Very Fine Day #51: Cam Wilson
"You don’t need a degree, you just do it. That’s the beauty of it."
VERY FINE DAY features weekly interviews with writers, creators, reporters, and internet explorers. Learn more about the people who keep the internet humming – and check out previous editions here. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter, or just follow Brad. Subscribe now and never miss an edition.
“If you share that, you'll get attention. They’re gonna get attention, too, and the best thing to do would actually be to ignore, but by reacting to it and by showing your outrage you benefit from it and they benefit from it. So the incentives are all set up to react and spread it further, which is kind of why we're in this problem in the first place.”
When your job is to write about communities on the internet – and power on the internet – that takes advantage of misinformation and bad actors and terrible things, at what point to make you the decision to publish something? How often do you think about how, when you write about a small, undiscovered group of anti-vaxers or conspiracists, you can potentially just be growing their audience? And then how do you strike the balance of knowing that if you wrote those things, and that if you just published and wrote about absolute chaos, your career would probably thank you for it. There’s money in chaos. There’s stature in drama. There’s a rising tide built on terrible content online.
Our guest this week is CAM WILSON. He’s a reporter here in Australia who writes about this sorta thing. The way the internet and power and information all bumbles together into a chaotic storm.
We talk quite a bit about the ethics of it all – and also about the temptation to go to the dark side. I think every journalist or writer or Online Content Creator has had a conversation with friends over drinks that revolves around the question “what if I just did unethical shit?” Because it would certainly be easier. And the social networks we’ve built would certainly support you. Retirement would come early. And you’d lose friends. But, god, life is hard enough. Aren’t you tempted? I see it in the twinkle of the eye of some far-right livestreamer, or the talking head screaming down the television about immigration. They might believe what they’re saying, truthfully. But it’s just as likely that they made a calculated decision, and now find themselves in a very lucrative honey trap. It’s sweet enough to keep you checking in. And your old friends won’t take you back.
I’m writing a book about that sorta thing, by the way. You are FORBIDDEN from stealing my idea. I’m kidding. Well, about the tone. Please don’t steal my idea, though. Book publishers… hit me up.
Done rambling now.
A little backroom news: I’m really happy to welcome the first VFD intern: Regina Atkinson. Regina is going to help with transcribing and Instagram and, hopefully one day, do interviews of their own. Ultimately, I want it to be a foot in the door for someone to enter the industry, or to be noticed. And Regina works - and has worked - very hard to be that person. Please follow them and welcome them. Thank you for your support of Very Fine Day. It’s because of your reading and sharing and contributing that we can make that sorta thing happen.
That’s it from me.
See you down the road.
INTERVIEW BEGINS
Cam Wilson: …When I was in radio you would always get the best answer at the very end when you finish recording. You wouldn't be like “I’m done recording”, but just “I think that’s all the questions I have”. And then the last thing that people would say on the phone would always be the thing that's actually the best, because you’re relaxed. And you weren’t overthinking it. You weren’t like :“I’m being perceived, i’m being journalised”.
VFD: Yeah. You started in radio, right?
Cam Wilson: Yeah, so I started at the ABC. Public broadcaster. And my first two and a half years of journalism were as a talk radio producer. Two of those were overnight radio - which was bonkers because it's just anything goes and such a different place, such a different role in people's lives.
For people who listen to overnight radio it's the only thing in the world for them. Often they’re there because there are some things weird, different, or wrong going on. Generally, if your life is going normally, you're asleep during the night - but people are either working odd jobs, they are disabled, they’re driving places. It could even be that they’re blind, so they can't get circadian rhythm and their sleep pattern is all over the place, so they’re up at night. And it means a lot to them. Because otherwise you switch on the TV and it's infomercials or Al Jazeera. So this is the only way. All their friends and family are asleep. So for them, it's the only thing they have in the world.
And so the connection that they develop with the host, and the producers they hear when they call up, and even the other guest speaker on the phone, is just an incredible connection. It's interesting. I'm an internet reporter now. I use social media a lot. And people are like: “how did you make the transition?” And although I use social media in interesting ways, I really learnt it in radio, because I think there's a real big parallel between talkback and Twitter. And there's the parasocial relationship between a host and their audience – the same as a Twitch streamer and their audience, for example.
VFD: Yeah, dude, I totally agree. And as someone that was hiring recently as well, the talent that I think is in the radio industry, that also doesn't realise that their talent exists outside of radio, is wild. And it translates so well to speaking on the internet speaking. “Internet Speak.” I don't know what else to call it. Talking online.
Cam Wilson: It's just plain speaking. The thing that radio always has that is harder than newspapers is that you were talking to people and you meet them where they are. And so when newspapers went online, they had to change a lot of their conventions and do new things. Because for the first time, really, they had to actually face their audience. Whereas radio – you've been facing them the whole time – and so going from talkback radio to getting ratio’d online… it isn’t that different. You're used to dealing with all kinds of people and developing a relationship with your audience.
VFD: Did you have great dreams of radio then? Were you a radio fanatic?
Cam Wilson: No, not really. I never wanted to be a host, which is quite unusual in radio, because a lot of producers out there just want to be a host, so they're hoping that if they eat enough shit and work long enough they’ll eventually get an opportunity. Which is actually very rare. Most radio hires are either an established journalist or someone who is a comedian or something. Somebody who brings in an existing audience. So the idea of taking your lumps doesn't really work that much.
But I think to be a really, really good radio host, to be the top one, you just have to have something like an endearing quality or a growing, engaging quality as a person. And I swear I'm not being down on myself, but I just don't have that. That’s not one of my things.
VFD: You’re not very endearing, yeah.
Cam Wilson: Hahaha. Well, y’know. I knew that was never my strength. I have other strengths. I knew what I was good at. So I did it because it was interesting. It was fun. And I was figuring out what I wanted to do. And I figured out that I wanted to be a reporter because I was seeing what other people were reporting. I was like: “ooh I wanna start doing that”. And so I was just like: “right well, being in radio gets me in the door”. So I did two years of overnights, which legitimately fucks up your life in a really tough way.
VFD: How?
Cam Wilson: Well, sleep is important. And for one of the years I was doing midnight to 6am, three nights a week, which was Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I was living in a different city to my now-wife. And it was like flying to europe and back every week in terms of the jetlag. And I was super isolated. And I was really shitty. And I was just in a really bad mood all the time. Yeah, it was really bad. If I hadn't gone out and found something – I ended up moving to rural Western Australia as a reporter – I don't think I could have lasted. But I was desperate to get out by the end.
VFD: So wait… where were you doing radio?
Cam Wilson: I started in Canberra, where I was living with my girlfriend at the time, and then moved to Sydney for the overnight radio job. And that was my first full time job in journalism. I did that for two years in Sydney before I moved to regional Western Australia.
VFD: Right. Jeez. That is a certain amount of desperate. To be like: “I need to get out of this. Regional Western Australia, that'll do it.” Like, “That's the opposite of what I'm going for.”
Cam Wilson: I was with ABC the whole time. I got a job as a reporter over there and I was like: “this is my opportunity”.
I wanted to start working for the company because I really like the ABC and what it does, and just the ethos of public broadcasting. You ultimately only answer to your audience. There’s no advertisers that you have to keep happy. So when this came up, I was like, “Cool.” It was supposed to be a 12 month contract. And I was like, “Cool, I'll take it, I’ll do it, then come back afterwards.” At least I’ll get the opportunity to learn on the ground and actually go out and do journalism - which is a very rare thing - to actually go out and meet people.
So I was doing my radio, TV, and digital there. It was really cool. I didn't know anyone there. I moved over. It was a seven-day roster, and when you're on the weekend by yourself, they'd just be like: “take the car, just go somewhere within our patch”, which is what they call the area which they cover. And there was 26 local councils within the area that we covered. So it was huge and in the middle of West Australia. And they'd be like: “nothing will happen in the office.” So I would just go drive somewhere where there's an event, turn up to a local fair, and just chat to people there – which is cool because you get to just talk to people. And regional reporting, you see the impact of your journalism so clearly.
I would talk to someone about a story and then they would hear the story in the radio and then I would see them later that week, or in a couple of weeks or months, and they’d be like “I heard that”, or someone else in the community would be like “I heard that story about someone I know.” And you really, again, have developed that feeling of: “I'm serving an audience.” And it's this mutually beneficial relationship where they're telling you what they want, you're amplifying what they're saying, other people are hearing that, and problems are addressed and brought up in the community. And meanwhile, you get a better sense for what’s going on and to then start to preempt those things. You get a feel for the community. You know what they’re thinking about even before they say it to you.
VFD: That's quite beautiful. And then you decided to leave that to join the internet. Where it couldn't be more far from that. Like: everyone hates you, everyone has really constructive feedback about how you could be doing things better. Or they just tell you that no one cares. That's always nice. Just a question mark response.
