In this episode of The Daily Show with Stephen Colbert, host Stephen Colbert talks about his new initiative, Clean Slate, and why it s so important to have people in your life who are believable and who are willing to fight for you.
00:06:12.000And then it was reinforced spending time with human beings in real life over Christmas and New Year's.
00:06:19.000And I'll get to the schedule in a second.
00:06:21.000You know, the show is coming back on the 22nd, the Daily Show, and next week, Monday, we have a Black and White and the Gray Issues and an Apologetics episode with Alex Jones.
00:06:29.000A lot of stuff happening here in the next week, but that's not really what I want to talk about right now.
00:06:34.000Clean Slate is an initiative that we're starting here.
00:06:39.000And I ask that you consider joining us.
00:07:53.000Now we live in a world where that's not the business.
00:07:56.000As a matter of fact, you're discouraged from that.
00:07:59.000And you're discouraged as a consumer from using these platforms that way.
00:08:04.000We now have people who aggregate content that they didn't make to try and reach an audience they don't care about through feeding a machine which we call an algorithm.
00:08:13.000And all that means is it's an artificial brain.
00:08:56.000A little secret, a lot of journalists do this at New York Times and Washington Post because they want to evade accountability.
00:09:02.000We're doing this so that hopefully you can follow suit and we will move forward using these platforms as the tools that were designed to serve us, not us, not you, serving them.
00:09:21.000When you're on social media, when you're scrolling through TikTok, when you're scrolling through Instagram, when you're looking at nothing but YouTube shorts, do you feel particularly social?
00:09:31.000Do you often find yourself using social media when you're in a room with the people you love who love you?
00:09:43.000You ever leave Instagram or TikTok, any of these places after an hour, and feel better for having done it?
00:09:51.000It's a genuine question, and it's something I hear from everyone about on a regular basis.
00:09:56.000Let me kind of give you an analogy, because this happened to me.
00:10:01.000Social media, these platforms, this device that is constantly bombarding you, and by the way, collecting your information, it's like being at a party.
00:10:09.000You ever been at a party and there's someone there and you have a bunch of your friends, your family, and there's someone who doesn't quite pick up on the social cues and they won't let you go and you want to end the conversation but you can't because you want to spend time with the people around you who you've come to see?
00:12:00.000You let the AI know if you want to see it.
00:12:04.000Do you realize that if I listen to these consultants, if I listen to these firms that exist now to tell you exactly how to profit, Off of new media content.
00:12:12.000To be clear, there's a business, and the model is create nothing because it costs money, it costs resources to create something, but profit off of everything.
00:12:22.000Clip someone else's stuff and distribute it, and hopefully you appeal to the algorithm.
00:12:27.000But let me explain to you the difference between doing a full-length program or, for example, using these social media platforms as tools.
00:12:35.000You know, when I was a kid, and they would say TV would rot your brain as an example, but it was different.
00:12:40.000If you went to a live show, you bought a ticket, you were there, you were sharing an experience with people.
00:12:45.000I can remember as a kid, my dad would usually tape it, because it was past my bedtime, staying up with him the next day after watching David Letterman, or if there was something really funny on Saturday Night Live, or he would show me these films that he grew up with.
00:12:58.000We would sit around and watch it together.
00:13:37.000Who you subscribe to and what you say you want to watch...
00:13:42.000Is largely irrelevant because of an artificial brain telling you what it is that you need to see.
00:13:48.000The difference between you controlling the devices, between you turning things on that you want to watch, and using it to actually help build your community.
00:13:58.000is very different from a device that is bombarding you non-stop with a default, a default setting of notifications and a bing, bing, bing, while it reads your face, your thumbprint, and your preferences, so that they can sell you to... Think about this for a second.
00:14:13.000When I say sell you, this isn't just some cynical thing.
00:14:18.000We have a mental health crisis, I guess we should say, that we've never had in this country.
00:14:24.000And we have more access to information than ever before.
00:14:28.000You really should be able to become more educated now for no money, but certainly less than at any point in history.
00:14:35.000You should be able to be connected to people, your family, your friends, more than ever before because you don't need to pay the money for a long-distance call or get on a plane.
00:14:47.000This was supposed to create accessibility, but people are more isolated than ever.
00:15:45.000When you take that and then you also extrapolate what we know about elections, what we know about the lockdowns, what we know about COVID, but it's really, really hard to identify that when you're so far gone because you've been convinced that you like something you didn't even care about because, boom, it was a 10-second view, it was a 10-second view, and all of a sudden you're down a rabbit hole and, hey, your kids are right there.
00:16:09.000There's nothing wrong with consuming media There's something really wrong with the biggest corporations that have ever existed, more powerful than governments, building their business model off of your inability to turn it off.
00:16:29.000And then you have the inability to teach people truth from fiction.
00:16:33.000And then you have to get into this rat race, like we've talked about.
00:17:01.000So that's why we're starting the Clean Slate Initiative.
00:17:06.000Uh, and, uh, if you actually go to louderwithcrowder.com slash cleanslate, uh, there are the instructions there.
00:17:12.000If you want to take part, and I want to be clear about what it is that you do, um, and an option B, because I understand that this is pretty severe.
00:17:21.000We've gone through, I guess, a digital suicide machine, as it were.
00:17:24.000We're not deleting these platforms, but especially as we go into an election season, we're hitting the reset saying, okay, what kind of a legacy do we want to leave?
00:17:35.000And what kind of a change do we want to impact?
00:17:38.000And any of you out there want to have the AI brain determine what it is that you consume and who you are based on things that you were posting in maybe 2009 when the platform was entirely different from what it is now?
00:18:08.000It's a bigger risk here right now for us because we know that we're, this is a media company, and it's gone.
00:18:14.000On Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, at some point that takes a little bit longer.
00:18:17.000So if you go to lyderwithcredit.com slash cleanslate.
00:18:20.000If this sounds like you, and you were thinking I need a change, I'm getting sucked in, maybe, and by the way there are resources for this too, maybe you're addicted.
00:18:35.000Can clear your timelines and put up one post, whatever post it is that you want to put up, so when people go to your profiles, this is what they see, this is what defines you, and include the hashtag Clean Slate so that hopefully other people do it.
00:18:53.000Now, if you don't want to do that, and there are ways to archive, by the way, everything you've done in the past so you don't lose it yourself personally, then I would just ask that you be mindful as you move forward.
00:19:05.000And use these platforms as tools to serve you as opposed to chasing the dragon and serving a master because you need to understand that that master is an artificial brain that doesn't exist and does not care about you or your children.
00:19:21.000It would be like a hammer with sentience.
00:19:37.000If you feel like this is something you've been wanting to do.
00:19:40.000I can't tell you how many comments we get, especially people who are concerned with politics, saying, I want to have an impact, but my God, I just, it's just stressful.
00:19:47.000And I just, I, then, then they have to, I have to go off the grid.
00:20:15.000Whether you choose to wipe everything, one post, hashtag Clean Slate, or you can include hashtag Clean Slate in your timelines as they exist, and as you move forward, decide that you're going to take control of this.
00:20:29.000And outside of that, yep, just so you know, not only is the show coming back on the 22nd, we never really take breaks.
00:20:34.000We've been working on, we've had the undercover unit here pissing off the most powerful people in the world.
00:20:41.000If you thought the Nashville Manifesto was something that is child's play compared to this, we have to aim once and aim right.
00:20:46.000They're out there working on it right now.
00:20:49.000So we'll have a lot of those coming up when the show comes back daily on the 22nd, but we'll also have Monday, another Black and White and the Gray Issues, where I sat down with two black women and just talked about everything for about an hour and a half.
00:21:02.000Wednesday, Gerald and Alex Jones, they did an apologetics episode, and we actually have a special Nick DiPaolo 30-minute stand-up special as the OG on Friday, and then we're going to have, once we get the final Go ahead, here, from legal on the undercover stories that, um, you know, hey, none of this would make sense business-wise.
00:21:42.000The undercover unit does not make sense.
00:21:44.000If you're just trying to appeal to that algorithm, click, click, click, click.
00:21:48.000You're better off posting an old Andrew Dice Clay hilarious stand-up clip and not giving credit.
00:21:53.000But we want to provide this to you and you.
00:21:57.000Not some artificial learning machine that seems to get dumber or more evil by the day will determine what it is that we do and I just ask that you consider not allowing it to determine what you do going forward.