Balancing Digital Life While Making the Internet Weird Again

Bob Dunn: Hello and welcome to Open Channels FM Podcast Network with Open Web Conversations. Hey, Bob here, and I’m with Bowe Frankema. We’re going to dive a little bit into the open web and just different stuff, digital stuff, and just kind of weird stuff, I’ll say. I’ll actually say that. How you doing, Bowe?

Bowe Frankema: I’m good, Bob. I’m good, Bob. Like, I’m honored to be here, especially once you mentioned we’re going to be talking about weird stuff, like weird stuff on the internet. That is like one of my passion projects, just see what people are creating these days.

Bob Dunn: Exactly. Yep. So first, let’s get a little bit of your background. Just, we don’t need to go down a rabbit hole, but just a little bit of what you do.

Bowe Frankema: Well, I was born. No, I’m just kidding. Let’s skip that. First of all, something about me. I’m from the Netherlands. I was born in the Netherlands in a nice little city. And at some point, I was like one of those classic high school dropouts and I got bored and I thought I want to build something for myself. So I was born basically with the ambition to do something that I could control. So I got into making little websites, you know, for your aunt, like hairdresser websites and learning myself how to kind of build on the internet.

And then I discovered WordPress when I was, I think, 19. So we’re talking like 20, 21 years ago. And that kind of snowballed. You go to this little WordPress conference and then before you know it, you have friends and then you get absorbed with this thing called open source and you learn everything that kind of makes it great. So that is a little bit my, my background there. But yeah, I moved to Berlin like 12 years ago and needed a change of scenery. And I live here with my dog Mocha and my girlfriend Julia. And, uh, yeah, I mean, what else do you want to know?

Bob Dunn: Yeah, well, that sounds like a good life to me. Good start there.

Bowe Frankema: So it is.

Bob Dunn: What I’m thinking about here is a little bit, and we’ve had this in other episodes, especially around just the general open web, is how different people are reaching out. I mean, they’re still doing the digital thing, but their lives are like, what else is there besides this digital stuff I sit at? And sometimes I think AI sucks us into it more, and maybe you can’t necessarily find that balance you want. And you’ve found an interesting balance lately. So kind of tell us a little bit about how that transpired.

Bowe Frankema: Yeah, I mean, this is, I think, if you look at what you see today, and I see this a lot in how my brain works, right? If you’re always used to building stuff, for me, there were always barriers, like the amount of stuff I could get done or the people I would rely on to build things, right? Like you have your team and then everyone has their responsibilities and you cannot just be bossing around or like, I would try to do that, right? I would be very ambitious and say like, I want this done or let’s do this, you know, maybe have some time over the weekend. All that stuff is now taken away because of AI. You basically have unlimited ability to deliver and build.

And I realized in the beginning that would make me very happy because I would be super productive and I could expand on all my ideas and even just create stuff on the weekends. And then at some point, Julia, my girlfriend, will be like, hey, Bowe, you’ve been looking at this screen for like 12 hours. Like, what are you even doing? You know? And I’d be like, I don’t know. Like, I think I just, you know, been doing this side project. And at some point, I think like most of us in this world, I’ve had problems with burnouts in the past, but that would be building up over months and then after a year. And now I was like, wow, I’m reaching burnout within a month because I don’t sleep well and I’m constantly creating and I have all this, you know, energy, but what am I actually producing? And does it make me a happier person? And then at some point, the conclusion was very obviously no, because I’m creating for the sake of creation, but there’s no, it’s not a healthy drive. You know, it’s actually waking up at 3 in the morning with all these wild ideas, taking out your phone and like making notes. And then you wake up in the morning and you’re like, what does this even mean? You know, it’s like almost like this is not, this is like almost like on the, you know, like the manic episode of creation.

So for me, what saved me is going off the internet, right? And going away from the computer and finding something that would still give me a sense of purpose and progress. And there was this amazing video where someone said, like, one of the biggest things that people don’t realize is that if you are driven to create or if you’re entrepreneurial, most of the time you get addicted to the sense of progress, right? You’re building something and you move forward and you see a product take shape. And then I started to just play padel, which is basically a variant of tennis with glass walls on the side. So it’s like a, it’s a sport. And I realized all of the satisfaction of progress and building stuff can also be translated to a physical activity, like with real people on a court and having a beer afterwards and building a community like I’ve always done on the web translates even better in person.