Cam Wilson: I don't know. I am a white guy. I found the Internet to be generally a pretty friendly place to me. Obviously I get trolled doing things - like anyone does. And I don't know if it is my background in radio where you’d have people pranking you all the time and weirdos ringing up and yelling abuse at you, or people who are racist, or bigoted… it's a common occurrence.
But I think that’s helped me. For me, the tough thing of being a journalist and getting feedback is from people who I know. Someone who I cover who might have a legitimate criticism of my work. That's the kind of stuff that gets me. Not Banterboy69. who's tweeting “fucking kill yourself”. That doesn’t affect me as much.
VFD: Yeah, whenever I get that stuff, I'm always like - and I do sometimes reply this - “Are you okay?” Like: I will happily just talk to you. Because clearly, something's going on. Maybe you haven't realised it yet.
Cam Wilson: Yeah, and sometimes - not to talk too much about the radio - but that was something that I would do in radio as well. Sometimes someone would call up, and we have a really long show, and they’d call up and bring up something awful and I would almost take it as a bit of a challenge to be like: Can I get them to question that? Will I change their mind? And I know it's very hard to actually argue with someone, but if you ask questions, hear them out, sometimes you do. And then sometimes people are clearly so hell bent on being an asshole nothing will change what they say. So why would I care what they think?
VFD: How would you describe what you do now, then? Because to me, I'm like: “well, Cam writes about the people that make the Internet work.” I don't know if I classify your beat as “internet culture” in as much as it's real world culture that bleeds into the internet because of the way they communicate - or the way that they're having an impact, right?
Cam Wilson: Yeah, yeah.
I kind of moved away from a more traditional internet culture beat, which I kind of define as looking at like trends. The normal cultural aspect of it. People aren’t doing that as much anymore. I kind of fell into more of taking internet culture but applying it to politics and power. And that's kind of why I got interested in the first place. Because when I was working in overnight radio and when I was over in the middle of nowhere, reporting on hay prices or whatever, I made some friends there but my friends still lived over on the other side of the country.
So a lot of time of nothing going on. I was just mainlining a lot of this really burgeoning field of internet culture reporting that came from my feed. And in particular, Charlie Warzel, I used to say he was 50% of my journalism DNA. So I was just reading everything that he did that was just after Trump got elected. That was the time of the alt-right. So that was the time of 4chan, Alex Jones, that was the time of the information wars, and this real reckoning and we're reaping what we sowed in terms of the effects of social media. And that's kind of how I got this job.
My first job in internet reporting was at BuzzFeed and I got it despite not having really done much on it before, because I decided to do a little bit of a podcast about internet culture. I think I did literally two episodes so I could say I had done something. But I started just tweeting and putting out stuff - not for work - about things that would eventually become my beat. Because I was like: “I can see this happening - like all these things are happening on the Australian Internet”.
And people in Australia just hadn’t caught up with it. They don't understand how the different infrastructure of this internet, this new different way of how information moves, has changed everything.
VFD: They still don’t.
Cam Wilson: And so I was really early on reporting on Craig Kelly, who's the Australian politician who was a member of the government that went increasingly rogue and got sucked into pro-ivermectin, anti-vax kind of stuff. And now he's full on. And he’s in a different party and probably gonna get turfed out at the next election.
And then it ended up being bigger. But early on I was like: “this is happening and I can’t believe people aren’t paying attention to it.” And then I guess I tweeted and podcasted my way into getting a job doing that.
VFD: Yeah, I think that's so often the case for people - particularly cultural reporters or anyone that writes about the intersection of the internet and anything - you ask them how they got their job, or how they really got started, and they’ll say: I just kind of posted my way to it. Like: I just just tweeted a lot. And then eventually my tweets became articles, and then my articles became a job.
And you try to give that advice to some poor kid in uni and it doesn't really compute to be like: “I know you have two followers. And I know no one's listening to you. But you should just post. Just go mad online.”
Cam Wilson: Yeah, I think there’s still a premium on knowing things, or observing things, or pointing out things that are important that other people haven't noticed.
And you can build huge audiences, because you’re the person who knows about XYZ thing. And I think that’s the cool thing about journalism. It has always been that there’s not a style of journalism that you need to do. And if you’re someone who can come up with stories and information that’s important, people will want to hire you.
