ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Nellie Bowles
We talk with journalist Nellie Bowles about San Francisco, tech culture, ideological capture, media mediocrity, and the joys (really) of parenthood.
The following is a rough transcript of our episode with Nellie Bowles, “San Francisco Burning.”
Please note that this is a full, rough, unedited transcript. If you’d like us to polish and edit these transcripts, please consider supporting Uncertain Things as a paid subscriber!
Vanessa: Hello. Uncertain things, listener. It is I, Vanessa. Adaam is off gallivanting in our nation's capital, doing very important journalistic things while I remain in this dirty little city we like to call New York. Uh, here recording this intro for you. I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. You can cut that Adaam because that sounds really corny.
Okay. Today we have on the podcast a real treat, a delight, miss Nelly Bowles. Uh, you may have read her things at the New York Times when she was their tech reporters. You may have read her. Excellent article in the Atlantic about the failure of San Francisco. Both Adaam and I came across this piece independently when it came out.
Uh, me because of my urbanism circles, him because of his obsession, shall we say, with ideology and how it, when it grips the mind, it results not only in mental decrepitude, but also physical urban decrepitude. And so for different reasons, we came across this piece and converged on Nelly as someone we wanted to talk to.
If you haven't read her stuff, you absolutely should go through her back catalog. She has some incredible articles really capturing this moment of time of ours in which we find this tech revolution completely shifting the paradigm of our society, our world, the way we interact with each other, the way we think about ourselves.
Um, and you should keep up to date with what Nelly's doing. Now she is at the free press, uh, along with her wife, Bari Weiss. Um, we, she writes the newsletter, T G I F. So make sure to subscribe to that to get your weekly dose of Nelly in your inbox. Um, and yeah, we talked, we did not talk to her too much about the free press, which in itself is an interesting topic as a different format for media, uh, journalism and new independent media outlet.
Um, but maybe Nelly will come on back to talk to us about that. But we did cover a lot of great ground around San Francisco, the failings of progressivism or progressive capture, I guess, when it comes to trying to get real shit done in a kind and not cruel way. Um, from there we get into big tech, uh, the relationship between big tech and the media and how often media doesn't do a very good job of understanding tech or even really keeping it terribly accountable, uh, even despite all the tech lash going on in the world.
And we also delve a little bit into, you know, the question on many, uh, millennials' minds these days, whether to procreate or not. Um, and so Nelly gives an enthusiastic response to that. Um, all in all, very fun conversation with Nelly. We, we brought up a lot, but also left a lot on the table, so we will have to have Nelly back for an encore presentation.
Um, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this conversation. With the one and only Nelly poles. We have like an Arc Nelly. We never, we never actually hit the arc. But here, here's like the, yes. Tell me, tell me the tent poles of our theoretical arc. Uh, Sanford. Talking about San Francisco. Love it. Big tech, uh, Silicon Valley.
Have to off about San Francisco. Cause I ran. Okay. We will, we will, if we wanna get to the, to the other things. But we have like, that's why we put it first. Cause we wanted to make sure we could get into it. Um, big tech and Silicon Valley culture. Uh, questions in there. Um, religion and community, we see those as like combined co combo topic, uh, bucket of questions, um, media obviously.
Um, and yeah. And then our final bucket was to, to have children or not to have children. What is the question? What is the answer?
Nellie Bowles: 100 Percent have children. It is unambiguous. The answer is 100%. Have children. It is the most amazing thing. It's so much fun. You have to do it.
Vanessa: So I feel like you're only saying that because you feel like there's, you must feel like that there's too much backlash against it and that there's too many people choosing not to, and so you feel like you've gotta overcompensate.
Surely. No,
Nellie Bowles: no, no. I feel that it is just genuinely the coolest, most fun adventure that you can go on. You get to go on it in your own home. You don't have to go anywhere. You just have this adventure in the living room with a baby. Um, I am a big fan of it. I mean, the thing I think about all the time with our daughter, which is so weird, but like maybe it explains partly why I think it's so important to have kids is one day when I die, the very, very best case scenario is that our daughter is the one right next to me, like seeing me off into the next world.
And that is so profound. And like this person who's entered our life, I is going to also be the person hopefully who like walks me through the end of mine. It's the most incredible thing. And I don't know, it's just also really fun. Be beyond the sort of having someone walk you through death part. Right. I would say, um, having a kid.
It's fun.
Vanessa: But this is the thing, I can't quite believe you when, when you say it's fun. Like I actually, when I'm, cuz I'm, I'm of the age where I'm thinking about it and I, when I think about the pros of it, it's actually more like, won't I regret it if I don't do it? Like it's all of this, I'm, the, my framework about it is like, oh, I should probably do it cuz when I'm older I'll be sad.
I didn't, and then I'll regret it. But there's no like immediate upside that I see. I feel like I don't feel pulled. Oh, you're, you're
Nellie Bowles: so crazy. No, no, no. For sure. You should think like there's a, there's a great book, selfish Reasons to Have More Kids and his whole argument throughout the book is think about how many kids you're gonna want in each decade of your life.
When you're in your thirties, how many kids do you think you're gonna want when you're in your forties, when you're in your fifties, when you're in your sixties, how many kids will you want to have had? And I think that's what you were saying there and I think it's a really actually good way to think about it.
But also I find the day-to-day to be. Extremely fulfilling and extremely fun. I mean, this morning before getting on with you guys, I was just cuddling with a baby, like making little coing noises and she was coing back at me. Like, that's very fulfilling to me and, and very cozy and I don't know, I just as fun as what I'm doing right here with you.
Mm-hmm.
Vanessa: Mm-hmm. I mean, well see, I, I can very easily imagine that with a dog, but I just, I just really struggle with a baby. Well see, like, I don't know. I'll, I'll come to
Nellie Bowles: terms, but the trouble is straight. People used to just accidentally get pregnant and, and we need to bring that back,
Vanessa: bring accidental babies back.
Nellie Bowles: I mean, people like me always had to work a little harder and finagle something that's
Adaam: just, but we need to lower the quality of contraceptive. That's really what it's about. Exactly. Um,
Nellie Bowles: so,
Adaam: so you've extricated your family from
Nellie Bowles: San Francisco? Mm, yes. Mm Okay. So San Francisco. Yes. Yeah. Gimme on my, uh, this genuinely, there's nothing I like talking about more than San Francisco and the shit show, but also just the possibility of it.
Yeah.
Vanessa: Okay. So I think a good starting point is the, is the article you wrote for The Atlantic, because it's funny cuz So just so you know a little bit about AAM and I, and where we come from. AAM is more the news politics, journalist type. I actually come from architecture, urbanism journalism. Cool. Um, AAM more plugged into.
Partisan bullshit me, uh, conscientiously avoiding it most of the time, um, except through this podcast in which I must en engage with it intellectually and at occasionally emotionally. Um, but
Adaam: crucially, we have, uh, a deep crossover when it comes to cities.
Vanessa: Yes, we both really care about cities. A adom really cares about what happens when ideology distorts regular life, and people can no longer actually take care of their local environment because they're so wrapped up in what's happening on like a national or ideological level.
Um, and I really care about the local solutions and things like impacting the housing crisis and things, things we can actually do. And so I feel like they kind of, your article is a bit of a Venn diagram of both of our, of our interests. So I wanted to first,
Adaam: and it's one of those rare cases that we have landed at the same, uh, Piece of journalism independently.
