EP485 – So Limitless and Free

[00:00:00] Sé Reed: Google

[00:00:09] Jason Tucker: This is episode number 485 of WPwatercooler. So limitless and free.

[00:00:17] Sé Reed: it.

[00:00:18] Jason Tucker: I’m Jason Tucker. Go over to my website over at jasontucker. blog.

[00:00:25] Sé Reed: Oh, I’m Sé. I don’t even know where I am anymore, but Sé Reed Media on all the things.

[00:00:33] Jason Cosper: And y’all know who it is. It’s your boy, Jason Cosper back at it again on the world’s most podcast.

[00:00:41] Jason Tucker: Speaking of that podcast, you can listen to us as a podcast and you can come hang out with us in our discord. Go do that.

[00:00:52] Sé Reed: Go do that. You should do it. It

[00:00:55] Jason Tucker: the show over here on the left. I’m Jason

[00:00:57] Jason Cosper: long, long time, no chat. Gosh, it’s, it’s been like May since I’ve been on an episode. You guys have had a couple episodes since then.

[00:01:09] Jason Tucker: know,

[00:01:09] Sé Reed: has?

[00:01:10] Jason Cosper: yeah.

[00:01:11] Sé Reed: I didn’t even realize that. Time is like just this weird, like, you never, like a little morphe origami thing that like flattens out.

[00:01:19] Jason Cosper: Yeah.

[00:01:20] Jason Tucker: that, that there is, there is one kind of sad thing about doing, uh, doing a show where there’s actually two shows and one of those episodes doesn’t happen on the same feed. So it ends up being on a separate feed is the fact that, uh, people don’t, that they don’t realize that there was like this gap and they’re like, Oh, what happened here?

[00:01:40] Jason Tucker: What’s going on with this? And, you know, it’s like, yeah, well, unfortunately because of us doing, um, you know, the first episode of the month is to a whole separate audio feed. Um, it seems like it’s a really long time. It’s almost like dog years, you know,

[00:01:55] Jason Cosper: Sure.

[00:01:56] Sé Reed: Well, it is a long time.

[00:01:57] Jason Tucker: you just like an entire month. You’re just like, Oh my gosh, I have to wait another month.

[00:02:00] Jason Tucker: And then we don’t do it again. And it’s a whole nother month.

[00:02:03] Jason Cosper: Well, yeah.

[00:02:06] Jason Tucker: but, um, unfortunately I do need to let you know

[00:02:09] Sé Reed: Speaking of waiting,

[00:02:11] Jason Tucker: Yeah,

[00:02:13] Sé Reed: How fitting.

[00:02:14] Jason Tucker: so this will be our last episode. So this is, uh, our, uh, uh, our final, our final episode. Um, I remember, uh, working at one place where I had a walkout song and it was the final countdown.

[00:02:25] Jason Tucker: And I just played it in my backpack as I walked out of the building, which I thought was very fitting. Um, people thought I was really weird for doing that. And I thought it was great,

[00:02:34] Sé Reed: think that’s great. We shouldn’t do

[00:02:35] Jason Tucker: but due to copyright, we’re

[00:02:37] Sé Reed: Copyright. Yeah. I was like, did you secure that copyright? Cause I don’t even want to hum it. I could hum it on a different da, da, da, da. That’s all I’m going to do. Woked

[00:02:48] Jason Cosper: I’ve, I’ve walked out, uh, to, uh, to a song as well. Uh,

[00:02:54] Jason Tucker: good for you. I’m glad somebody else has done it.

[00:02:56] Jason Cosper: yeah, uh, it was, I it was just painfully like cusper millennial behavior. Uh, but, uh, yeah, um, I, I woke out or I walked out to, uh, woke out. Yeah, I, I went woke and I went broke. Um, but, uh, no, I walked out to, um, the Doug Kennedy’s take this job and shove it.

[00:03:21] Jason Cosper: Uh, the cover of take this job and shove it. Uh, even though I left the job on good terms, I was just like, I ain’t working here no more.

[00:03:29] Sé Reed: You really, you really wanted to just use the song. Let’s be honest. You’re like, you’re like, I kind of want to quit this job just so I can play this song on my way out. And you know, when you’re young and dumb, you can do that. I’m not saying that’s why you did it. I’m just saying it’d be worthy of doing so.

[00:03:47] Sé Reed: My, the, I’ve never walked out on a job with a song, but mostly because I’ve worked for myself for a really long time. And I don’t know if you can walk out on yourself, play a song while you like leave angrily, like, I don’t know.

[00:04:06] Jason Tucker: Even like the songs that are listed here in StreamYard are not, not something that would work for a good walkout song. Yeah.

[00:04:16] Sé Reed: we should probably, so this is our goodbye episode, right? So we’re saying goodbye. Uh,

[00:04:21] Jason Tucker: obligated.

[00:04:22] Sé Reed: we took the last month off. I mean, not just, why are we laughing? Why did I miss

[00:04:29] Jason Tucker: Oh, cause I said it contractually obligated to do our last episode.

[00:04:33] Sé Reed: it’s more about like morally obligated. It’s more a moral obligation or like a, uh, um, like a loyalty. I don’t know.

[00:04:42] Sé Reed: Anyway, uh, See, now I lost my train of thought. Just one last time for all of you wonderful people. No, so we took July off not to have a, an existential, you know, um, like, moment or reckoning. Um, but just because our lives are wild.

[00:05:03] Jason Tucker: Yeah.

[00:05:04] Sé Reed: Um,

[00:05:05] Jason Cosper: I will, I, you know, I will come fully like, I’ll, I’ll let y’all know, uh,

[00:05:11] Sé Reed: fully transparent and authentic.

[00:05:13] Jason Cosper: yeah, yeah. Uh, what my life has, has looked like, uh, a little bit of, uh, vulnerability here since, uh, the start of June, my mom passed away. Um, from like a long battle with dementia. Uh, my wife, Sarah’s mom, uh, was diagnosed with stage four cancer.

[00:05:35] Jason Cosper: Uh, my, um, car, uh, decided to stop working, uh, had to go to the dealership and I was without a car cause we only have one car for like three weeks. Uh, and then, uh, as everything

[00:05:53] Sé Reed: Bring a gift

[00:05:55] Jason Cosper: Starting to, yeah, as everything felt like it was starting to level out, uh, my entire house, my water heater sprung a leak in my entire house, like the front of our house got flooded.

[00:06:07] Jason Cosper: Uh, so, uh, I have been like going from like one disaster to the next over like the past two months, and it is just, I have like no energy. Know, anything else?

[00:06:26] Sé Reed: There’s no extra.

[00:06:27] Jason Cosper: yeah.

[00:06:29] Sé Reed: It’s not even, it’s not even no F’s to give. It’s just like nothing. It’s not even about the F’s.

[00:06:34] Jason Cosper: Right. Like we’ve, we’ve talked about, we’ve talked about having enough spoons before. And, uh, like this, like I’m, I’m not, I’m not even at spoons. I, I just have

[00:06:49] Sé Reed: there’s nothing in

[00:06:50] Jason Cosper: I’m in, I’m in the, I’m in the, I’m in the corner with the knife going back the

[00:06:54] Sé Reed: I think you have a chopstick and you’re like,

[00:06:56] Jason Cosper: Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:57] Sé Reed: this? But just like one chopstick.

[00:06:59] Jason Cosper: But I’m, but I’m waving it around in a threatening manner because the past couple of months have just been hurtful.

[00:07:07] Sé Reed: Yeah. You’re gonna like, I’m gonna fend off life and it’s The universe with this chopstick. Uh, I was going to actually say that was an alt title. I, I didn’t, I, we got the, uh, uh, limit. So limitless and free from a Doris song, which I think has a lot of really nice imagery for this moment in time for WordPress, but the other title I was going to suggest before we just went with that one was there is no spoon.

[00:07:33] Jason Cosper: yeah,

[00:07:35] Sé Reed: Cause there’s no spoon, but not like Neo meant it. For whoever that kid was, like, there was nothing in the drawer when you pull it open, there’s no spoons in there. It’s like, you really need a spoon, there’s not one though, so, too

[00:07:49] Jason Cosper: So, I mean, Word, WordPress is, WordPress is still my day job. I, I still, uh, do that. I still, um, you know, I’m, I’m building WordPress plugins. I still, um, Um, you know, do that. Uh, I, I spend my time, uh, noodling around with other stuff because my day job is WordPress and I’m tired of, uh, like playing with WordPress at the end of the day,

[00:08:19] Sé Reed: Okay. But like, wait, I’m tired of playing with WordPress too in a different way. I’m tired of playing WordPress. Uh, but No, but , exactly. But, um, you’re, i, I do wanna point out here that, uh, you recently made a very, um, let’s, let’s call it viral. Let’s just call it viral viral. So, uh, what is it like when late, late, not late and viral, like, um, nascent, nascently viral, uh, site.

