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If you’ve opened Instagram recently, you’ve certainly seen Reels. The photo-sharing app has started aggressively pushing the TikTok-like videofeeds onto its users, a move that has sparked a heated response. Longtime users, and even celebrities like Kylie Jenner, have been urging Instagram to ditch the feature, which in addition to showing you more viral videos also shows you fewer updates from your friends and loved ones. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has defended the move, saying that Instagram is sticking with Reels and showing more videos in general, no matter how you or the Kardashians feel about that.
This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs joins us to rant about Reels and why all the social media platforms are copying TikTok now.
Watch Mosseri’s recent video about Reels (on Twitter, of course). Read Kate’s story about how Instagram keeps showing her sick kids. To read more of Kate on the rise of Reels, subscribe to the Plaintext newsletter, where she’ll be filling in for Steven Levy this week.
Kate recommends the book The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism by Adrienne Buller. Lauren recommends the Jordan Peele movie Nope and also Jason Parham’s WIRED review of the film. Mike recommends the Netflix show How to Change Your Mind and John Semley’s WIRED story about the companies racing to engineer new psychedelic drugs.
Kate Knibbs can be found on Twitter @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Lauren is @LaurenGoode. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
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Lauren Goode: Mike.
Michael Calore: Lauren.
Lauren Goode: Mike, how often do you get to say that you agree wholeheartedly with the Kardashians?
Michael Calore: Probably never. Close to never.
Lauren Goode: Well, in this case, I think you might actually agree with them because I've heard you talking about your Instagram experience lately and it seems like it's not very good.
Michael Calore: Right. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to open Instagram these days.
Lauren Goode: Why is that?
Michael Calore: Well, I'd love to tell you all about it.
Lauren Goode: All right. Let's talk about it.
[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]
Lauren Goode: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED.
Michael Calore: And I'm Michael Calore. I'm a senior editor at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: And we're joined this week by WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs, who's calling in from Chicago. Hey, Kate. Welcome back to the show.
Kate Knibbs: Hey, thank you so much for having me.
Lauren Goode: It's always great to have you on. OK. So today we're getting "reel," which is to say, we're talking about Reels, the TikTokification of Instagram. If you've spent any time on Instagram lately, you've probably found yourself in an endless feed of videos instead of photos. And those videos are known as Reels. Sometimes they might even be Reels from people you don't even follow.
So what is happening to Instagram? The short answer is it's becoming a clone of TikTok. Instagram's parent company, Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook wants to be all things social media, which means it sometimes blatantly copies other popular apps like TikTok or Snapchat. Kate, you've had some thoughts about Reels. You're writing about it for WIRED.com this week. Why is this happening?
Kate Knibbs: Well, the short answer of why it's happening is because Meta wants to survive and thrive and the company thinks the best way to do so is to rip off TikTok. They do have somewhat good reason for thinking this might be successful. If you remember, Instagram blatantly ripped off Snapchat when it created Stories and that feature ended up being a huge success. So I think that's the same thought process that's led us into this hellscape of Reels.
The big difference here, which is what I'm writing about and what we're all annoyed about, is that Reels is bad. Instagram Stories was a superior version of Snapchat's functionality, actually. Instagram stole from Snapchat, but they made it better, and that's why people liked it. What's happening with Reels, and I know that they're doing something similar on Facebook, but I honestly try to use Facebook as little as possible so I'm not familiar with what they're doing over there, but Reels is an attempt to rip off TikTok to basically port over TikTok's functionality onto Instagram, to convince people not to close the Instagram app and to open the TikTok app, but rather to just stay on Instagram.
But that's not what's happening in reality. From my point of view, anyways, what's happening is, I'm opening Instagram and being angry about seeing all these videos I don't want to see, and then closing and going to TikTok and not even really lingering on Instagram for the reasons that I thought I wanted to open Instagram, which was to see photos of my friends and family.
Michael Calore: Right. And that's actually Instagram's secret sauce, you could argue, right? The fact that there is this vast social network that everybody uses to share photos and sometimes short videos is totally unique. I mean, not totally unique, but you understand what I mean? That's the reason people have Instagram on their phones, is to look at what their friends are doing and see photos and comment and all that. So wouldn't it make more sense for Instagram to lean in what they already know is their strong suit rather than copy the features of other platforms in an effort to chase growth that way? And also, this is why I don't work in Silicon Valley.
