DOD232: New Kids on the Roblox

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:02 Clip: I'm the cool dad, that's my thing I know now what I can offer you that no one else can Complete and under-dependent I'm a man, I'm sensitive I need to feel loved, I need part of being a father that I enjoy

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's not yet been replaced by AI. I'm Tom Curry. I am joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:39 Eli: Oh, Tom, when I replace you with AI, you won't ever admit it.

0:00:44 Tom: You know, it's so funny because, like, when AI—I'll just tell this story real quick. When AI first started to roll out and you start to see it and you're like, oh, man, like it kind of sucks now, but you can sort of see how it could become this really huge, big deal thing. And I'm like, man, this is going to change a lot of lives and throw people out of work. And I just read something the other day, like Ford's like, ah, 50 % of white collar jobs are going away. I've been using AI more and more over the last two or three months. I use it every day now for a few things. It is so unbelievably bad.

0:01:18 Tom: I can't even tell you. I'm going to grouse about AI in a funny way real quick. I decided, old man yells at the cloud. Here we go. Know, Haley and I decided that like, as part of my, like my retirement podcast is just going to be to, cause we'll all be old as fuck at some point.

0:01:23 Eli: Old man yells at the cloud, am I right? Speak for yourself.

0:01:35 Tom: And like, we're not going to be relevant anymore. I'm just going to have a show old men yell at clouds and that's it. We're just going to fucking shake our fists in the air on, on microphone, which isn't so much different than what this is about to be. But I, yeah, we we were right here. So I, I was going to buy this program, this workout program. And I looked at it as like an online personal training thing, you know, It's pretty expensive, like $60 a month or something. But I'm kind of stuck and I'm kind of bored. I don't know about you guys, but I fucking hate doing my own programming. It's like the least fun thing about working out for me. I do not like it and I do not think I am particularly good at it. Yeah, like programming my workouts.

0:01:47 Thomas: I'm saying that's now, Tom. We're in now.

0:02:08 Thomas: Oh, not programming like coding. You mean like, oh, wait, what does that mean? Sorry. Oh. Just scheduling them out.

0:02:14 Tom: Well, no, like figuring out what you are going to do at what weights and how you are gonna map your progression so that you are doing that progressive overload and all that.

0:02:21 Thomas: Oh yeah. Isn't the AI, that would be something to be good at, wouldn't it?

0:02:24 Tom: Well so here is what I thought. So I was like, I was gonna buy this program. I have read a lot of good things about it. It was fucking expensive. So I was like, well, I'll use AI. I've been using AI for a whole bunch of stuff for my day job. I'm trying to get better and better at it, trying to learn it and trying to use it more and more. So, I'm like, I will use AI to do it. I go through this whole process of telling AI what my limitations are, what my weights are, and what equipment I have. We build this whole workout program. I look at it and I'm, like, this actually looks pretty fucking great. Like, this looks great. It all checks out. It makes sense. I start going through it for the last few weeks. Right.

0:02:53 Thomas: Just one lift, his back breaks in half. I was like, damn it. AI.

0:02:56 Tom: So I go through it and every day I log what I have done. Right? So I tell it like, okay, here's what I've done. And one day I had a really bad workout. I had a really bad workout, missed all of my weights, just felt like shit. And I thought, Hey, you know what? I'm going to have, I'm gonna have AI compare my workout performance with my sleep metrics. Soon as I asked it that question, it fucking went on this wild sideways goose chase. And then it lost all all of my data logs, all of that stuff. It like took a turn sideways and like three weeks of logging in all of these workouts, they're just gone. They just don't exist anymore. Cause I asked it like a tangential question. It was like, now I do something different. Yeah.

0:03:38 Thomas: You were just logging it into the AI? You fool. Cool.

0:03:42 Tom: I just logged it into the AI. Cause then it would, well, because like for like three or four weeks it was working cause it was, it was mapping the progressive overload. So it was like okay, like here you need to move up here you need to stay the same you know like it was really like actually very useful but then I asked it a

0:03:42 Eli: It's been telling chat GPT, I lifted four pounds!

0:03:48 Thomas: Oh, you can't do that. Yeah. Oh man. This is a good theme for the show.

0:03:59 Tom: Sidebar question and it lost everything oh

0:04:01 Thomas: It's actually user error. Tom, you got to make a document that becomes a project document and you just update that and it'll have access to it forever. I think this is a great idea. This is good. This is a good thing for today.

0:04:13 Tom: God it was

0:04:13 Eli: If you do all the work, AI becomes significantly less useless. Yeah, it's, yeah,

0:04:16 Tom: Thank you thank you like I don't want to do anything

0:04:18 Thomas: Oh I'm not defending AI. I'm just saying this This in particular is Tom's fault. I just want to make that clear.

0:04:20 Eli: I think Tom is emblemizing the problem with AI, which is that if you tell normal people that something is AI, it treats it like an artificial intelligence, which it's super duper is not.

0:04:35 Thomas: Right. It is not.

0:04:38 Tom: It's not even an accurate log of the conversations we've had together I had no idea that it can just lose parts of your conversation they're just not in the data log anymore and like I looked it up and it's like yeah sometimes it just does that and and you're like, well, what?

0:04:53 Thomas: Yeah, no.

0:04:54 Eli: It's why whenever one of the tech boys, the bug-eyed tech boys gets on the Twitter box and is like, we're going to have AGI this year. I'm like, my man, you don't have AI this year, you have spell check, but with interrupting and finishing your sentence wrong. Just like, we finished each other's kill yourself in the name of Daenerys Targaryen. No, we, sentences, sentences.

0:05:16 Tom: I tried to use it to build a flow chart at work. And I got back the most fucking hilariously unhinged flow chart. Like it was fucking amazing. I was just trying to put together like a really basic, if this, then that flow chart for my work to build out a workflow to send off to somebody real fast. I'm like, oh, I'll use Copilot because that's what my work allows us to use.

