EP467 – WordStressed

Episode Transcription

Speakers:
Jason Tucker: 5.08%
Sé Reed: 57.12%
Jason Cosper: 6.03%
Tom Finley: 31.77%
Jason Tucker:[00:00:00]
This is episode number 467 of WPwatercooler, Word
Sé Reed:[00:00:14]
Hey, it’s me! That’s me and Tom!
I’m Jason Tucker. You can find me over at my website at jasontucker. blog.
Sé Reed:[00:00:25]
Oh, hey, I’m Sé, at Sé Reed Media on all the things woohoo!
Jason Cosper:[00:00:33]
Yeah, and Cosper, sup, present,
Go over to our website and you can go and find us, find all the links where you can go find us and follow us, and you can also go and hang out in our discord
Sé Reed:[00:00:50]
I’m laughing because our pre show is so depressing.
I hear
Sé Reed:[00:00:55]
like, segwayed into this and we’re like, Whoa, hi, what’s up people? We’re here. What’s up?
Tom Finley:[00:01:01]
the blame for that one.
Sé Reed:[00:01:02]
It’s not your fault. Okay let me just go ahead and say this right here. It’s not your fault. Okay? It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.
I think I was paying back a debt of gratitude for after a decade of hiding in the shadows,
Sé Reed:[00:02:02]
Look, taking on an organization, a WordCamp organization in general role is not like a low bar that, that buys you a few years and
to
Sé Reed:[00:02:24]
It was a big deal. So yeah, I think you’re yeah, exactly.
is what I call it.
really
Sé Reed:[00:02:32]
and I don’t know what else that said. Drama, trauma, global trauma. We are, our topic today, sorry, Tom, why don’t you actually introduce yourself? So we just
Yes, I was a WordCamp US 2023 organizer. I am a WPDC core leadership, core organizer, however you want to frame that person. And I am the owner of Proof Creative. Which is a digital agency based here in the DC area.
Sé Reed:[00:03:07]
I like saying proof,
Proof. And that’s how I know, that’s how I know somebody is scamming and spamming me, is they call me up and they say, proof!
Sé Reed:[00:03:15]
proof
You don’t know what an umlaut is.
Sé Reed:[00:03:19]
Was there an umlaut? You have an
There’s an umlaut. There’s
Sé Reed:[00:03:21]
Oh, that’s really cool. There’s not an umlaut in your domain, obviously. So I haven’t seen it in your A smiley face in my old logo, right?
throw umlaut in there as well.
Sé.
Sé Reed:[00:03:41]
say? Say! It just makes the E and A. And your umlaut makes your U an O, a double O. Anyway linguistics aside, hi. Linguistics Weekly with Sé.
Yeah this is us giving ourselves
Next, we’re going to be doing a wordle. Look at us.
Sé Reed:[00:04:09]
I am so bad at those games, I don’t even play. I wanted to name this episode WordPress stressed, to just like really drive the point home. But we went with word stressed just because it’s so fun, but I I just… Oh, I’m so WordPress stressed. Y’all,
Tell us about it.
Sé Reed:[00:04:30]
No, I’ve been talking about it for weeks.
you on, Tom.
And,
Sé Reed:[00:04:35]
that’s why we, yeah, we had you on the, so we could talk about your term once
Yeah,
Sé Reed:[00:04:43]
Yeah. You met this. So that’s what, so I started the episode by saying, Hey, you were a Word camp organizer. Literally this year you’ve been active on what was. WordPress Twitter, which is now dead and just literally gone. It’s, it is dead because it’s not Twitter anymore, so literally WordPress Twitter is gone, like WordPress X, what are we, I don’t even, I refuse.
Yeah and I think it, it also would be a reasonable characterization to say I was one of those people who I existed in the Genesis community space for a long time,
Sé Reed:[00:05:44]
Oh my god, Genesis.
