Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
Rugnetta. This intro was written on Tuesday, 04/08/2025 at
09:07AM eastern, and we have a life defining show for you this
week. First, researcher, product consultant, and contributing
producer, Young Na Park tackles, finally on Neverpost, LinkedIn,
and how it is people construct and advertise themselves on the
business brain site, and what has been called the last truly
weird social network. Then I chat with clinical
psychotherapist, social worker, and cohost of Unraveling over at
the Brattleboro Institute, Kurt White, about how the Internet
helps us become ourselves, and if he, in his professional
estimation, thinks that is a good thing.
And also, the people united will never be defeated. But first,
let's talk about a few of the things that have happened since
the last time you heard from us. I have six stories for you this
week. Way back in November, Elon Musk sued Amazon owned streaming
platform Twitch over alleged conspiracy to boycott
advertising on his social platform x as part of the Global
Alliance for Responsible Media aka Garm, which has since
disbanded because of the lawsuit. DMR news reported that
the lawsuit cites a Garm document suggesting Twitch
executives endorsed the coalition's brand safety
standards, which x claims unfairly excluded the platform,
end quote.
According to Business Insider, the suit named Mars, CVS Health,
Danish Multinational Energy Concern, Unilever, and Twitch
amongst others. At the end of last year, Unilever settled and
on Monday this week, so did Twitch. A motion was filed in
the Northern District Of Texas, ex's preferred venue for
litigation, ordering a stay action in the suit, citing both
parties entering into a memorandum of understanding.
Pursuant to which they will contemplate dismissal by January
of next year pending satisfaction of certain
conditions. Wonder what those conditions could be.
As Meta continues its rollout of teen accounts in The US, UK,
Australia, and Canada, they have, as of this week, added an
additional restriction beyond parentally controlled time
limits and the blurring of suspected nudity in private
messages. Minors will now be blocked from streaming live on
Instagram without parental permission. The Guardian reports
that the announcement comes quote as The UK implements the
online safety act end quote, which in its own words is aimed
requiring platforms to quote prevent children from accessing
harmful and age inappropriate content and provide parents and
children with clear and accessible ways to report
problems online when they do arise, end quote. Critics of the
bill say among other things that it requires or allows platforms
to scan private messages to ensure compliance, a massive
privacy concern given it implies the defeat of end to end
encryption in personal communications. A similar
concern is popping up around the US senate's take it down act,
which aims to reduce the prevalence of non consensual
intimate imagery, most notably pornographic deepfakes.
Critics of the bill say its non specific provisions could lead
to undue burden and abuse. Platforms must review material
within forty eight hours and there are no penalties for false
claims. No process is outlined for appeals and it is not
entirely clear what counts as non consensual intimate imagery
leading to questions on whether say the president may use the
law to remove constitutionally protected free speech critical
of him. Trump has said he would. I'm gonna use that bill for
myself too, if you don't mind, the Washington Post reports
Trump saying, because nobody gets treated online worse than I
do, end quote.
Posts. Move markets. Amidst global turmoil around The US
Admin's trade policy, a post reading, Hassett colon, Trump is
considering a ninety day pause in tariffs for all countries
except China, made tanking markets reverse course on Monday
for a few minutes. The problem, it was unsourced and as of later
that afternoon debunked by the White House itself calling it
quote fake news. Don't believe everything you read on the
internet, I guess.
Minnesota state democrats have proposed a law taxing social
media platforms for collecting data on users. Under the bill,
the Minnesota reformer reports, if a social media company has
fewer than 100,000 monthly consumers from Minnesota, it
wouldn't be taxed. If the social media company has between
500,001 Minnesota consumers, the tax per month would be $40,000
plus 25¢ times the number of consumers over 500,000, end
quote. This echoes a similar law that has been passed around the
New York State Senate for several years now and recently
reintroduced in January of twenty twenty five. Oregon,
Washington, West Virginia, and others have also put forth
similar legislation.
And finally, Microsoft has canceled construction or leases
of data centers around the world. Pivot to AI has compiled
a list including plans halted in The US, Europe, Indonesia, The
UK, and Australia. Much of this processing power was set to be
put towards the development of AI technology about which the
company has been increasingly cautious. Perhaps surprising
given their $13,000,000 investment in OpenAI and their
ownership of 49% of its equity. In show news this week, we got
nominated for a Webby.
Woah. If you're not familiar, they're sort of like the Emmys
of the Internet, maybe the MTV VMAs. Either way, our x o x o
live episode was nominated for best live podcast recording,
which I mean, not to toot my own horn, but it was a good show. We
need you, please, to go vote for us. Please.
I'm gonna say it one more time. Please. We're gonna put a link
in the show notes. Just go give it a click. You sign in.
It's fast. I promise. Just you can search for never post. It's
probably the easiest way to get to us. Click on our show art to
give us a vote.
It would mean the world to us. Also contributing producer Tory
Dominguez Peek's episode about AI powered recreations of
deceased loved ones, which we called to BRB or not to BRB, was
an honoree as a finalist in the category for best individual
episode of a podcast. Just like of all of them out there last
year, which is amazing, and I think extremely well deserved.
Tory's work on that episode was amazing. There's no voting needed for that one, once you
are an honoree, you are just an honoree. But extremely exciting
nonetheless, congrats to Tori who's working on some new
segments for us right now. So hopefully, you're gonna get to
hear more of her work very soon. Okay. That is the show news I
have for you this week.
Go vote for us for a Webby right now, and then listen to the rest
of this episode. Next, Yungna Park on self narratizing on
LinkedIn, then me and Kurt on the internet making you who you
are question mark. But first, in our interstitials this week,
field recordings from the hands off demonstration on April 5 in
Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Youngna Park: As a technology consultant, I spend a fair
amount of time on LinkedIn, either looking to connect with
people, trying to generate work, or responding to messages from
other people. I use it mostly to research potential clients,
individuals, companies, and also use it to do a fair amount of
sleuthing. Who knows who? Do I know anyone who has worked with
someone? Who is this person who wants to meet for a coffee?
What is this company my friend mentioned, and are they making
something I should know about? I've been on LinkedIn as long as
I can remember. It feels like an important part of appearing
professional, especially because I work in the tech industry. But
recently, I started to notice that of all the places I spend
time on Internet, the place that increasingly leaves me feeling
the absolute worst is LinkedIn. And when I say worst, I mean
envy, jealousy, despair, annoyance.
I wanted to know why LinkedIn was making me feel this way. Is
it the collective desperation of people searching for employment?
Is it the blatant celebration of capitalism in a country with so
little social infrastructure? Is it watching people completely
renaritivize their lives in service of some middle manager
job using language full of platitudes? I
Melanie Ehrenkranz: feel like what you described is sometimes
how people talk about, like, Instagram. You log on and it's
like FOMO. You see all these people, like, living their best
lives and you, depending on where you're at, might feel
jealousy.
Youngna Park: This is Melanie Ehrencrantz, a technology
reporter and creator of Laid Off, a substack and Discord
community for people who've been affected by layoffs.
Melanie Ehrenkranz: The way you talk about LinkedIn, it feels
like it aligns with, like, this like, how our self worth is also
really tied up in work and, like, productivity and, you
know, having something to show for it in, like, tangible terms.
And I'm curious if you feel like your self worth and your job are
tied up, and LinkedIn is maybe, like, a toxic place to hang out
if that's the case.
Sara M. Watson: I generally feel like I have completely
disconnected my self worth from my work for the better after
many, many years of being extremely tied up in my
identity. But when I go on there, I think I see a lot of
people trying to perform at being very enthusiastic about
work or looking for work or doing work that does not read as
necessarily very genuine. And I think I just really feel for
that effort that it requires to do that when it's unclear that
they'll get any reward from it.
Youngna Park: That reality is that in 2025, work is more
precarious than ever. There are unprecedented numbers of
layoffs. The economy is tanking, and there's wide scale anxiety
and anticipation about AI. And still, LinkedIn is the largest
professional social networking site on the planet. As of
January, in The US alone, there are a 70,000,000 employed
people, but an estimated 250,000,000 LinkedIn users.
That's 80,000,000 more users than employed people. But I
believe LinkedIn is also shifting as a product in ways
that amplify how precarious our work lives feel by evolving the
platform to make us more and more reliant on it. The
combination of the shape of the product, its focus on work, and
the way we use it has created a perfect storm. To unpack what
LinkedIn is at this moment, I talked to Sarah Watson, a
technology analyst and researcher. When did she think
that the way that people post on LinkedIn started to shift, and
how has the shape of the product changed as we know it?
Sara M. Watson: I can think of a couple key moments, x and
Twitter being one of them as we kind of collectively decided to
abandon and leave. Mhmm. And I think that started to change how
much people were posting on LinkedIn because that it was the
default Mhmm. When you all of a sudden kind of lost another
audience that you might have been cultivating over an
extended period of time. So I think that kind of shifted
pushing to share shorter bits that feel like tweets.
Right? But I also think over the past couple of years, there's
been a real shift in the engagement metrics, and
therefore behaviors around how to game the LinkedIn system. And
also as more people have awareness of the role of
algorithms in populating our feeds, in working through
engagement. And so, those jump out to me as a couple key
moments.
Youngna Park: What do you think LinkedIn is really pushing you
to try to do? Like, what is the medium of LinkedIn?
Sara M. Watson: Yeah. The shower thought I had before we jumped
on this call was LinkedIn is the ultimate platform of capitalism.
I think Twitter, Instagram, those have kind of more cultural
aspirations at least. Like, what's the zeitgeist? What's the
aesthetic?
What's the micro trend niche, that's surfacing on those
platforms? And I think about those more as as culture.
Obviously, there is culture coming out of the way that
people use LinkedIn, but I think it's the most pure form of a
platform that is a vehicle for capitalism.
Youngna Park: And if it is a vehicle for capitalism, maybe
people don't know to what degree they're actually opting in to
participating in that. In my mind, it creates different types
of users, which, like on another platform, might be consistent
with types like a momfluencer, a chronic selfie poster, someone
who never posts but replies to everyone else. I feel like
LinkedIn has its own set of types with their own language of
self awareness and self promotion. I was curious if
Sarah were to identify these, if her categories would overlap
with mine.
Sara M. Watson: The top ones that come out for me is like the
influencer, thought leader as one, the like ultimate networker
amplifier,
which
I think is actually a very important role socially. Like,
there are people who repost a lot, and I see that as like a
service role that they're playing within their networks as
amplifier, as supporter. And I think those those folks are
actually really important. There's the self promoter, the
humble bragger, the extended metaphor that's like super
cringe is a certain type of poster.