So I started to just take that energy that I have to build and create and apply it to something that is way more healthy, which is being on a court, being active, going to the gym to get better at the sport, being way more, I think, in tune with your own body and finding a healthy outlet for all of the things that would always get in the way for me when building products or, you know, these types of things. So for me, that has improved my life drastically over the last 2 and a half years. And it also took away a lot of the anxieties and also the perspective of looking at your peers on the internet through these social media channels where people are always delivering and building and seemingly successful. And measuring myself towards that part of my ambitions and realizing, wait, I’m actually waking up refreshed, excited to work, but also to step away from work and play some padel with my friends and take my dog for a walk.

And waking up at 4 in the morning, not thinking about business ideas, but like, oh, maybe next time I should not play that shot on the padel court. You know, it’s still that drive that takes over sometime, but it’s more like, oh, you know, I actually need to go to sleep because if I don’t pick up my hours, then tomorrow my game on the court will be even worse. So I think that balance for me, uh, and that’s also what my girlfriend says, like, after once you found that outlet, um, I don’t see you work constantly. I see you play a tournament on a Saturday, or I see you go outside or go to the gym. So that’s basically a long winded way of saying like, go outside. And if you can create with AI, doesn’t mean that you always should, you know, because your work also suffers. And in my situation, it, you know, everyone suffered, you know, people near me, but myself as well. You just don’t realize it because you’ve been doing that type of stuff for so long, you know. So that’s a bit of a summary, I think, of what I recently, well, yeah, discovered over the last couple of years.

Bob Dunn: Yeah. So has padel crept into the digital world at all for you? I mean, are you using it to talk about it, or are you thinking of building or have built something around it that could potentially, I don’t want to say be a business, but be another piece of your life beyond just playing padel.

Bowe Frankema: Yeah, it’s funny how that works, Bob, because I think this is also the trap that you’re in. Like, if you have that entrepreneurial mindset and you start with something and you see this new ecosystem, and in many ways it reminded me of WordPress. Like, when I entered WordPress in the open source world, it was like you could feel there was a buzz, right? It was like early days, but it was established. In the sport of padel, it’s like the fastest growing sport in the world, but it’s not tennis, right? If you say, oh, I want to do something in tennis, you’re going to be competing with these massive brands. And there’s so much money and everyone knows about it. In padel, it’s like there is excitement because it’s a new sport and it’s popping off all across Europe. And in Spain, it’s the biggest sport after football. But in the US, you pay $250 an hour to get a court, right? So there’s no infrastructure there.

So me, as an entrepreneur, I start playing padel and I get better. And then you get some coaching and your coaching tells you, hey, Bowe, if you get a ball like that, what you should do is when you hit it, you need to hit it a bit lower and use your wrist. And they’re like, great, great coach. Thank you so much. You go off the court and you’re like, what did the coach tell me to do again? And it’s gone, right? So I was like, maybe if I make a voice note, I can remember it. And then I thought, wait, why don’t we just record the voice note, and then the AI can transcribe it, and then it goes to my profile? So then in half a year, I can ask my own personal AI assistant, what did my coach tell me half a year about how to hit the smash or the vibora or any of these padel-related shots? That then snowballed because you start talking to the people on the padel court, like, isn’t this cool? And then one friend of mine was like, that’s amazing. I’m a software developer. I’ve always built mobile apps. Maybe we can do it.

So before you know it, your hobby and your outlet once again snowballs into a new business. But I would say a big distinction there is just like why I love building in the world of WordPress, like 10, 15 years ago, it came out of passion. Like, oh, I love this community. I love this ecosystem. I want to build inside it, right? Now I have that with padel where it’s like, okay, I love this sport. I love the people. Is it perfect? No. Is it too expensive for most people? Yes. Is it a sport for elites in certain parts of the world? Yes. But then being with 4 people on a court, progressing together, having the social elements that are attached to the sport so deeply, could I build a product there? And maybe instead of on a Friday morning, wake up and sit behind my computer all day, or go to a padel club in Berlin, talk to the coaches, help them build a platform to improve their coaching. And then play a bit of padel with them, then go home, do a bit of work, and that would be my life. I would sign up for that right now. So I think, I hope this could happen in the future. So we’ll see. We’ll see.

Bob Dunn: Yeah. So it’s kind of almost a gradual balance of bringing it in and then, of course, using all what you’ve learned, you know, by being online and stuff and eventually working towards or hoping to work towards getting to the point where, okay, now this is more part of my life and I can use all this that I’ve learned and everything versus just, you know, being again back at just pumping out, you know, AI apps because you can do it, you know, every few hours.

