hey there I'm back with the second season of my viewfinder the project this season is to work with co-host Alvin paragut to discuss a broad range of topics that we invent on our Discord Channel if you're looking to get involved want to guest star suggest topics just give us some feedback hit us up on the Instagram which I think I'll go back on email mbfpodcast gmail.com we're looking to reconnect with this art form craft hobby love that we've lost touch with so without further Ado season 2 episode 1 of my viewfinder we should introduce ourselves and talk about why we hate cameras now oh yeah totally here why don't you go first I'm not very good at introductions I just like to riff Go full send okay fine uh how do we want to start this first episode so we can be a little bit formal I'm David Yan I'm Alvin peringa and we are here to start talking about photography geography Alvin why don't you quickly describe yourself in the lens of Photography well without sounding too cliche um I would consider myself a street photographer although that term is a bit wishy-washy these days what I do enjoy is just photography really just the act of photographing uh as long as the content is interesting I'm I'm gonna shoot it no matter what it doesn't have to be a certain genre it just has to be interesting okay you've been doing it a long time I mean we met in 2017 maybe or something around then how did you start did you get a camera in high school you told me once but I forgot I borrowed my dad's DSLR it was an Olympus e800 or some [ __ ] like that and that's when I just started taking photos it was really for family events uh family gatherings and then I started shooting my friends taking portraits of them and then I was very much into hip-hop culture so I wanted to take photos of graffiti around the city but I didn't really follow through with that and then it wasn't a lot back in the day no there wasn't well actually you know what there there was quite a lot especially with murals back in I want to say 2006 2007 around art Central uh where the Telus building is right now uh that Alleyway over there or what used to be an Alleyway there was a lot of graffiti murals along that that Alleyway I eventually stopped taking an interest in photography although I was still very much interested in taking photos of my friends with a little point-and-shoot and then I became a dad and I wanted to take photos of my kids so I bought a camera and the the interest in photography just kind of sparked again and here I am spending thousands of dollars on gear yeah you're loving books

born and raised I think that's important to you right yes I picked up camera uh during a midlife crisis in I bought one for myself 2014 maybe it was after the floods I was working insurance and uh I had to work the floods as a property insurance field adjusters you can imagine that was not fun fun I already hated my job so that added feel to the fire and so when I got this bonus check for working uh ungodly hours I decided I would just Splurge you know I took pictures for a living essentially with a point of shoot as well I mean that's how you that's how you investigate claims I had a little Canon elf and some I don't know so that's what I was whatever the yeah whatever the company gives you yeah after a while it's funny you're just like literally pointing and shooting we're gonna have to talk about the verbiage of uh photography anyways but uh going out and and capturing all these pictures and uh yeah yeah yeah it's pretty creepy but there's you know there's a little element of Street there too I think where you kind of uh voyeur right yeah or like documentation yeah yeah it's very core it's like reportage except to an evil Corporation right um yeah no that's fair unfair but to a corporation anyway so I um yeah so about this camera and then uh I don't think we yeah I don't think our son was born yet but uh you know it's Calgary I moved here from Toronto so you know the beginning is all mountains and [ __ ] like that which is cool and then you and I met at a show I think you know I first met at the resolve show where George Greg and Chris had some stuff up I'm pretty sure I believe Shadow briefly well my first interaction with you was you actually just added me on Instagram and we hadn't met in person and then okay cool person at was it resolve I want to say it's resolve I think there was there was like some seminar going on there and then that's when we that's right that's when we first met and that was through perhaps Costas at the time probably cost us yeah yeah resolve is my Anchor Point into the Calgary photography art scene I just want to ask like from taking photos for insurance purposes to to meeting at resolve like what what happened in between yeah good question I um yeah my life broken half uh I guess you know the short form is that yeah I had a total basically psychotic breakdown and I was on like two years consecutive stress leave one of the big things that I was doing when I wasn't just lying on the floor and debating how to end everything was learning to hike and I was bringing this camera out with a friend and then on solo hikes eventually around the same time we had our kid and that was the total mind [ __ ] too because we don't have support here and we were ill prepared about how difficult that was going to be and how I was having my wife was having such a hard time and I was really not a good emotional sport at all so uh this camera became kind of a meditative tool when I had the presence of mind to actually go outside and then for me because everything was digital I think one of the big maybe differences I've noticed between you and I is that I didn't really hold photography the art form or the craft of taking photos at such a high high line mark it was more just getting everything on the computer and then being able to [ __ ] around with them so yeah just posting essentially yeah and just like learning how to at first yeah first learning just general basic