0:05:39 Eli: Oh, which is even worse. You found a worse version.

0:05:41 Tom: I don't even get to use the upgraded version. So I get, like, the dummy version of, like Copilot, like that's all that's in our sandbox Ugh

0:05:47 Thomas: Each week we learn new and different ways that Tom is in health, personal health. But the only thing worse than

0:05:53 Tom: Than this fucking flowchart

0:05:55 Eli: Then this flow chart is the auto ads. Yes. Which are AI inserted now, according to Libsyn. What does that mean? Absolutely fucking nothing. They are, yes, Libsyn

0:05:56 Thomas: The auto ads is Tom waking life. Wait, is that true? Did they say that? Oh, that's funny.

0:06:07 Tom: Yes, they, yes

0:06:08 Eli: Just did this. We AI insert the perfect ads for you. Do you mean algorithmically? Yes. Is it the same algorithm you've been using since before this giant bubble prepared to tank our economy? Yeah. So why is it AI? Because we said AI to our boss and he got a big smile on his face. Fuck you. But you can make all of that go away.

0:06:28 Eli: Over at patreon.com/Dear Old Dads where we use... No. Dear old dads. Where we use dear old dads...

0:06:31 Thomas: D&D Minus, every time.

0:06:32 Tom: Nope, nope Nope, no Yep Stop trying to steal our money

0:06:35 Thomas: Do not go to D &B Minus. I will, uh,

0:06:38 Eli: It's because Tom shows up for the shows the same amount and so I get them confused based on how often Tom is on the

0:06:42 Tom: I've never, okay

0:06:46 Thomas: What's that, Tom? You've never shut up to D & D Minus?

0:06:48 Tom: D minus

0:06:49 Eli: Show patreon.com/Dear Old Dads to your old dads you get a commercial free there we

0:06:50 Thomas: Uh, that was good. That was worth it. That made it worth it, I've, I changed my mind, it's okay that you stole our show.

0:06:56 Eli: Go commercial free version of every single show plus a little parenting story at the end you get bonus episodes, monthly bonus episodes, we're digging through the old AMA from a couple of months back, now. Here's a fun thing. And the gentlemen do not know that I'm going to do this. So we did the bonus episode last time we recorded about a week ago. And we were like, oh, these questions are old. And then we did a thing that I like to think here at the Dear Old Dads podcast we do almost every week where we go, oh can someone post a new one of those? Now here's my question. The three cast members are here live right now. Did any of us do that? We sure fucking did it. And that is why we

0:07:28 Thomas: Not. I've - that's not on me, I don't even do it, But that's not on me. I edit the shows and do the schedule. I'm not doing that. Fuck it. You do it.

0:07:32 Eli: Are working our way through Lydia

0:07:37 Tom: Well, and you're the heart and soul of the show.

0:07:39 Eli: Edits the Shows.

0:07:40 Thomas: She does the first draft and I do the second draft.

0:07:42 Eli: She does at first because she's got the eye of the tiger you're trying to steal her work you're like the Justin Baldoni of podcasting in that you're very obviously guilty and I don't understand why this pr firm is wasting its time trying to make me think otherwise patreon .com forward slash god awful movies rip into it rip into my friends well

0:08:04 Thomas: You bastard.

0:08:11 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:08:12 Eli: Gentlemen, we were actually kind of already circling what I wanted to talk about this week uh which is not just ai I wanted to talk about this article that I saw in the times which y'all can look up it is a cheery fun little jeu d'esprit I highly recommend read it aloud to the kids like an old-time radio talkie called he made a friend on roblox their relationship turned sinister now this is a New York Times article so you know it is going to blame technology for a bad thing that happened so

0:08:29 Tom: Jeu d 'esprit, huh?

0:08:29 Thomas: Yeah. What is that? A killing spree? Or trans people. Or trans People. To be fair.

0:08:44 Eli: Or trans people right you know it could also accuse trans people of losing us the election in 2008 or whatever the fuck they're saying now or defending charlie kirk because they are charlie kirk so this this story which again is very sad and I'm obviously not going to make light of a young person being victimized I'm going to making light of everything else but just like that a youngperson met someone who they thought was a child on roblox got talking with that person that person convinced them manipulated them it's not clear it got them to send nudes then use the nudes for blackmail uh and then this child ended up taking its own life which is obviously incredibly sad now what do you think this new york times article is about is it about monitoring your kids internet use or activities no is it about the nature of what it means to be victimized or what it means be a queer kid on the internet and how much that opens you up to victimization? No. It is about how Roblox doesn't have enough parental guidance settings, or this is somehow RobloX's fault. Now, my friends, if you know anything about Robloxx, you know that it is truly one of the most evil companies ever

0:09:55 Eli: To exist in the history of time. What's that company that started slavery, the Dutch something, whatever it is? The Dutch East India Trading Company would look at the internal policies of Roblox and be like, I don't know you guys it sounds really bad that was

0:10:02 Thomas: Something yeah yeah that was a

0:10:12 Tom: What is that voice?

0:10:14 Eli: Dutch, that was flawless Dutch yeah,

0:10:14 Thomas: Perfect combination of Italian I heard Mario in there

0:10:14 Tom: That was, that what? Ah, yes.

0:10:18 Eli: It was a Mario was in there

0:10:19 Tom: It's Giuseppe the Dutchman. Yes.

