Some tech show ideas 4 ur headtop
A few pilot episodes I’m going to film
Winter is for essays, Summer is for making things.
My thinking-to-creating ratio has been top heavy the last few months, which feels bad. So I’m currently working on a shock collar that links to your screentime, where your groupchat gets electrocuted every time you doomscroll. It is dumb and that is the point.
In the meantime, I’ve been stewing on Anu’s great “New Media Is Insider Media.” She argues that Silicon Valley’s revival of tech media is increasingly “media for insiders, by insiders.” It’s convincing, including quips like “audience market cap” (that small insider audiences are more valuable than their size might suggest) and “prestige is the coveted lane” (a call to make things that insiders can’t miss, because there’s a good chance outsiders follow). Insider Media, like knowledge creators or trade mags or B2B events, is an industry still dealing with post-scale monetization.
Still, it makes me sad. I was a yute in Mississauga Ontario who got exposed to Silicon Valley in ~2014 because I got to read along with Blake Masters’s notes on Peter Thiel’s CS183 Stanford lectures. I want tech insiders to continue to make shows for outsiders, because I am an outsider. It feels wrong that the industry is staying in its Dark Forest, ceding the public ground to sixteen year olds making clickbait AI explainers and hot wasian shortform creators getting their brand deal bag. Anu isn’t explicitly arguing in favour of opaqueness, but insider media is naturally inaccessible for a mass market. It’s funny that the Fable export controls got announced two days after her post—Anu herself admits that for a sufficiently advanced piece of technology, you need to balance insider narratives and outsider trust. Tech’s holy trinity of ridiculous wealth, fearmongering, and weird dudes is not making it any easier to bring the Machine God to life.
In the spirit of making things instead of commenting on things, here are a few show ideas that I bet could represent tech to a wider audience:
I. Good Hang The Newsletter The Show
II. Bourdain For The Tech Industry
III. Nathan For You For The Tech Industry
I. Good Hang The Newsletter The Show
Hot Ones is the GDNISOAT (Greatest Digitally Native Interview Series Of All Time). Its core concept, eating progressively hotter wings, actually qualitatively changes the viewing experience of a celebrity interview. PR training melts at 100,000 Scoville. That core idea is no longer subversive, but the show arrived at a time when viewers were itching for rawness instead of manicured celebrity. This isn’t an attempt to dig up decade-old media analysis, rather it’s to underline that it’s possible to do something similar with the tech industry. I bet we could open tech’s kimono via a good old fashioned house party.
Concept: The house party as an interview format—subcultures through the lens of hanging out.
I. We rig a house with 30 hidden cameras, similar to Friends Keep Secrets or Big Brother
II. We invite a bunch of people from a particular subculture, such as employees from the frontier AI labs (and some much needed social fluffers)
III. We throw a straight up house party, and everything gets recorded. One possible adjustment here is that every episode hinges on a single character or interview, and the party is just the context.
IV. It gets edited down into a 30-40 minute episode of the best storylines and conversations. The end product would feel like some mixture of David Dobrik’s OG vlogs x a Big Brother episode x Friends Keep Secrets x Side Talk x Drink Champs x Cheeky Pint
Talent: Randa is a homie who happens to be an easy victim of plagiarism. Good Hang was my favourite Substack and it makes me sad that it doesn’t exist anymore. But the art of the hang is still a great bit, and I bet there’s a ton of room for exploration here.
References:
The Real World
The Shop
There’s a lot to figure out here still, from technical production to storyediting what is effectively a reality TV show. But I think it would be fun! I’d love for this format to initially focus on the tech industry and its characters, but I bet it would work for subcultures outside of tech too. It should feel like the evolution of the man-on-the-street format, or something like a digitally native version of longform party reporting.
II. Anthony Bourdain For The Tech Industry
It’s strange that tech’s renewed love for media is still mostly confined to a standard podcast setup. You would think that the infinitely moneyed oligarchs would have figured out how to shoot on-site. The format is the message—Bourdain walking through the streets of Hanoi with a local resident is not the same as him sitting across from that person just talking about their favourite dishes.
I love TBPN and Cleo Abram for their ability to bring light-heartedness to the heady topics of technology. But I’d also equally love to see something darker and grittier—an on-the-ground exploration of how technology is impacting subcultures (good and bad!).
Concept: Culture through the lens of technology.
I. Pick a subculture that has been uniquely enabled (or hindered) by technology. Think: Voice chat enabling gaming culture, Shawarma spits enabling shawarma spots, hair clippers enabling barbershop culture, jobs getting replaced by AI.
II. Shoot each episode like a mini documentary, almost like Parts Unknown for the tech industry, where a charismatic host leaves the desk and actually ventures into these subcultures
Talent: My friend and prolific schizoposter, InternetVin. He’s a documentary filmmaker, technologist, and the world’s most curious man.
References:
Cleo Abram’s Huge If True
Strip everything else away, and Bourdain was ultimately just a cool dude. The same could be said for TBPN and their success. They’re funny normal guys in a sea of slightly awkward tech brethren. It’s a real advantage, especially when many outsiders are interpreting AI as “out-of-touch guys replacing humans.” In some ways the technology industry feels like the ivory tower it once sought to replace. The point of this “Bourdain for Tech” show is to shoot something that is grounded in reality, to remind people of the role that technology actually plays in our day-to-day lives.
III. Nathan For You For The Tech Industry
AI makes it easier than ever to pull the things in our head out into reality. The idea guys shall inherit the earth. So we should ask more of our creative technologists than “sticky note canvas apps with jiggly css effects.” I’d love to see more people taking swings like Riley Walz’s stunts or Danger Testing’s apps-as-cultural-commentary. It’s time for a Nathan For You for the tech industry.
Concept: Using absurd technology to solve your everyday problems.1
I. Pick an unassuming everyday problem: phone addiction, flaking on friends at the last minute, etc.
II. Build an over-the-top solution: a shock collar for phone addiction, an audio model of your friend’s eulogy whenever you try to flake on them, etc.
Talent: ME!!!!!
References:
Nathan For You
Danger Testing
Riley Walz
MSCHF
This is admittedly a half-baked idea compared to the other two, but it feels like a fun chance to make silly things and see where it goes. There are a bunch of great internet stunts going on right now, but very few have a legible vehicle that can both compound and monetize over time. I’d like to try it myself.
Tech’s “new media” is more aptly described as “improving the aesthetics of its marketing videos.” Polymarket and Kalshi may be shooting Hollywood-budget TV Spots, but they’re still shilling gambling apps. I’m more excited about broadly shifting the sentiment around technology, and especially in highlighting its role in our culture. I’ve never actually filmed a pilot before, but video feels like a fun new arc to explore. Reach out if that’s something you’d be curious to work on together <3
There’s definitely some wordsmithing to be done here
InternetVin mentioned 👀