JH: Big time. It was relevant because there were some parameters for sharing so it wasn’t infinite, whereas now sharing is infinite. It’s in the crazy house, mirror after mirror. To the point where maximum saturation is… none of it means anything at all [laughs].
AP: It’s true, like when U2 put themselves on your iPhone. Like how did they gauge whether that was a success or not? Did they look at the numbers of people actually listening to it?

JH: But once it’s downloaded…
AP: Nobody’s gonna download it.

JH: Wasn’t it already downloaded?
AP: I think it was available or something, I can’t remember. But any kind of tracking of people who pressed play or whatever and streamed it for five seconds would give you a false sense of pride, I suppose. Like, “Yeah, we got one trillion listens…” Jennifer: [laughs] And we made ten dollars. Ariel: [laughs] “We got lots of previews, guys!”

JH: I wonder how much that marketing option cost, it wasn’t free [laughs].
AP: It might have been free, what if they were trying to do something new and they thought of this…

JH: Well perhaps with U2 that’d be the case.
AP: “Hey guys, we have a great idea! Fuck publicity, fuck any of that stuff, we’re not gonna release our music in record stores, let’s bypass all that and just have it included in the phone plan.”

JH: [laughs] “And if you don’t opt-out, you’re gonna be charged for it every month.”
AP: [laughs] Brilliant plan.

JH: You know that Fortnite game? I don’t play video games, they create a lot of stress for me. I don’t find them relaxing or fun, I find them frazzling and stressful. But I like looking at the graphics and not participating, you know? And inside the Fortnite world, I watched Travis Scott do a twenty-minute concert on that virtual stage. So like all the gamers and the cross-overs were watching, there were like twelve million or something. It’s interesting, but it’s a totally different art form. It’s so multimedia.
AP: Was it broadcast live or pre-recorded?

JH: I’m not sure, from what I saw it was streamed in real-time. That’s what people are seeing, but it’s all animated, so I don’t know if it was simultaneous animation or perhaps it’d been done prior. We don’t even have 5G yet, so I don’t think they could even manage simultaneously turning a concert into an animated thing in real-time.
AP: We still can’t even get like GPS properly, it’s always delayed, and if you call long distance there’s still a delay. We haven’t mastered that yet.

JH: 5G is coming though. During the Kobe [Bryant] tribute at the Staples Center, someone had their phone up and was streaming live, and they even do it on TV with newscasters and it glitches up all the time. Like, we aren’t there yet. But I think 5G is going to be the big turnaround. I think we’re gonna spend a bunch of money on infrastructure to get up to par on that.
AP: You think that Bluetooth will be like, right behind it?

JH: Like, lightning-fast?
AP: Lightning fast and never a glitch. People are so used to hearing everything cut up and glitched because of loading and bad connection, I can’t believe that we took a step back for as long as we have.

JH: I have a lot of high hopes for 5G. But evidently there’s like a political movement against it…
AP: Oh yeah, they say it’s cancerous, right?

JH: Right. But then hasn’t everything been cancerous? Radio, cars?
AP: I’m not one of them, I welcome 5G.

JH: That’s how we will evolve as humans. We’ll take on the perils of the new world and our bodies will adapt to it over time. We’re the first frontier [laughs].
AP: We need to pump it into our brains to get the right antidote.

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