0:10:19 Thomas: Sorry it's a really a bad

0:10:21 Eli: It's just me, it's Cesar something Italian, head of the Dutch Eastern Company, that's why he never talks about his past because he was head ofthe Dutch East India Company, rip into it but here's the thing, I could spend this entire podcast telling you about the children -centric victimization choices they do make so when I tell you that this article misses fails to criticize roblox correctly it's like telling me that the only bad thing about the nazi party is their train schedules like it is impossible to be wrong about this and like look I obviously don't want to get into like a robloX thing although I'm always happy to talk about how fucking insane because here's the

0:10:52 Thomas: Slavery what is that

0:11:02 Tom: Well real quick roblox is so bad donovan the other day was asking if he could guest on this show to talk about robloX and how bad it is and he loves that show or that game like all of him and his

0:11:13 Eli: Game he doesn't love this show but he loves that game yeah first of all if you don't know anything about out roblox it's impossible to describe what robloxx is without sounding like tom waking up out of a nightmare but like one that he ate a bunch of mushrooms before he

0:11:15 Tom: Buddies yeah how would I know the difference

0:11:27 Eli: Went to sleep yeah that's true that's fair he is always pinching himself we can see it under the table tom I've been meaning to tell you

0:11:32 Tom: It doesn't work

0:11:33 Thomas: Explain explain roblox to me though because I actually don't know what it is it just is it the other what's the other one and are they the same it's not like minecraft

0:11:39 Tom: No it's not like minecraft

0:11:41 Eli: Imagine someone said I'm gonna make legos for the internet and you were like okay that sounds pretty good and then within that lego program they created the the entire internet, including all the like child porn and murder and white supremacy, but continued to market it directly to children.

0:11:46 Thomas: Okay yeah so it does sound pretty cool oh I don't like that part that doesn't seem ideal hmm that seems bad

0:12:03 Eli: Then imagine that that also incorporated. And I need to be clear because I'm not saying this lightly, literal slavery, sex slavery, work slavery, indentured servitude, however you would care to use the dictionary. Yes.

0:12:16 Thomas: So you're not doing a bit because this sounds like the worst this is not a

0:12:20 Tom: No dude it's crazy how bad roblox is like yeah it's wild and it is phenomenally popular like it's all the kids play

0:12:22 Thomas: Bit jesus what's that we explain this what's it so are you saying they're in the the slavery is the like kids do a programming for free or something what is

0:12:36 Eli: So that's a part of it. There is now an economy within Roblox where you get paid in Robux based on the games you create within their internet. So they made an internet and you can grab a corner of that internet and create a game in that called Zippy's Fun Balloon Pop. Now, ignoring the fact that 99 % of those games are actually Zippy'S Fun Fuck A Child, if you make ZippyZFun Balloon pop and people do that you get robux and then you can use those robux to then buy aesthetic things and and and items in other games or special stuff for games like there's a bunch of things that robux can be used for

0:13:01 Thomas: That jesus human trafficking okay

0:13:17 Tom: There's the whole in -game economy yeah

0:13:19 Eli: Right and in theory that would like kind of be okay like you can see all the problems with it even in a good system right good kids just children you can already see like hey I don't know if that's like a great thing for kids to be doing but what it is actually turned turned into is like these giant mines by which children are put to work by adults to create their games, but they are unable to do anything except work like truly hundreds, if not thousands of hours for these adults who, rather than turning their Robux into fucking shiny hats, turn it into real money. Yeah. Turn it into Real Money.

0:13:56 Thomas: Oh are they selling it oh I think that's true of only fans is

0:14:13 Tom: Yeah just like like a lot of other like exploitive internal economies like like think only fans almost nobody makes any actual money there's like a top like one percent that actually earn a real living it is yeah yeah like if you look at the earnings breakdown and things like only fans like very few people make any real money compared to the total number of people

0:14:20 Eli: I make nothing on there. It's true. It'S really awful yeah you do it's because you're you're the only one it's when it's honestly I just text thomas a picture of my butthole once a month and he

0:14:20 Thomas: It yeah that's not true eli I pay you a lot to keep your clothes on

0:14:21 Tom: That are on it yeah like

0:14:30 Thomas: Yeah and then I I pay him to not show that to anybody

0:14:33 Eli: He pays me for this podcast

0:14:36 Tom: A tiny percentage of people make real money and everybody else does more of the work right so they do they do a huge amount of labor to sort of like create all these other games and programs and everything else but none of them get or most of them will not get big enough that they'll actually earn any significant money. And then if you compare the money they do make to the hours it takes to create them, the hourly pay rate makes no sense.

0:15:00 Thomas: Oh yeah well if you did that for us it might be bad too though to be fair yeah oh yeah that's right yeah tom's doing

0:15:04 Eli: Yeah it's actually a pretty yeah yeah no tom's doing great it's a pretty dope metaphor for capitalism in a lot of ways because and then again that's just the legal shitty version right that's the

0:15:06 Tom: Well, speak for yourself. It's a pretty good gig over here.

0:15:17 Eli: Version that like we look at the laws of and we go like ah can't do like labor laws on a video game on the internet because we don't have a senator who's young enough to see without their glasses. So that's the shit. And then, but then there's also all the illegal stuff like the sex trafficking and the child porn, which again, it cannot emphasize enough. The company openly facilitates, right? This is not like, uh, we look the other way and we're not super careful and we don't Have enough parental controls. I'm saying that like a couple of months ago, there was a guy who made his living by busting pedophiles on roblox and robloxx banned his account not the pedophils his and then when he asked them hey why did you ban my account it was for divulging the private information of their customers

0:15:37 Thomas: Fine geez oh yeah I heard about this yeah of pedophiles yeah wow

0:16:08 Tom: It's fucking nightmare over there.

0:16:09 Eli: That's an active choice right because there are things that happen on the internet that are evil that you can just be like oh that's That's an evil algorithm made by a lizard at the top, but like, Joe Meta probably didn't have anything to do with that. Joe Twitter probably didn' have anything with that particular decision. Sometimes they do. But again, it's hard to name a non -evil tech company, sorry. Roblox had to get together and look at this very public -facing incident and be like, this is the evil thing we chose to do. So, when I tell you that this New York Times article criticizes RobloX wrong, it is an impressive feat. But what I want to talk about, what I think is interesting here, because, like, we could talk about what the safety rules on computers should be until we turn blue in the face, right? And that's just going to come down to personal taste. Tom is like, every computer should have a gun to its head. And if I don't like it, I press that button and it explodes like Elvis, right. And Thomas is like free Swahili, whatever you want, right, whatever You want to do on

0:16:14 Thomas: By accident yeah What does that mean?

