Coffee With Kaz: The Rise of Micro-Celebrities & App Overload (Bonus Brew 3)

And this week, we're here with Karen Vranuch.

And this is Coffee with Karen.

And this, my friends, is Brew Number 3.

Elf is a fucking, like, it's Will Ferrow, isn't it?

He's like in his thirties, forties, I don't know how old he is.

But why is he playing like a silly elf?

I was just like, it's this 30 year old playing like an elf.

That's what's funny about it, right?

Because he's too old to be like chasing after his dad's love or permission of James Cullen.

I was just like, wow, there's so many things like that.

When I was a kid, it was even worse because you'd have people like to go to, like, the movies.

We'll talk about actual movies.

In Ireland, there was one screen in the town and there was a cinema called the Astor.

I don't know if it's still there.

And I went to see Grease at the cinema as a kid.

They were playing 1617, sort of like Dawson's Creek did a few years after.

Everyone was fucking really old.

I think John Travolta was in his thirties in Grease.

And they're playing high school kids.

They still do that.

It's so weird.

It's really weird when you realize that.

I'm like, these people are like in their thirties.

Why?

They're playing like teenagers.

One of them was 31.

Yeah.

I was like, this is really weird.

Yeah, it's strange.

But then, yeah, I don't know why that is.

Maybe it's just because...

More experience to play the part.

People do look very young when they, if you know what I mean, if you actually got 16 year olds, they'd probably look 12.

Yeah.

Right, let's swerve into another question.

I'm just pulling them out of the air.

If you could erase a TV show from existence, you'd press the button like Men in Black and it would vanish.

Nobody remembers it.

It's all gone.

There's no footage.

Gone from the public consciousness.

What TV show would that be?

I think Love Island is very annoying.

I've never seen it.

I've seen clips of it and I understand why people get hooked on it.

But I just think it's a bunch of conventionally pretty people just living their life on this stupid island causing drama.

I don't understand the appeal to some extent because obviously, everyone that goes on it now becomes a fucking micro celebrity, gets all this money fame.

And I'm like, what did you do compared to anyone else on a Saturday night in Newcastle?

You did nothing different, but because you're on TV, people watch you and they make you a celebrity.

I just don't like that.

If I could erase that, but then I know another one would pop up, so I can't just erase Love Island.

It's like reality TV is just such a weird concept to me, but I think I would just kind of get rid of that because reality TV is just making a fake reality.

Yeah, it's just a weird one to me.

I mean, it is shifting a little bit into sort of competition, things like trailers, which is actually quite good, I think, away from that kind of...

I'm surprised, like, obviously right now, who, what's it called?

I'm a Nazi, Get Me Out of Here is on, and I think they've lost a lot of viewers because of who they've put in there.

But I don't understand shows like that where you just get someone and put a load of bugs on their face because that is literally a children's TV show, right?

That's what you should gunge people when they've got a question wrong on a kids' TV show.

And that's what they do on there.

And the other ones are all just very pretty people who are just all the guys who got six packs and fucking...

Yeah, and they're running on this island and I'm watching this at home.

And they're just there to fuck, I guess.

I mean, it's just like, that's not good for anybody because I heard it mentioned recently, somebody was mentioning men's mental health.

And one of the signs to look out for is people who go to the gym too much.

And it was nice to hear that finally, that like you got those guys who just always doing press ups, always doing the thing, always running.

It's like, stop it, mate.

What are you doing it for?

Like Always Sunny, how brilliant is that season where he comes back all buff.

Rob McElhaney comes back all buff and that's all buff.

And he's showing them and they're like, yeah, yeah, it's great.

And he goes, but what did I do it for then?

And nobody knows and it's never mentioned.

And he's fucking genius.

He's so ripped for no reason at all.

He can even work out himself.

And I love that.

I absolutely love that.

That's one of the, and when he, that dance scene where they're singing in the real version and they're in the school reunion where he's fat.

I mean, and then the fucking dance at the end of the next season.

I mean, beautiful.

I don't know, geniuses those guys.

I know, I know.

Every time I watch it I'm like, wow, this is such great social commentary on like the world.

How did you think of this?

Yeah, and they always use whatever's happening right now.

Did you see the season finale this year?

Uh, what happened there?

It's where Dennis, the greatest bit of the whole thing, he has to get a car, the car is using an app for the rental car to get into that one.

And then he goes to buy the coffee and they won't take cash.

I felt all of that and he wouldn't give him a phone, but he could get a phone if he...

