This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Callsome Media.

Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline monologue.

I'm Ed Zittron, your host.

Better Offline.

As a reminder, you can buy better offline merchandise now.

You'll find a link to it in the episode notes.

You all seem to really like it.

It's cool stuff.

But I know some of you have also said recently that I've done too much AI stuff recently.

And I wanted to take a little time to explain why I've been doing so, in part because I'm not going to change.

The generative AI boom is about far more than artificial intelligence, or cloud storage, or data centers,

or what part of Hawaii Mark Zuckerberg will buy next?

I believe this movement is symbolic of a greater rot in the tech industry and indeed in media criticism,

both inside and outside of the tech media, and that the nature of criticism must indeed change to meet this moment. Now, a few of the most consistent critiques in my work are mostly around my tone. I'm a hater. I'm a cynic. I'm a skeptic. I'm too emotional. I've gone overboard. The local townspeople should throw tomatoes at me. I should be treated in the way of Shrek and excel from society,

things like that. But in all seriousness, it seems the only way my work is reliably

critiqued is to suggest that my emotions invalidate my criticism somehow and that saying

fuck somehow weakens my arguments. Basically, that giving a shit is invalidating when it comes

to criticizing something. And I find that putrid, by the way, when it comes to criticizing something.

And I find that putrid, by the way, but it's how things are.

And I kind of get it.

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