Based Camp - Luddites are BACK： This Time They’re Spoiled Rich Kids with Artisan Websites

00:00:00.000 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, the, the Luddite event turned into an explanation of how to build your own website?

00:00:11.360 That's what they were doing?

00:00:12.980 They're, yeah, this is a little bit confusing.

00:00:14.860 It's kind of rich that many of these people who propose to be Luddites are like, well, this is all about human connection.

00:00:21.040 I just want to have real human connection.

00:00:23.480 When people have very real human connection online.

00:00:27.680 the person i talk to most other than simone is leaflet and you look at the like 10 hour

00:00:33.660 conversations once every two weeks right i have never seen what leaflet looks like in real life

00:00:41.240 when we talk about like an anti-luddite they're like just get to know someone face to face

00:00:46.160 i have never interacted once with leaflet face to face like i ask you this sincerely

00:00:52.860 would if lived in my friendship be in any way meaningfully enhanced from a flesh to flesh

00:01:00.180 conversation would you like to know more hello malcolm i'm excited to be speaking with you today

00:01:06.040 because the luddites are assembling once again and you would never know it because you're online

00:01:11.040 and they're not online and should we be worried let's find out but thing thanks to wired magazine

00:01:16.720 being out there in you know walking around brooklyn we actually know about this because

00:01:21.100 otherwise how would we know we wouldn't know but yet they had to find what i love about this

00:01:25.860 article they wrote on this group and if you're unfamiliar with who the luddites are historically

00:01:29.660 they are anti-technologists who do not like technology taking jobs specifically they wanted

00:01:35.680 women in factories working on looms that is that is they believe the natural role of a woman for

00:01:41.360 all of human history is being in a factory and working on a loom but they found this in a store 0.98

00:01:47.140 Yeah, so I'm reading from the Wired article itself called Inside the Luddite Festival, Harnessing Gen Z's Rage Against a Big Tech. Rage, that sounds ominous. The author says, I found out about the event in a serendipitously offline way. Earlier in June, I was with a friend in the East Village, and we got caught in a summer downpour as I was waiting it out in the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, a small venue that documents the neighborhood's history of activism.

00:02:14.140 i found the booklet covering the summer of lud's events among other zines posters and pamphlets so

00:02:20.300 here i am bone tucked away notebook out playbill in hand because of course our he's not allowed

00:02:26.460 to use technology but what's crazier about this she you and i haven't been in the type of a venue

00:02:33.300 where we could even presumably find an invitation to a group like this yeah probably in at least

00:02:40.220 half a decade I guess you're right yeah so we would never know I mean thank goodness right

00:02:48.020 thank goodness I mean they're not they're not posting these at the local BJ's or Walmart so

00:02:52.180 where else do we go yeah well I mean I think you have to be like Victoria Elliott the author of

00:02:57.860 this article walking around you know in sort of bougie places in New York City and that's actually

00:03:02.820 a theme the more I dug into the modern Luddite movement the more I discovered that

00:03:08.380 it's it's kind of extremely bougie i would imagine it is yeah it's it's it's very and this is in

00:03:17.820 stark contrast to the original luddite movement which will also just go over at the end to kind

00:03:22.120 of see like okay how are these different how are these the same but people always to worry about

00:03:26.700 in their lives have no reason to be doing this stuff no they're like you can't do this whole oh

00:03:31.720 i'm not gonna have a phone i'm not gonna have a computer on me i'm not gonna use ai and what i

00:03:36.660 love is they're not even just like anti-ai they're anti the whole ecosystem yeah yeah i i felt like

00:03:44.060 we had to cover this particular event though this the summer of lud again because of the author's

00:03:48.960 description of it just another part of the article that i found very entertaining the summer of lud

00:03:53.640 was preempted with a press conference conducted by the organizer's spokesperson gowanus the media

00:03:59.940 puppet. Yes, I am serious. A blue cloth being with soda cap eyes manned by a masked puppeteer.

00:04:07.780 Gowanus was conceived of as a way for the movement to speak to the public and the media

00:04:12.700 without compromising the identities of the event's organizers who wish to remain anonymous.

00:04:18.620 According to Gowanus, New York's Luddite Renaissance is, quote, a loose group of organizers

00:04:24.860 that have no formal affiliation as of now, but have been coalescing around noticing similar

00:04:29.700 problems of alienation and over-reliance on big tech end quote so yeah this basically though what

00:04:36.440 you know at any rate i wanted to kick off with the summer of lud as sort of our starting point

00:04:42.100 here because it's seen as a cultural high point in the movements specifically analog and anti-alienation

00:04:48.920 wing and there are several wings to this some of which bear more resemblance to the original

00:04:53.280 luddite movement and some of which don't but the summer anti-alienation wing what tell me about

00:04:58.380 this but tell me about the wings can we see right so the different wings are basically this sort of

00:05:04.280 the anti-alienation wing is kind of like well we feel like social media has not been good for us

00:05:08.980 we don't like scrolling on our smartphones we would like to performatively be offline and very

00:05:15.080 prominently wave around our moleskin notebooks and analog typewriters etc and and you know meet

00:05:21.860 in clubs. I'll talk about the clubs. Then there's the anti-big tech and anti-AI data center

00:05:29.600 agitators. We did a whole episode on the anti-AI center agitation, which is partially funded by

00:05:37.340 outside players who would rather that the U.S. not develop a strong AI infrastructure. But there's

00:05:42.020 also a lot of, I would say, homegrown, though, I don't know, we'll say like a fertilizer has been

00:05:47.000 added by outside parties, but homegrown concern over data centers. But there are definitely

00:05:52.960 reports of escalating tensions between this particular sect of like, I guess you could say

00:06:00.460 the modern Luddite movement and some more violent stuff like the vandalism, sabotage threats,

00:06:10.020 threats of violence. You'll recall that an Indianapolis city council member who supported

00:06:16.600 data center development, heard 13 shots fired outside his home. And then when he opened his

00:06:23.700 front door, there was a little note reading no data centers. So people's lives, it is insinuated

00:06:29.680 that his life is being threatened by people who don't want data centers, right? So that I think

00:06:35.360 is the, we'll say more like militant branch, but this anti-alienation branch has more to do with

00:06:42.180 things like this festival with various offline gatherings and events and then also with basically

00:06:49.300 school clubs a lot of the original new organization that maybe started to trend in the media back in

00:06:56.820 2022 so this is not exactly brand new it was associated with school clubs but back to the

00:07:02.720 summer of lud just so like i can cover some of the more important details around that it seems to be

00:07:08.460 really centered around new york i didn't actually hear that much weirdly about successful luddite

00:07:14.740 movements clubs events etc outside of new york city which is kind of weird as well and it's it's

00:07:22.300 actually still happening right now malcolm if we wanted to just drop everything and drive to new

00:07:25.620 york we could probably attend some summer of lud events it finishes july 5th and as of today it is

00:07:31.900 july 3rd so second we could no it's what is it my god yeah okay so we yeah we can we can go

00:07:41.880 it's centered around well i want to hear about the wings i want to hear about the types of events

00:07:46.180 yeah yeah so it it has over 120 free public participatory activities there you can learn

00:07:52.940 saddle stitching you can learn how to use a shortwave radio you can learn learn how to mend

00:07:58.260 clothing also flirt and date offline they have talks and panels like indie web alternatives

00:08:04.620 privately owned public spaces fighting data centers so there's certainly like some confluence

00:08:09.580 with the anti-data center protest movement and also like i had described to you when we were

00:08:14.780 talking earlier today there's a google in real life session where you get to like talk to a human

00:08:18.980 expert right so yeah there was also that q a event where it's just google in real life like oh my

00:08:24.800 gosh what if you just asked someone except of course it's not anywhere close to as good as

00:08:28.640 google and certainly not as good as any ai search engine that i love it that i hear the idea of

00:08:34.120 somebody googling something and my thought now is wow that's quite antique you know that's that's a

00:08:40.820 little that's a little dated what what ai are you using googling googling well of course google's

00:08:48.320 trying to serve up gemini ai answers to everything which people are really mad about so they're not

00:08:52.840 i've been googling anymore but anyway according to gothamist which talked about this a little bit

00:08:56.980 as well quote at a monday panel discussion on nyc event calendars an array of neighborhood

00:09:02.580 characters older punks fresh-faced flip phone users and various others packed at the stone steps

00:09:10.120 of the east village community garden la plaza cultural to discuss ways to learn irl happenings

00:09:16.440 of irl happenings without social media overall the evening was largely a technical discussion

00:09:21.180 on how to build and maintain your own website or newsletter it never got particularly ideal

00:09:26.220 ideological wait wait wait wait wait the the the luddite event turned into an explanation

00:09:36.520 of how to build your own website that's what they were doing there yeah this is a little bit

00:09:42.600 confusing yeah a lot of it's it's not actually about being a luddite what i'm discovering is

00:09:47.860 that this sort of social element of the movement they kind of just want to go back to like late

00:09:52.400 1990s early 2000s internet with flip phones and with just before this the the any sort of social

00:10:00.940 media feed and not actually go offline which is interesting but yeah it's very interesting that

00:10:07.180 they're like all technology up to what i got comfortable with when i was a youth is bad yeah

00:10:13.580 well i mean as one person is at the event put it it's not quite a digital versus analog thing

00:10:17.800 it's a question of who controls how your community or operates itself it's a mark zuckerberg or you

00:10:23.240 thing explained thomas you're not an idle passenger of history you get to control the

00:10:27.880 impact of your technology that your technology has on you in your society so what a lot of people

00:10:32.420 are trying to do is take back sort of some level of sovereignty which i think is not inherently bad

00:10:37.380 i mean it's it can't no no i mean what's interesting is that makes it a lot like our

00:10:42.460 communities we're just a lot more like i mean the skybrow cinematic universe rfab which is

00:10:48.660 basically a cinematic universe at this point by the way one thing i've started working on with rfab

00:10:52.840 simone just in terms of features building is a replacement for descript because i too frequently

00:11:00.060 have issues with descript it's a useful feature i think descript massively overcharges if we did it

00:11:06.560 we'd be doing it at like one tenth the cost of descript and i don't use the vast majority of

00:11:11.040 descripts features yeah you just don't want to use them so yeah i really only need it for for

00:11:16.160 people who don't know this is what we use to edit our videos to automatically take out ums and stuff

00:11:20.140 like that and so what i would do with this system is use it to edit our videos but also give it to

00:11:26.660 you guys so you guys can just like move text around and it'll move around where it is i think

00:11:30.500 it's a great idea a lot of the organizations present just sound kind of like late 90s seattle

00:11:38.900 style zines and letters so a lot of the orgs that were present when at least i think gothamist was

00:11:46.220 there covering one of the events for nyc off tech which just does events to connect outside of big

00:11:53.440 tech like it's just dedicated to that unplatform which is a guide to escaping social media

00:11:58.700 red cow and when you go to red cow's website it's just literally images of posters that people make

00:12:06.620 like the kind of, wheat paste posters you might see put up in a city about

00:12:10.120 events and concerts and stuff, but it's just a website of them.

