Webworm with David Farrier

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed recently, but discovering stuff on Netflix can be kind of hard. Sure — you’re presented with a bunch of categories like “Top 10” when you login, but outside of those initial lists, finding things that are compelling and worth your time seems close to impossible. The compelling stuff is there — it’s just buried. With that in mind, I feel very excited to be able to share two things from Giorgio Angelini, one of my favourite documentary makers. The first is something I’ve been wanting him to write forever — about what it was like to release his latest documentary on Netflix. Secondly — Giorgio’s let me publish his latest short here on Webworm. It strikes at the heart of what’s going on in America right now.

My friend loaded about a year’s worth of our text history into Google’s AI (privacy, what privacy?) — and instructed the AI to create a podcast about me based on those texts. That’s what today’s podcast is — just a couple of AI people talking to each other about me, based on nothing but a text thread between me and my friend. It’s truly awful and I told Aaron as much. On top of this Joshua Drummond shares his latest big of art around New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

A conversation with someone I find endlessly fascinating to talk to — one of my favourite authors, Jason Pargin. He’s perhaps most well known for writing John Dies At The End, or a host of other books that all have amazing titles including This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It, What the Hell Did I Just Read, and If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe. His latest comes out this week, and is called — in true Jason style — I Am Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. I was reading his stuff way before I knew I was reading his stuff, later finding out he was the guy who started Pointless Waste of Time which ended up being Cracked.com. If you don’t know his writing, you might know him as “the geriatric TikTok personality” (his words, not mine) who stumbled upon Tickled recently, before moving onto Mister Organ. After watching that reaction video, I got in touch with him and fawned a little, before discovering that we have a lot of interests in common — from the chaos of social media and AI, to cults and religion, to all the stuff Tickled and Mister Organ touched on. I loved talking to Jason — and so here’s our conversation. It goes all over the place, and I hope you enjoy what he has to say. BOOK LINK: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/starting-to-worry-about-9781250285959/

Today’s Webworm is a podcast episode which tells the story of Barry. More specifically, it’s a story about Barry as told by my neighbor and friend Noah. Noah lived with Barry for six years, first as a housemate and then as a friend. This all seems pretty normal, until you realise that Barry was about 50 years older than Noah. I guess you could say it’s more a story of friendship, but one based on a fairly big secret. As usual, I will be in the comments all week at www.webworm.co if you listen and have any questions.

I’ve been trying to have this conversation for about seven years now, but it was impossible due to ongoing litigation in various United States' courts, including the New York State Supreme Court.

David D’Amato (the “big bad” in Tickled) died from a heart attack back on March 13, 2017. He left behind a legacy of tickling videos and online harassment, along with a couple of cats and tens of millions of dollars.

I noticed that one of the key people named in D’Amato’s will (as you’ll know from the film, we had a trove of documents from D’Amato’s computer) was Robert Maher. So back then, out of sheer curiosity, I dropped him an email.

To my surprise, he replied.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Corey Harris, the 44-year old man who went viral after Zooming into his court appearance while driving. The headlines generated were basically all the same: “Man With Suspended Driver's License Dials Into Court Hearing While Driving”. The video of Corey’s confused expressions went viral on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok — no-one really stopping to think why he looked so confused. He looked confused because a judge ordered his driving suspension be lifted over two years ago. 7News Detroit reported this fact, pointing out it was the court’s fault because they’d never passed those orders on.

Calvin is seven, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. In today's podcast, Calvin watches and then immediately reviews Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I hope you enjoy it. It’s Calvin, being interviewed by his dad Rob.

This week I started each day how I usually do: with a strong coffee as I read through your thoughtful comments. The stuff you shared around my piece musing about fate and destiny, chance and chaos, was particularly real and heartening.

“Even if it's down to random chance rather than some cosmic alignment, I find it so comforting to know you're grappling with the same questions and uncertainty in tandem.”

As I tend to do sometimes, I wanted to share some of it.

(If you have time, I’d urge you to read through all 170+ comments — it’s really good reading, and a reminder of this special corner of the Internet we occupy.)

The internet isn’t just full of bad ideas: It’s dying. The idea of a dead internet isn’t new, and full disclosure — it started life as its own conspiracy theory. Dead Internet Theory posits that most of the internet is just bots — and that these bots are being used to manipulate the human population. While I don’t see some grand scheme playing out online to infect the internet with garbage, I think it’s happening organically and it’s happening fast.

This is a conversation between Webworm's David Farrier, and his friend Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme.