Christina: [00:00:00] My name is Christina Crook, and I am the author of The Joy of Missing Out. I want to welcome you to the JOMOcast, a podcast for founders and creators seeking joy in a digital age. JOMO is the joy of missing out on the right things, things like toxic hustle, comparison and digital drain to make space for life-giving commitments that bring us peace, meaning and joy.

This episode has been a long time coming, but at the same time, I feel it's happened exactly when it should. As we stand at the Dawn of 2020, voices are being raised heralding the next decade as the era of JOMO, a decade of reassessing, renegotiating, the excesses of social media hyperconnection and hustle of the past 10 years.[00:01:00]

What was very recently regarded as fringe unrealistic or even ignorant criticism of the harm that a completely unconsidered shotgun wedding to technology might bring has begun to be seen as synonymous with wellness and even human rights. It was early in that decade that Anil Dash, today, the founder and CEO of a modular app design startup, Glitch, coined the term that brought both the title of my first book and all the work I've done in the years since into bright focus: JOMO, the joy of missing out. Anil has gone from pioneer of the digital wilderness to townie of the now ubiquitous web to ombudsman of the digital community with his company's emphasis on accessible code for one and all.

He's seen the rise of the social media giants, the fall of the [00:02:00] quirky creative underground that defined the early online landscape and the social and personal harm that has come from taking a wild west of free expression and participation to a labyrinth of gated communities locked down by unimaginably powerful entities with profit as their only motivating force. On today's episode, Anil reflects on the past, present, and future of who we are when we're with our tech, starting with the inception of that crazy little acronym JOMO.

To say that this conversation is a long time coming is a bit of an understatement. At least for me personally. I'm sitting here with Anil Dash who way back in 2012, coined the term JOMO, so Anil thank you for being here with me.

Anil: Thanks so much for having me. It does feel overdue. I'm excited to get the chance to actually talk.

Christina: And we're sitting in your studio actually, where you create the podcast [00:03:00] Function, and what else happens in this space?

Anil: A lot, you know our company here Glitch, we are a, um, a startup and it's a tool that people use to build apps online and, and really it's it it's interesting, it parallels a lot of things I'm sure we'll talk about, which is this, you know, a lot of people don't feel good about the internet these days about, well, what's happening to my information. What are these apps doing to my attention, or can I trust what people are sharing? And, you know, at Glitch, we built a community where millions of people have built little apps and tools and websites for themselves, for their community.

They've coded these things together, um, because they just want to express themselves. And so, um, you know, it's been something that's been amazing to watch takeoff and really is grounded in this idea that like technology didn't have to be something, you know, bad for us. Didn't have to be extractive. It could be something that is creative and expressive, just like all the things that, you know, inspire us to whatever, pick up a guitar or a paint brush or a camera, all the other things we do that hopefully some of our time online can feel like it comes from [00:04:00] that creative part of us too.

Christina: I haven't dug as deeply into Glitch as I would like, but from the outside it looks like a very joyful, playful, creative community.

Anil: Yeah, very much so. And I think there's a very intentional aesthetic. You know, one of the things you can do on Glitch is code together. And, um, you know, typically when people talk about programming or coding, they think of like the matrix and like green text on a black screen.

And the aesthetics of it are this very, almost like sterile dystopian kind of thing. And I think any space that we spend time, whether physical space or online, it's got some color and some, some humor and some like liveliness to it, I think is, uh, is good for our hearts.

Christina: I think this is not at all what I wanted to talk about, but I think there's something that I'm, I'm really enjoying online lately where it's a-, like things that are asymmetrical and kind of weird, and just like, they look like they're like broken, not broken, but just,

Anil: But, they're not that same boxy blue thing that we see on everywhere else in the internet.

I mean, I think, you know, [00:05:00] I've, I've been online for basically as long as the web has existed and you know, it, it did used to be a weirder place. And I think about, um, even, you know, the, I live in the East Village here in New York City and you know, I'm not one of those good old days people, like there's always problems.

The, that, you know, people sort of whitewash out of the past, but, but there is a moment when a space is still weird and still undefined and people are doing unexpected things and breaking the rules in good ways. And. Uh, and there's something very special about that. And so I think anything that's a return to that feels good and it feels like a freer place and that everything is not just, you know, this blue box that you put your photos into and then they do creepy things with your data, you know, like there's gotta be another way to be online.

Christina: Absolutely. Okay. So we're going to go back to 2012 here for a minute, because of course it's the JOMO cast and you're the originator of JOMO, and so that's the core of what I'd love to talk with you about. So in 2012, you wrote "My brilliant friend Katarina Fake wrote about the fear of [00:06:00] missing out last year. And the FOMO meme took instant hold amongst those of us who" I highlighted this "love the digital life. We're keenly aware that our constant connection to those doing things that are exciting, engaging or novel can make us feel let down with our humble circumstances. The Katarina's piece came at a fortunate time in my life, just a little over a month after my son, Malcolm was born.

When I read Katarina's piece, I'd been mostly offline for more than a month." I want to talk about that a little bit. "And during that time had barely checked in on anything online and seldom even left the house. It was" and italics, yours. "Wonderful." You said "there can be and should be a blissful, serene enjoyment in knowing and celebrating that there are folks out there having the time of their life at something that you might have loved too, but are simply skipping.

And that's what you called the joy of missing out. My question for you [00:07:00] is how would you have described JOMO in that moment? What was the experience of it? Like how did it feel?

Anil: Gosh, wow. Um, so funny to go back to there. Cause it's, you know, even at the moment I was writing about it, there was a year prior, right?

So we're talking about now eight years later and, um, you know, I'm always mindful that, um, memory polishes and blurs you know, the moments that we live in. So I never want to be falsely idealizing something, but I do go back to the, you know, the month after my son was born and I was, and I, this is a sort of thing I allied from especially from my writing at that time.

Um, I was, you know, at a challenging point in my career, um, and doing work that I cared about, but that was very taxing and, uh, a big stretch emotionally, psychologically, mentally, and had been sort of all consuming, right. It had been one of those, like, you know, anytime day or night, the email is going to come [00:08:00] through and I'm going to have to jump, you know, and, uh, jetting around a lot, like just a very, very intense moment.

And the juxtaposition from that intensity to this absolute tranquility after my son was born. We were very lucky. He was born very healthy and he was very calm, baby. And, and so we didn't have, I think a lot of, I mean, parenting is very hard and, and, and having a newborn is very hard and, you know, my wife was, you know, absolutely doing heroic amount of work.

And I was, you know, trying to at least carry my end of it. But even with all that being said, it was quiet, like in the house was quiet, like when he would be asleep, which was a lot of the day for a newborn, it was quiet. And I didn't, I had a legitimate excuse to not look at my phone, to not look at my laptop, not look at anything.

And I had not, you know, in retrospect, giving myself permission to do that. And that was something about just being forgiving to myself and about reprioritizing myself and, and the [00:09:00] incontrovertability of a newborn. Everybody in the world was like, well, I can't argue with that excuse. And, and the truth is it shouldn't have taken that to get there.

You know, I probably did have more agency that I couldn't see myself taking advantage of, but that, that in retrospect is the context for this as much as, um, you know, the, the anecdote I mentioned in that piece, which was that I, um, have been a lifelong fan of Prince and his music and he was playing in New York.