I actually got,
Sé Reed:[00:05:47]
Harry Dilsit’s face.
from Twitter during that entire period because bosses were always watching, so I couldn’t be on Twitter while I was developing and
Sé Reed:[00:06:37]
I
yeah and one of my missions has been to use my my privilege to speak out in the moment when I see shenanigans. Think you’re the, one of the, one of the kings of shenanigans pointing out.
Sé Reed:[00:07:14]
I think that’s really important. So I don’t think it, again, I don’t think it’s something to be just pushed aside. I think it’s great.
yeah, I think we have to pay it forward and as trite as it is, we have to be the change we want to see in the world, right? And so if we’re perpetuating shenanigans and I’m trying to be,
Sé Reed:[00:07:36]
I love the word shenanigans. I also love the word kerfuffle,
I have my own word for it, but that I coined, but not nearly as PC.
Sé Reed:[00:09:24]
I think you can probably also punch, metaphorically punch, by the way, because violence is not the answer. You can also sometimes, oh,
sometimes it is the answer, it very much if you’re, if if a fascist is involved if bringing up fascism now, huh? Because I have things to say about that. Yeah, we’re going there this episode, y’all. No, but I was gonna say you can also sometimes punch sideways. Because sometimes
Yeah are people
Sé Reed:[00:09:54]
who are next to you who need the punch. I have a personal theory
and you have yeah, I’m just like, metaphorically, you need to understand what I’m saying. Can we segue to fascism? Because I have a segue there.
yeah,
haemakers. I don’t have a graphic for it.
Sé Reed:[00:10:21]
Yeah, no, don’t put up a graphic for that please. No graphics for that one. Don’t ask AI to make a graphic. Even an, I can’t even just, okay. So the thing that this week is really, so obviously listeners of the show know stuff’s going, stuff spins going on with Matt within the community in general there I, I feel like I’m like experiencing this in some sort of like spotlight on Sé and everything that I’m dealing with is like rife with drama right now.
So much drama in the WP, it’s hard being S diuretic E, but you somehow some way.
Nice.
Sé Reed:[00:11:25]
Okay Look at
off.
Sé Reed:[00:11:29]
I hope we don’t get copyright infringement for that one.
No, it’s fair use. It’s fair use. That’s
Sé Reed:[00:11:34]
Very good. Okay.
quite the derivative, so we’re good.
Sé Reed:[00:11:37]
Alright,
on it and he’s done his rights.
Sé Reed:[00:11:41]
This week the the philosophy so much for me in WordPress is about ethos is about what the mission is of open source and specifically WordPress in its effort to wrap up to me, democratized publishing means so many things, but what it really means to me is that people have the ability to make websites or make web presences of any kind on a very low tech basis.
that that you have the ability to actually also influence the direction of that technology. That
Sé Reed:[00:13:12]
Yeah, one more. That’s,
talking about here, right?
Sé Reed:[00:13:15]
that is the that is the, that’s the what’s the word? Dream? Line? Selling point? I’m not sure what word to use there. Yeah that’s the idea of open source and that, right? You can get involved, you can take it. And if WordPress disappeared tomorrow, I could still use that software.
I wouldn’t even call it a manifesto. It’s a screed,
Sé Reed:[00:15:52]
A screed?
read.
Sé Reed:[00:15:54]
See, we are word stressed, again.
from other people is pretty much what it comes down to.
Sé Reed:[00:15:58]
Is it a screed? Or is it a manifesto? Or is it just like actual bonkers? That shit crazy. Manifesto!
on the man.
Exactly, Mika. Just like
Sé Reed:[00:16:11]
Look, I this is actually terrifying, this thing. I read the whole thing, and I read half of it, and I thought I was almost done, and I shared it with a friend of mine, and then we were dialoguing about it. Yeah, no one should call anything a manifesto at any point. So we were dialoguing about it, and they were like, Wait, what about this part? The reason I sent it to them was because I know in Matt Mullenweg’s talk at WordCamp US, in which he talked about futurism in the form of a hundred year WordCamp I don’t know, 100yearwordpress.
the WordPress platform. It’s a web based API that’s built on the
Sé Reed:[00:18:16]
trust and safety which will be relevant later, but also lists tech ethics, sustainability, And social responsibility as enemies of the ideas of this manifesto. Enemies of those who believe in this manifesto. Which is funny we have a sustainability team on WordCamp that is struggling a little bit to get started, but it is still it’s there, it’s got some sort of mandate. It’s been a little clunky. But so there’s a literal sustainability team. And I think we all agree that WordPress is definitely taking on a mantle of social responsibility with trying to be inclusive.
