The Real Deal isn't a Robot; It's a Random Thought So yeah, you're probably wondering why I'm talking about "thirteen" right now. It's not a specific number, but it feels like the most important one. You think about something, and suddenly it's been around forever. You remember a weird thought or a feeling, and it's just stuck in your head. You switch to another app, a different game, and then here we are, staring at something that's exactly as it was all along. It just keeps going, looping like a broken record. And that's the idea. It's just that one thing, one specific moment, that's never really gone anywhere. I remember being fifteen years old. I was sitting on my couch, watching the old news on TV, and this kid in a red shirt walked in. He had questions and a whole bunch of them, but they were all the same kind. You ask, "What's this?" and he says, "I know, but I don't know." Then he asked another kid, and the answer was still the same. You start asking people, and they just nod and say, "I feel it too." It's like magic. It's just that people are telling each other they understand something when they really don't. They're trying to keep each other company, sort of. Then I realized this thing about "thirteen" isn't about math or dates or even some weird scientific formula. It's about how we pretend to know things when we don't. We talk about "thirteen" because it sounds like wisdom. It sounds like someone who has seen everything. But it's actually just us copying what the guy in the red shirt said, all by himself. We're just trying to sound smart when we're just listening to a guy who has nothing but a question and a nod. Think about it. When you use the word "thirteen," you think about that specific kid, right? You think about the red shirt. You think about the questions. But you never actually see him. You never see what he's thinking, or what he's feeling, or what's actually going on behind his eyes. You just know that there's a group of people, or at least a couple of people, and they're saying the same thing, over and over, just to make sure everyone else is on board. It's like a meeting where everyone says exactly the same thing, nobody adds anything new, nobody adds a different opinion. They're just trying to keep the mood right. And that's exactly what "thirteen" is. It's that feeling of everyone agreeing on something they don't actually agree on. It's the way we use a specific number to represent a whole group of people who are just muting their own voices. We say "thirteen" to signal that something is important, but it's actually just a label we put on everything to keep the conversation going. We're using a specific thing to represent a bunch of people, just like we use "thirteen" to represent a crowd of people who are all saying the exact same thing. I remember that kid in the red shirt. He was just one guy. He had a question and a bunch of other kids and people around him. They were all saying the same thing. They were all just nodding and repeating the same line. It's weird how fast we move to the next thing after that one kid walks in, but we never stop there. We keep going. We keep asking and answering and pretending it's all different when it's pretty much the same. It's like a loop, really. You start with a thought, or a feeling, or something that's just been there for a while. You say it to yourself, or you say it to a friend, or you say it to a stranger. You use the same words over and over again. You don't change the meaning. You just keep saying it, over and over. It's just that one thing, that specific idea, that's never really gone anywhere. It's stuck in the head like a button that's been pressed a billion times. You press it, it says something, you press it again, it says the same thing. You can't get rid of it. You just keep saying it. And that's what we do when we talk about "thirteen." We talk about it, and we use it to signal that something is important, but it's actually just us copying what that kid in the red shirt said. We're using that one specific thing to represent a bunch of people who are just muting their own voices. We're trying to keep the conversation going by repeating the same line, even though we don't really understand what he's saying. It's like a meeting where everyone says exactly the same thing, nobody adds anything new, nobody adds a different opinion. They're just trying to keep the mood right. It's like a button that's been pressed a billion times. You press it, it says something, you press it again, it says the same thing. You can't get rid of it. You just keep saying it. I remember that kid in the red shirt. He was just one guy. He had a question and a bunch of other kids and people around him. They were all saying the same thing. They were all just nodding and repeating the same line. It's weird how fast we move to the next thing after that one kid walks in, but we never stop there. We keep going. We keep asking and answering and pretending it's all different when it's pretty much the same. It's like a loop, really. You start with a thought, or a feeling, or something that's just been there for a while. You say it to yourself, or you say it to a friend, or you say it to a stranger. You use the same words over and over again. You don't change the meaning. You just keep saying it, over and over. It's just that one thing, that specific idea, that's never really gone anywhere. It's stuck in the head like a button that's been pressed a billion times. You press it, it says something, you press it again, it says the same thing. You can't get rid of it. You just keep saying it. So yeah, don't get stuck on the number thirteen. Don't think it's a secret. It's not. It's just us copying what that kid in the red shirt said. We're using that one specific thing to represent a bunch of people who are just muting their own voices. We're trying to keep the conversation going by repeating the same line, even though we don't really understand what he's saying. It's just that one thing, that specific idea, that's never really gone anywhere. It's stuck in the head like a button that's been pressed a billion times. You press it, it says something, you press it again, it says the same thing. You can't get rid of it. You just keep saying it.