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- Kim Horcher plays the hits. - Out, it's that guy. (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Outside the Fox, where we explore what's happening online and why it matters. I'm Steve Flavin. - And I'm Kim Horcher. And Steve, I have a question for you. - What? - And the world at large. What does logging off even mean anymore? - I don't know. - I'm sorry that was intense. But it does seem like it's kind of hard to truly, fully log off. I mean, we have things like, we're always getting updates, messages, notifications, what have you, your biometrics if you have them always on.
- [Steve] Yeah. - Are you ever truly off? - Exactly. Yeah. Logging off used to mean closing your laptop. Now you've gotta turn off your phone, your watch, your car, your smart fridge, your Alexa, your Google Nests, all the things. - Yeah. I do have a nest. So I guess it's impossible for me to fully be gone. - I thought you were very antis smart home. - It came with the house. - Okay. I've also been looking at apartments recently, and I, I have very mixed feelings about like built in smart devices because I do have a smart home, but it's like I wanna bring my own devices and set them up.
And like, being forced into another ecosystem is a whole other, that's a whole other conversation. - Right, right. Agreed. - But we're talking about what does logging off even mean anymore? Something that we saw recently, which was a, a Substack article actually. - Yes, there is a Substack article by Eugene Healy. He's a brand strategist that says, being chronically offline. Right, 'cause we've heard the phrase chronically online is now a luxury, a flex, if you will. Which is to say, oh, I don't, I don't even know what TikTok is.
What is that? What are the kids doing? What? I don't know. I'm just, I'm above this. - Well, I mean, in his substack he was, you know, talking about it from the perspective of a marketer, just like, this is a trend that's happening in the ecosystem and, or, you know, the, the internet discourse at large and, you know, what does that mean in terms of how, how people are interacting with each other? And it is an interesting, he framed it as like a status symbol. - It is. I've had bosses contact me via Slack or whatever at 9:10 PM and then the next day be like, why don't you respond to my Slack? And I would say to that, why don't you pay me to be on call 24/7?
- Yeah. - So I think there are sometimes boundaries that get pushed a little too far, and then you get in trouble at work for being normal. - Yeah. It is really interesting where there's this kind of like hierarchy where it truly is a privilege to be offline. You know, there are certain celebrities that are famously offline, like Anna Wintour has a flip phone, or Christopher Nolan, like famously just like, doesn't have a phone. Although I saw an interview with him recently where he talked about he actually does have a burner phone. But I imagine you can maybe count on one hand the number of people who have that number
and like what you know, certain circumstances would, you know, he would allow a phone call. - Honestly, it doesn't impress me. It's like saying I'm so out of touch. it's unbelievable. - Yeah. But it's like, once you're at a certain station, you know, it is like, you don't need to have that phone call or that slack conversation or that email. You know, it's like, if it's important enough, they'll, they'll find a way to get in touch with your people and then they'll, they'll bring your team, your staff, you know, will bring the important stuff to you.
- Well, I think being offline well and truly is a luxury because I could, I can't afford that luxury. I am a media freelancer, and a lot of my work depends on me being able to pitch. And being able to pitch depends on being able to know what's going on, what's news, what are topics people care about, what is trending to a lesser extent. But I need to be part of the global conversation, or even the local conversation, a conversation, and I can't do that if I'm fully offline. - Yeah, it's true. Even being in-house at Mozilla, I'm on the content team. We feel an obligation, even when we're not on the clock, so to speak, to stay in the know.
We're trying to stay up a pop culture, trending audio and TikTok, you know, the hot memes, that kind of thing. And what I've personally found is, is just setting certain boundaries and limits for myself. And so, for example, Instagram, we've talked about Instagram a lot. - So many times, - My personal feelings about Instagram, but used to be my favorite platform. - Mm. - I don't really, it's actually been over a year, I think, since I've posted on Instagram. So I'm really more of a lurker these days.
- I guess I have to stop tagging you and things. - I see the tags, but I do set a limit on Instagram where I think it's an hour. I do it through my phone where it'll, it'll give me a reminder if I hit that hour that it's time to, time to put it down. Every once in a while I will tap the like, extra 15 minutes button and like finish what I'm doing. But it is a, it is a good reminder because what influenced me to do that is I was just like looking at my screen time and my stats and everything, and I'm like,
I'm spending hours a day on Instagram. You just don't really think about it. And so I feel like limiting myself to an hour, I still get what I need out of it, but then I'm not just mindlessly getting sucked into it. - I am far worse at this than you, as I think I've discussed before, where I feel that I don't need limits because so much of what I do relies on being online and knowing what's online. - Okay. - And it's become kind of a problem where I don't sleep. - Mm. - Like I've heard it's important to, to do that, to sleep. And I'll just stay up and scroll and read. And I'll think like, reading helps you go to sleep.
No, reading books helps you go to sleep. - Mm. - So I could probably use a little discipline, even though deep down, I believe I don't have to, I don't want to. - It's easy to convince yourself that you have to do it. And I think that doing a complete detox, I think for, for those of us who work in content creation, but even those of us who don't, you know, it's like you wanna stay connected with your friends online or, you know, it's like everything in moderation, right. - You sound like my therapist. (Steve laughs) - Oh, you might be onto something.
I'm gonna mention something and we can bleep this out because it's funny, but this is gonna be kind of a long segue into a new life philosophy that I have. But I was reading an article about Taylor Swift and it was, I think it was like USA Today or like some kind of gossip website where it was basically someone was commenting on her dining habits in New York. And the quote was, she eats, she pays, she gets the (beep) out. - She's Taylor Swift. - But I love that as a philosophy. Like you could extract that and like apply it to almost anything. So Instagram, I post, I check my messages, I get the (beep) out.
- Okay, Swifty. - I'm just saying, you know, if you go, if you go into something with it intention, - I do know that just from, you know, searching for jobs in media, there was a listing at USA Today to be a Taylor Swift reporter. - Oh wow. - There was also a Beyonce reporter job, which I considered applying to, but I didn't. And I'm here. So that's more capturing the minutiae of these, these people's lives. But I think those two certainly have the luxury of not being online. - Sure. - Not having to do social media or what have you because they are global taste makers. They can do as they please. - Right. - And, you know, obscenely wealthy and busy all the time as well.
- And they have a team. Yeah. Speaking of pop stars, I recently saw Lady Gaga when she came to LA and phenomenal concert, my third time seeing her live. Not to pat myself on the back because it's like, it's not that much of an achievement, but I hardly took out my phone. I took maybe a couple of clips there. - You didn't film yourself singing along? - You know, lots of other people doing that. But just be present, enjoy it. And, you know, true to form, I went onto Instagram and I saw, like, there were so many clips from that concert already on there,
and I'm like, I'm so glad they documented this for me because, you know, I got to just enjoy being there in person. - I'm actually on board with that. I find it very annoying when people decide I need to film this thing, that there's definitely high quality footage of out there and ruin this experience for myself and others. - Yeah, no, they were literally filming the concert film that night over multiple nights, probably. The magic of editing. But, so, you know what, in the few months when the, you know, concert film is on streaming, I'll get to relive the concert again.
- And you'll have that same experience, but better because they have better cameras, better angles, et cetera. I think that's a good way to be. I mean, we've talked about something like this recently or in the past, not that recently, like flip phone summer. - Right. - Like doing film photography. Like, you know, I have a lot of BookToker friends who are just like, I wanna open a bookstore, a physical place where I can just read books, but they're, they're doing it for TikTok. So, you know, it's kind of an interesting way
of going about it. I sound very mean toward my BookToker friends, and I do love them dearly, but it does show that going offline is kind of hard or going fully analog-- - Yeah. - Is kind of hard. - I love books. I mean, there's, there is something to be said about the physical thing, just holding something in your hands. I mean, once upon a time like books, the printed page was like the pinnacle of technology. Like, it's kind of wild to think about.
- The printing press. - Yeah. - History is very interesting. Look into it. - Yeah. I myself, you know, I collect media, you know, DVDs and Blu-rays, you know, I'm a cinephile. I've also recently gotten back into collecting CDs. I know vinyl had a thing. - CDs. - But there was an article recently in the LA Times talking about there's, there's been an uptick in CD sales. - Do they sound? - Like year over year. - Do they have texture the way a vinyl record does? - Well, this is interesting. And so, like, this might be controversial to some people because like, there are a lot of audiophiles that are like, vinyl sounds better.
It has a soul, it has a, you know, warmth to it. - Yes. What pretentious thing did I hear? - Digital, CD quality is just about the best that you can get. It's absolutely pristine. Some people would say that it's like too clinical. I don't know, like depending on your equipment, it sounds incredible. Also true to the name Compact Disc, is much more compact than vinyl. It fits on a shelf. You know, I, I personally like it.
I, and I don't really have nostalgia for vinyl because like, like that's what my parents listen to. No shade on it. I mean, it is cool to see the big artwork and there's something about the ritual of like, putting the needle on it. You know, it's like, if that's your thing, you know, totally cool. But for me, there's something to be said about just like having, having the disc and it just, you know, takes me back to high school. But apparently Gen Z is getting on this trend where they didn't grow up with this stuff, but they're like mystified by CDs and DVDs because it's retro. And-- - Okay. - They're sort of rebelling against this algorithmic streaming normalcy where, you know, there's the paralysis of choice.
There's much to, to pick from versus the intentional, like curating of your own collection. And some, and also when it comes to movies and TV, watching things that aren't available on streaming. There's lots of things that are either taken down or have just never made it to streaming to begin with. - I mean, now you've got me thinking about streaming. I made a 10 minute diatribe slash video essay for IGN. - It's a great video. - About the value of physical media and what we forget often in streaming or accessing something that we think we own via, let's say a gateway of a website
is they can remove that anytime they feel like it. You can remove things from streaming constantly that you think you've always had. The same goes for video games as well, which are increasingly moving toward digital or cloud-based. - Yep. - And you just don't have it anymore. You think you've bought it, you've bought a license to it, and it can be revoked usually at any point that the, the owner decides to do it. And it's very irritating when you think, you know, here's this thing, I love.
This thing is key to defining my sense of taste. My maybe my personality. And it's just like, well, you don't own it and you never have. - Yeah. - That's, that's the part that hurts. - Yeah. Well, I mean, our friend Christopher Nolan also has an interview where he talks about physical media and he makes a great point where he's like, you know, Warner Brothers isn't gonna parachute into your home and steal the DVD off your shelf. You know, so, you know, but they can take something off of HBO or like, you know, whatever.
- Absolutely. - Streaming services - They do it every month. - Yeah. - Constantly. I mean, there used to be this, during the console wars between PlayStation and Xbox, there was a point where Xbox decided that things, certain titles of theirs would be locked and digital only. And then Sony made this big thing of like having a physical copy and being like, here's a game friend, we're sharing. It's no problem. But that is kind of real where we've seen the movement toward not owning the game that you, you think you paid for.
- From a corporate standpoint, from the, the video game publisher standpoint, I understand the rationale. They wanna sell more copies of the game. They honestly, they don't really want you to share it, which is kind of disappointing because it's, it's-- - It's gonna kill Game Stop's reused game market. - It's a way of like creating access and like, you know, gaining fans. It's, it's hard to quantify that with data. - Well, I mean, I don't wanna tell anyone to do anything illegal, but I do think oftentimes,
walling things off and creating gateways that can be cut off does lead people to think piracy is the option. - Yeah, piracy is actually up. I saw some data that, which is wild in the year 2026 with everything so widely accessible, but here we are. - I believe it. - Yeah. Well, I mean that, that brings up another point, which is, you know, physical media is not connected to the internet. Right? So they're not collecting data on you.
