Over the last six years, our conversations on Culture Study have often circled back to a handful of recurring themes: contemporary work culture, burnout, optimization culture, intensive parenting, the often hollow pull of the algorithm, the tattered social safety net, and the desire to engage more with the world (and community) around us. We're fun, I promise! And today we're going to weave together so many of those threads in an intricate conversation about the broken promises of convenience culture.
Gabe Bullard started writing Against Convenience years before "friction-maxxing" became a thing. He's thought deeply about the bad time bargains of conveniences large and small, and he's spectacularly well-equipped to work through your questions on everything from the tyranny of pre-check, the difficulty of letting go of a lunch-order-habit, and much bigger questions about how convenience culture facilitates our worst forms of individualism. There's so much for us to keep building on in the comments, too, so make sure and find us there.
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Show Notes:
We're currently looking for your questions on the following topics:
Anne Helen Petersen: Hi, everyone. Here's your regular update on upcoming episodes so that you can submit your questions. So first, what's up with influencers? Broadly, what are trends that you're seeing? We can go anywhere with this one.
Second, book trends right now. What's going on on BookTok? What are all your friends reading? What's going on with book covers? Again, so many different things that you can do.
Three, deterioration of work communication. Basically, why is everyone so bad at emailing, texting, Slacking, all of these? Like, what's going on?
Four, journo influencers. Think, like, the people who reported from outside Mitch McConnell's hospital for weeks. Like, people who have become kind of amateur, popular Instagram, TikTok sort of journalists. What's going on there?
Women leaving the Christian church en masse. What's happening?
And Venmo culture. This is inspired by a conversation that we had in the comments a couple weeks ago about people who will Venmo request you for $2, or people who refuse when you say, "I got it." Like, they continue to Venmo request you. We're gonna see if there's enough for an episode here, so if you think that there's more to talk about in terms of Venmo culture broadly conceived, please send us your questions. And as always, we are open to your ideas for future episodes. You can submit all of these at tinyurl.com/culturestudypod. And just FYI, you can submit questions for multiple episodes at once. No need to fill out the form a bunch of times.
All right, on to today's show. This is The Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Petersen.
Gabe Bullard: And I'm Gabe Bullard, author of the book Against Convenience: Embracing Friction in an Age of Endless Ease.
Anne Helen Petersen: The first thing I wanna say is that everything that we're talking about today is very much in line with things that I've been thinking about, things that I've been writing about, people, other people I've been interviewing.
So it just brings it all together in a way that is very compelling and cohesive, so. Great, thank you. And also, you started writing it, like, way before this was something that seemingly everyone was thinking about, so good job.
Gabe Bullard: Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. It's been a long process.
Anne Helen Petersen: I bet your editors are like, "Good job, us," as well for understanding that this would be well-timed. But I wanna go to the very important moment that all of us as authors have, which is, like, the moment when you realize, this could be a book. And sometimes it's this could be an essay, and then that turns into this could be a book. But was there a specific moment or moments in your life that you were like, "I wanna dig into this more"?
Gabe Bullard: Yes. Yeah. So it started, I mean, years ago, gosh, like almost a decade ago. I was living in Washington. I was working as a reporter and was really thinking about how certain tech platforms had started to transform the city. Yeah. I remember hearing from a friend who, at the time, the big trend in DC was restaurants that didn't take any reservations for seating.
So people would line up outside. And somebody, a friend, was saying he had been waiting outside, and then a car pulled up, and people got in and just sort of traded off position. They had paid the line waiters through an app to wait for the restaurant for them. And I thought, "Oh, that's interesting," and then was thinking, "Well, they had pulled up in a rideshare, too."
And then hearing more about kind of the conversation that a friend had overheard and I realize is, like, thirdhand at this point, it turns out that they were also tourists in the city who were staying at an Airbnb in another cool neighborhood. And it's this idea of, wow, like, I would go places and see, you know, every car kind of has a person driving and a person sitting in the back.
And there's this idea of everybody was kind of, it seemed like, taking this opportunity, or many people were taking this opportunity, to sort of pay people to do things they didn't wanna do or to outsource a lot of things. And I was wondering, is this turning people into just little bosses, all the time thinking, everything around me, every car, every apartment can be rented. Every task can be hired, that sort of thing, this like living this, through apps, this sort of aristocracy-type thing.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Gabe Bullard: And then as I was thinking about it more, too, just encountering a lot of little changes here and there, I thought, "I really don't like the way a lot of this stuff works."
Like, I don't like using apps to do things that used to be possible in person. I'd never wanted to link my transit to my phone, like my transit pass, because it's like, well, no, I have a physical card. It's so much easier. My phone battery's dying all the time. I might drop my phone. I might get rained on, and there's no way I can get around without that.
So I was always sort of wary about that. And then at a certain point, I was talking with my book agent about sort of various ideas, and this, this name Against Convenience came up. And I was thinking, "You know, I kind of have a take that would, that would move in this direction, that would do this, but it's not going to be about the value of doing things by hand.
It's not going to be about the rewards of collecting records," though I do collect records, or using fountain pens or typewriters or anything like that. Like, I think it's more about how so many conveniences just aren't really any sort of a better experience. And we went from there.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. I just I think that there's a take that could be, and that maybe, like, 10 years ago, you could write this piece, and it would be like, maybe in Slate, it would be a very Slate take, kind of contrary and old man waving fist at sky version of, like, "Everything's so easy these days," or like, "I wanna take pleasure in difficult stuff."
And it's not that, right? Like, that's not the crux. It's more that all of these things that are supposed to make our lives more convenient, or the way that we have outsourced our lives, is also not enjoyable.
Gabe Bullard: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And I think it was around maybe a little over a decade ago when just story after story is coming out about the way that a lot of these things work, what being in the gig economy is really like.
What pushes a lot of people into the gig economy, the actual pay that people are getting, the conditions in warehouses. Like, all of these stories were coming up, and also then just the sheer environmental toll of so many electronics and needing to replace electronics so much. It also started to become this exercise in just looking the other way at - so it's an unpleasant experience, first off, and then there's that guilt of knowing, "Is it on me to make sure I'm tipping enough that this person is really going to be getting anything close to a living wage for this brief amount of time that I have hired them to do this job for me or to drive me somewhere or something like that?"
And I wish these things worked better. I would love to be able to enjoy a lot more conveniences. I would love to not do the chores that I do. But the progress sort of stopped at the same time. Anything that does advance ends up just offloading this, not just work, but frustrations to other people in a way that at a certain point, how much of your conscience can you shut down after a while before you realize how much just as an individual you're sort of contributing to a lot of these things?
And opting out isn't going to stop them entirely, but it does sort of stop that kind of constant guilt when you're riding in the back of a rideshare or getting something delivered.
Anne Helen Petersen: You know, we're gonna talk a lot more too about how we're not against people paying other people to, like… We're not against taxi cabs, right? It's more like the convenience of an Uber that depersonalizes the experience and also turns the job into a job that is not a living wage. Like, there's all sorts of this meta conversation. But I do think we are at this point of kind of collective desire to add friction back in our lives.
And almost a year ago, my friend Kathryn Jezer-Morton, who we're gonna have on the pod soon, wrote a piece for New York Magazine about friction magazine- Hmm. is what she called it. And it just was a prescient piece for something that would come up again and again over the course of the year, and that I've seen a lot in the comments on Culture Study.