[00:08:48] Sé Reed: And we were talking about this earlier and you were like, well, I built it on node,

[00:08:57] Jason Cosper: I, well, I, yeah, I use node to build it and I’ve had a few people like in WordPress DM me and be like, Hey, why not WordPress? Because it’s, it’s a, it’s a single serving site. You hit it, uh, a new, uh, like bit of text pops up on the screen every time you reload it or, or

[00:09:15] Sé Reed: that in the chat and the nodes, link it

[00:09:19] Jason Cosper: Yes, we’ll do. Uh, but so, uh, people said, well, why not WordPress?

[00:09:24] Jason Cosper: And the like page weight of stuff that happens with WordPress, I think the lines of HTML in this node app, like if you get rid of the CSS and everything else, I don’t think it’s more than 20 lines of actual HTML. It got bigger. Actually, no, I’ll, I’ll say 30 lines of HTML, uh, because, um, there is, uh, Yeah, well, yeah, I had to add all the open graph tags cause it was like looking real ugly when people would like share it on social media.

[00:09:57] Jason Cosper: So I had to fix that. Uh, but I, I just didn’t want to deal with the weight of WordPress. I just didn’t want to deal with,

[00:10:10] Jason Tucker: Don’t wait on WordPress!

[00:10:11] Sé Reed: The weight of WordPress,

[00:10:13] Jason Cosper: Jason, you. You have been,

[00:10:16] Sé Reed: meaning.

[00:10:18] Jason Cosper: you have been going through this yourself, right? Like you have kind of moved away from, you still use WordPress in a couple spots, but you’ve moved away from using WordPress as like a day to day thing. Right. You feel like it’s,

[00:10:33] Jason Tucker: Yeah. I mean, I’ve, I think I’ve settled at this point on ghost and it seems to work pretty good and the hosting for it’s ridiculously cheap, depending on where you host it at. And my websites are just me just like, you know, talking about like the thing I built or the thing I’m, whatever I’m going to Google for myself later is essentially what it is.

[00:10:50] Jason Tucker: I, I, this is my open notebook that someone will most likely see. And it’s going to be me when I go like, how do I do that thing? And it’s like, well, I wrote about it and here it is. But it’s so nice to just open a website and not have to do any like updates. The shit just works, you know, it just like open it up.

[00:11:08] Jason Tucker: You’re like, Oh my gosh, this is so cool. I can like type some words, like hit post and it gets posted. And there isn’t some plugin that broke that like stopped me from doing whatever it is I need to do. I didn’t have to do some server upgrade for some, you know, you know, whatever. I didn’t have to do plugin updates.

[00:11:24] Jason Tucker: There’s the theme isn’t out of date. It’s a lot of updates, man. I work in IT. I already do updates. Do I need to do updates again? I don’t want to do more updates.

[00:11:34] Jason Cosper: one

[00:11:34] Sé Reed: and then you have the, the new auto update hell of that, we talked about it briefly, of, um, all the new, the new thing. I don’t know when this started, but all I know is it has caused me a lot of grief in the past, I don’t know, months. And it happened again

[00:11:50] Jason Tucker: maintenance contracts, you make some good money breaking something that

[00:11:53] Sé Reed: I don’t want the sites to break.

[00:11:54] Sé Reed: They’re stupid, annoying fixes. Like, this is ridiculous. So I had to take all of the events calendar off of auto updates in order to not have them be like out of compatibility with each other, even for like five minutes, because the update schedule is different or whatever. And then, yeah, and no, then the other day my client emails me and they’re like, uh, or someone told us this page on the site is not, is 404ing because one of the extensions.

[00:12:23] Sé Reed: All of these did have an auto update and the extension was too updated for the plugin that I hadn’t gotten in and updated yet. And I’m like, Oh my God, I can’t, like, I didn’t realize I had forgotten to take the extension off of auto update and that never gets updated. So I never, it was the communities plugin, right?

[00:12:40] Sé Reed: So I never think about that one. And they’re like, we can’t use the event thing. And I’m like, this plugin is like literally like my

[00:12:49] Jason Tucker: Like Cosper, how much infrastructure would you have to thrown at your, your dumb little website?

[00:12:54] Sé Reed: Well, it’s not a dumb little website. First of

[00:12:56] Jason Tucker: like how much, like,

[00:12:57] Sé Reed: little website.

[00:12:58] Jason Tucker: Well, no, no,

[00:12:58] Sé Reed: on your name, by the way, here.

[00:13:00] Jason Tucker: how hard is it to, well, you know, Cosper’s kind of playing it down a little bit. So I wanted to play it down further and call it a

[00:13:06] Sé Reed: Oh, okay. All right.

[00:13:07] Jason Tucker: But how do you,

[00:13:08] Sé Reed: Just a little

[00:13:09] Jason Tucker: like, well, how much infrastructure would you have to like set up in order to be able to support the refreshes that you’re doing and all that fun stuff?

[00:13:19] Jason Cosper: yeah, uh, let’s see, uh, I mean, I, I would have had to, uh, spin up some sort of, I, I actually specifically used, uh, and put the site on, uh, glitch. com, which is a free service. Uh, you can pay them 10 a month, uh, to like boost your app. So it gets, um, like unlimited resources, uh, effectively, uh, for that time. Um, so initially, like when I was sketching things out, like, uh, had I not used, uh, Glitch, uh, as a tool, uh, I would have had to, uh, Um, you know, spin up a service, like either spin up my own VPS, which could be like 5 a month at DigitalOcean or, or whatever, uh, or, um, I could go in and, uh, like use a service like, uh, fly.

[00:14:15] Jason Cosper: io.

[00:14:15] Sé Reed: Premium.

[00:14:16] Jason Cosper: Fastly, uh, you know, anything like that. Uh, but Glitch just made it easy. One of the reasons I also went with Glitch is because, uh, everything that you do in Glitch is like done inside of a Git repository and sites can be remixed. So if somebody, one of the things, uh, we were, I was kind of inspired to do, uh, timwallsfixyourbicycle.

[00:14:45] Jason Cosper: com site, uh, off of, if, uh, if you’re enough of an internet old, uh, you will remember 2008 ish, um, there was Barack Obama’s Your New Bicycle by Matt Honan. Uh, his wife,

[00:15:00] Jason Tucker: on AOL though, right?

[00:15:02] Jason Cosper: yeah. Uh, Matt, Matt Honan’s wife or girlfriend at the time said to him, or partner, I’m not entirely sure, said to Matt. Uh, like, cause he just kept talking about Barack Obama and he was like a big cyclist and she was like, uh, or they were like, um, you know, Oh, well, Barack Obama is your new bicycle.

[00:15:25] Jason Cosper: And, uh, that is, so, uh, we were kind of, as we were joking and like spit bawling, uh, ideas, uh, one of my friends mentioned, uh, my friend, Mike was just like, Oh, well, Tim Walz fixed your bicycle. And it’s like, yes, perfect. Yeah,

[00:15:44] Jason Tucker: com,

[00:15:45] Jason Cosper: let’s, let’s run with that. But I went and looked for code of like a site like this, because for a while people could spin up their own blank is your new bicycle sites, like in, uh, 2008, 2009, et cetera.

[00:16:02] Jason Cosper: A lot of them ended up being like, not political,

[00:16:06] Sé Reed: What year is it? It’s all right, it’s

[00:16:09] Jason Cosper: right.

[00:16:09] Jason Tucker: at the end of it now, it’s so weird.

[00:16:12] Jason Cosper: so, uh,

[00:16:14] Sé Reed: moons ago.

[00:16:16] Jason Cosper: right. I was just like, Hey, let’s see if there’s some like, you know, dumb Ruby or Pearl or something that I can like bootstrap this with. And then I was just like, Oh no. That was, that was 16 years ago. Like, even if I did use this, it’s going to be like terribly out of date. So I was like, okay, what’s a place I can throw up a quick and dirty node site.

[00:16:41] Jason Cosper: Funny thing. Uh, I wrote this, uh, against node, uh, 18. I think they’re on like 22. Now, is that right, Tucker, that they’re stable

[00:16:55] Jason Tucker: Yep. Yep.

[00:16:55] Jason Cosper: I, I wrote it against node 18, uh, glitches supported node, uh, highest supported version of node is 14. Uh,

[00:17:04] Jason Tucker: Oh, wow.