Bowe Frankema: Yeah, I think, and this is, I don’t know, like, we don’t have to get too deep into the whole AI stuff because of course it’s everywhere. But I am fascinated with the idea of taste and experience to build with AI, right? So like, what if I would ask you tomorrow, Bob, like, if you have an army of people that could help shape the next variation or the next version of your podcast network, you would have the experience to know, okay, I want it to look like this, I want to have these kind of subjects, right? And I see now with all my experience and all the failures, all the stuff that I tried that didn’t work, I have a pretty good radar to say, okay, you know, if I find 1 or 2 people, uh, and even now really big companies, right, they’re saying we have divisions in our massive enterprise companies with just 2 or 3 people that built this entire branch of our product where it used to be 30, 50 people.

What I see with my 2 co-founders, like we’re 3 and we just make decisions like, you know, how should this product behave? How should it feel? But then the development and that taste, like that final 5%, if there’s like 100 products that are starting up, or in your case, a podcast network, what makes mine uniquely Bob’s and what makes it successful? If you have that experience and that sense of taste to steer then your army of AI bots or agents, I think you can create wonderful things. You can also create horrendous things, and then you get to the AI slop world. And for us, what we’ve seen also with my main product, with Dollie, is like the time it takes to make the right decisions based on your own personal taste and experience defines, in my opinion, your success because that’s the 5 or 10% you cannot replicate. So if you can dial that in and you have the confidence like, okay, this is what I want to build and this is why, and not everything is data-driven like, oh, you know, there’s 100 other SaaS companies that do this. It’s more like, no, I feel because I understand deeply this market, whether it’s padel or booking platforms or podcasts, I think you can still create something very unique. But it’s not something that can be taught. You really have to have the experience and live through these cycles of ideas and waves of innovation. And I’m not saying I have that, but I feel comfortable exploring that, basically.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of horrifying to think of an army of AI Bobs that stuck in my brain and it brought horrible visions to my…

Bowe Frankema: This is also like, this is also for me, it’s a hard time though, because I get very excited when I use the tools myself. So I can create more stuff and this is amazing and can build a padel app. But then I’m also deeply terrified because you can just see how insanely powerful this is to make things that are not to the benefit, the benefits of us at all. And I think that’s what you see at the highest level, right? Where the people who are way deeper than you and me yapping about this, who are actually on the ground zero of the innovation who were like, no, no, guys, I’m out. This is not good for anyone. And that’s truly scary to me, honestly.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, it’s kind of like the internet and the web all over again. It’s like building it and all this stuff, but what about the people that can do this and do that now? And it’s, so talking about, I’m going to kind of flip it real quick because I actually, as a transition of the good old days. And I don’t know when we’re going to say the good old days are. Maybe it depends on where you are at in the current days. But one of the things that always, well, it’s intrigued me. And I thought, I got to ask somebody this because I see it a lot, and especially in the open source space. And people have said this, before over the years, but I’m seeing a little bit more of it. And everybody’s saying, oh, we need to make the internet weird again. Now, I can grasp onto that a bit, but not being somebody that actually has created products, created communities, created all these things, what does it mean to you to make the internet weird again? And what, when was it weird and how do we make it weird?

Bowe Frankema: Yeah, I mean, like I said in the beginning, I’m excited to talk about this because for me, I think it boils down to one word, which is exploration, right? You could explore the internet and you could find your own pathway with your own entire ecosystems and sub-communities of people on forums talking about very kind of niche things, right? And for me, the clearest example of that was somewhere when in the highlights of the TV show Lost, you had all these blogs where people would post theories. And it’s not like now on Reddit or when you go to Google and you say, what’s the ending of Game of Thrones? And you get an AI-generated response and you don’t even get into those worlds. You just get a piecemeal answer. Then it was like you go to this blog and it was called Dark UFO. It already had a great name and it was just people submitting theories about the TV show Lost and they would make screencaps and they would have wild Wikipedia articles like, hey, maybe the island in Lost actually is related to this idea of pockets of magnetic energy. And you had whole communities that would subscribe to this idea and they would talk on these forums and you can get completely ingrained in that.

