Episode 1 - Things We Never Saw Coming

welcome to this episode of the

wolf and the shepherd today we're going

to talk about

things we never saw coming and this is

going to be a

huge cornucopia of

different items different topics

but in the year 2020 depending on when

you're listening to this

i can't imagine you're listening to this

in 2050 2060 but

at the year 2020

just kind of looking back on when we've

arrived at the era of technology

the era that we are in right now these

are

things that we never saw coming

well uh firstly i just want to say i

don't believe anybody in the year 2050

is going to be listening to this because

uh i've looked on the internet and 2020

is actually the end of the world

um oh i didn't get that update oh

i i saw it on a bunch of forums so the

internet is true

uh but yeah when we talk about things i

never saw coming

you're really talking about deficiencies

in the past

you never thought that would be met if

we go back to the basics

of your math teachers always telling you

you won't always have a calculator on

you

well guess what i do um and

yeah it's really made in the

deficiencies of the past

and how it's kind of met and been uh

equivalated in the future and i think

that's uh

really what it is i mean things i never

saw coming i mean i didn't imagine as a

child

anything really i just lived in the

moment you know i rode my bike

fell off it scraped my knees up

watched the three channels of tv i

actually had available but

i didn't envisage a utopia or dystopia

um i don't know about you if you

look at when i grew up

i remember one of my favorite movies

growing up was the back to the future

trilogy

so of course you have back to the future

one and

it was set in 1985 in marty mcfly goes

back to 1955

then has to go back to 1985 and that's

the premise of the movie

and then at the end of the movie you're

teased about back to the future too

and now in the year 2020

you watch back to the future too which

when they go into the future

is actually set in 2015

you kind of laugh at some of the things

in that movie

but you realize there were certain

things in that movie

that actually came true one of my

favorite scenes in that movie

honest to god is when

doc brown and marty they've arrived

there and it's

pouring down rain and doc brown looks

and he says wait five seconds and then

all of a sudden the rain stops and we

now have an app

that can tell us oh there's rain gonna

start at this time

rain is gonna stop at this time but you

know what

it's never ever correct

i've never seen a weather app

that is better than a pine cone i mean

for all the technology all this

meteorological

uh data that comes in i know they say

there's likelihood there's this

percentage this percentage but

the problem is with uh percentages is

that

um if you say something has a 27

likelihood of happening you have to

remember that's a 73

likelihood of it not happening so when

you roll

dice you can roll those dice

maybe 20 times and that 23

never happens and so them saying there's

a 23

chance of rain we could go through this

same scenario for almost two weeks

and it would never rain well that is

true but if you look at some of those

apps they literally get it down to the

minute they will say

rain will start in your location at 706

and i'll think okay well it's seven

o'clock right now so i'm gonna

walk outside and i'm holding my phone

i'm looking at the radar

and i say okay it's gonna start raining

in six minutes

and then 706 rolls around and it doesn't

start raining

and it's kind of disappointing because

i'm thinking

you know do i need to mow my grass

should i

wait until two days from now in mother

grass should i turn my sprinkler system

off

which could be something that if you

look at people that might be

30 40 years older than us would have

said

we never saw sprinkler systems coming

but

the amount of technology that is out

there that is

kind of highly inaccurate

is some of the things we never saw

coming but

let's talk about social media

because i remember when myspace came out

and there are a lot of people that might

be listening to this

some of the younger folks that don't

even know what myspace was

and i remember creating a myspace page

way back in the day and you could

actually

attribute that to good old tom i can't

remember his last name but he was always

tom he was always your first friend on

myspace

and you had this page that you created

to have

your space on the internet hence the

term myspace and there were several

people that

that was their first interaction with

html

coding the people that created the

really good myspace pages could actually

put a little

animated character they had music that

came on i remember

a twitter post that was talking about

how

why is it that when people come on my

twitter page i can't have a song

playing and i can't have something going

on and

somebody else commented on it saying

here we have finally arrived at the

generation that

does not remember myspace but

now you go out to

any kind of social event you go out to

a a church function you go to

a bar you go to a restaurant you meet

somebody

and now it's what's your facebook page

what's your instagram handle what's your

twitter handle

and people follow you and now we've

filled ourselves up with

all of these people that are on social

media that we

actually don't know and we concern

ourselves

with their lives well i think um

going back to myspace that was my first