00:12:13.080 So just in case you're not walking around the streets of New York city or

00:12:17.720 Brooklyn, you can, you can go to Red Cal's website to see what you're all set.

00:12:22.460 Let me, let me just send you a link.

00:12:23.760 It's cal.red.

00:12:26.220 So pretty easy to type in, but here's a, here's a link.

00:12:32.560 For the streets.

00:12:33.780 Yeah. So you can see it's just a series of the posters. It's like, well, if I just wanted to see all the weight paste posters in Brooklyn, I can just go to cal.red, which is not, I mean, like, so this is exactly what they're talking about. Like, how do we be offline and not have online advertising and not post on Facebook, but still have people come to our events, which is like this really tough thing to do in modern society.

00:12:55.960 So I do find that somewhat interesting from like a just purely logistical, how do we work this out

00:13:00.280 standpoint? Then there's also Moon Bulletin, which is just one person, I guess, talking about what

00:13:06.520 they know is going on. And then also the People's Circuit, which is this encrypted ProtonMail-based

00:13:11.700 email newsletter. So the big themes there are like, I'm really concerned about Mark Zuckerberg

00:13:15.820 knowing everything about me. And I just hate these big tech companies and I don't want to

00:13:19.820 be manipulated by social media. So here's my attempt to live a different type of life.

00:13:25.300 i like the intentionality of it no it's so interesting about seeing this and these types

00:13:29.900 of events and stuff like that is it reminds me of stuff i felt was like cool and subversive when i

00:13:37.280 was younger and the aesthetics of it certainly look like that yeah like a punk thing or like a

00:13:42.260 goth thing and i'd be like i want to go to this cool subversive whatever and what's wild is like

00:13:50.120 now that's the internet right like to to go to one of these you're just gonna find a bunch of

00:13:55.600 aging hipsters they said that all generations were there that there were some aging hipsters

00:14:00.160 but there were also a lot of young people so i i think that that's i i think there's probably some

00:14:06.660 but yeah i i i no no apparently like early reports from this from this event show that there's been

00:14:13.200 a lot of a lot like really good turnout at these events a lot of gen z a lot of locals a lot of

00:14:17.560 families and then of course older activists too but i what i think is more interesting is that

00:14:22.500 the new ledi movement in terms of like persistent ongoing social clubs is primarily um is is

00:14:30.140 primarily gen z but i think that's because this is the first generation that was raised as what

00:14:37.200 people describe as like ipad babies where they they actually don't know what it's like to be

00:14:41.440 more offline and when they describe these like revolutionary things that they're doing to live

00:14:46.360 more offline. It just honestly feels a little bit more like our lives because we, we, we

00:14:52.320 intentionally don't like scroll media feeds. We don't have TikTok on our phones. And like,

00:14:55.900 that's kind of as far as they're going. They're like, well, I just think, you know, TikTok is

00:14:59.840 bad. Although they try to go there though, you know, to mix results. Yeah. Just take your track

00:15:04.240 zone, man. That'll, that'll get you off media feed. No, for real actually. But I just think

00:15:08.620 that basically millennials and older can't participate in this movement because they are

00:15:13.600 by probably kind of the standards of younger generations actually Luddites like actually

00:15:19.940 terminally offline which which I think is also quite interesting but anyway there's this interesting

00:15:24.380 New York Times piece called now in college Luddite teens still don't want your likes and it's it's

00:15:30.340 this fairly recent New York Times piece that is checking in on a bunch of Luddite teens who had

00:15:36.560 a Luddite club who were first covered by the New York Times in 2022 so this is four years later and

00:15:42.540 is checking to see like are they still offline which i think is interesting i like that they're

00:15:46.920 like oh how persistent is this how committed are these people so most of the members or at least

00:15:52.100 former members still use flip phones and are still very like concertedly not online one teenage

00:16:00.420 ludic club in brooklyn that the new york times profiled in 2022 that that really was highlighted

00:16:06.080 in this article quote sketched and painted side by side they read quietly favoring works by your

00:16:12.180 Dostoevsky, Kerouac, and Vonnegut. They sat on logs and groused about how TikTok was dumbing down

00:16:18.940 their generation. Their flip phones were decorated with stickers and nail polish. Doesn't that just

00:16:24.720 sound like us as teens? Yeah. That's what's so weird about it. It's like, oh, the Luddites. I

00:16:30.720 pictured they'd be weaving or something, but they're just behaving like we did. I'm like,

00:16:35.100 hold on. I didn't even get a flip phone until really late. So again, this is not what I expected

00:16:39.820 to hear. But years later, most of the former members didn't go back to more heavy tech,

00:16:46.740 but one detracted at least. She wrote, it's constant access again. It's the relief of

00:16:51.880 knowing I can do things easier. I got Instagram too, and it's been nice reconnecting with people

00:16:57.140 on it. The point being, and I appreciate that she acknowledged this, that when you choose to be

00:17:02.640 offline, you're just not going to see certain people again. You're just not going to communicate

00:17:07.660 with certain people again like it's this concerted choice to give up many relationships and i think

00:17:12.820 it's kind of rich that many of these people who propose to be luddites are like well this is all

00:17:17.640 about human connection i just want to have real human connection when people have very real human

00:17:23.240 connection online like this morning on discord and whatsapp i had some very personal and deep

00:17:29.620 conversations with people that i'd not i would not have had if i was well and what's wilder is

00:17:35.600 what the personal connections mean for people like us like the person i talk to most in our lives

00:17:42.460 other than simone is leaflet this is both on discord and on our bi-weekly chats and you look

00:17:49.140 at the the long communications i have with her it's just like 10 hour conversations once every

00:17:54.620 two weeks right yeah drinking having fun chatting about life philosophy it's kind of yeah it's like

00:18:00.900 it's like a modern symposium which is really like extra old school and yet super new school

00:18:06.960 so weird i would ask you guys anyone who has seen one of these like how many people in your life do

00:18:13.340 you have that deep a conversation with or that deep of a friendship with right that you're having

00:18:20.500 these really long form conversations i have never seen what leaflet looks like in real life okay i

00:18:29.620 the person i'm interacting with is when we talk about like an anti-luddite they're like just get

00:18:34.020 to know someone face to face i have never interacted once with leaflet face to face

00:18:40.660 and i have no interest in escalating our relationship i that has never been something

00:18:46.520 that is i mean like we have to visit together we have to go on a vacation together if i drove by

00:18:53.180 where she lived in texas i wouldn't even i think she probably wouldn't stop if you were like a mile

00:18:58.980 away you'd be like matt would our and and and to our audience like i ask you this sincerely

00:19:04.460 would our friendship leaflet to my friendship be in any way meaningfully enhanced from a flesh to

00:19:13.400 flesh conversation would we know anything meaningfully additional about each other i mean

00:19:20.340 maybe what they look like they're like deformed or been highly misrepresentative of themselves

00:19:25.280 or something like that but i don't think they have been like i would gain no additional nature 0.76

00:19:30.840 to our friendship the only thing that requires being in person with someone is having sex with

00:19:38.540 them and look at the way i interact with my wife on this very screen right like we're in different

00:19:45.180 rooms even with your loved ones sometimes it can be more efficient to communicate with

00:19:49.520 through a screen are we not building our relationship through conversations like this

00:19:54.820 for real yeah and we we act like we do it literally in separate rooms of our house

00:19:59.340 those are our most now imagine the luddite what they're building in terms of a friendship

00:20:04.080 so they have to sit out in a park you know they sit in a park and they awkwardly talk to somebody

00:20:10.220 who they meditate do you think those conversations are going to be one one hundredths as deep as one

00:20:16.200 of the conversations that leaflet and i have over like many people offline have very deep

00:20:21.560 conversations but i'm not saying the number of people you can you can interact with and the types

00:20:26.740 of people you can interact with are extremely limited when you choose to only interact with

00:20:30.240 those whom you can reach but but also the depth of the conversation is limited by the format when

00:20:37.020 you are one in a park and two have a tight time limit on your conversation like an hour an hour

00:20:43.780 and a half you're just not going to get to the same type of topics you get to in a 10-hour

00:20:47.240 conversation that's happening overnight while you're both you know kind of out of it because

00:20:51.740 you've been interacting for so long the level of conversation that you're going to get to

00:20:57.200 and i often the conversations that i have with people in person especially the ones that where

00:21:02.320 i meet them in person because you don't know as much about their background because you don't know

00:21:06.280 what's going to offend them because you don't know where to go your conversations start at such a

00:21:10.720 lower level right like leaflet of my conversations can start at a very high level because both of us

00:21:17.100 have watched a probably hundreds of hours of the other person's content before that conversation

00:21:23.240 even started right this asynchronous relationship that people are able to have when they consume

00:21:27.800 each other's content or read each other's messages asynchronously and then have live conversations

00:21:32.720 again there's this additional level of depth that you can have that you just can't have otherwise

00:21:37.300 but it's it's the irony of i don't even know off the top of my head what her real name is i do not

00:21:43.860 know what she looks like and those things would not this is what gets me so much about these

00:21:49.120 luddites is they are choosing a form of relationship which is strictly lesser

00:21:56.180 think about the conversations you have on a discord like our our discord right people are

00:22:02.360 coming in after having watched a video and they are interacting with each other in a thread so

00:22:07.220 they're having a conversation basically now the depth that they're going to have in that

00:22:11.720 conversation is going to be higher than any random conversation in a park because they're

00:22:16.780 coming into the conversation with a shared context eg we both watched the information

00:22:22.840 in the video and are now conversing about the information in the video yeah i think that's

00:22:28.700 interesting with what also as i said earlier stood out to me is that there is this strong

00:22:36.960 undertone of privilege that pervades a lot of this, the people described and profiled when I

00:22:43.080 read about this movement, for example, of the alumna of this club, this Luddite high school

00:22:52.660 club that are now being interviewed later, like they're all getting humanities degrees at fairly

00:22:59.060 expensive schools, stuff that like implies they don't actually need real jobs. Like one is studying

00:23:04.340 russian literature at oberlin college this is not something that someone does if their family

00:23:11.020 is what are they going to do with their life like i don't know because they don't use the internet

00:23:16.620 actually so the one who's working a bookstore the one the one who's studying at oberlin

00:23:22.500 college actually is working for light phone which as it happens is one of the many companies that

00:23:29.280 is capitalizing on the interests of this, this. Oh, light phone. Oh yeah. Where's like a lighter,

00:23:36.940 that's not a terrible idea if you have like addiction problems. Yeah. It's a minimalist

00:23:40.660 device. It costs between 300 and $700. And there's this whole collection of devices for people

00:23:47.580 who want to develop more focus or like varying degrees of modern, what I guess you could say.