0:17:06 Eli: The Internet, Thomas is in favor of him. I don't know. I needed to create sort of an opposite end of the spectrum, but that's not an opinion either of you or I have. So, and then I didn't want to do something like really gross, you know, cause I was like child porn forever. And I'm like, well, that's no fun. It's a free sport. Thank you. I thought I was accurate.

0:17:18 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I know, we're not even in joke land with Tom.

0:17:20 Tom: You did a very good job steelmanning mine, though. That's 100%. Yeah. Yeah

0:17:25 Thomas: It's like you're just in realism land.

0:17:26 Eli: Yeah, no, I just, I thought it would do one accurate and then one big swing. Yeah.

0:17:28 Tom: That was right on yeah it was right off

0:17:29 Thomas: Yeah, you could have just explained my policy in a sober manner.

0:17:33 Eli: Yeah exactly. Thomas has some kind of reasonable position, whatever. But my point is this, and this is what I was saying before the show. And this is sort of what I want to talk about. What this comes down to is a conversation of, are we teaching our kids to swim or are we demanding that people put fences around the pool? Because I want to live in a world where everyone puts a fence around their pool, where that fence is high and tall and strong. But I think as parents, as dads, right, which is what this show is about, we need to acknowledge that people are fucking buttering the sides of the pool to put it, you know to abuse the metaphor right and so if we are going to keep buying into these moral panics about technology with these giant trillion dollar companies that cannot be held financially responsible then we are just setting our kids up to get hurt and setting ourselves up to expect a justice that will never come we were just doing the new orleans live show and I was talking to a listener at one of the platinum nights who is a lawyer about copyright stuff and what was was interesting, the conversation we were having was about Anthropic's copyright lawsuit. Do you know about this?

0:18:08 Tom: Which I am okay thank you

0:18:20 Thomas: Tom's middle name.

0:18:42 Tom: Oh yeah yeah

0:18:43 Thomas: Yes

0:18:44 Eli: They lost this very basic copyright lawsuit and copyright law, whatever else you say about it, pretty clean cut, pretty easy to tell when something is stolen in the way that Anthropic stole it. And what's interesting about the lawsuit is that they lost, right? They just lost straight out in the most obvious possible way. And it doesn't matter to their their company in any way at all, right? They just chuck cash into the garbage pail of the economy, hold up that cash and hold upthat payout and holdup those buyouts forever and ever and ever in a way that will never matter, leveraging their stock against it in away that willnever count. And so like we have this thing where like tech companies, which are dominating the lived space of our children are not going to be held responsible for anything they do so we have to take a firm hand with our kids okay

0:19:07 Tom: Anyway yeah yep yeah

0:19:37 Thomas: Hmm wait

0:19:37 Tom: I think this is the should ought problem right and like I get stuck and I'll raise

0:19:42 Eli: William lynn craig

0:19:42 Tom: My hand no no I I I get struck in the should world a lot and I want I want to acknowledge I get unstuck in the world because I look at this stuff and I'm like well it should be better we should get mad about this we should demand change we should but like the anthropic lawsuit I agree with you that's actually I want to yes and that that's a great example they lost that lawsuit and even if tomorrow they just wrote a check for the amount that they lost it's less than like one percent of their earnings so it doesn't actually fucking matter or

0:20:07 Thomas: Earnings I thought these companies didn't make any money are they losing money okay gotcha yeah yeah sure sure sure

0:20:11 Tom: Well their revenues not their profits their revenues not Their Profits so it's not a meaningful check for them to write and like you said they probably won't even write it but even if they did it's It's like, okay, okay.

0:20:18 Thomas: Yeah and that's been true I mean that's been true forget ai that's been true of everything I mean because anytime you've even heard about a settlement you guys covered the uh the oil spill the other day which there was a you're wrong about about that that everyone will remember where it's like the exxon valdez or whatever where it It's like they won money. The people won money and then conservatives on the courts were like, yeah, but isn't it wrong to make a corporate, a poor corporation pay money to humans? Like that's, that hurts. Yeah, that's owie. And so they just reduce it to nothing.

0:20:26 Eli: Yeah it's true yeah it some yeah just because they spilled some oil on your duck

0:20:52 Tom: I mean, look, when the fucking duck can show up and sue.

0:20:55 Thomas: Yeah exactly. And it, and so it's like, even when you've heard about these laws, just to yes and you like, Like, even when you've heard about these lawsuit wins, it doesn't fucking matter most of the time. So that's a problem. Independent of AI plus the AI bubble is crazy.

0:21:08 Eli: Right and we can't even get into like the ai bubble and the effects it's having on our economy and the way that like it will take us literally decades to back out about this right because is the other problem with AI not being real, going back to the beginning, and I promise I'll get back to the fences and pools thing, but like the other problems with AI being real is that we keep scurrying from platform to platform, pretending that one of them's going to turn out to be real. And the answer conclusively from everybody who is an expert on anything is it's not real. Now, eventually that rubber will meet the road and the AI bubble represents such a huge percentage of our economy, that how we will back away from that, how we will restore our economy to a thing that actually makes things, and I mean as a planet, not just the US, although in the US it's the worst, right? How we will restore the S &P to be based on things that are actually made and bought by people and used, I mean, it may genuinely take us 20, 30 years to recover, right, like if you tried to get out of your retirement account in 2009, you You lost 25 percent of it. We may look at a 20, 30 year period where we are trying to back out from Trump's economy and the AI bubble. But back to the fence thing. Right.

0:22:23 Tom: Well, that's only because these AI companies have literally no plan on how they're going to become profitable.

