Paul and Rich talk conspiracies: Where they come from and why people keep going in for them. Paul pretends to be a guy named Jeff who is falling into QAnon. They talk about where conspiracy thinking comes from, what to do, and how to handle Christmas Dinner.
A Call from Jeff
Paul Ford: Rich!
Rich Ziade: Hey Paul.
Paul Ford: Let’s imagine my name is Jeff, okay?
Rich Ziade: Okay… Hey Jeff.
Paul Ford: And I am, “Hey how you doing?”. I’m a young guy. I’m, I’m in my twenties. I, oh, I might have a college degree, I might have an associate’s degree, and I have a job and I have friends and I go to work, et cetera, et cetera.
Rich Ziade: Okay.
Paul Ford: And I’ve been reading stuff on the internet. I’ve been watching YouTube videos, and I’m coming to you as my advisor, as Ziade and Ford advisors.
Rich Ziade: Okay.
Paul Ford: And I gotta tell you, like I grew up, went to church. My dad used to read the paper. He watches a lot of Fox News, gotta tell you that. Man, my friend’s been sending me these YouTube links and it’s about how there’s like all this stuff going on in the world where, where these, these people kind of run the world and they, they go, I can’t remember what it’s called, like Bohemia Grove and, and the Illuminati and–which I know is like a joke…
Rich Ziade: Jeff…
Paul Ford: Yeah?
Rich Ziade: How are you doing?
Paul Ford: [00:01:00] I’m alright, man. I, I don’t know, my girlfriend broke up with me, so there’s like a lot going on in my life, but you know when I go home I have, I, I just like get online and like, you know, I play Call of Duty for a while and then, you know, “ding” and somebody’s like, check this video out. And so…
Rich Ziade: Mm
Paul Ford: My head is like all scrambled man.
Rich Ziade: mm.
Paul Ford: So I don’t really know what, what to do.
Rich Ziade: Jeff, let me think about this for a bit and call you back tomorrow.
Paul Ford: Okay.
Rich Ziade: Okay.
Conspiracies
Rich Ziade: Paul.
Paul Ford: Hey Rich, what’s going on?
Rich Ziade: I just spoke to your cousin, Jeff. He’s not doing too great.
Paul Ford: There’s a lot of weirdness going on in the family. I, I don’t know what to say to him, so I was kind of hoping you could help him out.
Rich Ziade: Yeah, I mean, I, I think he’s heading down, uh, a path and it’s actually leading to a subject that I’ve done a ton of thinking about because it, it, it really confused me when it first kicked in. I would say 2015-2016, [00:02:00] where it really started to ramp up. And that is just how conspiracy theories take hold.
Rich Ziade: Um, did a lot of reading, did a lot of kind of thinking, and I wanna share a framework on how to spin up a wickedly strong adhesive viral conspiracy theory.
Paul Ford: Wait a minute, that’s exactly the opposite of why I wanted you to talk to my cousin.
Rich Ziade: Yeah, but let’s, let’s see if we can get to your cousin before he falls too far into the hole.
Paul Ford: All right, so you’re gonna make me an evil conspiracy?
Rich Ziade: I’m gonna tell you the, the ingredients necessary, the recipe, Paul, for a good solid conspiracy theory.
Identifying Your Target
Rich Ziade: First thing you need, the subject, the target. Let me call them a target for a moment. Jeff. Uh, it isn’t in a great place–either didn’t come from a great place, meaning difficult family background, [00:03:00] just a rough environment such that, you know, there’s also the person’s individual psychology, but such that things aren’t great and they’re seeking a clarity or a bit of an explanation on why their situation isn’t great, why they’re stuck. Um, lemme put it that way. Um, can you be well off and comfortable and fall into a conspiracy theory? Absolutely. it’s a context that can come out of anywhere, but a lot of the time it’s vulnerable people.
Rich Ziade: And when I say vulnerable, I don’t mean fragile and delicate, I mean susceptible to conspiracy theories. So it sounds like Jeff’s not doing super. He told me that his girlfriend just broke up with him. Um, I think he’s been at the same job for a while.
Paul Ford: Jeff’s doing okay though He’s got Xbox. He’s got a car, he’s got a nice apartment.
Rich Ziade: Okay.
Paul Ford: He had a girlfriend,
Rich Ziade: Wait, wait. Xbox Series X or the old one?
Paul Ford: old one. [00:04:00]
Rich Ziade: Alright, alright. We’re starting to see things here. Alright, now. Okay. Look, does that lead to you falling into a conspiracy theory, theory hole? No. Does it–is it a component? Yes. You have to be open and vulnerable to it to take it in. Now, Jeff gets on the internet.
Rich Ziade: And the internet is ready to feed you whatever you’re willing to kind of meander towards, right? Like there, it’s not mainstream. In fact, the fringes are fascinating places on the internet and there are a lot of bad places and there’s a lot of things that get shared that, um, there’s an explanation for why he’s in the situation he’s in and why the world is the way it is.
Rich Ziade: By the way, it doesn’t have to be personal. The world’s scary man. We can see it warts and all these days, every bit of it. And so you want explanation and the [00:05:00] internet will give you the why and it’ll speak in authoritative terms, right? It’ll speak in absolute terms.
Paul Ford: Let me, let me say two things to respond to that. So one is, I like to listen to old radio programs, especially old news programs. Something about it really appeals to me and when you listen to a news program, regular everyday CBS evening news from World War Two.
Rich Ziade: It’s like wreckage everywhere.
Paul Ford: It, it’s just, well, 10, we, we don’t expect more than 10% of our pilots to die.
Rich Ziade: Yeah, yeah.
Paul Ford: That’s the good news.
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: That’s the good news. The bad news is that Poland has been destroyed, right?
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: So, so, humans, there are precedents. We just happen to live in an era of unprecedented, calm and prosperity in the West, while that stability is not equally distributed around the globe. And I think what’s happening is just more and more and more is surfacing and you’re starting to see the tensions. Like people blame social media, and I think this is my second point. There is a [00:06:00] reality which is that you used to have to, if you wanted to be into a conspiracy back in the day, you’d, uh, send away for things from the back of, of magazines.
Rich Ziade: Yeah,
Paul Ford: And get them mailed to you.
Rich Ziade: It, it was hard to get the raw material and if you-
Paul Ford: But if you
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: If you wanted to share your thoughts, you had to make pamphlets, photocopy them and hand them out outside of Tower, Tower records to people who would make fun of you.
Rich Ziade: Right, right [chuckles].
Rich Ziade: Trying to broadcast back out to the world. Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Ford: Exactly and the fundamental mechanism. Sure. The internet makes publishing and sharing stuff a lot easier, or making your own YouTube videos.
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford:The fundamental mechanism is SEO because I can type
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: in the words. What runs the world, right?
Rich Ziade: Yes, yes.
Paul Ford: And a search engine will say, well, you know, most people think it’s the UN, but, and then, you know I think,
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: I think that, that one wrong link. That the, the search engine can’t tell,
Rich Ziade: Or, or it got shared with you, like Jeff’s been getting links from his friends.
Paul Ford: It just takes that [00:07:00] one buddy at work or that one guy who you love. You both love Call of Duty, right?
Rich Ziade: Yep. Yep.
Paul Ford: And boom, here we go.
Apophenia
Rich Ziade: Alright. So the, the, the, the tools are out there, right? There’s mechanisms to share information. There’s always somebody ready to write up a, you know, a crazy theory about how, why the world is the way it is. But then it’s back to Jeff and there’s two key ingredients, key components to Jeff buying in, right?
Rich Ziade: The first is it’s psychological and it’s a phenomena called Apophenia,
Paul Ford: Okay, apophenia that’s my fear of dropping my iPhone. Correct?
Rich Ziade: Incorrect, but you shouldn’t try to drop your iPhone. You shouldn’t drop your iPhone. Yes, that is incorrect, Paul. Um, there’s a great article by a guy named Reid Berkowitz. It’s on medium, it’s called A Game Designer’s Analysis of [00:08:00] QANON, right. And I thought he was gonna like take down QANON bit by bit and instead he shares a lesson or actually a, a pitfall that he’s learned as a game designer. I’m actually gonna read you a paragraph.
Paul Ford: Great.
Rich Ziade: In one of the very first experience fictions, experience fictions are a type of game where it’s kind of open world and you, you sort of nudge the user along the gamer along, but it’s kind of open, right?
Rich Ziade: “In one of the very first experience fictions I ever designed, the players had to explore a creepy basement looking for clues. The object they were looking for was barely hidden and the clue was easy, like it was scuba do, Scooby Doo easy. I definitely expected no trouble in this part of the game, but there was trouble”.
Rich Ziade: “I didn’t know it then, but its name was Apophenia. Apophenia is the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningless pa–meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things. [00:09:00] As the participants started searching for the searching for the hidden object on the dirt floor, were little random scraps of wood. How could that be a problem?”.
Rich Ziade: And what he found when he was testing the game is the gamers kept looking at patterns in the scraps of wood and saying, ah, look, that’s an arrow pointing to the wall on the left. And they would get stuck. And meanwhile, this guy’s designed the whole world just outside the door. But everyone felt a connection.
Rich Ziade: Felt a, a, I’m gonna say dopamine hit that they had found something and connected dots.
Paul Ford: Look, humans are pattern finders. As you’re saying this, I’m suddenly reminded, I had a friend 15 years ago and I, I believe this story, okay. He was hanging out with somebody at a bar his, a coworker, and then he went home and he, he lived in a tiny one room apartment and he threw his coat on the bed.
Paul Ford: At which point the coworker’s single blonde hair fell onto his [00:10:00] pillow. Eh, that’s life hairs fall around.
Paul Ford: But then his girlfriend came over. She was a brunette, there’s a long blonde hair on your pillow, right?
Paul Ford: And he had a very good explanation. It happened to be true, but she was looking for that pattern at that phase in their relationship. She was not gonna let that go.
Rich Ziade: Well, it’s interesting. It’s one of the, the hallmarks of a good, a good conspiracy theory is you put the burden on the other person to disprove it. He was founding himself that the burden of proof was now him trying to explain that it’s not true.
Paul Ford: You’re telling me a blonde hair magically appeared on your pillow.
Rich Ziade: I mean, it probably took some work. It probably took some work. So,
Paul Ford: It, it did [chuckles].
Rich Ziade: Yeah. And so that, that sort of satisfaction of finding those patterns, it’s, we seek it out. It feels really good to connect the dots where no one saw, everyone just saw a bunch of dots, but like, watch this, I’m gonna connect these dots and it’s gonna make the shape of a unicorn.
Rich Ziade: That’s satisfying. But there’s [00:11:00] another component to it, and that’s also fueled by the internet, which is there’s a social dynamic, which is when you share that pattern that you matched back out into a group of people and they validate it. An incredibly strong bond is created because they share this common understanding.
Rich Ziade: If it is the most rapid fire way to create a belief system, religions need hundreds of years to create belief systems and you can do it in the most efficient, rapid way possible, so, okay. I solved something. Scooby-Doo style, and I’ve found a group of people who are validating and building on it.
Rich Ziade: By the way, one of the hallmarks of QANON is it, it’s like it’s fractal. People just add stuff to it and they say, of course, add it to the diagram. Right? Why? Because that is you effectively validating and contributing back into that [00:12:00] little community, right? And it’s, it’s very powerful.
Continuum
Paul Ford: Here’s what’s tricky and here’s where it’s hard to advise Jeff. It’s a continuum. I, I’ll give you an example. You’re a religious person. I am not. We both actually have,
Rich Ziade: Mildly rel–and I don’t go to church, but yes, I, I, I believe in something.
Paul Ford: Okay. I don’t. And so like you would think like I don’t know. You have a set of beliefs that are really different from mine and in that one regard, right? And like,
Rich Ziade: Right.
Paul Ford: I don’t know. I I’m never gonna try to convince you otherwise or vice versa, like, so that,
Rich Ziade: It’s not, it’s not tearing us apart [chuckles].
Paul Ford: It’s not tearing us apart, and it seems to be that you can have,
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: Healthy relationships with just about anybody, including people who don’t share your beliefs.
Rich Ziade: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Paul Ford: We can all be in the same club, now I don’t go to church with you when you do go to church, regardless, I grew up in a church, all good.
Rich Ziade: Hmm.
Paul Ford: Now go a little further. I grew up, at one point [00:13:00] my family went evangelical and that church was way more insular. People, outsiders were not as welcomed.
Rich Ziade: Hmm, hmm.
Paul Ford: And I went to that church and,
Rich Ziade: Hmm.
Paul Ford: the minister was really the center of everybody’s life.
Paul Ford: Okay. But even there, you’re still going to the store, you’re still seeing friends. You might be talking about weird stuff at church,
Rich Ziade: People are different. We accept our differences.
Paul Ford: You’re part of the community, but now we go a little bit further, right? And I’m gonna like, I’ll fast forward all the way to the end, which is I spend all my day trying to prove that Sandy Hook was a hoax.
Paul Ford: Like there was a profile of a woman who does that, and it, you read it and you go, “that’s the worst person in the world”. She is, she is cruel and she believes something that is reprehensible she is brutal to suffering people.
Rich Ziade: Yes.
Paul Ford: And there is no good reason for it. Right?
Rich Ziade: Right.
Paul Ford: So like, where do we, how do we talk about this stuff then?
Paul Ford: Because there’s all kinds of conspiracies. Democrats believe things, Republicans believe things,
Rich Ziade: Hmm
Paul Ford: about each other that actually point to conspiracies.
Rich Ziade: [00:14:00] Yes.
Paul Ford: If you’re a Republican, you think Democrats are sitting around a table planning to, to, to
Rich Ziade: Sipping blood.
Paul Ford: Yeah. And they’re, they’re going to add gender to the-
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: water supply,
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: Right, like it’s just like you get into that stuff.
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: So we’re all, we all have our own conspiratorial biases. Situate me in there, like, where, where does this begin and end for you? Where, where does this start to become a problem?
Rich Ziade: Why do you and I get along and accept our differences where if you try to even approach the, the rational-irrational discussion with a, like a, a conspiracy theorist, it’s pretty ugly, right? And here’s the thing, the more bizarre and crazy it is, right? The more powerful, the defensiveness and the backlash that comes out the other way.
Rich Ziade: Why? Because it’s actually, when it’s crazy, it’s fragile. It’s actually quite delicate. Right? And, and it feels like if you just take that one peg out of the big giant structure, the whole thing will crumble, right? And so there’s this intense defensiveness, [00:15:00] there’s this, this in, in, in intense, uh, need to protect and actually go on the offensive to protect the, these theories.
Rich Ziade: I, I mean, I, I don’t wanna judge yet another religion, Scientology, but it’s, it’s known for like, hiring private investigators and like chasing you down in real life if you try to go astray, right? Because they’re defending, frankly, a set of constructs that are I’ll, I’ll go ahead and say it a little banana cakes, right?
Rich Ziade: Like, and so how do you keep that together? You keep it together by being insular and being very, very protective and defensive about it.
Paul Ford: Look people believe all kinds of wacky things. When I walk down the street, I look at people and I go, there’s a 70% chance you think wizards are real that is just walking down the street. You know?
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: Lizards are real.
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: Scientology, I’m like, all right, it’s no wackier than anything else. As a stone cold, atheist, everybody believes, I, I think everybody believes in weird stuff, but Scientology wants to get you on that boat.
Paul Ford: They wanna put you on that [00:16:00] that boat.
Rich Ziade: Put you in international waters [chuckles].
Paul Ford: And that, that is where I’m-
Rich Ziade: Out of jurisdiction [chuckles].
Paul Ford: I don’t like religions that are like, “Hey, if you really want to get into this thing, we’re gonna need your bank account. We’re gonna need your wiring info and you gotta get on this boat”.
Rich Ziade: Get on the boat [laughter].
Paul Ford: So, don’t put me on a boat.
Rich Ziade: There’s another key component to what I’m saying here. Why is, what’s different and what’s different is if you are centered and you, your identity is strong and is pretty together, you don’t need this externality, a conspiracy theory or some organization to define you really good conspiracy theories.
Rich Ziade: You internalize them, you take from the group and it becomes part of who you are. Like I am. Lebanese by birth, an American citizen, I lean left. Um, I, uh, I’m Catholic by, you know, by birth, et cetera, et cetera. So I have these things that I identify as part of my identity. Good conspiracy theories, really effective ones.
Rich Ziade: You don’t [00:17:00] just buy into it, it becomes part of who you are. And so when you’re telling someone that’s bananas, you’re essentially saying you are bananas and you are incomplete. You are not an entire human being, and that is terrifying.
Jeff Calls Back
Paul Ford: Hey Rich it’s Jeff.
Rich Ziade: Hey Jeff, how are you doing?
Paul Ford: You said you’d call me back man Um look I don’t know I went I you didn’t call me back. So I went and showed my family some of the stuff I’m watching on YouTube and my dad like turned off Fox News and he’s like now yelling at me and he says I don’t know I think he’s out of it and like he thinks I’m losing it and he’s like you can’t watch that stuff anymore cause,
Rich Ziade: Hmm.
Paul Ford: I was telling him about banking and he’s like you don’t know anything about banking and,
Rich Ziade: Well, I mean like,
Paul Ford: Christmas is gonna be messed up.
Rich Ziade: Wait, what’s wrong with banking, Jeff? What about banking?
Paul Ford: Well it turns out that there are certain groups of people who control all the banks And I I was just trying to like figure that out.
Rich Ziade: You mean bankers?[00:18:00]
Paul Ford: No not bankers. Anyway can we move on…
Rich Ziade: Jeff, there’s this, there’s this YouTube channel that I like that I, I know you’ve been on YouTube a lot.
Paul Ford: Yeah.
Rich Ziade: It’s called Channel five. It’s, it’s this guy named Andrew Callahan. What’s great about this channel, Jeff, is he is not yelling at anybody. He’s actually let, he’s just hearing these people out. And what you’re gonna find if you watch a few of these is, um, a certain pattern around people who are actually in a lot of pain in a, in a really tough place cause they’re feeling really alone cause they’ve bought into a lot of theories and they’re feeling like the whole world’s kind of bailing on them.
Rich Ziade: Families are getting torn apart. Um, and it’s pretty rough. Um, and, and I think what’s great about it is that he doesn’t explain to them why they’re wrong, he doesn’t ever do that. He just sort of lets them talk and I think you could, you can kind of gain some perspective here if you check these out. Um,
Paul Ford: Alright I’m gonna go watch him. I like YouTube and that makes sense to me.
Rich Ziade: Alright, I’ll talk to you later.
Chatting Again
Rich Ziade: [00:19:00] Paul, I have a question for you.
Paul Ford: Go for it.
Rich Ziade: We just explained how these things come to be. How people fall into the hole. How do you get ’em out? This stuff is tearing families apart.
Paul Ford: I I like your idea of “Hey go watch Channel five”, here’s why I explain things sometimes for a living and I don’t think in 20 plus years I’ve ever actually convinced anyone of anything I’ve merely given people,
Rich Ziade: Ever [laughter].
Paul Ford: For real like I I’ve given people information,
Rich Ziade: Yeah,
Paul Ford: That they can use.
Rich Ziade: So you can’t talk him out of it. You can’t say, man, what are you doing with just get off the internet? This is crazy talk.
Paul Ford: No one has ever-
Rich Ziade: Does that not work?
Paul Ford: No no one’s been convinced of anything, and I think in fact if you say “You’re outta my life and I hate you for what you believe”, you actually reinforce that. They go “well that there you go that’s what it’s like out there people, people are so scared of the truth that my [00:20:00] own family won’t talk to me anymore because they’re so scared of the truth”.
Rich Ziade: Right. It just gets worse and worse. So Christmas dinner, what do you do? They’re coming over.
Paul Ford: I’ll tell you what, I’ve watched a family that’s close to me go through this through QANON and through Trump and through all the stuff and people were at each other’s throats for a long time.
Rich Ziade: Hmm.
Paul Ford: And I’m seeing it calm down, people are starting to get together for Christmas.
Rich Ziade: That’s okay.
Paul Ford: Can you have a drink together? Can you just let them see the kids? And then go for it.
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: That’s it. That’s all you can do.
Rich Ziade: Yeah.
Paul Ford: And this is the sadness and if you look on like the reddick groups for for people who are trying to get their families outta QANON or you look at historically,
Rich Ziade: It’s hard.
Paul Ford: culty programming it doesn’t work.
Rich Ziade: Yeah, it takes a long time.
Paul Ford: They have to want it.
Rich Ziade: Yeah. It takes a long time.
Paul Ford: The system it’s built in. It’s like asking someone to stop being a University of Michigan Wolverines fan.
Rich Ziade: Yup. I think to build on what you’re saying here, I think this is less about them believing in a bunch of stuff and more about how much they [00:21:00] invested in it and becoming a big part of who they are.
Rich Ziade: And I think one of the things they fear, one of the, it’s just terrifying, is that, oh my God, I’m gonna be an empty shell of myself if you take this out. If you actually unplug this part, I have to start over. And that is scary and terrifying.
Paul Ford: I don’t think people actually they don’t think that way let me let me do it this way, “Paul You can no longer use a web browser, right?. You love technology. No more technology for you. You get to write with pencil and paper, and use a landline phone” and I’m gonna go that is so boring I would really not enjoy that, that seems terrible.
Rich Ziade: Okay. Fair, fair. [chuckles].
Paul Ford: That’s what you’re saying. You’re saying all the things that stimulate excite and connect you to your peer group and let you feel that you are in control of the world, for me that’s technology, like that’s what technology is for–all those things are gonna get taken away from you uh because I think they’re not good for you. And you know what that person’s gonna do, [00:22:00] they’re gonna say they’re gonna put their middle finger up
Rich Ziade: Yep.
Paul Ford: They’re gonna go to hell with it.
Rich Ziade: Yep. Um,
Paul Ford: So it it can only flame out,
Rich Ziade: Give them a hug, Paul. Just give ’em a hug at Christmas dinner.
Paul Ford: I mean,
Rich Ziade: Say it’s good to see you.
Paul Ford: The the contemporary ideology is that you should only scream. But no I’m still of the opinion that kindness and respect as well as saying I’m really sorry you believe that,
Rich Ziade: Mm-hmm.
Paul Ford: I find it really sad.
Paul Ford: You can say tough things You can say tough things and they won’t care. And that’s okay.
Rich Ziade: Yep.
Paul Ford: You can represent yourself as a moral person and you can also just go “Hey I love you, and I hope this works out”.
Last bit of advice
Rich Ziade: I have one piece of advice and it’s not for young people or people who are bought into conspiracy theories or who are on terrible websites. You know who it’s for, Paul?
Paul Ford: Tell me.
Rich Ziade: The people that are influential, that are influencers, journalists, publishers, uh, people who are [00:23:00]savvy with social media. Um, I, I think over the last seven, eight years, people, um, understood these mechanisms really well. They kind of come out of marketing, like really good, savvy viral marketing, and they leverage them for political gains, for, um, for other, for monetary, uh, gains.
Rich Ziade: And I, I think, We do have a choice and we do have, um, uh, I think we can do better in terms of how manipulative we can be with these tools. Right? And, and it doesn’t need to be that way. We had a president that won based on that exact playbook. Um, I’m not even getting into whether it’s a good or bad person or whatnot, that is a marketer who learned how to manipulate lots and lots of people.
Paul Ford: Okay.
Rich Ziade: We can do better.
Paul Ford: But but let me throw this back at you, I actually think we are I think you know you know what you don’t hear a lot about anymore,
Rich Ziade: Hmm, hmm.[00:24:00]
Paul Ford: Facebook. You don’t hear, Facebook seems to have gone you know what we’re gonna turn the dial down. We’re gonna just no more of these bad ads. We’re gonna get rid of this misinformation.
Rich Ziade: Yeah,
Paul Ford: And so the whatever-
Rich Ziade: It does seem calmer, right? It does seem calmer.
Paul Ford: The waters are calmer. Let’s see what happens with the next presidential election. You do hear a lot about Twitter where everything you just described it seems like Elon Musk is doing the opposite and still-
Rich Ziade: I mean, he, he, yeah, he picked up the playbook, right?
Paul Ford: That’s right.
Rich Ziade: And he un knows exactly what he is doing. And, and, uh, here we are. Um, I, I don’t, I’m not gonna get into whether it’s bad, good, what the rationale or reasoning is behind it, but that’s clearly the same playbook. It’s hard to deny. It’s not the same playbook.
Paul Ford: It is. Maybe we should just give up and start a conspiracy.
Rich Ziade: How about a conspiracy that says that if you eat blueberries, you’re gonna be a happier person. Why can’t we have that kind of conspiracy Paul?
Paul Ford: You know, there’s no reason why not. [00:25:00] I’m gonna go downstairs and see if I have any blueberries.
Rich Ziade: Go eat some. Check us out @ZiadeFord.com. Subscribe in all the usual podcast places. Give us five stars because five is better than four. Um, write in a, write a review if you like. Um, also hit us up. How do they reach out to us, Paul?
Paul Ford: Send an email to hello@ZiadeFord.com. Check us out on twitter @ZiadeFord.com, still figuring out how to make it work on Mastodon and anything else. You know how to get in touch everybody.
Rich Ziade: Have a lovely week. Take care of each other. Bye-Bye.
Paul Ford: Bye.