00:23:54.040 so there's also the mudita compact k-o-m-p-a-k-t that's $399 it's this e-ink screen

00:24:02.680 device that that has online it's basically like a smartphone but without any color that has offline

00:24:10.000 maps and basic apps it's it's a little bit more flexible than the light phone and it it i think

00:24:15.600 it also costs no it's $399 so it's it's like kind of mid-range phone wise mudita by the way really

00:24:21.960 odd name mudita weirdly is was the name of when my when one of my family members was a member of

00:24:31.520 a cult her name was mudita in the cult which is interesting anyway then there's also the minimal

00:24:38.580 phone which is $449 it has an e-ink touchscreen touch touchscreen touchscreen and it it also has

00:24:47.700 just a few Android apps.

00:24:49.440 Then there's the Punct MP02, which is almost $300, that is just a very minimal button phone.

00:24:57.580 And then there's a bunch of like this whole class of basically typewriter style word processors

00:25:03.700 that are like tactile typewriters with e-ink screens that allow you to sync things that

00:25:11.840 you're writing like books or transcripts or plays to some kind of cloud account.

00:25:17.700 but they're not connected to the internet.

00:25:20.060 So you can't start messing around online,

00:25:22.000 but all of them are really expensive.

00:25:24.040 They're $500 to $1,000.

00:25:25.680 And I wanted to just point out how expensive they were

00:25:28.480 because you can just get a Razer flip phone

00:25:32.840 for like $3,500 to $100 on eBay.

00:25:35.380 I checked, like they're extremely affordable.

00:25:38.560 So you can very easily be more offline

00:25:42.600 without buying expensive additional stuff.

00:25:45.580 But I feel like it's one of those ecosystems where, again, the point that the young woman getting this degree in Russian literature is now working during the summer at Light Phone, but also like kind of not sure about getting an office job.

00:25:58.840 But like, what is she going to do then?

00:25:59.820 She's going to end up marrying some guy working in AI.

00:26:03.400 Exactly.

00:26:04.500 And I don't know.

00:26:05.560 I just feel like this is not going to end very well.

00:26:07.460 But then also like just this other sort of reference made offhand in the article.

00:26:11.980 I'm going to just quote from it.

00:26:13.340 winter jacobson who was in town from colorado to visit miss butler this was another one of the

00:26:18.100 former luddite club members was sitting next to her he started a luddite club in telluride high

00:26:23.420 school last year he said it had a dozen members these kids are so posh he says colorado is very

00:26:29.260 different from new york mr jacobson 17 said there's not as much to do in telluride people

00:26:34.660 are reliant on their phones as their self connection to the world sorry as their connection

00:26:39.820 to the world so some of my friends think the club's a joke i'm still trying to spread the

00:26:43.740 message though telluride high school tell us a little bit about telluride malcolm telluride is

00:26:50.220 probably i think one of the like richest communities on earth it is a beautiful place

00:26:55.980 though i think one of the most beautiful places in the yeah like if we could live there we probably

00:27:00.760 would accept i think the altitude's hard on your life i wouldn't be able to deal with the altitude

00:27:04.720 It would cause too many health complications for me, but it's a stunning place.

00:27:09.780 Yeah, it's basically like this rich person paradise where you can just walk the streets

00:27:17.620 and kids just walk free through the streets and just wander around these beautiful creeks.

00:27:22.920 There's literally a gondola system that's free to ride that connects Telluride with

00:27:28.800 a mountain village, an adjacent small village.

00:27:31.880 it is one of the most idyllic and beautiful and privileged places in the entire world

00:27:37.320 every every early september a bunch of celebrities descend upon the town for the telluride film

00:27:43.480 festival and it's just full of some of the most privileged educated people in the entire world

00:27:47.980 and i think that just goes to show that like the one other city that's mentioned where there's a

00:27:51.880 luddite club aside from brooklyn and new york city you know very very wealthy place is freaking

00:27:57.820 tell your ride you know the the secret like the brigadoon of rich people it's it's just insane to

00:28:04.380 me so yeah i i just wanted to point that out that and like all these sort of expensive devices that

00:28:09.600 people are buying when i think what you should really think about is sort of contrast the way

00:28:14.440 that like these people are so proudly going offline or like trying to deal with their internet 0.91

00:28:20.840 addictions with how Mennonites do it. And it's not like there isn't some precedent that modern 0.98

00:28:28.080 people who are concerned about tech use can turn to because Mennonites have been dealing with for 0.99

00:28:34.260 a very long time. And according to Mennonet.com, which is a thing, and it's delightful and it has

00:28:40.500 very like Craigslist styling, but it is a website for Mennonite things. Within Mennonite conservative

00:28:47.580 circles and plain circles, you'll see that the tools are just stuff that you would install

00:28:54.880 on an Android phone. There are accountability apps. One is called Covenant Eyes, which is

00:29:00.700 something that's also used by evangelical communities and also CloudVail. They log

00:29:05.280 activity and also are capable of filtering content. And they'll send reports on accountability

00:29:10.520 to a partner or a family administrator. So you had told me at one point you'd seen like

00:29:15.700 Mennonites. I quite like this technology. I think it's something that more people should use if you

00:29:21.420 struggle with addictions to stuff online. Yeah. Like your brother will be like, Hey dude, I saw

00:29:26.240 that you were on Facebook. Like that you'll get that social shame from it. There's also something

00:29:31.040 called the security appliance, which is a content filtering solution developed for and by the plane

00:29:36.420 community, which is used at the network level and some fellowships to restrict categories of sites

00:29:42.340 and manage what devices can access.

00:29:44.160 So it's, I think, similar to the kinds of controls

00:29:46.760 that say a high school's tech network will use

00:29:49.860 in terms of allowing like what the laptops

00:29:52.460 and phones on that system can use.