0:22:24 Thomas: Don't know about that. Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:29 Tom: There's no profitability angle for any of this. They're just like, sink money into it. Hope for the best. Like, it's pretty crazy.

0:22:34 Eli: They have no plan. They represent a huge percentage of the S &P, an incredibly unsafe percentage of the S and P index. I mean, every economist at every level is like, hey, guys, you know, bet it all on black is an expression for too much risk, right? It's not like a chill, cool idea. Oh, we're doing double zero. We're doing triple zero for the amount of things AI can contribute to in the world.

0:23:06 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:23:07 Eli: What I wanted to talk about today was this idea of like, how do we keep our kids safe when we know the cavalry isn't coming? How do we Keep our kids Safe on the Internet and also allow them to participate in these things? And my personal connection to that is like Max started his first Minecraft game this week together.

0:23:25 Thomas: Oh, that's big.

0:23:25 Eli: Like we started Minecraft and it's super fun and it is amazing and maybe we'll talk about it a little bit like what that has been like because it's so wonderful but I also am aware that the moment I put my kid on the internet with adults who want to harm him my job becomes full time protecting him from that harm and if I think anyone else will do that job I am opening him up.

0:23:54 Tom: I ask a dumb question? Like, you can play Minecraft offline, right?

0:23:57 Eli: Yes, you can.

0:23:58 Tom: Yeah. But Roblox, I know this answer. Roblox cannot be played offline. RobloX is exclusively one of these like a constant stream. Like it's a streamed game. I was just listening to something yesterday that EA Sports is the thing about like the EA being bought by Saudi Arabia or whatever. But like it was one of them. One of the things that I thought was particularly interesting that's relevant to this conversation is the majority of gaming is moving away from, I bought a game, I played a game. Which is how I played games, and a lot of us that are the olds grew up playing games. Literally, my kids, they don't game on systems, they only game on the computer, and they play exclusively games like Fortnite or Roblox. That's all that they play. It's not that that's most of what they play, it's all. That they play games.

0:23:54 Thomas: Oh, yeah. I listened to that. Was that the Daily? It was one of them because I listened that too.

0:24:49 Tom: It's all at any of their peers' play. It's like for Christmas, they're going to open up a new Xbox or a game that is a physical disc and they're going to put it in.

0:24:56 Thomas: I got you a roadblock. I don' t know.

0:24:59 Tom: Yeah, they are not interested. That's not the world that they are in. They are in a world where so much of what happens takes place in this, to us at least, parentally invisible sandbox unless we create and demand that visibility. Yeah.

0:25:14 Eli: It's worth pointing out that a tremendous amount of like, especially teen socialization takes place in those spaces as well. So it's not that you can't prevent your kid from being in those places, but it's sort of, I hope this isn't an exaggeration. It's kind of like saying you can eat lunch in the lunchroom.

0:25:34 Tom: It's not like making your kid Amish. You know what I mean? It's just like, yeah, you can lock them away from all these things and then they can have no friends because you've not allowed them the tool everybody uses to socialize

0:25:44 Thomas: Well, there goes our Amish listening audience, Tom.

0:25:46 Eli: Yeah some guy takes wooden headphones out of his ear throws them

0:25:47 Thomas: Great job. Fuck.

0:25:50 Tom: Yeah this is

0:26:07 Thomas: Well, they are doing the roadblock,

0:26:09 Tom: Of particular interest to me because I have so many people I have three out of four of my kids who are all online and they are all playing roblox man this is the space that they socialize in more than any other space absolutely they do Yeah, it's pretty rough. Yeah, it's like they all work for De Beers now. It's interesting. We're a Blood Diamond household exclusively. Roblox is forever. On our end, I will acknowledge a lot of it. We put a lot of trust in our older kids and specifically in Donovan. We've had conversations and he's assured us that they only play exclusively on private servers that Donovan and his friends run. So, yeah.

0:26:09 Thomas: So how do you yeah how do you handle that are they uh child slaves are they uh

0:26:17 Eli: Down I don't even know how roblox had diamonds I thought that was

0:26:40 Thomas: Yeah for only child molester service it's like just they're pretty tough on the entrance exam for those you know it's like show me your

0:26:46 Eli: Minecraft it's tough yeah show us on the doll where you touch them is what you have yeah it's a whole

0:26:54 Tom: But that's a really like privileged space because donovan is so tech savvy and he has been for so long and he hasn't been running his own roblox server and minecraft server and discord server and like I feel comfortable from my conversations with him and I've had a lot I feel very comfortable that he understands the dangers he's not interested in going outside of the servers he really takes a lot of pride in maintaining with his friends these private communities that they are really kind of like fenced off from randos so I'm comfortable there you know and I'm uncomfortable that he's aislen for example is really only playing in those same sandboxes that are pretty well guarded and pretty well locked off I'm under no illusions that when donovan is alone in his room as somebody who is unbelievably tech savvy that he hasn't wandered of course he's walker but like he's also 19 I I can't I don't know that I can like go in and sit down and control all of it yeah yeah

0:27:53 Thomas: Cv wandering on the beaten path if you know what I mean I don't

0:27:56 Eli: Thing right yeah exactly well and that's that's part of it right is like part of this conversation that I think a lot of parents don't want to talk about is like what is healthy porn use like what is a healthy exploration of your sexuality something I thought did this really well is have you guys seen the big mouth episodes about this yeah so it's not always uh 100 hit the nail on the head on everything and they've absolutely whiffed on sub subjects but they had a couple of episodes on internet porn use because the kids in that show are very young and they sort of stumble upon the internet and internet porn and and how like all internet porn is not equal it is not equally safe it is now equally consensual and it should not be equally accessible to kids and like if we're not willing to have that conversation with our kids they're going to learn it the hard

0:28:14 Thomas: Know no I haven't watched that I've here everyone loves it. I haven't gotten there yet. Yeah.

0:28:49 Tom: Hard way that's it well

0:28:51 Eli: Way end the episode right there boom no because

0:28:54 Thomas: Peak content right there.

0:28:57 Tom: I I think that's a separate like I I pin in that because I we definitely have thoughts on on that but I want to go back to the roblox and the the gaming spaces specifically because I want to like acknowledge I as a piece of advice like have a donovan is not good advice like that's bad advice

0:29:14 Eli: You don't know if you have a like think about all the assumptions tom has to make for that to be true and I hope they're true right but like anything in here right donovan letting a stranger in donovan being tricked by someone smarter than him donovan telling a lie ever to tom about technology then everything tom assumes to be true is not

0:29:34 Tom: Okay so here's the thing about donovan though he can't lie you just have to ask him twice if donovan I love him to

0:29:41 Thomas: It's like Will Ferrell from Austin Powers. Damn.

0:29:41 Tom: Death and like we were just joking about this if you ask donovan any any kind of fudges the truth which like kind of never happens but like if he fudges the truth and you just sort of pause for a half a beat and you ask him the same question again he was just like all right it was the other thing like yeah it's all it's like I love him to death but like if

0:29:57 Eli: True I've been selling these pictures of kids on the internet yeah

0:30:02 Tom: Yeah you don't even have to put his hand on the bible he's just like yeah he just cannot it's he's the fucking pinocchio with a short nose but yeah you're right like there's I I will acknowledge like putting an enormous amount amount of trust in a 19 year old boy who is unbelievably tech savvy is a bad strategy so but I guess I don't know it's easy to put a strategy together

0:30:05 Eli: Gotta take his hand off the bible is what you gotta

0:30:26 Tom: When the kids are younger right so like for amen for example he's 11 the answer to can he be on the internet is no you can watch some youtube videos on like youtube kids that's the extent of the internetting I'm letting him do right so he asked yesterday if he could be on messenger kids and I'm gonna say yes the messenger kids because I understand there's pretty good guardrails there are they

0:30:46 Thomas: My kids are on messenger kids. Yeah, yeah, it's hilarious. They, uh, that, you know, cause you can only, you can just have them be friends with each other and you or whatever. It's like pretty much all it is, but they're, they're friends with the family members and they just do the random shit that it allows them to do. Like it, you you know, all the filters and the making faces and the whatever. And I just, I just heard from my brother that, um, I guess like a long time ago, Phoebe will do this thing where it's, it says like do a drawing and then it sends it to somebody and then ask them to guess what it is or something like that. And so I guess my, my brother's son was like, Phoebe asked me to, you know? Do this thing. And he's like, oh, okay, cool. And she's like yeah, I answered. And then nine nine months later, she said, yep.

0:31:36 Thomas: Cause she just does it so intermittently and doesn't like read the responses. So she did the guess and then nine months Later, Phoebe was on it, which was like the other day. And then Phoebe did asked him another one. And he's like, I don't know if I should do it. It's just like, you have to wait nine months to find the answer. Yeah.

0:31:51 Tom: That's like me sending a text message to the kids

0:31:54 Eli: Exactly so we have the the opposite problem in my family which is that some of the kids in my extended family are on facebook messenger kids together together or messenger kids together. And we are on it as well. And they just constantly send us random stupid shit. It's just like, hi, Hey, what's up? Wink.

0:32:13 Thomas: Here's how much it is.

0:32:14 Eli: Smile. Yeah.

0:32:14 Thomas: It so much that I, Thomas Smith, don't read all my kids stuff that they send me that's how much it is because it's like it's just they make a bunch of videos I mean some of it has been kind of cool because they make videos that do these little filters and then they do little my kids are creative they'll come up with little bits you know but but then it'll just go on and on and oh

0:32:20 Tom: That's because it's nothing yeah

0:32:21 Eli: Cause it's not, it's nonsense. It was just an, yeah.

0:32:33 Eli: I mean, look, I adore my younger cousin who's on it and he'll be like, Hey. And I'm like, hey buddy, what'S up? And he's like, nothing. AndI'm like fuck off. Like, I don't know what to tell you, man. I got not, I'm gonna get myself bit from kids messenger because I got nothing to the fucking third hello of this week right or or we'll get in a group because there's a group one that we have now and that group one is just a nightmare it's

0:32:55 Thomas: They should ban you know what I forget regulating AI or anything think ban group messages just ban it I mean more than like four people that's the

0:32:55 Eli: Just a fucking it's it's like I can't imagine what how terrible it was to be around me in middle school when all I could do was quote anchorman right but I'm in the technological version of it right which which is just like 17 children writing, hey, smiley face, winky face, what up, hello, six. No, they don't do six, seven. No, because they can get in trouble for six, seven now because their parents don't know what it is because they're Tom. So now they just write six.

0:33:11 Thomas: Maximum there's no way you were in middle school just saying I was I was in college when that fucking thing came out or whatever yeah six six seven oh no

0:33:25 Tom: Six seven no six seven by the way is not 69 it has nothing to do with

0:33:39 Eli: It's 69, it's 69.

0:33:39 Thomas: It's not yeah everybody came and corrected

0:33:40 Tom: 69 it's not no like it it's not like it's it's just not there's a song and a basketball player it's nothing to do with 69

0:33:46 Eli: No, no, you guys are doing the old thing where you fall for it where a bunch of people lie to you. We literally did this to old people it's

0:33:51 Thomas: Eli well we're stuck between a liar and a liar though because you're also a liar so what are we to do do eli what are we to do

0:33:59 Tom: Why are you asking

0:33:59 Eli: Just it's this is just the kids do this constantly it's just we did this to adults what are you laughing at no 420 is when we're supposed to hang out later it's not a song it's 69 and 69 it's a sex thing it's the sex thing and they do it because it bothers us and the only way to win is to just graphically describe the sex you're having with their mom.

