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| Posted: 22 Aug 2011 08:20 AM PDT Have you ever seen a naked robot? If not, you can at least hear one, as the Salty Droid tells all in a 59 minute interview. Droids do not talk longer than an hour. ;) Topics discussed include get rich quick, get poor quick, marketing, community building, .info domain names (s'rsly?), the wrath of robots, and a few surprises. Like reading more than listening? Transcription below. An Interview of the Salty DroidInterviewer: Today we're going to interview not a person, so much as a robot, or maybe a person behind a robot. Who is the Salty Droid? Jason Jones: Is that the first question, "Who is the Salty Droid?" Interviewer: Yes. Jason Jones: All right. Well, the answer is, Jason Jones. Interviewer: Jason Jones. OK. Why did you decide to create a robot for your website or what was the idea behind that? Jason Jones: Well, I like robots first of all, because everyone likes robots. I was just using that as my online persona, and then the whole Salty Droid project developed underneath it. The robot just came out of nowhere, out of the blue. Interviewer: When you are writing or talking or compiling, everything you do is the Salty Droid? Do you view that as an extension of yourself? Or do you view that as something that separates yourself from what you're doing? Or how do you think of it that way? Jason Jones: I think of it definitely as separate. I try to keep it completely depersonalized or keep a layer in between it and me, because the robot is really angry and aggressive, but those aren't healthy emotions to take on personally. The robot is the character and the blog is the project. And it's more than just me. It's more than one person. There's a whole community there. I'm just one piece of it. I definitely don't think of myself as that, as the robot. Interviewer: That leads to two questions. One, you built a community around this, but then, two, you said that it's not good to have the anger and negative emotions. Do you view the community as being full of negative emotions? How can you create a community that revolves around a character that has stuff you wouldn't describe as good? Can you build a community that is separate from the traits of the founder of it?
Interviewer: One of the things that's an issue online is it's really easy to point to what's bad or what's wrong. It's really easy to be cynical. But do you think there is enough good resources for people to find what will help them and what's good with the site mainly being focused on staying away from what's bad? Or can you focus on one too much or if you did both would it cause problems? Jason Jones: Yeah. I think mixing them up would be a terrible idea because of the specific thing I'm talking about. I'm totally sure that I don't know what is the good side of making quick money online. Interviewer: Right. Jason Jones: How can you find the right help to do that, because that is not a real thing. You can't make quick money online. It's really hard to make money online. That is the reality of the situation. As far as how people get help in accentuating the positives. I really don't see, what are the positives? Interviewer: From that perspective I think you hit on one of the things, is that a lot of the people have the mindset. Like, I got an email today, where the person said that they want to make something. They've been buying all these network-marketing things and they want to be able to make money really quick and easy without needing a PhD. I've had other people say that they'd be willing to pay me a portion of the profits for whatever I taught them but nothing upfront. There's even been a person, he's offered me to pay me. They wanted me to rank someone else's page lower, a competitor. And offered to pay me after the fact. [laughter] Interviewer: The big thing there is there's a lot of mindset where people try to take whatever they can get and take. And the thing is a lot of them end up running into a roadblock by the view of the need fast, easy, cheap, free or placebo cost, but need it to be automated and make a lot. Do you think the big problem is the vultures or the mindset of people?
Interviewer: What are the emotions you would say are most commonly preyed upon the "get rich" people?
Interviewer: This is maybe a bit abstract or wide-reaching, but in the same way the monetary system is setup as being debt-based. To where if you have an income inequality and some people have savings, there's got to be some other people that are in debt or living right close to the edge. Do you think how we structure our political and economic system, feeds into the people being vulnerable and desperate? Or do you think no matter how it was structured people would always be that way no matter what?
Interviewer: Some of the patterns of the stuff you particularly don't like, is preying on people's emotions. Some of the stuff you do on your blog comes down to sleuthing and what Dereby called "investigative journalism", in a world where there is almost none. How do you get so much of the data? Is this building the community help pull on to that stuff in for you? Or are you really technically savvy? How are able to dig so much stuff up?
Interviewer: You did a lot of interesting graphics stuff. Did you find that hard to do? How were you able to tie in the image and audio? Let's say you put up a five-minute video or a three-minute video and you make all you custom graphics, how much work goes into that? [laughter] Jason Jones: A lot. Interviewer: It looks like it. Because I do the basic videos of like, "Here's the screenshot of this, and here's how it works." I make a three or a five-minute thing and I always screw-up in the middle. Then I get ticked off with myself, and start cursing on myself. I can imagine how hard it is to sequence all that together. Have you gotten more efficient with that over time? Or what did you use? Was it just a lot of hard practice till you get used to doing it? Jason Jones: Yeah. It was just practice, because the first time I had no idea. I had a reason, a motivation to do it. I just would do it. But that big epic video they were talking about Jeff Foster and Andy Jenkins. They were talking about the Syndicate and telling me to go fuck myself. That video took 36 hours, probably. Interviewer: Wow. Jason Jones: It was just a long time. Interviewer: What takes more time? Is it cutting up the audio, or creating the graphics? Or figuring out what pieces you're going to use? Jason Jones: Yeah. Everything goes wrong, and the audio formats don't match. You just have to get a few parts in. You restart, because you feel like your idea was idiotic. Interviewer: Have you thought about making videos about some of the stuff you do? There's one site I subscribe to. Financial advice where the guy is totally low-key, he's always questioning himself. His website's called iTulip." And he makes these amazing graphs comparing different asset classes over time. Sometimes he's like, "Yeah, I did this pretty quick," but he's taking a long time for most of it. Have you thought about some of the stuff you do, like creating tutorials on how to do some of this? Jason Jones: No, definitely not. Because one, that reach was the thing I'm talking about. And I don't want to do anything even close to that. Just to keep the line totally clear. Two, I have a hard time explaining the things that I'm doing to people who aren't me. It's hard. I know a lot of different little tricks. I don't know. You've got to figure out your own. Figure out your own little tricks. Interviewer: With the stuff you're doing, if the site gets more popular, if you ever decide to do so many years down the road, so many months, so many years. At some point do you think you're eventually going to lose passion for the project? or do you see yourself doing for years to come? Jason Jones: I don't know. I like it right now. No. I see myself doing it for a while, because no one's doing it. If I stop doing it, then what? It's something different is gone. I don't want that to happen. I'm a fan of the site. I like it. I love the site. Interviewer: What's the hardest part with running it? Is it doing the stuff yourself? Dealing with how other people interact with it? Or dealing with what people do away from it? Or what's the hardest parts with it? You were struggling with like stuff like people taking down social media accounts.
Interviewer: You mentioned something about that being an illusion. Well, you mentioned part of it being technical stuff related to that, but you also mentioned it being an illusion. Do you see that as a pattern that's always been that way in society across all cultures? Do you see the Internet making that better or worse? How do you feel about that?
Interviewer: There's also the extreme of false complaints and sites like Ripoff Report that have been called a variety of things. I don't even know what words I could use without availing myself to a lawsuit. [laughter] Jason Jones: I'll say it, extortion racket. That's what people accuse them of, of running an extortion racket, because it looks a lot like that. Interviewer: How does the consumer separate out? You think people are falsely confident that they have a full spectrum; how can they become more aware of stuff they should trust versus stuff they shouldn't? Jason Jones: That is a good question. I don't know. Knowing who to trust is a hard thing to do, especially on the Internet, because of how many different channels and how many different voices there are. Because right now, at the moment, as we speak, things are running wildly out of control. Interviewer: Things are running wildly out of control, what does that mean?
Interviewer: Yeah. Part of that is that the Internet naturally has network effects built into a lot of different things, like the first person in the search result's going to get the bulk of the clicks. The leading search engine's going to get the bulk of the search traffic. And you see that with systems like.... I'm talking to you on Skype now, and it's got tons of users. Isn't it, though just how businesses run? A lot of businesses start off pure, and then grow. They get larger. Get dysfunctional through their size. Then they just have to keep making the numbers? Jason Jones: Yes. That's clearly what's happening. Interviewer: It's not really just a web-only phenomenon. Jason Jones: Oh, no! Interviewer: It's just that on the web you feel you're getting more diversity when maybe you're not. So one thing on the web... Jason Jones: That's the big difference I'm pointing to on the web, is that there needs to be a disclaimer, so that people have the idea. But that won't work either, so there's just no way. Interviewer: Yeah. I think the key is building good internal filters for who to trust, but anyone who's new has a hard time with that. It's almost like you have to get struck down once or twice somewhere to... Jason Jones: Exactly. It's hard when you come right on. The sites that I trust, and the things I trust on the Internet are the ones where I can smell the person behind it. Once it gets out the point where it's so big you're not sure what you're looking at reported, like Huffington Post. It's like at first, it was a thing. Then at the