It's just trying to return to a more embodied experience. And actually, a couple weeks ago in the newsletter, I interviewed Ian Bogost about his new book, and he talked a lot about dematerialization and how we have lost the experiences, the tactile experiences of daily life that gave us gratification in some way.
And that could be something like pressing the buttons on a phone on an old school phone, or it could be walking to go get your lunch, right? Like, there's all sorts of ways that our lives have been dematerialized. The biggest example that he uses is the fact that, like, we don't drive stick shifts anymore in the United States in particular. But what do you think? Like, what are the forces coming together that make this a particularly conducive time to talk about being against convenience and just friction-maxxing in general?
Gabe Bullard: One thing that I land on a lot is... Well, two things I land on a lot. One is the isolation.
I think we're starting to feel it more and more. As more things happen, especially coming out of the pandemic, just the fact that so much less of life needs to be lived in any sort of public way with other people. Like, even small interactions of just kinda seeing other people on the street or or talking to someone when you place an order, all these things kinda went away, and I think that to some degree, a lot of people started to feel that weight and realize there's sort of this sense of disconnection.
I think on the sense of dematerialization, too, the sort of lack of permanence that started to seep into everything really causes me a lot of dread and anxiety, and was something on my mind as I was thinking, is this a book? Is this something that I could turn into a book?
What is the feeling in me that's driving me to keep thinking about this? It was this idea of, I don't feel an attachment to my phone as an actual object, even though that is probably the most important device in my life. Like, it controls everything. Even as much friction as I embrace, like, I still have so much running through my phone, and I don't care about it as a device because I've been through so many of them.
Anne Helen Petersen: I know, right?
Gabe Bullard: And it's sort of insane that all these really important things are so disposable now versus something that could be held onto, something that would last, something that would be repairable, all of that.
And I think to that point, too, something else that has maybe put this into the air is that feeling that things aren't really getting better. Like, I think the spread of Cory Doctorow and his writing about enshittification, I think is a big part of this too. But I think that a lot of people, whether or not they were actively thinking about, "Well, why is online shopping less reliable now? Why is my phone not lasting?" That sort of thing. Like, I think that even without thinking about that, you do start to notice, and you might even start to notice, what has really changed with these devices? Like, it used to be exciting to upgrade a computer or something like that, or get a new phone, that sort of thing.
And now it's just sort of like, oh, it's another chore. It's another thing I gotta do to make sure I can log into my bank account. It's another, I'm just paying my fee to participate in the world now, and getting this new device that I'm gonna carry around till I have to get another one, and nothing dramatic really changes.
Like, the camera gets a little sharper, the form factor changes a little bit, the headphone jack goes away. So now you have to buy additional headphones and that sort of thing. And this is like, it just, the progress just seems to kinda stop.
Anne Helen Petersen: I have a stronger sense memory and relationship with the phone that I had, like the physical, the phone phone, the telephone that I had as a teen than I do with any of the smartphones that I've kept on my person for so long. Like, that is such a good point. Or even, like, I could draw a picture for you right now of the vacuum that my family had when I was growing up. And I have broken, like, seven vacuums as an adult, and part of it is that I kept buying things that had to be replaced. Like, they were just not high quality vacuums, and they broke.
And I think part of what we're talking about, too, as you said, like, just this feeling that things aren't getting better. Like, everyone in the United States in particular, right, like, we make more money than any other country. Like, we're the richest country in the world, and yet we are all so dissatisfied all the time.
And some of that has to do with striving and individualism and all of these things that we're gonna touch on today. But also, it has to do with the fact that, like, we're spending a lot of money on things that suck.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah, yeah. It's something that has been on my mind a lot, too, I was going through… So in the late 1960s, my dad ran a record store. And I've found an old ad that he had run in the local paper where he was selling, at the end of 1968, on sale, the White Album by The Beatles for, like, $8.95 or something like that. And I was blown away at that price because that's, like, $85 today.
That's a ton of money, and that's at a huge discount. And I was thinking, man…
Anne Helen Petersen: Double album. Hello.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. It's a double album. And I was thinking, that's almost as much as you would pay for a year of a streaming service now. I guess it's like 60 or so percent for one album.
And I thought, but then again, that's gonna be an album that you're gonna hold onto. If you don't like it, you can resell it. Eventually you could make tapes of it. It's like it's a thing that you will own forever, and I actually own, still have my parents' copy of the White Album, in the collection.
And it's like it's this permanent thing that it seems like money well spent versus I sort of had this shock, when I think mortality was on my mind in the pandemic, and I write a little bit about this, of, what is gonna be left behind when I go? Like, I... 'Cause I have a niece and nephew, and I think, like, what...
They're not gonna want my phone. They're not gonna want… meanwhile, I have all this stuff that was, like, my parents' and my grandparents', like pieces of furniture, uh, clothing, like decor, antiques, like all this stuff that, that really has held up and, and that I value so much. And I'm just like, I don't know what is actually, like, physically going to remain after I go that, that anyone would, would remember me by that might be sort of a keepsake.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right, and this is not about nostalgia. Like, that's kind of an existential crisis, right? Like, this is a much larger thing than just, like, in my day, I had a phone that I can remember. And I think that's what we wanna expand and have this conversation really grapple with is, like, these are much larger questions about what it means to be a human in the world, not just about, like, I order my lunch every day or something like that, right?
Gabe Bullard: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: So we got so many questions, and we wanna try to get to as many as possible. So we're gonna start with this one from Ally that I think is really interesting.
Ally: "I used to resist convenience culture, taking pride in getting everything I needed on foot in a city where even big box stores were a 10-minute walk away.
When I unexpectedly became disabled, doorstep delivery became a necessity. I wonder, did convenience culture evolve from services originally designed for elderly and disabled people, much like curb ramps, which benefit far more people than the wheelchair users they were designed for?"
Anne Helen Petersen: So Ally's referencing universal design here, right? Like the ramps, this is the most classic example, that the ramps on curbs, like on a sidewalk, helps people who are in wheelchairs, but it also helps people who are pushing strollers, people who are on bikes and need to, like, get up onto the curb. It's things that are created to help people who are disabled actually help everyone, and that's why we should think about it a lot more.
What I see in your book is an incredible lineage of how so much of convenience culture is derived from getting people to spend more money. But I would love to see how you think about both of these things in concert.
Gabe Bullard: Yes. Yes. I really love this question, and that was something as I was writing that I was really careful about and grappled with a lot, which is this difference between convenience and accessibility.
And that's going to vary by individual. It's going to vary based on your situation, where you live, all these other factors. You may not have access to certain services and goods without an app or subscriptions or platforms or, or anything like that for somebody else is just gonna be a convenience, something that they don't really need to use but can. And I really don't like this situation because it's a world where basically private companies running platforms are in charge of some pretty vital accessibility issues. And I mentioned this in the book, but when Uber was pushing against some wage legislation in Seattle, they published this blog post where they say so many rides come from poorer neighborhoods and were for essential trips like getting to the doctor or getting to the store.
And I reached out to them for comment, and they said something to that effect. And to me, that is an outright failure of government. Like, no person…
Anne Helen Petersen: And public transit, right ?
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. Like, no person should have to hire a private taxi driven by a gig worker who is using their own car, giving a cut of the money to a company in Silicon Valley to get food.
