It's been a while since we talked about Twitter, but recent events have brought the platform back into the spotlight. We wanted to discuss the significant changes since our last conversation and share our thoughts on what the future holds for Twitter. As always, we'll give you our honest opinion and try to provide some valuable insights into this ever-evolving social media landscape. Let's dive in!
We are excited to share this fantastic cocktail recipe with you. It's a delicious and potent drink with moonshine as its key ingredient. The apple pie moonshine cocktail is the perfect complement to our discussion on the recent changes on Twitter. So, let's mix a few of these up and start our chat on a fantastic note!
Rich: I do have little buddies in the office today. I'm glad I showed you that on video.
Catelin: I know.
Rich: And welcome back. We're doing another episode, I hear.
Catelin: And we're here, we are. Twitter. Again.
Rich: I see that recording button going. It's spinning around, but yeah, we're coming back to Twitter. I was surprised when I saw this on the agenda. Seemed a little traumatic the first time. Don't think it's gotten any less traumatic.
Catelin: Well, I think the reason we're back here with our moonshine cocktail is because my prediction for 2023 is that Twitter would cease to exist, and so we're coming back at about the halfway point. I'm not entirely wrong. I mean-
Rich: Yeah, I think you're def-
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: As we knew it, it's not going to exist. It's not going to be the thing that I signed up for in, whenever that was.
Catelin: No.
Rich: 2009, it seems like maybe? Does that sound right? Yeah, it's a little wild. So you mentioned our cocktail, apple pie moonshine.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: So correct me if I'm wrong, is this one you make at home, sometimes?
Catelin: I do. I don't make the cocktail.
Rich: And I have a jar of it. You don't make the cocktail.
Catelin: I just make the apple pie. So this is a cocktail utilizing said apple pie, which is... It tastes like juice, but it will knock you on your ass real fast. This is like-
Rich: Oh, yeah. It's dangerous. I had the jar from you that unfortunately leaked a little bit, but I put it in a different jar. And that worked fine. But I took it to Christmas last year and...
Catelin: Was it wild?
Rich: Yeah. So my mom was staying with us and she doesn't really drink. She has a margarita every now and then. That's kind of her thing. But she drove me home. Apparently, I guided her into the garage, have no recollection of it. My brother said it was fantastic and delicious. So I gave him a smaller mason jar of it to take home, because you did the whole pint or whatever it were.
Catelin: It was big jar. Yeah.
Rich: It was a pretty good-sized jar.
Okay, so the apple pie moonshine, which you'll probably at some point have to explain how to make, like-
Catelin: It's basically, you just dump all the stuff in a pot and let it sit overnight, and then you drink it straight out of your cinnamon sticks.
Rich: Okay.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: All right.
Catelin: I can share the recipe and the-
Rich: Okay. So for this cocktail, you first got to make the apple pie moonshine.
Catelin: Yes.
Rich: Or acquire it from Caitlin, if you know her. It's a great Christmas gift.
Catelin: It is.
Rich: It just gives to everybody too. All right, and then you can turn it into an apple pie moonshine cocktail.
Catelin: Yeah, this seems like a, I don't know, maybe a cider? I feel like this would be good warm, quite honestly.
Rich: It might be. Yeah. Okay, so it's two ounces of said moonshine.
Catelin: Yes.
Rich: Which is probably more than plenty. I'm the one who always wants more booze, but I think that's good for this.
Catelin: One of these cocktails is probably enough, and then you need to switch to something else.
Rich: Yeah, like water or iced tea.
All right. So we start with the two ounce ounces of the apple pie moonshine. Then you ramp it up with two ounces of apple juice. I do agree that cider would be delicious with this too. One ounce of cinnamon simple syrup.
Catelin: Yes.
Rich: Ooh, it's a fun one to say too. Cinnamon simple syrup. Half an ounce of fresh-squeezed lemon juice, because a little citrus with your apple is always good.
Optional, garnish it with an apple slice. So could you take out... Oh, and then you could also garnish it with a cinnamon stick, but I've got a divergence here. What if I took a piece of apple out of the apple pie filling and dropped that in to garnishing? I feel like that would be okay. And then I'm going to have a whole-
Catelin: Like a can of apple pie?
Rich: Yeah.
Catelin: Cool. Yeah, I think so.
Rich: Yeah. But then you got to make it-
Catelin: And you can kind of like... Then it would be like soft. It's not going to be cute.
Rich: Yeah, it won't be crisp.
Catelin: I'm thinking of like a very thin-sliced... Just kind of floating on top would be cute.
Rich: Okay, so ignore my stupid idea.
Catelin: But you could do drunken apples with this, literally.
Rich: Oh, you could.
Catelin: Just soak them in it.
Rich: The other thing that would be interesting, I think a beautiful garnish would be like the spiral apple peel.
Catelin: Oh, yeah.
Rich: You could spiral an apple peel and take a little red in there, yeah.
All right. So you shake, shake, shake, because this is a shaken cocktail. No fizz in it. Lots of ice, two-thirds full of ice with that shaker so you get it nice and cold. Strain the ice. You can serve it over ice with new ice. We've started using those craft ice balls in our house.
Catelin: You're just like, "Yeah," or you could just serve it dirty.
Rich: You could just serve it dirty. I also think, to Caitlin's point, you can make this warm.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: I feel like just be-
Catelin: It's a fall drink. I think it's a warm drink.
Rich: But what I would do is-
Catelin: Going off the rails, folks.
Rich: We are.
Catelin: Much like Twitter.
Rich: Sorry, Zack.
Catelin: Ignore the instructions.
Rich: [inaudible 00:05:23] off rails.
Catelin: Just make it up as you go. There are no rules and they only apply to two people.
Rich: That is pretty much like Twitter. So would you then heat up everything but the moonshine and add that at the end, right?
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: Otherwise you're going to take the alcohol out?
Catelin: Yeah, I would just like warm. Yeah, just like warm your cider or your juice, and then... It's basically a hot toddy. Basically, you're just making a toddy
Rich: Pretty much, yeah.
Catelin: Yeah.
It's basically a health food. It has juice in it, so it's going to feel nice on your laryngitis throat, lemon-
Rich: And if you have enough of them, an apple a day...
Catelin: You could skip the simple syrup and do honey, and then it's just tea. Honey and lemon.
Rich: Pretty much.
Catelin: Yeah, it's tea. It's basically tea.
Rich: It's apple tea, which actually sounds kind of good, now that I think about it. A little apple flavoring in tea. So now I think we still have a half a jar of the apple pie moonshine, but it doesn't really go bad.
Catelin: Yeah. The only problem with a warm cocktail is that it's June.
Rich: True.
Catelin: So this is not seasonal. This is not a seasonally appropriate beverage, but it will fuck you up. So do with that what you wish.
Rich: Yes. And I believe that since you've dropped an F-bomb, that's going to get us an explicit label. However, we're talking about Twitter anyway, so the E was going to go on this one, no matter what.
Catelin: Oh my God, what a... Just a absolute dumpster fire.
Rich: All right. We can get to that in a second. But I want to give you one more idea, because you brought up the iced tea thing, and what I was saying is while we wait for fall to enjoy this as a nice warm beverage, you could just do like an ounce of the apple pie moonshine in an iced tea, stir it up, and it won't be super sweet, and it'll have a little kick,
Catelin: Little patio pounder.
Rich: Yeah, there we go. Patio pounder.
All right. And I'm sure there are plenty of ex-employees from Twitter who need good patio pounders this summer.
Catelin: I hope they're enjoying their severance. That's all I can say.
Rich: I hope they got a severance based on everything I saw, but-
Catelin: I don't even know. Yeah.
Rich: All right. Well, party dance break and we'll be back.
Okay. I think... Well, exactly is it... Tell me how you're really feeling.
Catelin: I just cannot. The level of cannot is too high.
Rich: Yeah. So question, are you still on Twitter? Are you still checking into it?
Catelin: I check it mindlessly when I have run out of Instagram to look at.
Rich: Okay, so Instagram's kind of becoming your new thing.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: I'm trying Mastodon, and I've got a few friends who went there. I kind of like it, but the spam has just started on Mastodon, which was exciting. And then I have an invite to Blue Sky, and I tried to sign up. I got the code and everything, and I tried to go sign up and it said my code was invalid. But it's the code that I got in the email from Blue Sky. So it came from Jay, like an actual email address. So I replied and said, "Hey, this isn't working. You guys don't have any customer support. You don't have any forms, you don't have anything, so can you help fix this thing for me," and I got no response.
So I also requested an invite from a different email address just to be like, "If I can just get in with one, it's fine."
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: But, yeah. I still check in on Twitter, definitely not as much as I did. I don't post. I Hardly post anything, because it's just, I don't know, my feed's just become kind of a wasteland of weirdness.
Catelin: What mine is without getting too big into the weeds is like Iowa politics wonks, and then just a lot of weird ads. And that's-
Rich: Yeah. I have them.
Catelin: So I have obscure local news, local being like to the state of Iowa, and then stuff that I would never buy. And that's it.
Rich: Yeah, there's a whole group of ads, and I'm sure it's all the same company. They have these multicolored logos and weird names, and I have been blocking them repeatedly. And I even tweeted a screenshot at Elon to ask when he was going to deal with that shit, but did not get a response, unsurprisingly. So maybe if I had a Twitter Blue check mark, I would get a response from Elon.
Catelin: Well, it will only cost you $8 a month unless you're famous, and then it's free?
Rich: If you're famous-
Catelin: Or you could be dead famous.
Rich: Yeah.
Catelin: And then it's also free.
Rich: They rolled it out, I think it was to anyone with over a million followers. They just gave it to. And so all the famous people were like, "Take it away. I don't want this thing. It's stupid."
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: And then, yeah, there were lots of dead people who had it, who I'm sure were not paying. David Crosby was one, I think. I don't think he paid for Twitter Blue since, you know.
Catelin: It's like he's dead.
Rich: He is dead. Yeah. There were several. And that's just awkward. So now the other thing that got me about it, and I get monetizing the service and having benefits if you subscribe, and Facebook has that option now as well, where you can be verified and get whatever. But what got me was when it came to companies. So if you had a business on Twitter and you wanted your business to get the verified check mark, which I think is gray or gold or something-
Catelin: Do we even know [inaudible 00:11:14]?
Rich: ... it's $10,000 a month to have a business be Twitter-verified. And that's per account. So if you have 10 accounts for your business, like for products or whatever, you're looking at a $100,000 a month just to be verified. And it's like, that's just so dumb. Aye, aye, aye.
So I did hear that it was like 13,000 people were paying for Twitter Blue after it kind of relaunched. So that's a very tiny number of all Twitter users. I don't know how many it is right now, but it was it really ridiculous how tiny it was.
Catelin: Yeah. RIP, Twitter.
Rich: Let me just...
Catelin: I think it's... I mean like try and turn it into some TV streaming platform or something, and then just, goodbye. It's going to go the way of Vine and Quibi.
Rich: Okay. So by February, it had fewer than 300,000 subscribers. They're rolling out half the ads, if you have Twitter blue. It's got some decent benefits that could have been really great if it hadn't just been botched so crazily.
Catelin: Well, yeah. I admittedly have checked out of Twitter, the news of it, and also the app itself. I am not there nearly as often. And so I think to try and rebound from all of that bad press will be impossible. I don't think they'll ever come back from it, especially not with Elon as the chairman.
Rich: Well, and isn't the official name of the company now X? I had read that Twitter's now a product of a company called X.
Catelin: Well, and that was his payment processing company that got folded into PayPal. That's where all of his tech money kind of came from initially, so yeah.
Rich: And the Dogecoin dog became the logo for a little while and then mysteriously wasn't anymore.
Catelin: Oh my gosh. He just can't stay out of his own way.
Rich: It is interesting.
Catelin: It's so bad. I don't know. I think we need to make another drink and then just call it. That's it. That's all she wrote. I don't know.
Rich: So ladies and gentlemen, we are six minutes in, and Caitlin is-
Catelin: I've given up.
Rich: ... throwing in the towel. We got a couple more things to talk about.
Catelin: That's true.
Rich: So [inaudible 00:13:59] breaking news recently, Elon is stepping down as CEO but remaining chairman and remaining Chief Technology Officer and having a new CEO come in.
Catelin: Yeah. I would love to see the org chart for that. Where he's the what president of the board, so she reports to him, but then he reports to her as the CTO. It just doesn't...
Rich: It seems weird.
Catelin: The math ain't math-ing.
It doesn't make any sense.
Rich: Yeah, so the person coming in... And there've been some things about who she's following, who she's not following, and people trying to analyze her through that. I did go through and kind of look at it and she actually seems to be following a variety of people with different... She follows Catturd, but she also follows Barack Obama and whatnot. So there's multiple people she's following. She's also at NBC Universal, so she's got, or has been... She's got a job that requires her to at least observe what's going on.
So I don't know. I don't know her, I don't want to make any judgements on her yet. But Linda Yaccarino is her name. And they're saying that advertisers are feeling optimistic because of all of her work at Peacock and with the ad-based services and that she gets monetizing a platform. I have no idea how well Peacock did at that. So we'll see. Wired's headlined from two days ago, "Twitter's New CEO has a Fearsome To-Do List." It's like that's the understatement of the year. Wired, thank you.
Catelin: I think she just has a lot of trash to take out. I don't even think it's a list of things to do. I think it's like she needs to declutter. She needs to channel the Marie Condo and just start releasing things that don't give her joy. [inaudible 00:15:48] the whole thing.
Rich: Or the Swedish Death Cleaning, as I've been watching. It's a fantastic show.
Catelin: That's probably a better metaphor, honestly.
Rich: I feel like that's actually on Peacock. So Linda Yaccarino probably is well aware of it and sold the ads for it. But yeah, it's fantastic. If you haven't watched it, you guys should watch one.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: The first episode has a lot going on in it with this woman. We actually...
I was watching with my mom and there's just a lot of penises. This woman, she collects penises and they're just everywhere in her house. So I was watching it with my mom and I'm like, "Hey, I feel like this show's good. Do you want to try a different episode?"
And she's like, "Yes, please."
So we watched one that was about five daughters who still had their bedrooms set up in their parents' house as they were. But these people are in their twenties and thirties and refused to allow their parents to take control of their own house. It was wild.
Catelin: That is wild.
Rich: But the way these people clean, I am here for it. It's fantastic.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: So, yeah. Some Swedish Death Cleaning, we need to send the Swedish death cleaning crew to Twitter and they need to work through that. So-
Catelin: This seems entirely reasonable and doable, for sure.
Rich: I think so. And I think they do great at it. When you watch one of the shows and see the people, I think you would agree that these people are geared for this.
Catelin: Professionals.
Rich: There's a therapist, a clutter expert or declutter expert, and an interior designer. So those are the people who [inaudible 00:17:16].
Catelin: Okay.
Rich: So one of the things, I think, on Linda's to-do list is probably to figure out culture and benefits, maybe, at Twitter. So I think I had sent this to you and it was sort of sad and sort of joking, but we now offer three times the maternity and paternity leave that Twitter does. So Elon cut it back to just two weeks, which is wild to me. We do six weeks or you can do 12 at half pay, but-
Catelin: Three and six.
Rich: Oh, is it three and six?
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: Oh, okay.
Catelin: At least it was two and a half years ago when I took it.
Rich: Caitlin wants extra leave back.
Catelin: I know, I was like [inaudible 00:17:58].
Rich: Three and six. Okay, so we offer one and a half times, what big deal. I don't even know our own benefits, but still the fact that we actually offer a week more than a tech giant, it's insane. We're a small agency. We're 12 people. I don't feel like our benefits should trump those of-
Catelin: Giant billion-dollar company, allegedly billion-dollar company, probably not so much anymore.
Rich: So the other thing that has come up is apparently he changed the coffee. And if there's one thing I know as a CEO, it's you let the people decide the coffee.
Catelin: Don't fuck with the coffee!
Rich: Exactly.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: So the coffee is terrible. He put in work beds, so you're expected to sleep at work.
Catelin: What?
Rich: Which the city of San Francisco came down on him for because it's not zoned for residential. Rumor had it, he was sleeping in one of the conference rooms. Yeah. I feel like it's everything that nobody wants to work in. And in the current culture, you've got people forcing people to go back to the office, which he also did. And then there's jobs out there. The hiring is still difficult. There are remote jobs out there. There's great jobs out there. I know that other tech companies have been snapping up Twitter folks who've left. Allegedly 80% of Twitter employees were laid off at some point.
Catelin: But no one knows because they won't actually publish or release any of that.
Rich: Mm-hmm.
Catelin: It's all history.
Rich: Yeah, every time I read something about it, I just cringe a little bit. I cringe a lot actually.
Catelin: I think the wildest part... And then, yeah, I have to be done or it'll just be me primal screaming. They made NPR mad. And NPR is the kindest-
Rich: Still chill.
... most neutral like, "They're all just here to report the news. And we have a peaceful voice," and like... I'm sorry. If you piss Steve Inskeep off, what have you done? What have you done? NPR, quit Twitter.
They said, "No, thank you. We will not be utilizing this any longer." And then in a show of defiance, he reassigned their handle to some random company or something. Just wild. All of it's wild.
Yeah, NPR's that friend at the party that just wants everybody to get along and they're just like, they're bringing cliques together and everybody's hanging out and meshing and it's really great.
Catelin: They're finding the common denominator in the group where they're like, "Oh, do you like obscure Anglo-Saxon literature from the late 20th century? Here, you should discuss amongst yourselves." And then they'll play a pleasant soundtrack behind it.
Rich: Yeah. And that came up because he labeled them as state media. Or government-funded media.
Catelin: And less than 1% of their budget actually comes from funding sources.
Rich: It's a very small amount.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: Most of their budget comes from stations. And most of the station budget comes from donors and individuals, which I think you're aware of. Yeah. Didn't you just do a fun like we were on some [inaudible 00:21:26]?
Catelin: I did. Siouxland Public Media with my buddy Mark Munger.
Rich: Yep.
Catelin: But, yeah.
Rich: So yeah, that's where most of the money comes from. Yeah. I don't know. It's really a problem.
Catelin: It's too much.
Rich: So here's one I hadn't actually seen. So there was a fake Disney account that got verified because they just paid for it. And it's like Disney Junior UK, they were tweeting vile content but got verified with a gold tick before being suspended.
Catelin: Because they just had a spare 10 grand?
Rich: I think this was before-
Catelin: Okay, before the charges started.
Rich: Oh. So Gold was a $1,000 a month at the time. Organizations and businesses who pay a thousand dollars a month plus additional fees for subsequent accounts, Gray is an official government account such as the national agency or head of state. So business is gold. But yeah, so I guess they had a thousand dollars to pay just to spoof and it ended up getting shut down eventually. But that's just crazy.
Catelin: I've done dumber stuff with a $1,000, if we're being honest.
Rich: I have too, but it's been more fun than that.
Catelin: Disney probably isn't the... Yeah. What a ride they went on.
Rich: Yeah, we're not even going to get into Disney. That's not an episode for this podcast, everything that's going on. So what else is going on with this?
Catelin: I think that-
Rich: I feel like this is just a train wreck.
Catelin: That's it. It's too... Yeah.
Rich: It's a dumpster fire on rails.
Catelin: Just Prrrr...
Rich: Well, actually off rails.
Catelin: Yeah, it's careening towards the ground.
Rich: So do you think it'll make it to the end of the year in some form? Or do you think it'll actually just completely shut down by the end of the year?
Catelin: I think it'll still be a thing but no one in the general population is going to be using it.
Rich: So it'll become like a MySpace kind of thing-
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: ... which just lingered forever, but no one you knew was actually on it.
Catelin: It'll be the stupidest $47,000,000,000 somebody's ever spent. And then... Or for four... I can't remember what it was. 43?
Rich: It is... Yeah, it was-
Catelin: $54.20 a share, whatever it was.
Rich: Yeah, it was...
Catelin: 4 billion.
Rich: Let's see. Let's just Google it. How much did Elon buy Twitter for? $44,000,000,000.
Catelin: Okay.
Rich: But yeah, there was the 420 joke in there as well.
Catelin: It's going to be the fastest $44,000,000,000 loss that the world has ever seen.
Rich: So his bid was for $43,000,000,000 at $54.20 per share. And then by the time it closed, it was $44,000,000,000 because he does stock prices go up and down.
Catelin: Just... Dumb.
Rich: Yeah, I'm down a rabbit hole on Google now that I need I to just close this tab and I'm done with it. Finished.
Catelin: We got to close the tab. We got to be done with this conversation. It's the end.
Rich: Well, I won't see you on Twitter...
Catelin: No, you won't.
Rich: ... but I know I have your Insta and I see you there. There's not a lot of chat back and forth there.
Catelin: No.
Rich: Unfortunately. But I also can see you in person, and we have Slack, so we can chat whenever we want to, which is not open to the world, which is probably a good thing.
Catelin: It's not as accessible. Yeah. Quite honestly. Nobody needs to know that about me.
Rich: Mm-hmm.
Catelin: Yeah, it's just like-
Rich: Yeah, there's quite a bit.
All right, so the culture is in the dumpster, Twitter Blue is not the financial savior that the company wanted it to be, and is pretty much a joke at this point from what I've seen.
Catelin: It really is.
Rich: People are requesting to not get free Twitter Blue. Like, "I don't want this free thing that you have."
Catelin: Please take this off of my account.
Rich: It's going to be pretty bad.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: It has to be really awful for somebody to not want the free thing.
Catelin: Mm-hmm.
Rich: Aye, aye, aye...
Catelin: Yeah. Yep.
It's already been-
Rich: All right. Well... Go have some iced tea and apple pie moonshine.
Catelin: I'm going to go take another shot.
Rich: All right. Goodbye, Caitlin.
Catelin: Bye.
Rich: That's it for another episode of Cocktails, Tangents and Answers.
Catelin: We hope it was as much fun to listen to as it was to make.
Rich: You can find me on Twitter or Instagram at Rich Mackey. I try not to make it too difficult. It's just my name. And you can find our agency at Antidote_71. That's A-N-T-I-D-O-T-E underscore 71 on Twitter and Instagram as well.
Catelin: And you can find me at home sipping a craft cocktail prepared by my in-home bartender. It's my husband.
Rich: We'll be back with another episode every other week and a whole new cocktail recipe. Plenty more tangents and, of course, answers to those pressing marketing questions.
Catelin: And if you'd like to send us a question, you can go to ctapodcast.live to send us an email.
Rich: Or you can call our hotline at (402) 718-9971 and leave us a voicemail. Your questions might be used for future episodes of the podcast
Catelin: For now, like and subscribe and tune in next time.