Kate Knibbs: I think that makes the most sense. But yeah, I also don't work in Silicon Valley. Did you guys see the video of Adam Mosseri that Instagram had released in response to some of the criticism? It's really funny. He looks like he's being held hostage.
Adam Mosseri (prerecorded): There's a lot going on on Instagram right now. We're experimenting with a number of different changes to the app. And so we're hearing a lot of concerns from all of you. So I wanted to take a few moments and clarify a few things.
Lauren Goode: So I did see the video and we should definitely talk about that. But maybe first tell us what happened with the Kardashians and how that led to the video.
Kate Knibbs: Oh, yeah. How could I forget? How could I forget talking about the Kardashians? Yeah, so I think it was Monday morning, I came out the gate hot in Slack complaining about this. And then within a few hours, I realized that this is the world's most unoriginal complaint because Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, and apparently now Kourtney Kardashian and a slew of other A-list celeb influencers, members of the Kardashian-Jenner industrial complex, have all already been complaining about the fact that Instagram is ruining itself by trying to be TikTok. They were posting a meme that a photographer created that said "Make Instagram Instagram again.” And so they sort of jumpstarted this very mainstream backlash to the redesign that I think had already been percolating for a while since I was pissed off about it before I even saw that.
And so there were enough high-profile people complaining, basically, that Meta must have panicked because they appeared to have held Adam Mosseri at gunpoint and made him create this video, trying to convince us that, actually, it's really good that they've destroyed Instagram and made it a junkyard app. I think in my piece that I'm writing, I'm calling it a video junkyard.
Adam Mosseri (prerecorded): Recommendations are posts in your feed from accounts that you do not follow. The idea is to help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not know even exist. Now, if you're seeing things in your feed that are recommendations that you're not interested in, that means that we're doing a bad job ranking and we need to improve.
Kate Knibbs: It's just a bunch of videos you don't really care about. I keep seeing MLM content, which is really annoying. It's no good.
Lauren Goode: That's multilevel marketing. It's when people start selling skincare items and athleisure and Tupperware to each other on the internet.
Kate Knibbs: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: By acquiring the good themselves and then reselling them, which is a whole other podcast.
Kate Knibbs: Yes.
Lauren Goode: And for those who aren't familiar, Adam Mosseri, he's kind of the dad boss of Instagram. Right? There are times when Facebook slash Meta trots out Mark Zuckerberg for him to make some kind of video announcement or host a press briefing. And then there are times, and particularly around Instagram, when it falls to Adam Mosseri and he often puts these videos on Twitter, the non-Meta social network. And he comes across as this pretty affable sort of "I'm going to be straight with you" kind of guy. Except he's working for the machine that is Meta.
Kate Knibbs: Excellent summary. And, yeah, I think it's so funny that he puts them on Twitter. I would love to hear the rationale behind that. But that's also probably a story for another podcast. So in the video, he's basically saying, "I know there's some blowback, but listen, actually, we have the behind-the-scenes information. And from where we're sitting, you guys actually like video, even though you're saying you don't."
Adam Mosseri (prerecorded): Now I want to be clear. We're going to continue to support photos. It's part of our heritage. I love photos. I know a lot of you out there love photos too. That said, I need to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time. We see this even if we change nothing. We see this even if you just look at chronological feeds. If you look at what people share on Instagram, that's shifting more and more to videos over time. If you look at what people like and consume and view on Instagram, that's also shifting more and more to video over time. Even when we stop changing anything. So we're gonna have to lean into that shift, while continuing to support photos.
Kate Knibbs: And that's the argument he's taking, is basically, "I know what you want, actually, and the data implies that you want more video." Which is just hard to believe. I hate video. I mean, I love video when it's on TikTok, but that's because the TikTok algorithm has crawled into my brain and knows too much and is serving exactly what I want. The Meta world has never been good at serving video, I don't think.
Michael Calore: Yeah. And I think a big part of the backlash is that this move, this shift towards Reels content, is going to coincide with the redesign of the feed in the app that's going to give you a full-screen feed. So if you've ever tapped on a Reel and then you just swipe up to go to the next one and up to go to the next one and up to go to the next one and it takes over your whole screen, that is what Instagram is going to look like for everything in the near future. Right?
Kate Knibbs: Yeah, I think so. That's the plan anyways. I know some people are getting served that already as sort of test subjects. I haven't actually gotten it yet though. Have you?
Lauren Goode: No, I think they probably have a special list of press people. They're just like, "Do not send the beta tests to them."
Michael Calore: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Lauren Goode: I don't know if that's true.
Michael Calore: Absolutely. And in the video, Mosseri also notes that it's a bad experience right now and that they're going to tweak it in the future, which I think is good. I appreciate the honesty, that this is bad, we have to get it right, so we're just doing it for a small percentage of people now. The other thing that he said in the video, which I thought was interesting, is that a lot of photo-sharing has moved into Stories, which I agree with. And I actually really like Stories. I will sometimes just tap on Stories and prop my phone up against my coffee and just watch Stories while I eat my cereal in the morning.
Kate Knibbs: That's an adorable visual. And that's the thing. I like Stories a lot too. I think they're really fun. Instagram for a while was moving into this zone where you felt like all the stuff that you posted to the grid had to be very curated. And stories were sort of a way around that, a way to make it so fun and ephemeral. And again, that is just straight up a Snapchat clone. They get zero points for originality with stories, but it's good and it rules and we all like it. So I do think that it's not necessarily the fact that they're stealing from another social network. Although morally I don't approve of that, as a consumer I don't necessarily mind it if the execution is good. It's the execution that's a disaster with Reels.
Michael Calore: Yeah. And I think the big reason that a lot of people feel that way is because stories is mostly organic content or curated things from people that we have chosen to follow, whereas Reels is just viral bullshit that gets thrown at you because it's popular elsewhere or because the person has a million followers. And that leads to a very low quality experience, which makes you feel like you're just part of some anonymous audience instead of a circle of friends.
Lauren Goode: I completely agree with that. I think we sort of all acknowledge that maybe our friends aren't always the funniest people in our feeds or the most talented people in our feeds, but they're our friends and family and we love them dearly, so we want to see updates. And then it's this other sort of realm of total strangers who also sometimes happen to have a viral hit or a schtick that we really go for and that's what makes up Reels.
But those are two very different experiences, I think. The melding of them just feels very messy. Another thing that struck me about the video is that Mosseri said that Meta thinks this is the way the world is going and that, therefore, Instagram slash Meta must go along with it, as opposed to acknowledging that an entity as powerful as Meta actually drives a lot of that change.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: They develop the algorithms, and we're going to get into this in the second half of the show, that sort of tip us towards these behaviors. And then they're like, "Well, this is just the way that people are behaving, so we're going along with it." It seems completely backwards.
Kate Knibbs: I agree. It seems like they're really downplaying their role in making the culture and attempting to argue that they're just following along with people's behavior online instead of acknowledging that they actively shape it.
Lauren Goode: On that note, we're going to take a quick break and come back with more Reel talk.
[Break]
Lauren Goode: So right now, there's this giant competition for our eyeballs and our attention spans, which are a finite resource. And at this moment, TikTok is winning that game because TikTok is not only grabbing our attention, but also ad dollars. So we have a sense of why Meta is doing this with Reels, as explained by Kate in the first half of the show. But my next question is, will this actually work? We talked a little bit about how Meta is famous for copying some of these other social services and in the past they've been successful at doing that. But I'm curious whether you think this is going to work this time.
Kate Knibbs: I hope it doesn't. I really hope it doesn't.
Lauren Goode: Fair enough. OK, that's our show, folks. Thanks very much.
Kate Knibbs: I'm always so tentative about making predictions. I don't think it's going to work. I do think that they're probably going to figure out how to pivot and continue to be a very dominant suite of social platforms. I don't think that Reels sucking is a signal of Instagram's demise or anything like that. I do think it points to the fact that TikTok is ascendant and maybe this era where Meta—I have trouble calling it Meta, I want to still call it Facebook, but fine—where Meta is the number one absolute most dominant social network. Maybe that era is waning, and this is an indication.
But no, I don't understand how this could work because it's just such an unpleasant experience. And I don't know how they're going to fix it. I mean, I guess they could really tweak the algorithm to make it as uncanny and deviously good at its job as TikTok’s. But I feel like it’s hard to imagine TikTok having the downfall that Snap did when Instagram succeeded it. I know I'm kind of rambling here. I'm just not sure, but I don't think that these videos are going to become a success. What do you think?