That was weird, right? You had weird, and they still exist. But everything, and I think this is also why the counterculture, like on the internet, translates also to like a city like Berlin. You still have countercultures of people in small parts of the city that are really into specific musical genres or specific hobbies that are very small and niche. And then, for example, in the Netherlands, you only have Starbucks and all these big chains. Here you had a mustard shop that only would sell mustard and cheese. It’s like this store wouldn’t even survive, right? That’s an example of a weird part of a neighborhood. The internet used to be weird everywhere if you know where to find it. And now it’s all funneled into these social media platforms where it’s an algorithm feed with either rage bait or non-weird stuff. So if there’s something we could do, and maybe you also have some ideas to bring that back, I would love it. So maybe before I yap another 20 minutes, tell me a bit, like, you must have some ideas, Bob, of what you would like to see return or happen on the internet.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, you know, that’s the thing I’m trying. So my history on the internet is really different because I never grew up young with that mindset of, oh, I just want to get on here and build. I’m not going to ultimately build something weird, or this is the opportunity to do it. I was already in business. I lived before the internet and I lived in the real world of business where, you know, you had to go around and function as a person meeting people and stuff, and you just didn’t do everything online. So I feel like I missed that weird part because that’s the part I wasn’t dealing with on the internet. And that’s why I’m trying to understand more of what that weird part was and why. I think you’ve explained it kind of in that example really well. And I don’t know what I personally want to bring back because I don’t think I was weird enough on the internet. Maybe I was weird in real life, you know, but I wasn’t so, I wasn’t into that part of the internet.

You know, I, when I think I think back of when I learned some basic programming in college. I went back and tried some of that. And so to give you kind of a scenario, when you think of when the internet started and everything, when I even started doing open source or getting involved with open source and things like WordPress and stuff, that was close to the age of 50. So I’d already, just begrudgingly, the only time I really got into the web a lot was in my previous business when we were running a marketing agency because I knew I had to be part of it. So trying to make this basic website and things like that. So I didn’t really ever have that.

Bowe Frankema: It’s a shame though. Yeah.

Bob Dunn: It’s like I’m trying to, that’s what, and I understand it. As, you know, almost third party, but not enough where I really ever did it. So that’s why it always fascinates me when I see that, because I think, you know, I, I probably, because of the time in my life or just what I was doing and different things, you know, I didn’t get to experience that really weird part.

Bowe Frankema: Yeah, I mean, I think if we go back to my example of like having, you know, places for expression or kind of counterculture. I think that is, I think for me, what defines the weird part of the web, right? Like I said, like in Berlin, you have all these neighborhoods with different stores that manage to survive because they sell mustard, you know, only 25,000 types of mustard, right? That type of idea where on the internet, where before I could get lost into, you know, a TV show’s subculture of forums and stuff, but also if you look at it, a bit wider. I think what makes the internet such a, sometimes such a frustrating place these days, or most of the time, is like you’re funneled, right? You’re constantly being funneled into what these very big companies want you to consume.

So I think there’s maybe something where I get enjoyment out of YouTube. YouTube seems to cater a little bit more to like, oh, let’s talk for an hour about this video game from the ’80s, right? Let’s talk for 2 hours about, um, you know, this very obscure board game that was released in the Netherlands, right? Or let’s listen to a podcast where you have, like, my favorite pastime when I’m stressed out, I listen to podcasts and they talk about, you know, this B-movie from the ’80s and how it was made and how, you know, those parts of the internet I still love, right? Where you have these really kind of like, I wouldn’t even call it nostalgia, but things that mean a lot to you because they were part of your life as, as a young person growing up. And you saw a scary movie and you were like, oh, how did they make that scene? Right? And then you have a bunch of nerds who are like going, talking to the screenwriter and saying, oh, this was almost not made, but this happened. All that information, I think, creates also an understanding of how hard it is to make stuff, right?

And now often you see stuff is just presented to you, and also how people consume it, you know, you, it loses all of that appeal of weird stuff, you know, a guy in his attic recording a podcast about something very niche. That needs to exist. And I think the actual internet and social media and just going on a website that your friend shared with you and being introduced to this weird set of either experiences or people and communities, that is, I think, the weird part of the internet that we need to bring back. But whether it’s going to be possible, probably not, because we have lost that battle already, right?

