Internet fame, friction maxing, and the new ‘touch grass’ (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: California sober means I only smoke weed. Brooklyn sober means I only do ketamine. There are so many versions. Have you not heard that?

[00:00:05] Speaker 2: Why have you, why do you know that, Ari Shapiro?

[00:00:07] Speaker 1: Because I have friends who live in Brooklyn.

[00:00:09] Speaker 2: Oh my God, okay, well. This is a special episode of The Assignment, which we're gonna call Engagement Party because it is about all the things we're sort of engaging with and why we're obsessed, which means I actually had to bring in a friend who is as obsessed as me. Oh, and I'm so happy to be here with you on your show, Audie. I'm happy to not be talking about the news for a moment. Like, just a moment.

[00:00:32] Speaker 1: We have spent our entire lives covering serious, hard, major news stories, and when the mic turns off, we talk about everything else.

[00:00:41] Speaker 2: Little cultural artifacts, and you turn to someone you love and respect and you say. And say, I have to talk about this. I have to talk to you about this. We have to discuss this. The first thing I wanna talk about is the idea of a breakout star in the era of our lord, Beyoncé's internet.

[00:00:58] Speaker 1: And in this case, I think there are two breakout stars, Conor Story and Hudson Williams. Oh.

[00:01:04] Speaker 2: Basically, the only way to talk about this to you is heated rivalry.

[00:01:09] Speaker 1: Are you not consumed? It's your Instagram feed, not a nonstop grid of these two on late night, on podcasts, and red carpets, like, closed, unclosed. I'm getting, is it just my feed?

[00:01:23] Speaker 2: No, it's not just you. There are these moments, and all of a sudden, someone's star is on the ascent, and the question is, can they sustain? Can they maintain? Can they convert it into financial success and also creative success?

[00:01:39] Speaker 1: Right, you compare it to a generation ago when someone like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck came out with Good Will Hunting and built a career of stardom when Hollywood and our attention was way less fractured. But these guys, unlike people who spend years working on an album or get cast in some huge franchise like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter, these guys thought they were making a little Canadian show that nobody would ever see. Connor Story said that he was ready to go back to waiting tables in Los Angeles after this came out, and suddenly, they're presenting at the Golden Globes. Which is crazy. And they're handling it pretty amazingly.

[00:02:14] Speaker 2: I think it's because they're digital natives. Like, hardcore digital natives, this is how they were raised on the feed. Specifically because they embrace the parasocial relationship. They are at all times talking directly to their audience. They don't dismiss their audience. Like, they are 100% in dialogue at all times.

[00:02:39] Speaker 1: Because today, if you're gonna go on a late night talk show, it's not because people are gonna watch that show. It's because you're hoping for a moment that will go viral like the one that I'm about to show you. You ready for this, Adi? I don't know exactly what you're gonna show me, because when I saw it, I was like, this is the weirdest aspect of this show, is bottom jokes.

[00:02:58] Speaker 2: I'm just gonna say it.

[00:02:59] Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I miss the days when straight people did not know what that meant.

[00:03:02] Speaker 2: You miss it.

[00:03:04] Speaker 1: Go on. All right, so here we've got Hudson Williams on Jimmy Fallon. The clip speaks for itself.

[00:03:10] Speaker 2: Okay, I could not believe this.

[00:03:12] Speaker 1: The man is on all fours, forearms on the ground. We have to describe this for audio.

[00:03:17] Speaker 2: Do we? So imagine you're getting on all fours before James Fallon.

[00:03:26] Speaker 1: But the point is, so many thousands, millions of people who would never watch Jimmy Fallon are watching this moment in their Instagram or TikTok feeds.

[00:03:32] Speaker 2: That might be the only clip I've seen of Fallon in weeks. Sorry, not sorry. Okay, so here's why I'm obsessed with this. When it comes to meeting your breakout moment, there are lots of different ways to handle it. And if I look back at someone like Harris Dickinson, who was in Baby Girl with Nicole Kidman, that was another like hyper-sexualized part. And that was a moment where I heard him on a podcast and he was, I think it was called the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast. And he was like, I'm uncomfortable with the way women speak to me in public. I'm uncomfortable with the kinds of things that have been said. He does not engage in the social media game. And he's sort of quietly gone on to make a movie that is very successful at Cannes. These guys aren't doing any of that. These guys, it doesn't feel to me like they are paving the road for a serious career.