And then he got locked out of the car and it was stranded somewhere, right?

Yeah, and then he's on the phone trying to talk to you.

I mean, it was very Larry David.

It was a little bit curvy and thesis, but fucking hell, what a great episode.

I know.

I won't ruin the ending, but it was just so good.

It was that bit where he was trying to get a Jamba Juice or whatever it was and they wouldn't take the money and he had to sign up for the app.

It really hit me because it was like, that shit is taking the piss.

Because I do feel like every fucking thing...

Everywhere you go, you need like an app.

Stop asking me to rate you because you sold me a fucking potato.

I mean, I'm sure this is like hack to say, but like it's just, it's getting ridiculous.

The amount of emails I get like to rate the thing that you rate.

How's your call today when you phone up for the thing?

How do you rate the call?

I don't think I have an opinion on this after two seconds.

It's just, yeah, it just happened.

Asking about my fucking opinion.

Yeah, that's about it.

I feel like in all the app thing, I've started noticing it, start of the pandemic, that obviously because you can't, for example, if you're at a pub, it was in the stage like in the UK when you could go to the pub, but you couldn't do other things, which didn't make sense.

It's just an excuse for British people to go to the pub.

You had apps to order things, and then you had apps to do other things.

When I was at student accommodation, you had an app to do fucking laundry.

God forbid you forgot your phone.

App to do laundry.

Some things are fine.

You know you don't have to change certain things.

That's what he says in the line there.

The key is perfectly fine.

How many times have you been in a hotel room?

Who was complaining about having a key?

Like, oh, this is weighing me down.

That's when I started noticing it.

And I'm just like, even today, because I was looking at my NHS app, and I was like, my subscriptions are there.

And there's one button that you can just like get it prescribed, because every time I'm in town, I just naturally think I'll go to the reception and just say, oh, I want this prescription.

And now I'm like, oh, I can do it through an app.

But to me, still, it comes natural to go and talk in person to be like, I want this.

Thank you.

Goodbye.

And then I wait two days and go to booths.

I don't go to the app naturally.

That's why I was saying to you before, I feel like my generation is the one that's half half, half foot into reality, half foot into the virtual reality that we're experiencing.

Oh yeah, the new game layer is going over.

We should say that Karen was born in 1999, so I find that quite shocking that you feel like you got one foot in each, because to me, 99 is like, if you're born in 99, you feel like I'm fully in.

You're fully in.

You must be fully in.

I mean, social media came along when you were like 7, 8, so it's like, I can't believe you feel like you got one foot in, one foot out, but that's interesting to me.

That's probably a cultural thing because Slovakia is really behind.

Well, that as well, but also the sort of app-based, everything has been going in one direction since about 2007, since the iPhone came out, right?

So that's when apps came along called applications before that, and they became apps, and they were in the phone, and they were like, oh, what's this thing?

Oh, I can touch the thing, and then suddenly, you know, you're doing your banking, and then you can't go back, right?

But like, it does seem that there's been this massive push, and I felt that this week when we're trying to move, everything has to be done through some kind of portal or app, or scanning thing and scan this, do that, whereas I think that no one wants any paper anymore.

And it's all like, you know, and that's fine because paper is annoying, right?

But like, I can't believe how many things are outsourced to other things that they ask you for your information, and then you scan a QR code and send it to your bank, your bank takes it, and it's like, what is going on on this thing right now?

I don't even know what's happening.

It has definitely sort of stepped up a gear in the last few years.

But obviously, the cashless society, I'm pretty much cashless.

I don't think I use money anymore.

And I was Mr.

Cashboy for a very long time.

And now I just see it as dirty COVID money with cough and spit all over it.

Yeah, definitely.

I want to touch that with a fucking glove.

It's handing me like dirty old money.

I feel like the one foot in, one foot out also comes from my parents because they, till this day, don't understand social media, never had any social media.

My mom had Facebook, and bless her.

She thought when she just not using it, it kind of disappears.

And then she realizes that that's not true.

She logged in and she's like, everyone's messaging me.

Oh, why?

And I'm like, just because you're not going on it, doesn't mean it disappears when you're offline.

That's why I think, oh, that's so like...

What's interesting to me, what you were saying earlier, like, because you're 24, you're saying, oh, when I look back at what I wrote on Instagram 10 years ago, the idea that you could scan your life 10 years back and see that as a child and see what, I mean...

Yeah, like you can see all your liked posts.

What my teenage thoughts are not accessible for all to see, because I can't even imagine what you guys have to like, actually, what you're going to live through.