Lauren Goode: Well, I think today's environment for social media is different too. So five years ago, when Meta, back then Facebook, was copying Stories or AR filters from Snap and implementing them into its platform, to your point, Kate, the experience was actually quite good. So that kept people in Instagram Stories.
But also, we had fewer demands on our attention spans. And over the past five years, that has changed dramatically. We are living through a pandemic. Our online consumption has gone up. There are multiple streaming services out there, not just social sites, but things like Disney+ and Netflix and Hulu and all of the entertainment we could potentially consume. There's been the rise of TikTok, which we led with.
There's just a lot happening in general. And there's been some reporting done on the harms that social media is doing to us as a society that I think are pretty important. And so all of this combined, I think, makes me at least, as a consumer, a little less likely to just go with the flow in terms of changes happening on some of the biggest social media sites and actually take more stock into how much time I want to spend on this versus another site. And I can't say that's going to happen broadly across society. But it does feel like a different environment from five years ago when Facebook was first sort of borrowing or stealing all these features.
Michael Calore: Yeah. I felt for a while that TikTok is not for me. I'm a middle-aged man and when I open TikTok, it does not feel like my world. It feels like a world that is foreign to me because most of the people on there are younger. And, yes, I know that there are a lot of content creators who are my age, but that's not what TikTok shows me. It shows me people who are half my age or younger and a lot of those videos are overly sexualized.
I'm seeing all of that same stuff on Instagram, so it's starting to make Instagram feel like it's not my world. My world is my friends, the people I've chosen to follow. And I've decided to sort of take control myself, because there are things you can do on Instagram to resist this change, right? To push it into the background. For one thing, you can go into your Settings and you can tell it not to show you Reels that are recommended to you. It'll only show you Reels from people you know. And, in some cases, it will just completely deprioritize Reels. That setting only lets you pause it for 30 days. So you still will begin to see Reels again at some point. The other thing you—
Lauren Goode: Why 30 days?
Michael Calore: I don't know. It's a dick move, but that's what they decided to do.
Lauren Goode: I want to see Adam Mosseri do a video on why 30 days. They just want you to forget about it.
Kate Knibbs: Yeah.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Kate Knibbs: That's definitely it.
Michael Calore: And then it pushes it back to you. The other thing you could do is just tap on the Instagram logo at the top of your feed and switch to your Following feed, which is great. I do that all the time. That just shows you a reverse chronological feed of the photos and videos that the people you follow are posting. It's not curated. There are no stories. It's just the stuff that your friends are posting to the grid.
So that's another good one. Also, I use Instagram way less than I used to. I noticed I was blowing all kinds of time on Instagram, so I set a timer that only lets me use it for 15 minutes a day. And that has been a big move for my mental health. But I will say that this move into the TikTokification of Instagram, as we're all calling it—it makes it feel unfamiliar. It makes it feel foreign. It makes it feel like an unwelcoming place for me. So I think if other people feel that way, they may start using the app less. I would not be surprised to see people say, "Instagram has changed. It doesn't feel like it's for me anymore, so I'm going to start using it less."
Lauren Goode: Kate, what do you think? Are you going to start using it less?
Kate Knibbs: Well, I actually have started using it less and it's somewhat related to this shift. I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but I've had to stop using it as much as I did because I keep getting served content about sick kids. And this is anecdotally. I don't think there's actually been a study on this, which would be interesting, but since I wrote about that, a lot of people who are new parents have reached out to me and said that the same thing has happened to them.
So this is not ... I know that this is an experience that a lot of new parents have. Basically, if you indicate that you have a small child somewhere on your Instagram, you will almost certainly start seeing content from accounts of children with extreme illnesses or other congenital conditions or who have died or who are dying. And it's very heavy and upsetting and hard to deal with. And for my own mental health—there were so many times when my husband would find me crying and I'd have to explain that I was really upset about this kid that I saw on Instagram—that I was like, "I can't go on using this app like this.”
And so that is why I've stepped back, but the reason why I am getting served that is tied into this TikTokification. It's because they're trying to serve you a lot more content from people you don't know in videos. And I'm like, "Please stop showing this to me. Can I just see my friends and family? I don't have the emotional fortitude to deal with this, honestly." Yeah. So that's what happened with me on Instagram recently. I know that this is something that is pretty commonplace, which is, I've got to imagine, having some negative consequences for Instagram usage among new parents. I'm not sure though.
Lauren Goode: What did Meta say in response to your story?
Kate Knibbs: They didn't say anything.
Michael Calore: Classic.
Kate Knibbs: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: This makes me think of Kyle Chayka's recent piece in The New Yorker about algorithmic anxiety, which is this idea that social networks have always claimed to show us things that we like, signals that we are sending to the social networks that we're into. Things that, as he put it, we might have organically gravitated towards ourselves. But then, actually, there's this entire ecosystem of content that's influencing us in ways we don't realize we are. So the things that we think we just naturally like might be things that are put into our faces.
And that's not to say, Kate, that you liked what you were seeing. You actually intensely disliked it. But there was something about your account and your experience as a user and your experience as a new parent that Instagram suddenly started thinking this was the right fit for you, and it was actually making you feel awful.
Kate Knibbs: I read that piece about algorithmic anxiety and I was definitely thinking of my own recent experiences and thinking that it was encapsulating them in a way. Because, from how I understand it, the reason that I'm seeing that is because I don't click away fast enough because it's really hard not to. And they don't really care whether I like something or not. It's whether I have an emotional response. So there is this somewhat predatory and discomfiting use of the algorithms to serve parents content that will upset them enough that they don't swipe away. And I guess it's working as far as we're not swiping away, but it's definitely not working in the sense that I'm scared to open Instagram because I don't know what I'm going to see.
Michael Calore: Right. So we're all going to quit Instagram, right? Is that where this is going?
Kate Knibbs: I should.
Lauren Goode: I mean, maybe.
Michael Calore: I can't quit you, Instagram.
Kate Knibbs: My one unquittable is Twitter, sad to say. It's just, I love it. Sick and I love it.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Kate Knibbs: I'm definitely opening Instagram a lot less though, seriously, because of this tendency for Instagram to serve me things that upset me.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: I don't know. I've quit dating apps. That's a whole other podcast, too.
Michael Calore: Next week.
Lauren Goode: Next week. Gosh. Well, I guess what we're saying is that, Adam Mosseri, we call bullshit on these changes. We are not nearly as powerful or influential as the Kardashian-Jenner industrial complex, as Kate called it, but we have a hard time believing that the majority of users actually want this Reels experience, so we're urging for change. And on that note.
Michael Calore: And bring back Gotham.
Lauren Goode: Oh, the filter.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Kate Knibbs: I thought you were talking about the show with Ben McKenzie. I was like, "That show was pretty good."
Michael Calore: Obviously, I'm talking about the black-and-white Instagram photo filter that I would never use if it was in there. Anyway.
Lauren Goode: And on that note, we're going to take another quick break and come back with our recommendations.
[Break]
Lauren Goode: Kate, as our guest of honor, what is your recommendation this week?
Kate Knibbs: So my recommendation this week is a wonderful nonfiction book called The Value of a Whale. It's by an author named Adrienne Buller. And the subtitle is On the Illusions of Green Capitalism. And it is a really interesting, upsetting, but galvanizing look at why a lot of the attempts to make green initiatives in the global corporate space are, in some cases, making climate change worse. So it's not an uplifting read, but I really think it's an important one and I want to recommend it.
Lauren Goode: That sounds like a good one. Thank you, Kate, for the recommendation. Mike, what's yours?
Michael Calore: I'd like to recommend two things that have to do with the same topic this week. And that topic is the use of psychedelics in mental health therapy. The first of these is a Netflix series called How To Change Your Mind, which is hosted by Michael Pollan and based on his book of the same title from four years ago, which I recommended on this show four years ago when it came out.
The book is about humanity's history with psychedelic substances and mind-altering substances, which goes back 30, 40 centuries. The Netflix series takes some of that stuff from the book, but really concentrates on the use of substances such as LSD, mescalin, MDMA, and psilocybin in psychedelic therapies. So people using them to help PTSD, to help anxiety, to help obsessive compulsive disorder, to help depression, fear of death in cancer patients.
It's really interesting. It's especially nice to see these things presented on the screen. I believe it was executive produced or produced by Alex Gibney, the famous documentarian, and Michael Pollan hosts it, so that's a really good one. The next thing I'm going to recommend is a story that ran on WIRED this week written by John Semley. It's called "The High-Stakes Race to Engineer New Psychedelic Drugs." And it focuses on a company called Compass Pathways, which is developing versions of those drugs that I mentioned, like LSD and psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. They are working on compounds that are a little bit different than the psychoactive drug that has been around for a while. So they're developing new compounds that they can then patent and put into trials and get approved for use in trials to treat those disorders that I just mentioned.
So it's this race to profit off of this groundbreaking work that is being done in psychedelic therapy in very controlled, very small studies. Because these drugs are still illegal in most places in the United States and they're still illegal federally, so it's very difficult to do these trials. But if they can get these drugs patented and go through FDA approval, then they stand to make a lot of money and, hopefully, change a lot of people's lives.
So it's obviously a very fraught area in the pharmaceutical world and there are a lot of people who don't like it, but this is the reality that we live in and the story is fascinating. And Compass Pathways, as a company, is fascinating. And the main character in the story is also very fascinating. So those are my two recommendations. And, bonus, if you read the WIRED story, embedded in it is an interview that WIRED did with Michael Pollan where he answers psychedelics questions for Twitter. And it's very funny.
Lauren Goode: Wow. This is like a psychedelic turducken.
Michael Calore: It's a trip, you might even say.
Lauren Goode: Ba-dum bum.
Michael Calore: Hey now.
Lauren Goode: And so you can get these prescribed. Or you can, because I'm pretty sure I know people who have gone through guided therapy sessions using some of these substances.
Michael Calore: Yep. Just like back in the day, you got to know a guy.
Lauren Goode: Interesting. All right. I'm going to check that. I've been wanting to watch How to Change Your Mind, so thank you.
Michael Calore: It's very good. I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. What is your recommendation, Lauren?
Lauren Goode: My recommendation is a two-parter as well. And Boone, our excellent producer of the show, also concurred with me earlier. We both happened to see Nope, the new Jordan Peele film, this weekend. It's spectacular. I highly recommend it. And before you go see it, you might want to check out our colleague Jason Parham's story, "Nope Rightly Challenges Our Love of Spectacle," which is his review of this film, which is a sci-fi, supernatural Western movie that is all about our obsession in our culture with our 15 minutes of fame.
It's not all about that. It's interesting. You go into it thinking it's a movie about a UFO, but it's actually more about how people on Earth, on land, are reacting to this strange shape-shifting entity in the sky. And it says a lot about our relationship with fame, our 15 minutes of fame. It's sort of not a movie about Hollywood, but it's a Hollywood-adjacent movie. It's really good. Jordan Peele is obviously a phenomenal director. So check it out.
Michael Calore: Awesome. Awesome. Kate, have you seen it?
Kate Knibbs: No, I really want to. I haven't been to a movie in the theater since before the pandemic, you guys.
Michael Calore: Same.
Kate Knibbs: Because yeah.
Michael Calore: I may never go back to the theater.
Kate Knibbs: I love going to the theater. It's just that now I have to deal with my baby. He's not old enough to go to the movies and I don't hire. I don't know. I haven't been able to go, but I really want to.
Lauren Goode: Well, I will say there's a certain joy in going to the movies by yourself, if you ever can. And so if your partner, Kate, is ever like, "Hey, I'm going to take the baby for a couple hours." And you're like, "What should I do?" Go sit in the back of a dark theater for a while and just bliss out.
Kate Knibbs: I would love that.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. I wish that for you.
Kate Knibbs: Thank you.
Lauren Goode: I'm sending that your way. All right. That's our show this week. Two weeks in a row talking about the all-powerful Meta. What will we talk about next week, Mike?
Michael Calore: Well, WhatsApp. We're going to talk about WhatsApp next week.
Lauren Goode: Probably. Kate, thanks so much for joining us again. It's always a delight having you on.
Kate Knibbs: Oh, I love it. Thanks so much.
Lauren Goode: And thanks to all of you for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on Twitter. Just check the show notes. Our producer is the excellent Boone Ashworth. We'll be back next week and goodbye for now.
[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]