00:29:55.080 And then there are other web filters

00:29:57.000 like OpenDNS, FamilyShield,

00:29:59.060 and then just other ones that are out there

00:30:00.920 that can be configured at home or on business Wi-Fi

00:30:04.020 to block entire categories of content.

00:30:06.800 So if you don't like Mark Zuckerberg

00:30:09.020 because he's watching your life,

00:30:10.880 then you can just block faith. Like there are very easy offline ways without buying some expensive

00:30:16.400 phone. And when you could just get an Android phone for a hundred dollars, or if you still

00:30:21.740 want a smartphone, for example, that allow you to do this. And then you can also just,

00:30:27.460 cause I just did this with an Android device that I'm sort of repurposing for, for our oldest son,

00:30:33.240 you can just set necessary apps on an Android phone or use something like Google family link,

00:30:39.660 which I know is annoying you, but I'm still setting up the settings to set downtime schedules

00:30:43.880 where like during these hours of the day, you can't use the phone. You can't use the phone

00:30:47.060 for more than two hours. Like it just literally shuts off. And then the person who is the admin

00:30:52.080 on the Google family link can give you more time if they think you should have it, but they can

00:30:57.540 cut you off like a bartender. So these are all super, like you don't need a special device for

00:31:03.060 it, but this community feels like it performatively needs to. But what I think is more meaningful is

00:31:07.180 that in Mennonite communities, there are just social norms around not taking out your phone

00:31:12.080 at certain places. Like a Mennonite would never go to church and pull out a phone because they 1.00

00:31:16.500 know that they would be like socially ostracized for it. And I think just having those social

00:31:21.740 norms is way more helpful than even using some kind of tech if you know that you're going to

00:31:27.600 be shamed. And that is something at least that did really show up in the summer of Ludd in New

00:31:32.520 York. It's still probably still showing up at these events is that when people take out their

00:31:36.060 phones people see that they're doing so with great shame that the phones are like held really low

00:31:40.160 like you know when someone shamefully takes out a phone to like check something and they do that 0.98

00:31:43.220 they hold it at like hip level and they think that you can't see it's like it's the stupidest 0.98

00:31:48.120 thing it's like when our kids play hide and seek and they're like hiding under a table making eye 0.72

00:31:51.560 contact but they assume that you can't see them it's like i love the the them wanting to play 1.00

00:31:57.320 hide and seek and being the worst hiders in the world it's i know man like i think they're so 0.98

00:32:03.500 excited to do it too oh yeah well and then they're like when they find a good hiding spot and then

00:32:08.020 you find them in it they're so delighted that they immediately want to play another round but

00:32:11.820 then they just run directly to that same hiding spot like not clear on the concept guys like at 1.00

00:32:18.340 what age do they figure this out at any rate maybe our kids are just stupid no our kids are beautiful 0.97

00:32:24.380 and wonderful and i love them so much i love you so much simone i love you too the original 0.97

00:32:30.680 Ludic movement though I want to point out is like so different from this because one these are

00:32:36.980 working class artisans who are deeply concerned about their jobs just being completely obliterated

00:32:43.460 it lasted very it was very short though it went from 1811 to 1816 one of the reasons it was so

00:32:49.700 short is that the stuff they did was super violent and illegal and harmful and damaging

00:32:55.260 And even a guy was killed at one point. So in addition to raiding factories and breaking machines, starting in Nottingham in 1811, they ended up breaking over a thousand machines. I mean, people lost fortunes in the damage done.

00:33:11.420 I mean, some, some equivalent of this would have to be like, I don't know if, if they

00:33:16.520 like broke into Apple stores and just took a baseball bat to every device they could

00:33:20.520 get their hands on, even in like the backroom inventory.

00:33:23.080 But I guess Apple stores are kind of designed to make that impossible.

00:33:26.140 It seems like they've anticipated this.

00:33:28.100 We've learned, but they also ultimately killed this man, William Horse, Horsefall.

00:33:33.360 They, they attacked Mills as well.

00:33:35.840 They, this, I think started with the Rothold's mill in 1812.

00:33:39.600 And so obviously there were immediate legal and military repercussions. So this is the kind of movement that had to be repressed. So in a sense that the modern Luddite movement is at least more sustainable and that most of the even anti-data center protests are just protests.

00:33:57.740 There hasn't been at least very successful sabotage of data centers, which is nice.

00:34:03.600 And at least they're using mostly legal channels, like both in the EU and other parts of the

00:34:08.020 world, plus in the US, they're trying to move more through like zoning councils and be

00:34:12.320 nimby about it instead of like, I'm going to break all of the things.

00:34:16.720 But there are some similarities in that like there were many threatening letters sent to

00:34:21.860 people who are trying to buy and implement the use of these machines.

00:34:25.820 but these are by the way it was it was mostly about textiles just in case people are not which

00:34:33.260 was a predominantly female industry at the time if i understand correctly no i don't think no

00:34:38.280 this this was predominantly men i i think exclusively men but yeah no it it arose among

00:34:44.300 skilled english textile workers who were like framework knitters and and stockingers in

00:34:51.380 North Hampshire and croppers and shearers in Yorkshire and weavers and Lancashire. So they 0.98

00:34:58.960 were primarily men. And when they organized, they would organize like kind of semi

00:35:04.920 militias. Like they would even sometimes do military style drills as their preparations.

00:35:11.040 But one of the other big things was they would send threatening letters signed by General Ludd

00:35:16.400 or by this mythic likely mythical at least ned lud that's why they were called luddites which is

00:35:22.120 kind of similar to the the 13 gunshots fired outside that one council member's house

00:35:30.360 and then leaving the note of like no data centers outside his his his door but that's really the most

00:35:36.500 that is close as they get but the luddite movement was so small that even at its peak

00:35:41.880 there were maybe seven to eight thousand sympathizers and the in terms of like the

00:35:48.780 raids so the mud eye movement was smaller than the base camp fandom yes like that's kind of crazy

00:35:56.160 yes it is it is genuinely crazy and i know we even mean like yeah like arguably paid fandom

00:36:02.860 which is like extra committed people who are actually willing to put money down it's it's

00:36:07.440 rather it's rather insane and the raids never really got bigger than approximately 100 men

00:36:13.200 so this is not i would say the anti-data center movement is bigger than the entire

00:36:19.180 luddite movement which makes sense because it isn't just textile workers whose livelihood is

00:36:24.000 being threatened by ai it's like any it's human job email job or what do they call them yeah email

00:36:32.320 job employee or like white collar worker at this point is being threatened by them and plus these

00:36:39.060 were working class artisans whereas the primary participants of the Luddite movement appear to be

00:36:44.340 privileged young people and then kind of retired boomers and then just like some families that are

00:36:52.600 like well I live in Brooklyn and we're looking for something we can take our kids to so this

00:36:55.720 looks fun there's a play about the Luddite movement and there's a puppet frog oh our kids

00:37:00.520 will love that you know like i think they're just kind of they're there because they kind of like

00:37:05.480 the aesthetics of the movement and you know they probably are anti-screen parents because they live

00:37:08.820 in brooklyn and they're just going because it's there right so i i wouldn't say that this is a

00:37:15.480 movement this isn't some kind of domestic terror movement in the same way the original luddite

00:37:19.480 movement is i think it's kind of odd that they're choosing the word luddite because the original

00:37:24.240 luddite movement was very much about like destroying career threatening tech whereas

00:37:29.440 here they're more like well i just don't really want you know mark zuckerberg to well i mean a lot

00:37:34.840 i also took on a vernacular term over the years it did it did but i don't know and i also think

00:37:41.940 that like it's it's very interesting i feel like it is a market correction of sorts that's that's

00:37:49.360 it's worth listening to in the sense that a lot of people are trying to go back to like kind of a

00:37:55.860 early 2000s era internet use which i could see as being relatively healthy like worth pursuing

00:38:01.900 because i think that worked pretty well for us it's working really well for our kids who i think

00:38:08.820 are having that kind of relationship with tech and the internet and i think that's kind of maybe

00:38:15.220 the sweet spot for humans and i think it's important to note if that's where people are

00:38:20.120 converging but what do you think yeah like video game consoles they're not really good ones

00:38:26.520 no vr no feeds i think no feeds is kind of a good just don't be wasteful just don't be wasteful

00:38:33.500 but like come on that's what i think with this stuff like with our kids i'm getting them the

00:38:38.520 little video game rom console and stuff like that no that's my point though that's what we grew up

00:38:42.940 with no but it's more than we grew up with it's everything i think it's operating in an anti-big

00:38:51.060 tech environment is a better way to do this than an anti-tech environment and that's functionally

00:38:58.260 what they're trying to achieve they just yeah like how to make your own website how to host

00:39:02.560 your own things i was so surprised to not hear orbit in all of this so look at the video game

00:39:08.580 system i'm going to be giving octavia right like yeah this is not from nintendo this is not from

00:39:12.980 xbox this is made by hobbyists who wanted to make a system that could play any raw right from any of

00:39:20.380 the old systems and so he can play through any of the old games on a local device look at the

00:39:26.060 rfab it's coming down the rfab pipeline you guys will have this soon i am so excited to be working

00:39:31.240 on this but an rfab hardware we're gonna have soon which will allow you to give to your kids

00:39:37.700 a little talking companion that keeps the conversation focused on educational topics

00:39:43.320 and you can also see the point because we found that our kid when he walks around with the that

00:39:48.440 rabbit ai device that the camera is really crucial he wants to be able to show his ai companions what

00:39:54.920 he's looking at and learn about it like is this poison ivy or what do you think of this or what

00:40:01.540 business which is really cool i cannot wait to have our fab hardware but with all of the things

00:40:08.180 in our life you can choose to just not go with the big tech and you're generally going to have

00:40:13.840 better outcomes especially as big companies get worse at things like right now while we've been

00:40:19.620 having this talk i have been specking out what it's going to take for me to to clone descripts

00:40:24.880 features and just make it better and cheaper that's because like what why go and work with

00:40:30.520 descript when i can build this myself and frankly they charge way more than they should

00:40:34.040 you should do no i actually really like stream yard but maybe stream yard next

00:40:38.860 you want me to do video hosting cloning i can do video hosting i can do that easily you want me to

00:40:44.740 you want me to knock out stream yard we won't be able to afford it much longer so yeah how much

00:40:51.040 how much are they charging us now well remember when we we were able to grandfathered in on their

00:40:56.200 non-business plan for just a little bit longer because of our non-profit but they wanted to

00:41:01.140 charge I think like 500 a month or something like some insane amount that we were like oh my god we

00:41:05.020 just can't yeah I can I can do this anyway I'm excited think about it but yeah anyway I think

00:41:13.620 this is fine I think that it's bougie but that's fine I just I think that the most reasonable

00:41:21.760 approach to the future is kind of solar punk. Malcolm and I were talking about it earlier that

00:41:27.840 while the original solar punk movement sort of came from a very progressive coded environmentalist

00:41:33.180 coded space, all of the solar punk environments and families that we know are more on the sort

00:41:39.400 of like conservative, like big family side of the spectrum where, you know, they may live on

00:41:45.760 some kind of homestead, but they're using AI to work out everything from medical solutions to