You blanked me. I’m looking,
today.
I knew it before you said
Sé Reed:[00:19:18]
I know, everyone’s wait, what is
I got nothing.
Sé Reed:[00:19:20]
Yeah, it’s something. We can look it up. But we’re moving towards this. We’ve got a sustainability team. Equity.
And equity is a huge component.
Sé Reed:[00:19:38]
It’s
Absolutely. Thank
Sé Reed:[00:19:39]
A big deal. So just to wrap this up, right on, say a Festo that’s all well and good. And then there was a blog post, Matt. Mullenweg posted wherein he called the the manifesto exciting, and he said that the only edit he would make is that he would remove trust and safety from the enemies list. Matthew said that? Yes, Matt Mullenweg, the benevolent dictator of WordPress said that the only edit he would think to make to that manifesto is that he would remove trust and safety from the enemies list because he thinks managing spam is important and saves money.
Ooh, ooh, can I go?
Sé Reed:[00:20:31]
Yeah,
Please,
Sé Reed:[00:20:35]
please tell them, cause I’ve got nothing after that. That’s where I ended. And I was like, Hey, I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut and I have no breath. So that’s cool.
I’m going to do a little exposition just because not everybody is across everything. Mark and Jason’s company is called A16Z. Automatic officially operates
Sé Reed:[00:21:00]
A H C. Yeah,
Little bit of a love letter there. To that
Sé Reed:[00:21:06]
For the record, A8C came after A16Z.
If you go back a few months in the Make Announcements channel it’s locked, only certain people can post to it, and it was in response to Andresen’s post on AI, like, why we should stop worrying about the bomb and love AI,
Sé Reed:[00:21:32]
See, that one was definitely a screed.
and,
it? Why AI will save the world?
Sé Reed:[00:21:38]
Yeah, basically.
and worship!
Sé Reed:[00:22:20]
I also just want to point out, in the manifesto by Andreessen, he references a Manifesto that was written, he doesn’t say its name, he said it was written at a different time and place, and then quotes it quite lovingly. It’s called the Futurist Manifesto, and it was written in 1909, and the person who wrote it went on to write, wait for it, the Fascist Manifesto. Same person, quoted. In the manifesto,
you.
Sé Reed:[00:22:53]
just saying, that’s not that’s not implication. But retweeting doesn’t encourage, retweeting doesn’t of where we are right now.
There were a lot of people making money hand over fist and a lot of people who got hurt died,
Sé Reed:[00:24:09]
of people died. And suffered a lot.
And right now there were some wars.
Sé Reed:[00:24:46]
It’s
Sé Reed:[00:24:48]
That is the best summary. Oh my god,
we need to take a long, hard look at what we’re being fed, right? We need to scrutinize the shit, and I am going to say the shit out of everything that is being said by people who have paychecks that will take us centuries. To get people get paid in one year, what some of us, 100 to 500 years to make.
Sé Reed:[00:25:14]
Yeah, and
we don’t
Sé Reed:[00:25:15]
died before, before we get there.
worries. And,
Sé Reed:[00:25:20]
the
I see that the other troubling thing, because you criticize somebody like Andresen or Mullenweg on Twitter, and there’s one person that comes in and be like, yeah, you know what, you’re totally right.
Sé Reed:[00:25:35]
sometimes the person themselves even says that.
I I can’t even believe that there are so many people willing to, pardon my language, dick ride people who don’t even fucking know them,
Sé Reed:[00:25:49]
We’re getting real this episode. Yeah, they don’t even know them. And not only that, but not only do they not know them, but they would not value them if they did know them. They do not have a high opinion of the, what are the masses, right? The common people. That’s essentially what we’re talking about here.