experience of

social media but i think the great thing

about

myspace is it really did tell you who

could afford

a good into get connection and who

couldn't

that means because you went you'd go on

some profiles and it would take 10

minutes to load the page because all the

videos used to auto play

and the same thing with the songs and

sometimes you'd have the song

which was like the automatic song which

would load

when you loaded the page up sure but the

first video would also play

with audio um so you'd have a song

playing

and you'd have a stammered video

also playing and uh you know i remember

looking down

um you know some friends

pages on that and thinking this could be

better designed because remember you

could also do your own background and

also

absolutely no all this other stuff you

could tear into all of it

if you were looking to date based upon

myspace

i mean you really needed an unlimited

internet collection

you know i mean it was just oh my

goodness i mean

you look at i don't know something like

tinder

or you know match.com

or you know plenty of fish it's like you

can

scroll through and just swipe swipe

swipe and i think that's the difference

i mean now you look at the first photo

and you like swipe swipe swipe swipe

or if you're just like really desperate

everything goes to the yes yes yes yes

yes

but on myspace i mean it was like doing

an fbi investigation on somebody

because by the time you could see the

fourth photo of somebody you'd spent an

hour

and you'd listen to like nine songs you

didn't like

um i think facebook finally unified the

thing that

you had to accept somebody as a friend

but if you could

kind of see each other what was going on

it's like

i'm gonna get a look in your basement

you're gonna look in my basement

but people still had so much selection

over

what they chose to give out about

themselves which i think is the whole

thing about social media

it's still just you really don't know

who you're talking to who you're seeing

i mean i've got friends on social media

i look at their profiles and i'm like

yes isn't really kind of you right in

in one thing that we've talked about

with social media before

and especially in the digital age that

we're in now

we've talked before about cameras used

to

no one had a camera with them maybe you

had a friend that

for some weird reason had a camera with

them

and so they would take a picture of you

at a party

they would take a picture of you at a

graduation event

they would take a picture at you at some

kind of life event because they knew

something was going to happen now we

have cameras constantly in our pocket

kind of along the lines of the

calculator always in our pocket right

and so it's very easy now

to take pictures of everything going on

and we've even went to the point to

where if there's nothing going on that

somebody wants to take a picture of me

i will take a picture of myself and i

and now we've called it a selfie and we

go ahead and take a picture of ourselves

at a certain thing maybe we're by

ourself maybe

we're in some vacation

type uh situation where

i'm sitting on a beach and i want you to

see that i'm sitting on this beach

but the one thing i don't think anyone

was

ready for social media is we can present

a different version of ourself

we can only show you what the positive

is

and we don't take any of the negative

out

i'm only gonna show you what makes me

happy

i'm only gonna show my family smiling

at a family vacation i'm only gonna show

you

my dinner out that i went to once a

month and here's a picture of the food

that i'm eating

because this is my once a month that i

go out and then as you look at me

you say look at the dinner this guy's

having

look at this vacation that this guy's

having

this guy has got it great and

everything's framed right because we

have that phone in our pocket

and we can take a hundred pictures

until that picture looks right we can

take

different angles of everything we can

actually ask a waiter hey take a picture

of me eating here at this fancy

restaurant

even though i don't normally go here and

now i can project myself as something

i'm really not do you think um

well actually uh i think one of the

downfalls of western civilization

and i've been trying to look for the

through the old testament

for something which alludes to it i

think is the selfie stick

uh i think the certain stereotypes which

come with today's social media

that you know originally

it used to be good you know when you see

the beach pictures of everybody trying

to jump in the air

and they took that photo or um you know

the

you know not no sexism intended but

almost every female's

picture of being on the beach is a

picture of their legs

and then the beach in the background and

the sea whereas with men there is no

equivalent

it's like i've gone to the beach well

let's be honest the last thing that you

want to see on my social media page is a

picture of my hairy legs

laying on a beach i disagree i think

most people would like to see my legs on

the beach

in fact i think if i was sitting my own

backyard i think people would want to

see it but anyway

point being i think there's become

stereotypes in social media

now that um you know because

people follow so many people it's hard

now to kind of trigger

recognition before it used to be you

know oh

anything it's like your friend's posting

anything it's like oh i've gone to the

dentist

