# Two Years of Build & Learn  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Two Years of Build & Learn - Show: Build and Learn - Owner / Host: CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz - Episode publish date: 2024-08-27 - Episode AI description: Celebrate a two-year podcasting journey with reflections on consistency and audience engagement. Discover how social media shapes consumer behavior and mental health, emphasizing mindful digital consumption. Dive into the world of AI tools for creating engaging content and the challenges of software development. Explore the nostalgic yet innovative landscape of domain names, highlighting the evolution from .com to NFTs. Plus, hear about exciting projects like optimizing Redis and the entrepreneurial idea of an automated ice cream shop! - Duration: 43:36 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/b292baa2-febf-468a-89f7-53ae23192746) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/a7d7cab4-9aff-4fb2-bee8-014ef5cd0f7a) - Export date: 2026-02-17T23:33:06 ## Snips ### [Consistency Powers Podcast Longevity](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7d44962f-4807-4209-8396-3e2e0dc9e28c) 🎧 00:04 - 02:15 (02:10) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/54ca5c2b-3add-43a0-abd8-d2db7e8d80f1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Consistency in podcasting is mainly about having a habit and maintaining a reasonable release schedule. - Recording regularly but releasing biweekly helped maintain momentum without pressure. #### 💬 Quote > I think we have a habit, which is funny because I feel like we're not, like it's on the calendar. We're pretty consistent. > — Colin Colin on their podcast consistency #### 📚 Transcript All right, it's the big five oh, how you doing CJ? Good, good, how are you calling? Pretty good, episode 50. Two year anniversary, that is a big milestone, especially when a giant part of podcasting is just to continue doing it. Yeah. What the stat, like pod fading, it's like after 10 or something or like most don't make it. Oh, I think, yeah, most make it to even five for sure. So I think we have a habit, which is funny because I feel like we're not, like it's on the calendar. We're pretty consistent. And I guess we got pretty close because we did 25 episodes a year for two years. There's 52 weeks in a year. So we got pretty close. Even I know that we've skipped weeks, we've re moved, we've moved things around and we've got the habit. Do you think that we would have made it this far if we were recording every week? That's hard to say because I do think it gets a little weird when we, time gets funny, like this one, if for you listening, this is going to be 50 and it will be in August, but we are recording the middle of July. So there is that and I actually think that that has helped us because when we do have to skip we have episodes in the hopper to put out. If we do weekly, we can burn through that hopper way faster. So I think it's similar to like YouTube. think you have to put out three videos a week or you're never getting the attention. And then you get these creators that spend six months on one video, they drop it and disappear. And then they get more views than like all of those videos that people put together. Not saying we're doing that here, but I don't think that these games that the algorithms want us to play are healthy and actually have a topic about that later that we'll talk about too. But I don't think that we would have. think, I do think that it'd be interesting to try to figure out how to get the show closer to when we record it, but just the pure nature of it coming out. Like we actually do record or try to every week. We just only release every two weeks. So I think that's really where it's covered us is that we've actually recorded every other week in practice. --- ### [Social Media Drives Consumption Cycle](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5ac5b7ce-ca71-4844-a9f6-8a167549675d) 🎧 05:21 - 06:39 (01:17) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/78241629-d1e7-4c51-a0fc-2cec62faf5fc" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Social media largely consists of ads and sponsored content disguised as real posts. - This creates a compulsive cycle of consumption and perceived lifestyle needs. #### 💬 Quote > Take, start a timer and do a minute and just scroll. And count how many posts are ads, like real ads. And then of the posts that are posted by real people, which of them are also ads. > — Colin Colin on social media ad saturation #### 📚 Transcript Yeah. I think when we first started the guest thing was designed around like when we were thinking about growing it as big as we could. And challenge like even today we had to bump it back an hour. Like you can't do that easily with a guest. And then you got to do research and you got to do a lot of stuff. And that's not to say we don't prep, but like enough stuff is going on in our lives that we have enough to talk about. And it's different enough, but it overlaps with like our interest. And I think of like when we get to do this is going to the hallway track of a conference is that I actually don't get to talk about a lot of this stuff outside of this show at work, I get exposed to some things, but it's in the context of work and it's not what are your actual opinions and I don't get, I get to be a little bit, I don't get to talk about work as much here, but I can be more fast and loose with opinions and stuff on this. Whereas I'm a little bit more reserved at work on that stuff, a little bit less bike shedding and things. But the idea behind the guests is that say we feature somebody they're going to share with their audience. So then the show's going to pick up, maybe some people listen to just that episode, but gonna get a few new listeners. And if we