And having what you need in your home doesn't need to, shouldn't have to rely on a giant warehouse full of workers putting their safety in danger. And it's a shame that not everyone has a choice in how they use some of these conveniences. I think the comparison to curb cuts is really interesting because there's a long history of protests and fighting and community action to get those done.
You know, the movement in Berkeley in the 1960s, and those were mandated in law with the ADA, which passed in, what, 1990? And had pushback from the business lobby. Like, it was a controversial bill in some corners that this would pass to mandate that. And so I think the answer to that is not to ensure that everyone can get a rideshare, that everyone can get food delivery.
It's to build a solution that works equitably to have buses and transit that's reliable and safe and accessible. And I think having conveniences that do improve accessibility at the same time…
Anne Helen Petersen: Mm-hmm.
Gabe Bullard: … can cloud this and lead to accepting a lot of trade-offs that shouldn't be trade-offs.
But something like DoorDash is miles away from Meals on Wheels. And I guess the other thing that kind of strikes me with curb cuts is those are about being able to navigate the world, making public spaces more welcoming for everybody. Something that universal design that improves everything for people to sort of be out in the world.
Delivery and these other conveniences are all about being able to stay inside alone and purchase things. Like they're inspired by marketing, they're inspired by, like you said, the push to make money, the push to keep selling things, and the push to just find the easiest possible way to get people to give up their money.
And what bums me out about that, too, is that social isolation is this huge problem, especially for the elderly.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yep.
Gabe Bullard: But you have places where, according to Uber, which provides these rides, you have places where people have to hire a private taxi if they're going to get to the doctor.
Which you would presume then they would also not be able to get to a place to get food, get to a place to, to see friends perhaps and everything. And I think the good convenience is one where things are made more accessible, both physical spaces and just a wider variety of food and products and services and options and all that, but done in a way that's not going to harm others or destroy things that are good or further inequality and sort of lead to this world where you have to use them because maybe there's just not a store in your community anymore.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes, and we should emphasize that the first line in the book is, "This is not a book about how life should be hard."
Gabe Bullard: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: 'Cause that's ... we got so many questions from people saying, like, "Actually, a lot of these conveniences are really important to me as a disabled person," and I don't think any of us would argue with that in any way.
Gabe Bullard: Exactly, yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: It's more that a lot of these things that everyone now uses are there in large part to facilitate individualism and not having to do things that would put us in contact with other people, and to allow us to work more. Like, I always think about the things that I used when I was in New York, like every single one of them was facilitating a life...
Not that, not a fuller life, not a life where I had a lot of time for myself or for hobbies or relationships. It was a life where I could work as much as possible.
Gabe Bullard: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Going back to the frustration of just buying a new smartphone, the idea of, I think, for a lot of jobs, the last few full-time jobs I had, the expectation was that I was providing my own phone.
That I would have a smartphone that I would therefore then be able to get emails at all hours, that I would install Slack on my phone. That I would have all these other ways of being reached that when I first got them were tremendously convenient and seemed even kind of fun, Slacking with colleagues and that sort of thing.
But then it became, "No, you will have Slack installed on your phone. You will have Microsoft Teams installed on your phone. You will be reachable in these hours." And it's like, oh, and I'm also paying money to do this. Like, I'm paying for the data plan. I'm paying for the phone. And this device that really should be my connection to the world and could be a lot more fun is also the thing that is enabling me to constantly be working.
Anne Helen Petersen: Well, and the point that you made earlier, like a lot of these things are about putting the cost of convenience onto the individual consumer…
Gabe Bullard: Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: … instead of having it something that is collectivist in any way, right, or part of public infrastructure. And then also the profit then going to private shareholders, right?
Like, it is a very different scenario than, how can we make something convenient for all people in a way that is not intended to create profit.
Gabe Bullard: Exactly. Exactly, yeah. But it's just so easy to end up privatizing these little conveniences or creating a business out of some everyday activity.
Anne Helen Petersen: So this actually is a great segue into a question from Stephanie that gets at this tension between collective versus individual stuff and how it attaches to inconvenience.
Stephanie: I think a lot about how things that benefit the collective aren't necessarily the best for convenience. Some examples might include how every neighbor with kids has a trampoline instead of getting together and agreeing to share one, or doing books or games or toys or puzzles or tool swaps instead of everyone owning their own version of everything, or the inconvenience of car sharing instead of owning your own car.
I believe in all of these things in theory and participate when I can, but in a world where there's so much additional labor to life, adding more and more administration can feel insurmountable. Not to mention everyone is socially awkward these days, so taking community action is even trickier. How do we balance the competing desires for convenience with the collective good?
Anne Helen Petersen: I love this point about everyone is socially awkward. Mm-hmm. And I think part of the reasons we're socially awkward is because we're not doing things like this.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right? Yeah. It's chicken or the egg. Like, yes, it's hard because we're socially awkward, but we're socially awkward because we're not doing this.
Gabe Bullard: Exactly. I think all these forces of kinda commercialized convenience push toward this level of isolation. You know... I get into laundry in the book and how there were these experiments for a while into socialized laundry, like collective laundry. There's some great old newspaper articles about in, like, Minnesota farm towns where these sort of community cooperative laundry facilities opened that provide jobs to people who need jobs in the community, that provide laundry services to people because the idea was laundry is one of these chores in the home that could be automated away or somehow solved, and they were solved in this collective way.
But now it's, well, what went away with those was, well, no, now you have a home machine. And now you do laundry at home whenever you want all the time, and you pay for the water, and you pay for the electricity, and you don't see other people. Like, it's good that laundry is not done the way it was done before laundry machines. Like, I don't think anyone wants that type of laundry experience. It's miserable, and was physically damaging. But at the same time, like, the solution ended up being - could have been a more communal one and ends up being this really isolating, antisocial one.
Another thing that struck me too was talking to people who work in places where they get orders from apps and how rude customers can be, cursing at people, yelling at them, even when they're getting exactly the thing that they had ordered on the app. Just the amount of anger and frustration that comes from that.
And, and it's like, why... When did that happen? When is it ever okay? It never is okay to curse at someone who made you something that you asked for because you don't like it or because you don't like one little aspect of it. And so, yeah, I think that there is this sort of isolating, antisocial aspect to it.
I wonder in thinking about, what could be done about this, how to spread it around, I do like things that I sometimes see in neighborhoods of like, oh, here's the shared tool library that anybody can do because somebody moved to the neighborhood and they have this huge craftsman set of tools that really not everyone needs in their garage, but everyone could borrow, or like even a little free library.
One thing I settle on a lot too that I would like to see expand and think maybe could expand is, is the way mutual aid works, where -
Anne Helen Petersen: Yep ...
Gabe Bullard: - you can participate in a very passive way in mutual aid by donating something, money or goods or that sort of thing. You can participate in a really active way by helping to organize other volunteers, by providing rides, all of that.
And I think that there is some administrative side to that, that that's going to have to be done, but it would be great to see that kind of spread out as this way of not having to opt into, to all this essentially buying things and shopping and, and everything like that. You know, even if it's as simple as giving somebody a ride to the store or something like that like trying to spread that into more areas of life.
