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This Puppet Wants You To Stop Scrolling and Listen to a Podcast Instead

Manisha Krishnan, WIRED’s senior culture editor, talks to Gowanus, the spokespuppet of a local Luddite movement, about the tenets of their group—and how they plan to grow it.

Released on 07/14/2026

Transcript

So you brought a paper contract for me to sign.

Can you tell me what's in it?

Yeah, it's essentially asking

that you guys do not make any short form content

of this interview.

You know, whether it be TikToks, YouTube shorts,

you know, Instagram reels, whatever it may be

because we really wanna incentivize people

to watch the full video, you know,

practice their attention skills,

and absorb all the information essentially.

And not scroll past it, choong, like that.

Schwing, new thing.

Choong, choong, choong, choong.

Okay, I totally hear you on that,

but we also want people to listen to this,

and I feel like that's a big part of promoting it.

Yeah. Is just having a clip.

Why don't we clip this right here?

Hey, you there, watching this short-form content.

What if you watched it long-form?

Wouldn't that be great?

You could hear, look, I'm a puppet.

What, what's happening here?

[Interviewer] I'll tentatively agree to that.

Okay, great.

You wanna shake on it?

Sure. Great, we did it.