A transcript of S03E02, (330) of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom are joined by Oobah Butler to talk about his filmmaking, the manipulation of algorithms, their impact, and what we as designers might consider doing about it..
This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Dave Trendall.
Computer voice
Season Three, episode two
[Music]
Oobah Butler
When I remember, when I did the shed, I remember I got approached by genuine restaurant companies who wanted me to help them launch businesses in that way. So basically create the idea of a restaurant, then basically manipulate its position and then open it.
Per Axbom
I’m Per.
James Royal-Lawson
And I’m James,
Per Axbom
And this is UX podcast, balancing business, technology, people and society since 2011 and with listeners new and old all over the world, from Denmark to Nepal.
James Royal-Lawson
Today, we bring you a chat we recorded with the brilliant Oobah Butler. It was from business buttons here in Stockholm that we had the opportunity to sit down and have a natter with Oobah.
Per Axbom
He’s a journalist, filmmaker and prankster known for toying with institutions, algorithms, expectations and boundary-pushing storytelling.
James Royal-Lawson
Oobah is the creative mind behind the great Amazon heist, an impressive documentary that tells the tale of how we infiltrated Amazon and managed to turn fake products into top ranked merchandise.
Per Axbom
He also gained global attention for the shed at Dulwich, a remarkable experiment where he turned a non existent restaurant into London’s top rated eatery on TripAdvisor.
James Royal-Lawson
Without serving a single meal.
Per Axbom
Oobah’s work is a fascinating mix of satire and investigative journalism.
James Royal-Lawson
And he can also do a pretty good rendition of Ziggy plays guitar if you happen to be with him in a bar and a piano.
Per Axbom
I’ve never met you before. So fantastic that you’re here with us at UX podcast.
Oobah Butler
Thank you. Yeah.
Oobah Butler
What I have been doing is some research, and it has come to my attention that sometimes you send other people to do your interviews and even attend your high school reunions?
Oobah Butler
Allegedly, yeah. I have been known to do that. Yeah, I’ve got my own little app called Oobah where people can order look alikes at themselves. It’s basically a form on a web page. But the concept is, there’s an app.
James Royal-Lawson
I love the fact that you can make your name sound more like a certain Yeah, transport based company.
Oobah Butler
Yeah. No. If you look at the logo, it might look a little similar as well, but yeah. I mean, this is the real me, the real deal. I can, I can assure you.
James Royal-Lawson
I did actually joke about forcing to take out ID.
Oobah Butler
It’s actually back in the hotel room, which is, which is over there, above the Abba museum. So, you know.
James Royal-Lawson
I’ll tell you what though, we’ll check your ID later. Okay, we won’t stalk you or anything. I’ll follow you back, but we’ll sort of the ID later. But when reading a bit about you and watching some of your stuff, you get described as a con artist sometimes. And you know, from my perspective, I mean, you’re a media personality, I guess, as well. But are you an activist? How do you see yourself?
Oobah Butler
Yeah, it’s a that’s a good question. I think through different phases of my career, I’ve been called different things. So when I first started out, I was a writer, and it started out mainly with vice and things like that. And at that point people would have called me a journalist or a writer. Then I started to go from doing my weird stuff in written form to then doing it in video form and these kind of online documentaries. Then, I started getting called prankster or whatever.
Oobah Butler
It’s the space I play within because my stuff always is colliding with the real world in terms of I’m gonna play in this space, you know, I’m gonna play. People find it slightly tricky to pin that down. I don’t know, really, it’s hard to classify myself, because I know what I’m doing, and I know what my lane is. So I guess I’d probably need to think more about it. Maybe it’s like social engineering. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the way that it comes together.
Oobah Butler
I mean, I definitely have a worldview, and I think that helps to make the stuff feel contemporary. I think if I was doing what I was doing 20 years ago, I think it would be easier to make films where, like Sasha Baron Cohen’s obviously a genius, but I guess that stuff has to kind of move on as things change or whatever. And I’m sure he’s making something new right now. I’m sure it will be updated, and he’ll have developed it, or whatever. I don’t know why I’m talking about this.
Oobah Butler
What I’m trying to say is I don’t think I’m an activist, no, because I think that there is a real, proper space for that. But I definitely have a world view. And I think that if, in my opinion, like that’s what helps make the stuff feel contemporary and relevant, is, you know that they’ve got a world view without jamming it down people’s throats, because ultimately, it has to be entertaining as well.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, you’re still foremost an entertainer but if we think about the the Amazon heist, that is social commentary. There is the activist aspect to that whether you’ve come from that as the burning issue or not.
Per Axbom
Was the intent to be a commentary on?
Oobah Butler
it was probably quite natural, to be honest, because it was during the pandemic, and just seeing how much of a growing presence in our lives Amazon was occupying and stuff like a lot of the shops on the high street shutting and seeing a lot of people obviously not being able to leave the home or being. I know it was very different in Sweden, you guys did a different thing.
Oobah Butler
Everyone was at home a lot more. Everyone was using Amazon a lot. The company grew at this absurd rate in a really short amount of time. I was using Amazon as well. I wasn’t above it. I just found it interesting how much of a growing presence this company, had become and obviously everyone kind of had a whiff that they didn’t quite do things great. Then I started making a short about Amazon, like a short film that I just made myself with a friend of mine called Stan, and then that ended up being this piece that’s in the film about tax avoidance and it was really fun.
Oobah Butler
It’s how do you get people to care about this issue that can feel quite boring. It does impact us, but how and why do I care? And that was kind of the question. And then in the film, we ended up, we focused on potholes. The whole idea that infrastructure and how quick can Amazon make a prime delivery without the roads that are paid for with our taxes?
Oobah Butler
But yet they pay such a tax to turnover rate that’s so low, so low. Certainly, look, I pay more corporation tax than Amazon, I did last year anyway. So, I don’t know, it was funny to me, as a new challenge. It definitely felt like a different, a step further in that direction of that. There was a focus to the film. Amazon are the focus of the film. They’re the reason it exists. But it’s not me saying delete your Amazon account. It’s just saying why don’t we have a little look at this gigantic –
Per Axbom
It’s observation, rather than a call to arms.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And obviously, then it spiraled into this big documentary that was really a dream for me to be able to do something with Channel Four. And it’s now come out in it’s come out in Denmark recently. It was on TV too, but it’s not out here yet, and it’s been out and a few other places like New Zealand, Australia, and hopefully more places soon.
Oobah Butler
But yeah, it was that was like a dream of mine is to do my weird stuff that I started doing when I was living in a shed seven years ago and now being able to do a documentary on Channel Four was, yeah, a bit of a dream. So, yeah, very lucky. It’s very easy to just quickly forget that that would have been a dream a year ago, and maybe 18 months ago. And now life is just about – your expectations change every time you achieve something, doesn’t it? Then it’s, oh, now I need – and you’re like, stop being such a moron. Just take a second. And I’m just hearing myself talk about it now and thinking I’m proud of that.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. I mean, I remember the shed in Dulwich when that that came out, and, of course it just got splashed far and wide on the news and media but I remember at the time just reflecting on the whole algorithmic side of stuff, and this is something you cover in the Amazon heist one as well, that ‘gaming the algorithms’.
Oobah Butler
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
And just just how easy it is. Well, I mean, I’m seeing it’s easy. It just seems it can be, and it seems easy and you’ve done it multiple times now. But how do you look on the kind of, I suppose, the social commentary side of that, that you’re faking something to get there. But is it really, I mean, what I’m trying to get to there is, are you just mirroring what goes on anywhere?
Oobah Butler
Yeah, in all myself, I tried to, sort of, I always started like a monkey see, monkey do kind of space. It’s this thing that we , specifically with algorithms like ranking systems like TripAdvisor or in the Amazon heist, the amazon sales list, I guess that we kind of, the way that I think that we view those things is sort of, we curate our experiences of the world based upon these, these rankings, I would say. Not everybody, but I personally am more drawn to taste makers. I’ll find someone who’s taste that I really, really admire, and then I’ll try and follow their recommendations.
James Royal-Lawson
Like an influencer kind of.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, I guess an influencer, I guess so. I would just like, say for example, I’ll find a food critic who I think is great, like this guy called Jonathan Nunn in London, who does a sub stack called vitals. It’s brilliant, and it has a world view as well. Weirdly, I think food should have a world view sometimes. But anyway, so that’s just one example. I’ll subscribe to a sub stack and that’s where – other than word of mouth, that’s where I’ll find what restaurants I want to go to. That’s me. Personally. I think I’m more naturally drawn to that than consensus, I would say.
Oobah Butler
But I think a lot of people will just, you know, search, you know, Best Restaurant, Stockholm. I just got here. TripAdvisor is still there in the top one or two on Google. So then I would go to that restaurant based upon that, that ranking. And then obviously, just my experience was just that finding out that these, ranking systems were so manipulatable and that there were businesses and companies, I mean, Amazon’s a gigantic industry of people who game that system because it’s so valuable.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, it’s a platform, and they’re doing it constantly.
Oobah Butler
It’s the same as TripAdvisor, but Amazon on another level, I would say now. I feel like there’s so much cynicism just creeping beneath the surface there and with me, what I do is I try and explore that – it’s sort of like, how do I do this in the most grotesque way possible sometimes, or the funniest way possible to make a point about, not just make a point, but it’s also one, I want to see if I can do it, because it always starts, is this possible? I think it might be. You know, can I get a number one drink on Amazon made out of their drivers urine. That doesn’t sound like it should be doable, and yet, you know, in the film,
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, you’d hope the laws would stop you.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, exactly.
Oobah Butler
And then we listed the ingredients, and it said, this is collected bottles of Amazon drivers’ urine in the description on the platform, and it didn’t pick it up. I am drawn to these ranking systems. I do think that they curate our experience of the world and how we go into experiences. And I definitely have, I would say I probably am victim to it as well. To be honest, I think we all are. But I don’t know, I enjoy just taking a second from time to time and exploring how much do I trust this platform, and should I?
Per Axbom
But do you think people get it? Because I felt kind of frustrated when I was reading interviews with you, when the journalists or the media outlets, they find it ‘but this is hilarious, what you’re doing. It’s so funny. You’re gaming the algorithms’. But they don’t problematize it around the fact that, well, everybody is gaming the algorithm. And as you said, of course, you’re susceptible to it yourself, because that’s how the way it works. And I’m traveling this summer, and I was realized I was checking hotels, and I thought, I’ll just check the reviews. And then I caught myself, why in the world would I trust these reviews? But they’re there so I read them.
Oobah Butler
No, of course. It’s impossible to ignore. I do think it’s a good point. It is that there’s so much – why wouldn’t you, if you’re running a company, you’re trying to make something work.
James Royal-Lawson
Still, it’s the quickest route to the goal, isn’t it,
Oobah Butler
It genuinely is, yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
There’s no other quicker way of doing it.
Oobah Butler
I remember when I did the shed, I remember I got approached by genuine restaurant companies who wanted me to help them launch businesses in that way. So basically create the idea of a restaurant, and then basically manipulate its position and then open it. Isn’t that unbelievable?
James Royal-Lawson
I used to have a Facebook page when Facebook pages were actually useful, before their algorithm killed them.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, they did.
James Royal-Lawson
I had offers from people wanting to buy that Facebook page because it’s a bait and switch. You take that thing, you rename it, and you alter it and you use it for something else.
Oobah Butler
Exactly. To open a physical space, a restaurant space, I mean, as a business model, I don’t know if that would have worked, would it? Running a restaurants actually, really difficult. I actually used to work in my sisters restaurant in York. That was hard, whereas sitting trying to figure out ways to manipulate algorithms is sometimes difficult but mainly just fun I think because you’re not investing loads of money. But yeah, I would say that there’s a lot of things in the world that feel like a meritocracy and are treated that way, whereas I’m not really sure that’s the way we should look at them,
James Royal-Lawson
The whole thing with this as well just funnels us into such small – the result is so small. Now we’ve this, I don’t know if you’ve seen this last week or so, there’s been the whole thing where, was it Lawson, Mount Fuji, where there’s a point where you can take a picture of Mount Fuji in Japan, in front of this convenience store and they’ve now erected a barrier on the side of the pavement to stop tourists from taking the picture of Mount Fuji in the background, because it was causing accidents, people going into the street and all the rest of it. It was basically, if you search for this, it says you should do this, go and take a photo of Mount Fuji.
James Royal-Lawson
So, you know, they can’t stop them from turning up. So now they’ve actually put this it’s a like a mesh barrier now they put up a fabric barrier to stop you seeing it.
Oobah Butler
So crazy.
James Royal-Lawson
Well, of course, then they all came to look at them while they were putting the barrier up. A thing in itself.
Per Axbom
That’s interesting. So bringing it back to Design, how do you feel about accountability and responsibility when it comes to these things? Obviously, people are building these review systems. So how do we make people aware of how trustworthy they are or they should be? So it’s not only about the companies gaming the system, it’s also about the people building and relying on the scoring systems.
Oobah Butler
Yeah. I mean, it’s tricky, isn’t it? I mean, I do quite like the design, or the kind of idea behind Rotten Tomatoes, the film website, where you have two scores, and you have the public score, the audience review score, and you have the critics review score. I quite like that. I think there’s something there where the audience score will be manipulatable, and it definitely will be.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s very Eurovision.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, it really is, you’re right.
James Royal-Lawson
That’s exactly why they’ve maintained the jury aspect, because you can’t trust the public.
Oobah Butler
Genuinely, I think that there is something in having that balance between, in my opinion, I don’t think we should throw the baby out of the bath water and get rid of your ability to review something online. But I think that having a combination of different types of things that people can look at, you know, critics, because there are experts and there are people that do have great taste. You know, there’s a reason why a good DJ is a good DJ and a bad DJ is a bad DJ, because they’ve got good taste, good ear, they understand the situation. So, your question, so specifically about the designs of these things and how we should help people.
Oobah Butler
It’s really hard though, isn’t it, because I think that, how many people do you think realize that, you know the order of they’re what they’re served algorithmically on social media, and you talked secondly about Facebook, you know, advertising became the main goal of that, of that platform, you know… It was impossible to build [an audience], to continue. I was working with Vice at the time, and a lot of different small media companies, the whole the ass fell out of them overnight.
Oobah Butler
You know, there was all of a sudden, you’ve things that were getting, you know, 15 million views on there would be getting, you know, 500,000 views. And it was what basically trying to say is, Do people understand that have the basic understanding that so much of what they’re seeing is paid for? Do they understand that that feels like something that people should be educated in.
Oobah Butler
You’re right. Yeah, I do think with, I don’t know why I might be wrong, but my instinct is that tick tock, and I know that’s controversial, because America – whatever’s going on with that, and Congress at the moment, but I do feel like that’s the most given giving algorithm at the moment. I would say, because they have such a smaller, they have such a lower percentage of advertising, ad income, I’ve been able to build a big audience on that in a short amount of shortish amount of time.
Oobah Butler
Now, it was initially short, now it’s not short, but I was able to build a big audience on that and it feels almost like a little bit more – I’m not saying it’s a great algorithm. I’m not saying that it’s the way everything should be built, but it does feel a little bit, and now, obviously it’s going to 10 minute videos.