00:41:51.860 complex health issues to how to develop strong, like a strong permaculture system for their unique

00:41:57.080 microclimate. And it's, I think it's really hard to do all these things without AI, because a lot

00:42:03.020 of us are coming into this without tacit knowledge that has been passed down from generation to

00:42:07.600 generation. In other words, I feel like we can't actually return to the land, return to nature and

00:42:12.440 return to old ways, like more sustainable offline ways without AI, because we have collectively as

00:42:20.140 a society forgotten how to do most of these things. We've forgotten how to tie knots and

00:42:27.100 go fishing and do all these other things. And the only reason that we're able to learn these things

00:42:30.420 again is by leveraging AI and asking for that help. AI is playing the role that our grandparents

00:42:38.240 used to play and teaching us how to do things the way that things used to be done so i would just

00:42:43.960 warn people who like want to go super offline that it's going to be hard to learn the old ways

00:42:49.240 to learn how to do things without the internet if you don't leverage i love they're like the old

00:42:53.900 ways when you used to make a website for yourself that's what's again what's so funny about it is

00:42:59.660 like oh this isn't a line movement this is like go back to the early noughties internet anyway

00:43:04.920 though i love you very much malcolm thank you for cheering me up i by the way i got the blood work

00:43:11.780 back and i am just the it just completely failed i have no hcg i'm not pregnant at all we lost we

00:43:20.320 lost our baby and i'm so sad and i really appreciate that you've been that's really sad

00:43:26.020 but this happens you've cheered me up a lot and i really appreciate it and we're gonna keep

00:43:30.000 trying and you will get pregnant yeah thanks malcolm all right i love you bye

00:43:37.820 simone statistically this should have been happening way more no i know that i know that

00:43:41.960 no i'm not gonna dwell on it i'll yeah bye bye did you find the book you were looking for i did

00:43:49.880 find it and now it's included with the rest of the documents that we'll be able to get it digitized

00:43:53.820 and i didn't just find that but included with it was a write-up of the collins family history

00:43:58.640 which i otherwise would have not had included dude okay that's so one thing i'd really like

00:44:04.960 to find for the documentary team is the first book i wrote in high school

00:44:09.700 i don't think i've ever seen this

00:44:15.900 what is it it's called why do anything i wonder if it's in my google oh wait wait wait that's

00:44:22.780 google drive i i know that i know that hold on it is at least i have a copy of it yeah i i i made a

00:44:30.620 copy of it in 2013 yeah like why do anything like literally it's a good title it's a yeah it is

00:44:37.980 essential to know what you should be working for as an ultimate goal in life without meaning life

00:44:43.480 is meaningless when we think of what we want out of life we normally jump directly to shallow

00:44:47.980 motivations ones derived from core motivations such as a loving family or a nice house the

00:44:55.200 problem with this is that we do not ask ourselves why it is that we want these things in life if

00:45:05.720 you were to ask yourself why it is that you want such things you would in turn answer with one of

00:45:09.820 four core values oh this is great i love that i wrote this all the way back then this is a

00:45:14.800 That is delightful.

00:45:16.520 One day when I was 15, I wondered why I was trying so hard in school.

00:45:20.840 I always had assumed I did it in order to get into a good high school, which would then

00:45:24.540 get me into a good college.

00:45:25.880 And from there, I would get a good job.

00:45:27.080 At that point, I would be successful, make a sufficient amount of money, and I would

00:45:30.920 be able to do whatever I pleased.

00:45:32.480 Ultimately, all of the effort I put in was going to make me happy.

00:45:35.920 And if I simply economized and constantly worked hard, I would recap the benefits later

00:45:40.740 coming out ahead as far as happiness goes in my life.

00:45:43.520 It was in that I asked myself why I should strive for happiness, and I realized that I didn't know.

00:45:49.080 I was aware that pleasure centers in my brain were activated when I was happy, and that this rewarded me for doing things and achieving certain things, but why should I care?

00:45:57.300 Why should I do anything?

00:45:58.720 Should I work hard to become successful, or instead drift through life, finding happiness where I could, if overall I would have more happiness doing that?

00:46:06.120 should i help other people or help myself without knowing what motivation should be everything i put

00:46:12.240 my efforts to would be completely pointless i decided from that point on my motivation in life

00:46:17.120 would be to find a motivation and then i go through but yeah this is i i would hope bar

00:46:21.880 kids do something like this at 15. i think this is something an exercise you can see the pragmatist

00:46:25.840 guide to life is basically just a longer rehashed version of this basically yeah

00:46:30.200 hmm that's freaking wild that is really crazy oh memory lane today

00:46:37.040 kind of fun thank you for storing that simone you're so diligent oh thanks

00:46:43.340 there we go that's good right yeah that's a lot of me hey tex do you think you look like octavian

00:46:54.740 now. He can't see himself. Well, he's smiling. You smile a lot. Yeah, and I like it. I like

00:47:05.920 his smile when he looks at me. He's like laughing. Yeah. Yeah, you make him laugh. Hey, it's

00:47:14.480 close to three. It's kind of, it's just close to three. It's just close to three. Super

00:47:21.960 close, huh? Yeah, I'm actually, I can't write the lyrics here. I'll play with Tex, because I really

00:47:31.100 want to, I'll play with Tex the way for Eric. Okay. Because I know he really want him to smile. I do.

00:47:37.020 Yeah, I play with him, makes him smile. Perfect. Aw, look. Look, Tex, there's a carrot.

Based Camp - July 03, 2026

Luddites are BACK： This Time They’re Spoiled Rich Kids with Artisan Websites

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