post-processing and then um and then realizing I can Muck around with it you know much more destructive way which is fun and that just became kind of an outlet and that was the first time I did a show I got this one night show at Phil and Sebastian's coffee shop here in Mission spent so much [ __ ] money we'll talk about that too one day Framing and putting this [ __ ] up on a wall but it's so exciting once I started getting a little bit more stable uh mentally it was great to just take walks you know and be outside and my kid was still really young so whenever my wife and I could negotiate the time I'll just yeah [ __ ] off into Calgary and Calgary is pretty new to me too at that point um so I'll take pictures of anything and street photography was still not as offensive as it is today so taking pictures of people and how stuff wasn't you know ruffling feathers or making people upset yet to the most part so it's really exciting and uh it was fun to just put that out that's why we would have met on Instagram like Instagram was still a photographer's tool so by the time we met I would have classified myself as kind of a street photographer too but not in a purest sense as I learned hanging out with you all these years well even then that that term is just it means nothing at the end because if you look at my photographs even though I consider myself a street photographer a lot of it is on the street but a lot of it is also just family members but the foundation of my work is that it's candid yeah what is it documentarian I would just say like I don't I don't think genres really matter unless you're looking for something to sell I don't think genres really matter you're just a photographer you're just doing the act of Photography or whatever's sake for my sake it's just because I want to take a photo of something because I find it interesting well yeah I was thinking more philosophically like documentarianism using this tool and craft of Photography to record uh moments or experiences as opposed to let's say a studio or art photography where there's so much more intent in the formation of the photograph which has its own thing I I don't know I think there's like you said there's it's there's no real sub-genres anymore photography is kind of folded in on itself but there is kind of a thick line with the editorial or commercial photography I think where there's a a pre-design almost in you know forming an image rather than recording one as it happens maybe yeah well photography does have many different purposes you aren't creating art when you had your company's camera doing documentation for insurance but having said that maybe this is just a hypothetical maybe you had a photo that would be considered art the composition was great the content was interesting even though it's a bit of a tangent but that's what makes photography so interesting to me because a lot of the time you're not even really thinking about making art you're just thinking about taking a picture right I think if you're out there to create art I don't I don't want to sound so purist but you kind of take away from the act itself it's not really photography at that point you're just you're just trying to conjure up you know what [ __ ] no forget I said that I don't even know where no you know what I I I feel that I think while we're encroaching on maybe is the definition of the word photography and that's of course going to be ambiguous and it's going to illicit some emotional response if anyone hears this because uh we all mean different things even when we're aligned like this idea of a Zone you know when I and getting into a flow of taking pictures there's gonna be a point where all of a sudden it's not so uh cerebral or intentional and it becomes something more intuitive is that photography or is it the moment that I carry my camera out and maybe I know like you're doing the graffiti project or you go to a cipher you go to an event and you know that you're going to take pictures whether they turn out or not is that photography is designing a project and executing is that photography I don't know is the development of film photography it's weird because everybody likes different parts of it right that's a good point to make it's been a while since I've heard this quote I remember uh listening to a Gary winogrand lecture and he was making the argument that ads that use photography isn't really photography it's illustration I think this comes to play too with the idea of Art and you know just circling back to what we intended to talk about today why I think both of us are a little bit disassociated or disillusioned with what we used to think of as a passion although we are doing this podcast so clearly we still love photography at some level but that sense of whether this is real at all what makes a picture good not to be too much of a hater too but often when I go to see exhibits or see what's popular not that I'm on Instagram anymore but let's say in the popular sphere or come across photojournalism or you send me a few articles in the last couple weeks which question some of the ethics and morality and intent of content that's being created I don't know how to define it for myself anymore what is a picture what is yeah like a painting or an image what is content versus you know versus our photograph yeah it's all it's all messy now right yeah like I don't know what are words well yeah well this is it means too abstract to call it a philosophy class but I mean this is the the basis of philosophical thinking it's arguing about semantics yeah so I don't know I'm actually reading uh this one one thing that Gary winogrand said and this is a quote from him a photograph is not what was photographed it's something else to me that's it's taking whatever it was in the real world and transforming it into something different something that that kind of gives you a suspension in disbelief say for example um there's this one photo I took of a flock of birds and there was [ __ ] on the window and you would think that like all these birds are coming towards me to you know to attack me or like take a [ __ ] take a [ __ ] yeah on top on top of my car but the reality it was there was already poop on the window and then there just happened to be a flock of birds right so you're transforming two totally different real world subjects and I don't want to say make a narrative but no I think that's fair yeah but it it it does conjure up something different from reality would you say you had that intent when you hit the shutter or is it something you just discovered after and contextualized I think I think it was just I think I was just focused on the flock of birds I didn't even notice the [ __ ] until after that's the interesting thing and maybe part of my current um divorce from actually going out and bring my camera all the time is that I am so conscious of being powerless to create context before I take a picture I almost feel like I can't hit the shutter unless I know it's going to be cool I totally get that one thing that I've kind of come to terms with is that especially with street photography with candid photography there's no guaranteed way where you will have a great picture because 99 of the time it's all luck say you're at Stampede there's so many things going on right so much content that you can make out of but you have to be at the right place at the right time to make the right photo because yeah you can take a photo of something interesting but is the photograph in interesting whereas I could have the inverse thing happen say for example this one photo I took of a mural at the Seattle Surrey Porter in real life I was in queue at the border and I was waiting for for the officer patrols to to come check my car and so I just happened to take something boring but then when the image came out it was one of those images that someone has told me it happened it was a photo that happened something about it just made it interesting so what I'm really trying to get is it's it's all luck and and yeah hard work consistency definitely plays a factor but there is no there's no formula to make good pictures you just have to be out and about the right place at the right time and kind of hope for the best really if you think about it mathematically I mean if you're outside and you're shooting at 1 800th of a second yeah right it just it doesn't make any sense something inconceivably short that's what I've come to terms with though it's there are no Geniuses unless you're doing like editorial [ __ ] but at that point it's I don't know something different it's illustration to me right you're kind of orchestrating [ __ ] to to make it a certain way um you're already thinking about the the composition of what the photo is going to be right it's like everything is all predetermined yeah and yeah yeah and if it comes out if it comes out as your idea yeah that's that's great and all but it's not interesting on itself it's more so the idea of it is interesting whereas you can take something totally boring totally mundane and flip it upside down it'll be an interesting photograph that's just burned into your mind it's listening to you I'm thinking what this part of our conversation today is really begging at is uh this idea of what makes art in general so before we worry about capitalism and consumerism and and sort of the leveraged idea of making earning with creativity it's like even when you look at the classics you know like what is it that an image intentional or not speaks at the human mind of the human soul already gonna call it and can transcend just being a cave painting I mean we value cave paintings now less for their artistic Merit and more just for the historical significance but you look at um I mean let's say Renaissance painters as a huge example basic stereotypical one what is it about it that uh we cherish is it the art is it the historical context I don't know because photography has a disjointed relationship with that it's not respected as an art in in a pure sense I think there's something weird about falling in love with this process those inherently never gonna find a foothold in creativity I agree with you I think um throwing money to if you want to call it the art form it adds an unnecessary stress and pretense to it some of the most expensive photographs in the world are not the best photographs like that one photograph of what was it the [ __ ] that one in like the cave it was it was like the highest selling photograph of all time here let me let me search it up most in the edit most expensive photograph oh this one right here 2014 for a price of 65 million but to me it's not it's not that interesting here's the thing though it could be interesting so someone else right I mean this is yeah I mean really bad case the way I view it art is that um it's a medium which conveys some sort of idea right and whatever whatever idea that you get from that or how it makes you feel that's where the value viewers the perceived value adding money to it is just makes it it makes a material difference but at the end of the day you're kind of just looking at it and you're like what the [ __ ] is like is this supposed to be good for the record we're looking at Peter lick let's say Phantom balls just reading uh the description this photo was taken in an area known as Antelope Canyon in Arizona USA by Peter Lake actually I don't know two two different uh spellings instruction in 2014 for a price of 65 million bucks and then interestingly as well they've said here the buyer's list is private Anonymous which means the sale cannot be verified and I think we should definitely spend a little time later on maybe critiquing fine art as a business well yeah that's true because suspect man a lot of these things are just tax write-offs right or something right there's a game there's definitely a little bit of uh it's not really the art is valuable but more so it's taxes and well this is the funny thing is uh now