And I used to love going to his shows. I mean, he was as good a live performer as we've ever had. And, and the night my son was born, he was playing a concert in Madison Square Garden.

Christina: And you had tickets?

Anil: I had tickets and, um, there's actually clips up on YouTube because one of the standout moments that happened in that show was he, he, what he would do is he would play his, whatever, two, three hours on the show.

And then at the end have kind of a dance party and he'd play, you know, the long jam and people would come up, you'd literally pull fans up on stage to dance and I'd had friends who'd [00:10:00] gone up, but he would also, you know, he'd pull from the first couple of rows. You'd have like celebrities and stuff that people had the good seats, right.

And so that particular night, this is in February of 2011, he pulled up Kim Kardashian.

Christina: Wow.

Anil: And she was one of the people, you know, obviously sitting in the good seats and, you know, he just told her to dance, it wasn't like, that's what everybody else was doing. And there were, you know, you know, middle-aged dads up there dancing like it was all kinds of people.

And she was, I think, sincerely like a little intimidated, and also like, I don't, I don't know if she can dance, never, it's never occurred to me to wonder, but net result was, she froze and, you know, he was very straightforward and he wasn't actually even being like, he was, you know, sarcastic about it.

He wasn't being hurtful. He was just like, well, if you're not going to get dance, get off the stage. Do you know what I mean? And it became a moment. It was one of those things where it's like, it's trending on Twitter and it's on, it was on the local news the next night. Like it was a, they made a big deal out of it.

And the thing is like, he's done this [00:11:00] thing. He'd done that on stage for many, many years. It wasn't that a big deal. Because people knew it was a fan. And I think people, some people know I was going to be at the show or was supposed to have been, I was, I didn't know any of this happened. I was in the hospital with my wife, the kid was born. We were busy, you know, like otherwise occupied. And so it didn't, it was days later before I found out about any of this, like, I wasn't paying any attention to any of this, but a whole bunch of people had texted me or sent me this thing, hahaha, did you see this? Or, you know, your guys, you know, going crazy on, you know, whatever whatever's happened.

And it was such a, um, well, one, I was like, who cares? Who cares? Like I could not care less about this, you know, on the one hand. And the other hand was like, oh, I didn't find out about this in the moment. And the world certainly did not end, yet there was that urgency of it was as if there were like, you know, your apartment's on fire.

Do you know what I mean like, like the level of the number of. The number of messages, the intensity of it. And, and, and again, [00:12:00] it all comes from a place of love. There are people like you identify with this thing, we think it's relevant to you. It's funny, we're bonding. Like I remember you, so I'm going to send you a message of a thing you might care about.

And, and we all have those things that our friends know us for and yet in, in having the delay and the disconnect from it, and then re-engaging with it. Like I said, it was the, the level of urgency I would have expected if somebody like your hair is on fire.

Christina: Right. Or there was like a real emergency in the city or something.

Anil: Exactly, exactly, exactly. And so, and so that, that I think was clarifying too. And so all of those things informed, like, where I was at in my life and then these little glimpses into how we have had tools that are designed to keep us at a red alert level of intensity, even for something that is literally meaningless, trivial, you know, pop ephemera.

And I say, this as somebody that like, I love pop culture. Like I think it matters in the world, but like, I didn't need to know about that at that moment. And so all those things together, along with, in my case, you know, now 20 years of building [00:13:00] social platforms online, I think all coalesced into I wanted to share something I'd learned, I was appreciative of my friend Katarina outlining a concept that mattered.

And I didn't like that the narrative within the tech industry in particular, where I work had been, you know, her, her framing of FOMO, of fear of missing out was a criticism they didn't want to hear. And it's funny to say this now where everybody is critical of the big social platforms, but they were so resistant to her being even mildly critical of a completely legitimate point that I really was so indignant that they were rejecting.

And I think no small part of this is because she's a woman. And, and, and for her to sort of point out, here's a real flaw in technology as we conceive of it today, let's fix it and get such blow back from Silicon Valley, I thought sort of confirmed every reason I'd had for leaving there. And, uh, and that was part of it is [00:14:00] I wanted to, to offer a framing, which is, um, not just a rejection of what's wrong, but an affirmation of what's, right.

We can't just move away from things we need to move toward things. And so that was sort of my, you know, rhetorical role was to outline a thing that we would aspire to not merely a negative thing that we would reject.

Christina: I think that's the reason why I love the concept of the joy of missing out so much, even just the way that it's evolved in my own life.

Having my book obviously titled the joy of missing out. Um, and like I mentioned before we started recording, it was originally supposed to be called Digital Detox and by some great, great serendipity, it was retitled. And it's created this entirely different conversation. Exactly what you're describing.

What are we moving towards? What joys can we step into when we mindfully disconnect from technology or at least use it in a way that's intentional. Um, in a conversation between you and Katarina on the Note To Self podcast, she said, quote, "In a media saturated, information saturated environment, like the internet, you're trading [00:15:00] off so much of your life to trivia and entertainment. Keeping a part of yourself offline for your family, for your friends, for yourself, becomes very important."

Do you think that's true? And if so, why?

Anil: Yeah. You know, there's a balance here where I'm lucky I have a platform online. And most of that is actually just due to, uh, I've been around a long time, you know? So I've been, I've been blogging for 20 years, um, which is absurd to say,

Christina: If I can just say it, you're also very likable. You're funny.

Anil: That's very kind. I, I, um, well, my public persona is, right. And, and I, I had this conversation the other day with somebody where I'm like, I, um, I care a lot about justice and I care about fairness and I am not particularly concerned with being nice and I, I, I'm not against it certainly. And, you know, I tell my, my kid to be nice.

Like, I'm, you know, like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a sociopath, but I'm like, I [00:16:00] personally, it's not the top of the list. It's on the list. It's not the top of the list. And, um, and that comes across sometimes in my social media presence or whatever else. It, mostly because people are pointing out that, Hey, that wasn't nice.

Right. And. I realized, like I felt, I still feel a pressure that people who have the great privileges I do of having a public platform are obligated to be nice. Right? Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Isn't like isn't the, the, the cost of admission to being even a completely minor public figure is to be nice, and transgressing across that, against, that is seen as, um, really unforgivable, you know, really like this, this thing you're not allowed to do.

And so I, you know, I, I like to joke around online I still do. And, and it's a, it's become much harder. I'm the CEO of a [00:17:00] relatively successful startup company. And I have, um, as I've said, a privileged platform. I get to write for magazines and I get to do things and, and, you know, be on the radio and be on podcasts.

And like, those things are exciting. Um, but I, I struggle very hard with like, I don't want to curate a public persona and, um, and a lot of the way that's played out, actually, you know, I would say in the last 10 years, like in that timeframe of when I was thinking about this stuff with JOMO and everything else, um, is I've moderated how well known I am.

I've deliberately not set out to become famous. And there's a weird line of being known like in tech now the bar is low, but like being, you know, being known in an industry and not being famous because all the mechanisms are built with a feedback loop that is pushing you to try, try to be an influencer or try to be famous and a couple effective ways to not become famous is, one is like, in my case, like completely average height, average looks, you know, like, like [00:18:00] there's, there's none of those sort of signifiers. Uh, don't be that nice to people don't perform niceness, even when you don't feel like it. One of the other things I've been very intentional about is like, my career is relatively inscrutible.

My job is straightforward. I work at a tech company and we make software for people who make software. If you ask people who follow me on Twitter, on social media, what I do, they'd be like that guy tweets about Prince and, and you know what I mean? And, and, and yells at people about politics and, you know, like th the subtle, it's a very incomprehensible thing, and it's very intentional.

And, and that all goes to this, like, I think something that's very close to JOMO, which is choosing what you're not going to be in the world, not letting people outside choose for you, what you're going to be. And there's been significant sustained pressure for me, in being on social media for 20 years, to get on a conveyor belt that is supposed to lead me towards being famous or being an influencer.

And every person I've ever seen who gets on [00:19:00] it ends up the worse for it. I've never seen anybody go through it and be like, and now I'm happier.

Christina: Wow.

Anil: I have seen people be wealthier.

Christina: Right.

Anil: And I have seen people be more famous and well-known, and I've never seen, you know, I have it being in tech. One of those weird things that you were in tech, long enough people around you become like millionaires or even billionaires, because it's like the lottery winners get picked out of this group.

And I talk to guys, I know somebody very well, who is well into that category. A lot of zeros on his bank account at the end of the number not the beginning. And you know, his kids are the same age as my son pretty much. And they can have anything in this world that, that, you know, capitalism will allow them to buy.

And his kids are not happier than my kid. They're not unhappy. I mean, their life is good, but it's not like there are a billion times happier if their dad's a billionaire, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's not that thing. And so that's very clarifying where I'm like, on the other hand, there are lots of people that hate that dude, not knowing him, [00:20:00] because of legitimate criticisms, because of envy, because of the inequities of a system that allows him to concentrate his wealth. Like all these different things. And I'm like, I don't want to play in any of that. None of that sounds fun. Right. And then the wildest thing to me is I see these people that have amassed all this power and all this wealth and they tell me, oh, I can't speak up on that issue.

I can't talk about that thing I care about. I can't risk not being nice. I can't risk having a political opinion because this whole house of cards will come tumbling down and will come after me. And, um, I'll apologize because I'm sure you run a polite show, but there's a concept of F-you money.

Christina: Okay. Tell me.

Anil: People used to talk about, uh, you know, if you get F-you money, it's basically you have enough money, you can tell anybody in the world to go F off. Right. And, and I was sorta like, what's the point of having that much money if you never tell anybody to F off. And I know, you know, I said, I sound less kind than, I mean, too, but, but, but I think there's this point of. If you can't tell, if you can't speak truth [00:21:00] to power, if you can't flatly, tell somebody, I think that's wrong.

If you can't say I care about this thing and I want you to care about it. And I hope more people will pay attention to it. If you can't amplify somebody in need and somebody who's vulnerable and somebody who's doing something worthy and all those constraints come in, why would you chase that? Because I think there was a very strong push, especially for me in like the internet industry, you know, over the last decade that I was supposed to feel a fear of missing out on being a billionaire.

And it was just, to me, to feel a fear of missing out on being Mark Zuckerberg. And I met, you know, all those guys, Mark Zuckerberg, whoever you want to name every single one of them back when the internet was small. And I saw many of them go to the mountaintop, and I saw a lot of them get chopped down, you know, from those heights.

And, um, and none of it was appealing. And it's not that I'm not ambitious, like I'm running a company. I want us to be matter in the world and, and do all these things. But [00:22:00] I had the joy of missing out on being an internet tycoon and of pursuing a path towards the thing that ultimately didn't really didn't make them happy and didn't bring any meaning to me.

And incidentally made the world worse. You know, the rise of all those giant networks caused misinformation, caused people to be creeped out, caused even just stress at Thanksgiving when you're talking to your family members, like all those things happened because of those companies and then the people running them, none of them, none of them are like, and now my life is simple and happy.

And so for what? And, and so that was really kind of in that same theme of like being kind to yourself, being forgiving. And I was like, I never aspire to that. And I felt like I was crazy when I lived in Silicon Valley, I lived in San Francisco, worked at a startup and I didn't aspire to being, you know, Mark Zuckerberg.

And people look at you, like you have two heads and I'm like, I think you're the one that's nuts. Maybe this makes a lot of sense. [00:23:00]

Christina: I automatically think of the story. That's like classic story of the fishermen, you know, they're like, you could take the fish and then you can, you know, have a fleet of boats and all the things.

And then in the afternoon you can have naps. I was like, I already do. I would have a nap right now. I'm having my nap right now. Don't need to do all that. It sounds to me like one of the things that motivates you is, is freedom.

Anil: Oh yeah. Very much so. Yeah. And it's funny. I, it's funny. I just told that story about being a Prince fan and it's all in my mind now that he had put a memoir out recently, a post-humous memoir, but he worked on it before he passed and this theme of like his music and his work was this like freedom and owning your work and ownership.

And there's a good example. There's a guy who was at the top of his game, you know, the biggest movie of the year or the biggest album of the year and all this stuff that, you know, whatever it is 35 years ago now. And you know, the thing everybody aspires to, I'm going to be a rockstar and a household, name it on, you know, MTV back when they were MTV and you know, all that stuff.

And. And then he's like, what if I get rid of [00:24:00] my name and get rid of my record label and tear it all down and go back home and just work on music and then see if people still think it's cool. And those are the people I'm going to work with forever and sell stuff to online and tour and do music for .

And it turns out people stuck with it. So I was still interested in going to that show, you know, all those years later. And, and I think that was really instructive as this, like what artists show us and that's, you know, that's music, but I think it's true of filmmakers. It's true of, of authors, which is, um, they chafe at limits and constraints that are arbitrary, that limit their creativity of their output.

Uh, but anything that enables them to sort of be able to be free to create is powerful and, and they value almost above anything else above the money above the fame. And I was to think of like, you know, in tech we talk about, about hacking, right? Like I hack the system and I'm going to get outside the boundaries of it.

And, um, but that's a tradition that goes back, you know, in culture, in every [00:25:00] lane and every area of creativity and discipline. And so over and over and over this lesson is learned of people get lauded and, you know, rewarded for being at the peak of their industry in whatever creative discipline they're in.

And they win all the awards and they get sometimes get rich, sometimes get famous. And then consistently they're like, you know, I'd throw it all away, if I could just be free to do X, Y, and Z, if I didn't feel burdened by all these other things around me. And, um, and that pattern repeats a million times that I'm like, okay, what's the lesson I'm gonna learn from this is, let me just not take on all those encumbrances to begin with.

Christina: You describe yourself as an advocate for ethical tech. What does that mean?

Anil: It changes over time. You know I started simple, which was just like, let's not do weird, creepy things with your data, and let's not trick people into using your app.

I didn't think it was that radical. Uh, when I [00:26:00] first started talking about this stuff and I was, um, you know, I've been in tech for 20, 25 years. And, and, um, well, when I started, they were, you know, they were called software, not applications or apps. Right. And, and you would buy a disk or a CD rom, and you put it in your computer and you put, you know, an app on your, on your laptop and you know, or your computer and you would just work.