Bob Dunn: Yeah, yeah. And you can try and make that effort. What it kind of reminds me of, and I just thought of an example, and it has nothing to do with the internet, but just how I had a very interesting youthhood or whatever time and stuff. And I was thinking the other day, I was thinking about it and I just thought about it is album covers. So you call it vinyl now. And when you used to buy a record, which is we just kept it pretty simple and called it that. You could consume quite a bit of time just enjoying the cover. I mean, there could be information inside. Sometimes they put the actual lyrics. The artwork was always very intricate. It wasn’t just the artist on the front or whatever. It was something you could actually look at and think about for a while, which sounds kind of weird to some people probably now.

But I think kind of what you’re saying is that kind of a thing, because that was, it wasn’t just grab the album and, you know, pull it out, pull out the record, play it. It was, you know, when you went and shopped physically for it, you would really look at the cover, you know, and often that could be the selling point because of, and often they were very weird covers too, when you think about it. The kind of art, especially from like the ’70s, ’60s and ’70s and stuff. But, um, so I understand what you’re saying and it’s true. It’s like people want to do that and maybe they’re going to carve out their little space, but to really make it what you call weird again, it’s more of a personal make it weird for yourself and for whatever community you’re going to be relating to versus just, okay, the internet needs to be weird again. Parts of the internet need to be weird again, maybe.

Bowe Frankema: Yeah, I think like maybe the best comparison for me is like why I fell in love with Berlin. It’s like, you know, if you think about club culture, right, like, or counterculture, it’s like, oh, Berlin has the best nightclubs in the world. And then some people think, oh, then what they do, they go there to do drugs and dance all night and that’s it. But that’s not it. It’s weird because you have 100 clubs and some of these clubs have very experimental music and people go there to connect with each other. And as soon as you go in, they put a sticker on your phone. They say you cannot call, you cannot make any videos, you cannot record. And you go into this world for 12 hours and you meet people and you feel like, okay, we’re being weird. It has nothing to do with anything that most people think it has to do with, right? It’s finding a group of people that absolutely get sucked into a night of experiencing fantastic music. And like your idea of the cover, it’s not like, oh, it’s loud music. No, that’s the entry point, right? You go there to dance, but then it opens up all of these layers of what it means to be part of a community where people are not judging you and you can explore and you can do whatever you want, right? The internet used to be like that. It’s all gone.

And then what you see now in Berlin, they would say, oh, we have now a morning rave, and it’s just some big corporation. They play loud music for 2 hours and then they get you to consume coffee, right? And that is then how they tied their corporate identity to counterculture rave culture, right? And this is exactly what the internet has become, right? You have these things that are happening that look pretty cool, but they’re just borrowing on top of real culture, right? And the internet used to be truly weird, right? And it’s now attempts of being weird or, you know, like to promote a product, they’re doing something experimental. And I mean, I do that too, right? Like when I think about how to promote my product with no budget, I think of something unique, but it’s not true culture. It’s not truly weird. It’s tapping into what we used to have on, and you see that everywhere, right? Retro campaigns or movies that have really cool art design, and then brands taking that and applying it to, you know, whatever they want to sell. And if it could become truly weird again, like certain parts of Berlin, and keeping that, you know, open and keeping spaces available on the internet to just be weird, that would be really fantastic. But it’s hard, you know.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, that’s interesting because how do we bring that in and commercialize it basically, you know, and make it part of our brand and stuff rather than just reflecting on that? And a lot of the sites I see coming out are very retro, and I often wonder how people react to that, or is it like, okay, this is just coming back, but this is cool. This is coming back and people are making effort. So I guess it’s all a personal reflection.

Bowe Frankema: If my, if I can do one prediction, it’s like that MySpace era kind of feel of a lot of these websites. I think that’s going to be super, super hot because it appeals to that weird part of the internet, right, that people are nostalgic for. We’re talking about it right now, like how, you know, grandpa tell me how weird the internet was. Like, that’s basically, you know, if my nephew says, hey, what did you do on the internet, uncle? I would be like, you would build our own websites with MySpace and customize the colors and had these weird, you know, animated things. I think that will appeal very strongly also to young people because it’s a form of expression that’s lost, right? You now have your social media profile. You cannot do anything. Like, you can reshare or re-edit TikToks, but to have your own space on the internet that sometimes would literally be unreadable because you had black on black text with black backgrounds. And that’s the stuff we would do, right? You know, put hidden messages on your MySpace profile, you know, play random songs that you could just put in the player and you could just blast music across the speakers if someone opened your website. It was hilarious, man. I want that to be back. You know, so that’s why it’s strong corporate appeal because if a brand nails that aesthetic, I would probably buy from it. You know, that’s just how it works.

Bob Dunn: Right, right. So do you think that the idea of making it weird again or creating, you know, sites and things like you’ve talked about, is that going to be stronger in the open source community? So does that really affect it at all?

Bowe Frankema: I would tend to think that the people that are attracted to open source would have a very strong incentive and kind of like gut feeling to build stuff like that. And I think now with AI, it’s also easier, right? So you could have parts of your brand or product tap into the weird parts of the internet. And, you know, like, for example, what we’re doing with our product Dollie, we, at some point, we want to, you know, show people what’s the best way to use our product, right? And then before, you would have a boring landing page and it says, oh, hey Bob, you would love our product because we think you could use it for X, X, X, X. You know, that’s all cool. It’s been done to death.

But what I’ve been doing in my spare time is like, okay, what if someone had a little button at the bottom of the website that says identify yourself and it would open this retro terminal? And you would put in your name and your website, and it would then make a customized proposal, which is a sales process, but it would be done by this retro OS. So you have a voice saying like, hey, Bob, good to have you back. And then you’re like, oh, this is really cool. There’s another button here that says do not press. Let me press that button. And then it shows a little video that says, hey, you press this button. Just so you know, there’s infinite realities where other versions of you have not pressed that button. So what did this, what does this mean, right? So you’re building this experience on the web where you try to create something weird that still ties back to your product, right? It’s not like a complete diversion, but you play into these, these ideas. And I think this is why sci-fi and horror is now so resonant also with young people. Like, what happens if something out of the ordinary happens, right? Like, kids, they all go see horror movies because it speaks to them directly, right?

And I think the best part of AI is being able to build this experience with a small team and give some personality or try to do something weird in the very strict confinements of, in the end, selling stuff, which is sad. In the end, I’m still selling stuff. But I think there’s at least a part of my own creativity that goes into it that gives me satisfaction. And that, like, that minigame that I told you about, that experience, I built it, then I tested it, and I gave it to some friends like, hey, can you make a proposal for yourself for our product and see what happens? And then 2 of them never got to that point of that minigame that triggers because they were like, oh, it’s a good proposal. And then one friend of mine, he pressed the do not press button. He went through this whole experience with like infinite realities and versions of himself. And he followed like all the breadcrumbs in the little mini game I built, which is like, you know, almost like a terminal MS-DOS game, like an adventure game where you ask questions and stuff. And he was like, this was amazing. Like, I loved it, right? So that is, I think, a small example of, I hope, stuff we can see in the future where people use their memories of what made the internet weird to maybe bring it back a little bit, you know?

Bob Dunn: Okay, I have one last thought or question. I just restarted my personal blog for about the 500th time. I’m not one to carry on a personal blog over the years. I, you know, kind of whatever works at that time. And it wasn’t like I was thinking, oh, I’m going to make it weird. I was just, you know, I’m just going to put something on there again. And I went back to the days of post types, which is for people in open source and stuff they understand. So there’s like photographs, quotations, whatever. And I decided to go back and just every day I’ll put in, you know, instead of posting on social, I’ll put in a, like a post, you know, a small post. Could fit on social and people would say, why didn’t you do that on social? Because it’s sitting on your site and nobody sees it. And I’m not going to get into the whole thing of ownership and that’s why I’m doing it.

But the question I’m coming to is when I did this, I thought, you know, I don’t care who sees it. I don’t care if anybody comes, if people subscribe, if whatever. Okay. I’m going to do something like this and the chips fall where they fall. And you’re not thinking, okay, you know, if a few people come and do this, but I’m doing it because this is what I want to do from here on with this particular site, and I enjoy it myself.