0:34:11 Thomas: No I don't think it's that I don' t I don''t know well we can agree on that to not play I don´t

0:34:17 Tom: Him all right maybe all right I they did does bother me yeah oh god

0:34:29 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:34:31 Tom: All right so we got it what the fuck do you do especially and let me ask you this too what do you do if you are not a tech savvy because like the answer can't be become good at the fucking technology that's a bad answer because that's not an answer so many people have the luxury to do right like I think of like my dad growing up like my Dad when we were growing up that guy didn't have 20 extra minutes to rub together like he was a single dad working two sometimes three jobs he worked his ass off how do you maintain if you're somebody who's like, yeah, my day job is welding or something. My day job isn't in these online spaces. I don't live in these spaces. How do you check it, Eli? What do you do? What is the suggestion?

0:35:17 Eli: This is my hot take. My hot take is, is that the pool is actually a pretty decent metaphor for us olds who are trying to figure out this space. Because when you were growing up, you had a community pool. It was unsafe as fuck. Horny teenager talking to his girlfriend, not watching your child not drown at the pool. Right? So that's, it was not a safe pool environment. So, right, you have three choices in that situation. You learn to swim, right which is the learn Roblox and be on Roblox get your kids swim lessons which is that you put them in a situation where there is a responsible adult who's going to make sure that they're playing in a safe environment you find a professional Donovan who makes sure that where they are playing in those spaces that they can participate in those spaces right

0:36:00 Tom: How do you do that? Wait, hold on. That's interesting to me. How do you do that? Let's say I didn't have a Donovan. Let's say I'm in a house with three teenage kids and they all want to get on Roblox because everybody is playing Roblox explain that other option to me a little more because that I'm intrigued

0:36:02 Thomas: Know about that yeah well you know you can get child slaves on Roblox so you got to do that to get oh

0:36:18 Tom: I'll just hire one of those

0:36:19 Thomas: Shit no that's back to learning the game damn it no can't do

0:36:22 Eli: So you can hire uh you can get private servers on Robux on Roblox which you pay for where you literally hire a donovan essentially right there is a uh child safety advocate who is online all the time monitoring chat that is always on there but is always making sure that yeah that and that all the games it costs a certain amount it depends there are different prices for different servers on this no no I mean it's it's tough to say because I've never I've ever ever been able to say a price online without someone being like, well, it sounds nice. $2.99 a month.

0:36:39 Thomas: That wow how fucking much does that cost is it like a lot I guess like give an indication is this the kind of thing where that's a super privileged answer or is it like somewhat affordable?

0:37:04 Tom: Really well

0:37:05 Eli: Right. So like, I don't, I, again, like, I don't know, could you afford swim lessons or not afford swim lessons? You know, there's a lot of privilege whenever money comes into it. So there's, there's teaching your kid to swim and learning to swim, right? Where you get in the pool, you and your kid figure out how to swim together. And then there's you get swim lessons, right. And then the third, and I really do think this is, I'm going to go full Tom here. Don't go in the fucking pool. Like, look, I get that it sucks when your kid will say like this is what my friends are doing and I really want to participate in it but I would encourage you to read any of the horror stories that have come out of Roblox and the example I will give is my parents and driving right like I've talked about this on the air which is that I was not allowed to ride in a car with another teenager my entire life my entire like I came back from college college. Right. Oh yeah. See, I didn't have a limit. I came back from college and like, I was, yeah, well, I Didn't get my driver's license until, you know, until, you know three years ago. Yeah. They might've taken it. Yeah, still not allowed to do it. But like we had lots of very painful moments. Me and my parents really got along and we could talk about everything. And the fact that that was a hard no was really painful for me. It was really painful it was really sad and I might have been responsible I was a pretty responsible kid I was a pretty good kid I might've made good choices but my parents decided it wasn't worth the risk and so the answer was no and I I just I just one of the things that I wanted to put out there is like Amish is okay you know like if if you do not feel like you can control exactly

0:37:50 Thomas: Me too. Yep. Me too, it was until 18 for me. Yeah.

0:37:59 Tom: I still can't do you have one

0:38:06 Thomas: And then your mom saw you driving. It's like, you're not allowed to ride with you in a car. You can't ride with. You, we got him back. He put the wooden headphones back in.

0:38:45 Eli: He's back in, he's got the beats now yeah but it's hoof beats yeah like if you don't feel like you can keep yourself safe in these spaces especially because the only way you know about these spaces is by fear-mongering articles by the New York Times and fucking you know executive editor Bari Weiss then like it is especially important it is specially important that you be safer rather than cooler or chiller with your kids

0:38:45 Thomas: And that's all paid for by Big Amish. That's all. Eli's just pandering.

0:38:48 Tom: Yeah yeah you know I wonder, I totally hear that and I don't think I disagree I just wonder too about the practicality of I don't know at some point the kids are you know they have laptops they have computers in their rooms they're like all my kids are so incredibly they have fucking chromebooks issued to them by the school they've got, they're so online it's impossible to my it really is impossible to monitor all of their access all the time and like they're in their rooms and their doors shut and their door is often locked right like we're not a household where you're not allowed to shut and lock your door like you can have privacy and I am very aware that like that is a recipe for potential disaster and I wonder if part of like teaching your kids to swim isn't just like being let's sort of like just to go back like to the point like at some point you got to tell them like look there's a lot of spaces out there that are fucking dangerous man like a lot of spaces that are dangerous maybe more than are not dangerous and you just, if you're going to have this computer, if we're going to have Wi -Fi in the house, if we're going to have these connections, ifyou're going to have a phone, because it's so easy. It's just so constant and it's so easy and they're not under your direct supervision, especially as the kids get older. They're not under your supervision most of their life anymore. Most of the kids' lives. It is amazing to me that whole days will go by where I won't even see some of the kids and we're all in the same house together. I won't even see them the whole day like because they're holed up in their room or I'm busy working or we just didn't pass like ships in the night we didn't pass in the hall in the common spaces when they're younger that never happens but when they are older they are out they've got a friend over they are in their room they are doing something I'm doing something like it's very easy for a day or two to go by without seeing one of the kids like really kind of at all yeah it happens a lot especially because we can't do family meal times so but like, and I recognize that that's different.