Linda Iaccarino.
Sé Reed:[00:26:29]
There you go. That’s why I have, that’s why we’re all here together.
his tech is taught as shoddy bullshit. Look into what’s happening with the satellites, right? His satellites are about to basically, probably end all satellites. And that’s not that’s not speculation. Just
Sé Reed:[00:29:39]
Like just the tech, they’re dying or
are they’re in an exponential collision course that, that, that cannot be corrected and they can’t get them down.
Sé Reed:[00:29:50]
Wait, like collision, like actual…
Yeah they have had to make exponentially more course corrections for each of the satellites, and it is becoming impossibly unmanageable to continue to correct their trajectories, and the space agencies have no way to fix it.
Sé Reed:[00:30:12]
That’s
communications, which would be really interesting.
Sé Reed:[00:30:19]
We don’t rely on satellite communications for anything important, Tom. I don’t think, now, and I’ll cop to being, I’m very ADHD, so I see things very macro and micro, and it makes things unmanageable sometimes, but this is all really important because there, there’s an element in this it’s like less wrong, right? Sam Bankman Fried, thank you he made that popular, and with this You mean the guy on trial for massive fraud? That guy? Yeah. Okay, cool.
These great visions are being revealed to just be like the selfish designs of mediocre men, mediocre white men. And and they’re incorporating these elements of like stoicism, right? Like just go along with what happens because you can’t really change it.
Sé Reed:[00:31:39]
Hadn’t noticed.
what is it? Is it DARVO is the acronym for deflect and reverse victimize? But that’s a, it’s a technique the Republicans are using right now. And you see a lot of these tech CEOs use that, right? Like they deflect and they reverse frame who the real victim is.
Check it
Correct usage of Darbo, Jacob tells me. So yeah it makes, every
Sé Reed:[00:32:33]
can I just…
Until otherwise verified. And I don’t, I have a mistrust, but verify relationship with.
Sé Reed:[00:32:45]
Yes. I have a difficult one myself. I… You just distracted me, because now I’m
on some social media site
Sé Reed:[00:32:55]
Yeah, some said some stuff with WordPress leadership. I, Oh, we had a nevermind. Yeah, I forgot what I was going to say. Cause now I got distracted about WordPress leadership.
Sé Reed:[00:33:07]
I wrote down was Darvo.
If one if one has a distrust with WordPress leadership let’s talk to Bernie, who is once again, asking you to consider WordPress governance.
I am once again asking you to consider WordPress governance.
Sé Reed:[00:33:25]
Oh God. I just, I feel with all of this on top of it, right? Like I this is why I prefaced this whole conversation with all of that stuff before, right? Like I always felt that we had these ideals in common. That we were going for that. But I do not understand how the techno optimist manifesto, excuse me, is in any way in alignment with WordPress is WordPresses ethos.
to have a third world war and,
Sé Reed:[00:34:50]
and then they,
have to use a nuclear missile with a dilithium crystal to get the attention of the Vulcans. So that’s just.
Okay
That shit ain’t happening.
Sé Reed:[00:35:06]
Okay, I was, I am too, and that’s why I enjoyed that so much. So I wanted to bring this back real quick to the enemies list, which I just like that there’s an I don’t like, but I like to remind all of us that there is literally an enemies list. So if that doesn’t sound frightening and authoritative, authoritarian and fascist to you, I don’t know what does.
How many people who give a real a real fuck about the WordPress project are on that enemies list?
Sé Reed:[00:35:44]
That’s what I’ve been, the whole WordPress project is on the list. And I am like the one that really obviously sustainability and social response, there’s other stuff on this list that is like, what, why would you, what an enemy? These are ideas that are enemies. It’s Orwellian thought controlled, creepy, awfulness.
He had an ethos, but not necessarily ethics.