keep that up, you eventually do get this organic growth. And would say, we don't look at the numbers, but the numbers are pretty flat, but they are consistently flat. --- ### [Manage Social Media Consumption](https://share.snipd.com/snip/691853f7-33f2-43ac-b25a-b9c71d50ab79) 🎧 12:55 - 15:10 (02:15) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fb9f4883-85e6-4817-afd8-aeca9fc2afb0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Limit your daily social media use to reduce exposure to consumerist triggers. - Reflect on whether spending is driven by true needs or social media influence. #### 💬 Quote > If we can recognize that that's one thing, but like the same principle is just ramping consumers and people being unhappy. > — Colin Colin on managing social media impact #### 📚 Transcript And like yesterday, I think if I look at my notes, it was like 16 minutes on Instagram yesterday, which is like amazing. If I can hit 15 a day, we're good. I get the good things out of it. I hopefully just recognize the bad things and just keep moving. So when you're saying that it's making you want to buy stuff, like often are you actually buying stuff versus just recognizing that you want to buy stuff? I think this one for me, we just moved. So I think it also knows that we've moved. I'm getting stuff for apartments and how to set up an interior design. And so I'm already in a like we did need to buy some things. And then I would not be surprised if buying some of those things also triggered more algorithms around. I don't even know Facebook pixel like that person did buy the thing. So that's the signal now Facebook's flood me with more interior stuff. There's a bed out there, you've all probably seen it from Thuma, T-H like we bought that bed. And I'm pretty sure that it has triggered this wave of interior design things. And so it's just, for me, it's like just good to recognize it. It's, we've never needed to clean our house with any of these hundred gadgets. So I don't think we need them now, now that we've moved. what if we can recognize that that's one thing, but like the same principle is just ramping consumers and people being unhappy. The Alan Watts thing about what makes you itch and money. Buying things to please people that we don't like necessarily or that whole line. I don't know, just more of an observation. I'd be curious again for people to do that experiment and just see it. Today is also Amazon Prime Day, so we're being just deluged with offers for more and more and more. And I think just, it's an invite to think about experiences over things and figuring out how you can do things in creative ways. We can get into the money side of this is I'm gonna try to think about what is like the rest of no spend summer look like a few trips, those are experiences. But if we're gonna spend money, do we need to, what are we, are we doing it to fill something? --- ### [Algorithmic Targeting and Affiliate Marketing](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ef552f41-63cd-4626-ab32-d8de5925c91d) 🎧 15:34 - 18:04 (02:30) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3f244e3e-4ba5-4294-b182-6a4677a67fdb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Social media algorithms aggressively target personal insecurities to drive ad engagement. - Many creators participate in affiliate marketing, complicating consumption and mental health dynamics. #### 💬 Quote > TikTok knows that I'm a little bit overweight and also is trying to push this testosterone thing so much... I wonder how much of this is driven by the gig economy and people trying to make money for themselves. > — CJ CJ on social media ads and gig economy #### 📚 Transcript TikTok knows that I'm a little bit overweight and also is trying to push this testosterone thing so much so that I actually remember last year, like asking my doctor, Hey, should I get like my testosterone levels checked and everything? And he was like, dude, you are just getting hammered with ads. No, you don't need anything checked. Like you're 36. This is wild that you even are considering that. And it's just that we're just getting inundated by these types of ads, which is, I don't know, it's interesting. The other side of this coin too, is I wonder how much of this is driven by the gig economy and people trying to make money for themselves. And there's like this whole idea that like on TikTok, at least you can do, or I think probably every platform you can do this like thing where you as a creator promote a product. And I think on there's like the TikTok shop or whatever. So if you like a certain water bottle or something, you can make your own UGC or un user generated content about the water bottle. And then if people buy it through your video, then you make a little bit of money. And so I do wonder is this tradwife thing that, that you're thinking of and seeing how much of that is, is driven by maybe like the stay at home parent movement where they want to also make a little bit of money on the side. And they see other people doing it on TikTok because that's, well, all they're seeing is like on social media is these other people who seem to be having success with this affiliate type relationship. And if you think way back, Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income, where you like set up a website and you blog about something too, and then become an affiliate for whatever product that you blogged about, it's exactly that same concept, but now applied to social media. And it's definitely way more in our face. One of my thoughts is how do I avoid getting trapped into or tricked into buying stuff? Which admittedly I, I would say that I'm usually pretty good about not buying stuff from social media, but I, I'm like, definitely can think of at least a handful of things this year that I've bought off there, but the other piece of it is like, how do I teach my kids to be thoughtful consumers of social media content and also like, how can, how can I teach them to play the game so that they're on the right side of making the content and driving the affiliate sales, but not actually consuming or going down this like negative mental health loop. --- ### [Master Social Media Creation Wisdom](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e65985fc-3964-4ce8-9d15-4723cb94a1b2) 🎧 18:04 - 18:53 (00:49) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e33d4209-01b4-4d69-ac29-d89eb6075163" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Learn social media content creation skills to participate positively without falling into consumption traps. - Know the rules and play the game wisely to benefit instead of being exploited. #### 💬 Quote > If you know the rules, then you can show up to a table and play it in a way that you walk away like with a little bit more than you showed up with. > — CJ CJ on smart use of social media #### 📚 Transcript And so we've been for fun, like we've been using a bunch of AI tools to create. Like short form content and with the goal of eventually we have this faceless channel. That like talks about certain stuff and maybe someday it's big enough that we can like also make UGC that helps people find certain things, but it's, we're like contributing to the problem in a way. Like we're, we, we, I don't know how to, like, I don't know how to feel about either side. If you got to be, got to know the rules of the game, got to know how to play the game, but also it's like gambling in a way. Like if you, if you know the rules, then you can show up to a table and play it in a way that you walk away like with a little bit more than you showed up with. And you don't give into a mode and you know when to quit. Yeah. --- ### [Twitter's Impact Prompts Break](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f3466cc9-1423-42d2-ab4d-05bb2c2ed2b6) 🎧 23:51 - 24:38 (00:46) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/96dae204-8da4-4cd9-bc46-ecbb840a5eb0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - CJ experienced rising stress and physical symptoms from constant exposure to negative Twitter content. - He removed the app from his phone and now checks occasionally via browser. #### 💬 Quote > I was just super angry or like mad and really frustrated. I felt like a lot of the every single tweet was like people fighting in the street... I deleted it from my phone. > — CJ CJ on quitting Twitter app due to negativity #### 📚 Transcript Like I, it has become such a, a rough place, at least like the algorithm for my account. So I don't know if that's happened for you too, but. Yeah. The following, my following tab is not as bad. The for you tab. Anytime I start to feel that way, I realize that I'm accidentally on the 4u tab like it switches over and It's pretty similar. I would say Mike is probably feeling better than both of us these days if I think they are still off And I think for me I do think a lot of it is more of the nostalgia of Twitter Because we've been here for so long. It's weird to leave a place that we've been in, but it's no longer the same place. And similarly to the thing we just talked about, it is a fire hose. --- ### [Avoid Engagement Bait Online](https://share.snipd.com/snip/11b38fa1-d770-4548-b1d2-3068037eaf97) 🎧 26:48 - 28:16 (01:28) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1429fbce-e393-452b-a417-93ddb5607034" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Avoid engaging with inflammatory content designed to bait user reactions on social media. - Maintaining a regulated nervous system improves wellbeing compared to falling for engagement bait. #### 💬 Quote > When you live a day of a regulated nervous system without engagement bait, you will feel way better than a day with all that crap. > — Colin Colin on social media engagement bait #### 📚 Transcript The screen time feature iOS is super nice for that. I think it's also on or coming to Mac if it isn't already, which will be interesting. But I think the thing, and back to the Twitter one, there's a bunch of people in our space, people know who they are, where it's just they're trying to get reactions. It's especially the JavaScript people. Sorry, JavaScript people, we all know that's almost always like a Vercel person, a JavaScript person, or like Vercel is never going to sponsor the show. But for Primogen, right? that kind of... Yes. Primogen, Theo. Yeah. The hot takes one after another to try to get engagement and they do get engagement. It reminds me of the, what was the guy, the YouTuber who would, who like worked at meta and left and was just creating like the most controversial videos ever. I think I may have blocked this out of my mind. I'm not sure who that is. Yeah. It's like the, like senior pro, senior dev or something like that. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. I think we like almost went to jail or maybe that was just content. This is, yeah. His videos are designed to trap a certain user for sure. And then enrage another set. And it's all engagement. So it's engagement bait really at the end of the day. And like when you live a day of a regulated nervous system without engagement bait, you will feel way better than a day with all that crap. --- ### [Refreshing Docs for Clarity](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4539b0da-78d3-4deb-ae20-155ac2380f49) 🎧 29:30 - 30:02 (00:31) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8ebb9053-5cd1-4713-b129-7f427f7e8f80" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - CJ is refreshing Discord docs about in-app purchase flows to provide clearer best practices and reduce support. - This is important for accuracy around polling, events, and avoiding API rate limits. #### 💬 Quote > I've been