Download Watch Duty and get results there. Otherwise, just do it, man. Try it online and I hope it makes you feel better. I feel bad for them, honestly, you know? I’ve been through this before. But the way I managed was by building Watch Duty, not by shouting into the ether. We all have our coping mechanisms. Some are productive and others are not.
Screenshot: Courtesy of Watch Duty
Do you think the fact that people can learn more about what’s happening on the ground will help them be smarter about what they say online? Or will all that shit still happen?
I don’t know, man. I wish I had a good answer that I could include in your question, but I don’t really care about those people. It’s so uninteresting. People are still fleeing the fire right now. And that’s really what matters. I don’t need armchair reporters now. There are great reporters who aren’t on Watch Duty, like a group of people who are getting information out to the public about X, which is great. I’m glad they do it. I wish they had a better platform for it. There are still great people on social media, but unfortunately you have to look at the Bitcoin porn and other random things that are being overturned by Chinese bots right now.
So what’s next? How does Watch Duty approach the next few days of this particular fire, and then subsequent fires?
This is a good time for a Mike Tyson expression: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Right now they are punching us in the face repeatedly. When I’m in that mode, we don’t make strategic plans.
We are extraordinarily tactical. We focus on what is in front of us, just like a firefighter does. That’s what we’re doing today, keeping our servers online, keeping the engineers fed, making sure they can keep this running while we’re experiencing explosive growth of three orders of magnitude. And then journalists also need sleep, they need pep talks, they need help. And then it’s really just about “getting over this,” man. We are about to experience another wind event tonight. We are far from done and tonight is going to be another very bad one.
What about the long term? What is the future of how people use Watch Duty?
I can talk about long-term things because I’ve been thinking about it for years. We’re really thinking a lot about what other Watch Duty disasters might look like. We are actively developing it now. We are working to make sure we can do the same thing we did in Los Angeles during the next Hurricane Helene. Because those floods were disastrous. People didn’t get enough warning, they didn’t understand it. And there is good data out there that is not being communicated to the masses. We want to be the voice of reason in these difficult times. And that’s what awaits us next when we get over this nonsense.
It’s better than sitting there, desperate.
Yes. I have to be constructive, you know?