Sé Reed:[00:36:33]
is what I’m just saying, like just saying tech ethics opens a conversation about what those ethics are. It is not even saying like sustainability is saying we want things to be able to continue to function
And you can, and then they say you can fight a person and you can fight a, an army, right? But you can’t fight ideas. And so we’re when we’re in that mode of deliberately framing ideas as an enemy, I think that is some interesting territory. Think it’s terrifying to be honest.
Sé Reed:[00:37:18]
You say wait. If you say, the only edit I would make is this. You’re not tacitly endorsing the rest of it. You are cleverly, perhaps, not saying, I agree with this entire thing except this, but it is the same thing to say, I agree with this entire thing except this part, than to just say I would just edit this part. It’s the same thing. You could do plausible deniability there but
That’s respectability, politics, and action, right? To plausible deniability
Sé Reed:[00:38:15]
It definitely increases my blood rate. It definitely my blood pressure rate, like it definitely creates feelings. I don’t know if I would call them excited, but my my, my synapses are activated. What does exciting mean exactly?
Yeah, we should all just be in survival mode, right? As if we already aren’t. But I, I think when you go back to the alignment of, or lack thereof, of these, the manifestos the caping for them and where WordPress is as like a open source project. It’s not out of alignment if you’re running a corporation. And I think that ultimately, like that’s the point that the
Sé Reed:[00:39:10]
Technically I run a corporation. Hold on just a second. Technically I run an S corp, so technically I run a corporation, so I always think it’s really important to qualify that with, because there’s a lot of small corporations that are small businesses, so I’m not one to allow the word corporation to be a stand in for a corporation.
well,
Sé Reed:[00:39:34]
I just because then that you start getting, you start people saying I’m a corporate, because technically my business is an S corp, right? So technically I run a corporation. So anyway, I just don’t want to get into that split. So it’s, I think it’s important not to frame it as just like that way just a side point.
Let me get to the.com versus.org
Sé Reed:[00:39:53]
Get where you’re going, get where you’re going,
emphasis is.com then it makes sense. If the emphasis is really having a community driven thing, it doesn’t make sense. And I think there’s a lot of tension there, and honestly, you can’t find it now, but I’ve made a very long post about this.
Sé Reed:[00:40:58]
I just want to illustrate your point. So on last Tuesday because of a tweet that I made, because now I apparently am on the lists for what being launched on Twitter a tweet that I talked about where I said that the… I think I mentioned this on the show earlier that the marketing team was not involved whatsoever with the annual survey, right?
I think I have say I think I have a problem with how many things are being pulled back from the community when for 20 years, or at least for most of the last 20 years the biggest strength of WordPress has been the community, the
Sé Reed:[00:44:36]
that’s what we all say in our selling points.
Sé Reed:[00:44:39]
That’s oh,
there, but because of I don’t know, capitalism, because of whatever we’re someone who is already rich and just wants to be richer.
Sé Reed:[00:45:23]
not even paying them to work in the community, which is a conversation that I would that’s a whole other that’s what we are saying that is. What we are purporting to have happen, right? There are sponsor contributors that are there full time, part time, whatever, that work in the community.
I think to draw an analogy that we can all readily identify with, at least if you’re based in the US it’s a lot less. It’s like a representative democracy and more like the electoral college, which if you know what the history of the electoral college was, it’s because you could not trust the decision making of the everyday man.
And I think we need some clarification around that. Now, I don’t have eyes on what the historical levels of control and or monetization from automatic to project. org. I don’t, I have no idea, I can’t speak to that, but I have a distinct sense now that there is so much money interlinked between the two that it is also driving some of the tension,
Sé Reed:[00:47:58]
Yeah, I
And that every time we scratch at the community ownership angle, We are getting close to, too close to some element of money scarcity Yeah. Agenda.
Sé Reed:[00:48:32]
rate from WordPress or from the community? From the software or from the community?
Sé Reed:[00:48:42]
Woo hoo.
With the level of cash that is being infused into org, the entitlement and almost obligation to steer things in certain directions that are being deemed like important to return those things are being seized. Or at least that would be my theory.