And that was it. And, you know, things changed a lot when they got connected, like sending your data up and doing things with it that you couldn't expect and targeting things to you based on what they could, you know, surveil and deduce about you. And I intuitively like, I wasn't like, I'm not an academic, like I'm not, I know the tech pretty well, but like, I'm not an expert in all these different areas. Intuitively, I was like, well, this has bad incentives. If we're making money on collecting people's data, then we're going to have economic incentives to always collect more data, right? If we are making money on distracting people's attention, we are going to have economic [00:27:00] incentives to steal more and more of their attention.

It was basic stuff. Kids can get it. And I didn't feel good about it because I had gotten into writing software and creating technology because I was like, it empowers people, it frees them, it lets them create, they can't, I can write a book on my laptop, computer, and it used to be something that only a few people could ever do.

And I could make people make music. They make entire albums on there, on their computer and used to be kind of thing where you'd have to pay for all the instruments and studio time and whatever. Right. And so this was a tool of liberation and empowering people, especially that couldn't get past the gatekeepers.

And that was really important to me. And then I saw the rise of these technologies and I was in it. I was creating social platforms, you know, at the sort of birth of the social media era and, I was really adamant, like you should just charge people money for them and they'll pay it. And then everybody understands how the exchange of value happens.

And, you know, I, I lost that battle and the industry decided that [00:28:00] surveillance based advertising was going to be the model. And I was critical of it. And, you know, I, I, I think this sort of breaking point for me was almost a decade ago. There was a, uh, the, the movie, The Social Network came out and around the release of the movie, um, the New Yorker did a profile of Mark Zuckerberg.

And in it, that was the first time I gave myself sort of public permission. I was, I was fairly critical and actually by contemporary standards, I was very gentle, but I was sort of like, you know, this is a guy that grew up like the kid of a dentist in Connecticut. And he was doing so well and left that he could drop out of Harvard and still know he'd be okay. I was like, I'm a son of immigrants. Like I'm not dropping out of Harvard if I got in, but I couldn't get in. But, uh, you know, we don't have legacy admissions for immigrants. So, so it was just such an interesting, uh, fairly mild critique. That was like, he doesn't know what he doesn't know.

And vulnerable people are going to feel the impacts of the choices of Facebook makes in a way that he won't - real simple. Uh, and it was [00:29:00] a mess, you know, there was, I got a call from Facebook PR I, I had a very powerful, big name investor in Silicon Valley telling me I would never work in tech again.

Christina: Wow. Where did you publish this?

Anil: This was, well, I had written something on my personal blog. And then because of that, uh, I was asked for this quote that ran in the New Yorker. And, you know, when they get a pithy quote, they put it as the, the kicker, the closing quote in the, uh, and the story. So, you know, you, you, you scroll all the way to the bottom or you flip to the last page and it's this like, you know, here's, here's this guy Anil Dash, saying, you know, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't know something. And first of all, you know, everybody was like, well, who the heck are you?

He's he's Mark Zuckerberg. And he's going to be a billionaire. At that time, and way past that now. And, you know, you're some guy with a blog, so what do you know? And, you know, I just said, I, I'm not saying I can do all the things he's done. I'm saying the impacts of us all putting all our data into this platform are going to be bad.

Right. So I was right. [00:30:00] And you know, what's terrible about that is I think I'm supposed to feel like smug or satisfied. I feel worse. If you tell everybody there's about to be a car crash and everybody's like, we're going to let these cars crash. You feel worse, you feel worse. I feel like I didn't do enough.

I feel like I didn't bang the drum loud enough. I wasn't, I wasn't aggressive enough. I was too nice. I was not confrontational enough because they took it as like, well, we can dismiss this guy. And, um, and the thing I was worried was if I was not nice enough, they would say I was crazy. And they said I was crazy anyway.

You know, and so that galvanized me and it was, there was sort of other things around then, but I, I just sort of said, I got to leave San Francisco, I got to leave the regular tech industry. I came back east to New York, which is where I'm, you know, that's home for me anyway. And, and I said, technology is still impactful, but let me apply it.

And I did a research project actually, um, backed by MacArthur Foundation to see about the [00:31:00] impacts of social media on policymaking, um, which turned out to be substantial. But, uh, you know, sort of, uh, we were probably, we didn't do that maybe at the right moment in history, but, uh, hopefully, uh, you know, the work was still meaningful, but all of which to say, I was like, I knew looking at technology's impact on the world can have, had value and that I could still do that, but that I would never work for, um, you know, the big tech companies again.

And, um, and I think from their standpoint, they were sort of like good riddence to you. You know, they were really glad to let me. And, and then after that, honestly, you know, it was only, um, a few years later that I wrote the JOMO piece. But it was like a liberation. It was like, now that I know that's not a path for me anymore and I'm not on that road anymore, I could just tell the truth.

I can just say the thing that actually lots of people and that in every case, nothing I said was I ever the first to say, and, and just to amplify these things that others were saying, and that people around me were saying, and that were common sense for people who were vulnerable [00:32:00] and, and through, you know, enough time passing and also people being able to see the, how this has played out in the world.

Um, it's, it may be come back into vogue to think about these issues.

Christina: Absolutely. Which leads to my next question. What do you think the ethical and moral responsibilities are for people who have the specialized skills and unique social position to consistently and effectively be persuasive? Essentially.

Anil: That's a, that's like a question of a lifetime.

Um, I can't answer for everybody. I can answer it for me. You know? Um, my, my parents were born in India and I'm very fortunate. They're both still with us. Um, we're from one of the most rural and poorest parts of India. And so like my dad's village, um, is surrounded by Aboriginal tribes that live there and a family of four in those tribes today typically lives on about 800 to a thousand dollars a year. And that's still, and my cousins still work in the rice patties in that village. Um, and, [00:33:00] um, and the difference between me and them is my dad got on a plane. You know, what my parents have done, you know, through, through genuinely through hard work and, and incredible risk and being willing, they spent these, you know, years of their lives disconnected from their families.

When my dad first came to America, he couldn't even send a letter home. And, you know, there was nobody, I think in the entire, he was in Indiana. He went to Purdue. I think there was nobody in the entire state who spoke the language he spoke growing up. English was, you know, his second language. The level of isolation is greater than if you went to the moon right now, you know, and all the other immigrant stuff, right.

You know, $20 in your pocket and not knowing anybody and not knowing what to eat and all that stuff. And they endured that for decades and, and made a life for me and my sister and all in all the things they did. And, um, and they didn't do that casually.

Christina: One wouldn't, I would expect.

Anil: Yeah. You know, like you don't, that's not like [00:34:00] hailing a cab.

Right. You know, it, it is something monumental and unfathomable. I don't have the temerity for that. I don't have the strength for that, but I feel the obligation to honor it every day. And I think about in one generation from that, and my dad grew up, he was not born, uh, free. He was born a British subject.

You know, this pre-independence India, no vaccines, no running water, no electricity. I think he's was the first in his family to go past junior high. Um, and to higher education, let alone, he ended up getting a PhD. Um, and my son. You know, can afford, we can afford to have raise him in New York City. And he has a little, you know, Nintendo Switch, little video game thing, and certainly has vaccines, certainly has running water. The quality of life improvement between my father and my son may be the greatest single generation increase in quality of life in the history of humankind.[00:35:00]

Right. Um, I'm just a conduit for that. I'm just the connection in between those two people. And that is, um, you know, when I'm dead, that is what I will have been. And so what can I do to be worthy of the privilege of getting to be in that place and of the work that those people did for me is like, it's all a rounding error.