end, it's just this big goulash. Then it's like, "I'm not going to look at this anymore. I can't relate to it." Interviewer: Right. You think that it's having the character and a voice of an individual or a small group of individuals that you've learned over time is valuable. The more depersonalized it becomes, the more mushed, the less you can trust it. I had an interesting thing along that lines, when Google recently did an update called the Panda update, and a lot of larger sites from big brands got a big boost. But then, a lot of the independent sites actually end up getting crushed out that didn't have the brand. It sounds like the relevancy algos are going in the exact opposite direction of what you're saying is best for the web? Jason Jones: Towards the bigger? No. That is bad, right? That's the old-school way. That's the thing that is so not working. Let's not put that on the Internet and do it again, where it's even easier to scale up to an irrational size, become unreasonably big and useless in all of your ways. Interviewer: Have you seen my weight scale that posts to Twitter, is that what you're saying? No. [laughter] Interviewer: Let's see. Jason Jones: Although I used to like Google more, before I started reading your blog. Because then I saw them more as a heroic force, and then the way you talk about it. Yeah, I can see how so many of their tactics are little guy squeezing, which is really not what I want to see happen on the Internet. Interviewer: It seems that offline, there's growing income inequality. And maybe technology only speeds that up as well. Jason Jones: No. That's reflective of the offline world, too. Everything is way too big. Big groups are the worst, most unreliable. It's one of our worst human inventions, forming giant groups. And the bigger the group is, the stupider it is. Yet our whole economy is about building out the biggest possible things. I'm not an expert on this, so I don't know why I'm running my mouth about it. Interviewer: There's a book I read called "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History." I will admit that the reading was deep and beyond my level when I first started. But it was interesting, so I stuck with it. And one of the things he said is that it seems that we've always sacrificed variety in favor of homogenation to increase yield, as a general piece of capitalism. Online, some people will come, to your blog and say, "F*ck you, you stupid robot!" or stuff like you would never see people do in person. Where they're really enraged. Do you deal with a lot of that? Or do you think people view you in that way? Or how do you get the humor angle across without turning people off?
Interviewer: What do you mean by that, that they find out something? What are you saying, are you saying like making money quickly, or having some system?
Interviewer: Do you have any way of gauging how much you help people at all? Do you get thank-you emails every day? Or do people tell you that they were in a like crappy spot, and then they came across your stuff, and it changed their way of thinking? Jason Jones: Yes. I get those always, all the time. And it's much more in private than on the thing in public. Interviewer: Yeah, because I would imagine people might feel a bit embarrassed to admit that they were getting ripped off or something. Jason Jones: Yeah. A lot of the stories I hear are so personally tragic, and they contain so much just like horror that people don't... Talking about them more is painful, and people definitely are uncomfortable talking about it in public. I'm sorry, what was your question? Interviewer: Well, continuing from where you were, is that largely what drives you to keep going with the site? Jason Jones: Yeah. Definitely. Without that, it would be too hard, because there's not a lot. Sometimes I wonder why I'm doing it, but families especially like in the James Ray situation. Well, all of the situations. For every outrageously stupid comment, threat, or whatever that I see or get, I get 10 from the other side. Interviewer: You mentioned a group called The Syndicate. Jason Jones: The Syndicate. Interviewer: What is that? Do you think there's five or 10 or 20 or 50 different groups that are aligned similarly to what you mention? And you just honed in on one group? Or do you think that one has more reach than the others? Or why so much focus on this one group? You also mentioned that it seemed like some of this stuff weaves together. Can you describe how that is? Am I making any sense or not?
Interviewer: Why would they record those calls? Or how would those calls end up recorded then? Like we're recording this one. Jason Jones: Yeah, they record. They like to. They're narcissists. They like to hear the sound of their own voice, and they record their calls. They record all kinds of things they should not be recording. Even after I get some of those recordings, they keep on doing it, because they don't learn any lessons. Like the last one I released, which was that boiler room call. The boiler rooms, they record their calls, because that's what boiler rooms do. Interviewer: Do you sometimes feel like a man trying to hold back the Sahara Desert in a way, because this stuff's everywhere? Or do you think if you make a big enough difference in one area, people will carry on and help in other areas? Like it spreads out in circles? Jason Jones: I don't know. That's what I want to think about when I'm in a drum circle. I don't know how realistic that is. I hope that's how it is. I hope there's all these magical, beautiful butterflies being born, because of what I'm doing. Interviewer: Part of media has always been if you go to other forms of media, stuff spreads out, and then it reconsolidates. Like there's a bunch of people experimenting. And then ultimately, a lot of that comes down to social signals. Like people trust what they think other people trust. You did a good job marketing your site, especially on a very small budget. What were keys to getting well-known exposure, spreading your ideas?
Interviewer: Did you make the number one most popular robot? Or, number two most popular robot online behind GoogleBot? Get you a little plaque made up? Three years down the road, you decide you have a great idea, or you think you could really help people. It's not big, bureaucratic, dysfunctional, large company, but you eventually want to start doing something where you think you help people. But it's going to be more of a money-making enterprise, rather than something that you're just doing for free. Do you think the marketing lessons you learned from building the Salty Droid help you, more than any of the bad karma from people hating Salty Droid? Some of the people who you've exposed hate that obviously. And whatever you do going forward, there's going to be some connection, right, between them? In terms of people will try to connect them up? Jason Jones: Between this project and my next project, you mean? Interviewer: Yeah, I'm not saying that you're going to go from Salty Droid to SaltyMillionaire.com. What I'm saying is like whatever you do next, the web has a way of tying people or things together. Are you worried about that at all? Or do you never really plan on trying to make much money online, just do what you're interested in mostly? Jason Jones: Well, I don't believe that you can make money online, number one. And no one's ever been able to convince me by showing anyone who's doing it. Interviewer: Well, we'll do a sidebar after this.
Interviewer: Unless you can keep the cost structure low while you're doing it, and you're having fun doing it. If you're having fun doing it and you don't have too high of a cost structure, then you can stumble into a business that way, because you've already built up all this leverage already. I think what harms a lot of people is they say, "Hey, I got online yesterday. I need to make a bunch of money tomorrow." It's just like a new person to the stock market that's probably going to get served and lose all their money. But if you keep a cost structure low and do what you're interested in, it helps. You mentioned how it attracts people that are similar. And you build a community around it. That's how I started. When my blog came out, or when I first made my blog, it was a default web template. Three months in, I could afford to buy a $99 logo.
Interviewer: A friend of mine, a close one,, I always tell him, "Hey, do something you're passionate about." They're like, "I don't want to do something I'm passionate about. I just want to make money." And then it's like, "Hey, have you been working at all on that?" and they're like, "Nah." I'm like, "That's because you're not passionate about it." Jason Jones: Sure. Although that advice about being passionate about it, I guess that's good when you're trying to pick something to try for yourself, but most people are kind of like slaves and they're forced to, and there's not that much you can do about it. I want to do something I'm passionate about. Interviewer: Why did you choose a .info extension? Outside of Germany, there's like three legitimate .info sites in the world. Salty Droid being one of them. What made you choose this? Jason Jones: Yes! Because Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss registered all our domain names. Interviewer: They registered all your domain names? Jason Jones: Yes. There's a post about it, it's called Deiss and Belcher's Big Mistake. I was flashing my teeth at them about it, but I really didn't care. Because it was just stupid, I just got .info. And it's worked out just fine. Interviewer: Yeah. Have you ever made any posts that you'd later regret? For example, you saw someone doing something that was kind of shitty, crappy? And later you saw like them do something decent. And then like, "Maybe I went overboard on that." Or do you think that by the time you collect enough, that you're pretty certain that someone is what you think they are by the time you write it?
Interviewer: You think in some way ignorance is bliss? Do you think you would feel better if you didn't know all this stuff? Or do you think you feel better knowing that maybe you helped some people? Jason Jones: Ignorance is bliss if you're ignorant and you remain ignorant of all things, so that you can't tell. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. There's bull crap going on all around, so there's plenty of reason to be depressed. I don't find this particularly depressing, because everything's depressing. Tsunamis are depressing, too. If you're reading about the world, there's lots of stuff that needs to be better. That's just the perpetual state of everything. Interviewer: You're not going to know how you're going to become successful? When were the points when you thought that what you were doing was some little side thing, to where you really believed in it? Were there steps where you said, "OK, this was?" Do you look back where you say, "These are the five things that really made 80 percent of the difference?" Or do you think it's just going to bat every day? Or how would you describe it?
Interviewer: Do you think that's because people realize how things can snowball? And they want to see what's going on and try to minimize it early?
Interviewer: All-around good guy, obviously. Jason Jones: Yes. And he came. I know he saw it, because people can't not come see their own thing. That's really powerful, right there. That was the "Aha!" moment. Right as it started going, I could just tell right away. Like, "Oh, my gosh! They hate this so much!" That makes it worth doing it. Interviewer: Did you actually send the people emails, like, "Hey, I wrote this about you?" When you first launched, were you doing that? Jason Jones: Yeah, right. At first, yes. Interviewer: OK, That was key to getting it to spread right there, because you were going to write... Jason Jones: Not really. Because I only did that right at first, after that, I could tell. Well, because I thought I needed to do that. The way the web works now, you don't need to do that. I never do it now, like I say something about it. Interviewer: I don't think that the web changed so much as your website's authority and reach changed.
Interviewer: Do you think that there's...? Jason Jones: He was complaining in front of the marks in the room, just like he was that disturbed that he would say something about it from the stage just a few days into it. The web is powerful for talking directly to people. If you have something to say to someone other than Barack Obama, put it up on the web, and they will see it. Interviewer: Why is Barack Obama so much harder to reach than W.? Jason Jones: Well, because... [laughter] Interviewer: I don't know if you realized it, but a lot of what you're mentioning is actually just a lot of marketing concepts. You're talking about do something you're interested in. Find people that are relevant. Find people that are kind of egotistical, not saying that you have to feed in and kiss people's asses. But feed into knowing who will respond and how they'll take it. Then you also mentioned something else. Like, "You're not supposed to do this. You're not supposed to do that. Most people wouldn't do that." A lot of times a lot of rules and concepts of rules are set up to keep existing market leaders in their place and prevent others from disrupting them. That's a lot of the point of how Eric Schmidt famously, "The lobbyists write the legislation," When you talk about all that stuff you're doing, when I hear you I'm like, "OK, this is a marketing step. Be relevant. Be interested. Know your market. Connect with them, have a point of differentiation." Do you see how a lot of this stuff you mentioned? You didn't mention it using particularly marketing words, but it almost sounds like a marketing plan?
Interviewer: You're just a marketer. Jason Jones: I'm a marketer. Oh, that's great. This is great marketing, bud. Interviewer: Well, I think that it's hilarious, because a lot of bloggers do that with SEO, too. Like if I write something, they, "Oh, more SEO bullsh*t!" And then like a couple years later, after the same guy said all SEOs are a scam, he'll say, "Oh, yeah, that was one of my link-bait efforts." [laughter] Jason Jones: Right. Interviewer: It's like, "You transparent jackass! Why would anyone trust you now?" Like that, "Hey, I was full of sh*t a couple years ago, but you can trust me now." Jason Jones: "Remember when I was a liar? Those days are in the past." Interviewer: "Well, I think they're in the past, but I wouldn't bet on it." Or, "I'd like to bet against my own." Pete Rose style. Jason Jones: I hedge!
Interviewer: Goldman Sachs, "We're sort of long this..." Define "sort of" and "long". In English or French? No! If you had to start over from scratch today, what are things that you would avoid doing that you did? Jason Jones: I would not use Twitter. Interviewer: Not use Twitter?
Interviewer: OK. It seems like there's almost two marketing things in there. One, it's important to have autonomy and control of what you're doing, right? Jason Jones: Yes, definitely. Interviewer: And then the other would be you can maybe get a bit of attention with those, but it's not worth putting too much effort in the social networks. Because it's better to be a big fish in a small pond, or to build your own pond, rather than swim in an ocean where the current...
Interviewer: And what about that other thing, about like the big fish in a small pond? Do you think that it matters? It's better to be really relevant and focused and niche than to be on something bigger and just be one of many? Or how important is it to have some level of differentiation? Like a focus on building your own thing? Do you think that you ran your own blog was really important relative to being a participant in some forum? Jason Jones: Yeah. Ultimately, I regret spending all this time where I was building something for someone else. Like I was building Twitter's site out. I was adding something to Twitter, but they don't care about me. I'm not looking back, why? And I worried that once my Twitter account got banned, because I was using that primarily as the main part of my voice. The blog posts were actually much shorter back then, because I spent so much time working on Twitter. Once I was gone, I thought, "Well, now, you know, that's going to really hurt my popularity. Most of my clicks came from Twitter, and like I wonder if this is the end of it." Interviewer: How do you use Twitter? Jason Jones: It is an afterthought. If you're spending more than half of your time on Twitter, that seems to me like a waste, any of them. Interviewer: Have you ever thought about creating the ultimate guide to online baiting? Not "debating", but "baiting?" Jason Jones: No, I could. That is something I have expertise on. No. Because what I'm doing, not to be immodest but it's for professionals. You have to be careful talking like that. If you're good enough at baiting, you can destroy someone. That's not very nice. You should keep that mostly to yourself. Interviewer: Do you ever find yourself reading comments on YouTube or anything, like to perfect your craft? Jason Jones: To pick up like gibberishy bits? [laughter] Jason Jones: No. YouTube comments suck. Most people are really bad at baiting. You've got to be... Interviewer: Yeah. Well, your mom! Jason Jones: Oh! You destroyed me. [laughter]--- Thanks Salty. Categories:  |
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