Sé Reed:[00:49:05]
Yeah,
know shit
Sé Reed:[00:49:06]
It’s called seizing the means of production.
yeah, so I it’s
Sé Reed:[00:49:12]
Someone wrote about that at one
You can only infer, you can only infer these things because it’s not being spoken about, right? And it’s not being spoken about honestly. We know we’re being deflected.
Sé Reed:[00:49:22]
speaking about it, honestly, finally, Tom. I’ve been speaking around it for a really long time, but at this point, I got nothing to lose. I I’m already being ostracized from the community. I’ve been doing this the nice way for a long time. I have been having these conversations behind the scenes actively since 2018.
Scott’s telling us in the comments that they they recanted just this month on that.
Sé Reed:[00:54:02]
Oh! Yay! That’s the same type of thing. Probably because they were losing a lot of customers. Because people were like actually, really, these are bad things and they don’t need a home on the web, and I don’t want to be associated with them, right? Same reason, like, why companies don’t want to advertise on the thing formerly known as Twitter, if they’re going to be next to hate group posts, right?
And I don’t think that, that institutional knowledge and guidance isn’t necessarily bad, right? It’s the transparency around the process. I think that, that tends to be at least for me is.
Sé Reed:[00:56:10]
but it’s not just guidance, it’s control. That’s the difference. It is not. It is not we’re all here together. There’s elements of that. And individually, most people have that approach, but it’s not how it works in reality. And the, again, I’m not trying to vilify any individuals.
And that’s why, and that’s why I made the comment that we’re in a flat spin, right? Cause that’s what that is. We are literally chasing our tails in circles, trying to figure out what the lay of the land is. And there are some great things coming out of the project, like on the pre show I am a booster of full sight for all the frustrations.
Sé Reed:[00:58:46]
it’s been a time, man.
I still
say the temp has changed on that?
Sé Reed:[00:58:50]
I, I think that it might not matter so much because I think that there, the sponsored contributors have been placed for that. I think it might actually make everybody more happy. We all just leave. I did get unmasked on someone saying it is open source. In theory we could, not fork, but just organize. I’m a big fan of organizing we have the WPCC is a framework if we want to use it for anything. It’s just that I can’t do everything by myself. I have a kid you have a kid we would need people to do that. And then also you start getting fought with, right?
And there may be something to be said for the fact that we actually, we may be part of the crisis point, which is with every paradigm shift in mass communication comes a mass hysteria. And I think that it’s entirely likely that some of this is driven by our own activity.
Sé Reed:[01:01:34]
I think for me, and I will wrap this up, I swear is that I, no, I don’t even know how to wrap it up, actually. I don’t I just, I still don’t know. I really still don’t know. I just know that I don’t want to do the thing where you just throw good money after bad, or whatever that expression is, where you just keep going with something, because it’s sunk cost.
cost analysis, yeah
Sé Reed:[01:02:00]
Don’t want to be in that world that’s a certain point if you’re in an abusive relationship or if you’re in a bad situation and it’s not working you gotta extricate yourself from that. But I don’t know how to tell the difference between that and fighting for something that you believe in and trying to make change and rallying in that sense for the community. So if someone has an answer, please tweet at me and don’t tweet me. Just, I don’t know, yell into the
feel free to go hang out with us in our discord. That’s where you can come and hang out and talk with us about this stuff. It’s a safe space. We welcome you over there.
Sé Reed:[01:02:44]
Yeah. And if you’re not, if you’re not talking, just tag us,
Hey, this is a good segue of wrapping up. Post a link to the Discord because I don’t have it.
Sé Reed:[01:02:52]
get in there.
com slash discord. have it in the notes. We’ll talk to y’all later. You have a good one
Sé Reed:[01:03:00]
I want to tell us your
We really appreciate it. Thank you
take us home, Tucker.
Alrighty, here’s our outro. Hey, go to our website at apywatercooler. com slash subscribe, where you can subscribe to our podcast over there.

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EP467 – WordStressed

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