[00:04:26] Speaker 1: Although you can tell that they are feeling suddenly from one day to the next, I can't go to Trader Joe's. I can't work out at the gym. The fandom is so wildly intense in such a short time. A friend of mine was telling me she waited in an online queue to buy a ticket to the heated rivalry club night that was coming to Washington DC, which sold out so quickly that they had to make it four nights. In DC, it is the 930 club, but this has been happening all over the country. And we've got a TikTok showing the LA party where a fan edit is playing on screen, a fan edit of the show. And then you have this club music in the background. Thousands of what looks like mostly young women jumping up and down while on the screen you see Ilya and Shane going at it. When I think about the rocket ship to celebrity that these two guys are on, I think of, there was a recent profile of Jennifer Lawrence in the New Yorker where Gia Tolentino interviewed her. And you have Jennifer Lawrence now at this stage a couple of decades into her career. And she was looking back on her early press tours sort of affectionately, but slightly cringingly.

[00:05:37] Speaker 2: And she more or less said- Which is actually the definition of it culturally, right? Which is that it was sort of adorably dorky and then somehow overstayed its welcome.

[00:05:48] Speaker 1: And trying so hard and doing so much. That's the arc that fame, if you're lucky, takes in a big career. And so I could imagine these two guys 20 years from now looking back at this 2026 moment and saying, oh, we were doing so much. We were trying so hard.

[00:06:01] Speaker 2: Is it the same for men though? I feel like with women, we're primed to hate them. You're totally right. There is a double standard. Yeah, whereas with these guys, people are just gonna be like, oh, ha, ha, ha. And then they'll do an arthouse film and they are one pretend overdose on TV away from being an Emmy winner.

[00:06:15] Speaker 1: Or, because this is the other thing that Americans do with famous people, they will get torn down for some real or perceived misstep or slight.

[00:06:23] Speaker 2: Here's where this is challenged, Timothee Chalamet.

[00:06:26] Speaker 1: Sure, I think he's navigated it well.

[00:06:29] Speaker 2: We should be at a tipping point.

[00:06:31] Speaker 1: Oh, you think that society should be turning against Timothee Chalamet?

[00:06:34] Speaker 2: Yes, we are at the point where people should be like- And yet, he's like an Oscar front runner. But this Marty Supreme thing is on another level. This Marty Supreme thing seems to be a breakout where Hollywood is also not just sanctioning, but stamping him as what they want their future A-list to be. That's true.

[00:06:51] Speaker 1: They want him to be a movie star in the way that George Clooney is a movie star.

[00:06:55] Speaker 2: More than he wants to be a movie star. There's part of it where if you are in the club societally, this ride is not as difficult. There's a conditional acceptance to who you are and when you fall, there's a sense of, oh, well, we always knew he was a, oh, we always knew she was a, and it just feels very hard to escape that vortex, which is sort of what's happening with Sidney Sweeney. Sidney Sweeney is just like, people are like, you showed us your boobs, it was fun at first, now put them away. And it's like, wait, what?

[00:07:25] Speaker 1: I think another person who has spoken really articulately about this is Chapel Roan. Oh my gosh, yeah. The double standard that applies to women, Chapel Roan, who blew up for amazing pop hits after kind of working in the trenches for a very long time and suddenly was completely overwhelmed and threatened by the way people felt like they were entitled to relate to her.

[00:07:46] Speaker 2: Well, by publicly disparaging the parasocial relationship.

[00:07:50] Speaker 1: That's it.

[00:07:50] Speaker 2: Woo, you can't do that. Doja Cat learned that. The fans think you owe us. Yeah, you can't do that. We own you. You're there because of you. We own you. And yeah, there's something about that that's a violation. It's a violation of the contract.

[00:08:02] Speaker 1: And I think so far, these two guys, Conor Story and Hudson Williams, have done it brilliantly. It is early days yet.

[00:08:08] Speaker 2: It is early days yet. Okay. All right. We just talked about breakouts. What are we talking about next?

[00:08:13] Speaker 1: I am obsessed with an idea. Have you heard this word, friction maxing?

[00:08:18] Speaker 2: No.

[00:08:18] Speaker 1: Okay. I was at a dinner party the other night and somebody who was a senior in college told me that she was- You were at a dinner party with a senior in college?

[00:08:25] Speaker 2: Her dad was at the table too. Oh my God, did you suggest they go into plastics? Were you like the old person at the table? I was the middle-aged person at the table. Sure you were.

[00:08:34] Speaker 1: This woman who was a senior at an Ivy League school said that she got a CD player and is buying CDs, which obviously plays into this kind of analog retro trend that we see- Yes, carrying your analog bag. Your camera. But then I saw that there was this New York Magazine article about resisting the urge to make a frictionless life. And it basically argues that between one day delivery on Amazon and asking ChatGPT what to cook with the things that are in our fridge and location sharing on our iPhones, we are trying to achieve a frictionless life, which is a life that humans were not intended to have.

[00:09:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, you need to be, what's the term that sort of therapy speak? You need to be like comfortable with your discomfort. Totally. You need to live in your discomfort. And it's come up, I think it's not an accident that it's happening into 2026 as we turn a corner in the conversation about AI. You're nodding. Where do you think I'm going with this? Tell me.

[00:09:33] Speaker 1: I think that the tech lords of the world are trying to, I mean, like, okay, Mark Zuckerberg has said, people are lonely. They don't have enough friends. So what they need is AI friends.

[00:09:47] Speaker 2: Right.

[00:09:49] Speaker 1: I don't think that is the solution to loneliness.

[00:09:50] Speaker 2: I don't think that's what we asked for. All right, I want to play for you something. It is a person who is like commenting on the friction maxing.

[00:09:58] Speaker 1: Two Xs.

[00:09:59] Speaker 3: There are so many interesting things that she writes here about ways that we can practice. One way she says is stop sharing your locations that you have to ask, where are you? Stop using chat GPT, already on that game. Buy a cookbook, text your friends for advice. Go to the grocery store.

[00:10:12] Speaker 2: This list of things is amazing because I used to call this life.

[00:10:15] Speaker 1: Like go to the grocery store. I'm curious, does this resonate more with you as a person moving through the world or as a parent raising small humans?

[00:10:22] Speaker 2: It resonates with me as a journalist following AI. If I'm going to be completely honest, and here's why. The whole idea of friction comes from e-commerce. How can we make it easy to convert you, a casual scroller, into a consumer and a customer? We're trying to get you to the shopping cart. And I think one of the reasons this is coming up is because with Instagram and TikTok and a lot of social media sites that are now becoming, they're trying to turn themselves into shopping malls. People have complained a lot about how they hate social media and this friction is a fancy way of saying, I don't always want to be a customer. That's what's in my mind when I see it.

[00:11:04] Speaker 1: There was also a Substack about this back in May, a Substack post that made an interesting argument, which is that what we think of as frictionless puts friction in other places. So what does one day Amazon delivery mean for the warehouse workers, for the drivers? What does the ease of an AI chat GPT or grok search mean for the data centers that are sucking up water and raising energy prices in their community? What we think of as frictionless has a ripple impact that creates friction elsewhere.

[00:11:33] Speaker 2: And it gets at this idea, I feel like, which is like with climate change or something, sometimes when there's very big, big problems, people try and figure out a micro solution. Like what is the thing I can do to make this better? And then that's how you get Gen Alpha posting pictures of their tote bag with a book and a pencil. You know what I mean? I'm going analog. Yeah, exactly. It's like they are, this is a protest. Not all heroes wear capes is what I'm trying to say. That's what I'm trying to say.

[00:12:05] Speaker 1: I don't want to mistake this for sort of trad wife culture. We're not going back to knitting our own clothes. I'm still gonna use my dishwasher. I'm not disavowing technology altogether.

[00:12:15] Speaker 2: I feel like the trad wife thing is a little in a different realm, but continue.

[00:12:19] Speaker 1: Continue. Maybe so. I am not disavowing the 21st century. I'm just saying maybe we have gone a little too far and maybe we need to just curb our lust for a frictionless life.

