I found myself walking in downtown Portland, Oregon this afternoon, and came upon a sandwich board advertising BRUNCH! $2 MIMOSAS!.

That, in Portland, is hardly worth a second glance.

Weekend brunch is practically mandatory in Portland, so it’s not surprising to see a restaurant laying a trap for the wannabe-weekend-hipster types (especially on a holiday weekend).

However, this particular sign was out front of a very fancy, very French place.

It’s the kind of place that the older generation goes, before the opera or ballet or something, not the types who view brunch as an unofficial sporting match for who can get the most drunk before noon.

And I thought to myself, that restaurant can no longer afford to be out of the brunch game.

Brunch has become a competitive sport. In order to keep up, you have to adapt to the market.

While I was walking, I was listening to a podcast. It wasn’t the type of podcast that’s more like an exploration, where the host provides a sounding board for the guest’s ideas. Instead, it was more like a jousting match — the host wouldn’t let the conversation proceed until the two participants agreed on the nature of truth (or at least hammered out their respective definitions of truth, I may have lost something in the details).

It was Sam Harris talking to Jordan Peterson, btw.

Another kind of spectator sport: conversations.

No longer are conversations decentralized and held between two people, or a small group, in a bar or living room or park.

Now, we listen to other people have conversations for us and judge which side we agree on.

(Of course I understand that podcasts can spawn conversations amongst people, and podcasts are much like radio which also has the same problem.)

If you’re in restaurants, you can’t afford to be out of the brunch game.

If you’re in media, you can’t afford to be out of the podcast game.

Both are really, really weird.

[Citation needed]

Anybody listen to a Batfort podcast?