That’s the story of Yashar: this LA-based Twitter guy who came out of nowhere, was a democratic operative or something, who is very mysterious, and all of a sudden he started breaking these big stories about celebrities. And he had no training. And it turns out that he may have been hopelessly compromised, but he was actually breaking scoops about important people. He was getting attention. And he got a huge audience and was getting recognition from all kinds of journalists. You don’t need a degree, you just do it. That’s the beauty of it.
VFD: I wanted to ask you how you approach something that I think is quite unique to internet culture reporting, which is that, particularly the scoops you get, but a lot of the things you’ve discovered that no one knows about – I would always find myself struggling to rationalise with the morals of it. Like: no one knows about it. And I need to reconcile that me publishing this means people know about it. And then that goes one way, right? Bit it also makes me look great. And people will be like: “Great story!” And I’ll continue to be known for uncovering things that are happening. And that feels good and I like feeling good. But I don’t think I have an answer to that – I’ve thought about it a lot over five years. But how do you rationalise that exposure you’re giving to these often unknown things? Do you think about that?
Cam Wilson: Yeah, all the time. Every day. Every time we've published a story you’re making a decision on that. I mean, the most obvious example recently has been the anti-vaxxers in Australia and COVID stuff. There’s a small group of people who represent and who are active in promoting dangerous information. And they will do everything they can to get as much attention as possible because they want to hijack mainstream media attention. And the flip side is that people love reading about it!
If every day I just went into the encrypted Telegram chat – which is very easy to get into because these groups are trying to recruit all of the time – and I just published a story like: “here’s some crazy shit that four conspiracy nuts said”. I would get bulk retweets and it’d be huge news.
VFD: You’d be a media brand, man!
Cam Wilson: Yeah, exactly. But on the flipside – and there’s that guy in the US who just publishes Fox News clips and pumps them out like “can you believe what Tucker Carlson said???” every single night – and Fox is probably a bit different because it’s already so big, but people love looking at weird shit. And this is weird shit. But I do think it’s important.
And so this question that by writing about something I’m drawing more attention to it, I ask myself: why am I drawing more attention to it? And the reason I do that, and the reason that journalism is important, is to give people information to navigate being in society.
Like: here’s something you need to know to make good decisions about your life. To help someone in your life. And to hopefully contribute to a better world.
But sometimes, with information on anti-vaxxers for instance, I want to tell you this so that you know what’s happening and so that, if a friend brings up a random conspiracy theory to you, you can be like “well, that’s not true.” It’s almost like a vaccine, in a way, that you’re giving them. It’s a little bit of something to make them stronger against bullshit, or to help them understand.
I’ve kind of moved away from debunking things to write more about people who are trying to manipulate institutions. And you should know about that, too. So you have to ask yourself: is what I’m actually pointing out helping anyone? Is it going to change their mind? Or inform them? Or am I just helping people point and laugh at someone who’s probably, themselves, being misled and in the process has been exposed to harmful ideology.
VFD: And do you think that approach works? Like, that's where I always get to as well. I agree with you in almost every way. But then I'm like: I don't know if that works. I don't know if it doesn't just create something that is still getting worse and worse. Not just anti-vax, but all of this shit that gets uncovered. I mean, Trump! The Trump movement is probably the biggest microcosm of this, right?
Cam Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, with the Trump movement there's a whole lot of other factors there. Like, the patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, all these ideas. And it’s probably not my fault that I wrote an article about some alt right someone and then some dickhead gets radicalised.
VFD: I want to be clear, I'm not trying to blame you and be like: “it’s cam’s fault for anti-vaxers”.
Cam Wilson: I did it. I’d do it again. I got heaps of attention!!
But no. Every kind of decision you make as a journalist – and what you’re presenting – has to be one of risk mitigation. So this is all about the idea of oxygen and amplification. I believe one of the things that journalists need to do is show their working more. I think that’s something that builds trust: being like “here’s what I found. But don’t just take my word for it, here’s the tools that I use as well.”
And on the flip side, you gotta understand that by showing people this stuff you are potentially amplifying it further. And there's things you can do. If you’re sharing a tweet, you can take out the handle of the person who tweeted it, so that people aren't going to know where to go and follow that person. Or put a big red strike through it, so that probably won’t then be circulated afterwards out of context. There’s little things you can do.
And ultimately, I do think that when we think about changing people's minds, or informing people, we think there’s two sides. We think there’s pro vaccine and anti vax, but actually, there's a lot of people in the middle who are probably like: “Y’know, I’d get vaccinated. But then if I see something about microchips and vaccines, and I don't know enough, I might change my mind, or I might move closer towards that kind of misinforming you.” So by telling them about that, you can kind of preempt that and keep them paying attention to reality.
