liberating conclusion. It's whatever we collectively decide it is. One of the reasons that I love crypto or an internet of value is that we have really antiquated vehicles for representing value, he says. He believes crypto enables better instruments for assigning value to all things. [31:13] this idea of like value being something we can tinker with. [31:19] seems at the core of that.

[31:22] I guess I'm curious why you consistently find yourself being drawn back to this thing, [31:27] despite all of the cases for doomerism and all of the disdain and all the hyper-financialization and the SPFs and all of that, like there's some hope dream thing that you're seeing. Like what, what is that? Yeah. I mean, there's so much in there. I think, [31:41] There is a spiritual and psychological war. Like, you know, there is there is a desire to move people to a higher state of consciousness. I don't know. There are plenty of people doing that.

God bless them. [31:54] They're really good at that. And then, and I think there are, there are a lot of people who are kind of the opposite end of the spectrum are looking at purely utilitarian ways to like help people get to the next meal or to, you know, the next moment. And I think what I've, [32:09] uniquely been able to do because of my life trajectory is, you know, kind of live what I say from the squat to the yacht. Like I actively engage with like, you know, shithead crust kids, crusties.

And like, I still have all of my like, [32:25] Takunian anarchist friends who are on no-fly lists, and I have billionaires speak in my house about AI. And I think I was a function of moving from Iowa to A. when I was 16 and having art aspirations, but kind of recognizing my place in the universe as being someone that can be this connected tissue. And I think I've joked in the past that I've always wanted to be the chef that makes two Michelin star corn dogs. [32:55] 19, I had a California roll and I threw it up.

It was like too advanced. You know, I was raised on like, not even Taco Bell, I was raised on Taco John's, you know, like knockoff of knockoff. And the idea that there were people who could contribute if they had some kind of connected tissue is what I was interested in. So there is this kind of like psychological and spiritual war and they're, they're, they're kind of need someone to say like, man, I actually know how venture capital works. Like you can say two and 20 to friends of mine in like the art world, [33:25] And I also am like deeply rooted in the history of culture and music and I'm interested in like the right people winning.

And so if I can effectively be a low status person who can LARP as like a high status person and maybe a high status person that can LARP as a low status person, I can be this translator and use this kind of tissue. [33:44] from the kind of more utilitarian angle, [33:47] Low status games are often like the best way to repurpose value just historically. When you learn the history of Hollywood, I often, you know, talking to my contemporary art friends. [33:58] I'm like, if I was just a pure artist, I would be in Saudi right now.

You know what I mean? Like, where else are you going to find someone who's like $3 million to like build a really compelling object? Like, take a flyer, but I want it to be here. And it's de classe, and people in America will be like, ugh, Middle East money. But that's what like people in France were saying about America not that long ago. This was the de classe. We are new money. We are low status. You know, like Ralph Lauren is a Jewish kid from the Bronx. [34:28] who changed his name to Ralph Lauren and started pretending to be a kid from Connecticut, and was able to play this game so well that he created this whole fantasy that became real.

And I think that's a tangent that I'm also interested in. I love Lana Del Rey. [34:40] because her dishonesty is so internalized, it's real. [34:45] Talk about authenticity. Yeah, like Lana can tell you, you know, she was like living in a trailer park, like smoking meth with the local like rodeo guy. And I'd be like, I know it. [34:55] I believe you my whole chest, my whole heart. Even though you were like, your dad was a domain broker and had hundreds of millions of dollars or whatever it is. You've internalized these things so deeply that schizophrenia is real.

Yes. Yes. There's an idea I've struggled to articulate over the years, but I think sort of more or less is that identity can be a projector and a mirror. And it's intuitive that it's a projector. If you dyed your hair green or have a Mohawk, people are going to perceive you differently. But after enough time, [35:23] You're going to perceive yourself differently, which is pretty profound. Absolutely. Like we are who we pretend to be. And that fake it till you make it thing is, you know, one of I think it's one of the things that's so easy to articulate.

But to truly live it and to become that is a real blessing to experiencing. Watching people overcome that imposter or whatever it is and just live it, commit. And you see it in A. like the pirates. Yeah, they're still doing like an 80s hair metal thing and they live it. You're like, that rocks. Yeah. [35:50] Good for you. [35:51] Do you think there are a lot of people who are really living it in crypto? [35:54] There are obviously a lot of imposters, but a lot of them have left. I like crypto a lot right now.