Right. That it's not something that we had to share with each other that we both actually have written. I'm honor. Yeah. It's just this is not something that normally happens. Right. But it, it literally was the band diagram.
Vanessa: It's usually Adaam introducing me to someone or me introducing Adaam to someone. It's not usually we've both come across, you know, the, the, the, the writing that, and the person,
Nellie Bowles: I'm honored to bring the roommates together.
Vanessa: Thank you. Well, um, for, for anyone who hasn't read the article, would you mind just setting it up? What, what were you writing about? What were you noticing? Yeah, put yourself back in that mind, if you can.
Nellie Bowles: So, over the last few years, and really it peaked to a point where you couldn't ignore, ignore it.
Adaam: So you, you just, so it, for people who can't see, uh, there, there was an immediate Paul that fell over Nelly's face when you had to reconnect to that story.
Nellie Bowles: I mean, I have, it's, you know, you gotta like get your mind back into the scenes of the 2020. Like heat of the pandemic, they closed down a lot of shelters. So as they send people because of overcrowding, so they send people back into the streets, there's not quite a system yet around hotels. Um, so the streets of San Francisco are just completely filled with homeless people, with addicts, with people struggling in the most horrible and sad ways.
So basically all of a sudden in 2020, you had a physical manifestation of something that had been happening for a long time in the city, which is that the housing crisis, the homelessness crisis, had gotten. So inhumane and so brutal and all of a sudden in 2020 it was like, oh, holy shit, we can't pretend this isn't happening.
It was in front of city hall. They turned it into an outdoor home, homeless encampment. I mean, it was, it was in neighborhoods cuz previously it had been kind of quarantined almost into poor neighborhoods in the middle of the city and all of a sudden it, and, and it could be ignored by the upper middle class and wealthy of the city, and all of a sudden homelessness was spilling out into the whole city.
So that was part of what was happening. Then you had all of a sudden the school board and government activities in general, but the school board in particular holding their meetings on Zoom. Previously we couldn't exactly see what was going on with the San Francisco School Board. Not that many people wanted to go physically into one of these meetings.
Maybe there'd be a chronicle reporter there, but who was gonna like e, even them, I don't think they would be going to every school board meeting, but all of a sudden it was on Zoom so you could watch it in 2020. You had this moment where San Francisco, all the things that had kind of been hidden but had been happening, the decay that had been happening for years was out in the public and was, was, was undeniable.
And I wrote a story in the Atlantic, basically capturing this moment of why had San Francisco become a failed state and what was going on with the reform movement that was seeking. Changed that path. And ultimately by the end of reporting, that story did change the path. I mean, by the end of reporting the story, when, when I started, it was just gonna be sort of a send up of like, look how wacky the school board has become.
Look how insane the homeless crisis has become. And then by the end of it, it was like, oh my God. There's a movement here of rational, moderate ish, but still progressive people who are saying this is enough. So if you wanna like dive into specifics, I'm happy to like go into what the school board was up to, what was going on with the um, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Adaam: yeah.
We, we are all it into digging into so,
Vanessa: oh, AAM microphone. Just, just don't turn away
Nellie Bowles: from the microphone. Of course. You start pacing, start pacing the room.
Adaam: I remember, uh, in 2018 I was working at CNN and at the same time I had a startup that was trying to. Kind of draw attention to bipartisan coverage of the same stories.
And I remember there was a moment in 2018 where conservative media started leaning hard on the problems of California. Mm-hmm. And it was kind of an obsession, uh, like, uh, uh, would where they would, every time there would be, uh, uh, somebody who would post on Instagram a video of some human waste left by homeless people, they would post it.
And then there would be a story on Tucker Carlson. It would be like really dark and, and almost fetishistic. But,
Nellie Bowles: but the liberal response was to say that this was all a lie and it wasn't a lie. And, and yeah, that's exactly
Adaam: my point. No, no. So, so my, my quote, my point was that at the same time I remember the, the, the other side.
That's why it was interesting to be at cnn. Cause I remember CNN co like responding to this as you are looking at the most successful. In the union right now, the like economic powerhouse, a model for innovation, a model for liberal policies. And as somebody who has actually never been west, I had to re, I, I was really living in, I don't know who to trust and I dunno what picture is real, but I was certainly more skeptical of the Tucker Carlson image because of how, how obsessed it was.
And it felt like, hmm, you know, you can always highlight the dark corners of any big cities, but is
Nellie Bowles: it really that bad? Both things can be true, right? Sarah, the California.
Both of these things can be true. California can both be a place where you can make incredible wealth, incredible fortunes, where it is a great place to start a business full of smart young people. That can be true. It can be a beautiful place, a place with unbelievable natural beauty gifts that that, that we have here. And it can also be a place that is cruel and that is an example of progressive politics taken to such an extreme that they become cruel to humans, real life humans. And so what you see in San Francisco was a kind of layers and layers of progressive government that ended up somehow in all their gentleness and all their kindness and all their sort of empathy based political. Language somehow created a society where people were dying on the street, and that was the best we could offer. And it where housing couldn't be built and that was the, the best that could be done. And where the schools, the, the only elite school in San Francisco was getting shut down. And that was for good. And somehow you had a politics that were creating a, a unlivable city. And so of course, conservatives lept on it because conservatives could point to that and say, oh, you want these progressive politics. You want a progressive, a more progressive government. You want universal healthcare. You want all of these things. Look at the cities you have, look at the places you have, what have you done with them? And so, It's both fair for them to critique it and important for liberals to then say, my God, we have to reform this. We have to fix this.
And I think over the last four years since again, that sort of conservative movement pointing to San Francisco started in around 2018. In the last four years, I think you actually have seen a really successful reform movement within some of these cities. And San Francisco's the one I know best, but you have seen a reform movement of liberals saying enough.
Vanessa: Yeah. I think to your point in the, in the article, it's not the progressive policies per se or progressivism per se, that is destroying cities.
It's the adherence to a purity of progressivism. Right? It's like an ex, an elevating the theoretical over the practical and re and reality. Yeah.
Nellie Bowles: Elevating a utopianism like in a utopian world, everyone on the street. Would say, thank you. I'll move into this shelter, move into this housing, and I'll follow these like lovely rules you set.
And I'll do voluntarily. Yeah. Like in a utopian world that just happens in like a warm, loving way where you, you reach a handout and they reach a hand back and like, that's just not how the real world works. And like people are genuinely suffering and mentally ill. And it's not all about, I mean,
the progressive response of San Francisco is basically that Googlers moved in, tech people drove up housing prices. And so that's the, that's the only issue here. It's just housing's too expensive and, and once these bad tech people get out, everything will be fixed. And it's like, that's just not the human reality of what's happening. Like there, there's a way of like ignoring fentanyl, ignoring mental illness, ignoring all these things and pretending like that's not. Part of what's going on.
Adaam: So, and I, I, I wanna get a better picture of what, what was going on on the ground and what is still going on, on the ground in terms of the, the, the, the day-to-day experience. So, and, and when we're thinking about policy as well. So, okay. Cause those are two different questions that I'm gonna just bundle together.
There's, I wanna understand what's happening on the ground, but also the, where the failures are. Cause we don't ha, it's not like there's a failure of wealth there, there is a lot of wealth in the city. There is desire to, and, and to some extent willingness to redistribute that wealth. So that's the definition of progressive, right? Highly taxed with a desire to use the wealth generated in order to then create a more balanced reality in the city for all people.
Nellie Bowles: Where is it failing? The, it's, it's that the ideas are bad. It's that the ideas are the are bad, they're not good ideas. It's brilliant people. It's tons of money. People willing to spend that money on these issues, but the ways in which they're spending it are not good. Like the specific solutions. Yeah.
So let's take housing, um, in the sort of progressive San Francisco politics, actually building new housing is very bad and they don't want to build new housing. You want to preserve, um, sort of the old quaint aesthetic. There's a movement to preserve all the sort of, um, empty lots that then are overgrown, but that feels sort of parkish and they should be converted into urban farms or things like that instead of more housing.
Um, There's a huge pushback against anything market rate. You can't build market rate condos. That's like, that's like the worst thing that you can do in San Francisco to, to the San Francisco Liberal. It's build market rate housing. And so there's a ton of money spent on other stuff around housing, money spent on, you know, putting people up in hotels, money spent on, um, giving tax incentives for affordable this, doing this, doing that.
Those are just, that is just not a good politics. That is not a way to solve the solution. The then I, I, that's just one small slice, but for the housing situation, the progressive take on how to fix the housing crisis is a bad one.
Adaam: Right. So to that extent, it's not just the execution, it's, it's, it is fundamentally in the progressive idea.
Like this is a failure of progressivism
Nellie Bowles: in, in that one. Yeah. And so in San Francisco you have the movement, it's progressivism put to the test and failing. Yeah. In San Francisco you have a great movement called the YIMBY movement. Mm-hmm. Which I know you guys know all about, which is yes in my backyard.
And the progressive would call that person a neoliberal, shill. The, the YIMBY would say, actually all housing is good housing, actually, let's put in maybe a few rules. Like you can't build a skyscraper, whatever, but a building in a residential neighborhood is a great idea. Right. Let's do that. Right. And they, they acknowledge the reality, which is that, and I hung out in many of these apartments, if you don't build fancy new condos, guess what's gonna happen?
Those Googlers are gonna buy up a rundown. Old Victorian, they're gonna turn it into something fancy and they're gonna live there cuz they're people and they wanna live in a city. And that's fine. Yeah. Like w there there's this progressive notion that if we don't build it, they won't come. And it's like, what do you, what, what, what's the plan here?
Adaam: Oh, I see. And I see the fundamental problem there, not as just per se, against building. Cause if you, if you. If you peel it off, it's not that they are against the idea of new developments for their own sake, but they don't wanna destroy the thing that exists that they think is charming. And they think that there is something exploitative about market rate developers that,
Vanessa: but they think it is destroying that. That's the thing though, like if you, when you say, when you say new development, even if it's new next to old, it ruins the old by proximity.
Adaam: No, of course. No, of course. My, what I was gonna say is the problem here, and this is the utopianism fallacy, is the idea that you can have it all. Hmm. That's the problem. Of course it will destroy San Francisco to create, to turn it into, uh, a more like, uh, to change the housing problem in San Francisco or in New York or anywhere means that city has to. It will not be the same. And to some extent you will lose maybe some of its old magic and some of its historical beauty,
Nellie Bowles: physical charm, but not, and first of all, I don't even agree with that. I think you can have beautiful new buildings, but
Adaam: Right. But if you buy into that idea, like, and, and, and you have that image of San Francisco in those old, like, um, single family houses that are just lined up in the declivity,
Nellie Bowles: and I'm not talking about bulldozing the painted ladies. I'm saying there were years where a laundromat in the mission district was being fought over because it was considered a historic laundromat. That's what they were wanting to say. No, I'm not kidding. A historic laundromat in the middle of the mission district. This isn't a, a beautiful like Victorian architectural example. This is a laundromat
Adaam: that's crazy. We were just talking about with Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times, uh, architecture critic, and, and I was trying to create an un absurdum example of, of commitment.
Nellie Bowles: I've got some.
Adaam: The first thing that came to me was if you had put an emphasis on community, uh, getting to define what is worth preserving, and then the community really finds this corner bodega valuable, and then suddenly you, you pass a law that this bodega shall not be, uh, torn down. Like what happened? Like, okay, maybe it really was the center of a community, like it was a community center de fact. For like five years and then 10 years later it's just a fucking bodega. But the law protects it.
Nellie Bowles: What a community wants to preserve are housing prices. They want their house to be more expensive. Everyone. It crosses racial and socioeconomic bound bounds. Everyone wants their house to go up in value. And so yeah, you don't really wanna build a ton of housing in your neighborhood because it will make your house probably go down in value if it does what it's supposed to do. And
Vanessa: yeah, I mean, I'll push back on both of you a little bit because I do believe that there is inherent value to having like a corner bodega. And I think there is, uh, there is an argument to be made for its preservation, but I do think there's like a statute of limitations essentially. And there's, and just because you're, you say you wanna preserve it doesn't mean it has to be frozen in time. Like I do a lot of work talking of to folks who do preservation on the ground in communities of color, and they all say the same thing. Like most of them are renters. They're like, what? I don't wanna be stuck in a time capsule and have all the, like, the prices go up. Like in reality when we talk about preserve, like let's preserve elements of it, but let's also make sure that it can evolve and adapt to people's needs. So I think when we think of preservation, we can't think of it as like stuck in time. It has to be like,
Adaam: but this goes, this goes into my argument of you can't always have it all. Yeah, I want, I want things to look exactly the same, but also to be dynamic and change at some point when you are involved, especially when you involve legislation and the sluggish mechanism of a a city legal system, you are. First, introducing a whole new dimension of corruption that, that will inevitably penetrate into it. But, um, you are by definition stifling the, the dynamism. Now, you might wanna say, sometimes it's worth stifling the dynamism, but you really can't have it all. And that's the problem that I always seems to be recurring in the progressive discussion, is the assumption that you can't, that you don't need, that things don't have tradeoffs.
And when you do the tradeoffs, people get angry. That's, I think, the purity that you are alluding to Vanessa.
Vanessa: No, no, no. I agree with that. The un, the misunder,
the fundamental misunderstanding that all development involves trade off is one of the hardest parts of community engagement. Community engagement is not about getting everybody what they want. It's about coming up with the, the best compromise. Yeah. And that is never a fun or exciting thing. And, and what we talked about with Michael and, uh, Vishaan Chakrabarti is that Americans have gotten very good at saying no to anything and they don't know how to say yes, and they don't know how to, yeah, how to as, how to weigh those trade offs in their mind and say, well, for a greater good, this hits enough of the, of the button, uh, the whatever the check marks that it, yes, let's go forward and let's build something like this.
Nellie Bowles: I think that I have gotten really radicalized on this issue. Like I think I started, I mean I grew up in San Francisco and I obviously love its beauty and love the charm and I appreciate that enormously, but it is really hard once you allow neighborhood participation. You just open the door for years and years of impossible. You just opened the years for years and years of hell. It, it people. Will complain about anything that you try to build in any neighborhood, and it will make it impossible to build anything. And so you, it, it all sounds really reasonable. Like we want community input. Like, that sounds great. I want community input. That sounds nice. Like we want like to respect history like I do too. But fundamentally, as soon as you start opening that door, you, you've lost it. You, the laundromat will stay a laundromat and you better be happy with it. And, and at this point I am just radical. I am like build, just build things and it should come top down. It should be like, and, and you see the governor trying to do this in California, but it should be
Vanessa: the Moses, he's bringing Moses back. I mean, I, I think if I were to ever write a book, it would be about this topic because I think there surely must be a way to do it. In a way where fe people still feel involved, but that it doesn't get in the way of of developments.