VFD: Yeah. I think I subscribe to that. I just get so sticky.
There’s like that side of it. And then I've been thinking a lot recently about the way political reporting and any insider or “access” reporting involves getting drops from different people on opposite sides, left and right. And clearly, if you then report on that drop, you are amplifying the message they want. And I feel like we're gonna get very dense and not actually get anywhere if I keep rambling on along that.
Are you ever tempted to just sell out then? Become that guy?
Cam Wilson: Oh yeah, all the time. Hell yeah. Yeah totally. Every day.
VFD: Every day!
Cam Wilson: No. I mean, it's interesting you brought up political journalism. I think what I do is literally the opposite of that insofar as political journalism is a set group of people who you cover and essentially a set amount of places where stories come from. It’s like: here’s the parties, here’s the main figures, and they're gonna always come up with something.
Internet reporting is the opposite of that. It’s like: rather than having a few people in this close community I have this endless community. And how I find stories isn't by going to the same people, but it's by trying to have feelers everywhere. And so, as part of that, you've got to be very online and you’ve got to be smart about productivity hacks. Things that you can do that can help you find stuff bubbling up so you don’t have to look literally everywhere.
But the thing is, that means you’re constantly, every couple minutes, being like: “there's something new, is that a story? Yes or no? Is that worthy of publishing further? Yes or no?” So I guess you end up running yourself mad. And then you see people who are individuals who make different decisions to you and might decide to publish something that you didn't. And there's a lot of accounts that are essentially all about covering what happens in Telegram chats and have made a different decision about what they decide to amplify. Because that’s what they do.
And so there is feeling when you've seen something that's wacky or super interesting or salacious, but in your head you think: “that's just another example of an anti-vaxxer doing something crazy.” Yes, it's engaging, but ultimately, all I'm doing is just doing more of the same and amplifying it further. And you can be like: “okay I’ll pass on that.” And then someone else will share, and then get lots of attention. And inside you’re like: “That could have been me! I could have been the one reaping the rewards, and I chose not to, to try to be responsible!”
Everyone’s got different decisions. So yeah: it would have been personally beneficial for me, if I did that. And then someone else has now done that anyway. That happens every day.
I just think that in the long run, if you’re doing something like journalism, it’s not a very well paying job. It’s got bad conditions, there’s not much job security, and probably the reason you’re doing it is, well, that if you didn’t love it you would hate it. So if you’re loving it, hopefully you’re doing it for the right reasons. And if I’m sharing Nazi videos into everyone’s Twitter feed all of the time, am I really making the world a better place? No. And I don't think I'd be able to personally live doing that. So that's probably why I feel bad about it.
VFD: That's the pull quote right there: “I could just share nazi videos all day.” Something that gets me is when I'm watching, or engaging with, content that I know is bad - and I'm enjoying it. Or not that it's bad, but it's ethically questionable.
I struggle with the way that I passionately love “All Gas, No Brakes”, and “Channel Five”, because it's so good. But it's also like: I think how I’d like to do something like that, but also I think: “okay, but we can't do it that way.” Because I'm not sure, ethically, if we should just be going to the anti-vaxxer rally and being like: “let's get all these people on a microphone and broadcast it.”
Cam Wilson: Yeah. And I think, like a big thing is also the audience that you have. So I write for Crikey, which is a mainstream publication. But I also do a Twitch stream where I have, like, 40 people who watch. The kind of content that I would cover in my job where it's going to many thousands of people versus something where it's 40 people who follow me, who I trust, and who are probably not going to be radicalised because they already know what I'm doing. I can kind of show them some more of that cooked content. Because they’re a different audience.
And at the end of the day everyone's gonna make their own decisions about what they think the influence of their actions are. It's tough, there's no easy answer.
VFD: I think everyone also has a moment where the went against that ethical worm in their brain, I guess. And they did share the thing, or they did post the thing, and it started doing really well. And you remember the feeling of satisfaction crossed over with disgust. You’re just like: “I can't believe I stooped that low.” Because I couldn't just do it myself.
Cam Wilson: When was yours Brad? Is there a moment that you remember?
VFD: I'm trying to think. I think I probably have a few. I think I probably have a few that are probably closer to that Fox News style thing, though it's probably Sky News or something, and I grabbed the clip. And I load it up onto Twitter thinking it’s going to blow up, and it does, but I know full well that the reason it's going off is because it is negative in every possible way, or is harming a minority community. And it's just going to get amplified by people being like: “can't believe this!”, Or by people being like: “Thank God, someone's saying this”! And you're the conduit between that. You just realise: Oh, these racists wouldn't have been able to actively be racist if I hadn't put this in front of them”. I think that teaches you a lot.
Cam Wilson: Well, that's because there’s a second order effect when you share something trying to attention hijack. Like those super emotive, often hate-filled editorials. If you share that, you'll get attention. They’re gonna get attention, too, and the best thing to do would actually be to ignore, but by reacting to it and by showing your outrage you benefit from it and they benefit from it. So the incentives are all set up to react and spread it further, which is kind of why we're in this problem in the first place.
VFD: Yeah, that’s Twitter.com. That's the business model, right? That’s the whole thing. It’s a great website. You do a lot though, man. Y mentioned your Twitch stream before. And you do your newsletter for Crikey. And are you still doing the podcast as well?
Cam Wilson: Yep.
VFD: Did I miss something?
Cam Wilson:I’ve dropped off but I need to get back into doing TikTok as well.
VFD: Yeah. How do you do all that? Like, in the simplest way. While having a full time job.
Cam Wilson: Sorry, I was going to say “like a lot of successful people” but I’m not successful. But I’ve heard from successful people that a lot of the things that they do, when they do a million things, they feed into each other. So there’s an Australian broadcaster called Patricia Karvelas who does TV in the afternoon and goes on radio shows and she would be broadcasting four or five hours, nationally. And how is that possible? And the answer is that it snowballs. It’s the same substance for TV that would be on radio later on at night.
So the things that I cover in my day job I will often then talk about in my Twitch stream. And I think those serve complementary purposes as well. I try to break news, and then on Tiktok, or my Twitch stream, and my newsletter in fact, I try and explain and put some more analysis and give some more colour around it. And so the idea is that it all feeds into each other. Because once you have a good idea, which is the most valuable thing in the world, you can then get out to more meetings. You've already done the hard part. So you can get it out in different ways. But I don't know. You just try to be smart about it. And know what it takes and what your limitations are. What about you, how do you do all your things that you do?
VFD: Well I don’t do a whole lot. I feel like externally I portray doing more than I do. But I really just do my full time job and I do this and I struggle. I'm increasingly finding this to be hard for me to change modes into, because it is so different to what I do professionally. Well, not so different. But it's a different media business that I'm essentially trying to build, while having to think about another media business all day. And that mind shift is something I have spent this year working on. Trying to balance between those two left and right brain things.
And there’s also the fact that I feel like with any kind of self starter - not any but most - who are doing a newsletter, or you're writing a blog, or you have a website, or you do a podcast - I feel like the realm to success, to meaningful success, is never a hockey stick graph. Even though it looks that way. I think it's literally a single moment. And you don't know when that moment will be, or if it will ever come. But it will take one interview with one person, or it will take one written essay that you do. One thing and that will get you the book deal that gets you the movie, or it will get you the thing that gets you the TV show, or gets you the job. And so you do these projects that are self starter projects, knowing that might not happen. In fact, it's likely not to happen. But your alternative is to stop, right? So it's like: well, if I stop, then it definitely doesn't happen, right?
Cam Wilson: Yeah. So I was at BuzzFeed News in Australia when they got rid of the whole news team. And I had been there seven or eight months. And I'd been made redundant in the media. It's like a rite of passage. But also part of me was like: “I really don't want that to happen again”. I want to be a journalist who at the very least is either employable or who can figure out a way to do my own thing.
And so I have been quite conscientious of the idea that, if you take a step back, we’re still in a time of incredible change. TikTok in the western world wasn't anything three years ago, and now is pretty much the most popular platform, at least by average hours and by user numbers, in Australia.
VFD: More than Netflix. It’s insane. It’s totally nuts.
Cam Wilson: Yeah. And three years ago that didn't exist. So I want to have a lot of tickets to the lottery in case any one thing just takes off. And the upside of that is that by doing a lot of things I don't really feel bad if I drop something. I haven’t put all my eggs in one basket. But yeah, I agree.
I tend to think that you just never know what one thing might hit big, in which case that’s what you want to ride. But I do agree that the more tickets you have, the more chances that you have for something to just randomly go right.
VFD: Alright, man. Well, thanks for talking. Appreciate it.