Youngna Park: Give me like an example of that one.
Sara M. Watson: Yeah. So this is well, I so I pulled the polar is
another one. Mhmm. I pulled my LinkedIn folks in anticipation
of this conversation and only got one reply because it wasn't
apparently engaging enough of a post. But I did get one good
answer which was I was sentenced to five years of hard time in a
Russian gulag where I was forced to do manual labor 23 a day.
Here's what it taught me about product management. That is the,
like, extended metaphor cringe post.
Youngna Park: There's, like, find and follow your passion
people.
Sara M. Watson: Like Oh, yes.
Youngna Park: Who got their job, and now they're, like, telling
you how the thing to do is to follow your passion.
Sara M. Watson: Yeah. The the advice givers. Yes. For sure.
And that that feels in alignment with the thought leader, but I
think there are two separate it's it's like the life coach
version and then there's the, like, hot take counter argument
perspective person.
Melanie Ehrenkranz: LinkedIn user, Srikanth Kumba, comments.
LinkedIn: I can suggest an equation that has the potential
to impact the future. E equals m c squared plus a I. This
equation combines Einstein's famous equation e equals m c
squared, which relates energy e to mass m and the speed of light
c with the addition of a I, artificial intelligence.
Youngna Park: When you think about the typologies that you've
come up with and those largely overlap with the ones that I
thought of, then how do you think that interacts with, like,
what LinkedIn is actually trying to get you to do?
Sara M. Watson: Their business model is getting you on their
engagement ads, but it's also premium. And for all the folks
who are using it actually as part of their jobs, recruiters,
marketers, all range of people who are, like, there to actually
do business.
Youngna Park: I mean, this might be a conspiracy, but, like, I
wonder if they actually want you to find a job on LinkedIn
sometimes because when I think about it from, like, what
behavior do you wanna optimize? You wanna optimize interaction.
You want people to subscribe to premium, which is a real premium
price tag. But the more they help job seekers actually find
jobs, those people don't need premium as much because they
don't need the full suite of functionality or tools that
might be offered to someone that is like that.
Sara M. Watson: Mhmm.
I mean, I think they've gotta have a model of, you know, there
is the person like you, the archetype of or the user type
who is going in and out when they're job searching and
they're gonna pay for it when they need it. And Mhmm. But, you
know, you're gonna be hopping between jobs. They know you're
not a recurring revenue in the way that a recruiter would be.
Mhmm.
But, you know, I think ultimately, because there it is
such a complex ecosystem now, there are many different use
cases. And so to lump it all together is is is kind of hard.
Youngna Park: Yeah. When I see some of the posts of the
typologies that we were talking about, sometimes my question is,
like, who is this for?
Sara M. Watson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Youngna Park: Yeah. You know, I'm a little bit like like,
there's a type of post that I don't think we've talked about,
which is, like, when someone announces that they have a new
role. Yeah. They seem to list out, like, I'm so excited to,
like, launch brand campaigns and growth hack my way with this new
company. And I'm like, I'm not sure who you're talking to or if
this is, like, what you've been taught that you need to say,
like, not directly taught, but
Sara M. Watson: Yeah. Gleaned. Well, I also, out of sheer
curiosity, asked Claude to not typologize posters, but types of
posts. So Claude would would call this the corporate
cheerleader. If use of praise of employer, team, or product, The
purpose is to signal loyalty and team spirit.
Here's an example. Blown away by what our incredible team
accomplished this quarter. So proud to work at my company that
truly values innovation. Yes. And I think that one is
specifically for, like, who's gonna engage with that?
It's all of your coworkers. Right? Right. And all your new
coworkers if you're announcing a new job.
Youngna Park: As you can hear, Sarah used Claude to do this
type of LinkedIn categorization and largely came up with a very
similar set of the ones I'd had in my head. What about the
language people are using on LinkedIn made it prime fodder
for categorization? And what does that say about how people
talk and use LinkedIn? Is it because the way we talk about
work is so predictable? We've adopted rote ways of describing
our relationship to our jobs, which makes a large language
model the perfect tool for summing up our behavior.
Sara M. Watson: There's something about the, like,
regurgitation that feels so compelling about asking LLMs to
categorize LinkedIn posts. Because I said, categorize the
many types of LinkedIn posts as archetypes, including comments,
use of emoji, extended metaphors, anything that people
typically write on LinkedIn. How would you analyze the language
of LinkedIn? And they said, the humble brag, the personal
triumph, the corporate cheerleader, the thought leader,
the life coach, the pseudo vulnerable. I love that one.
The poll starter, the networker, the one upper, the link dropper,
and the emoji reactor.
Youngna Park: I had a typology called, like, the reply guy
Sara M. Watson: Yeah.
Youngna Park: Who's, like, congratulating everyone on any
new launch or job.
Sara M. Watson: Yep.
Youngna Park: Yeah. I feel like Claude did a good job.
Sara M. Watson: I Yeah. But it's also like, it does a good job
because LinkedIn content is regurgitatable. Yes. It it's
slop.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn user Kathleen Booth comments. Can we please
stop shaming people for using AI to write LinkedIn posts? Yes.
This post was written by AI, but it's still 100% me.