Most people are in AI. The weirdos are hanging around. Yeah, it's just like freaks and weirdos and people that are probably unemployable in a lot of places. I wonder... [36:10] I haven't thought a lot about it, but I'm sure you encounter it. The other day, I went to Shake Shack with my fiancee. [36:17] get a cheeseburger and she's pregnant. And I was like carrying all these things. And this guy just went above and beyond and helped us. I started talking to him and he was just so articulate, so curious, so thoughtful.

You know, I was asking him what he did. He was going to school, told him I work in technology. He had all these thoughts about AI, you know, really like poignant stuff, like could explain a transformer, you know, which is like what most of the DCs I engaged with, like couldn't. Right. And so there is this, this kind of like neat Reddit, you know, kind of lost [36:47] but maybe doesn't have the tools to kind of contain it or articulate it such as they can like, you know, it's a parsable by whatever institution of powers it be.

Yeah, it's just not quite legible. And, you know, some part of me is really interested in identifying those people and giving them power and teaching them how to become legible. And I think crypto is full of those people, which is so fun. I think that's one of the reasons I love hanging out in Telegram with a bunch of like racists and like insane anime PFP people. [37:17] There's some, there's somebody human underneath. There is, there's someone human underneath who read the wrong white paper or the wrong something else. They read too much Curtis or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, totally. There's okay. So there's this thing that has been happening for a while that you, I think are very interested in, which is that attention and capital are compressing, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, [37:38] Back to the idea of things being financialized. And I think this is interesting maybe through the lens of things being legible because part [37:45] I think financialization of things does is it, [37:48] brings things to the forefront. This is you. You say, this is the definitive mutation of the early adopter. The 2000s hipster discovered bands in basements and hoarded their finds like trade secrets, terrified of mainstream contamination.

Today's equivalent, what Nemesis calls the creative director, still wants to be early, but they want everyone else to show up too, preferably with liquidity. Creative directors aren't gatekeeping, they're shilling. Being first isn't about protecting your scene. It's about getting in at the bottom of the bonding curve and waiting for your idea to [38:18] to the DEX, cultural capital has merged with financial capital. [38:21] Great writing. Thank you. [38:26] Maybe with that backdrop of like the weirdos that the internet has always been good at sort of like having a place for, like, I'm curious how you think about when attention and culture are like fully financialized.

[38:38] Does something about them fundamentally change? Do you actually have less room for the, this was at least selfishly, like one of my frustrations of crypto is like the financialized part of it and the speculation part of it sort of like clouds everything else out. You have something that's bubbling up to the surface and all that weird stuff you were just talking about is like. [38:56] hidden away somewhere. And I think... [39:00] What I... [39:02] I'm trying to figure out how to express is that all of the stuff that's being obscured needs to be obscured because we're entering into a new era.

And I think it's as uncomfortable as it was from the move from like modernism to postmodernism, you know, like the urinal, like Duchamp being like, no, this is an art. I'd be like, that's not a fucking art object. Like, where is the craft? Where is the skill? Yes. And I think that's like the great tension. And I applaud that. [39:28] people in Silicon Valley and the broader, you know, technology world for wanting to champion what they see as art. But I think what myself and other artists have been talking about a lot kind of behind the scenes is that, [39:44] The act of creation is not that different from the act of speculation.

If you squint, this idea that you have a belief about the future and you want to express it via a medium and have it, you know, validated or perceived by your peers or maybe recognized in a market is something that all of the artists that, you know, people champion do because those models are, [40:07] are so antiquated or laggy by the time you get your work to an art fair, by the time you get the album out, by the time you get the film out, [40:17] It often feels dated, you know, and I think what's tough for people that are actually interesting is you watch a new Paul Thomas Anderson film and you're like, oh, cool.

A conversation about like incels and like civil war and a bunch of like 60 year olds are like, how radical this is. This is a reflection of our time. You're like, no, we're having that fight on Twitter 18 months ago. [40:47] you know, music, filmmakers, [40:50] We used to talk about prestige television or new films or art fairs. We talk about Fed rate cuts. And you're like, wait, what happened? And I think what happened is they've recognized that there are instruments for expressing beliefs that now allow them to be right verifiably and with financial upside in the same way they could be with an art object.

But now... It's like skipping the middle. Yeah, skipping the middle and without a 50% vig to your curator, right? And I think meme coins and prediction markets are like... [41:18] like bad instruments but when the game before was you could bet on wheat futures if you understood weather patterns like they have an information advantage because they're a meteorologist okay well like i have an information advantage because i'm a cultural savant why can't i have thousand x asymmetric upside and so like that to me i think is the great tension is these people have these very narrow ideas of what like an art community is and what a finance community is and there's like the the patagonia vests and the bushwick babes but to me i'm actually interested in saying like [41:48] those people living in opposition, which is a fool's game for the Bushwick Bays because these guys have nukes.

Yes. And they have financial nukes. Yes, yes. And you have like sticks, you know, bows and arrows. Like we can give you nukes too. And you can have a real meaningful advantage against these people in markets and you can have asymmetric upside in the yachts. So like. [42:07] Why not? [42:08] So many of these things come down to like don't hate the player, hate the game, I think too. [42:13] And there's a lot of hating of the game. In a broader thing that, I don't know if you've written about this publicly, but you kind of talk about this idea of the belief economy.

And you have this specific frame around making to framing to predicting that, [42:23] partially is encapsulated in what you just said, but I think it would be helpful for you to talk specifically about that. Danko has also written about this shift, kind of post-postmodernism, but what is that shift? [42:33] I think it's also worth hitting on the framing part. I think most people sometimes sort of feel like we're still in that because it's a thing of the past. And then obviously this new thing. Yeah. I love Danko's piece. And so there's a group of friends, which maybe I would call like the new models extended universe.

And that goes to like Arthur at trust, Citarella, Jeff, Citarella, Holly Herndon, Matt Dryhurst, you know, the nemesis folks like Dan Keller's here now, not part of the models. Like, [43:00] I think we've been deeply frustrated because we're people that are interested in progress and technology for us has all of this white space and all of this incredible opportunity for progress. But, [43:10] post you know trump election and i think the artistic world seeing technology as these enablers of dictators of tyrants as you know the russia gate whatever like you felt disenfranchised from both a bit and so we've kind of had the talk in isolation for a bit about the world that we see in front of us and then the world we encounter when we go to a biennale and just see like aboriginal artworks and wall works and sculptures that could they're not meanly different than they [43:40] years ago.

[43:42] I think in my opinion, in Danko's opinion, in like the group chats, this kind of like thing that's ethereal and in the air that we're trying to pull out of it is – [43:50] This idea that [43:51] The people who would have been articulating ideas about what's happening, what's going to happen, have taken different forms in society over the years. And the ones we're most aware of, you know, probably are in the frame I'd used in that piece for like the modernist era, where the thing you produced had all the value to this postmodernist era.

We identified actually like the narrative and the framing around the thing had the most value to now. [44:21] has that same value. And I think it feels really uncomfortable for people. Yes. Because they're like, it's all fucking gambling now. And you're like, well... [44:30] Yeah, like the always was meme, you know what I mean? Always has been. There are always decisions being made and there are market forces and there are outcomes that were more opaque. And if you choose to kind of make them more visible, it's uncomfortable, but I think it's very real.

And it allows for... [44:49] you know, in new champions to emerge. And I think that's the part that like, we're all really interested in is that predicting is very similar to creating. And if you squint, you know, making a wall work or having an opinion about prestige television is very similar to taking a position or expressing that belief in a prediction market, a meme coin, or, you know, betting on a meta on the thing I'm looking on now. Yeah. [45:13] It seems almost that... [45:16] maybe a little less so with the making part, but especially the narrative, the framing part, it's almost like we ran out of scarcity there.

[45:25] There's nothing scarce in your ability to... Again, I talked with Gabe Whaley about this. Going viral is like... [45:32] It's shots on goal. Like it's not even, there's no novelty there. There's no magic there. And it is interesting that sort of like, [45:38] consensus... [45:40] on the collective belief is... [45:43] Maybe not. [45:44] fundamentally scarce, but relatively rare. And that's the thing that everyone's seeking. I wonder, like, I don't know, one of the things I was thinking about a lot is, is I went through this is just like, [45:56] This feels very reactionary, even if you're right.

And I think there are optimistic parts of what you're saying. Like, don't we still want to incentivize people to make things? Like having all of our best people, all of our tastemakers skip over everything to the [46:09] anticipating reacting to what's going to be next. [46:14] Maybe we'll horseshoe, but like I think that would – if I were to guess what the average sort of thoughtful person's reaction to it, [46:21] What you're saying is, even if all of that's true, like, [46:25] Are we just going to be in a world where we're all like speculating on made up memes?

Potentially. I think a lot there. I think, um, [46:33] Talking about virality being shots on goal, the other thing that I maybe didn't highlight in that piece that I maybe should have talked about more is that discourse is probably – [46:44] It's probably the most important product of millennial culture, like podcasts. [46:53] Everyone has clubhouse voice. Every dinner party you go to, people are repeating the same New York Times podcast takes or whatever it is. And we live in this sea of takes with no way to sift through what's meaningful.

Yes. Right? And so Marcus being a tool for seeking out information, I think, is really interesting. Yes. Yes. [47:10] To speak to the part about making actual objects, I think it's really important. I just think that robotics and AI automation are going to devalue those things. Scarcity again. Yeah. And I think having lived through technology devaluing things, it's like, okay, who are people that you care about? [47:28] I care about creative people and I want them to win. Okay. Well then where do you shepherd them? I shepherd them to where the value is going.

Like, and I think what's, what I appreciate about Silicon Valley is they want, uh, [47:39] creative people to do well but they are effectively pushing them to where the puck is not to where it is going and that's why i feel like even if dissonant uncomfortable i need to actively speak up and be like hey this matters go here get in the resources such that you can impose your will and point of view in the world because it's important that you do because you'll figure this out once you've won almost i mean i think yes we'll figure it out once you've won but i also [48:09] I think it's uncomfortable to hear as well.

But part of growing up is that there are people that make decisions in the world and you can either have a seat at the table and influence or not. And, you know, [48:19] I [48:20] the all-in podcast has extraterrestrial at this point influenced as a space force. And if [48:29] We can shepherd people from having conversations on dialectic into having seats at the most powerful tables in the world. I would like that in order to do that. They probably will need to have meaningful capital and meaningful amounts of verifiably correct takes.

Yes. OK, so this is interesting. Yeah. [48:48] One of the things you said a couple of times, you just got at the end, is that markets are a way to get to at least one kind of truth. This is a pretty profound idea. Obviously, the prediction market kind of stuff, lots of different things. It's a market-driven truth. I'm curious what you think about, if you have any thoughts broadly on what that truth is and if it differs from other types of truth we might have. And then on top of that, does that truth line up with what creative people are trying to get closer to?

[49:18] other thing around authenticity and honesty or whatever, whatever the things maybe creatives are normally sort of trying to get at. Yeah. And this is a sticky one, right? Um, so yeah, [49:27] I guess the framing I would use is like in a, [49:31] pre... [49:32] enlightened world there's effectively like magic and like a divine interpretation of truth and like ideas and i think in this post-truth environment like there's so much takes so much distance you can find your truth in your research there's been a return to magic and i think yes what's what's interesting for me is that again like if you think about it in kind of like less contemporary terms like in a tribe there were kind of people that created magic and were able to like define what [50:02] And I think that, like, you know, obviously the narratives and the stories that control our lives define those truths, whether it's capitalism or neoliberalism or whatever it is.

And so. [50:14] The thing that I'm interested in truth right now and markets being able to [50:20] I guess, uh, reveal truth is that, and this is again, an uncomfortable reality. A truth is subjective in a lot of ways. And what you're seeing, I think in capital markets at the highest level is this unwinding of this like efficient markets hypothesis. [50:36] And, uh, [50:37] retail effectively running over some of these value investors and Steve Cohen's of the world. And you're like, what's going on? And I think the idea that we can stay retarded longer than you can stay solvent is quite poignant.

The Wall Street bets thing, there are PE ratios, and then there are a bunch of retarded Redditors who are like, no, actually, those don't matter. And effectively, at some point, there's a tipping point where a PE ratio was just a meme. [51:07] the collectively accepted truth. By the way, when we say truth here, I think what we kind of mean is consensus. Exactly. And I think at some point, consensus tips... [51:17] And I think that, again, is the opportunity, right? And I think that's what I would describe as creative people do.

You can be Karl Marx or the Chicago School Boys or whomever you want, and you can come up with a narrative that people internalize and manifest and turn into real actions in the real material world. And all of a sudden, that is the dominant form of our everyday lives and truth. [51:47] but like it's really interesting. [51:50] I think it's really interesting. [51:52] I guess we've been talking a lot about it from the lens of the creative person. [51:56] One of the first interviews I did, or early ones, was with Jacob Horn.

And he had this line where he's basically like... [52:03] the [52:03] there's a difference between speculation and gambling. [52:08] along the lines of your belief economy, which is like speculation is sort of putting weight behind or stakes behind something that you want to be more likely. I guess I'm curious how you're thinking about that now and how you're thinking about the ways that like [52:23] having more hard incentives versus soft incentives from the like crowd to push the tastemakers or whatever else we want in a certain direction. Like, [52:33] One version of this is, [52:35] One instrument is meme coins.

Sure. Like, I think a lot of people look at that and they're just like, what? Like, this is, this is, yeah, there's nothing here. What is, and you can be as specific or not specific as you like, but like, what is a version of this that is good for?