[00:17:06] Jason Cosper: uh, but, uh, the fact that I’m like, oh, I require 18. They’re like, oh, we’re giving you a 14 and the site still spun up.

[00:17:14] Jason Cosper: I was like, okay. Good enough.

[00:17:16] Jason Tucker: good enough.

[00:17:17] Sé Reed: good enough.

[00:17:18] Jason Cosper: And, and, and really that’s what this is all about. Like good enough. Like, uh, I, uh, also, uh, because all of that stuff that I talked about earlier in the show, uh, was going on, like, uh, you know, I, I, I like money, like. You know, I, I do okay financially, but like money gets tight and I’m just like, Hey, I’m trying to make my life like less uncomfortable right now, uh, as, as I have to like pay contractors before insurance checks arrive as I, uh, so like I.

[00:17:53] Jason Cosper: Spun up some, uh, like professional services. Like I actually, uh, started taking on new clients, uh, and, uh, like, uh, dusted off my professional services site. Uh, and I added. I added product, that’s a WordPress site. I added product buttons, uh, to the site though, to be able to like buy, uh, a site optimization to, to buy maintenance contracts, stuff like that.

[00:18:21] Jason Cosper: If you go click one of those buttons, you’re not taken to like a WooCommerce page or any other e commerce stuff. That is just a link that takes you directly to Stripe checkout. Uh, and I didn’t, I didn’t use a Stripe plugin. I didn’t use anything else. I just use Stripes tools because I have,

[00:18:42] Sé Reed: can build links off that. It’s

[00:18:43] Jason Cosper: I have, I have three, I have three items that I’m selling, uh, Two of which are, are recurring maintenance contract services.

[00:18:52] Jason Cosper: One is a, is a site optimization. Like you just punch the button, you give me your details, uh, and I get to work. Uh, but I didn’t want to add everything that I would have needed to add it, add with WooCommerce.

[00:19:08] Jason Tucker: Mhm.

[00:19:09] Jason Cosper: Just to be able to sell services. Like, you know, there are tools out there, uh, that, I mean, like, you know, I know people might’ve turned to Shopify, might’ve turned to like, uh, Equid, big commerce, any of those names out there, uh, and been like, oh, well, I’ll just sell through that and like, you know, use the tie in, but I was like, why?

[00:19:33] Jason Tucker: Right. This is another thing to break. This is more plumbing that I could break that you’re going to have to then service later again.

[00:19:40] Jason Cosper: And, and I, I still, I’m, I make, I make, I make my living off of WordPress, but WordPress has gotten too like stupidly complex and,

[00:19:51] Sé Reed: Well, yeah, that’s, that was, I was just going to say, like, everything that you were describing with Ghost and then everything you were describing with Glitch is stuff we used to say about WordPress. Like, I used to say that to people, be like, you can really easily just, I mean, it wasn’t ever easy to like, you know, get it up despite the five minute install, but like, you know, once you did, it was like, you don’t have to like, Wave through chaos to get there.

[00:20:15] Sé Reed: You don’t have like, like, I cannot imagine telling someone to install WooCommerce to sell something on the internet. Like they want to sell one thing or do, do whatever. I would never tell them to do that. And it’s like the fact that like, you know, this is happening, you’re spontaneously making a site, like, and you’re not making it in WordPress.

[00:20:33] Sé Reed: I’m not trying to say like WordPress is done because I used Word, like I was literally up until 5am working on a site for a client that they’re launching a thing today, like.

[00:20:43] Jason Tucker: Yeah.

[00:20:43] Sé Reed: it every day, right? I use it all the time. But increasingly, um, it is, it is a, it is, it is just part of a stack, like not the stack of WordPress, but a stack of like data points, right?

[00:20:57] Sé Reed: That like where data is moving from system to system. So it’s just part of an integration stack. And like, it’s just like, everything is, it’s like every, if everything is like, it’s not headless WordPress, it’s bodiless WordPress. It’s like the opposite of that. It’s like, like all WordPress is, is like, you know, just a database holding stuff.

[00:21:21] Sé Reed: But the database is really obnoxious. Right. So it’s like, I was even the little, like I make some dashboard micro sites and now you can just make those in, you can even make those in Airtable. You can just make an Airtable site. And even less than I was noticing. Uh, Zapier, you can make your little dashboards and your data things, right?

[00:21:43] Sé Reed: So there’s all these use cases for WordPress displaying information on the internet, right? That is what a webpage is, and we’ve just put so many barriers Between, um, anything but blogging, I guess, because, you know, you can still just sign up, you got your posts, whatever, like you can still do that really easily, but anything past that is like really, uh, unclear and laborious.

[00:22:12] Sé Reed: And, um, You know, I guess you’d have to go to like wordpress. com or something to get the kind of sort of easier version where it’s like suggested little like, you know, I don’t know. I, it just, this is not to say that this is a reason for us ending the show. Um, just to bring that back to that. Cause we just kind of went on this whole like WordPress, you know, negative bash and, and I have plenty to say about that.

[00:22:39] Sé Reed: But the reason I do want to talk about like the reason because everyone’s gonna be like why are you doing that and we were Talking about everything that’s going on with Cosper and then Tucker you wanted to talk about well I want to I want you to talk about like, you know, cuz you’re really you’ve been the The heart the backbone.

[00:22:58] Sé Reed: Yeah, it’s more like the spinal cord of this You know of this show. I might I might be the heart And then like maybe Cosper is like the the frontal lobe or you know what I mean like you’ve got this part or we’re all brain parts you know what I mean I’m like the part that’s like lights up with emotion and you’re like the logic and then you’re like the keeping it all like the primal one keeping it alive.

[00:23:22] Sé Reed: I don’t know what parts of the brain those are but that’s my take.

[00:23:25] Jason Cosper: I’m all in baby.

[00:23:29] Sé Reed: Yeah maybe we’re those I don’t know um but you know Jason you’ve really been the Lifeblood at the very least of the show in keeping the, keeping the lights on. And, um, so you, you, after our break, you know, it wasn’t necessarily intended to be a thought thing, a thought process where we were taking time to think or anything, but you did in fact, take some time to think,

[00:23:55] Jason Tucker: Well, you know, you, you, uh, you sit, you sit there and you think, uh, so we’re, we’re putting together a show for people to watch, to talk about WordPress. But are we talking about WordPress and what part of WordPress are we talking about and who’s our target audience and who’s our, this and what’s going on with

[00:24:14] Sé Reed: who are we talking to?

[00:24:17] Jason Tucker: sometimes it’s just myself. It’s just me just going like, what’s going on here?

[00:24:21] Sé Reed: No, I mean, who are we talking to?

[00:24:22] Jason Tucker: like, yeah, right.

[00:24:24] Sé Reed: to? Who’s anyone talking to?

[00:24:26] Jason Tucker: ends up watching this

[00:24:27] Sé Reed: What are we doing here?

[00:24:31] Jason Tucker: yeah. Other than

[00:24:33] Sé Reed: are

[00:24:33] Jason Tucker: like Cosper’s, other than doing Cosper’s first, like news outlet here where we’ve discussed, uh, you know, how he built the website. So at least he has that figured out. So when CNN talks to him or something next that, uh, it all worked out. So that, that’s good. So we, we, we broke the news first, but yeah,

[00:24:51] Jason Cosper: give me a ring.

[00:24:53] Jason Tucker: I’ll let your boy.

[00:24:55] Jason Cosper: Yeah.

[00:24:55] Jason Tucker: Yeah. So,

[00:24:56] Sé Reed: that’s breaking it all. You

[00:24:58] Jason Tucker: right. Um, I don’t know. It’s just, it’s like this, this is a, um, this was, this was a labor of love that, um, I had that I kind of no longer love. That’s really what it came down

[00:25:13] Sé Reed: out of love with the show. Not with the show, with

[00:25:17] Jason Tucker: With the show.

[00:25:18] Sé Reed: WordPress, with

[00:25:19] Jason Tucker: Yeah. With, with the show,

[00:25:20] Sé Reed: No, because we’re the show, like you didn’t fall out of love with

[00:25:23] Jason Tucker: Well, yeah, but if we were talking about, if we were talking about one of my other hobbies, I’d be super stoked about it.

[00:25:29] Jason Tucker: But like, this is like, not my, this is my burden. This isn’t my hobby. This is like a burden now. It’s like, Oh, I have to like, deal with this crap. There’s all this WordPress stuff. And every time I want to write a blog post, I got to push an update and I got to fix this. And I don’t even

[00:25:43] Sé Reed: you don’t even want to use WordPress for your site, let alone talk

[00:25:46] Jason Tucker: Like, I don’t even think that the video on the front page of wpwatercooler.