oh i'm sitting in the car and it's

raining at a stoplight

you know i think everything used to

trigger a reaction it'd be like

like like like now it's like oh yeah

i've just gotten a car wreck and this

guy's lost an arm but

ah it's not interesting um

i think it's becoming harder and harder

just to

get people's attention and maybe social

media has

reached this limit where the shock value

of you literally being able to post

anything live or otherwise it's like

just nothing surprising anymore and this

is why i think tick tock

you know instagram reels came in it's

like

okay impress me in 10 seconds impress me

in 15 seconds because

you know i go i go through my facebook

reel and there's a you know i've got

friends and family obviously on there

and i go through it and you know they

might be

streaming live having their appendix

taken out but i'm like yeah i don't care

about that

you know maybe i'll come back like or do

the whatever care emoji the new emoji is

but

i don't know now what it takes

to impress somebody to get their

intention you know

i i think what goes on with that now

is the category of the influencer

there are so many people that really

want to get into that category

of being an influencer so they look at

the

influencers and say what are they doing

they're doing the tick tock dances

they're

as a female they're posing in a bikini

they're posing in sexy outfits

that gets the likes there was a news

story about

how a woman stabbed her boyfriend

because he did not like her picture

within 10 minutes

i've heard similar stories not as

horrible as that one even from my

own daughter who was upset because her

boyfriend did not

like her picture on instagram

because that is this persona that we're

trying to get out you liked it but he

didn't

love it well and and now

it went from that facebook created that

like you know that that was that thumbs

up

deal that said i like this and now we

have

all these different things oh you you

post that

here's my dog i like it i love it oh

i had to put the dog to sleep oh well

now i'm going to put the cry emoji on

there yeah

but if it's hard to click the like on

that one right but but if i'm

so out of the loop on all these

different emotions i'm supposed to tell

you because you had to put your dog to

sleep

and i want to try to tell you that i

hear you

and and i saw this if i click

like on the fact that you put your dog

to sleep

if you would have looked at that five

six years ago that would have been okay

but now you've got to put the cry emoji

you gotta put this sad emoji

you you gotta basically become

a ancient egyptian with hieroglyphics

that now we have to learn this new

system of hieroglyphics and

i'm going to be quite honest with you i

don't want to learn it

i really don't want to learn it because

i

one of my favorites and then we're gonna

move on from the social media topic

because we're gonna do an overview on

this today

everybody but one of my favorite ones

is the one that asks for prayers

so you see hey i i need

prayers on this or uh asking

for unspoken prayers the

emoji that everyone puts on that

is not two hands praying it's actually

high fiving and most people do not even

realize

that it is a high five emoji it is

not two hands high five in jesus

man okay well you know what if they're

high fiving jesus

more power to him it reminds me of a

joke that i put on my facebook a few

years ago with a picture

of ewan mcgregor dressed as obi-wan

kenobi

and i said you're ashamed to put jesus

on your wall

and everybody shared that and i thought

are you kidding me because it we just

we look at certain things on social

media and we do that

so let's move on to our next topic about

and like i said we're not trying to

minimize

any of this but our purpose of this

podcast right now

is talking about things we never saw

coming we're

we're gonna highlight some things and to

be quite honest with you we'll probably

delve into some of these in future

podcasts so

what's our next topic about things we

never saw coming

online dating has got to be a big one i

was uh

so single a single single at the right

or the wrong time when this right

but i i hate to interrupt you here and

and

by the way we do not script any of this

but the online dating thing to me is

fascinating and thankfully i got

married long before online dating

started

and so i'm going to

look at this as an outsider looking in

so i just want everybody to know when

you hear my voice about

online dating i have not participated in

online dating at all but i truly find it

fascinating well um i also got married a

long time before online dated existed

but then i also got divorced before

online dating existed

um i spent maybe

three or four years on the online dating

scene and i say

seen because it's abstract

right it's all virtual how so well

because

you never know which profiles are real

because i would actually go on there

and i'm not ashamed to admit it uh

and i know many many people did and

create fake profiles should catfish

right

you do and and just to just to mess with

people

and i don't know why i just i had too

much spare time on my hands

but you'd create fake profiles you know

whether it be a man or a woman

and you'd go on there and put yeah i

earned 250 000

a year you know i'm there some this and

this and you just mess with people

and um there was a statistic which i

think came out

maybe around 2005 when the first

internet dating came online and it said

that