They're-- - That's a good point because when you watch something on streaming services, they're gonna take the data of how long did they watch? - Yep. - How long were they retained? Why was that? Let me, you know, analyze this data more. And I think it's, it is okay for you to analyze my data if I explicitly say you're doing that. And I guess I've passively said it - Sure. - In agreeing to, to using the streaming app. - Yeah. I mean, basically every TV nowadays is a smart TV. And if you look really closely at the terms of service, they are collecting a lot of information about your viewing habits.
A lot of these devices or TVs, you can, you can opt out or turn off some things. I have a Roku TV and so there's like a menu where you can like turn off some things, but you can't turn all of it off. - It's true. - And it also, like, your mileage may vary depending on the manufacturer of the TV. And so, you know, that's something to consider. But it also works both ways. Not just collecting data on us and our viewership habits, but, you know, content creators, showrunners, people making television and film content, a lot of stuff is green lit or renewed based on completion rate.
You know, the attention rate that they can now track very, in a very sophisticated way that, you know, in the days of, of Nielsen, you know, was a little bit more, you know, vague. - It was, Nielsen was more of an abstraction, like-- - [Steve] Yeah. - We think everyone is watching "Heroes" on NBC, but with precise data collection, they know a lot, a lot about a lot of us. And sometimes it's a little, little creepy to me. - Yeah. You were saying this, which I, I think it was Ben Affleck and Matt Damon mentioned it in an interview that Netflix was pressuring them to like, add dialogue where they explain what they're doing for the people that are not watching that are like
second screening. - Second screening, - Which I remember when you mentioned that and it like, blew my mind. But now it's becoming kind of common knowledge that, you know, that something that. - Yeah. - That people are thinking about. - So writing is getting worse because of this. - Basically. I kind of noticed that the last season of "Stranger Things," I thought the writing was terrible because it's like, there were so many monologues where they're just like talking about what just happened. - You don't like monologues where someone says exactly what they're doing?
- And I'm like, I just watched it. I don't need you to explain what I just watched, but here we are. - I love it when the music is on the nose. - Mm. - Or the song will be like. ♪ It's nighttime and we're sneaking around ♪ - I need the soundtrack for that. - Well, I'll write it for you. - Kim Horcher plays the Hits. ♪ Doubt it's that guy. ♪ - Oh, where do we go from here? I mean, I guess we could talk about being online intentionally. Right.
It's like setting, setting boundaries for yourself, setting intentions for yourself. We touched on this a little bit, but just speaking for myself, something that I can, you know, recommend is, you know, setting little rituals for yourself. Like, like don't look at your phone in bed. Like, I try my best. I'm not always successful in this, but I try to physically get out of bed before I look at a screen or a device. - See, this is hard for me because I have a hard time dealing with failure and I'm going to fail a lot at this particular thing.
- You know, we all fail and failing is okay. - It's a lesson I've never learned. And I think all children should know this. - Something I've really come to enjoy is, you know, when I have my morning coffee and breakfast, that's like a no device zone. I sit on my couch, I have a nice view outta my window. I look at the, I look at the traffic, I look at the I people watch, you know.
- Okay, I bet you even touch grass. - I mean, there was no grass. I a very urban environment. So like I don't, I don't go outside anymore, but at least I look out the window. At least I can. - I like how you're trying to prove to me, no, no, I don't go outside. - Shh. But yeah, I mean, it, it doesn't have to be mind blowing and, you know, excessive. But I think that just trying to carve out some intentional time where, where you're not sucked into a screen, you know, can, can do a lot of good in terms of, you know, being able to concentrate and, and just your own mental health.
- Well, I am reluctant about this, but I do know it'd be better for me. And I was talking about this yesterday on my own, which is I would like to start reading paper books again before bed instead of scrolling and scrolling. 'cause even when I read eBooks, I'm just scrolling. The brightness is getting to me. I don't have a special device just for reading. - Yeah. - I just use my phone. - I've always been Kindle curious, but I just, you know. - My mother has one and she loves it.
- Yeah. I mean, if you read a lot of books, I'm not one who like brings a pile of books with me everywhere. So I just feel like a book is like, fairly compact. Like I can put that in my bag if I'm traveling. You know, it is like, there, there's something to be said about the one book. And I'm also not, when I'm just reading for pleasure, I'm not reading that fast anyway, so it's not like, you know, it is like, I might read a few chapters on the plane. - Oh, maybe that's why. I read really fast because I majored in literature in college.
- [Steve] Yeah. - So I think I gotta just zoom through the book and get all of the, you know, information in my head. I've been doing it wrong since college. - It's just like, slow down a little bit. - This is my downfall. I have to slow down. - It's true that like, I do, you know, on my phone, you know, occasionally will read a book and I do like the scroll because it's, you can read it faster, you know, it's like, you don't have to pause and, and turn the page. But I think it helps kind of with digestion that actually by intentionally slowing down, you know, it helps with, you know, retaining it
and you know, just, it's like gourmet cuisine. You're savoring. It's like there's something elegantly simple about just having a thing with pages and I guess it requires a light source, but beyond that, you know, it's pretty simple to fold into your life. - It's so wild to talk about the idea of paper books and libraries as quaint and cozy, but they're there and we should use them. I mean, I, my, for a long time, my favorite book was "Fahrenheit 451". - Oh, I love that book. - And I got to talk to Ray Bradbury before he died.
- Oh wow. - Yeah. - [Steve] Okay. - And it was just like, why don't I support this more? Because I have an easier, more convenient option? But yeah, I think that's certainly an option. I would move into my life before buying a, a special device just for reading black and white. - I, you've opened up a whole thing 'cause Ray Bradbury is like one of my favorite authors. We're gonna have to connect after, after this podcast. But bringing it back to setting boundaries for ourselves and, you know, maybe slowing down.
A Firefox product that I really enjoy is Firefox Focus. It's a mobile version of Firefox that is basically like a burner browser. It's just a one window app that blocks tracking by default. And I use it for, you know, if I'm shopping quite frequently and I just, I don't want the ads following me everywhere. It, like, is good for that. Sometimes I'll be writing, you know, like, I read a screenplay recently where one of the characters is pregnant.
I didn't want pregnancy ads following me everywhere. So if I'm Googling about pregnancy, it's great to do it in a separate browser, but then there's a little trash can button at the bottom and then when you're done, you just trash your session and, and you're back to a clean slate. I love it. It works for me. I highly recommend it for, it's not for everyone, I acknowledge - I've tried to use it. It's not for me because, okay, we did this previous, I think, social video where we said, how many tabs do we have open? And I had infinity tabs open.
I like having all the tabs because I can go back and be like, oh, there's that recipe, there's that thing I wanted to get. And so having the lightness of Focus is maybe a little, little bridge too far for me. I'll take the classic. - But we've got, we got both options. - Yes, it's true. - So depending on, you know, if you, if you wanna try it out, you wanna shake it up. - So it is ultimately da, all about choice. And I think that is certainly, it's the answer that I think is the best way to encapsulate this, which is between the two extremes of always being online or always being offline, Christopher Nolan style.
Maybe the answer is definitely in between for us normal folk who do want to be connected, but not to our own detriment. - Yeah. So the takeaway isn't necessarily to log off forever, it's to log on with intention. - I'll try. - Well, on that note, that is all the time that we have for this episode. But we really wanna know, are you chronically offline or do you think that's overrated? Let us know in the comments. - And don't forget to subscribe and be sure to download Firefox because you know it's the best.
We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)