[00:25:50] Jason Tucker: com right now works because last night I, I like put the embed in and it like doesn’t load. And I was like, you know what? I don’t give a crap.

[00:25:58] Sé Reed: Fuck it up. It

[00:26:01] Jason Tucker: Hopefully you watch it on YouTube. I don’t know. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s. It’s just one, it’s, it’s one of those things where like the show doesn’t make any money, not that money’s the important part of it, but the show costs money to produce. That’s another one of it. Um, dealing with sponsors, it’s like, I don’t want to deal with sponsors because sponsors require us to do a show.

[00:26:21] Jason Tucker: And maybe, you know, uh, Cosper’s dog has some issue or, or Sé’s kid has some issue or my cars have an issue or I had a kitchen flood too, you know, it’s like we all had these things, you know?

[00:26:34] Sé Reed: Oh, shoot. I don’t want to.

[00:26:36] Jason Tucker: Yeah. You need to, you need to go check your water heater. Say, I’m just, I’m just knocking on some wood

[00:26:41] Sé Reed: I do want to check my dryer. I think about this all the time because, um, someone in the WordPress world had a fire in their dryer and their house burned down. And I think about it a lot. And my dryer keeps like taking off and like being like,

[00:26:53] Jason Tucker: all that,

[00:26:54] Sé Reed: feel like there’s

[00:26:54] Jason Tucker: all that stuff out.

[00:26:56] Sé Reed: Yeah. So I’m going to do that before my house burns down.

[00:27:00] Sé Reed: And I add to the fire and the flood. 12

[00:27:03] Jason Tucker: now, we’re closing in on 12 years. It’s like, it,

[00:27:06] Sé Reed: years!

[00:27:07] Jason Tucker: it’s, it’s just, it’s a, it’s a long time. And the thing is, is

[00:27:11] Sé Reed: dog’s life. It’s a dog’s whole lifetime.

[00:27:13] Jason Tucker: right like is WordPress supposed to be like the end all be all for everything. Like if you’re building, you know, our famous thing is building a cat blog.

[00:27:22] Jason Tucker: If you’re building a, you know, Tim Walz fixes your bicycle. com website, would you build this on WordPress? I don’t think you should.

[00:27:31] Sé Reed: No?

[00:27:32] Jason Tucker: If you are, it better be on WordPress VIP and somebody who’s being like 24, seven babysitting this thing to make sure it works.

[00:27:38] Sé Reed: my

[00:27:38] Jason Tucker: know, it’s, it, you know what I mean? It’s, it’s, it’s a whole different beast, but if you accidentally build a cat blog and your cat becomes the most famous cat on the internet and everyone’s going to your cat’s website.

[00:27:53] Jason Tucker: And you built it off of 5webhosting. com with some like janky plugins that you just clicked on and we’re like, yeah, yeah, I’ll install all the SEO plugins. And you do that. Your site’s going to blow up.

[00:28:05] Sé Reed: That’s what happened to me in, in 2016 when I, uh, was, uh, doing the digital management for the, and the, that campaign to, um, petition for the electors to change their votes to not elect Trump, um, as president of the United States. And, um, turns out it was the most popular, uh, petition ever on change. org.

[00:28:34] Sé Reed: Even more popular than the don’t eat puppies one, um, which kind of impressive, but it turns out when you send an email, a little message to all the people who have signed the petition and fun fact later change. org came back and said, wow, no one’s ever used this like that before. And I was like, really?

[00:28:52] Sé Reed: Okay. No wonder it broke. Uh, they, when you send that email, they had no delays or there was not batched in any way, shape or form. Uh, they’re just like, yeah, we just sent those emails. And so let me tell you, when those clicks came in, how fast did my site go down? So fast. Went down so fast. And you know what else?

[00:29:09] Sé Reed: It wouldn’t get back up. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. I was like, oh, I have to like change everything right now. And they’re like, yeah, DNS is having, I’m like, we have to change DNS right now. Are you kidding me? After this link went out and they were like, yeah. And I now think about that. So like when, for example, the, was it CrowdStrike thing?

[00:29:29] Sé Reed: The CrowdStrike

[00:29:30] Jason Tucker: Uh huh.

[00:29:30] Sé Reed: a couple of weeks ago. I was like, see, not just me. I think that every time

[00:29:36] Jason Tucker: Right.

[00:29:37] Sé Reed: I’ve thought that every time some site goes down, I’m like, I take screenshots. I’m like, I don’t feel bad about it. I still feel bad about it, obviously, but I try to not feel bad about it.

[00:29:45] Jason Tucker: So to go back to, to go back to your,

[00:29:48] Sé Reed: Not worth it.

[00:29:48] Jason Tucker: me, the, the, the idea is, is that this, this burden that I had of being the one that puts together the site, puts together the show, manages all these things, these are things, these are self inflicting wounds. All of these are self inflicting wounds. The

[00:30:03] Sé Reed: Self inflicted.

[00:30:04] Jason Tucker: self inflicted wounds, my two co hosts here are not to blame for any of those.

[00:30:10] Sé Reed: Thank you for that. I think it makes it sound like we’re horrible people.

[00:30:13] Jason Tucker: The only blame that I have for them is that they would, they, they are the ones that need to come up with the topic for the show and the title for the show. And, um, and,

[00:30:22] Sé Reed: didn’t always do that in a timely manner. Is that surprising to

[00:30:27] Jason Tucker: was the

[00:30:27] Jason Cosper: No, no. Yeah. And especially for

[00:30:31] Sé Reed: and I are neuro spicy.

[00:30:35] Jason Cosper: especially for somebody who, uh, has fallen out of love with WordPress,

[00:30:40] Jason Tucker: Yeah. And I have to come up with a damn title.

[00:30:44] Jason Cosper: asking the two people who still do WordPress on a day to day basis to come up with something that people have been talking about. Uh, yeah, I, I get that. My bad. Uh, like.

[00:30:56] Sé Reed: No. I mean, we came up with stuff,

[00:30:59] Jason Cosper: We did, but sometimes it was, but, but sometimes, but, but right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

[00:31:05] Jason Cosper: See, sometimes it was Thursday evening and it’s, what are we going to have a show about this

[00:31:10] Sé Reed: but see, it wasn’t always like that because I didn’t always have a kid. You know, like, we, we didn’t always, like, that really took a lot of my free time. I don’t know. Turns out that’s a thing. BT

[00:31:22] Jason Tucker: on, early on, we would just, um, I would just come up with something, uh, um, before my lunch break. And then I would just, uh, I would just, I would type in whatever it is. That’s what it’s going to be. And I would say at the beginning, everybody’s like, Oh, that’s what we’re talking about. Okay. Sounds great.

[00:31:36] Jason Tucker: And we would just do that.

[00:31:38] Sé Reed: Yeah, it’s a, I, it turns out that’s a format I thrive in. It’s just like random, spontaneous conversation. So I’ve been having random, spontaneous conversations since, uh, 2012. And, uh,

[00:31:49] Jason Tucker: have to pre plan your random spontaneity.

[00:31:52] Sé Reed: no, this is why I never want to talk about the show before the show, because if I respond to it, like, then I’m like, oh, that’s gone now.

[00:31:59] Sé Reed: I’ve now

[00:31:59] Jason Tucker: Yeah, you’ve checked it off the list.

[00:32:01] Sé Reed: That’s where all the gold is in my little ADHD brain, it’s like, buh bye, we’ve moved on, that’s no longer interesting,

[00:32:08] Jason Cosper: say, say, did, did you say, did you also thrive, uh, at making the poster board, like the morning of, for the science project? Like, is, is that

[00:32:19] Sé Reed: why do you think I was up until 5am last night? Although, for, to my, to my defense, Uh, there was some nonsense API documentation that I had to wade through that was like this new thing that they changed. It was not totally my fault, because integrations without documentation are like, um, you’re like, hold on, let me just hack my way through this and see what works, like over here throwing spaghetti at a wall.

[00:32:44] Sé Reed: But yes, uh, you know, long, long story short, long answer short, yes.

[00:32:50] Jason Tucker: yeah, yeah,

[00:32:52] Jason Cosper: Too late

[00:32:53] Jason Tucker: Oh,

[00:32:54] Sé Reed: Last minute. So, I mean, that’s what, how it obviously worked out with the show also. But I mean, I don’t think if we, you know, were pre planning, like, see, this is the thing pre planning, doing like a season, like getting guests, like all of that stuff. That’s like, you know, we, we did that in a very spontaneous way.

[00:33:14] Sé Reed: We’ve always done that in a very spontaneous way and we’ve never treated this show as like, A production, like one, so back in the day in 1998, a really long time ago folks, um, I worked at, so it was before the little first bubble, I worked at a place, uh, why can’t I remember, Cyber Radio TV is what it was called.

[00:33:37] Jason Tucker: They added all the words in the

[00:33:39] Sé Reed: It was all there. Cyber Radio TV. Um, and it was, uh, a streaming, like, network that, in 98, okay? So, it was like, you know, could have been Netflix, could have been Spotify, like, it had, you know, whatever. It did not do that, by the way. I don’t know if you knew that, but it did not do that. Um, actually become a thing.

[00:34:00] Sé Reed: Um, not even like pets. com or whatever. Uh, so I produced three shows there that were streamed on, um, what was it called? Uh, not broadband. It was called, uh, it was before everyone, when everyone had dial up, right? It was like, I guess it was before broadband. It was like, everyone had dial up. And we were like,

[00:34:22] Jason Tucker: or something.

[00:34:23] Sé Reed: Yeah, we were like, you know, broadcasting and like no one could like get the feed because there was like no live streaming back in the day.

[00:34:31] Sé Reed: So I did three shows and I can never remember all the titles of them except for the one that I named which was a sports show, which I don’t care about at all. And it was, uh, called Nothing But Net. Which, you know, I love a, I love some alliteration. It was great. Um, uh, anyway, so I produced these shows and we got guests and we like, you know, did this show. I guess what I’m trying to say is I am, I’m used to and have in my career made content that nobody gave a shit about. I was going with that.

[00:35:07] Jason Tucker: Like, look, the thing is, is that there,

[00:35:10] Sé Reed: in making content that no one cares about, and sometimes people do care about it so much that they have, you know, conniption fits on their 40th birthday and meltdowns and whatever that lead to like massive chaos.

[00:35:22] Sé Reed: Um, sometimes that does happen. Occasionally.

[00:35:26] Jason Tucker: we do get downloads here though. There are like downloads that happen. I mean, you go on YouTube, not everyone wants to watch us

[00:35:31] Sé Reed: can find me

[00:35:33] Jason Tucker: as a podcast. Yeah. There’s people listening to us as a podcast. Um, they listen way more than they watch us on video, which means, you know, you put a lot of effort into video and then, um, no one really gives a crap about it.

[00:35:47] Jason Tucker: They’re just like. It’s so cool. You’re it’s so cool that you’re showing the thing, but you never actually say what the thing is. And I’m on audio, so I don’t know that I’m actually holding a remote control right now. You know, it’s like that sort of thing. No way.

[00:36:08] Sé Reed: Like I am, I am the last, I wanted to do this last because I feel like I’m the, it’s not Johnny come lately, but like, uh, Tucker came to us with his decision,

[00:36:18] Jason Tucker: Yeah.

[00:36:18] Sé Reed: like,

[00:36:19] Jason Cosper: and he

[00:36:19] Sé Reed: this anymore.

[00:36:20] Jason Cosper: and, and he gave us the opportunity to

[00:36:24] Sé Reed: Oh, mm hmm.

[00:36:25] Jason Cosper: doing the show without him.

[00:36:27] Sé Reed: of course. He’s still totally like, you know, whatever. What do you want? He wasn’t like, F you.

[00:36:32] Sé Reed: I’m pulling the plug. You get nothing. Uh, no, so then Cosper and I were gonna chit chat about that. Then Cosper had himself a thing also. Uh, and, and Cosper had already been asking, you know, some existential questions with like, you know, bulleted lists in, um, in text. Like, that’s pretty impressive. I actually found a new feature on my iPhone that if you actually, like, do too long of a text, It will, it will like auto thread it for you.

[00:36:58] Sé Reed: It was really, I was like, Oh, I didn’t know it did that. Cool. Here’s my essay replying to you about that. This whole show has been brought to you by

[00:37:07] Jason Tucker: ever seen. It was pretty impressive.

[00:37:09] Sé Reed: It was cool. Uh, so anyway, like, so then, you know, Cosper, you, as you talked about, you had the weekend to reflect on all of the stuff you’ve been going through and the effort you’re able to bring to the table.

[00:37:19] Sé Reed: And then, you know, he messaged us and said, you know, I can’t do this either. You know, I can’t, I can’t take on, what’d you call it? Co parenting.

[00:37:29] Jason Cosper: Right,

[00:37:30] Jason Tucker: I’m going

[00:37:31] Sé Reed: co parenting role, and I was like, it’s more like a single parenting role, like,

[00:37:36] Jason Tucker: the

[00:37:36] Sé Reed: you know, so anyway, we would be co parenting, you’ve been, you know, single parenting, we’ve been like aunt and uncle ing over here, is what we’ve been doing.

[00:37:44] Jason Tucker: that

[00:37:45] Sé Reed: and we’d have to like adopt the child.

[00:37:47] Jason Tucker: in a while or, okay, just wanna make sure. She just will

[00:37:52] Sé Reed: every once in a while, I’m a very dedicated aunt, okay? Like, I show up all the time, whether you want me there or not, with a hot dish. We’ll not show up early, but I will show up late, and sometimes I will bring a hot dish, because this is my new favorite word, hot dish. Okay, um, maybe that should be the name of a, of a thing I do, hot dish, because like, It’d be hot stuffy dish.

[00:38:14] Sé Reed: I’m sure someone’s using that. Okay. Anyway, uh, so I didn’t make this decision. Um, I did not it because I’m not producing the show by myself. I’m not going to go talk. I already talked to myself on the show. I’m not going to like come in here and just be a little talking head and it’s like say, at the watercooler talking to herself like a person who should probably, uh, have some special care.

[00:38:41] Sé Reed: Um, that’s not going to happen. So that, you know, there was no, there was really no, no point. I don’t want to move forward without at least one of these dudes, right? Like, these are like my dudes, right? So that’s not a show. That’s not hanging out at the watercooler. Um, so I didn’t really have to make a decision, but obviously I have been thinking a lot about WordPress.

[00:39:03] Sé Reed: And my connection to WordPress, as evidenced by the last, like, the last episode that we did. So, what is that? Episode 484? 484? Um, that really detailed my experience of, you know, the fallout from all the stuff that happened last year, with, uh, post WordCamp US, with, uh, the Philosopher King of WordPress. And, uh, I mean, for me, Part of that long essay was about having a, I was like, I want to do this if there is a way forward to doing it without like, like, like building up something that I know is toxic, like, like I’m, I’m struggling a lot with wanting to, like, I, like, it’s not just a software because if it was a software, it would be.

[00:39:58] Sé Reed: You know, use this software, use that software, whatever it is. But, you know, when you, it’s like a whole, it is an ecosystem. And by bringing someone into WordPress, whether it’s to contribute or just to use it, you’re bringing them into a whole world, right? With all of these stuff, these little things. And both from a, you know, WordPress isn’t often the right tool for the job anymore because of what it has done.

[00:40:22] Sé Reed: Software, the software decisions it has made, but that is intricately linked with the person who is making those decisions. And I know that that person is not me. is a toxic person. I’m not, I don’t think that he’s irredeemable. Maybe he’ll come around. I’m not, you know, I don’t, I never write people off. I never want to throw someone away.

[00:40:43] Sé Reed: Um, I always want to allow for humans in general to grow and evolve and change. Um, but I’ve not seen any of that. None. Zero. Despite ample opportunity, despite ample resources, um, and I feel, I have felt very conflicted. In my values about moving forward, this is like Jason like doesn’t even care about what we’re talking about it, um, I felt really conflicted in my values about moving forward with something that is essentially promoting WordPress, supporting WordPress, the project, the software, whatever it is, um, even if it’s not directly in line with, um, you know, making Matt money, or like directly influencing, you know, directly dealing with It’s just too interconnected, is the problem.

[00:41:37] Sé Reed: And so I can’t sit here and be a hype person for WordPress, um, with the current structure. I can’t get behind the decisions that are being made for the software. I can’t get behind the decisions that are being made for the community. I am Conflicted about all those things because I still love the community and I still love the idea of the software, but, um, you know, I’ve been in that state.

[00:42:00] Sé Reed: I am, I am, I know about myself, and I told this to the dudes, that I have a tendency to be like, no, we can redeem this. It is redeemable. Um, and hanging on to something for way too long past its redemption point. Um, because I, I have like these.

[00:42:19] Jason Tucker: ghost site now.