Oobah Butler
You can put more and more up, and it’s becoming a bit of a different platform. But I do think that it is nice where you’ve got that feels a little bit more like the algorithm is based upon people’s reaction to random content and themed content that they’re served, rather than just who’s paying the most, which is quite a depressing view of the internet, or where we are headed in a way, or where we are really, I guess now, at this point. Even like SEO, Google rankings, you know, you can pay for that, you know. That’s changed now, hasn’t it, as well with the AI assistant, the Google AI. I mean, that’s a whole other issue that’s literally changed over the last week, isn’t it?
Oobah Butler
Are you hopeful?
Oobah Butler
I don’t know, really. I have to be on some level, because I don’t think I would have a career without the Internet. So I don’t think I would, so I’m hopeful in some senses, selfishly, that there’s a lot of bullshit going on and I can continue to poke holes in it. I don’t feel too hopeful about voices, like diverse voices, in terms of media, I don’t think I would have been able to build a career – well, I definitely wouldn’t be – because vice doesn’t, they don’t publish anymore. They don’t have any, I think they have one or two members of editorial staff left.
Oobah Butler
That’s just one platform that I used to work with. I feel like it’s going to be harder for more interesting voices within this space to pop up. I think they will but I don’t think it’s going to look the same. You know, the skill set of what is required to pop up is more like, how can you short form video that’s going to pop in 15 seconds, 30 seconds, rather than, the way that I cut my teeth was writing a combination of clickbait, music, news stories and then more long form journalism and music reviews and things like that. It was like a weird path. I didn’t go to university, so it’s kind of like university.
Oobah Butler
That’s just, I guess, speaking to me and what I do. I feel not that hopeful about the ability for media companies to exist because of Google’s now becoming – I think someone estimated in the Wall Street Journal, I think it was this week, I think websites are going to lose about 40% of their traffic. It’s like further now, just because obviously people now will stay on the Google platform because of the scrubbed data, and they use that to just basically keeping people in the google play pen.
Per Axbom
So you’re obviously engaged in all this. You’re very well read and understand what’s going on.
Oobah Butler
I don’t know. I try to keep my head on in the space. But yeah, you have to then, because then you’ve got to with all this material, you have to then think, well, what, what point am I going to make, and how do I do it in a way that will cut through? So, yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
That point there about kind of what Google’s doing, and Google moves stuff kind of into their world, or how they phrase it is, it’s a UX thing. It’s user experience thing that you want the answer to your search as soon as possible, and providing it in the same page as soon as possible. Which makes me think of the end of the Amazon heist documentary, where you have the little clip where it’s talking about, we do this, we start the customer and work and we do this for the customer Who’s to blame?
Oobah Butler
That is true. Yeah. I mean, that is a good point. In the Amazon thing, we do talk about the fact that the scapegoat for all the justifications of, you know, the treatment of workers, the tax stuff, the safety around the platform, is all ‘we are the most customer obsessed company on Earth so this is all you.’ It’s kind of shifting the blame and putting it onto you. There’s a really good point. So, yeah, do you think that the UX of Google is better with the AI responder? Do you think it is? I don’t like it.
Per Axbom
I personally don’t. There is so many people actually now, there are posts and recommendations and guides being written on how do you turn it off? So people are trying to do that as much as possible now, because a lot of people really don’t like it.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, I like the idea of fact checked experts who’ve actually written the thing on rather than their data that’s been scrubbed without any regard for copyright and fed back to you by a –
James Royal-Lawson
A mysterious box.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, mysterious box. There you go. I found it odd – what were you gonna say, Sorry, I’ve cut you off then.
James Royal-Lawson
I was just saying about the AI thing on Google is just another extension of what they’ve been doing for years of just shifting stuff from you having to go somewhere else to find the answer, to keeping you back in, so extension of that. The AI is the new frontier of how far can we pull this back into our world.
Oobah Butler
I mean, I found it interesting – it makes the dispute between the Hollywood and screenwriters, then all of that saga and went on for what was it, a year, nearly. Well, eight months, or whatever, makes all that feel a bit ahead of its time, really, wasn’t it? Because that was all based around the use of people’s images. They wanted to have it in contracts so that if someone appeared in a film, then they have rights to use their image.
Oobah Butler
At the time, it felt, to me, it felt a little spacey. And I was like, really, is that really a hill to die on? No, now it definitely was a hill to die on, because that data now is being scrubbed. It sort of feels like things are happening at such a pace that I don’t know, back to about feeling hopeful. It’s like we’re on the cusp of something, something big, something. It feels like a big moment.
Oobah Butler
And I don’t know if it’s a good one, but it feels like a big one. It feels like scapegoating customer, scapegoating the user, whatever is the only way home for them, though because the only way home is that they make it such a crucial part of our day to day, that by the time that these lawsuits stack up and about intellectual property and copyright –
Oobah Butler
I’ve got a friend of mine who works as a library composer for television. He’s just lost one of his jobs because they’re scared about the automated music things, where they can just type in your theme and it just – and it’s good fun putting songs, write a song about, you know, can’t say that. But yeah, you can imagine, but then obviously then having the reality of his companies that employ him saying we’re gonna have to stop working. We need to cut, you know, a third of our staff, because we don’t know what the hell is going to happen. This is all happening way quicker than I thought it would.
Per Axbom
And just the other day, we had the news about Scarlett Johansson’s voice being used, by open AI.
Oobah Butler
Allegedly, yeah.
Per Axbom
A voice that sounded extremely similar to hers. And they took it down.
James Royal-Lawson
They did. And they did try and get her again to agree to it just before they launched it.
Oobah Butler
That was the smoking gun, they did contact me two days before, and I still said no.
Per Axbom
Didn’t ask them to take it down. She didn’t either. She actually asked them, how did you make this voice? – Oh, we’re going to take it down.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s so crazy.
Per Axbom
But are you worried, worried at all about –
Oobah Butler
About my work?
Per Axbom
Yeah, because obviously you’re already using lookalikes, but now lookalikes can just pop up anywhere.
Oobah Butler
Definitely. If you’d have asked me a year ago, then I’d probably have said no, but I’d say that it feels like there’s no lines, really. It’s like composers, for example. Music’s had such a, you know, it’s only 100 years of 120, years, or whatever, of this really specific copyright law that protects it. So that felt pretty like my friend was recession proof. He would still work, because you still need music and now, no. I don’t think anybody’s safe from it, really.
Oobah Butler
I don’t want to scaremonger too much. I do kind of feel like people will always want entertainment that cuts through but I don’t know whether that means that, for example, channel four, who I put out this film with, you know, they had to cut 16% of their staff in January, and that’s like a public service broadcaster, technically, like the BBC or whatever – paid for slightly differently.
Oobah Butler
But that’s an example of, I mean, everything’s kind of, I don’t know what they’re – what am I trying to say, that’s not a good sign for me. Do you know what I mean. I don’t know how much we’re linking the AI thing to that, maybe a little tenuous at the moment, but it’s definitely all the stuff we were talking about with algorithms and advertising, and that’s all 100% what money and television is about, you know?
James Royal-Lawson
But from a creative point of view, it feels like we’re going through a phase at the moment where we’re trying to be creative with AIs, but AIs are just based on stuff that already exists. They don’t produce, they’re just mixing the stuff up in the ball. They’re not actually anything new to the ball.
Oobah Butler
I heard something about the they want to get, or they have got the ability, or they want to get the ability to scrub YouTube now. They’re basically out of data, basically, or something. I could have been half asleep, listening to something. But maybe it was an AI. I don’t know. It’s mad to think that we’re all in there. All of us are in this thing without any consent, or. I guess, completely honestly, I think I’m all right for now.
Oobah Butler
I just don’t know what’s coming next. And the way I’ve always done my ideas is, you know, starting from a point of, trying to find things that don’t feel possible and things that feel absurd. My dad says what I do is like, it’s like, when you have a conversation in a pub and someone says something, that they’re going to do something, and you’re like, yeah, all right. And then I actually then go and do it. That’s sort of what he says, is what I do.
Oobah Butler
So I hope that the goal posts will just shift. I do think someone’s got to make something really smart about about this, what’s going on. I was trying to come up with something the other day, but it’s just so much to go on, you know? And it’s moving so quickly, yeah?
James Royal-Lawson
Production time, actuallyy gone from idea to actually having some help. Not got much to work on.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, definitely. And it’s so funny, isn’t it that Sam Altman went with the Scarlet Johansson voice to, there’s something so – Her is an amazing film, that Spike Jones film, but there’s something so weird about someone, basing his heart, this whole thing about on a piece of work as well. And it’s like, Yeah, it’s weird.
Per Axbom
I mean, Her is put out as a warning.
Oobah Butler
Yeah, exactly.
Per Axbom
So they’re copying all these warnings from books and films, and what you’re doing is you’re putting up warnings really,
Oobah Butler
Yeah, that’s a good way of looking at it, yeah.
Per Axbom
And you’d hope that people would get it at some point.
James Royal-Lawson
Very much Black Mirror-esque in that sense. You know, we again see that mirror coming true. Frightening as hell, yeah. But it’s same kind of thing, I guess.
Oobah Butler
Yeah. I mean, when I did one of my look alike films where this guy sent a look alike to skydive with his wife, right? I made it all happen. She didn’t realize. And it was, it was too dark. I just said, just don’t tell her. And then that’s that. And that’s like black mirror, you know, they went out, and she’s like, wow, because he had vertigo and all this stuff, and he couldn’t do it. And then we switched them out as they were getting on the plane, and he distracted her. It was such a mad film. Watch it on YouTube, if you’re interested but I remember the end of it now, I look back as a better filmmaker.
Oobah Butler
I look back and go, it probably would have been better if we’d kmade him have to actually face what he had done and tell her or something. You know, have him have to learn something. But that was the most black mirror thing I think I’d made that where they’re hugging, and she said, I’m so proud of you. And it was just like, what have we done? This is really bad. This is really bad. This isn’t good. But I’m glad I did it, because it was a lesson learned as a filmmaker of that’s just a bit too edgy. I don’t think it would have been a better film if he would have had to have dealt with his cowardice in some way. It’s funny.
Per Axbom
That’s a good message about accountability to end on.
Oobah Butler
Yeah.
Per Axbom
Thank you so much Oobah. This was loads of fun.
Oobah Butler
Cheers. Thank you
James Royal-Lawson
So much of that chat with Oobah is fascinating, and I think something which me and you Per, we tried multiple times during that interview to pin him down as an activist.
Per Axbom
Exactly.
James Royal-Lawson
And Oobah keeps pushing back and not taking up that tag. And he preferred, as you heard, the I have a worldview, and you know, what does that really mean?
Per Axbom
He kept saying, it makes it feel contemporary, because I have a worldview.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, worldview. So thinking about what that means, a worldview. And yeah, sure, he has opinions but he doesn’t want to adopt a certain tag. He’s happy with his own tag. He’s an entertainer, and that’s the tag he’s happy with. But when I think about us as designers or people we are, our reaction to his entertainment, in particular the great Amazon heist, we see him as an activist through that content.
James Royal-Lawson
And then if I think about the reaction he received from the audience that from business to buttons, when we saw him speak live, the reaction he got, like standing ovation and applause. It was the reaction of an audience that saw him as an activist. So whether Oobah likes it or not, there is an audience out there of designers, UX designers, that looks upon his content in a different light.
Per Axbom
And are thankful for it, because that helps them explain things to people. But also, I mean the word activist is value loaded. So I can also understand that if, if he gets labeled as an activist too much, then people will actually avoid his content. So you’d want to, like, stay away from that.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, exactly, exactly. We see this with Greta Thunberg. I mean, she is an activist. And then becomes, over time, the anti activist group, the people who disagree or don’t have the same, ‘the worldview isn’t aligned’. And with, I suppose, with entertainment, then you don’t have to necessarily have 100% aligned worldview to appreciate something as entertainment. But if it’s then, I suppose more political, it’s kind of like more pushing a point, then you maybe have to be aligned with the point to appreciate it.
James Royal-Lawson
And it’s interesting how we’re adding our perspective to what he is constantly. But really, he’s just a guy doing fun stuff.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, it is really fun. I mean, if you haven’t, you should watch some of the vice videos that he did as well. In particular, hementions the skydiving one. That’s actually really funny. He is really funny. It’s really good entertainment. Well, we can’t get away from the fact though, that he’s, and we mentioned black mirror again, the fact that he is exposing something. And he’s showing us the truth. He’s gaming the algorithms that other people are gaming in a similar way. But we’re lapping it up as consumers.
Per Axbom
Exactly, and we’re laughing at it, and we’re thinking, Oh, hahaha. Now I understand, or I knew that. But the thing is, we still keep getting fooled. And as I expressed in the episode as well, that I’m frustrated with journalists not really understanding what is his commentary about. And sometimes I feel like, does it matter? It’s still funny.
James Royal-Lawson
If you read some of the articles about this and reviews, there’s a fair bit of focus on the actual product, the fake product, you know, the bottles of Amazon driver urine. And that isn’t the point. The point of that was, of course, it’s an extreme product, and why would anyone even be allowed to sell it, kind of thing. The underlying point is lack of transparency of these algorithms.
Per Axbom
Right. And the safety mechanisms, whatever they are, are not picking up on these things, which perhaps we should expect them to.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, and that begs the question, what should we as designers in organizations that have algorithms do?
Per Axbom
Right. And are we even aware of how many different algorithms there may be at play inside our organizations that are affecting ourselves, but also, of course, our customers and our users.
James Royal-Lawson
Because you know, we’re doing this for the customer, as keeps getting mentioned. I mean, we in our organizations, I think should at least do that self check. Do I know what algorithms are at play? Do I understand how they work? I mean, I think you’re possibly going to struggle to understand them fully. If I reflect on my own experiences, there are times where maybe the bandwidth isn’t there for you to do the research or dig to find the answers to some of these things from where you are in an organization. But surely it’s important to understand how the black box works, for you.
Per Axbom
And sometimes you will be working with an interface that actually has an algorithm incorporated integrated somewhere. And would you want to be complicit in that by not understanding it and not addressing it? Or do you actually want the people you are exposing or exploiting to understand more?
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. I mean, I think this is a really, now we’ve got all serious Per, but I think this is why we get so kind of activist or excited about the content, is the entertainment Oobah’s produced, it does raise something we’re all aware of and haven’t managed to really do something about.
Per Axbom
And I think that part of that is actually because Oobah is doing such a good job of it. He’s very well read. He understands the problem in detail, in a way that most people who work with these things actually don’t.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, exactly, because he’s putting into practice. He’s doing he’s doing usability testing, he’s doing actual research for us. And they say, again, we do this for the customer. I think Do this? Do what? If we’re saying we do this for the customer, we’ve got to understand what this is.
Per Axbom
Remember to keep moving.
James Royal-Lawson
See You on the other side.
[Music]
Per Axbom
James, why was the snowman looking through carrots?
James Royal-Lawson
I don’t know. Why was the snowman looking through carrots?
Per Axbom
He was picking his nose.
This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom, and Oobah Butler recorded in May 2024 / Jan 2025 and published as episode 330 (S03E02) of UX Podcast.