0:39:40 Eli: Mm-hmm, mm-hm. Right. Yeah. I don't like them. That's a big part of it. No.

0:40:43 Thomas: Jeez. Holy shit. Wow. Bummer. Oh, yeah.

0:41:14 Eli: So I think the answer to that is that you build those safety tools along the way. And look, I never like it when I say you should monitor your kid's internet and people are like, that's when your kid is going to do the brrp, the brrrp, because I'm smarter than my kids and always will be. But the thing that is smart, that is always hidden in that feedback, is, do you create an environment where your kid will come to you at the first sign of discomfort?

0:41:40 Tom: Right.

0:41:41 Eli: The first time a stranger reaches out to them and asks them a question they don't understand or says something that makes them a little bit uncomfortable, have you created an environment where they're like, I'm getting my fucking dad? I think you have done that, Tom, right? Right. I think you have raised a family that knows I was raised in that. Right. The minute I was uncomfortable anywhere as a kid, but then like all the way up until the second he died. If there was a thing I didn't know or was confused or upset about, I was like, hey, dad, guy at grocery store is looking at me for too long.

0:42:14 Eli: What I do. Right. And he was if he was in the state, he'd be like, I'd be right there. And if he wasn't, he'D be like leave the grocery store. Right? I just had those answers. I think we create those environments. I think we teach our kids to swim. And in those situations when your kids get old enough, just as someday Max will be able to go to the pool with his friends because I trust that he is a strong enough swimmer to do it. Similarly, I think you have taught your kids to swim on the internet in a way that is safe and when inevitably, because I promise you, if Donovan was on this show, he could tell us a hundred times he is butt up against the dangerous parts of the internet

0:42:18 Thomas: Murder. Yeah.

0:42:49 Eli: And then been like, eh, not for me. Or felt like he could go to an adult in his life and say, hey, what's this? I don't like it.

0:42:55 Tom: Yeah, I think you're right, and I think a big part of that is our kids, I was joking about this with Eamon the other day, because he was making a, he made a joke about, like, he would get in trouble if he did something, and I was like, dude, have you ever seen anybody get in trouble? Around here? And he sort of paused, and he's like, no. And I'm like, we don't do be in trouble. Trouble that's not a thing that we do like everybody like we're on your team like if something goes wrong and I had explained to him like if something goes wrong like we are going to help you fix it because we are on the same team like we don't do get in trouble we are not a get in trouble house it's worked out pretty well you know like I got two kids that are 18 and 19 they have never been in trouble a day in their lives they have never been punished they have ever been grounded they have been never been yelled at they are doing great you know Aislinn is 14 same thing we just don't do get in trouble we're not a get in trouble house so if you remove the idea of being in trouble from the equation then you remove all of the trepidation and I remember when I was a kid I was always afraid of being in trouble because I was fucking in trouble all the time I was in trouble for the most mundane bullshit all of the time my dad had a series of labyrinthine rules and like I mentioned before like sometimes those rules would shift on a dime if Lynn came over like it was like very like weird I was just always in trouble and so I was like well yeah fucking it was weird and so because of that like I would never tell my dad shit right because it's like I'm not that's not somebody who helps me that guy's not on my team right I understood that he loved me I understood that he was there to care for me I understand that he does love me but like I never had a strong sense that that dude's on my Team we just tell the kids explicitly all the time, bro, I'm on your fucking team.

0:43:37 Thomas: That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah.

0:43:55 Eli: Mm-hmm. My associate is here. Mm-huh.

0:44:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:36 Tom: Like if something goes wrong, tap me in. Cause I know how to help. And you don't. And Donovan the other day, he's like, Hey, can I talk to you guys in a little bit? I'm like, yeah, sure. So he comes upstairs and he starts relaying this story that I'm not going to relay where bottom line is like, somebody had some personal information about a friend of his. And like, they reached out through like a weird phone number that nobody recognized. And then they had this sort of back and forth with them. And he's like, well, what do I do? And I was like you block the fucking number that's what you do like you

0:44:50 Eli: Rude. Yep.

0:45:28 Tom: Block the number you disengage you have no idea like he because he wanted to know like sort of like how to better engage the weirdness that was going on right like how does he how does she dig in or find them like no like this what you do is you immediately block the number you make it impossible for this person to contact you you accept that weird shit happens and then you move on dot fucking come man that's what you do because like we don't want our house to get swatted that's a real thing the school down the street what my kid's school last week was in a soft lockdown because the school across the street got swatted the fucking junior high got swotted

0:45:33 Eli: Yeah. Well, it's the fucking...

0:45:41 Thomas: Jesus. I don't understand any part of this story, but I know you can't tell. It's someone's phone number. Whatever. I don't know.

0:45:47 Tom: No well the details don't matter the point is that Donovan felt comfortable saying I don't know what to do a weird thing happened I'm gonna go to mom and dad and so he immediately came to us and we're just like yeah, here's the advice man like disengage from the internet for a minute disengage from this bullshit like just don't be a

0:45:57 Thomas: Yeah, that's awesome.

0:46:02 Eli: Yeah. Don't stay in the haunted house. It's what we've been shouting at screens since we were kids, right? What do you guys think? You want to check out the basement? No. I do not want to check out the basement.

0:46:06 Tom: Part of yes yep that's exactly

0:46:21 Eli: All right. Gentlemen, before we go, a doctor in my town fractured his leg while auditioning for the local play. Don't worry. He made the cast.

0:46:15 Clip: DEAR OLD DAD

0:46:33 Thomas: That's a good one. I like it. I like it.

0:47:20 Tom: A blood diamond household exclusively

0:47:23 Eli: Every computer should have a gun to its head.