Nellie Bowles: No. It just has to be done and then people kind of make peace with it. Hmm.
Vanessa: If that's, if that's the case, no, no. If that's the case. Case,
Nellie Bowles: cause we have to bring housing down, it's insanity. And guess what? You kill the neighborhood anyway because of a thousand dollars apartment becomes a $6,000 apartment. That neighborhood's dead. Yeah. That's all just miserable. People who pay $6,000, it's you, you want artists and all of this cuz it looks pretty and it's painted pink on the outside, but it's full of bankers inside that charming Victorian who cares?
Vanessa: I dunno. As someone who, who follows a lot of what people are trying to do in urbanism, I think there is possibility and hope, I have more hope than you on this score, Nelly. Um, however, I do think that if you're going to put, if you're going to say like, build what you want and everyone make peace with it, then I actually would be more in the, in the camp of having some sort of regulation in terms of. It has to be fucking good. Like people should not be allowed
Nellie Bowles: Yes, of course.
Vanessa: To put in whatever they want to make their bottom line. Like there should be incentives and subsidies to encourage them to put things in for community benefit. And that includes aesthetics and that includes things like community spaces and like, and there are ways of doing it. It's just nobody wants to.
Nellie Bowles: No, I agree. Of course. I want it to be pretty, you know, you, you want some rules, you want some rules. You don't want just like things that are falling apart and don't have permits. Like, I'm not, like, I'm not saying like just build, like whatever you wanna stick up there, but, but you know what I mean? Yeah.
Adaam: I, I, I actually mean, I, I'm just enjoying this quite a lot. But, um, the, I I, I also wanna get at some point to the question of, uh, criminal justice reform and, and where that failed. In San Francisco you mean? Yes, but not
Nellie Bowles: limited too. Okay. Oh yeah. I forgot when describing the article, I forgot to even say Chesa Boudin. My God.
Adaam: Oh God. The context of writing that article originally was, it was right before the recall, right? The recall of Chesa Boudin.
Nellie Bowles: Yeah. Yeah.
Adaam: Okay. So there gi give, give us that moment and, and like, kind of like the context of what was happening with Vanessa was saying was, was being nice when she was saying, I'm, I'm worried about ideological creep. I'm, I'm worried about the way that ideologies and that's a total bipartisan thing, are deranging people's ability to actually get the result that they were looking for. So that's a phenomenal case study.
Nellie Bowles: Yeah. I mean, he is an ideologue in a really impressive way, to be honest. Um, Part of what was going on in San Francisco at the time was that this really radical, charismatic, progressive prosecutor, Chesa Boudin had been elected and was, had top cop in San Francisco. And his big project was Radical Reform. His big project was, um, you know, all almost, I, I would say it would, it got up to the point of prison abolition, but not quite there. But he, um, he was the, he is the son of, um, the Weather Underground, um, members, his, his parents were incarcerated. He, um, has a really compelling story and makes really compelling points and makes really good points in the actual brass T tax.
Times of like running a, being the top cop of a city. Um, he couldn't quite pivot to the reality of what was going on during the pandemic, which was that there was a crime wave and um, people were feeling scared and he couldn't really muster empathetic language around it. He couldn't really like muster, um, any kind of softening of his, of his politics to respond to what was an increase in very visible crime.
Now, you could point to the stats and say there was the crime rose on this thing, but murders were this, but carjackings were this. The important thing was the visible crime on the street. Petty crime stores being broken into sort of, um, The, the visible stuff you see, and it felt unsafe in the city and people started to feel unsafe and Uddin could not bring himself to really reckon with that.
And so over the course of the pandemic, there was a recall election.
Adaam: So before we even get to the recall, it's worth reminding listeners, and we have some listeners who are not Americans, that the reason I see that as a microcosm is because it was happening across, oh yes. Progressive cities that where the combination of the pandemic, where you lose the eyes on the streets and and mm-hmm. Get more crimes, the results of vagrancy, uh, because of overcrowded shelters, which of course is an endemic problem that precedes the pandemic, but has gotten worse and. The, the context of the, uh, George Floyd riots, that out of righteous outrage created a permission structure that allowed bad actors to take the cover of ideology for whatever they wanted.
Nellie Bowles: There was a feeling of lawlessness,
Adaam: a lawlessness that was justified, right? It wasn't just the lawlessness, because moments of anarchy are part of American history. Um, but it was a moment of anarchy that was either denied
Nellie Bowles: yes
Adaam: or legitimized.
Nellie Bowles: Mm, you said it perfectly.
Adaam: So Chesa Boudin kind of embodied the derangement of ideology because American police. Of course it's, first of all, it's different between different states and different counties, but, but it has a lot of problems. It's over militarized. It's undertrained
Nellie Bowles: huge problems.
Adaam: He's huge problems.
Nellie Bowles: The movement to elect Chessa came out of something legitimate and came out of something exactly real, which is that policing in America has a problem and anyone can see that, obviously with George Floyd, but with a thousand other videos that we can watch.
Adaam: Right. And it's, it's racist underpinning is, but one of its many systemic problems that need severe addressing. So you understand where this energy's coming from.
Nellie Bowles: I'm sure it sounds like we agree on this, but like my, my thing on like defund is always like, we should fund the police more because I want them to be better, I want them better trained. I want this and that. Like, it would always seem like a silly movement. Like I, I don't, I actually want unionized police officers with body cams doing the security versus. Um, what actually is happening in a lot of American cities like our neighborhood where we have private patrols that people sign on to, like a gym membership, and these guys are not unionized. They are not wearing body cams, and they are definitely armed. And so that's how a lot of neighborhoods in LA and increasingly in San Francisco too are actually policed. Um, and I'd rather not have that be the situation.
Adaam: So can can you just, uh, recap that, that moment of the recall?
Nellie Bowles: Yeah. So what happened is, I think it was a mix of he couldn't change his rhetoric to respond to what was a real crime wave, what was a real change in the feeling on the streets of the city.
And also he was not a very good leader of his team. And so that was what really did him in, in the end. In the end, what San Franciscans responded to was members of his own. Team, other attorneys in the DA's office, um, started speaking out against him and started whistle blowing. And they were also charismatic and they were also progressive, and they were also compelling.
And they were telling stories of what was going on inside that office that were disturbing. And they were coming out with allegations that he was pressuring them to downgrade charges, basically pressuring them to not do their job to the fullest extent that they should, that they felt they should do their job.
And one of those whistleblowers, Brook Jenkins, um, young, black, very charming, charismatic, um, with a, also a very compelling story, family members who have had brushes with criminal justice and all of this. So she, she ha, you know, comes at it with a lot of credibility. Um, she ended up running. Against Chaa after, well, no, no, hold on.
Lemme say for that. So she ended up becoming a whistleblower and then, um, I think was really the one who, who did amend because she was so hard to ignore. The liberal response to the Chesa recall was, this is all nonsense. This is fake. There's no crime. Wave Chaa is so fabulous. This is all just like conservative media that's doing fake news in San Francisco.
And it, it, it just wasn't true. And San Fcan knew that. And so, um, and actually one major community that was very hard for progressive media to bully was the Chinese community of San Francisco, which is a big block and a really important sort of voting group. And also as a community that saw a lot of violence during the pandemic, um, horrific violence where there'd be viral videos of.
A guy just beating someone up and it, it, it, it was like really jarring. And I went one day to a, um, retirement home for Chinese Americans in the city. And, um, just chatting with people. There was palpable anxiety about even going for walks alone. And, um, there were sort of lunch escorts who would walk people out to lunch.
And whether you could say it was unfounded, I think it was somewhat founded the, the fear. Um, anyway, so Chessa lost those people. He, he really did. And then, and the Chinese radio was a major pro recall, um, rallying force in the city for, for both Chesa and the school board.
Adaam: Yeah. When you are talking about whistle blowing, we're not talking about whistle blowing of obvious. Or like what we imagine as corruption, like he was on the take from the, from the mob or stuff like that.
Nellie Bowles: No, yeah. He wasn't corrupt.
Adaam: Right, exactly. It's not corruption. We're talking about just understanding, just giving visibility into how far his ideology has taken him.
Nellie Bowles: Yes.
Adaam: That's what we're talking about. And it's important to distinguish. It's not like he did anything that he didn't see as part of his mandate as a reformer.
Nellie Bowles: He was doing what, what he ran on doing exactly. The trouble was because he's an ideologue and because he really believes in the cause when in a really almost beautiful way, he could not pivot. He could not soften. And so you had someone like the Mayor London Breed, who did soften her rhetoric and she did pivot and she did acknowledge that the city was feeling that citizens were feeling da endangered and um, You know, she saw what was happening and responded to it. And, and I kind of respect that in, in her. And it's how she's stayed not recalled and relatively popular
Adaam: for context. Uh, Chessa is a fascinating example, but is not alone. New York right now has a da, Alvin Briggs who also follows similar ideological commitments and from a very genuine place I, as far as I can tell, but has very little flexibility. And I know from interviewing police officers, for instance, you should also distrust the perspective of police. Fair enough. But I'm talking like beat cops and detectives, not spokespeople who are expressing the deep frustration that they're feeling from knowing that even when they arrest criminals who have committed some form of violent crimes. They just know that they're gonna see them back in the streets the next day. And that's because lack of persecution, which is defacto decriminalization of certain types of violence, you see the difference in, in the day-to-day of the city. But you also see it in the, in the cascading effects of law enforcers, you realizing that their job is practically obsolete.
Nellie Bowles: Chesa called these quality of life crimes and he said we weren't gonna prosecute quality of life crimes. So what are quality of life crimes? It's smash and grabs in your car window. Which is extremely common in San Francisco. There's signs everywhere saying, watch out for your valuables. Don't leave anything in the car. Smash and grabs happen a lot on this corner. Whatever. I mean, quality of life, crimes are the crimes.
Adaam: I, I dunno if it's a real, it's a reality or, uh, uh, uh, an urban legend about the people who live, uh, who, who leave the, the window opens just to avoid, like, just steal, take, take everything you need, but just don't smash my car.
Nellie Bowles: Not an urban legend at all I grew up always leaving the car unlocked because you locked the car, you'll get your window smashed. Like I, I, and, and yeah, I mean, it is what it is. Um, but Chesa basically said, we're not gonna prosecute that anymore. We're not gonna prosecute. He, and he would say, I want kilos, not crumbs, which meant he wasn't gonna prosecute low level drug dealers either. So people on street corners who were dealing drugs, which became more and more, I mean, over the course of the pandemic, fentanyl deaths soared and are still soaring and. Chas basically made a promise that he wasn't gonna go after the low level drug dealers. And actually in an interview about these guys, he talked about how we should have empathy for those low level drug dealers because they also have families that they're supporting, and they also have, um, you know, injustices they're fighting and that, that these aren't the guys we should be going after.
And it's like, I'm sorry, the guy standing on a corner selling fentanyl that's leading to hundreds of deaths, more deaths in San Francisco of fentanyl than Covid, by the way, the guy selling fentanyl on the street corner. Yeah. I'm okay actually arresting him. That's, that's okay by me. Like, that's, that doesn't seem crazy.
And, and basically Chesa said, no, we weren't gonna do that. And so now you see Brooke Jenkins, the new da, who the, the whistleblower ended up being elected in his stead. Um, And you see her doing just that, going after these guys. It's like no-brainer stuff. It's like, it's not crazy Law and order revolution.
It's literally saying, let's follow some of the, a few of the laws we have in the books like that. If you're dealing fentanyl on a street corner, you might get arrested.
Adaam: Not, not only that as it's, it's a truism of criminology. I mean, I guess there is no such thing as a truism, but, but it's a, it's a known fact or should be careful because I, there I have a bunch of, um, criminology experts who do listen and will catch me if I'm saying something slightly inaccurate. But there is a strong argument that to me makes perfect sense in criminology that you, it's more important to have consistent punishment than harsh.
Nellie Bowles: Mm. That's so, that's so smart.
Adaam: It's just knowing that crime doesn't go unpunished, that deters crime, not the length of the sentencing. Yeah. But where the reform movement landed is a place that says some crimes are just worth not prosecuting. Which means maybe you can get away with certain things, maybe some misdemeanors are, are, are tolerable, maybe they're not you, you don't know. And the result is this impunity and ambiguity, which combined completely wrecks any kind of deterrents.
Vanessa: Adaam shall we pivot into, into ourselves and, and get into kind of some tech tech talk. Um, so I think, so Nelly, I know that you are San Franciscan and we've been talking a lot about San Francisco. It's, it's foibles. Um, we've actually haven't talked that much about tech, um, from your perspective. When did tech basically eat the city? Um, and you as a, as a reporter, when did you realize like, if I'm not covering tech, I'm, I'm a not covering the city, but b I'm not covering the future of our nation.
Nellie Bowles: You know, I mean, Silicon Valley was always in Silicon Valley and it started to slowly creep up. Um, I would say around when I graduated college. So I moved back home in 2010 and my first job was working at the San Francisco Chronicle. Um, and I was writing for the style section. I was basically doing nightlife reporting and doing that reporting.
The main thing I noticed was I was covering a lot of young techies and all my friends were working in tech and everyone around me was getting jobs in tech and all my childhood friends were getting jobs in tech. And it was like, oh, this industry is now up north, now it's in the city.
Um, Did it eat the city? I mean, it gave it vibrancy. There's this idea, this nostalgia that the hippies, they came and they were just pure good. But the tech people, they came in. Oh god, they ruined it all. Like, no, the tech people came and it was amazing. It was a, a youth movement, uh, of ambitious, smart, creative, like idealistic young people moving to San Francisco, wanting to build the future and having wacky ideas and living in wacky arrangements and making polyamory cool and doing all these strange parties.
And it was a great story. I mean, it was a great thing to cover. And they were, um, kind of hilariously, not self-aware and just all of these things that made for a great story. Um, No, I don't, I don't think they like ate the city, but I think they came and revitalized it. And I think, uh, now you're seeing a city that's starting to lose a lot of those people and it, it's going to be a bit of a lull.