doing a lot of community communication lately and not writing the docs... we pieced together over time as we released each piece. > — CJ CJ on improving Discord documentation #### 📚 Transcript Yeah. I think a lot of times docs are such a low priority for product teams that oftentimes it's let's just write a doc that we'll make it so that we stop getting a certain kind of support request. That's oh, it's support driven docs. People keep asking about auth. So let's like write a doc about auth instead of having a cohesive story about how to set everything up, what are the best practices, how are you expecting to use the product? So yeah. Which is tricky when those, when you first write them, those things all don't maybe exist at the same time too. --- ### [Optimizing Redis for Rails App](https://share.snipd.com/snip/30b47ebe-9c24-4194-abae-f8a39b470abe) 🎧 30:32 - 32:46 (02:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fcac864c-d509-48a4-8fd2-cf97b358f4a7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Colin resolved Redis caching issues by splitting instances: one for view caching with eviction and one for background jobs without eviction. - This improved performance and lowered costs for their Rails app. #### 💬 Quote > We kept running into these issues where our Redis database would fill up... Recently went through the process and learned a ton about how to set up two separate Redis instances. > — Colin Colin on Redis optimization #### 📚 Transcript How about you? Yeah, we, we've been, so we have a big Rails app and we use Sidekick for background processing. And we also do a lot of like view caching and fragment caching with Rails. And we kept running into these issues where our Redis database would fill up. And so when we initially deployed to render, we configured Redis so that. The max memory policy was no eviction basically. So like at no point would it delete like automatically delete any keys. And that is like the recommended setting when you're using sidekick because like it, when you put, when you put a job on the queue or whatever, it shouldn't be deleted from the database. If some other thing was added more recently or whatever. And what we were running into was that we kept caching like tons of view fragments and it would fill up the database. And then we would try to schedule a background job and there was no space. And it wasn't, it didn't know how to evict those keys, like the older, the older few keys. And so recently went through the process and learned a ton about like how to set up two separate Redis instances on, on render one with no eviction that we use for all of our view caching and all of our rails caching stuffs. And then one with that won't evict that we can use for jobs. So eviction one, it uses LRU or the least recently used so that if a view was cached like two weeks ago, and no one's actually needed that in two weeks then. And then we need to regenerate another cache view today. Then that new one will overwrite the old one. And yeah, it's been humming along. We were able to downgrade both of them to like much cheaper plans. So pretty, pretty excited about the change. And yeah, there's a handful of little tips and tricks that I wrote up in an article a while ago about using, like building our own little like cache methods for view component. Cause it doesn't have built in tooling for using the rails cache. So yeah, we're using that heavily and it seems to be, seems to be helping a lot with speeds. --- ### [Family AI Video Creation Fun](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d979f828-f37b-494d-971d-3af8f3825ac6) 🎧 40:46 - 42:15 (01:29) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/701f5a73-aadb-48f4-b290-d4c9212a8d61" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - CJ and his kids use AI tools like 11 Labs, D script, and chat GPT to create engaging short-form videos. - This process includes scriptwriting, voice generation, video editing, and captioning, making content creation fun and fast. #### 💬 Quote > The kids have gotten just like wicked fast at coming up with an idea, writing a script for it... then dump it into 11 labs to generate the audio and then spitting out a video has been tons of fun. > — CJ CJ on AI tools for content creation #### 📚 Transcript so yeah, the boys and I have been playing a ton with 11 Labs and the voice generation there has just gotten so good. we'll kind of like come up with a story for some short form content, throw it into 11 Labs and use their like project tool, which lets you go segment by segment to generate it using different voices and different intonation. And you can even do like voice to voice. So it'll, if you come in there with a Southern accent and then they'll take whatever voice they have and they'll say the thing, but like in a Southern accent, which is like pretty wild to see. So we've been using that plus D script and the kids have gotten just like wicked fast at coming up with an idea, writing a script for it, using chat GPT or they like to use Gemini to spit out some, yeah, like bits and pieces of a script or like whatever and then they fill in the gaps or add chapters or add context and then dump it into 11 labs to generate the audio, pull it into D script, and then using D scripts like video editing, like throwing captions on, throwing like clips from Giphy in there, and then spitting out a video has been, it's been tons of fun just like mess around and learning how to do that and learning how to do it quickly. So very cool. I guess I mean, that's a shout out to the labs. Yeah. There, there are unofficial sponsor this week. Yeah. And Geocities. But it's very similar to like, when I think back to when I was just tinkering, I literally was using GeoCities and probably a bunch of other things before that. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts