Vibecheck the Planet - Episode 2

The conversation revolves around the comparison between Spotify and Apple Music and the user's preference for Spotify due to its user-friendly interface. They also discuss their conflicting feelings about using Apple services and supporting giant companies like Apple and Amazon. The conversation touches on Amazon's business model and its impact on small businesses, as well as the management strategy and growth-focused approach of Amazon. They also briefly mention the negative effects of social media platforms and the QAnon conspiracy theory. Yeah, no, Spotify and Apple, go for it. What is it you want to say to the world? Well, when you put it like that. Yeah, no, we were just talking about it. Yes, I am a devoted Spotify user. Okay. And I did try my time at Apple Music and it was just not it, chief. Couldn't do it. Why? I don't get the Apple Music. I feel like I didn't. So the user interface, when you've been a long-time Spotify user, is not very friendly. Why? You know, just the gestures are not the same, the way where music is, it's not the same. I don't enjoy it. But why? When you hit play next, you know what it does? What? It does not play your next song. Yeah, it does. I use Apple Music. You press the skip button, it goes to the next song on the queue. No, it stacks it up. So if you keep on hitting play next, play next, play next, it'll play that song. And it's not going to add them to the queue. No, dude, you don't know what you're, you do not know how to use Apple Music. I just told you I don't know how to use it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I know how to use Spotify, which is the correct way. Did you try to learn how to use Apple Music? I did. Sounds like a skill issue. Yeah, it was probably user error to a very big percentage. This is user affiliation. You want to go to the problems with the user bases or you want to talk about the problems with the companies? I think there's some big issues with, I guess, the big services. We talked about this before we cut. I think we're so despondent towards supporting the services that we use for hours a day. I don't like the blue bubble, green bubble type thing. Yeah, I mean, okay, not just that, but I really enjoy using Apple Music. I get to listen to a lot of music that I like. I have no problems because the content I want is there. That's really what I'm there for is the music itself. The user interface is good enough to where I enjoy it. But even though I really like Apple Music and it's super valuable to me, I hate paying for it. You hate paying for it? Yeah, because it's Apple, one of the giant companies out there. I could be giving my money to a small business and supporting people in my community, but I'm giving it to a giant company. And how much is an Apple? It's a little bit of my phone plan, so technically I'm not paying for it. I'm paying for it, but in a weird way. Come on. I know I'm one of those people. But yeah, I don't like my money going to Apple. Let Instagram advertise me. I don't like it. But you're enjoying their product. I know. It's weird. I don't like that I feel that way. I feel like I should be glad that I'm using a service that I like, but I'm not. So you care more about just paying for it. No, I feel bad that giant companies are making money off of me. You know what I mean? But they're the economy, bro. I know, and that's what I'm saying. That's the world we live in. You make money off of a company. Yeah, but in my mind, one of the big problems I see with FANG specifically is that you have these large companies that are competing in some of the sectors that small businesses also compete in. So in a way, they're also supporting income inequality. That's kind of my biggest gripe with it. Yeah, well, for example, small businesses sell on Amazon, but Amazon takes a cut of what they make. How much does Amazon take from the small businesses? I don't know, but I'll Google it. Because I know that eBay has a big problem with that, or they had when I was a user. Yeah, well, I mean, they'll always try to balance it out to whatever lets them make the most money. So if they milk their sellers too much, they won't sell on there. Referral fees, typically 6% to 15% of the sale price. Individual seller fees, $0.99 per item sold. Account fees depend on your account type, it seems like. And then the sale-related fees. Oh, my lord, there's a lot of fees. Sale-related fees range from 8% to 45% of each product's selling price. Yeah, and then there's different types of Amazon seller accounts you can get. So, at the end of the day, are they being more profitable or less profitable? Anytime you use a middleman, you're always going to be less profitable. Anytime? Yeah, your variable costs increase. The fixed costs of your business stay the same. So, I've been noticing that a lot of people hate on Amazon, and I really don't understand why. Specifically faults of Amazon that I think are objectively... Their operations division is insane, bro. Yeah. It's wild. I think they're at the tip of innovation, bro. It's like a modern pillar, in my opinion, from what I've seen. You're not wrong, but there are things in the management strategy of Amazon that I think make people really mad. So, for example, one of their policies is they fire the bottom 10% of their workforce each year. Each year? Yeah. So, turn, which is the business turn that refers to the proportion of people that go into your business versus out of your business each year, it's built into the business model. So, they don't want people to stay there for a long time. Yeah, that's from Bezos. That's like top management has made that policy. So, there's that. So, your job is always on the line? Yeah, always. They want people to be super competitive in their business, which is fair, but... So, you're still getting fired? If you're in the bottom 10%, sure. This year? Me? I'm not getting fired. I don't work for them. So, next year you're going to be... No, me, I'm a top 1%. ...even better than the people that stayed. This is not sustainable. That's what I'm saying. The turn is there. And maybe eventually they'll run out of people, and I think they're kind of already running into that issue, but that is a policy that they have. Well, I don't think that's a very sound... That's worked out great for them. One of the most valuable companies on the planet. Yeah. How much can we contribute to that, though? Attribute to that? I don't know. I don't even think... The amount that Amazon makes is very deceiving, because they're a growth company. That's kind of always been their concern. It's not really making money, but growing their stock price. Agreed. And that, I think, is bad. I got to hand it to Amazon. They've really implemented a lot of important innovations into the logistics market, especially... They've got web services, but I think they're more well-known for the logistics side of things. They're really good at that. And I think that's kind of important. But when you have companies that are only growth stocks, they can't... The value that they're trying to give to their shareholders is, like, we're consuming more market share. That's always what growth companies are trying to do. Anytime you're trying to grow your company, you're trying to take up more of the total available market, which means less for other people. So Amazon has kind of been undercutting every business they compete in. With, like, Amazon Video, they were way cheaper than cable services, right? When they started off. Way cheaper. Yeah. But that's not sustainable. Same thing with... That's what they did with Alexa, too. Yeah. With, like, for example, Prime Video, now that is identical to cable. Like, identical. They charge higher fees in general, and they also have advertisements on everything you watch. They undercut their competition, and then once they seized up more of the total available market, they made their service bad, so they could charge people more. Did you hear that going on with Amazon? Yeah. And, I mean... So what is going to happen to Next? So they just did it with cable, right? Turned it into Amazon TV or whatever. What are they going to do next? They won't change that competitive strategy until someone else tries to take that throne from them. So Amazon is like this big octopus. Yeah. Do you remember in a U.S. History class when they showed the big octopus spreading through? Yeah. It's effectively that. Like, your goal... Amazon. Yeah, that's the goal. You seize up as much of the market as you can, and then you start putting the heat on slowly so that people will pay you more money. That's what all these giant companies are doing. DoorDash, Facebook, Instagram. They're all squeezing people now that they've got everybody using them. So how... You can't grow forever. How sustainable is this on a society? I mean, nothing's sustainable forever. Everything dies eventually. Is this why? But more so generally in America. I don't... It's been a crazy fucking ride, bro. No, no. It's not that bad. I think it's been a while. It's not Facebook's fault. I'm not attributing fault to anything. Okay. It's not the social media's fault that people are using... People who shouldn't be talking about... People who aren't very good at talking about politics are talking about politics on these platforms. For example, this is one of the things I think is obviously negatively impacting people. Everyone's got an opinion. Especially on politics. The people who were into QAnon for a while... You know how many people actually read the QAnon posts on 4chan? Not a lot. No idea. Not a lot. Barely anyone actually. Did you read it? Yeah. Yeah, I read it. What did it say? It's just dumb cryptic stuff. I can tell you off the top that it's like... Oh, God. Something like, the donkeys are coming. You know what I mean? It'd be something like that. And whoever QAnon was would allegedly make a series of posts. I think on 4chan originally, and then he moved to 2chan because he got banned from 4chan. He would make posts, like a series of posts. And then people with YouTube channels would go and compile those posts and then release it to the public. And then there would be another series of reactions where other YouTubers would react to the YouTubers who reacted to QAnon. And that's like the big people who were talking about QAnon. The ones who were reacting to the reactions. That's funny. There was a Rick and Morty episode where they had a joke where it says just that. You watch people on YouTube reacting to YouTube. Yeah. That's not valuable. Absolutely not. That's not valuable. I'm not even... To clarify, I don't think QAnon is real. But I can understand why someone would want to evaluate QAnon's posts. Yeah, maybe it's going to get you engagement on YouTube, but talking about it is something. Talking about other people talking about it is not really contributing anything to the conversation. If I go to QAnon and I read that stuff and I'm like, hmm, maybe this guy's on to something. And I explain why. I'm putting something valuable out into society. Even if it's wrong, you're at least getting people to think. And if you think QAnon's wrong, show the QAnon posts, talk about why you think they're wrong, and try to convince people. If there's something... I barely even know what the fuck QAnon is. It was the guy LARPing on 4chan as a top clearance level... Official. Yeah, but the whole Deep State shit and all that. Yeah, no, that's what it was. No one knows who QAnon was because the boards are anonymous. But he was the leader that fed them all that shit? Yeah. Okay. Again, I just have a vague idea of what it is. There's a documentary about it. I think it's called Investigating QAnon. I think it was the son of the founder of 2chan is who it was. Or who it is suggested that it is. It's just some dude. It's some random... Dude that fed the shit. Yeah, just some nerd. That's all it is, bro. Yeah, some weird porn addicted nerd. That's who QAnon was. And he changed the world. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Why weren't people talking about why that wasn't real? Why were people only talking about the cryptic messages? Not who this QAnon guy was. That's what I'm saying. I have no idea. That's not... When you talk about people talking about QAnon, you don't really have anything good to say. You're just throwing things out into the atmosphere. You're trying to go... You're fishing for engagement like these companies. That's a small PP vibe. Yeah. I mean, they're not saying anything valuable. That's most of what goes on on these social media platforms. And all of them, you think? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Certain. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Is that the social media platform's fault, though? Business-wise, you can't blame them for that. I think you can. Why? Because you're running a business. They want these things to happen. They want these things to happen. As long as they're getting engagement, their business is doing good. That's business. That's engagement. That's what they want. This is like Pablo Escobar type shit. You know Pablo Escobar sold cocaine, but he never used cocaine. Yeah. And he told all of his family to never use cocaine. That's... He knew it was horrible for you, but he didn't give a shit. Yeah. All he wanted was to make money, so he just sold you as much as he wanted. That's what I'm saying. But this is the problem with publicly owned companies. It's a flaw ingrained into the system, which is that they have to boost value for their shareholders. So they have to... They gotta make that number go up. Agreed. They gotta make that number go up. They have to legally. They're publicly owned. That's what it's all about. They have to do it economically viable. They can't do otherwise. And that's what it's all about, man. It's all about making money. All this dumb crap. It's just making money. It's just making money. Yeah. It's just numbers on a spreadsheet. Going up and up and up and up and up. Yeah. That's it. Okay. Let me rephrase that. I don't think it's all about money. Sometimes it's also about attention. About what? Attention. Like ego. Attention? Yeah. You know, I read this book. It's called Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. Yeah. Very, very good. Who is that? He's this stoic philosopher. Oh, boy. He has a very good YouTube channel. People want to check him out. Ryan Holiday. Very good. Does he have any Sigma edits of him? That's what I care about. Yeah. He's a motivational speaker and everything. He's been to Conure. Yeah. He's been to like the Navy SEALs. If he doesn't have short form content, he's not real. He does have short form. Yeah, I know. He's actually a good person. For money. Maybe. Maybe. He motivates me. He too also wants to make money. Actually, you know, I think he has a YouTube channel for people just like you. I might watch it. I'm willing to check it out. I don't think making money is bad. I'm not one of those like, there is no. Is it ethical? 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