I mean, I'm long on San Francisco, right? Like, I think there'll be another, another group will come and find the city. But um, yeah, I never understood the rage towards them there. And there was rage from the old city against the new tech workers.
Vanessa: I mean, what wasn't, I would imagine with the influx of Silicon Valley culture hitting that hippie culture, I mean, that's probably why you were seeing. The interesting stuff happening, right? Because there's like, this can-do, I'm gonna change the world spirit meeting, hippies doing drugs, maybe having multiple partners, like, and then, and then there's like a bleeding into each other. That is probably what mm-hmm. What you were picking up on and covering. And that's like a new culture that's emerging. I don't know, did you see that?
Nellie Bowles: A lot of it is just generational. A lot of it is, it's, it's generational, mixed with, let me, I'll give you, it's a little bit of a media critique. So I think it's the aging hippies who just don't like the kids, right? So they just don't want kids.
The kids these days are up to weird shit always. Right? And the, the happen to be that the kids these days worked for Facebook and, and they were up to crazy shenanigans and they had their hipster coffee and they were driving up the prices. Like, how dare they wanna live in a beautiful place. And so there was an element of that.
And then there was also an element that most of the media that we consume in California is made on the East Coast. It's made in New York, it's made by New Yorkers. It's made by people living in probably, actually just Brooklyn. It's made by one neighborhood. And that neighborhood doesn't really like when there's like a whole lot of exciting stuff happening that's not in that neighborhood.
And so there was a sort of instant media rage towards the, the tech boom and the tech workers and their culture and um, that it couldn't just be funny and goofy and like a great thing to send up. It had to be that it was like evil and that it was like, Like somehow uniquely bad out there. And that was always absurd to me as someone who wrote a lot of stories making fun of a lot of the tech culture shenanigans. I, I, I cut my teeth doing that, that that was my bread and butter for years.
Vanessa: Yeah. I, I mean, did you see that kind of rage before the tech lash? Because like from my perspective l looking at what, how media was covering tech, there seemed to be a period where it was mostly just like fluff, uh, positive c e o does they're doing such great things. And then there was that turning point where all of a sudden it went from like rose colored glasses to shit colored glasses and everything was terrible. Um, but it sounds like you felt
Nellie Bowles: that was all around that 2010 sort of pivot period. There was, yeah. But before that, there was a period of like, I guess if we go back like 15, 20 years ago, then you're looking at tag coverage that was, um, more like product based and more like, look at this cool gadget.
Let's talk about this gadget. How does it work? Is this the best gadget? Is it a good price for the gadget? Like right, fun gadget. Like, and, and that was most of the coverage for good reason cuz it, the gadgetry was really fun to look and think about, but then it became more of a story and rightly so, a story of power and influence and mon like big money. And um, so I think to some extent the coverage shifting was correct because it, the tech story is a story of money and power.
Vanessa: Yeah, so, so this is where, so I'll bring in my sidewalk lab story now. So which is a-
Adaam: a actually do one, one more step before that.
Vanessa: Ok, go for it.
Adaam: Cause, cause this is before things go, uh, techlash, I want your thought on, and I'm gonna explain, but is scam culture inherent to or conman culture inherent to Silicon Valley?
Because basically the entire ecosystem is funded by vc, which works on, on a promise and a story and an idea, and as a result, you need to be able to really sell a fantasy of a new world in for just to get funded, just to be able to start a company, right? You don't, you don't have a product yet, or you have just a vision of what might become a product someday and may pivot into a completely different product in two years.
But in the meantime, you have to really convince the money that you are the person to bring that future and that. That, that ties into me with so much of the underlying personalities and, and problems in sifting out who's, who's a genius and who is just really, really good at playing a guru on tv.
Nellie Bowles: 100%. I, if I wanted to be a scammer, I would definitely do it in one of the tech arenas. You would do it in crypto, you'd do it in vr. I think VR scammers are some of the underappreciated tech scammers, I think. Um,
Adaam: why, why so,
Nellie Bowles: there's just so much money went into VR and so little like real output, just output came of it. And I just think there's like a lot of great VR scammers. Like, I don't know, do you, have you seen, seen how much money put it in magic?
Adaam: I Really did under appreciate it. I'll pay attention.
Nellie Bowles: But crypto, like crypto crypto as far as I can tell is all scam. Like I actually used to be sort of a believer. I thought there were a lot of scammers, but. You know, maybe there's a kernel of something real there. It makes sense that there would be some internet money. That would be a thing. I, I can get that ledgers blockchain. I sort of like read enough explainers that I was like, okay. Yeah. But at this point, I think cryptos scam all the way down. I think it's scam top to bottom. I like it's, it's a, yeah, it's a brilliant
Adaam: What can, what, what changed your mind on that? I wonder crypto. Besides the col the current collapse,
Nellie Bowles: I mean the, the current collapse and also just, just the basic, it's a little bit like the streets of San Francisco with crypto. Do you use Bitcoin for any transactions in your life right now? And actually, have you ever, and actually it's incredibly annoying to use and. To make it less annoying, you have to rely on things that are incredibly unsafe. So I, it kind of was like, wait a minute. This thing that I've been promised is, is around the corner. It's gonna be the future. It's gonna be the future, it's gonna be revolutionary. Never quite does that.
Adaam: To me. The, the biggest hint, the thing that always put me on guard with these is noticing that all the investment, uh, institutional investment or, you know, retail investors go into this, not for the use cases, but this is just an instrument of generating money. And that's
Nellie Bowles: All speculation
Adaam: is just speculation. And at that point, well, you are doing a really bad job convincing me that it's not a Ponzi scheme.
Vanessa: Okay. I think I have a segue. I think I, I think I have a segue from our, from this conversation. Let's see how, if I can do it. So. So in the case of crypto, when you have like mad speculation, this is the, the, the case in which I want journalism to be holding it to task, right?
Like I want mm-hmm. I want journalists to be digging in to holding them accountable. Like there's clearly, as you said earlier, like clearly there's so much power and money in this realm that's like, obviously we need journalists paying attention and putting pressure, um, to these companies feet. But I am worried about the way that journalists just seem so captured by just taking down tech all the time. Yeah. And spinning up narratives intentionally meant to destroy grand visions. Right.
Nellie Bowles: Okay. Well a lot of this. First of all, lack of sophistication. A lot of people just don't understand it that well, and so it's either it's good or it's bad, and that comes from people just not being super sophisticated and you have to think, A lot of reporters, they just don't know that much about this stuff. It's hard and it's confusing, so it's easier to just be like, This company's good or this company's bad. Hmm.
Vanessa: Yeah. So, so back to the Sidewalk Labs example. So I used to work at Sidewalk Labs.
Nellie Bowles: It's really cool. Sidewalk Labs is awesome.
Vanessa: As folks may or may not know, sidewalk Labs had a grand vision to redevelop some, uh, acreage on the Toronto waterfront. It was going to be a city of the future. It was going to have all the sustainable buildings, all the sustainable delivery. It was very exciting to be part of the group, to be, it was a lot of young, not all young, but a lot of talented, ambitious people who wanted to make a difference. Um,
Nellie Bowles: it's so cool. It was such a cool vision.
Vanessa: It was, it, I was a very cool vision and we put forth,
Adaam: and for people who don't know what, it's a vision of also redefining how to, to even approach. New construction and city development.
Vanessa: It was so beyond tech. Like as someone coming from an urbanism background, like yes, there were tech elements and we wanted to have a tech enabled city because why not?
If you're building a, a city in the 21st century, why not have it integrate with technology? Duh. However, it, there was all of this work done around like sustainability, about affordable housing, about like, there was, it was a broad, uh, proposal and vision, uh, and the, the, the, the plan fell through and there's a lot of, you can point the finger at a lot of Laci city politics and what was going on in Toronto, but I don't think you can exclude the media environment and the pressure it put on all people involved.
Uh, because the narrative became, it's Google. They're there to get your. That was all anyone wanted to talk about. When I would talk about this project, it was like they didn't care about the mass timber, they didn't care about the delivery plans. Like it, they're out to get my data. Right. And that was enough to, I I would say it's like a huge reason why the, the project killed.
So I think that's like thing one is when, when tech narratives out of a lack of willingness to engage with a vision that could have had positive na outcomes, that's like problem one when like the narrative just becomes so simplistic that it actually has a, a net negative impact on that neighborhood, I would argue Thing two, which is kind of what I wanna get your take on Nelly.
Feel free to give, give take on thing one first if you want.
Nellie Bowles: Oh, my, my take on thing one is that the press is actually a very conservative institution, and I mean conservative temperamentally reporters at Legacy publications don't like change. They don't want new things happening. They don't like new media companies, they don't like new stuff going on.
The, the stance is a skeptical, sort of, um, wary position. And, and to some extent you want that. Like that is what a reporter should be, is skeptical and wary of any change and anything that's going on. But, um, it's, it's gone to the extent now that basically the knee-jerk reaction to anything new is, this is bad, this is evil.
This is the end of the world. And that's what you'll read in the New York Times and the Washington Post and. That, that's just the standard take.
Vanessa: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, I totally agree. I totally agree with that.
Nellie Bowles: It's, it's a, it's rare. Some people will zig against that or zag against that, and it'll be rare. It'll be like, oh my God. Like,
Vanessa: yes. Justin Davidson to give him credit, was the only journalist who worked, works for New York Magazine. Um, now Curbed, I guess, but was the only journalist who actually took the proposal at Face Value and dug into it and had legitimate critiques. Uh, every other writer was just super knee-jerk about it, and it was very frustrating.
Um, but so this is part of my, the second part of my question.
Adaam: Yeah. So let's just underestimate laziness beyond the conservatism.
Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, we published a book, so asking journalists sar like an 800 page book is really asking for a lot, a lot. Like,
Adaam: yeah. Why, why actually study, uh, proposals when you can just follow your heuristic of Google Wants data equals bad.
Vanessa: Yes, exactly. But the second half of my question is, which I wanna get your take on Nelly, is the impact that it has on. People, the workers essentially. Right? Because you used to have this Silicon Valley culture of like, I'm here to make a difference. Like I'm, I believe tech is gonna change the world for good.
Right? And I could see it in Sidewalk Labs too. Was tech and urbanists. But like we believe we can make a difference. And I feel like because of the media environment, there's like this shame around being involved in in tech. And so like as Adam Dom and I were, were work like workshopping this question last night.
We're just discussing like what are the, what are like when you take it out, what are the implications of people no longer feeling proud to work in tech? Either they leave tech, right? They go onto something else that feels more meaningful or they stay because the money's good, the money's still good. But if you're staying and there's no more higher purpose or higher calling and you're just there for the money, why care about morals anyway?
And then these are people who are making the things. That all of us are using on a daily basis. And so, I don't know. It's like you take this, like there is the pote, like you could say who cares if tech workers are sad? But you can make the argument that if you go through the, the chain of implications, it could actually be really bad for all of us.
Nellie Bowles: I, my joking response would be, we gotta, we gotta organize a tech pride parade. You guys, you should, you should be rallying your forces for some tech pride. Get, get a flag going, get a, I
Vanessa: mean it would be very nerdy,
Adaam: but you know, this. This is real. And like you see the, a version of that connected with our previous conversation in the Exodus from police forces.
Mm. Because, and in police forces, they don't, they
Nellie Bowles: don't compare the Googlers to cops.
Adaam: I mean, obviously the, the moral valence is different, but it is true that being a police officer, you get good pension. Nice but horrible legal immunities. Sure. But you're probably not in it for the pay that much if you lose the social pride.
Nellie Bowles: Yeah.
Adaam: The social stigma is growing and your work is becoming up so late because prosecutors are not actually following through. What you get then is a lot of cops asking themselves, why are we even doing this? Oh, sometimes leaving the police force while others who consider joining the force second guessing themselves.
Nellie Bowles: Yeah.
Adaam: And I'll just say that, uh, when we were, as Vanessa said, work shopping this question, it occurred to me something that's so obvious, but yet I never thought of, I never really grappled with is. How much we take for granted the underlying values around which the tech world and the internet have developed.
The, there, there is an what we see as an inherent pro, decentralization and, uh, libertarian quality to the internet. A demo democratizing, um, aspect to it, but that's not inherent to that technology. It's inherent to the culture that created it. And, uh, the same technology, the same ideas could have been developed under an authoritarian mindset, and the results would've been completely different.
We would not have had the internet that we see today, but even section two 30 that everybody loves to hate now is in fact, uh, uh, an an idea that came from a desire to preserve the freedom of the internet if you overt, stigmatize that entire sector. Or make, make it actually exercising some, some value in it, practically impossible, then people will be, yeah, sure.
I'm definitely staying for my 300, uh, k a year job. I'm not leaving that, but I'm just not gonna think about it so much. I'm just gonna check out ethically, morally, and just go with the flow. And if the flow is towards a global police, take China then Sure. As long as I'm getting paid.
Nellie Bowles: Yeah, I think we are, we are definitely starting to see what happens when an authoritarian government has the tools built by a utopian 24 year old in Berkeley. Right. Like you're, you're definitely starting to see what happens when someone with bad intentions has these tools. And we've been seeing it for a few years now. An ability to control a population that would be unimaginable to previous generations of fascist dictators. Um, yeah, I I think you're, I what part of what you guys are getting at is that the culture and the belief system of the people developing and wielding these tools really matters.
And it just really matters, like where the tech press is right, is that these tools can be extraordinarily dangerous and these tools are being used in ways that are horrific. And so there is, should be skepticism about what's being built because some of what's being built, um, by din of being so good, like by din of being so addictive, we, we want to carry our phones with us, right?
Like we don't wanna leave them at home. I want to bring it with me. That allows us to be surveilled and tracked and monitored in ways that no one could have ever imagined in previous generations.
Adaam: So there's always been a talk, talk about tech ethicists and, you know, yeah, we want, we wanna make sure that all, all these, uh, technologies don't go, don't get away from us, which is what you're talking about. But is the fact that now tech itself as a sector is becoming stigmatized
Nellie Bowles: that suddenly that the workers are gonna be worse? I don't think so. I, I, I don't think that it's like, you can blame cultural stigma and say like, oh, well you guys were mean to these Googlers, and so they made this tool for China to like hold the uyghurs and the, it's like, I, I don't think you can be, like, you gotta be nicer to the Googlers and they'll not do that. They'll be better. I, I, I don't, I don't buy that per se, but,
Adaam: Not so much that if we are nicer then, then we'll educate them to be nicer in return. But that if we have no discernment in how we think of the industry and we just disregard them as the cynical bro assholes that I'm sure some of them are and sap that sector of the naivete, uh, of a sense of mission, then they won't have a sense of mission
Nellie Bowles: here. No, no. Here's what I'll say. It's the little boy who cried wolf. It's that it's that the tech press goes like five alarm fire for things that aren't five alarm fire. And so then you get in a situation where when you have technology being used by dictators in horrific ways, it's, it's like hard to be like, no, this one's especially bad.
Like you saw this, I'm gonna be honest, you saw this with a lot of the coverage of Facebook. Facebook around 2016, Cambridge Analytica, all of that narrative, which was now we know. Completely overblown. Totally overblown, all, almost to the extent of being wrong. I mean, it was technically right, right? Like Cambridge Analytica did these things, but it was so minor and so small in the scheme of things, and so, A lot of credibility was lost there
Adaam: for sure. And it was actually more, uh, sample of the scam culture that I was talking about, because a lot of, no, I know. They were scam, they were reporting was Cambridge Analytica showing up. Yeah. We've affected the election and people are, they're saying they, they changed the election results, so of course it's like it's, we should give them the credit for that. We should just assume that they're not boasting about, they had such impact. They were so precise. But same with by, by the way, with the Obama administration, they ha you had a lot of these small tech analysts who said, oh, we cracked Facebook. But, but then it was a good thing, obviously, right? Facebook is the tool of democracy because Obama's team was able to crack it.
Nellie Bowles: The rhetoric was so unhinged, and so in the end, wrong and in the end, kind of like crazy embarrassing if you look back on it now, that then it makes it really hard when we wanna talk about. Times when tech companies are really doing terrible things. Mm-hmm. And, and where we need to maybe have government reforms or whatever. Mm-hmm. Um, like I think TikTok is legitimately very dangerous and, uh, a really risky thing. Mm-hmm. The tech press kind of like, I'm trying to think of a, of a metaphor that's not shot. It's wad. Oh my God. I'm like, I'm like, Jesus, what is wrong with my, it's just like
Vanessa: blinking in your brain now over and over again.
Nellie Bowles: Yeah. There's another metaphor, Nellie, like,
Vanessa: It just went over the top. Um,
Adaam: I'll just know that part of the reason that I got so triggered right now, it's one of my recurring rambles because the one time I was fired from a job so far. Was when I was in a, in a prominent media institution that shall not be named and covering the Facebook influence in 2017 and going into it thinking that we are gonna blow the lid off of this story.
And just looking at all the available information, said, look, there is no story here. I'm, I'm looking at all the available Russian promoted ads that they see. I look at all, everything that, uh, Cambridge Analytica has opened up. The levels of engagement. There are pathetic. This, this, this is to call this election influencing is hyperbole at best.
And I got fired for that. It was, it was crazy. Like people took it personally. Like, why are you in the way of the project? Why are you, why are you making it difficult for us to tell the story you want to tell?
Nellie Bowles: That's crazy. What, what institution was this?
Adaam: Uh, I'll tell you later.
Nellie Bowles: Um, I'm realizing it's almost 1130. There's one line that. Um, I was wondering if I could
Vanessa: Sure.
Nellie Bowles: Say again, which is, I, I wanna make sure I don't say that Chesa Boudin is a prison abolitionist. I wanna, but he's like, he's like a hair to the right of that.
Vanessa: Perfect. We can pop that in.
Adaam: And by the way, you said that he was not a prison abolitionist in the, in the original two.
Nellie Bowles: I always wanna be fair to him, even as I, like, I so disagree with him, but I, I kind of do respect him. He really never, never scooched, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Just, he's a never sco, I'm pretty sure London, he's never scooched. Like London Breed I'm pretty sure was a, like a defund the police person and then was like, you know what, actually let's fund the police. Right. And, and I kind,
Adaam: maybe they do need some money
Nellie Bowles: anyways.
Adaam: Well, we, there's like an hour worth of, of more questions that we want.
Nellie Bowles: I know. I wanna do more. Yeah. I'm so sorry. No, you guys, I, I feel horrib. I, I literally wanna just stay and chat with you. I'm like, you guys are so sweet.
Vanessa: Thank you. Likewise. We would, yeah, we'd love to have you back again. Um, because we didn't get into the other side of the question. We didn't get into religion
Nellie Bowles: guys. Anytime. Anytime. I mean, this is so fun. You guys are like this sweetest and you've interviewed all my friends. Like I, I was looking in, it's like Caitlin Flanagan. I was like, this is so fun.
Vanessa: Okay, so to wrap us up, I know you have to go Nelly, to wrap us up. Can we, uh, we're gonna ask you our question that we like to ask all of our guests. Uh, what are the biggest blind spots on the left and the biggest blind spots on the right.
Nellie Bowles: Okay. Biggest, oh God. Biggest blind spot on the left would be like, you can't tell people to not see what they're seeing with their eyes. And you lose credibility when you try to do that. That's one i one on the left and on the right. It's, um, that, that cruelty, that that cruelty is not going to win people over. Like there's a movement on the right. And there's a rhetoric and a culture of cruelty and of, of using nasty language and just being mean and being a bully and, and
Adaam: you called us deplorable. So we are gonna embrace that identity and be as deplorable as we can be,
Nellie Bowles: and that that's not gonna work, that's not gonna get people to your side. And, and that a lot of the stuff that people on the right ride is like, oh, these crazy wokes. A lot of it is just language that is gentle and that is kind and, and that part of it is good and, and doesn't need to be mocked and, and doesn't need to be thrown out. Obviously it goes too far. You have the Associated Press this week putting out a, a tweet saying we shouldn't use dehumanizing language like the homeless and the French. Right? Like literally that
Adaam: I was just reading that before the interview.
Nellie Bowles: So you have, you have, it obviously goes to an excessive place, but a lot of it is at its best, it's about being kind and being gentle with each other and life is really hard and just why not be gentle with each other when you can. And I think the right misses that. And for all the talk of religiosity and Christianity and this and that, there's, there's a lack of humanity and gentleness that, um, it would be nice if people on the right saw.
Adaam: By the way, apropo, the, the AP is chewing the definitive article. Um, the, the, the French Embassy, I don't know if you saw, they, they, they posted on Twitter, I guess this is who we are now. She changed their name to, or jokingly changed their name too. Embassy of Frenchness in the us.
Nellie Bowles: No, they didn't. No, they people experiencing frenchness is the, the joke. I mean like, guys, this is obviously absurd, but you know what I mean? Like, there's some, there's the kernel of all of that. Even. It's the tech. I, I love making fun of the tech people. I love making fun of the crazy woke language, but the kernel is, let's just be kind to each other. Life is really hard for a lot of people,
Adaam: right.
Vanessa: Thank you, Nelly. This was so much fun. Hopefully we'll have you back.
Nellie Bowles: You guys are so sweet. I loved being on, and, um, I'd love to come back. Yay.
Vanessa: Thank you for listening to Uncertain Things. You can find us at uncertain.substack.Com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you're an Apple person, be sure to give us five stars. It makes a big difference. And if you're not an apple person, just go ahead and share us. Share us with your friends and enemies. Until next time, stay sane.