[00:12:31] Speaker 2: What I think is interesting is finally, we're also going to have to make some definitions about what it means to be human in that what is a human interaction? What is discomfort versus something that's like really bad for you? Like what does it mean to engage?

[00:12:47] Speaker 1: I also love somebody on X posted, inconvenience is the cost of community. I repeat to myself as I climbed six flights of stairs for my friend's birthday party for her cat.

[00:12:57] Speaker 2: I saw that one. I love how they have to bring it into a mantra. You know what I mean? You can just imagine someone like burning their like Palo Santo being like, inconvenience is the cost of community.

[00:13:07] Speaker 1: Inconvenience is the cost of community.

[00:13:09] Speaker 2: Okay, I'll remember that the next time you invite me to your house.

[00:13:14] Speaker 1: You're a parent, I'm not. And I think this discussion about friction and discomfort often comes down to how to raise good kids who are comfortable with whatever life might throw at them and are resilient. But I also think that as adults who lived through a pandemic and had this year or two where we had so little human contact, we as grownups also kind of have to relearn those skills that parents are trying to instill for the first time in their kids.

[00:13:36] Speaker 2: Most of the time when I'm talking to my children, my boys about, and I feel this conversation in the back of my head is I'm bored. And I'm like, yep, you're supposed to be. And they're like, no, no, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, honey, that's when the best ideas come. So go be bored and come back to me when you've got something. But I can't even do that. I'm literally telling them to do a thing that like I can't bear. You know, we have to demonstrate something that we're all actively struggling with. And that's where I think the conversation, as you said, about kids in the next generation is.

[00:14:11] Speaker 1: Okay, Audie, speaking of the best ideas, as you know, my beloved husband has, for as long as I've been a journalist, pitched me story ideas that I don't think I have ever once run with.

[00:14:24] Speaker 2: But you always tell me about them.

[00:14:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, and so when he heard that you and I were gonna be doing this, he saw his opening. My time is now. He was like Lucy trying to get on Desi's show. And so he sent in a video that I guess pitches you some stories since I never accept his bitches. I haven't seen it. Have you seen? No.

[00:14:40] Speaker 2: Let's do it. Look at his face. I love this, okay.

[00:14:45] Speaker 4: Hey, Audie, happy new year. And have I got a story for you. Now, this is not a scoop, but it's a perfect story for January. And especially dry January. A lot of people are doing dry January, where they cut out alcohol for the entire month. Most Americans now have access to THC, which is for some people replacing alcohol. Some people are cutting out alcohol for financial reasons. Wait, these are actually good story ideas.

[00:15:10] Speaker 1: Why does he give you the good ones?

[00:15:12] Speaker 4: If you use GLP-1s, that seems to inhibit the appetite for alcohol.

[00:15:16] Speaker 2: He is so- He's completely right. He's so right. And we've done stories on this as well, but a huge part of it is the cannabis element. People have another option, especially with the broadness of that marketplace. I remember we did a story about Thanksgiving and the amount of sort of edible products that are around for your Thanksgiving dinner. The Cousin Walk, I heard that episode, yeah. And so people used to call it California Sober and all that stuff.

[00:15:44] Speaker 1: California Sober means I only smoke weed. Brooklyn Sober means I only do ketamine. There are so many versions. Have you not heard that?

[00:15:50] Speaker 2: Why do you know that, Ari Shapiro?

[00:15:52] Speaker 1: Because I have friends who live in Brooklyn.

[00:15:54] Speaker 2: Oh my God, okay, well. Are we allowed to talk about ketamine? Of course, apparently we are. I don't know what's next. I think that he's right. It's a great story, and it's weirdly a story that is not going away.

[00:16:07] Speaker 1: And I also wonder whether alcohol consumption going down ties back into people spending less time with each other. Because alcohol used to be a thing that you drank with your friends at the bar or had a bottle of wine with somebody at home. And if we're spending less time in each other's company, we might also be spending less time imbibing.

[00:16:24] Speaker 2: Okay, Ari, now it is time to talk serious business. Oh, I'm ready, okay. Very, very important business. It's time for our- Okay, should I button my shirt up more? Well, yeah, for other reasons, but sure, yeah. Very important quiz.

[00:16:37] Speaker 1: Okay, where we'll ask each other questions about pop culture and see how tuned in we are. I'm ready for it.

[00:16:42] Speaker 2: Well, I'm trying to stump you, that's actually the goal. Okay, we'll see. We begin. What movie was this Chelsea Handler joke about at the Critics' Choice Awards?

[00:16:54] Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't watch those.

[00:16:55] Speaker 2: What?

[00:16:55] Speaker 1: I watched the Golden Globes, but not the Critics' Choice Awards.

[00:16:58] Speaker 2: That's not the flex you think it is. Okay. The joke was white Hollywood was so shook after seeing the box office numbers variety ran the headline, do box office numbers really matter?

[00:17:10] Speaker 1: It's gotta be Sinners, right? Yeah. Oh, God, I love that movie.

[00:17:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, but apparently that's a thing now, but the discourse about how Sinners is performing.

[00:17:20] Speaker 1: Getting completely snubbed by the industry. I mean, we talked about Timothee Chalamet, but where's Michael B. Jordan in the Oscar conversation?

[00:17:27] Speaker 2: Not dating a Kardashian is what he, right? Like there's the boost that comes from that.

[00:17:31] Speaker 1: He has been doing the work, he's been playing the roles, he's been getting not only the critical acclaim, but also the box office, and yet. It's just- Which we talked about the double standard of gender, there's also a double standard of race. Here's a question for you. You ready? Yes. What game show host made headlines for posting on Blue Sky?

[00:17:47] Speaker 2: Unsubscribe, what are you talking about, Blue Sky? I'm supposed to know something on Blue Sky?

[00:17:51] Speaker 1: Well, what game show host can you name? If you want to just take it at that level. What game show host made headlines for posting on Blue Sky? The prosecute the former regime at every level candidate has my vote in 2028.

[00:18:04] Speaker 2: The flip side is this is extremely Blue Sky.

[00:18:08] Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like that's very- Especially when you hear who it is.

[00:18:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. Oh, when you hear who it is. So this is someone who's maybe not seen as political?

[00:18:18] Speaker 1: I think it's somebody who is seen as a quintessentially Blue Sky kind of- Like, this is designed for the Blue Sky audience.

[00:18:26] Speaker 2: This is not a Drew Carey situation. I'm gonna go who you wouldn't expect.

[00:18:31] Speaker 1: Well, it really goes back to like, how many game show hosts can you name?

[00:18:34] Speaker 2: Okay, Jeopardy, Jenkins.

[00:18:35] Speaker 1: Thank you, Jennings. Okay, great. Close, you were very close. Very close, Ken Jennings. If you didn't get it, I was gonna give you the clue. It is a game show that I had a category on not too long ago, but you didn't need that clue. First of all, what? Wait, yeah, you didn't know that? What did it say? It said, talking and listening with Ari Shapiro. No, no, no. I presented a category. Ari, come on.

[00:19:01] Speaker 2: This is like the highlight of my life. Okay, question for you. Okay, you watched the Golden Globe, so you should be able to get this one. Whose Golden Globes acceptance speech thanked God and the trans community?

[00:19:13] Speaker 1: Oh my God, I loved this moment so much.

[00:19:15] Speaker 2: This was a great moment, yeah. Trick question, though.

[00:19:17] Speaker 1: Okay, okay. What's the answer? Well, the answer is Wanda Sykes on behalf of Ricky Gervais. Perfect. Ricky Gervais was not there. Wanda Sykes was presenting the award. She was like, I will thank both in his acceptance speech that I will deliver on his behalf.

[00:19:30] Speaker 2: And Bill Maher catches a stray on the way as she makes a joke saying, Bill Maher, you do so much for us. We wish you could do less. He was not amused.

[00:19:40] Speaker 1: Wanda Sykes, national treasure.

[00:19:42] Speaker 2: That's the thing, because not wrong. I only heard facts. Like, yeah, do less. All right, Ari, finally, I want to talk to you about a segment I've been kicking around in my mind. It's called Touch Grass. Oh, I like that. Yeah, and the reason why is I've just been really, really wrestling with this idea of everyone feeling lost with the AI onslaught, lost with slop, the rage bait. Get us back to the real world. People are just, they're actually exhausted. And now what used to be an insult, go touch grass, people are now like embracing.

[00:20:15] Speaker 1: Literally doing it. Yeah. You wanna go first?

[00:20:17] Speaker 2: No, you have to go first because you're always doing stuff out in the world.

[00:20:20] Speaker 1: Well, and also I like actual grass. I'm like a nature boy.

[00:20:24] Speaker 2: I have been known to enter into nature.

[00:20:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, you famously, my mother invited you on a hike in Oregon and you said, I only packed high heels. So she said, I will drive you to a waterfall and we can sit in the car and look at the waterfall. That's Audie's version of going into nature. No, your mom did take me into the- The Columbia River Gorge in Oregon.

[00:20:46] Speaker 2: Okay, whatever those words are. And yes, I only had knee high boots. Because I was meeting Ari Shabiro's mother.

[00:20:54] Speaker 1: I just, my mother is like Ari Patagonia outdoor. Yeah, I love that. I love that story. Every day I take my dogs on a walk through a park near our house. And this week I saw that this little bush was blooming. It's called witch hazel. It has these very, very subtle flowers. They actually have a very powerful smell. It is always the first plant to bloom in the winter.

[00:21:21] Speaker 2: How do you know this stuff?

[00:21:23] Speaker 1: I just like nature. And seeing it bloom is the world's message to me that even though temperatures are below freezing, even though we might still get snow storms, even though the nights are long and the days are short, we are moving towards spring. And so now, it stays in bloom for a really long time. And so now until like the snow drops arrive and then the crocuses and then the daffodils, I've got the witch hazel to remind me that like life is coming back to the world.

[00:21:49] Speaker 2: Okay, I love that. Nature is healing.

[00:21:51] Speaker 1: Here's a little photo that I took of the witch hazel.

[00:21:52] Speaker 2: You took a picture of the plant?

[00:21:54] Speaker 1: It's like not impressive, but it has an incredible smell. These little branches with these little yellow-brown almost teeny little tentacles kind of poking out.

[00:22:03] Speaker 2: Aw.

[00:22:03] Speaker 1: It's subtle. It's subtle. It's very sweet. I like this. I like this. Okay, what's yours?

[00:22:07] Speaker 2: Mine is, mine's a little bit nerdy, but again, relevant to what we're talking about, which is I brought home a book for my kid who's like eight, nine-ish, and this book was a graphic novel. Going on 45. I know, but it was a graphic novel called The Amazing Generation. And it is written by this guy, Jonathan Haidt, who people may remember sparked essentially an international moral panic about smartphone use and kids with a book called The Anxious Generation. So he was talking about how like, oh, all these parents have come up to me and been like, well, what do I do with my kid? What do I say, right? In those friction boredom moments. And so he came up with this book for them, which is for kids to read. Like, what are we gonna do? Blah, blah, blah. And I have to admit, I brought it home as a test because usually this kind of thing is too nerdy. Kids can smell it a mile away, right? They're just like, what is this propaganda? And he, I think he got it right. The story is, it's called The Amazing Generation, and it's about some kids who have to rebel against some tech lords slash wizards who want to rob them of their attention and rob them of their childhood. And I thought like, oh, that's kind of corny. And then my kid like picked it up on his own. He starts reading and he comes over and he's like, mom, you know what's really interesting about this? Like the tech people want, they like want all your attention. You know what I mean? Like, you know, he's like all of a sudden got introduced to this conversation in a non-finger wagging way. And I have to admit, I was impressed. I was a hundred percent preparing to mock this book because it just seems like a, just like cringe, you know?

[00:23:54] Speaker 1: The thing that I love about this is that it is easy to pinpoint a problem. It's harder to identify a solution. And it sounds like here you've got Jonathan Haidt who previously pinpointed the problem, now coming out with a solution.

[00:24:06] Speaker 2: So yeah, my kid looking at books, which I think is the perfect note to end on because we are here at a bookstore, solid state.

[00:24:13] Speaker 1: We love a small independent local bookstore right here in Washington, DC. Audie, thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast.

[00:24:18] Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Ari. Thank you.

[00:24:20] Speaker 1: See you next time. Bye.