Youngna Park: This got me to wondering if there's a more
genuine way to communicate on LinkedIn and which types of
posts do come across as more real. It feels like there's got
to be a better way to talk about work or interact in a way that
feels a little more human and doesn't just feel like hanging
out with Claude.
Sara M. Watson: I so I I have a lot of thoughts about that. And
I I think this moment in particular okay. So I'm having
multiple threads. One is about solidarity in this moment and
LinkedIn having the potential as a solidarity platform, which
feels crazy to say. But also, I think whether it's federal
layoffs, tech layoffs, there's a lot of disruption.
And you can tell the difference with those posts. Right? Like,
they feel more genuine than just a like, sorry for everyone
affected by this. They sound different. I think there is like
a potential right now as we are getting into AI generated crap
that it is actually more salient when you can feel somebody's
sentiment in a post.
Youngna Park: I think that solidarity is an important idea
and something we'd all benefit from right now. It really feels
urgent for a particular subset, which is people who've been laid
off. At a time when attitudes about work are routinely
described in headlines as bleak, how does this group find support
and solidarity here? And how do people talk about being laid off
in a way that toes the line between professional, personal,
and not too desperate. I spoke to Melanie about this.
Like, if you were to describe what a layoff post looks like on
LinkedIn, like, what to you is a layoff post?
Melanie Ehrenkranz: Yeah. I've been thinking about this a lot
because layoff posts have definitely evolved to be almost
more about, like, the entire journey. I see a lot of, like,
day a hundred of unemployment, you know, applied to this many
jobs, have had this many interviews. So I'm seeing more
people, like, chronicle from, like, day zero to wherever they
are at this point in their journey because people are
looking for jobs for a really long time. So Who do you think
that that chronicling is for?
Yeah. I mean, like, psychologically, I think sharing
is almost this, like, act of defiance against shame. You
know? You're saying, like, I'm not ashamed of this experience.
This is just what's happening to me, and I think it's, like, a
moment of solidarity.
But I also think it's I hate using the word desperation, but
it's even in the Discord, the laid off Discord, it's, like, a
word used a lot of people are you know, have been out of work
for so long, and they're doing all the things that you're told
to do to get a job and aren't moving the needle at all. So
it's like this way that they can kind of take control of their
own narrative and put themselves out there through a channel they
control when all of the other channels seem to be giving them
nothing. So I think it's also a way to just be heard and
recognize that they're doing their best. And, like, if anyone
can help, great. And if at most, they can just, like, acknowledge
their experience, I think that helps.
Youngna Park: I'm not asking for a magic bullet on how you how
you guide people to find a job, but I am curious if you have any
particular takeaways in terms of, like, how you might talk
about your layoff publicly after the fact.
Melanie Ehrenkranz: Yeah. I talk a lot about, like, rejecting
toxic positivity when it comes to how you talk to people who've
been laid off. And I think I think it can also apply to what
you're posting. I don't think you have to be like, everything
happens for a reason. I'm gonna be okay.
Like, you don't have to, like, put a face up unless, of course,
that's how you feel. Like, you should be authentic. That being
said, I think really focusing on, like, building and
nourishing a community of people that feel aligned or tangential
to the work that you wanna do is really important. So, you know,
showing off the work that you're doing while you're laid off. You
know, it could be a personal project.
It could be I had someone recently who did an unpaid edit
test and didn't get the job, and he was like, can I share this?
We're like, I'm proud of this work. Can I share it on LinkedIn
as, like, something that I did that I'm proud of? Reaction. And
I think thinking outside of the box in that sense of like, you
are still accomplishing.
Even like share your experience and and connect with people. So
even if you're just connecting with like one person a week who
can mentor you or give you advice or is just like in a
community that you're interested in. One other thing I would
recommend is like, look for people you're connected to that
are connected to someone at companies you like and ask them
to make an introduction for you. I think being really
comfortable, even if it's, like, faking the confidence of asking
for help, there's no shame in asking for help. So if someone
you know knows someone else, like, I would just ask them to
make an intro.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Youngna Park: What do you think is the biggest contributor to
false hope on LinkedIn?
Melanie Ehrenkranz: I think seeing all of these jobs that it
says, like, you match nine out of 10 of the qualifications.
It'll say, like, you know, you're a top contender for this.
You're super qualified for this. For the easy apply, it'll be
like someone viewed your resume or, like, if you I will say,
like, a recruiter viewed your profile. So there's all these,
like, little, almost, like, gamified moments that kind of,
like, maybe the second you start to feel a little hopeless, it's
like, well, this could be the one, but it never it never is.
Youngna Park: Full of false hope on this platform, I started to
wonder what a better alternative to LinkedIn would look like. Is
there one out there? I asked both Melanie and Sarah, but
neither could come up with a clear alternative. And to be
honest, neither could I. I started this journey wanting to
know exactly how we got here and remain unconvinced that this is
the best version of professional networking technology can
create.
My takeaway at the end of it all is whether you've been laid off
or hiring or just trying to be a person with a career is to try
to remain as human as possible. This might be how you post, how
you reach out to people, or by saying something in your own
words, even if it takes a bit more work. Although the product
has shifted and the world has shifted, we don't need to treat
each other in only the way that they've designed. Thank you to
Melanie and Sarah for taking the time to speak with me. And I'm
really curious, what do you think could be a better
alternative to LinkedIn?
Let us know. You can find all the ways to contact us in the
show notes.
Mike Rugnetta: You are about to hear a conversation between me
and Kurt White. And I wanna just say, upfront here, who Kurt is
and why we wanted to chat with him. We all know him because
he's the cohost of a show called Unraveling. It's a podcast that
looks at the world through the lens of mental health. It's
published by the Brattleboro Retreat, which is a nonprofit
psychiatric hospital in Vermont.
And Hans and Jason, who you know from Neverpost, also work on
unraveling. But besides being co workers essentially, we're all
just huge Kurt fans, honestly. He's a clinical psychotherapist.
He's a group psychotherapist, a social worker, a teacher, but
he's also just a very smart, very thoughtful, kind guy who is
very reasonable, which is you know, think a rare quality. So
we wanted to talk to him about something that's kind of been a
theme throughout so many segments that we've done on
Neverpost, which is how it is that the internet can help you
become who you are.
And you know, as a psychotherapist, I think he's
got the right set of skills to help us figure this out. There's
so much fret and worry and anxiety over the deleterious
effects, let's say, of algorithms and certain types of
content and certain types of content for certain age groups
and encountering certain concepts and ideas both
generally and at different points in your life. There's so
much conversation about the encountering and the misuse of
concepts related to therapy and mental health. And so just
taking all of this together as one big really messy
conversation and we wanted to know from Kurt, how are these
things impacting us? Are they?
People seem worried. Should they be worried? How can the internet
really shape who we are? So, Kurt. I'm curious if you are
familiar with this thing that people say online.
It's usually a comment that people leave under a video, and
it says, I built this algorithm brick by brick, or I placed this
brick myself, or things along those lines.
Kurt White: No. I don't know about that. What what does that
mean?
Mike Rugnetta: Do you wanna take a guess as to what it might
mean?
Kurt White: I I I have heard that people have a certain pride
sometimes in the idea that the algorithm really gets them, you
know, that they that they're careful about the things that
they like or even linger on, I think. Right? So that they're
only getting that sort of special unique content to them.
Is that is that what that would mean?
Mike Rugnetta: You absolutely nailed it. Yeah. It's it's a way
of describing the work that you put in to training the algorithm
on social media, right, usually TikTok or Instagram, to show you
really specific things. So I I've been thinking about this a
lot, this like brick by brick idea. Alongside I think another
much larger and more abstract idea, which is that like in the
process of being online, a lot of us like figure out like who
we are.
Or we figure out like who we could be, like what the options
are. And the comparison that I make to myself a lot when I'm
thinking about this is now is kind of like what the mall was
when I was a kid. Just like a place that you can go, and you
can see lots of different people all at once, and you can kinda
get a sense of what your options are. What you might imagine
yourself as at some point. Mhmm.
And I think maybe there's this thing that's happening,
especially in the algorithmic internet, where people are going
to the internet to make some versions of themselves, building
this thing brick by brick while we also in a sense are built
brick by brick by it. So it's this strange like funny
recursive loop like making a feed that influences our sense
of self, which is then reflected in the feed, which then
influences our sense of self, which then is reflected in the
feed. We ascribe a lot of agency to this technology, and we say
it knows, and it puts you places, and it has figured
something out. And it's just doing complicated math. And
every once in a while, it's, you know, it's not imagining a
version of me.
It's it's running an algorithm that will sort of never never be
able to know or understand.
Kurt White: And the only thing it's really, the sort of way
it's evaluating how it works is probably very simple, actually.
Just are you do you stay doing it? How much do you do it? Yeah.
And so it isn't necessarily even optimized.
I mean, not only is there no mind there, but, right, it's not
even necessarily optimized to give us the thing that we'd like
the most. It's just optimized to give us the thing that we don't
stop doing. People often conflate pleasure and and sort
of reward, and, actually, they're, like, related things
neuro neurobiologically, but they're not exactly the same.
Mike Rugnetta: Right? Wait. Can you say more about that just as
it relates to, like, the feed?
Kurt White: Yeah. Sure. I mean, you know, a lot I mean, a lot of
this stuff I I studied and worked with folks with substance
use disorders and addictions for a long time. And I really think
an essential way of understanding that is to
understand that there's a set of brain circuits that developed
with a common ancestor that is so far back in the evolutionary
tree that we share this set of circuits in common with as
distantly related creatures as things like lizards. Right?
Sure. Like, it's way before the mammalian branching and things
like this. And this was a set of circuits to sort of get like
like a lizard can't do meal planning. Right? I mean, it does
very poor at that.
You know? In a five year plan, absolutely nothing. Right? I
mean, really low.
Mike Rugnetta: Lizards lizard's not thinking about bacon, a
bunch of chicken breasts for the week, and
Kurt White: then Exactly right.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Their credit report.
Kurt White: Yeah. But so you have to develop a a system that
has nothing to do with conscious thought that involves getting
them to eat the right nutrients in the right proportions and
kind of do most everything else that it does. It has to reward
the things at a basic biological level. And that works so well,
you know, as an adaptation to the environment, you know, over
millions and millions of years that, you know, it's still kind
of like the basic system that most creatures use today. But
there are hacks to this as it's sort of really how it is.
It's an unfortunate chemical accident that some substances,
sometimes just naturally occurring and sometimes if you
refine the heck out of them, they they sort of tell the brain
that the reward part of it is super important when they take
that in. Right? Cocaine, you know, like, oh, yeah. It's sort
of like, you might feel good, the pleasure part, it's sort of
a related circle in the dopamine, but then you take in
cocaine, it also your brain says in a very particular way, I'm
pretty sure this is a thousand times more important for me to
do than anything I've ever done I'm I'm pretty certain I need to
do this again. Right.
Mike Rugnetta: I've checked the math. I've looked at the
numbers.
Kurt White: I checked the math. That's I've I've had this I've
had this system a long time. Yeah. And I don't know how I
didn't know about this, but I've gotta reorient what I'm doing. I
kinda don't care about any of that other stuff anymore.
And some people more prone to that than others and social
context, but we could do a whole thing about that. But but,
basically, that that set of circuits is the right way. But
drugs is not the only way to overwhelm the circuit, actually.
You can you can do it through clever manipulations of people
that sort of get your brain to produce its own chemicals that
that get you into basically compulsive compulsive action.
Right?
Gambling is the sort of classic one, of course. Right? But if
you kinda look at what we've done with a lot of this kind of
social social media, algorithmically based social
media, it's people who know this and have consciously tried to
optimize the algorithm to get as much of that dopamine to release
to get you sort of compulsively behaving in that way, to not put
the thing down or to pick it up again as soon as it's down. Put
it down. Pick it up.
Put it down. Pick it up. They don't care if you like it. Yeah.
They don't care if you like it.
Right? You if you do great. Right? I mean, it's like it's
like, you know, you like cocaine the first time you try it. The
thousandth time you try it, there may not really be much
pleasure in it anymore, but your brain still thinks you
Mike Rugnetta: need I mean, it's amazing the number of sort of
systems I have in my life to remind myself when I have spent
too much time online that it's like, you're you could be
hurting yourself right now. It feels like maybe you're having a
good time, but like, let's check-in with the body and the
brain and see. You know, I talk to myself the way that I talk to
my daughter. Like, how are you feeling? Or we do should we take
a moment?
It
Kurt White: makes effort. I mean, isn't it isn't that wild?
Like, mean, that's one of the hallmarks of recognizing Yeah.
When you're in a compulsive process. Right?
Like, if you say even if you're not using excessively, like, you
say to yourself, when I go out tonight, I'm only gonna have
three drinks. Right? Now you're you're having to put thought
into controlling it. You don't say to yourself, I'm gonna wake
up tomorrow. I'm have only two glasses of orange juice.
You don't have to do it. Right? Orange juice isn't that
rewarding. It's just not. And so, you know, you just drink the
orange juice you drink.
You don't have to think about it. Right? Even the effort to
control that you suggest how out of control we are. Right?
Mike Rugnetta: So how does this construction of self or even the
feeling of you are constructing yourself through these actions,
like how does that relate? Are we I imagine it's probably
different for different people, but is it like we have these
compulsive actions and we want to justify doing them because
we're just like, like, oh, but this is who I am. Or are those
feelings just making us feel like this is who I who we are
because in some way they're positive, and we associate sort
of constructing the self with a positive effect.
Kurt White: Well, man, Mike, I didn't know you were gonna get
my dark read on this. I don't know if you're gonna like my
answer to this, but I don't I the darkest read of this, which
I think is plausible
Mike Rugnetta: by the
Kurt White: way, is that all of that is a made up after the fact
justification, but on a part of the brain that is just simply
doesn't like that it didn't know what it was doing. There's a
part of your brain that wanted what it wanted, wanted to pick
up the phone, wanted to not set it down, wanted to do this, and
it did it. And now you sort of say to yourself, why did I do
that? And the brain doesn't really like that. You know, we
sometimes call it confabulation.
The brain doesn't like a big hole in in its set of schemas,
but that sort of compulsive part of the brain can connect
directly to the motor cortex. It can get you in motion. It can
get you doing things without being processed through sort of
higher order cognitive functioning. You know? Even
things just as simple as, like, intention and values and things
like that.
And so you say you might say to yourself, I like this because I
think it reflects who I am. And maybe that's actually total BS.
Like, it's a lie your brain is telling yourself. That's a
darkest read. K.
But I I I do think there's a slightly less dark way of of
looking at it, which is that the world can be broad and narrow.
And I think the great joy for me in discovering the Internet in
1991 was this sort of idea that the world that I knew in the
suburbs of Metro Detroit was no longer the limiting factor in
the people I could hang around, the kind of conversations I
should have could have with people, the things that I was
interested in, you know, the games that I I had, this love of
this Japanese game, Go. Yeah. It's actually a Chinese game,
Weiqi. And I found that I could play it on servers in the middle
in the middle of the night with people from all over the world,
which mostly just crashed at that time.
But I but it became, like, the most important thing in my life
for a couple of years like that, like, doing that. And there was
a real solace to it, you know, and I and I do think that, like,
if I hadn't had that, you know, if I hadn't been able to find
something, you know, that commune that group, that sense
of self, even if it's playful and exploratory, I probably
would have been more depressed than I was as a teenager. I
think that's true.
Mike Rugnetta: In the middle of all of this, right, you have
access to this information, these communities that really
lets you expand your idea of what's possible both in the
world and for yourself. There's all different kinds of things
that you can learn about yourself, about the world. An
infinite number of ways that you can go. And I'm curious about
one particular very narrow, though maybe you'll tell me it's
very broad, aspect of that, which is something that I see
increasingly on TikTok especially. And that is
diagnoses.
Seeing videos on TikTok, commenting in this brick by
brick sort of fashion, somewhere between I've worked hard to get
this algorithm, but also the algorithm knows some things
about me that maybe I don't. And then at the end of
Kurt White: that
Mike Rugnetta: is, has the algorithm given me this video
because I have ADHD? Then people being served videos by
therapists, or psychologists, or whoever, who aren't diagnosing
people online, but who are, you know, talking about symptoms,
and then, you know, going to the comments and being like, well
that seals it. That's gotta be me. And I'm curious about your
perspective about this kind of thing that like figuring out
this part of yourself using the internet. Because I imagine, as
I said, it's I imagine it's extremely complicated.
Kurt White: I mean, can I give you a weird answer to it that
backs that backs way up a bit?
Mike Rugnetta: Oh my god.
Kurt White: Absolutely. One has to see, I think, that the
history of psychiatry and mental health treatment through the
lens of its relationship, its complicated ambivalent
relationship with science and medicine, and with the
constructs of science and medicine as increasingly the
unquestioned sources of truth and reality for us. Right?
Freud, for example, was really kind of more of a humanist. You
know, he was actually excluded from studying neurology because
of antisemitism, and so had to sort of invent psychoanalysis as
a way of as a way of understanding what people are.
In the ways that his approach was scientific in a sense and in
other ways not so. But he used these sort of beautiful terms
like soul, you know, psyche. I mean, they just would have
conjured that. They use psyche, you know, meaning soul, you
know, And having those associations more to sort of
classical literature and experiences than this. The id is
just the it, the I, and the beyond the I.
Right? I mean, this is poetry in a way, isn't it? And that kind
of played in Europe. But he said when we translate this into
English, you've got to think about the Americans. And the
Americans are not gonna buy this.
They're not gonna take that seriously. And so I want you to
use the Latin words for these things because that's what they
use in science. They use the Latin words. And they'll they'll
buy that, you know. So we have ego and id and superego.
Right? And the rest. And so sort of ideas that were sort of
fundamental to the way that mental health treatment
developed in America and the psychoanalytic version of that
in particular had to do with this sort of wishing to be more
a part of the structure of knowledge power dynamics that
come from medicine and science. Medicine, however, never really
wanted psychiatry, you know, and so I think there's been this
struggle to be taken seriously as a profession and the sort of
wish to have diagnoses. And by the way, we have, like, almost
no lab tests for.
Right? It's diagnosis by checklist, basically. You know?
It's symptoms, and it's a serious business. I'm not trying
to poo poo it, but it's different than I think the way
you often get diagnosed with a lot of things in medicine.
The rest of medicine, I guess, should say. And so finally,
maybe it gets to a point where people are are sort of saying,
oh, okay. It's a medical thing. It's like that. I can take it
seriously.
I can have a medicine. I can have a diagnosis. And then
almost right at that moment, on comes the Internet, you know,
like a like a damn freight train, you know, and it's like,
ah, here we are. Here's the we don't need to decide. We could
just have a YouTube video about it.
You know? And I maybe it's the internal chaos agent in me where
I'm like, bring it on. That's great. You know? You figure you
out, man.
You know? That's okay. These categories, what whatever. You
know? I I really don't feel like as a representative of the field
that I personally don't really wanna to feel gatekeepy about
it, you know.
Which isn't to say I don't believe in the construct
validity of diagnoses. I do actually. But I don't really
believe that that science and medicine and psychiatry or
anyone else gets to fundamentally decide how you
divide those things up, how you divide those categories up. And
what I see in the Internet, even in this sort of weird versions
of it that come out, is this beautiful interstitial
intermediary play space version of things where people can toss
around different ideas of the self, and they can be true for a
minute and not true for not even a minute, ten seconds. It could
be true for ten seconds, and then you're on to Scottish kids
swearing.
Mike Rugnetta: You I mean, you almost like took the next
question I had out of my mouth, which is like, do you worry
about people over committing to things that they this is very
loaded, think they've learned about themselves online? It
sounds like the answer to that is no.
Kurt White: I don't really worry too much about it. Yeah. I mean,
probably like if you were to study this, you'd find the most
common thing is that people kind of toss it around in their mind
for a while and think about it, and maybe it gives them a
different sense of their self. Maybe they talk to a couple of
people about it, but they're not gonna go schedule an appointment
and and get a prescription for something or go see therapist.
There but probably far more people don't do that than do
that.
But the experience of it might really mean something to that
group too. Right? It may have done something meaningful to
them in opening up the sort of window of possibilities of the
self just a little bit for them in a way that, like, I don't I
don't think we can we could be in danger of underestimating the
impact of that sometimes. And if and if some people do, they go,
you know, like, jeez. Like, sometimes it's not subtle.
You know what I mean? It's sort of like, yeah. I don't know.
Like, I'm I'm seeing people here talking about I discovered that
this is why I have no friends, and this is why I've never
turned a paper in on time ever. And I'm not and I gotten fired
from three jobs because of this, and I'm late constantly.
And I'm in trouble for that. And these are real areas of
suffering. And you go like, oh my god. I thought I was just a
screw up. You know?