uh 97 percent of lesbians online are men

about this catfishing thing oh that that

makes sense because

way back in the day you you had those

online chat rooms and you

thought you were talking to some woman

or whatever and it was nobody knows

you're a dog

online that used to be the anonymous

quote nobody knows you're a dog online

and this was the thing and so you know

when i first started going on these uh

dating sites you know i had so much

skepticism

because i'd you know like

been an idiot or whatever and messed

around and created

fake profiles and all this stuff that

like how do i know this person i'm

talking to is real

how do i know these photos are real but

you know before you had google reverse

image search

and all of that stuff it's like oh yeah

she's a model oh yeah i'm definitely

in here and yeah no it's a guy called

brian from iowa

um you know you really didn't know

but then as you and i have spoken

multitude of times

you know in the old days the origination

of online dating when people used to

scan in their original polaroids

you know it's like okay this is what

they look like

i mean now that profile photo

might be the best out of 2 000 photos

they've taken

there is no guarantee even though that's

a photo of them

you know um if you'd ever see that

person i mean it's like the alignment of

all

all eight planets sorry pluto um you

know it's the alignment of the planets

you're never going to see that person

look like that ever again and that's one

with just the head shots

and like only from the neck up and

they're looking up because they don't

want to see the double chin

kind of thing you never know what that

person looks like well and let's also

not forget about the filters

that are out there now oh yes because it

it

used to be that you would put filters on

certain apps

and now you can take a picture and you

can apply

certain filters and the things that

used to be someone that had to have

all kinds of knowledge about photoshop

or about the way photography works and

things like that

you had to get a hold of somebody and

make that picture

look really good now you have an

app on your phone that you can take

these pictures

and like you said you can take 2 000 of

them

and you can narrow it down to five of

those and then you can

apply those filters and then put that

out there and say

here is my dating profile

picture i've got to tell you right now

if i was in the dating pool

and i go out and meet a girl and she

doesn't actually have rabbit ears

i'm going to be pretty disappointed oh

yeah or the dog knows

stuff what the the one thing that

getting past the

pictures the obvious deception

behind the pictures is some of the

descriptions

that are on some of the dating sites

because to me

the snippets that i've seen on the

internet or whatever

i could fit into two categories

category one would be

everybody that says the exact same thing

i like

walks on the beach i love to go out and

eat food

i love to travel and i like to snuggle

up and watch a movie

okay who doesn't like

things like that i don't like that last

bit i don't like snuggle up and watch

the movie obviously

well yeah i'm talking about the women i

i should have prefaced this

i'm sorry all right so uh that's women

then in going along the women category

so then you have category two

which is the ridiculous

[ __ ] women that just want to say

whatever it is to intrigue the male

mind to say oh i want to swipe the

correct direction

because like i said i've never been on

these apps so i don't know if it's right

or left

whichever the correct direction is to to

connect with them

they put whatever they want on there and

they come up with some kind of creative

little anecdote or or

whatever they play something off their

name

or they they say some terrible

thing if it's

really a dating app if it's

really something that somebody is out

there searching for somebody

why do they put that horrible crap on

there when they

know when they absolutely

know that there's no future in it

um and then the

the second piece of this question is

they know what they're

going after but then they turn around

and they ask why can't i find a good guy

yeah i think

you know women have been very quick to

pick up on what men want and this has

been

for four thousand years oh yeah women

are so much better at picking

up what men want and certain are what

women yeah and so they post

you know on social media and on dating

apps

what they know men want and men

you know in reverse you know they post

what they think women want to

hear um but

you know one of the things i found out

very quickly about

dating apps you know outside of the

photography thing which

today would be even worse because you

know it was

over a decade ago when i went on those

um

you know through all the filters and

everything now i think if

uh you see a filter on a photo you need

to run

like 100 miles in the other direction

because for as many photos that you can

take of yourself

if you have to choose a a photo out of 2

000 photos you've taken

and put a filter on it this is not the

person you meet in

you know you will not pick them out of a

crowd of two people

but also i think you know as you touched

on earlier about

you know the descriptions on dating apps

people choose

things like i like food i like eating

out

i like going to the beach i like animals

nobody's sitting there thinking like oh

my goodness at last i found somebody who

likes to eat