Anne Helen Petersen: I think about this a lot in connection with our difficulty with friendship, especially as 30 and 40-year-olds. And part of it is I think that like we, as I was saying before, a lot of us work so much that it's hard to feel like there's any time to make the sort of loose connections that would make sharing a trampoline feel less weird, right? And I have to push back against myself all the time when I need something. And I live in a tiny community where people lend people things all the time. Like I am in the perfect place to feel comfortable asking for things. And the other day I needed a power washer, and several friends on the island, like actual good friends who have power washers, who would not think twice about lending me a power washer.
But there was part of me that was just like, "Oh, I could just buy this right now and it would come to my door." And I borrowed the power washer and then later I was like, "Oh, I gotta get it back to them." Like, they're probably annoyed that I haven't got it back to them. And of course they're like, "Who cares? I would ask you if I needed the power washer, and then I would drive two minutes to give you the power washer." And I think that part of the problem is that we don't have these loose ties, and we also don't have a lot of mechanisms for facilitating and sustaining and communicating through these loose ties.
Like, an app like Nextdoor is intended to facilitate this, but then devolves into political fighting and, like, racist, is something happening in this neighborhood sort of reportage. But we used to have organizations where you could, if you went to, let's say, a church service or you went to an Elks meeting, you would make these sorts of connections that then would make you feel comfortable saying, "Oh, well, like, I'll give you a ride."
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. The social experiences that were just a little bit more built into, into day-to-day life.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Gabe Bullard: I always think of this a few times, 'cause you mentioned Nextdoor. When I lived in DC, the number of times I would see somebody post on Nextdoor that they might need something, and I knew they lived in my building, and I was like, "Oh, I should just go knock on their door. I know who that is." And then I stopped myself 'cause I'm like, "Ah, that's kinda creepy. Like, I don't know about doing this." And it's like, well, do I reply in the app and say yes, and then we DM, and I say, "By the way, I'm three floors away in the building"? I don't know.
I just... Yeah, like, I mean, I even felt that level of awkwardness of trying to, offering to help or to ask or anything like that.
Anne Helen Petersen: I totally feel that, and also, it shouldn't be creepy because then you could become the person for one another that, like, "Oh, there's a delivery coming for me. Can you bring it in?" Or, like, I'm talking about, like, a package delivery. Or, like, "Can you check in on my cat?" Like, all sorts of things that are the things that people crave in terms of neighborhoodliness. But I love that, like, the fact that it was on an app made it feel awkward to you.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. It seemed like all of a sudden it's like, well, wait, we exist in the app, and then we also exist in real life, but, like, we don't share. Like, the app is some, like, separate space from the building, and it can't cross over, even though it's ostensibly an app about connecting neighbors or, or something like that.
I think also, you mentioned Nextdoor devolving into a lot of abusive and toxic stuff. I think that also really did shape an opinion of certain neighbors too, where it's like, I don't know... Which I guess maybe fuels some of the thinking on, on the antisocial thing of like, why would you feel comfortable posting this? Especially, who are the people who are posting kind of these toxic and trolly comments on Nextdoor where the whole point is it's people who are right around you? You know, it's like maybe there's ... You could vaguely understand some of the psychology if it's a bunch of strangers on Twitter or something like that, but, like, just to put it out there in the neighborhood, like, that's such a… I don't know.
Anne Helen Petersen: Well, it's predicated on the fact that you are not gonna have to interact with those people, right? Like it's that disembodied, consequence-less discourse, which I think is very corrosive. Our next question is about something that you write about in the book specifically, and it's about food apps, but especially pre-ordering.
Mm. This is from Allison.
Allison: "Why do we keep pre-ordering food? There are so many fast casual spots around my office where I could stand in a pretty fast-moving line, order exactly what I want, and have it made in front of me, and yet nine times out of 10, I opt to place an order on an app. It's usually not ready when I arrive, or I ordered too early and it's cold by the time I grab it.
It's also my one time out of the office in a typical workday, and I spend it waiting for overworked employees to get to my order behind the 10 people who pre-ordered before me. Clearly, I am buying into some illusion of efficiency. But even when it proves me wrong time and again, I opt for the app. What gives?"
Anne Helen Petersen: So you talk about how you used to, like, pre-order your Starbucks drink, and then you would feel this moment of dread before you stepped into the actual Starbucks because it was gonna be this conflagration and…
Gabe Bullard: Yes. Yeah. It was, I would order and it seemed really easy.
It's like, "All right, I'm getting this drink. It's gonna be great. I could stay at my desk and work even more. I don't even need to go wait in line or, or talk to a human being or anything like that." And yeah, then you go in, and it's just a mass of cups on the pickup counter. There's people everywhere.
The only words I would exchange to people are saying, "Excuse me," to kinda like pass through, and then you have to touch all the cups to see what's going on. And it was just really an unpleasant experience to have to go through. And I had talked with a few Starbucks employees for the book too, and the thing that kinda came out of that is the app ends up adding this extra line to the store.
The store was not remodeled to accommodate the app beyond shifting the counter around a little bit. It's still the same physical building that was built to have a line where people would walk in. And the app not only adds another line, but then it removes so many of the frictions that might lead to ordering a really complicated, a really, really hard to make drink because you can just tap them and there's…
Anne Helen Petersen: Hmm.
Gabe Bullard: - literally billions of different combinations that can be made. I was doing the math. I worked with a fact checker on this, and we were going back and forth on how many combinations are there really? And I was, like, doing the formula and writing it out and even to the point where, like, on the calculator it starts doing the exponent and it's like all right, there are so many combinations. And the company has since limited it and introduced a few things to deal with some of that overflow. But I think with any of the app ordering, it ends up just sort of creating this additional line in a store where people now have to tend to that while there's also this big line of people in front of them.
And, we talked about sort of work and jobs and everything earlier. You know, every job should be a job that comes with dignity, and I think from talking to people who assemble a lot of app-based orders, it's just kinda like being a robot of, here's this list of things that I must do.
I must press these buttons and therefore I have to... You know, and that's going to do it. And, one, getting into sort of the deeper economic theory even, there was some back and forth I'd had with different economists about this of, is this something that is just going to be replaced by machines in the future?
And there seem to be some attempts at certain fast food places. And the bleak side of that is, perhaps not because you can always just tell a person to go faster, and eventually they might go faster than a machine is built until you perfect the machine that puts everything together, which is just a really bleak way to think about the future of work and how, you don't even get to interact with the person who's going to point at the things to put into a salad bowl or something like that.
The other side of this, I worked in a place, in an office that had one of those systems where, like, you order the salad on the app and they deliver it in the office to the shelf. And it was kind of a dystopian thing of, at a certain point, everybody's phone buzzes, and everybody gets up from their desk and we walk, and we go to the shelf, and then we come back to our desks. And maybe there's a little chitchat, and it's always just about the thing that we bought, and then we just go immediately back to work. I guess in talking about, like, why opt for the app, too, there is an appeal to it.
Like, I didn't want to have this sort of self-help pop psychology element to the book because I thought, one, I'm not a psychologist. That's not my field. I'll talk to psychologists. But also, that itself can kind of be a convenience to think like, "Oh, my brain is hijacked. I can't control it."
I'm just compelled to find the most convenient thing. And there is, some compelling evidence that the term is cognitive miser. It's like we're always trying to save energy, mental or physical, whenever we can. And so it does always seem a little bit easier that it's so tempting to think like, "No, I just have to tap this. I don't have to go wait in line. Waiting at my desk is gonna feel better than waiting in line," that sort of thing.
So I think there is some psychology at play, but, but also, I don't know, just over and over and over, the experience ends up being so miserable. And it's so easy just to keep opting for it.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. Well, and I think that sometimes, Starbucks is a great example here because it is something that has this app that a lot of people use. Like, one of the reasons people go to it is because of the consistency and, like, that's a whole nother conversation about chain restaurants. My point is always, I always get in an argument actually with people that I'm traveling with if we stop at a Starbucks that's on the way to the ski mountain that we go to, and whether or not to go inside or go through the drive-through.
Gabe Bullard: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: Because the drive-through is always a faster experience because as you pull up to the drive-through, in order to get cars going through the drive-through, they have to give, they have to make your order right then.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: Whereas if you go inside and order, you get second... Like, you are third actually in priority, because the app orders and the drive-through orders are taking prominence over your order. And so, I like, even the experience of trying to give yourself more of that embodied friction of going into the store and watching them make your drink is a worse experience. Like, the app has made it a worse experience for other people.
And so you go back to, I'm gonna order ahead and then maybe I'll just jog in, and it's always freaking cold. Or I'm gonna go through the drive-through, which gives you a little bit more of that interaction, but you also, this is so key, you do not see the people making your drink, right? Like, you do not see the process that is all alighted from the experience.
And sometimes now, because of the experience I've had of, like, going through the drive-through at Starbucks, sometimes I'm like, you go to a normal old school no order ahead coffee shop, and you're like, "Oh my God. Like, it's taking forever." And it's not, right? It's not.
Gabe Bullard: Exactly. Exactly. It just feels like, yeah, that...
And there is some psychology behind that too of, yeah, you're waiting in line, it's gonna feel so much worse than than that. I like what you have to say too about sort of the story isn't meant for you as an in-person customer anymore, and I think that's true across so many different conveniences, is that they completely change what it means to do a thing.
Yeah. Like, you're still accomplishing the same thing. You're still getting coffee. But in that experience, like, the coffee shop is now the place that fields your app order. Like, the coffee shop is just the... It's like a big vending machine or something like that. Like, it's the place where you go and there's a coffee waiting for you because you did it on the app.
And, everything ends up kinda changing. You know, coffee is now a thing that an app gives you. It's not any sort of agricultural product that is shipped around the world and kind of this miracle of logistics and everything like that. It's like no, it is the thing that I tap a button for and then I walk across the street and pick it up in a really crowded, loud store.
That used to be a place where maybe you would go and sit down that no longer is. Like, convenience just transforms all these things into just the end result and the money you spend for it, basically.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. This also just makes me think of this larger question of like why do we want to save so much time?
Like, what are we saving it for? And usually the answer is more work, but I think about something like I used to go on drives with my grandad. Like he would drive me to camp when I was growing up in Minnesota, and we would always stop about halfway, and not because like, oh, we'd driven so long.
It was usually, I don't know, like an hour and a half, two hours in. And part of it is that, like, he wanted a smoke break, obviously. But part of it too was like we would stop and we would go to a diner. Like, we would sit down, and even if it - like, if it was lunchtime, we'd have lunch. If it wasn't, he'd have like a slice of blueberry pie and I'd have a milkshake.
Like, it was something that we would actually stop, like in our trip, pause, an experience as part of the trip, and I think a lot of people have those experiences or have those memories at some point in their life, and especially our parents' generation, of stopping and, like, that is part of the trip.
And now it's like, "How can I go… How can I pack enough beverages in my car at the very beginning so that I don't have to stop at all? Like, if I didn't have to pee, that would be great," right?
Gabe Bullard: Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: But why are we trying to get somewhere so fast?
Gabe Bullard: I think there's so many so many sides to it. I think that one is just, over time we just get trained on this idea that the destination is it.
Like, that getting the end result, that's all that matters, that anything else that does that is getting in the way. And a lot of what we end up being offered, I think, as conveniences are ways to not even to make that pass faster, but to fill the time in these other ways.
Anne Helen Petersen: Mm-hmm.
Gabe Bullard: More types of entertainment in the car, more options for… like, I think one of the top uses for smartphones has to be just killing time when you're waiting somewhere. People I talk to for the book too get into this, and it's something that over time has come to mean more and more to me.
I think there's also a deathly fear of boredom, of ever being bored in a way that you really have to train yourself back into, just being able to sit and not have something else to do and just let your mind kind of wander and maybe wander past... You know, I'm always kind of going to the most catastrophic thoughts possible.
But, like, kind of let your mind go past that if you can. Like, just sitting without something to do. This is something that I think is in the ether, too, where I have seen more and more people commenting of, "Remember when we were kids and how much time we were just bored?"
Anne Helen Petersen: Mm-hmm.
Gabe Bullard: And it's like, I think that, I don't know, I think being willing to, to stop on a trip really does kind of help retrain those muscles. And it's like, it's not boring. It's clearly a meaningful experience to stop at the diner and do these other things. Like, there is meaning in that.
But there's also a risk that maybe it would be boring, and maybe part of the drive will be boring. And so it's like every possible minute has to be filled with some sort of activity. Usually a monetized activity, usually something that is commercial, that's gonna play ads or that you're gonna have to pay extra money for or something like that.
But, just that idea of, there's a little bit of silence, there's a little bit of time to not think about something, to not look at something, to not sort of have constant content input.
Anne Helen Petersen: I have to make very purposeful decisions about leaving my phone at home when I'm going on a dog walk so I can just hang out in my own mind, right?
Or I don't listen to anything when I run, which is also another thing that I do very purposefully. This actually makes me think of this previous question about the Starbucks app or about ordering the app by phone. If you know that it's bad and you don't wanna do it, I think sometimes the best way to retrain our minds is to delete the app.
Gabe Bullard: Yes, yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: It's that simple, right? Like, we get so in our patterns of like, "Well, this is what I've always done. This is what I do. This is what I know the rhythms of." But if you delete the app, it forces your mind and your everything to figure out a different route to get to the way that you, the thing that you wanna do.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah, yeah. I have deleted Instagram so many times. And occasionally, now with the book, I might need to go on and, like, post something to promote the book, which is also a strange experience. But it's like, all right, I install it, I post, I wait a few hours to monitor the reaction, and then I have to delete it again because I really...
It's so hard to help myself with it when it's there. It's like, well, I just want to. I've gotten my home screen down to now, by default it's basically a camera, music, and the weather.
Anne Helen Petersen: Mm.
Gabe Bullard: And, like, I, I really just want, like, nothing else on that screen.
Anne Helen Petersen: Well, and I was thinking about this earlier.
You know, there's all these idealizations of '90s summer, which is actually '70s summer, which is actually just, like, parents not having intensive parenting practices and also, like, often having at least one adult who is able to provide, like, a little bit of supervision in some capacity. But part of the way that kids had these creative exploratory summers was that there was just not enough TV to fill our days.
Like, there were some cartoons, and then you're like, "There's nothing for me until, like, 4:00 or 5:00 PM, and then maybe it's, like, a MASH rerun," and that's it, right?
Gabe Bullard: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: Like, so what do you… maybe there's an old VHS tape that you can watch, but otherwise you gotta fill your days. And now when there's every single children's program ever made available to you at any time, like, of course there's not a lot of room for kids to cultivate boredom.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah, yeah. I mean, and adults. Like, I don't know. I always think it was such a big deal when we got cable when I was a kid, and then not long after, even then it's like, well, there's more TV than ever, but there's still not enough. Like, I'm not going to watch this episode of The Brady Bunch for, like, the fifth time.
And why, 20 years after the show ended, do I know so much about The Brady Bunch as a kid? Like, I need to just sort of move on and get outside and do something else. I think that's a big part of it is, yeah, like, just the limited options for, for sort of content that existed, so to speak…
Anne Helen Petersen: and think about all the weird stuff that we were exposed to because we didn't have on-demand television.
Like, whether it was The Brady Bunch, I watched, Nick at Night reruns of My Three Sons. Very obsessed with that show, but also old school Saturday Night Live.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah, yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: They played reruns of that, but also, like I was saying, I watched MASH every day. What a weird thing for a fifth grader to watch, but I had to find another way.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. You know, I think an interesting thing to this is, I had such a similar experience watching MASH as a kid. Like, why watch MASH? Like, well, that's on. It's like, The Simpsons were on and then the news and then MASH, and like, that's what's on sort of like the local, one of the rebroadcasting affiliate sort of things. But there is a bit of a shared experience there, 'cause I also remember talking with other people about these shows. And I do get into entertainment a bit in the book, but I think there might be...
When there was sort of fewer options, and not to sound nostalgic about it, because it's good that there's that there are a lot of options, but, that idea of the shared experience that we were all watching the same thing, has so gone away now. Like, it's so rare that I mention to someone that I'm watching something and they are watching the same thing. There are so many shows out there, and so many options, it's really hard to even get on the same page with somebody now about what we're all enjoying, even though it's easier than ever for us to watch the same thing.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right, and also easier than ever for us to find things that are very tailored to our own personal... Like, what we have decided are our tastes. And I actually find this a struggle. I wonder if you feel anything similar with doing cultural journalism because even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was a lot easier to find something, to write about something that an audience could have a collective reaction to because they were consuming it or consuming it secondhand, like consuming the discourse about it.
And it is so diffuse now. Like, and this is the convenience, the idea that everything is on demand also makes it so that everyone is watching all sorts of different things, and that it's not just harder to have a casual conversation with someone in real life, but it's also harder to have a conversation online in a broad way.
Unless it's a huge piece of monoculture like The Odyssey, right?
Gabe Bullard: Yeah, yeah. And The Odyssey, I feel like also with the whole Barbenheimer, was that three years ago?
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah, yeah.
Gabe Bullard: One thing that strikes me with that is those were experiences that had to be... You still had to go to the theater for it.
Like, there was still like that little bit of friction. Like, it wasn't something that was an option to stream at home and you just decided whether or not to. Most people would not. So yeah, I encounter that too in, in culture writing of, what is the thing that people are really thinking about and talking about…
Anne Helen Petersen: Yep.
Gabe Bullard: … that's out there in streaming. And then also, I think there's many reasons for sort of the traffic apocalypse that so many websites are seeing, but…
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah ...
Gabe Bullard: … it's so easy also just to flip away from an article if it's about a show that you're not watching or a show that you haven't heard about.
Like, well, why read it? It's like I'm not gonna watch this show. I have not heard of this show. Like, even if you like the writer, maybe it's like, well, let me just move on 'cause there's going to be something else. There's going to be some other thing to look at, some other thing to read. Yeah, I don't know.
There's almost no, there's no friction drawing me to keep engaging with something.
Anne Helen Petersen: And this is, I think the tension between the infinite scroll and the idea that abundance is actually what we want and how constrictions are very useful, fruitful. Like, they allow us to sometimes engage with things that we wouldn't have necessarily chosen.
Like, we don't always know what we want. Sometimes you need someone else to pique some little small thing in your brain and open up a new curiosity for you. But if you're only chasing, like if you're only making your own pathways, then I think oftentimes you start going in a circle.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah, yeah.
There are, I think problems with the idea of, well, you need to watch this or, like, you need to be exposed to certain things, but, there's also some validity, I think, to seeing something that doesn't fit your taste exactly -
Anne Helen Petersen: Yep ...
Gabe Bullard: - and then thinking about why it does or does not.
Really engaging with that, rather than just immediately moving on to the next thing. Like, actually spending time assessing something, and not just assessing whatever it is you're watching or listening to, but then your own reaction to it, I think is tremendously valuable, and is also something that, I don't know, I still think about today sometimes, where it's like, "Yeah, I saw all those episodes of The Monkees on Nick at Nite," or all these episodes of MASH. Like, why did I have that reaction to them? Like, how does that… or like occasionally, I don't know, I'll laugh at a joke, and I'm like, "Well, that was something that might be, like, a late season MASH joke. Why..." It's like, oh, I'm conditioned to it. Like, and you just learn so much.
There was this great quote that I found from the filmmaker Federico Fellini, who was giving this interview, and he got very involved in politics, really involved in criticizing Berlusconi sort of in his in his later years, and he really did not like the remote control because he said, like, "This is the thing that all of a sudden makes you not have to sit with anything anymore," and it is the comfort that just leads to people being... he called it something essentially describing it as, like, almost a tool of small-mindedness, that is going to end up just leading to you never having to take in anything that is not only that doesn't appeal to you, that doesn't immediately appeal to you.
And so he's saying this, I think, in the late '80s or so, and it's, yeah, just this fascinating idea of like, yeah, as soon as you can switch away from something, then you start looking for and whoever's providing it starts providing for you, yeah, the thing that will immediately draw your attention and hold your attention.
Anne Helen Petersen: Okay, we're gonna take a little bit of a hard pivot here and talk about how this is maybe just a pretty bougie conversation. This is from Leah.
Leah: "How do we prevent friction from becoming another aesthetic aspiration and wealth signifier? It's already heading that way, and I worry talking about it without any in-depth economic and class analysis will push it further in that direction."
Gabe Bullard: Hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: How do you think about this?
Gabe Bullard: I think it's a big conundrum, and it's another one I grapple with because there's two sides, I think, to opting out, or two levels of reward to opting out. You know, one is on the personal side, that I go do something for myself instead of just ordering from a service, and then I feel a little bit better about it.
I think I've gotten a better experience, but that's just me. What does that do for someone else, if I'm not relying on the gig economy or something that is maybe harmful to workers? You know, there's that, but it's like, what does that actually do to make the system better for the people who are in it and the people who have no choice but to participate?
And, I think it's good that this question asker is saying this because it means going into this with a level of consciousness. One thing that I did was I tried not to describe my own life and my own choices in the book that much because I don't want to present it as, "This is how you live this life. This is how you model inconvenience. This is the thing that you do." Like, I get into a few things that I do and sort of the thinking behind them a little bit, but, like, I didn't want to say, to present any sort of model for that. And so I think that there is this element of performing inconvenience that you see that often maybe isn't really inconvenient at all.
I think people posting when they're waiting in a long line for something, which seems to be something a lot of people are talking about more and more.
Anne Helen Petersen: Posting when you're in a long line.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. The long lines. And then the whole sorta trad wife thing too, I think. You know, or just anybody sorta living that trad existence is sort of performing inconvenience and presenting it as Leah said, as this…
Anne Helen Petersen: An aestheticized, regressive, like... yeah. That is exactly what we do not want.
Gabe Bullard: Exactly. And I think one part of it is to not necessarily post about it, not make a big deal of it. Like, if you're embracing in friction or doing something inconvenient, do it for its own sake and for what it brings to you, for what sort of reward you're going to get from it, rather than what it might look like or what it might say about you.
Like, so make that personal decision first. I think on the class issue, too, not having money in the United States or anywhere is extremely inconvenient as a way to exist in society because there are so many things that that changes and makes more difficult about your life. And I think it can be really easy sometimes to sort of avoid that as a person who does have the resources because so many conveniences do lead to just being able to avoid interacting with another person, to take a car instead of a bus, to do all those things.
So I think that, just trying not to engage in conveniences that hide that reality from you and also that end up making some of these class issues worse maybe by furthering the gig economy or hurting local stores, that sort of thing, I think could be a big part of it. But I think also to avoid making inconvenience into an aesthetic thing, it's good to talk about when you do something that's inconvenient, and tell a friend because maybe they would like it, but, you're not going to start a revolution by posting, like a cool photo of a loaf of bread online or anything like that.
Like, just one other thing I do, and I think about this a lot, is, remember running errands and how, not to sound nostalgic, but it's like, oh, my parents would need to go do stuff and I would go along with them. Or like in college, somebody needs to go to the bank and it's like, "Yeah, I'll go with you."
And it's like there's so much passive socialization that happens with that, whether you're talking to the bank clerk or just kinda having this time to talk with your friend. Like, that's nothing that really seems like anything you'd wanna post about, but it is an inconvenience. It is something that's nice for you.
It is something that's nice to build a little bit of socialization around.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. I think that the kind of the flat understanding of embracing inconvenience is just like, "Oh, well, I'm gonna do things that take more time," and because rich people supposedly have more time than poorer people, like, then that's a class signifier.
And I don't think that it's necessarily that. Like, now there's some texture here, but most people who are making a lot of money, they're not leading a life of leisure. They're just working all of the time. And then they're using these - getting rid of inconveniences so that they can work more.
And yes, they have a luxurious life, but a lot of their life is also just work and oftentimes somewhat miserable and don't have a lot of time for relationships. And for me, the way that I would like to look at it is in this more universal design component, which is like, if we try to make systems that work better for everyone, then they will make everyone have a better life, right?
Gabe Bullard: Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: Like, if we make the airport better for everyone, not just people with Clear and lounge access…
Gabe Bullard: Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: Rich people will have a better experience of that airport and so will people who don't have as much money. You know what I mean?
Gabe Bullard: Mm-hmm ...
Anne Helen Petersen: How can we make that more universalized positive experience? Public transit is, like, the object lesson, right?
Gabe Bullard: Yeah, yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Gabe Bullard: And one thing that had come up in a conversation I'd had with one researcher for the book was she mentioned there's a difference between sort of having to do something and using a convenience that achieves that one goal, and having the option of how to do it and whether to do it.
And I think when you talk about -
Anne Helen Petersen: Mm ...
Gabe Bullard: - universal design and everything, I think giving people that level of autonomy for how to participate in all these things that they do, and not saying, "Well, no, your choices when you go to the airport are pay a bunch of money to have these services and apps installed and everything, or just be herded around and, and have a miserable experience."
Like, being able to sort of have that variety, I think is something that a lot of conveniences end up taking, or alleged conveniences end up taking away from us. That it's just sort of this prescribed way of consuming something, and you either do it or you don't, rather than having the option for how you do it and what your end result may be, all of that.
Anne Helen Petersen: You know, we had another question that was kind of like, "Okay, so what? What do we do now?" And we've talked a little bit about that throughout the course of the episode. But I do think that thinking less in terms of, like, how do I embrace it just personally, but also thinking on a more societal level is really important here, 'cause it gets to that more collectivist understanding of a society that is trying to eliminate inconvenience in all way is a society that is not trying to, like, allow us leisure.
It's a society that wants us to work more.
Gabe Bullard: Exactly, yeah. Work and then pay for anything that you do that is going to be fun or- Right ... or anything. Like, constantly have the, the experience of either you are working and you are generating productivity or you are You know, spending and consuming and having this commercialized experience.
I think that's something I think about a lot too is sort of, how to spread this in a way where it's not just going to be your own personal comfort. And I think part of it is, if you're up for it and able to, taking those actions that are going to support collective action, whether that's avoiding shopping in certain ways, avoiding businesses where you don't like the labor practices, making sure that you're putting more money into the local economy. Like, there's more activist ways that you can get involved in this in a way that it doesn't mean that you have to live your life perfectly, but that you can do a little bit more participation.
I think there's also a way, beyond sort of getting involved in these larger and larger ways, is also just kind of inviting people to experience things along with you without-
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Gabe Bullard: - I was just gonna say posting about it, without bragging about it, anything like that. Like, I love to, when I have to run errands, invite someone to come along, like with a friend.
Anne Helen Petersen: Errand friend.
Gabe Bullard: "Oh, hey, I gotta do this thing." Or like, "Hey, let's meet at this,", there's a ton of farmer's markets around, and there are a ton of repair markets around where people will volunteer and fix your stuff, like if you have something small that's broken. And those are excellent ways to, one, find some good food and then also get something fixed without having to buy or replace it.
Like, I like to go get things repaired there. But also, they're really good social experiences just to take a friend to, which then sparks something in that friend, and maybe they're gonna go back or maybe they'll tell a friend, that sort of thing. So I do think there's also this sort of very small scale but socialized way of kind of just introducing people to the inconveniences or the friction that you find valuable in your own life.
Anne Helen Petersen: I love the errand friend. I love being the errand friend. I love going on errands with my friends, and one of the things that you always have to do is, like, go to a place that you don't need to go to. Like, oh, we gotta go to the bank to make this deposit. Like, oh, we gotta go to freaking UPS to drop off this package.
We have to go and make this return at REI. Like, but it's worth it. Like, I'm not like, "Oh my God, I can't believe that we have to go to REI." Like, it's fine. We're hanging out. Right? Like, we're getting my errands done, and we're hanging out. But the thing that I've had to let go of is this idea that, like, I am optimizing my errands, and I'm gonna go boom, boom, boom, and back home, and it's gonna be amazing, right?
Like, I'm gonna do it so fast, and then I'm gonna get home. But it's a worse experience, right? And it's not hanging out with my friends, and I feel like I'm rushing from place to place and yelling at the traffic at this place, right? Like, just a totally different experience when you do it in a sharing way.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. I find when I do things alone, I am constantly in a hurry to the point that I'm like, I have to check myself of like, "Why am I in a hurry?" Like, I was running for a bus the other day to get home after going out to pick up a few things from a store, and then I stopped halfway, and I'm like, "Why am I running for this?" Like, there's gonna be another one in a few minutes. Like, fortunately, there's a good bus route here, but it's like, yeah, another one's coming. I've got nothing to do. Like, I don't need to run in the heat through the streets of the city to catch this bus. Like, why am I in such a hurry?
Versus if I were with a friend, we'd probably just do what I ended up doing of, well, no, just walk and, I don't know, read a book or something or get a cup of coffee, kill a little time. Like, I had no reason to get home, but I just felt that compulsion of like, I have to be home because if I'm home, I'm gonna be able to do this, and I'm gonna be able to do this.
And probably if I had been able to really have a full conversation with myself, I was probably thinking I would get home and do some sort of work or some sort of productivity thing.
Anne Helen Petersen: Right. Well, and I think that, like small scale stuff has larger sociological ramifications. So stuff like, okay, it, does your neighborhood have a tool library?
Is that something that you would be interested in doing? Like, what about four families getting together and something that you want, buying it and sharing it?
Gabe Bullard: Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: Just did this with a Ninja frose maker with my friends. We don't all need a frose maker. But what if we had one of them between four families?
Yes. On the larger scale, I think sometimes we forget, especially because of the way that the US government works in particular, that there are policy changes that have connection to this, like right to repair.
Gabe Bullard: Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: Can you talk a little bit about that and how this connects?
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. So right to repair, it can take different forms, but it basically is a law that would say that you have to...
If you make a device or make a certain piece of equipment, that you have to make it to where it can be repaired by the buyer or perhaps a third party. The tools have to be available. The parts have to be available. It can't just be this sort of locked box that when it breaks, the person has to go back and buy another one from you or that only you can repair it.
Like, it has to be something that a person truly can own, and make repairs to. And there's other sides of that too sometimes, like, legislation that requires a posting sort of the lifespan of, of an item, on the box. Like, how long is this refrigerator really going to last, which, as smart appliances start to infiltrate daily life, that becomes really important because those chips don't last as long as the big metal parts that used to run on appliances.
So yeah, like, so there's various things about it, but right to repair basically is, yeah, you have the right to fix or to take your things to be fixed by someone that is not that is not the manufacturer who sold it to you.
Anne Helen Petersen: Well, and I think this kind of brings us full circle to the idea that when we're talking about being against convenience, we're not talking about like, "Oh, you shouldn't have a vacuum," right?
We're actually saying, "You should have a vacuum, buy it once, and then instead of having to, research which kind of vacuum to replace it with in three years when the mechanisms break and ordering it on Amazon and having it arrive at your door, and then having someone haul away all the trash, and then doing the entire process over again in three years.
That what if you had a vacuum that when it broke, you had to go... And these places still absolutely exist. You go to the vacuum cleaner fixer and you have a conversation with him or her, and you learn something about the mechanism in your vacuum, and then still have a vacuum.
Gabe Bullard: Exactly, yeah. Yeah.
And not necessarily even be sold this sort of constant small improvements in vacuums. You know, reading about the way that home life existed sort of before utilities and industrialization. Like, there was this gigantic, wonderful leap of all these things coming into our homes, but it's like, what has changed with the refrigerator that is in any way close to the difference between not having a refrigerator and having one?
Like, a camera in the door or a screen in the door that gives you a recipe is not nearly the advancement of actually having a refrigerator. And I think sometimes it's very easy to lose sight of that, but can also just be such a downer of just like, oh, like these machines are basically the same machines they were when they first came into the house, but now I connect my phone to them.
Anne Helen Petersen: If not worse. Oh, yeah ... I was watching this TikTok of someone exploring a fridge that was built in the 1950s. And it was such a beautiful fridge, just aesthetically, but also just everything still worked absolutely the same way that it did in 1950.
And part of the reason they stopped making it was because it lasted so long.
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Anne Helen Petersen: That it wasn't a profit center.
Gabe Bullard: It's one of those things where it's like you find it out in real life and you find the evidence for it, and then as soon as you talk to people about it, you start to feel like you're a conspiracy theorist almost. Yeah.
Anne Helen Petersen: No, but planned obsolescence, it's not as much as we sometimes think it is. Like, it's not like the iPhone explodes at year three. But there are things that make it unusable, for sure.
Gabe Bullard: And the whole idea, even starting with cars where it's like, oh, there's this one minor new feature.
There's this one or one minor new feature, so you're getting a new car every year. And the ways that that have been tried with appliances, I quote the historian Susan Strasser, who's written a great book on the history of housework and appliances and everything. And one thing she points out is, like, why are there so many speeds on blenders?
Why were there the avocado fridges, all this, and it's like, well, it's just to make you buy it again because you think that it's going to be, in some way, more convenient. But, the difference between the third and the fourth speed on a 20-speed blender is not anything that is bringing new convenience into your life, you know? Like, the one blender would be good, like, just get it and let it work and, and all that. But it's like, yeah, you have to maximize the profits. If not actual planned obsolescence, then perceived obsolescence because now it's no longer the new convenient thing.
Like, you're no longer the convenient home keeper because you don't have the blender. Though now with software, it's just like, oh, we don't support your software anymore, and therefore now you have to buy a new thing. You have to buy a new thing because you can't update it anymore. Your fridge no longer gets updates.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Gabe Bullard: Now you have to just buy a new fridge.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yes. The thing that I've been thinking about, something that people talk about with clothes a lot, is that when something gets cheaper, when you think of it as like, "Oh, I can have a lot of this thing-" Or it gets cheaper, right, for you to have an Uber or whatever the thing is.
Like, it's not like, in almost all cases, it's not that they have figured out how to make that thing more efficiently. It's that someone else is paying. Right? They're paying with exploitative working conditions. They're paying with subsidies from the government. They're paying with VC funding that kept prices artificially low on Ubers until people started using them en masse.
Like, someone is paying, and that is a useful experiment for me when I'm thinking about a convenience. Like, is the time that this is theoretically saving me worth the cost in all sorts of different ways, right?
Gabe Bullard: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I do get kind of bummed out sometimes at just how much it ends up overtaking to the point that, what is the other option?
Like, what is the option that is going to be better? What is the thing that is not going to promise to save time and then end up eating up all my time with tedium? What is the shirt that is going to be worth the money and not end up falling apart because now all of a sudden, like, we've all just gotten used to, really bad material in things and it starts to fall apart after three washes. And I thought it was a better one, but no. You know, like, it gets to be harder and harder to even know what the good options are or what is going to be a true convenience.
Anne Helen Petersen: How do you discern? That's my final question.
Gabe Bullard: So in the embracing convenience side, I really love list-based thinking. And there's a Wendell Berry essay that I go back to over and over, in the book and just even in my own life of -
Anne Helen Petersen: Oh, yeah ...
Gabe Bullard: - what would make him buy a computer, why he would not buy a computer, and what a new tool needs to do. And I think about that, and then I think about sort of my own version of that and just kind of asking questions.
Or the way I kind of think about it is, what is this convenience going to save me? Where is that coming from and is this something that I actually want saved? Like is the time that I could save by ordering something instead of going to a store, like how am I going to use that time and do I actually enjoy the time when I do it?
Like it is nice to go out and, I don't know, see people and and ride the bus and feel a material in the store before buying it. So I always think about what am I really getting from this? What is this saving me and do I really want that to be saved?
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah. I think that's a wonderful place to end.
Gabe, if people wanna find more from you, where can they find you on the internet?
Gabe Bullard: They can go to gabebullard.com and they can find everything there from links to social media apps that I will delete after a while and not look at, to a newsletter that I write and the website Together, Alone about television that I write with with my friend Ariel.
Anne Helen Petersen: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me. This was a pleasure.
Gabe Bullard: Thank you. It was great.