that I think about it in one of the many winogrand lectures that I listened to he does mention that there's books and I've read as well but uh yeah American capitalist um I don't know poison but the influence on fine art as we understand today as a recent call out you know this nft so-called boom in art that lasted all of one year or whatever uh was the same problem as this idea that the art itself has the value that is assigned by the market which is not actually true you know I I think even with the class you say Mona Lisa allegedly is the most important painting in some circles and it will have some kind of uh valuation but from a purely mechanical standpoint as far as aged canvas Framing and paint you know it's not that those things have value or you know it's weird it's a weird thing to attribute a number so this Photograph I'm guessing as a physical object and not the rights of the details of the image itself 65 million dollars what does that even mean other than we all wish we had 65 million dollars right hell yeah that is true but you know just to rewind even more because I wanted to get us back on where we're at today you said and often taking What Might Have Been a boring moment in picture in later viewing might have created a strong photograph you know why why aren't we shooting boring pictures Alvin why are we meeting at coffee shops and talking about why we won't take pictures anymore if what we really need to do is just go out be bored and and take another hundred thousand shitty frames uh what's going on well I think it's because I don't want to muck up my hard drives even more I lost a big one last year it's [ __ ] crazy yeah with tens of thousands of boring photos I don't know I think just having coffee is more fun oh for sure when I look at my uh divorce from Instagram and uh being a little shell-shocked you know obviously covet everybody talks too much about covet now but it is a big cultural problem right we lost two years of three actually three years of innocence and and I definitely had a break uh through that I didn't even go outside so living in a cave there's only so much you can take a photograph of yeah but frankly I'm kind of scared to take pictures now I had that little altercation just before covid with Scott yeah we were essentially attacked by a very angry short racist homophobe and uh I mean I realized you know years after that Scott and I could have easily pressed charges to him he [ __ ] grabbed Scott's camera and tried to break it if it wasn't tied to him you know that would have been that's you know constantly as an actual assault but more importantly it made me think about why I was even out taking pictures it ruined the fun of him he's got nowhere out an hour before that I was literally on the way back and so that that creeps uh you and I know this last couple years just the minority status and being visible in the street as a non-white photographer is a problem you were I think we're more easily accosted than uh than others um it also makes me think like why am I taking these pictures of people in Calgary I don't I don't know anymore yeah I don't know what I want to do it for so well that's weird I'll tell you one thing it for me for myself I remember when I had I had a really good run around 2015 to 2017 just literally taking photos every day doesn't really matter what the subject was taking photos within Calgary was such a fresh it was a fresh feeling um the act of Photography at that time was fresh right just coming up with something that constantly felt new and as time went on for for myself I just ended up repeating the same workflow I would say which you know you repeat something time and time and it gets old it gets stale right that was street photography for me which was at the time the most exciting genre that I could possibly do I'm not into doing portraits I'm not into doing Landscapes not into doing like freak [ __ ] I guess but uh yeah it just got boring it just got boring and repetitive and the the work to reward ratio was just not it and then covet happened it kind of killed it for me because afterwards I tried doing it again and sometimes it just wasn't the same you know yeah and also I think when when kovid happened literally every photographer was trying to make their magnum opus work with the pandemic you know just just empty Street yeah yeah families in their homes and it's like from a documentation point of view I see value in that but the photographs themselves are just it's boring there are I will say though there there were some very very interesting work coming out of sure during that time yeah I don't know there's so much more noise right it's like it's hard it's hard to feel like you're doing something special it's hard to have fun with it even though I shouldn't be comparing myself to other people it's hard not to right because we're so interconnected now we have to get you know some people we know that are like still heavy into it to kind of explain to us why they're still passionate yeah I don't even know like who would be or probably Chris Malloy is he still doing his I don't know I don't talk to him anymore uh Scott a little bit but he works in the industry or he's a directors that's a little different Louis maybe Lou is the most technical guy he's more of a Craftsman right like I met him at that event and he's talking about emulsions and different chemicals and [ __ ] yeah we should ask that question too like is that photography I don't know it's it's fascinating to talk to him it's like a scientist so I met with Caitlin a couple weeks ago and she's also a little disillusioned even though she's a professional photographer it's I think every space it seems like everyone's disillusioned in some way yeah I know I was for sure especially after I tried quitting Instagram actually I I did quit in Instagram or photography and then I tried starting it back up end but now I realize that it's it's not it's not the same but the caveat was having Instagram made me made me keep doing it a little bit more you know what I mean it's like oh maybe maybe there's some content I can post but it's just content that's not [ __ ] that I like you know I just had this thought about you know one of the topics I wrote down we should talk about is uh photographer's relationship to where they are with the lens like I hate getting my picture taken and but I'll take pictures of things is Instagram or you know um public forums for photographers a way for us to project who we are through our work you know it's like to be seen ironically almost without us being seen most photographers I know don't post selfies you know uh I think you know I think it's more just trying to post the pictures that they took so there's a weird dichotomy in that there is also it's it's like if you just keep posting for Instagram is it really your work or is it is the work being done because of you or is it being done because of Engagement truth be told yeah for me engagement was faster for sure it's got to be both maybe it's swung too far one way I don't know for myself when I was you know when I had like I didn't even have that many followers like 600 followers right but I would I would post selfies I would post work that maybe other people would have liked right there was there was a bit of ego being projected onto that Instagram account which is fair game but when I create my zines my projects that was a whole different story uh because I don't know it was like it wasn't my ego but more so my my interests are those two different things I don't know I I don't think so but I certainly didn't see myself in those projects I just saw the work and obviously the interest because why else would I why else would I create that project but that's also something like I think projects like that ultimately matter the most it's tangible right something you could touch Instagram is yeah for the most part Instagram is not it is real but it's not real it's not tangible one of the first things I remember liking about Costas is he told me that you're not a photographer until you've printed your first images I thought was a neat way to put I mean he's a printer so it's a little biased but I thought that was very interesting for me because yeah once it's a tactile object it holds its different value but yeah if we're asking why did I make it into an object was it to seek validation was it to sell a commodity was it to get it you know into the real world I don't know obviously don't have an answer for that I will say now because I'm so much more jaded I almost feel like I won't print something unless I think someone will buy it because there's a huge cost involved right there is it's weird for me I I totally get you from that end I won't print something nice unless someone's gonna buy it but [ __ ] I'm gonna I'm gonna print something if I find it interesting and it's not going to be on my really expensive computer or at a real print shop it's going to be at Walmart right just because I want to see like I just want to view the what's the word I'm looking for I guess just the photograph I just wanted to view the photograph yeah there's something to be said about even the scale of print versus your computer like you know I've both gone out with little insta Max cameras and then I I mean I've seen some of your shows where we print pretty big and I've made a few images that are printed quite large and it's different right it always feels different because when it's an object it has a different context too so it's weird yeah it's just also thinking the flip side like if you do it just for Purity you get the mythology of a Vivian mayor right it's like yeah you know she never existed until someone found this box of [ __ ] yeah was she a photographer then because yeah it's weird well she did but she didn't show anybody while she was alive it's almost like the the uh what's that saying it's like if you it's if you if you chopped a tree in a forest and no one heard it did you really chop a tree or something yeah yeah does it make a sound or yeah it's weird like uh there's a I came across this woman I think I saw it in a magazine article she's kind of like a baby Meyer but she's alive so uh she is a Korean woman so she's not Vivian Mike well in in this one sense which is that she uh she's a Korean woman who um during Japanese Occupation but before the war her family moved to Hawaii and so after the Korean war was finished her dad had just bought her a point-and-shoot color film camera and when they went to go visit she just took candid photographs everywhere she went and then when they were developed she just kept them in a box and her daughter like five years ago found this box and these pictures are fantastic not only because she actually turned out to be a very good photographer in terms of composition but they're showing a part of Korean history that you know exists but they're in full color it's not a reporter it's not been create into propaganda from some you know dictator in Korea during the 60s 70s and so she's putting on shows and developed a book but it's her daughter doing all this work but she's now getting interviewed for these magazines this original photographer had no interest in sharing these pictures with anybody they were in a box in an attic right yeah that stuff's weird right it's like does it have more value now that we can see it in a museum or did it have value inherently because it was taken it's strange that is strange I think it was in that case maybe it maybe it was just more valuable because it had more eyes on it right same with the Vivian Meyer story yeah just a bunch of you know old dusty negatives maybe a print here and there and then it got shown on a Flickr group and more eyes laid on top of them and it just blew up just became more valuable I don't know the idea of value like when you and Scott Scott mallow were to keep talking about did your um was it I can't remember when you did your talk was about street photography or both Photography in general but Scott was doing that project redeveloping his dad's negatives and build are his dad's photos and that it's kind of the same idea it's like where does the value come in it's weird the idea of values kind of [ __ ] up you know like I look at my iPhone the other day and I have pictures of my you'll do this too we'll have pictures of our kids ridiculous candidates because they're too fat or doing something really stupid or crying or falling off [ __ ] and it's hilarious because they're adorable is that not a good photograph because we would never sell it because they're done on a iPhone 5 and the resolution's garbage it's perceived value because a photo of my kid that I thought was great or cute would not be important to someone else unless you're super famous yeah but maybe the photo was great then it's like oh yeah this is the content doesn't matter but the photograph itself has value yeah you've shown me some of your family pictures that you take in a document yourself some of them are great but yeah would we sell it I mean you send me that Oracle we'll talk about it about uh that photographer who made an art project oh Sally and their children yeah the children in the nude and uh we'll try to get to an episode talking about exploitation Etc but yeah stuff's weird man why can't we take pictures anymore I take pictures but uh it feels different well what do you mean when you say why can't I take photos anymore I just I find it stressful you know not when I'm finally out with the camera um like the other day I was out uh I decided intentionally to bring camera out and I drove I can't remember if I was doing Aaron first but ultimately I ended up at Glenmore Reservoir just taking pictures of the snowy path and trees and [ __ ] and uh it made me think about how if I'm gonna run away from Urban human street photography other than sort of architectural things that maybe I should go back out and try to take pictures of landscape certain nature or something just to literally get a breath of fresh air and in the moment that I'm taking photographs it reminded me of five or six years ago of just just being out there and part of something not worrying about whether someone's gonna have to see it or how to post this on Instagram or how it's gonna Stitch it together and that part was very cathartic and meditative but I haven't been out since you know you think that if I enjoyed it that I would go and participate in it again and I didn't so I don't know there's something broken there I think I can't tell you what it is but we have to solve it but that's where we're at yeah that's that's the issue for sure it's uh some I think not even just you and I just a thing that everyone kind of contends with uh yeah I don't know it's I like the idea of continuing to photograph but for myself I have no interest in like what the world is around me at the moment and if I have no interest in the world then I have no interest in photographing right I keep going back to win a grand but it's like a photographer's relationship to his medium is relation is the relationship to his world is the relationship to his medium so maybe we're just too cynical in general I think so I think I think you have to look at the world with like some sort of not even optimism but hope faith like there has to be an interest whether whether it is optimistic or not know what I mean because you can you can be pessimistic about war but still have an interest in it right yeah yeah and I think that that kind of just reflects my state of the medium right now I'm just not interested in the world right now I'm not interested in my immediate surroundings if I travel somewhere yeah it's new to me but I don't have that luxury right so that's why photography has just been on the back burner for me not even since covet but like since 2018 just because you know things have gotten stale uh the way I look at the world uh the way that the world responds to me really I'm just what I'm saying is that I've just become a boring person maybe we can't take photographs at least with joy because of our disillusionment and so there's some play on words where because we're dealing with a visual medium our disillusionment is preventing us from building images about it it's weird because as when you're talking about it that's how I feel like too I've been hating on the world and and now I'm unable to take photos of it yeah it's it really depends on how you the photographer responds to the world right and that's really how you just get photos not even an interesting photograph just photos in general personally I don't like to photograph when I'm in a bad mood but when I'm in a good mood when the world around me seems a bit more optimistic then yeah I'm I'm just buzzing around ultimately the act of photographing just relies on Vibes really it's just Vibes yeah man it's good but I think it's true yeah not because you're on a mission to do something it's just Vibes just fivesman that's how I listen to music isn't that how we consume art anyway because it makes us feel good right dude because it's literally just Vibes obvious you're looking at things mathematically or because it costs a lot it's just how it makes you feel right that went to Paris and spent maybe four hours at the Lura and I was like yeah I'm good foreign

when I tell some people that they look upset but whatever all right cool cool what what do you want to try to talk about next we've just covered briefly everything we've been brainstorming about talking about so let's pick a topic um I I think we just scratched the surface yes on the things we talked about do you want to talk about how it's like a pay-to-play kind of game all right let's talk about uh Commercial Art culture and get ourselves in really big trouble yeah whatever yeah for that episode two I'm nobody I'm nobody so my opinion should not matter to anyone listening really it's public discourse the internet um we're already celebrities I'm just a guy who had