Like everything I do in my life will be, um, a footnote on either my son's and my father's lives. Right. And so how to be a worthy one, you know, is, is what I think about a lot. And in that context, it's very, um, again, it's very freeing. So if I were to aspire to material things, then I would say like, oh, I want to have a private jet or something.

The difference between what flying like economy plus and a private jet to my cousins is nothing. Right. Those are the same thing. Yeah. [00:36:00] I can afford to fly somewhere. Right. And so then I called in and was like, what's my obligation is to be worthy of that. You know, my great grandfather marched with Gandhi, risking life and limb for independence.

And I'm like annoyed by like waiting for, you know, the train when I'm commuting. You know what I mean? So, so the level of luxury, the level of convenience, a level of, of privilege is so extraordinary that I don't, I don't have any complaints except about what is not just, and then I'm like, okay, then I got to fix that.

Then I got to fix. And what can I do to have it be that that is what I represent. And I see this where like, I, I serve on the boards of a couple of companies and a couple of, um, uh, nonprofits. And, um, and as a result, I get to guest in other meetings and things like people invite me to consult or to help, and I'm mostly trying to help.

And I saw that there's a company I'm not affiliated with, but that asked me to come in and speak to leadership. [00:37:00] And, um, I, you know, I was like, sure, I'll talk to anybody. And tech is tech, I'm always still curious. And I went in the room and one of the guys, and it was all guys, turned to the other and sort of said, oh yeah, we have to, uh, update our diversity and inclusion statement.

And, you know, I didn't say anything. I literally had not said a word and it could have been coincidence, but I don't think it was. I think I was a mental bookmark for him that, being charitable, he was going to be reminded about their moral obligation about who they could include in their company as it succeeds and who should profit from their success, or being less charitable.

I was a brown guy and he said, uh, yeah, brown people exist. You know? And the reality is probably somewhere in between those two extremes. But honestly, if all, if my [00:38:00] presence and, and I actually, I give myself enough credit within the industry I'm in, like the narrow lane that I'm in, people do know what I stand for.

And if they know me, if they know me well enough to invite me in the room. And it's, you know, I think it's probably some version of is that guys gonna yell at us for not doing the thing we're supposed to do, that has utility that has a use in an ecosystem. And if me walking in the room reminds somebody we're probably going to get yelled at because we haven't been doing enough to not be exclusionary at our company.

Good, good. And so that to me was, and it's like a weird thing to celebrate because it felt terrible. Honestly, it felt diminishing and it felt like, uh, being tokenized a little bit. But, um, but the utility of my, well, I got into the room, right. You know, like there's something there about, um, that was not a room made for me.[00:39:00]

And, and I still got my way in through, um, mostly through not being very nice. This is I probably the only person who's ever going to come on your podcast and talk about the value of not being as nice. But there, there is, there's a balance about how niceness, civility, and all these other tools are, are used to limit freedom are used to limit control are used or to enact control on people. And, and I think a lot of that is, in the same way, what I experienced so much of. Missing out is about inculcating, a expectation into people that is used to control them. And if I'm supposed to fear missing out on a private jet or going to some concert or partying with my friends or looking good on Instagram or whatever it is, those are all things meant to control me.

And to keep me away from what it is that I think is meaningful, that at the end of my life, I will find to have value. And, um, it's very hard to stay centered on that. [00:40:00]

Christina: Oh my goodness. There's so much there. Um, I made a pact recently with a close friend of mine. She was, so she's a digital sociologist at Goldsmiths in the UK, her name's Dr. Jess Purriam, I'm sure she's listening. Uh, we made a pact recently to no longer be vanilla online. We feel like we're these vanilla versions of ourselves. And so much of what you're speaking about is because of the, all of those constructs that I think most of us myself included don't think about the ways that those pressures are there.

Anil: Well, and I think especially women are so socialized to, to be nice and to, to, to perform compliance in so many ways and are rewarded for it. Right. And, and punished severely for stepping outside of it. And, and, you know, I think about that a lot. I mean, I, I, I have an eight year old son and we talk a lot about how society, you know, sort of shares expectations on us because of gender, because of race, because all of these different factors.

And [00:41:00] it's hard to explain at a third grade level. How do you create a framework by which things matter? Right. There are, there are good social stigmas. There are good social pressures, right? There are things that are shameful, rightfully, Right? And that, that shame, you know, arose as a, a useful, I think way of us enacting control on one another, as a, as a society it's how we sort of share our values.

And it is a deeply harmful and abusive, you know, tool that is used indiscriminately and, and used to, especially against the vulnerable. And it's hard to know like w which application of this kind of control are we, are we doing? And I think, um, that's, there's, you know, there's a lot of different ways to frame it, but I think that's something that's very hard for us to sort of interrogate.

And it's interesting how that overlaps with what technology amplifies, rewards, accelerates. And we, we know it at the level of, well, within the tech world. I don't want to presume, you know, there's different audiences, but like [00:42:00] within the tech world, there's, there's a, there's a widespread understanding in recent years of bias in systems and algorithms.

Right? So we talk about this with like artificial intelligence and machine learning. We can train it with bias data, uh, but there's even simple things like do the photo filters on your favorite photo app work for your skin tone. Um, which I have had unfortunate experiences with being a brown person, but like, there's a, there's a range of like, is this tool made for me?

And what has it encouraged, but there's sort of a similar part and there's, there's we can understand, I think intuitively, but if we say being reductive, this photo filter, doesn't work with my eye color. Okay. Yeah, I get it. And also it's actually, again, being charitable to the people that make the software, the technology you're like, oh, I can understand that's a bug and I'm going to fix my app to not have that bug.

Right. Right. But when the trending topics or the Instagram discover tab reward certain appearances, certain presentations, even [00:43:00] just the level of like having a manicured presentation in general. Right. That also is a biased algorithm. That also is a software bug. The technology has a bug that it wants me to be presentable in a certain way.

And I look at this where, um, there's always this sort of like, what is the norm that you're conforming to? What is the standard that you're trying to achieve? And, um, there's a writer, Durga Palacci who, uh, she does a lot of creative thinking about culture and society in general, but one of the pieces she wrote a couple of years ago that really stood out to me.

And it was just sort of like this casual aside in a different piece, but she sort of said for those of us who are South Asian, uh, intrinsically many of us have dark circles under our eyes. And she spoke to the impulse to, to lighten them. Right. And I think about this where I've been on TV a few times, like a business TV, not like, you know, anything exciting for people to watch, but like, you know, where tech CEOs go and, um, like [00:44:00] Bloomberg is a good example.

And I think every case that I've been on TV, they've spent more time putting makeup on the dark circles under my eyes that are intrinsic to being Indian than they have in prepping me for the topic I was going to talk about. I could choose to see that as their confidence in my competence, on the topic.

I think that is part of it. I also think it is about a medium that cares about how you look and that the definition of how you look is defined by a norm that did not include me. It was not designed for me. Right. They will never put on makeup to darken the circles under my eyes. Right. And, and, and I am a good, you know, 50 generations into being part of a family that has got dark circles under their eyes.