Is anyone going to look back and go, because you know people are apologizing for things they said like 10 years ago on Twitter or whatever, because you could be, you're the most progressive person I know, you're the most forward thinking, and you could be fucking up right now on this.

I know.

And you might not even know.

You'll be like, you know, 30 years later, I really apologize to the Czech, Czechia people for saying that.

Yeah, but that's the thing.

I'm very open to change.

And if that happens, I don't have this ego of like, I can apologize because things constantly change.

Now that we, like, I'm sitting here, and in a couple of years, I don't know what will be acceptable or not, but I'm open for change because it just happens.

I'm not going to be like, oh damn, you can't say anything nowadays.

You can still say whatever you like.

If I want to, right now, I can say all the things we can say, but I wouldn't do, because I don't want to be offensive, don't bring trouble.

There are certain things I still keep hold of that I'm passionate about, certain swear words that I think are emphatic and should be used, and it's fine for now until someone tells me otherwise.

And if someone tells me otherwise, then I won't use it anymore, but I'm not going to apologize for using it now, in this year when it's not considered.

As long as people are open for the change, I might tell them.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know how to think about the words, the things I used to say.

Even when I said earlier, I'll cut it, I guess.

Maybe I won't when people call guys pussies.

I don't like that.

I don't like the term of it.

I don't like what it is because it's saying something negative about it.

How is it that it's a cat?

Anyway, I don't really understand where this all comes from.

A lot of things are just so in the language that unless you stop and pause and think about it, you don't realize it because it's language, you use it every day, you kind of don't realize, but then you stop and you're like, wait, pussy as in like cat, but also female genitalia.

So you're like, why are we using that?

Well, in the same way that gay was used in a very different way, I don't even think 10 years ago.

No, I mean, before that, obviously it meant happy.

Like the songs like, what's the Disney song?

Da da Did you pay them now?

Yeah, there's a kid's thing.

I'm not giving it a lip service.

But yeah, there is no, I mean, in the sort of 2000s way where, I don't know, I worked in theatre, everyone was pretty forward thinking.

I worked with a lot of gay people and they would be doing it.

Everyone, you walk in and you'd go like, it wasn't even like you're wearing some weird bit of clothing and someone would go, gay.

It would just be like it would be sung at you for like almost no reason.

You'd be like, I come in with like, imagine I come in with a soy latte in 2011 into a theatre.

Guarantee someone's going to go, what's that, soy latte?

Gay.

Because that's what it is.

That's wrong now and it's offensive and I get that.

It wasn't anything to do with sexuality.

It was used in this weird term that I don't even know what it meant.

And it didn't mean any of that.

And it didn't mean any of what it meant before.

It was just this weird thing.

People just singing at each other for about three years and then it stopped.

It was really weird.

It's like when people started about 10 years ago, when people started in London, I started hearing people saying abbreviatives in sentences.

Now, I can't claim to know much about words, but I'm pretty sure I meant abbreviations.

Maybe on a bus in London and someone go, Oh, yeah, well, you know what, to be age, I don't really know anything about it.

And you'd be like, to be age?

And so, you know, things come and go.

And then no one talks like that anymore.

Thank God.

Well, some people are like, imagine if I just went LOL.

Hashtag blast.

Fuck that one.

If you say hashtag blast, turn your fucking thing off, whatever this device is, and fuck off and never listen to it again.

We don't need your, like...

I feel like my generation is also really good for realizing how stupid that is, using it ironically, and like making fun of it just like we do right now.

Like, whenever I'm in a situation, I would just sometimes be like, oh, hashtag, as a joke.

This is where the problem comes.

I was speaking to someone younger than me, and they used it unironically, which is the problem of the other generation.

Not a problem, but I've observed this.

They're also doing yoga on a Sri Lankan beach at the same time.

That's what they all seem to be doing.

But I feel like the younger generations will, because they obviously listen to what we say, but we know we're saying it ironically.

They don't realize that it's ironically said, and they say it without the irony there, whereas we're obviously making fun of it, but they just take it seriously, because there was another interview online that I watched with these kids.

These kids, maybe 12 online, in America, obviously in America, because the internet is only American.

These kids were interviewed on the street.

I don't even know what this is, but they were asking, if you liked a girl in school or something, or anyone at school, what would you say, or what would you say if something's really cool?

They would just say things like phrases that even I'm shocked.

All the words have all changed.

They're all words.

I'm like, I don't understand what you meant by this.

They're like, I'm mad on Jesus, bro.

I'm like, what does that even mean?

My son, he goes, and he said it in an Asian accent.

He said, I'm going to send you to Jesus.

I was like, what does that mean?

I don't know what that means, but he keeps saying, I went to school and we were playing football, and she brexited me, and then I was doing, what do you mean they brexited you?

What does that mean now?

It's got another fucking meaning.

What do you want about me?

These kids are using it, not using it the way that my generation would, that we're making fun of it because we're above that.

We know that it's stupid.

You make fun of it.

But now, younger generations take the words and completely change the context.

It's just so funny.

I remember when wicked came in when I was a kid.

Something was good, you got asked wicked.

I remember my mum at one point said, stop talking stupid.

I said wicked is good.

But now you think, oh good, that's weird that that would be that.

My son says sick, which I guess is a 90s one, where they go, oh sick.

That's so old fashioned to me, using words like that.

But they're often taking, because there's all this fucking YouTube people online that do all this stuff.

Which I still don't believe YouTube is still a thing.

I thought it kind of died.

Well, it's banned in this house because it just spews out the most capitalistic fucking machismo, American cap wearing fucking ____ in my house, teaching my kids how to be, absolutely not.

So they watch YouTube Kids and they can watch some YouTube with me if it is like, you know, I mean, I put the videos to this podcast are available on YouTube, everyone, so definitely, there's no video, as in audiogram videos, but the new sort of thing of just taking almost any word and turning into a completely different medium.

But isn't that just code?

Isn't that every generation wants a code from their parents?

So they use different words.

But it is weird that the people teaching them all in the thirties and forties, why are you looking at a 35 year old man holding on to a car?

I don't even understand why you're watching that.

Or a 40 year old man opening a box of Lego.

How is that entertaining to you?

But it's not for me.

I'm not supposed to understand it, right?

You didn't watch unboxing.

Was that a thing when you were a kid?

No, that's new.

No, I don't think it was a thing.

Back when I used to watch YouTube videos, which I wasn't.

That's another thing.

I think that whole wave of people watching YouTube videos, I watched DIY crafts and that's all I ever watched.

I didn't watch, because yet again, I didn't care about their life because I thought it was weird that they're uploading it online.

That's why I was like one foot in, one foot out.

That I still consumed it, but I didn't agree with it because my parents were always very private.

They wouldn't post photos of us anywhere.

So I never saw that behavior anywhere.

So I was like, why would someone, hey, why would I fucking care what this person is doing?

I don't care about the daily vlogs.

I don't like...

Vlogs?

It's just like, why do I care what this person is doing?

I could just ask my friends, like, oh, what did you do today?

And that's more meaningful to me because I have a conversation and I get to know them.

But this person on the internet, I don't care.

And I've always had this attitude.

And I feel like that's why I don't like reality TV because I don't care what these people do on this island.

Like, I don't care what they do.

They probably have sex and like party and that's it.

Like, why is that interesting to me?

Like, that gives me nothing.

Yeah, why do people watch that?

I don't know.

Because it's either going to make you feel shitty about yourself Yeah, I just think it's not entertaining.

Or what the dysmorphia TV that is.

Yeah, but I don't know.

I haven't seen it so I can't comment on it.

But I imagine there's some very vacuous people on there.

And then they're all micro celebrities and they all just like go and...

Yeah, it's like, because they're not, I'm not going to call them a celebrity, but like people are well known and then they get like sponsorships and like come up with like, I don't know, cosmetics or like perfume and I'm just like, this person...

They didn't come up with anything.

Yeah, they're just a puppet.

Can you plop a bit of that?

We've seen The Apprentice, we know how to make perfume.

Yeah, it's just like, yeah.

I think that's why I'm a bit annoyed about reality television, because they get fame and all this that I...

Because I know so many creative people out there that if they even had half of that so-called fame, that would be so beneficial, because it's so hard to have a real artistic career.

And it's so hard to like, quote unquote, make it.

So it makes me angry that people that have no offense, no talent, go to party.

Anyone can go take drugs party, get all this fame for doing absolutely nothing.

That's what they look like, isn't it?

Yeah, but that's not like a talent.

That's just like you're born with good genetics.

You can work out, but that can only...

Or they get work done.

So I'm just like, and it's really annoying because I'm here trying to like just be artistic and like tattoo in the future.

But now in order to do things like that, you need to make Instagram videos.

You need to be trending.

And I'm like, I just want to be here and tattoo.

I never signed up to do the social media thing.