Bowe Frankema: I mean, I think you absolutely nailed it. I think that is, if you find joy in it, right, and it feels like the right thing to do for you, then by default it’s meaningful, and then your reach would be much smaller, but the people who do find it will appreciate it that much more. So in fact, if you think about it, I think you’re basically selecting the most highly engaged either audience members or potential people that you want to work with. Because if I would be looking into you before I would come on this podcast and I didn’t know you, and I would find this personal blog in the style of a retro, you know, post-format format of the early days of WordPress, I would be like, wow, this Bob guy sure loves the open web and everything that has come before because this is how we used to do things. So if you find joy in that and you do it authentically, it’s the best thing you can do. If you do it to replicate or to do it inauthentically, to leverage, you know, what has been built weirdly in the past. Let me go back to the example of a big coffee chain saying we’re gonna do a rave if you buy coffee at 9 in the morning, then you’re borrowing on actual culture. So in my opinion, absolutely do it. I love it. And I also wish I would still have the ability to, to do those things because I think I got a little bit jaded, right? But do it for sure, Bob. Do it.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, great. And I enjoy it. I just thought, you know, it’s maybe just getting older too. Like, okay, I’m just going to do this. And because I’m really getting to the point where I’m a little bit, well, not just a little bit, but posting on social, I’m just not really that interested in doing that anymore. And I like what you’re saying about the people that’ll find you or the people that understand you, not necessarily follow you, but they will use that as an instrument to kind of get a grip on who you are and how you feel about things or what you actually think about. And yeah, it just was a decision I made. I just started it this week and it feels like the best thing because I always have struggled with blogs. I mean, there’s certain points where you think, okay, I’m going to start a new blog, I’m going to start over. What am I going to do? You’re always looking for that. What am I going to do? What am I going to talk about? And sometimes you just got to not define everything you do around, is everybody going to like it? Am I going to get people coming to my site? Am I going to get people engaging? Sometimes I think we get too lost in that and we lose some of that, maybe like you said, some of that weirdness.

Bowe Frankema: Yeah. And it’s also sadly how these platforms are designed, right? Whether you’re in your 40s or 50s or 60s, you still have been conditioned to think basically the same as what young people think when they post on socials, right? Am I going to get likes? Are people going to like this? Because the whole thing is driven on people will see it and interact with me if I create something that these platforms like and want to push, right? And the biggest example for that, of that is like for my work, I’m still on X and I despise everything about that platform, right? But it is the platform that was built that used to be Twitter. So I have the most reach there. So if I want to sell something or portray myself, I am on that platform. And then I would put something in that was me and it would get no engagement. And then at some point I would retweet something that made me angry and I would get engagement.

Or there was a hype thing, like there was something about AI and I discovered something and I just did a random tweet like, oh, this is what you could use this AI solution for. And I wake up and I have like 1,600 likes and 100,000 impressions. And I’m like, oh, if I just follow the stream on what’s hot, I could probably get a lot of reach. But do I care about that? Absolutely not. Because the last thing I want to do is be in this ecosystem of engagement-based social media posting whilst I’d much rather talk to someone like you about weird things. Or get inspired by what you said. I’m like, oh, maybe I should bring back my own blog and just post there. And then, you know, every once in a while someone says, hey, I saw your blog, that was really cool. Instead of being happy with, you know, a stupid tweet that gets, you know, 1,500 retweets about a subject I honestly don’t even care about, you know. Yeah. It’s weird how this all works.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, that totally reflects how I feel about X, and we could go on and on about that.

Bowe Frankema: No, let’s not do that.

Bob Dunn: I keep a lot of that inside me.

Bowe Frankema: We had a good conversation so far, so let’s not go on.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, really, we don’t want to really mess it up with that. So, very cool. Well, you know, this has been fun. This is, I really enjoyed this, and I like to hear from others. I said, maybe I missed out on that weird part of the internet, but I didn’t miss out on the weird part of life, let me tell you. So that’s good.

Bowe Frankema: I know, Bob. You’ve told me stories at the bar that we cannot repeat on this podcast that would definitely confirm that you know how to live life. So that’s why it was an honor to be on the podcast. So happy to yap about anything. So it was really nice. Thank you so much.

Bob Dunn: Cool. Okay, well, I’m sure I’ll have you back sometime and we’ll find something else weird or not weird to talk about. So I appreciate you taking the time. And I don’t know if, is there anywhere that, you know, maybe besides X that you would like people to connect with you?

Bowe Frankema: I mean, I think after this conversation, just go to my personal domain, which is bowefrankema, which is my name, .nl. And I will just bring that back. I think I will probably just do what you do and make like a nice retro style blog format. And then you don’t have to find me on the socials. So I’m actually inspired by you, Bob. I’m going to do that.

Bob Dunn: Oh, wow. Amazing.

Bowe Frankema: I don’t know when this podcast will go up, but it gives me a little bit of wiggle room probably to do this.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, it might go up pretty soon, but we know it’s coming. So that’s good. Exactly.

Bowe Frankema: All right.

Bob Dunn: Okay. Thanks for coming on.

Bowe Frankema: Absolutely, Bob.