It's like, it's not going anywhere. And I, that was on my mind because I noticed, um, a lot of the photo apps just do the same thing, reflexively. They just do it there and the buttons will be like, prettify, clear up. Right? [00:45:00] And I'm like, who sets this standard? I have, and I'm not there yet, but I aspire to not thinking the natural color of the skin on my face is ugly.

I would like to not think that. I'm not, you know, we're all growing and evolving. I'm not there yet. Um, but I don't know who taught me that it was. Um, and I certainly certainly do not want my son to pull a phone out of his pocket when he's a teenager and have an app tell him that pretty is whatever he is not.

Christina: Yeah.

Anil: And I think I can have that impact. Like I think I work in tech and I have a loud enough voice. And I'm willing enough to not be nice that I can change that. And it is not obvious that that form of antagonism for me, is motivated by wanting to bring peace to someone else. I [00:46:00] want to bring somebody else, not even my son, Durga who wrote this piece, whoever I want to bring those people, the inner, like the inner calm of not holding up a mirror as people use their phones as their mirror.

Right. I don't want to hold a mirror up to my face and have it tell me that the way I look is wrong or needs to be fixed and, um, and asking nicely hasn't achieved it. And so I will choose less joy for myself, uh, in achieving that in hopes to bring more joy to others.

Christina: You've talked about, about the need to change the definition of success in the technology industry to create things, in some cases, smaller things, smaller communities that truly make people fulfilled and happy. Do you feel like that's something that you're accomplishing here with Glitch?

Anil: Yeah, very much so. Gosh, I hope so. I mean, that's really all of us. I think there's dozens of us on the team. So I get to be the voice of this, but it's just so many good people here and [00:47:00] what, what everybody in the, and there's millions of people in the Glitch community.

And what I think everybody's aligned around is, you know, nobody's thinking about it at this, like, you know, dense academic level, but intuitively they're like this just doesn't make any sense. 3 billion people in the same app? There's no way could work for everybody. Right? Like just common sense, you know? Um, like they don't even have one flavor of Coke for 3 billion people.

You know what I mean? Like they, they make different versions.

Christina: Community builders on the ground know this to be true.

Anil: Exactly intuitively we all know it. Right. And, and as humans we know it and, um, we, we can feel what is wrong with the scale of the technology. But we have not been taught what the alternative looks like. And the funny thing for me is only reason I know what the alternative looks like is I've been on the web long enough, you know, um in the early nineties, mid nineties, there was a different internet.

And that was true all the way until relatively recently. You go as recently, as you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, for sure there were a lot of different websites people went to in a [00:48:00] different day and a given day. And also there were a lot of websites made by people, you know. So depending on the vintage, you are, you might remember My Space.

You might remember Live Journal. You might remember Black Planet. You might remember Neo Pets. You might remember Geo Cities, but I can rattle off a dozen of these sites. And every single one of them are full of weird looking sites that regular people made, not following any design rules, but whatever their personal aesthetic was and they made it themselves.

And the interesting thing is I love food as an analogy here. Right? So when I was growing up, like, you didn't know what farm the apple grew on that you got at the grocery store and you didn't know, you know, what conditions the pigs were raised in. And now if I gotta, you know, I go to the grocery store, it's like, this is Jim. And he picked this apple and this is, you know, exactly the, the tree it was on and this incredible amount of data and information. And that came from people saying, I can, if I can understand the supply chain, understand the source and understand the ingredients, then I can make good choices. Right. [00:49:00] And it's not every time, you know, sometimes you eat some and junk food and it's fine.

Like if I'm at the airport, I'm like, all right, let's get this cheeseburger on. Right. Um, so it's not about being perfect. It's about like being able to make choices. Right? And, and then if you ask people, what are the meals you remember in your life? They are home cooked. They are made by people, you know, and love.

You were probably all in the kitchen together. You know what the ingredients were. It was probably tied to your traditions or your culture and, and you have warm memories of it. It's so good that you took pictures of what you all shared together, not even necessarily the food although, maybe that too, but like that time we had a meal together and they are, literally in the scale of your life, if you go back and look at what was the time that you all had together as a family, um, alongside the weddings, funerals, that kind of stuff, you will have meals pop up and even those have meals around them. Right. And all of it is this, you know, really useful analogy for me. Cause then I say, I look at technology, look at the apps on your phone.[00:50:00]

How many of them were made by somebody, you know. How many are made by somebody that loves you? How many are made by somebody in your community. How many of them can you say what went into it? What the ingredients were, how many of them are tied to your culture or your community, context, or history, which apps were handed down to you by your mom, which apps came to you that you learned to create in your church, which apps are part of your faith and your culture and your tradition, which ones will you remember at the end of your life using together with your friends. It is not too much to ask that our technology meet that bar. When every meal, we cross, every meal we eat crosses that bar. And the funny thing about it is it doesn't mean I don't also eat junk food. Right, right. It just means not everything is factory farm junk food.

Christina: Yes. If we could balance our eating the way that we balance our tech consumption, it would look very different.

Anil: Right. And I just want to have that option of one locally grown, organically sourced, [00:51:00] home cooked piece of technology amongst all the other junk food.

Christina: So I've been thinking about wanting to create like a pretty weirdo website. Again, just my personal website, like the way the website I would have made 20 years ago.

Right. Like with my handwriting, probably like Photoshop, you know, pictures of typewritten things I've done.

Anil: Right. Like all there's a little bit. Yeah. Not just square blocky stuff and maybe something like angles and shapes and curves and colors,

Christina: but I don't because I am earlier on in building what I want to build around the topics I care about.

And when someone comes to my website, I want them to be able to figure out in about five seconds. Right. Who I am and what I, what I'm about.

Anil: And there's an expectation of what professionalism is and there's these tools. Right. And they'll tell you, well, we'll build you a professional website in minutes, right.

Moments clicks instantly. And you know, they're all this like white background and the square blocky thing. And. You know, I'm going to smack [00:52:00] myself in the head. If I have to listen to another, like plink, plink, acoustic guitar with couple of people in a coffee shop and they got like a fancy latte and they got a nice phone and they're just like, kind of like blandly smiling at each other.

And I'm like, I've seen that thing 8 billion times and like real life doesn't look like that. You know, it doesn't work like that. And I don't like, I don't, it's not that I don't appreciate this, that aesthetic. There's got to be more than one aesthetic, you know what I mean? And, and, and the tyranny, similarly of like the mason jars and the chalkboards and the thing, and, and people feel compelled to conform to that.

And, and the thing about, you know, in this modern era of machine learning and artificial intelligence, like as a technologist, one thing I'll say is like, if there's a precedent and there's a genuine, you know, fashion trend or, an aesthetic that goes out there and somebody's like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to do my mason jar wedding reception.

It's fine. Like, I don't, you know, I don't have the objection. Like that's somebody's taste. [00:53:00] But when it becomes a trend, it feeds the algorithm. It feeds the machine learning. It teaches the system. People teach the system, this is what good is. Just like, they teach them. This is what the circles under your eyes are supposed to look like and everything else.

And so if you stray from that, will those systems reward that? Right? And keep in mind the technologists, the people creating these apps, treat the data as the truth. Right. And they don't understand that people want to appease. They want to, they want to keep the system happy. They want to get attention.

They want to get likes. They want to get good feedback. And so you feed the machine, whatever it tells you, it wants. Right. And, and so they're treating the data as the truth, but the data is just a record of people trying to make the system happy. And that, that dynamic is playing out across how we get our news across how we share information.

And I think it has really, really harmful [00:54:00] effects because everybody wants to deviate in some way. You're like, oh, those ideas are cool, but I have this other thing I want to do, you know, this other color I liked in it, or, or I, I want to pick a color. It's not in your, in your palette, you know? And, and that, there's not tools for that.

And to get out of that, you have to give people the raw materials, right. So if you're going to cook something, that's not in that recipe book, you have to be able to buy the ingredients and not just the meal kit that you deliver everything to you and, and, and, and, you know, you, you have to be able to create at a base level.

And, you know, you start by putting that stuff together. Similarly, like, you know, whatever, you're learning an instrument, you tap out a couple of notes, but once you want to write music, you're like, I choose what the notes are. And, and I've seen the same thing with technologies. Like when's the last time you went to a website that was ugly.

Right, when's the last time you went to a website that was weird. It's been a long time. Yeah. There is a, there's a really tyrannical homogeneity to the apps we use to the websites we go to. And like, you know, I go to the banking website, like [00:55:00] definitely I want my bank to be, I don't want it to be weird. You know what I mean?

Like, I just want to like click the button and get the thing done, but somebody who's, you know, talking about their, cause they care about, somebody who's talking about the artwork they've created or, you know, we can even imagine videos that are not all in the same video player online, but instead of surrounded by things that have to do with that person's personality or aesthetic, uh, that's not that wild to imagine to me that is not that crazy.

Like imagine, you know, like with the, um, you know, with film, there's still a pretty wide range of aesthetics and cinematography and, and you know, a, a Western doesn't look like, you know, a cartoon action movie doesn't look like, you know, a romcom, like they have different visual styles. Um, and in music we have genres, right?

And, and we talk about the genres you like, in fact, we use them to identify people. We say that, you know, like that, well, that's the indie rock fan kinda guy, you know, we, we sort of talk about what they are. You don't have genres of apps on your phone. You have tools that they have. You certainly can't talk about artistic [00:56:00] movements on the web, right?

And you can in painting and books in music and every other creative expression. That's a choice of technologies. They have not enabled the kind of expression that humans like to create, which is all of us working together to make artistic movements and creative movements and activist movements. And, um, that is a even been kind of erased from our imagination of what's possible.

Christina: Absolutely.

Anil: And you know, it bends people's brains when I talk about home cook tech. And when I talk about artistic movements in web design, because well, we've been sold the idea that those don't exist. But it's only that they've been prevented. The human impulse is there just as strongly as authors, writing books and filmmakers making films and, and poets, writing poetry, like, um, there are people that want to use the internet and technology and the web to express what's in their heart and they cannot yet.

Christina: But that's [00:57:00] part of what you're doing with Glitch.

Anil: Oh, very much so. Yeah. And we were lucky where, um, we don't articulate it that way. You just say you don't make stuff on the web and like you're allowed to be weird here and that's kind of it. And, and the aesthetic does a lot of that for people like, well, this looks different. This doesn't look like, you know, YouTube, it doesn't look like that, that sterile blue Facebook, this is something weird. So I can try something weird. And the site is called Glitch. So they're like, I must be allowed to make mistakes here. You know, like I'm not going to get in trouble. If I try something. And also there's a community. So you can code things in Glitch. Um, basically kind of like Google docs, you can edit together in real time.

And, and for programmers, that's a big breakthrough, like at a technical level, there's, there's a lot of work that it takes to enable that. Um, but one of the features of that is while you're coding, if you get stuck and you have a bug or something, um, there's the emoji of the person with their hand raised, and you can click that and it'll raise their hands.

And it'll say, uh, you know, Joe is in here, needs help. Uh, you know, Jane, do you want to go and help him? And you click that button and you're in there coding together. And generally on Glitch, those questions get answered within a minute. And generally they're by people [00:58:00] that have never met each other and don't know each other, total strangers helping each other.

And when you do go in and help somebody like that, they can thank you. And your screen fills up with hearts. It's really beautiful animation. And, um, that's, uh, as you might imagine, that's not the kind of experience has ever existed in a programming world before. That is, you know, bright pastel colors with hearts, filling your screen is not what people think of as computer programming.

But the reality is that was what we imagined, you know, two years ago and millions of people have responded by saying that's what it should always have been. And they are everywhere from, you know, we've got grade school kids here in New York City that are writing their first line of code on the web all the way to some of the most senior engineers at Google who work on their cutting edge, you know, artificial intelligence projects, and they're all working together.

And when a kid at a public school in New York raises their hand for help, and the person who answers the question is the person who created that technology at Google, neither side forgets that experience for the rest of their lives. You know, it's transformed, it [00:59:00] connects them both with, this is what I thought tech was going to be.

This is what I, why I loved the internet. This is what people told me. It was the promise of, you know, connecting people online. And so, you know, we started putting that together in, uh, you know, early version two years ago, and really came out of beta, like with a real version of it about a year ago, year and a half.

And, um, people have built over three and a half million apps on Glitch. And for scale Apple's app store has about 2 million. Um, Google's has about 2.1. So we're probably by the end of year, we'll be at twice Apple's scale and you know, it's apples and oranges, no pun intended. It's not the same thing. They're not building, you know, uh, Fortnite or whatever.

You know, those are these huge, you're not building Microsoft Office, but you're building stuff that comes from the heart, you're building stuff that's a little weird. We have activists and educators and artists and just all manner of people that would never get featured in the Apple app store, would never be funded as a startup in Silicon Valley.

Um, [01:00:00] but have a story to tell or something funny. I mean, every day people just make goofy stuff or they're like, oh, I can use this technology and play around or make something funny for my friend. And I was like, oh my gosh, when's the last time I found something just joyful and absurd and silly kind of broken and ugly too, you know, like a very DIY crafts.

Nobody ever gets the like handmade craft that their kid made at camp and is like, son, you did this wrong. I, this is unacceptable. You know what I mean? Like these popsicle sticks are not parallel. Take it back, right? Like that just, you would be a monster. And yet there's that expectation that everything somebody makes for you in the digital world is supposed to be perfect.

Perfect. And, um, so we've worked very hard to create a place where you can make mistakes and you could ask for help. And, um, nothing has to be perfect and people were, were waiting, were waiting for it. They didn't know they wanted it until they [01:01:00] saw it. And I think, you know, it was not, I wish I had been thoughtful enough to have it be completely intentional, but I think it was fate that, uh, we would call it Glitch because I think it gives so many people permission to sort of say, oh, this is a place I can, I can make some mistakes, but at least I'll have good company.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. The whole idea of psychological safety, being able to take risks, everyone in there, just trying things out.

Um, I have three children, so I know the importance of having those types of spaces and personally myself, as well. Earlier this year, you published a blog post called "I should have written the JOMO book."

Anil: I did.

Christina: If you did write that book, what would it say?

Anil: First of all, you've done the definitive job of this. And I want to be clear about that. Um, I, you know, what, what I meant is I wrote this piece... It was really actually after reconnecting with Katarina Fake, who'd inspired this in the first place with me, you know, we we've been friends, for you know, almost 20 [01:02:00] years and, and we were I was talking about, um, well, one how important her idea FOMO was, that she had framed an idea, and I think what the greatest thinkers, do they give a name to a concept that all of us feel, but can't articulate. And she did that perfectly, you know, and I think, um, one of the, going back to the Glitch part, like one of the things that people did for creating apps on glitches, you remix somebody else's app.

So you're not starting from scratch. You build off somebody else's work. And that's, I think part of what's enabled such creativity is you're not like starting with a blank page. And I think that's core to generativity and creativity and sort of similarly, you know, I had no idea; Karina had an idea and I remixed it.

Right. And, um, and I think that is how we all sharpen each other's ideas and polish each other's work is we build on a remix sometimes in, you know, innately explicitly, and sometimes just intuitively you know, there are ideas that bubble up in culture. I mean, you and I arrived at JOMO independently and through different [01:03:00] paths.

And so, you know, you've been very generous to credit me, like chronologically, I think probably I said it earlier on, I'm sure somebody else said it somewhere else and we don't, you know, like it's not in Google or something, you know what I mean? But there's also a, um, their ideas whose time has come and there are narratives and giving a name to something that is about revealing a thing we all feel.

And so, you know, um, I think that, again, the, the polite thing I should say is like, your book is canonical, but I mean, that very sincerely. Right. And, and the reason why it's like it arrived when the world needed it, and people responded to it because it captured the idea for them, you know? And I have no, uh, I wrote the best blog post about it that I could.

Yeah, there's no evidence I know how to write a book, let alone a good one. And so I think it's sort of like, we all contribute, right? Like I think we all contribute to the creation of an idea in culture or the creation of [01:04:00] a, um, a value that we all aspire to. And so it's, it's the, you know, we are all, um, you know, throwing wood on the fire.

And so, so that, that's sort of how I see it as this like I, you know, I'm very, I'm always happy that like anything I've ever written gets read, I mean, it feels flattering and exciting. And a couple of times I've had concepts that connect with people in different ways. And, you know, honestly, most of them are like very techie, very esoteric, and which is satisfying in, in my domain of like the work I do. Right. But it's like, you know, that's not going to be the, you know, like there are not going to be strangers on the street are like, wow, I heard of that. And this is something where like, you know, I don't, I think, you know, 100th of a percent of anybody who's ever heard of JOMO has heard of me.

Right? Like it's not something I'm, uh, that I'm associated with, but it's a thing that I, you know, played a tiny role in contributing to like putting the idea out in the world. And so [01:05:00] that's something that I think is like, what a gift. I mean, we get to connect, we get to have a conversation. We get to talk to other people who care about these ideas.

Um, I, you know, I wrote about like, I should have written a book, and what I meant was I could not have foreseen that this was an idea that resonated with so many people.

Christina: It's huge. Yeah. I mean, did you watch the video of Oprah discovering it?

I

Anil: did. I, that was amazing. You know, there was a, there was a moment early, early on.

I wrote the post in 2012 and they did a like, you know, predictions for, I think it was for 2014, which is funny. Um, but it was one of the big ad agencies, I think JWT. Yeah. And they wrote a, like, here's the, you know, here's the themes that for the next year to be aware of, and they put JOMO on that. And it was, um, most tellingly this is of that time, it was on like Yahoo's homepage, you know? And I, there's still people that go to Yahoo, I guess. And, um, I just remember seeing like a ton of people were like reading my website. Like I was like, and clearly they were like, what is this guy? Like some guy in New York talking about the internet.

Like, I don't know what this [01:06:00] guy is, but like, okay, this idea. And, um, you know, there's a, there's an ego part that was like that was a nice validation. It's like, okay, these people are authorities, and they said that my idea is good and they liked my framing of it. Um, but the bigger part was like, I just want people to have this tool.

I want them to have this idea. And I honestly did not know until years later that it had that second life after that. Cause that was the moment that okay there, it had a little blip and they wrote this like trends piece and it's done and it sort of started bubbling under. And I had, well, one just been busy on other stuff.

And two, I think it had come up in completely different spaces around mindfulness and certain kinds of creativity and expression that were not where I spend my time and attention online. You know what I mean? And also not least like, again, a lot of this is very gendered, so like what you get recommended to you on social media, is like, I am a man and they sent, they, you know, they sent me like, you know [01:07:00] carbon fiber, manly things, you know, I'm like, I don't really perform masculinity in that way, but like, I understand why you're targeting me for this ad, you know? And, and so I just was like, you know, uh, didn't see it. And, um, and then as you know, you had really told the story in a way that connected with people, you know, started a new narrative.

And that was really sort of where it came back. And that was sort of what I was speaking to, which is like, this idea is so powerful. And in particularly, I just felt so strongly about Katarina's role. And I was so struck by her thoughtfulness in that she wanted the idea out there, but did not want to capitalize on it.

And she could have easily had any platform out there. You know, I was sort of talking about like, they could have given her a Ted talk or a TV show or something. And, um, I guess these days you get a Netflix series, whatever it is. And, and she was like, you know, she wanted it to be about the idea and not her.

And also she was like, I can't dedicate the time to being the advocate for it. I think that's such a [01:08:00] thoughtful space to be in. And I think like, you know, you need to have, as you're doing the people who are the advocates to talk about an idea and to get it out because like ideas don't get out in the culture on their own.

They need to have agents. They need to have voices. Um, but at the same time, you know, the worst is the insincere version of that, right? Like the person who's doing it, like it's like um pushing an oldies act doing their greatest hits and they clearly hate the song. If you ever seen this is I used to work in the music industry.

You just see people and like the guys in the band hate each other. And they're just like dragging around the road, playing Holiday Inn being like, I hate this song, you know? And like, that's like grim. And if you have an idea that succeeds, that's the worst nightmares and you don't want to be that, you know. Conversely, if it's like, this is the people who are like, this is the crystallization of what I wanted to say to the world and I'm proud of it.

And I like to be sharing it with everyone. You know, I think that's like, that's the greatest gift you can give [01:09:00] somebody is like, this is sincerely of me. And I still have depth to share about it that I want to open up to you. And that's a form of like vulnerability and sharing that I think is just incredibly powerful.

Christina: So you're writing a little bit about our good friend and another of us are personal friends of her, but our good friend, Marie Kondo. "Marie Kondo has grown," you write, "Marie Kondo has grown a global empire around," and I'm framing it this way as, "intentional consumption, improving our lives by starting with the question, what brings you joy."

And Anil, you seem to like that starting point, you were like a hell yes to that. And then you wrote quote, "The stakes are so much higher now than back when we just worried that social media would make us feel bad about missing a party. Yes, that's still a cause of stress, but far worse is social media enabling grifters to profiteer off of innocent people's credulity.

Ultimately though, this began as a conversation centered around joy. Isn't that a rare and special and fragile thing. How often do we [01:10:00] talk about joy? Let alone actively pursue it or protect it? I think pursuing joy, protecting peaceful moments, seeing our friends' happiness as a cause for celebration and not envy and engaging with our lives on our own terms are quietly radical acts."

And. I just want to say that I couldn't agree more. I want to thank you Anil for your work in the world as the originator of JOMO, for your work as a creator and founder and father and ethical tech advocate. I want to personally thank you for making space for me to carry forward this part of the JOMO discussion.

This has been a conversation I have been looking forward to for a long time so thank you.

Anil: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the work you're doing so much in the world.

Christina: Thanks Anil.