[00:42:20] Sé Reed: Yeah, thanks. I appreciate you. Anyway, uh, Tucker’s just tired of listening to me talk.

[00:42:28] Jason Tucker: No, no, no, no. Look, uh, there’s, there’s,

[00:42:31] Sé Reed: like,

[00:42:31] Jason Tucker: there’s a phone call. There’s a phone call waiting to the water polo, water cooler folks that want to take over the show. I’m just kidding. That does not happen. But that is the only thing that this thing could go for is that

[00:42:49] Sé Reed: Yeah. So anyway, we can’t,

[00:42:50] Jason Tucker: water cooler. I don’t know.

[00:42:51] Sé Reed: WP. I mean, I I’m definitely not done with tech. I think that’s all super interesting. I love this format. You know, I put, I put, um, I, I don’t even, I didn’t even like save anything in my, um. On this website that I’ve got down here, Sé Reed’s the internet, which is like literally like a basic um, like 2024 page right now that I’m like gonna delete and be like, yay, let’s save that.

[00:43:16] Sé Reed: Okay, so it’s like Sé Reed’s the internet, you can come, I’ll figure something out. But what I did want to make sure that we talk about, that we’re going to preserve, Is our discord.

[00:43:27] Jason Cosper: Yes.

[00:43:28] Jason Tucker: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:29] Sé Reed: and that is because the discord has become the water cooler because the whole idea, and this is something you’ve always gone back to Jason.

[00:43:39] Sé Reed: That is that this whole thing was, you know, we started it because we were a bunch of freelancers who worked in our houses and we needed to like have human contact and it was literally like, this is our office water cooler. We’re going to get together and shoot the shit about stuff and ask if anyone has any help about this or talk to somebody about this.

[00:43:57] Sé Reed: And honestly, we have that now in our discord. We have a really nice community. We’re pretty good moderators. We don’t really put up with stuff. Like people are growing as humans.

[00:44:09] Jason Cosper: Silence.

[00:44:13] Sé Reed: you know, willing to talk with people, like, you know, we’re, we’re not shy, well, Cosper’s not shy about using the band hammer or the boot, but at the same time, that’s not the first resort, but also we’re not just letting people hang out there and take screenshots and whatever.

[00:44:29] Sé Reed: So we’re, we’re, we have this nice little curated water cooler experience happening in the discord where we’re able to have. Those conversations that I still want to have about WordPress, like the software, and ranting about, you know, the API, and whatever, and we can do that in a way that doesn’t burden Jason, doesn’t require us to be hype people, doesn’t require us to, um,

[00:44:53] Jason Cosper: let’s

[00:44:56] Sé Reed: of should you join the media core?

[00:44:58] Sé Reed: No. No, we should not join the media core. Like, no, we’re not joining the state sponsored media. Like, the world, the world of WordPress is taking such a direction, like the actual official community. And, you know, we would have to be outside of that. With what we’re doing and it would just not only be so much work, but also like just engaging in those conversations and being like, who do we have on?

[00:45:20] Sé Reed: And, you know, are they supporting this person? It just, it’s too much. And so I’m, I’m genuinely grateful, honestly, that we’re all able that like, we’re like consciously uncoupling with our podcast.

[00:45:33] Jason Tucker: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:35] Sé Reed: it and we’re like, this has been a thing and like, we’ve really enjoyed it. And it’s like, this is, you know, so I just want to commend you Jason for being able to recognize that.

[00:45:45] Sé Reed: Like, I think that that’s, that’s really something that isn’t easy to do to, to, to recognize that like that era is like, it’s just not, it’s for all the reasons, you know, there’s not just one reason, like all the reasons. I just, I think that it’s, I don’t know, I’ve been like trying to see how I feel about this, like do I feel sad, do I feel, and I haven’t talked about this, we didn’t talk about it with other folks, you know, prior to this, but it feels right. It feels right. It feels like this is, it feels natural. It feels like this is a, it feels like the right time. It feels like it’s not too late, and it feels like it’s not too soon. I got everything off my chest that I wanted to get off my chest in terms of Matt in that last episode with you, Tucker, that we did the transcript of and You know, I don’t, I don’t want to have to keep bringing that up because everything that we talk about comes with a disclaimer.

[00:46:46] Sé Reed: Like, oh yeah, by this way, this, by the way, this guy’s like, literally like, you know, an authoritarian nightmare. Which,

[00:46:54] Jason Tucker: right, right. Yeah. I mean, the

[00:46:56] Sé Reed: do not endorse, you know.

[00:46:58] Jason Tucker: we, we talked a lot of shit. We ran out of shit to talk about is pretty much what

[00:47:02] Sé Reed: I don’t think he talks shit.

[00:47:04] Jason Tucker: Oh, I think we talked a lot of shit.

[00:47:06] Sé Reed: well, we talked about a lot of shit, but I never, I I’ve never considered myself a shit talker ever once.

[00:47:12] Jason Tucker: No, no, no, I, maybe, maybe not using that as a, as using that was probably the wrong thing, but like the, the idea of just like,

[00:47:20] Sé Reed: All the stuff we’ve talked about.

[00:47:21] Jason Tucker: we would talk about anything. And we’re not sponsored by anybody. So no, we’re not like, Oh, we got to go through this maze of sponsorships to figure out what things we can talk about and not talk about.

[00:47:30] Jason Tucker: We, yeah. Sponsored by Jason Tucker.

[00:47:34] Sé Reed: Yeah.

[00:47:34] Jason Tucker: know, it was just like,

[00:47:35] Sé Reed: you really have been, you know, doing it. No, we’ve been independent. We’ve been, um, you know, doing this thing and I feel like it’s.

[00:47:44] Jason Tucker: news.

[00:47:45] Sé Reed: We’re not state sponsored news. And we’re gonna have the community that we’ve built. I don’t even know, like, I’m not even going, I don’t even know what’s happening with WordCamp US.

[00:47:54] Sé Reed: Like, I mean, I do, because I’m, I’m still with the WPCC. Still trying to figure that whole thing out. Um, and, but like, I don’t even really want to go to WordCamp US. And that’s so sad to me. But like, Like I used, like, remember when we, like, would, like, pal around and, like, we, we interview people on multiple things, we did live broadcasts, like, we were really having fun and doing cool things and it’s just, like, all the joy has been sapped out of that and so even, like, the thing, I can’t just sit here and, like, promote and talk about it with, with joy anymore.

[00:48:27] Sé Reed: Yes, it’s my job, yes, it’s a tool, but now it’s just, like, it’s just a tool

[00:48:33] Jason Tucker: Yeah.

[00:48:34] Sé Reed: a certain, you know, and we’re creating our own community, but, like, it doesn’t have the.

[00:48:38] Jason Tucker: Is it the best tool? Is it the right tool? Is it the appropriate tool? Is

[00:48:44] Sé Reed: There is definitely a tool in WordPress.

[00:48:49] Jason Tucker: it is definitely hashtag it

[00:48:52] Sé Reed: depends, but there is definitely, it’s not always the right tool, but there is a tool for sure. It is definitely a tool. Uh, I feel like the ever encroaching, um, I, I really feel like The community, the software, like, we have seen multiple open source softwares be like unopened, like, have their licenses changed, be, you know,

[00:49:16] Jason Tucker: Bought

[00:49:16] Sé Reed: nothing, like, bought, subsumed, like, consumed, acquired, whatever it is, like, and, and, like, changed, and I feel like that’s what’s happening also with WordPress and Automatic and, you know, WordPress.

[00:49:29] Sé Reed: com, and I don’t, I think that’s intentional, I think that that’s, And I’m not going to stop, and I’m not interested in fighting that battle. And I don’t want to have a show where we’re like sitting here talking. Like I said, like, I don’t want to have to be negative all the time just because otherwise like I’m endorsing this dude.

[00:49:44] Sé Reed: Like, who’s like not a nice dude. It’s actually funny. I told my, I told my daughter, This morning I was like, yeah, you have to go with your auntie because I’m going to do a last, she’s on summer break. I was like, you’re going to do a last water cooler. She’s like, you’re not going to do water cooler anymore?

[00:49:59] Sé Reed: And I was like, no. She’s like, why not? I was like, how do I answer this for a four year old? And it’s like, well, it’s just time. I have a lot to work too. I’ve got to spend with you. And you know, it hasn’t been the greatest. It’s been hard lately. And she goes, She literally said this, she goes, and Matt Mullenweg’s not a nice person. I was like, that’s

[00:50:26] Jason Tucker: Hey, look, as long as she leaves a five star that we’re good,

[00:50:29] Jason Cosper: right. Right. I was it when, when she asks, uh, why you’re not doing the water cooler anymore, just send her a link to the video. She can watch it on her own time. It’s okay,

[00:50:42] Sé Reed: did a whole episode on it, babe. Read the transcript,

[00:50:45] Jason Tucker: we’ll update her Weebly site and everything will be fine.

[00:50:48] Jason Cosper: Right. Kids, kids are very digitally savvy. It’s it’s fine. She can just watch the video.

[00:50:54] Sé Reed: Did I ever say on the show, I’m going to say it again because it was so funny. My favorite, uh, little moment that I’ve had about my, uh, her was when she was three though. She goes, she goes, mama, when I’m a mama, can I make websites too? I was like, yeah, cause only mamas can make websites. We’re the only ones that are allowed to do that. Sorry. Yeah, you have to be a mama and then you can make websites. So funny. Anyway, it’s, uh, I’m excited that we’re going to, um, be able to just, you know, be part of our community in the Discord. I’m going to put, be able to put more energy into the WPCC for now, um, and try to get that actually doing something because that is something that is a community effort and can be.

[00:51:43] Sé Reed: You know, something that is a force for good in WordPress that doesn’t require me to be a hype person. And in fact, you know, has the ability to be a good force, a force for good within the WordPress community. So I, I’m going to put more effort into that. Um, and trying to make sure that, you know, WordPress, the software does have an independent, um, contributor base.

[00:52:10] Sé Reed: Like that’s kind of the goal there, right? That it’s not just. Everybody who works on the software is an automatician. That’s my goal with that, really. And, I mean, you know, that’s just because I think that’s important from an open source software, 43 percent of the internet, using the tool sort of perspective, right?

[00:52:30] Sé Reed: I don’t want to just be like, Oh, yeah, you can just have it. Just take it. You know, I don’t want to hype it up every week anymore, but I still think it’s important. So, you know, I knew it was coming and I’m on the same page, even though I would never have pulled the plug because I never do that. I’m not good at hitting the button ever, but I’m glad you two are.

[00:52:50] Jason Cosper: I will see. And, and that was, that was just it. Uh, I, I knew that if we kept this going, kind of, kind of like you touched on now, uh, with, uh, the, this whole refocused, uh, WP media core, like, uh, the whole thing, and, uh, I, these are my own opinions. They do not reflect my. Uh, that, that of my employer, uh, which I, I will not say who I am employed by, but I mean, just, just Google it, I guess, if you’re really that mad.

[00:53:21] Jason Cosper: Um, but, uh, the whole WP media core just seems super fucking bootlicky to me. I’m sorry. Now Indie can’t watch the video. Cause I said

[00:53:30] Sé Reed: Oh yeah, that’s true. She can’t,

[00:53:34] Jason Cosper: um, yeah, like it, it just all seems like this sort of like, um, I just hear

[00:53:41] Sé Reed: direction.

[00:53:42] Jason Cosper: Yeah, it’s, it’s not the right direction. We need people, uh, even, even if it needs to be gently questioning the direction of things, uh, I don’t look at, uh, what used to be Twitter is now X very often, but somebody sent me a link, uh, and down.

[00:54:03] Jason Cosper: Like in the related stuff, uh, I saw, uh, Daniel formerly should Smith. I I’m sorry. I’m not aware of the,

[00:54:12] Sé Reed: I think it’s awesome, Smith.

[00:54:13] Jason Cosper: okay. Awesome. Smith, Daniel. Awesome. Smith now, uh, was saying, uh, was, was kind of convention a little bit about the, uh, fact that the excerpt has been moved out of the sidebar into this like little confusing, like.

[00:54:28] Jason Cosper: pop up and it’s like, what is this UX nightmare that you just like foisted upon us? These are like the critical conversations that we used to have here. And, and if, if we keep, if we were to keep doing those, it would just, I don’t know, it would start to like drip of bitterness. It would

[00:54:50] Sé Reed: Yeah, we don’t want to be bitter. We want to be able to have a healthy dialogue. And honestly, it’s kind of not possible in this climate currently. I

[00:54:59] Jason Cosper: Not currently. No.

[00:55:00] Sé Reed: mean, that’s why the marketing team got shut down and a media, an official state sponsored media core was, you know, created, it’s very clear, you know, that that dialogue is not welcome.

[00:55:11] Sé Reed: And then we’re just like, yeah, like bitterly, like being like, well, this sucks, like, who wants to do that? I don’t want to do that.

[00:55:20] Jason Cosper: You can’t, you can’t

[00:55:22] Sé Reed: a hater at my job,

[00:55:24] Jason Cosper: yeah, you, you can’t have a criticism of, uh, the software because, Oh, like that’s not moving, moving things forward. This conversation only moves things backward because you’re being critical. And it’s like, but nobody talked to anybody about moving. The, the area for an excerpt to this weird little pop up window

[00:55:50] Sé Reed: Oh no, that was a GitHub issue in a GitHub repo, repo, repo, repo folder. And that was commented on only by automaticians in a back and forth that lasted about, you know, six hours. And, uh, if you missed it, that’s your problem and you should go read some Vogon poetry. Sorry.

[00:56:13] Jason Cosper: Yeah.

[00:56:14] Sé Reed: Yeah, no, that was, that was all to like make the Douglas Adams reference about the, uh, the, yeah, but basically, you know, like.

[00:56:23] Sé Reed: The fact that in, in that show, right, you would, they would file the, they filed the plans to destroy, not the show, the book, file the plans to destroy earth on another galactic, you know, in a galactic filing space a long time ago. And that’s exactly what happens continually. They’re like, Oh no, we talked about it over here.

[00:56:40] Sé Reed: You know, and all the attempts to make a firehose that makes sense, um, you know, are strongly rejected. Even, uh, discussions about how much Automattic does sponsor WordPress. Like, how much, because there’s a lot of infrastructure that’s actually hosted on Automattic’s, you know, structure. Let alone, like, you know, who’s on the sponsor, or on the hosting page.

[00:57:07] Sé Reed: There’s a whole other like clandestine mafia shit conversation. Like, then there’s also like, how much, so just how much are you donating to the WordPress world with Automatic? And they’re like, we don’t want to talk about that. That’s not something we want to talk. Okay. Well, like, okay. You can’t, we’re not talking about anything then.

[00:57:25] Sé Reed: We can’t even, we can’t even know how much you’re doing,

[00:57:28] Jason Tucker: Right.

[00:57:29] Sé Reed: like, you know, appreciate it or whatever, because it’s such a hostile environment. So there’s no, there’s no way to exist in this environment without being a hater. And, you know, I think we’ve done an admirable job of not becoming haters or bitter, and I think that it’s good that we’re, I don’t know that we could move forward without that, without bitterness, like you’re saying, without that constant asterisk, where it’s like, you know, we’re talking more about the way things WordPress, the way WordPress could be.

[00:58:05] Sé Reed: And how we wish it could be instead of how WordPress is. And so at that point, we’re just having a fantasy conversation and we’re not even talking about WordPress, you know, maybe we’ll all come back and have a better, like fantasy tech talk or something, who knows,

[00:58:18] Jason Tucker: who knows?

[00:58:19] Sé Reed: really interesting. But like,

[00:58:21] Jason Tucker: Yeah, but it’s just, I just hope that there’s another show out there that’s doing what we’re doing that,

[00:58:29] Sé Reed: there’s a bunch of trying to do it, but who cares, whatever,

[00:58:31] Jason Tucker: but I hope that I hope that there is though, because the fact that you have state sponsored this and state sponsored that you also ultimately end up having sponsors that are potentially state sponsored as well.

[00:58:46] Jason Tucker: So it ends up becoming this like, this like blob of sponsorship that is really just WordPress Chuck E. Cheese tokens that are being like passed around. And,

[00:58:57] Sé Reed: Oh, it totally

[00:58:57] Jason Tucker: you

[00:58:59] Sé Reed: It’s like, um, it’s like all the media networks, right? Right. The media networks that like, so and so owns this conglomerate, which owns this conglomerate, which owns this conglomerate. And at any given time, you’re just watching all one entity that your money is funneling into, you know, whether you got your Hulu or your Disney Plus or your whatever, right?

[00:59:17] Sé Reed: It’s all the same thing. And that’s really just what’s happening right now. Right, with WordPress. I was looking at, this weekend I was walking my dog, uh, this week actually, reflecting on this. And I have a Jetpack swag bag. I was actually going to bring it, but then I forgot. It’s like a little green bag that we, I got, you know, a long time ago at, I think, WordCamp San Francisco.

[00:59:38] Sé Reed: Maybe it’s like, these little, like, fold up able bags that are, like, small. And I use it for, um, I use it for my doggie bags. For

[00:59:47] Jason Cosper: let’s go ahead and get started.

[00:59:49] Sé Reed: And like the jet pack is like,

[00:59:50] Jason Tucker: that are ultimately become our wash shirts. Yeah.

[00:59:53] Sé Reed: Yeah. And I was just thinking, I was just reflecting on it and I was reflecting on jet pack and how we used to make that joke about like, oh, one of these days WordPress is just gonna be come bundled inside of Jet Pack.

[01:00:04] Sé Reed: You know, back when we had like George on the show who was like a jet pack, uh, worked at jet pack and you know, like. Those, those were jokes. And then like, now it’s just like this, like authoritarian nightmare rolled inside of an authoritarian nightmare. And like, it’s like, you know, everyone owns something.

[01:00:22] Sé Reed: And then over here you have like the ecosystem folks who are just acquiring things and like, you know, they’re doing like, I don’t know, the, like Starbucks version of WordPress over

[01:00:35] Jason Cosper: I mean, you, you, you kind of, you kind of touched on it with, uh, the streaming stuff, like when, uh, NBC started their thing, like all of the, the NBC or universal shows all got rolled up onto Peacock. And if you wanted to watch a universal show, you had to go to Peacock. If you wanted to watch a Paramount show, you had to go to Paramount like, uh, or Viacom or whatever.

[01:00:58] Jason Cosper: It like, all of these things are like conglomerating.

[01:01:01] Sé Reed: Mm hmm. And, and that’s what’s happening in WordPress with the, you know, you’ve got your, your Stellar clump or your Liquid Web clump, you’ve got your WP Engine clump, you have all of these clumps. Uh, and I, you know, we’ve talked about what that’s going to look like. Are they become their own self hosted things?

[01:01:17] Sé Reed: Everyone’s forking the software? Like, who knows? But I know that the WordPress, um, that I want to love. It’s like someone, you know, when you’re breaking up with someone, sometimes you have to recognize that like the person that you thought they were, or the person that you did love or fell in love with isn’t that person anymore.

[01:01:36] Sé Reed: Right. Like, or, you know, maybe they never were that person. Um,

[01:01:42] Jason Cosper: it’s not me. It’s you.

[01:01:44] Sé Reed: yeah, it’s not us, by the way, not us. And it’s actually, it’s not you, anyone who’s probably listening to the show, unless you’re hate listening to the show. And then in this case, it is you specifically. you’re hate listening, it’s you. Hi Matt.

[01:02:00] Sé Reed: Um, anyway, uh, actually, bye Matt. We got bye Felicia, now we got bye Matt. Are we done? Are we, are we gonna peace

[01:02:08] Jason Tucker: Yeah. Um, I’m, um, I’m going to go into the garage and I’m going to do some woodworking. And I did want to share one of my favorite, um, one of my favorite little things here from Cosper’s website.

[01:02:22] Jason Cosper: Oh yeah.

[01:02:24] Sé Reed: You hold the other end of that tape measure, tape measure. Uh, I love you all. This has been, this has been 12 years of our lives. Like 12 years of my life and Tucker’s life and like, I don’t know, 8 or something or 9

[01:02:36] Jason Cosper: Not, almost nine, almost nine.

[01:02:38] Sé Reed: and that’s a really long time and, you know, I hope everyone who listens to this show comes and chitchats in the, uh, Discord because that’s where we’ll be hanging out and talking.

[01:02:49] Sé Reed: And we have a voice chat in there, so if we want to chat, you miss my voice, um, you know, we can go, we can chat in there. I’m not, you know, Tucker’s kind of leaving the WordPress space altogether, really, because he already is gone. Uh, Cosper’s not going anywhere, because he still works here, but he’s not going to be his hobbyist.

[01:03:06] Sé Reed: He’s going to try to separate some work life balance. Uh, right? Yeah. And, um,

[01:03:12] Jason Cosper: it’s,

[01:03:12] Jason Tucker: I have WordPress sites, I still have to manage and do stuff too. This, but this does not have to do with Matt or have to do with the software itself or the ecosystems or any of those sorts of things. These are just like PHP files and CSS files that all talk to each other. And, and, you know, it may or may not work depending on if someone, you know, some independent developer forgot to like, you know, put a carriage return on something or what have you.

[01:03:34] Jason Cosper: yeah, this, this is this, uh, in a way, this is kind of like, uh, in the early two thousands, when I finally like, I was a hardcore windows user, uh, and, uh, when I finally switched to Mac OS, it was because my entire day, I spent working on and troubleshooting windows users. And I.

[01:03:56] Jason Tucker: for a day job.

[01:03:57] Jason Cosper: Right. But I didn’t, I didn’t want to do that when I ended my day.

[01:04:02] Jason Cosper: So I bought Macs and now I spend all day on Macs and fortunately I’m not troubleshooting Mac users, but like in this case, I spend all day on WordPress. The last thing I want to do at the end of my day, uh, unless you’re paying me to optimize your site, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, uh, is more WordPress.

[01:04:27] Sé Reed: Right. Work life balance, because that would still be work if you’re getting paid. But we’ll still be in the chat, what I’m trying to say, talking about it, because we still are, you know, doing it in the life, like, we’re still like, it’s still part of our lives, it’s still a tool, it’s still what we’re using, it’s just, we are not going to come here and chit chat about it on this show and talk to you on the things.

[01:04:47] Sé Reed: And we’re going to miss

[01:04:48] Jason Tucker: still on discord and I’m still hanging out in the discord. I’m just not going to be running it.

[01:04:53] Sé Reed: We miss, well, I’m gonna miss this. I’m gonna miss y’all. I’m gonna miss this thing, but honestly, I miss WordPress too. I miss what we all had, and instead of maybe missing it, I’m just gonna feel a little nostalgic for it and be like, you know, end of an era. Right?

[01:05:07] Sé Reed: Like, my daughter just graduated preschool this week. End of an era. And, um, This is an end of an era. We’re just, you know, moving on. We’re all growing up. Uh,

[01:05:19] Jason Cosper: she graduated preschool this week. This show has been going on so long that I remember when you told. Uh, Tucker, myself and Steve, who was still here, uh, that you were having, uh,

[01:05:34] Sé Reed: I was going to have a baby. Yeah. I mean, that was only five, it was like five years ago. So that wasn’t even like, it was more than halfway through the show. So yeah, we have a whole human lost a dog, you know, we’ve done a lot of life things. So this is a big part of my, you know, y’all are my friends and a lot of y’all who are listening, you know, I consider you my, my community, my people.

[01:05:53] Sé Reed: So I don’t want to lose you any more than I have with, losing WordPress and, you know, feeling like I’m losing the WordCamps and the, you know, the local scene from down here in SoCal has been so different. So, please come in. Let’s, let’s curate a nice, good place for all of us who need to use WordPress and are using WordPress and, you know, can have, can be on that, you know, have, aren’t drinking the Kool Aid, aren’t interested in the Kool Aid, know that there is Kool Aid.

[01:06:25] Sé Reed: You know, trying to put up signs to be like, don’t drink the Kool Aid, you guys, you

[01:06:30] Jason Tucker: There’s some water.

[01:06:31] Sé Reed: Kool Aid, Slack, Watercooler, Slack, Discord.

[01:06:35] Jason Tucker: There’s some water.

[01:06:36] Sé Reed: Yeah,

[01:06:37] Jason Cosper: they can have as much, technically they can have as much Kool Aid as they want. In Jonestown it was Flavor Aid. They spike the flavor aid.

[01:06:46] Sé Reed: can have Kool Aid, just not Flavor Aid.

[01:06:48] Jason Cosper: just, I, I really, uh, you know, we’re, we’re at an hour in, I know Tucker is looking forward to going out and doing some woodwork, but I just had to put, I just had to put my, my pedantry hat on one last time.

[01:07:03] Sé Reed: One last time. Alright, well, I have to just take the last word one last time. I love you all. I love you, Cosper. I love you, Tucker. I love my Jason, and I’ll talk to you online, and I love all you other people who are listening to this and being a part of our lives. Now I’m gonna cry a little

[01:07:22] Jason Cosper: I love you.

[01:07:24] Sé Reed: more. Thank you, Tucker, for making it unsad.

[01:07:26] Sé Reed: Or is that Cosper? I don’t even know. Okay, I love you both. I love you all. Thanks for having us here, Jason. Weep! Nash! Go to the Discord! Don’t listen on any of the things. We love you!

[01:07:49] Jason Cosper: We’ll miss you.