And they see that. They said, no. I I went and I saw someone,
and I I have this trouble now. And I now but I'm getting help
for it, and I'm liked anymore. Look.
I'm in a relationship. I have a job. It's better for me. And if
that person calls the phone and picks up someone and says, I
don't know. Do I know.
Like, great. Great. Great. You know? And if you don't have it,
what's the harm?
Really, what's the harm? They're just labels. We shouldn't be so
precious about it.
Mike Rugnetta: It's just a it's a perspective about this kind of
thing that you just never ever hear online. And it's, I will
say, extremely refreshing to hear a professional say, so
what?
Kurt White: So what? And I don't you know, I'd refer to this
idea, like, if you really wanna talk about self, you know, and
self, how that develops. Like, you know, I've used this word
play a couple of times, not accidentally exactly. Because I
think it you could say fundamentally that the self
develops through play relationships
Mike Rugnetta: k.
Kurt White: In in a developmental way. Right? Of
sort of, like, you come out of the womb in a symbiotic way.
You're not really exactly a person, but you develop being a
person. You know, you're a person in the sort of usual
legal sense of things.
I'm not gonna say that. But, like, you know, you don't really
have an identity yet. And you develop that in relationship to
others and in relationship to the parts of you that are only
for you. And you do that by trying it on, moving in and out
of letting things be true and not true at the same time.
That's what play is really.
Right? It's you could have it's true and it's not true. And you
do that over time, and then that gets and and then that's the
sort of, we think, the sort of psychological basis for
development of creativity, actually. That this kind of play
structure never goes away. We just learn to do more with it,
and we learn more about ourselves in doing that, which
is more of a process than a result.
Right? The self the self as development rather than the self
as a sort of an entity that way.
Mike Rugnetta: I built it. I built the self, and now
Kurt White: it's built. That's right. And that's the part
that's wrong about that. It's it's not built. It's that you
built a prison for yourself.
Any rigid idea about yourself is a prison. Any rigid idea. Right?
We always if we don't have playfulness about things, then
then we're going to start suffering eventually, maybe not
immediately. And there might be some times where we really need
to have that rigidity.
It's a protective function. But if we can't get it back, then
they were in real trouble. And I think, like, the Internet can,
like, it can be like a seed of that. It can sort of so, like,
uh-uh. I'm not alone.
Uh-uh. Here's an idea. Uh-uh. But you need the relational part
of it to metabolize it.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Kurt, that's so good. It's making me a
little emotional.
Kurt White: Yeah. I'm glad. I see it in your eyes.
Mike Rugnetta: I think the thing that's really beautiful about
that is that there's a hopefulness to it that
especially in this moment, like right now, you know, this week
on the internet is very absent. And it feels agentive in a way
that I think a lot of people don't at the moment. People feel
really controlled. People feel really hemmed in, and people are
really trying to like search for how it is to be themselves. Some
people feeling I think like doing that is dangerous.
And so knowing that there's this like way to think about this
which is just like, look out for you and just pay attention is I
think really empowering.
Kurt White: Well, I think even the dark moments in in life are
things that we can bring some some of that quality of openness
to if we find the right way to do it, I think, with some
people, with some community, I think you might find even that
sometimes even things like despair, you can have a little
bit of playfulness that creates a room around despair, where all
of a sudden possibility opens up again where there was none for a
minute. And I think that's the task of being human, quite
frankly.
Mike Rugnetta: Even online.
Kurt White: Especially online. Why not? Not? Bring it on, man.
You know, bring it on.
The online is just bad in the way that we're bad. And it's
good in the ways that we're good. And if can find ways to
use it to open us up, then let's rejoice in that. Let's rejoice
in that. If it's bad, then let's just work together to to put it
down when we need to.
That's that's important too.
Mike Rugnetta: Kurt, thank you so much for joining us. I really
appreciate you taking some time to chat with me about these
huge, complicated, extremely important subjects. Thank you.
Kurt White: It has been a pleasure.
Mike Rugnetta: Where can people find you and your work online?
Kurt White: Oh, well, we're at the Brattleboro retreat where we
have a we have another podcast, Unraveling. If you're listening
to this on the Never Post feed, check it out. We have some
really interesting stuff going on, and, you can find me
primarily on LinkedIn as sort of the only only place I keep a
real presence, on on the socials.
Mike Rugnetta: Legit. LinkedIn, real hot right now.
Kurt White: Oh, yeah. Oh, well.
Mike Rugnetta: Thanks again so much to Kurt for talking to us.
We talked for nearly an hour. It was a really great conversation.
If you want to hear more of it, you can hear a longer cut over
on Kurt's podcast that he does with journalist Mary Wilson,
Unraveling. They have published our full conversation on their
feed.
While you're there, please check out all of their other excellent
episodes. There is one about how AI is starting to be and can be
used in therapy. And it turns out, you know, it turns out it's
more than just chat bots giving you advice. There's a lot to
consider there, very carefully, which they're very good at
doing. So thanks to Kurt.
Please go listen to Unraveling. That is the show we have for you
this week. We're gonna be back here in the main feed on
Wednesday, April 23. Give us money. The show is very hard to
make.
And if you've listened to this far, I mean, you're in the
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Never post producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the
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Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer. The show's host,
that's me, is Mike Grignetta. Your business in this world,
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