food absolutely you know it's just that

stupid thing

it's like so predictable

and all you really have to go on is the

photos which is why i think it led to

this evolution to go to

uh tinder and bumble and all these other

swipe apps because

in reality when it came down to the

descriptions

on match.com and all these other ones

was that like

because everybody pretty much put the

same stuff and you could basically lie

that you really came down to the photos

but now

you can't even trust the photos so it

may as well just be like

i want to meet somebody random sure

absolutely so one of the things that

i always said that would be the easy way

to

online date would be to go to facebook

marketplace

and look for women who were selling

wedding dresses

right because you could look at those

wedding dresses and you'd say oh i

i'm i've been divorced i'm gonna sell my

wedding dress it's a size four

and here's the dress then you can look

at their

facebook profile and you can say okay

well i know

how big she was at her wedding i can try

to

figure out you know based off of her

facebook

profile picture right now what she looks

like but it kind of goes

into one of the other things that we

never saw coming which is

amazon i mean it we now have

this ability to buy

anything that we want online except for

obviously a very

honestly nowadays small handful of items

but you take something like

amazon which started out as a bookstore

online and you think about people who

are

reading books they like going to

bookstores

and old jeff bezos

probably was laughed at saying how are

you going to sell

books online because people like walking

into bookstores they like

that smell of books everybody talks

about the smell of books right

and now we have the ability to

buy whatever we

want on amazon and if you're willing to

spend

a little bit more money a year have it

delivered

sometimes within two hours and before

if we looked at it the closest thing i

can remember

is being a young kid in the mid-80s

and my dad

totally thrilled about the schwann's man

that would come up with the truck and

you could buy ice cream

and certain frozen meals out of the

schwann's truck

and he thought that was the greatest

thing now you can have

all of your household items

all of your electronics all of your food

all of your everything you need from

one website and on top of that

you can actually talk to a device in

your house

and say i need this

never saw amazon coming what do you

think

when the first matrix movie came out

that you know the attraction of it was

that

we were all logged into this we were in

a neural

network we're in a simulation but

it was prophecy in a way because we all

have become

logged into a simulation of real life

both socially

how we do our shopping how we live our

lives and with

you know covet and more people working

from home

that you know a lot of our lives now is

virtual

it's not real i mean it's not

connected and you know you think of the

original matrix movie what the message

was that it's just you needed to break

out of the matrix to realize

who and what you really were and what

your

uh purpose was but

we're being pushed more and more into

that matrix existence whereas if if

you know somebody like jeff bezos or

elon musk came along with his

neural implants and said hey you know

we're going to put the internet in your

mind via a chip

that you know a lot of people would be

like okay yeah i'll take that i mean

you've got your phone in your hand

already

you know forget the mark of the beast

it's already in your hand

right right um

if you had that chip in your brain and

you became connected

socially you could order stuff

sharp everything then that's pretty much

you being in the matrix

sure but you talk about connected

have we actually become disconnected and

so i i want you to think about this

obviously for those listening you don't

really

know us but you and i

hardly ever talk on the telephone

we send text messages back and forth but

our text messages tend to be

hey are you on your way hey can you stop

here and grab

something or we send some funny articles

a lot of the time it's the poop emoji

well yes

that's usually from you yeah but

you and i still

look at social interaction of being

one-on-one we're sitting here right now

and obviously this isn't being videoed

we're not on a zoom call we're not

talking over the phone we're sitting to

face

right now we're actually talking

in person to each other and we've now

arrived at the realization that

it's okay to not

socially interact anymore to not

actually be in person and do that

but how many people do you honestly

comfortably feel like you can sit

opposite

and talk one-to-one with in your life

well i think both of us would say a lot

of people

really i i i honestly talk to a lot of

people one-on-one no

now your question was would you be

comfortable talking to him would i want

to

very very few most of them i wouldn't

and now we're going to kind of spin back

around

social media there's a lot of people on

my social media that

i don't want to sit down and have a

conversation like you and i are having

right now

but i wouldn't mind saying oh okay well

your kids in 11th grade and here's their

first day of that and that's great

i don't want to spend two and a half

hours with you making small

talk figuring out that but i'm okay with

the fact that

now i know that your kids in the 11th

grade because

quite frankly i can't even remember my

kids birthdays most of the time

yeah and so i don't want to have to try

to remember

what all your kids are going through my

wife's really good with that

she always knows oh this person's kids

are this age and they're in this grade

or whatever i'm like

i have a tough time trying to remember

how old i am or what i ate for dinner

like yeah

i i think um you know the notifiers i

see on facebook and instagram just

reminds me of their kids are alive

basically i mean you know when it comes

up with the

uh oh here's the oh first day of school

eighth grade and blah blah blah i i just

i just don't care i mean so uh i mean

congratulations on getting through the

easiest part of life

you know in some ways i mean it's nice

to see kids grow up who you've known for

multiple years

but it comes to a point where

everybody on the thread in your facebook

thread is posting the same

stuff and like i said you know

it just becomes a very normal thing that

you wouldn't i don't know 15 20 years

ago

know about you know unless you met that

person they pulled out a polaroid of

you know their kids first day of school

you wouldn't know about that but who

cares they're all wearing the same

clothes

it's just the first day of school i

don't really care and i don't mean to

being passionate

about it but it's just one of those

things where

and i'm guilty of it because i post a

lot of photos of meals i make

but this is just me trying to boast i

can cook to be honest with you

um but i get that a lot of people just

going to scroll past it and be like oh

he's made another meal i don't expect

50 likes or 100 likes and i don't

in some ways know even why i do it but

you know most of social media what used

to

excite you we've now become very very

numb

to absolutely and so

we're gonna close this one out with

one thing that i never saw coming

and it kind of goes along with what you

were talking about

the fact that long distance phone calls

don't mean

anything anymore nobody cares about what

your phone number is

nobody remembers what your phone number

is you plug that

phone number into your phone nobody

looks at the area code

because going along with what you said

looking at social media it's very easy

to say hey

my kid is now in the 11th grade or

whatever

but you used to have to make long

distance phone calls if you had to talk

to somebody

out of county out of state

out of whatever now you don't even have

to look at that

anymore now we look at phone numbers we

don't even think about the area code

we don't say oh i don't want to do

business with you because

here's your phone number and this phone

number

looks funny there was an old seinfeld

episode

about elaine not wanting to

get a certain phone number because the

area code was going to be

six four six rather than two one two

all of that has gone away and i never

saw that coming

i remember when i was younger

in dfw in the dallas fort worth

metroplex you could have a

metro number which meant if somebody in

dallas called you in tarrant county

you didn't get a long distance charge

and

if you if you had that number you were

considered

rich because you thought oh you have a

metro number that's a big deal

my kids don't even know what long

distance is they only know about

international calls so i always tell

them on their cell phones which

we could do a whole episode about kids

and cell phones right

with cell phones now they say where the

call comes from if you don't have it

programmed in

i said if it comes from another country

don't answer that call because i'm not

quite sure if we're going to get

charged an exorbitant amount of money

for that

but that's another thing i never saw

we see for you that probably wasn't a

big issue

but for me the whole bypass in long

distance

was actually an issue because uh

i now no longer have an excuse not to

call my relatives overseas

exactly which you know before i'd be

like oh yeah it's gonna cost me

2.95 per minute so i can't call you

i'm just going to email you a photo of

myself looking happy

but now it's like yeah i've got to call

them

i've got to facetime them or they're

saying why haven't you put anything on

your social media yeah why haven't you

done this because that's all free

and we can see that and so i

really hate the whole tagging thing on

instagram on facebook

when it comes up oh you've been tagged

in this photo for review

click on it put it on your timeline and

you're like

no i don't want to let anybody know i

was there i don't like the photo

and you kind of hit the decline button

and you wait for the aftermath of like

whether you're going to get a message of

like

because some people actually go ahead

and they check

on your timeline to see whether you've

accepted the tag review

just like we were talking about earlier

about people

uh disseminate him whether you like or

love

something so oh you liked it but you

didn't love it

because you know it's always easy to

click the like button but you've got to

hold it down and scroll across to the

love button

oh sure you know and it's uh there's

become

this absolute uh ostracizing

of friends by people who yeah she never

loves any of my photos yeah

absolutely so thanks for tuning in to

this episode of the wolf and the

shepherd we have

much more to talk about on things

we never saw coming uh we wanted to

kind of cut this one short and

kind of look at different things that

were going on with this

so we hope you tune in to the next

episode