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foreign [Music]
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welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast I'm your host kinda
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today I'm Marquez you might notice it looks a little different and sounds a little different from normal because Andrew's not here first of all and I'm
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in my basement that is because uh I and a lot of the rest of the team on
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the podcast all got covered this past week not to worry we're all feeling
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better uh thankfully but we're just being safe about it we're not going back in until we all test negative um but in the meantime that left us out
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of the studio and it's crazy we've realized that over time we've had all these like backup plans where we're like
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oh if one of us is sick you know the other can host and vice versa that's cool but if we're all out what do we do
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and uh I think we've realized we've had a hundred and forty
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consecutive weeks of this pod and didn't even blink didn't even realize we'd done that streak that long which is crazy so
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we didn't want to leave you hanging with nothing but we came up with a really cool idea which is that basically we just got all these Spotify wrapped
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things and everybody sees what's on the top of their playlist this year and actually if you upload a podcast to Spotify you get a wrapped and what we
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realize is waveform has grown immensely in the past couple months and the past year and we're super grateful for that
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but what that also means is a lot of you listening and watching here are new which also means that a lot of you
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haven't seen or heard some of our best episodes from the past year or two especially the ones with guests and this
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is one of my favorite things we've gotten to do in the past few years which is like have great fun conversations with fellow creators and interesting
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people and honestly our guest list is just straight heat a lot of bangers on there so if
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you've missed them that's what this is all about this is going to be a sort of a little curated highlights section of
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some of my favorite guests we've had on waveform in the past year or two uh and if you want to go back and listen to the full episodes well this is a great
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opportunity to do that so just uh filling in for this week hopefully we're back next week wish us luck but in the
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meantime these are some of my favorite guests we've had on the waveform podcast lately let's get into it with a
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conversation with one of my favorite creators uh YouTuber in the car space the man the myth the legend himself Doug
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demira but yeah it's an interesting world and yes the the you know part of the problem
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I think with the the believing what companies say is an interesting concept you know the the Tesla Twitter people
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are just a completely different level of insane that I've never experienced before and what that company says is is
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the word of God to them and that they don't believe that there's any ever any uh and I'm pretty positive about Tesla's
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compared to most car reviewers um and yet I can still get in I still get like vicious complaints from some of
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these people sometimes because I don't believe this thing yeah that that might be the they might be the most defended
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cars by people who have never actually used them which is very strange to me because in the tech World there is there
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are there are rampant Fanboys of certain companies and products even if they don't use them like a product will come
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out from a company they love and if even if they've never used it they will trust the gospel that is that company's
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advertising messaging and if your review goes against it you must be paid or you must be a shill or you're a fanboy of
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the other guy frequency of which I'm accused of being paid is quite unbelievable I'm sure you
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get this also I don't get it as much as I as as I see some other people get it as much as I expect I think it's really
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clear that I try to be really objective but still like and some of the stuff I'm being accused of being bad about is so
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insane and I'm just like what could you possibly be thinking but that's I guess the reality when you're dealing with the
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general yeah there's got to be a reason why you don't like the same thing I like you must maybe it's because you're paid
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I don't know right that's it can't be because my taste is wrong or or or our
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tastes differ or whatever and the other thing the thing that really is crazy to me I suspect you don't see this quite as much because the gadgets you're
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reviewing are less valuable although you probably do but in the car world the amount of
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personal investment people have in the cars is insane I frequently make fun of
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my own cars like they're unreliable I own this Convertible Mercedes G Wagon so I think is one of the ugliest cars ever made I talk about that I'm like totally
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fine with all that but when I say something like negative like that about somebody else's car people it's it's
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like you insulted their child yeah and I'm like how could you take a possession this personally I'd never have
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understood what's funny about that I think I think it's uh I actually understand that in the car world because
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that is probably one of the top two most expensive important buying decisions you
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make and so in a way it reflects a lot about you and your priorities and your knowledge of the things you could have
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done right so if you get you spend all that effort and energy and you make this
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huge purchase in your life and someone says something bad about it you kind of feel like you need to defend yourself against it but in the in the tech world
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I see a very high level of this around smartphones and I think it's because not
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that that's not that they're super valuable but because they are some of the most personal pieces of tech that
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you can possibly own what is more personal oh interesting it's always with you it has all your equipment it runs
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your life basically you're holding it all the time it's it's a borderline fashion accessory to some people like to
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to speak negatively about about someone's smartphone purchase decision would be like speaking negatively about
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their hairstyle or something it's like that's a part of me and that's the way people react which is always funny
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um yeah I've just I've never gotten into the the things that I possess I've never gotten into personally defending them
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even the cars I get that it's an expensive decision but like you bet like who cares you know like if
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that's what you decided and that's what you decided and and I just I think people are so so so crazy but they can
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be so militant um about some of this stuff and sometimes I will say something in a video and just be like nervous like I
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know oh yeah I always know I know there's uh these days I like to
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defend it just by recognizing like smartphones aren't like young anymore like it's kind of hard to get a bad new
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phone if you're anywhere in the 300 plus dollar price range of new phones from
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the big companies like you can't really get a bad one anymore uh does it feel kind of the same way in the car industry
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like obviously if you buy an old car now it can be bad but if you buy a new car right it's probably fine
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yeah yeah and it's it's kind of funny I get sometimes I get friends or family members coming up to me and saying
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listen I'm I've spent hours researching this I've watched your videos watched everybody's videos I'm trying to figure
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out the best small crossover to buy is it the CRV or the RAV4 or the Mazda CX-5
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and they'll be floored when I tell them which dealership is physically closer to your home like we're not talking about
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none of these will be bad like you're not going to make a mistake here and they're very very very very very few
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bad cars maybe not on sale right now um and so that makes it things a little
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bit easier yeah you're not I'm not ever starting review ripping up a car anymore it wasn't quite like that when I first
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started there was some like Maseratis were pretty weak and four or five years ago and I did some tough reviews on
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those that got a lot of pushback but generally speaking sometimes I just find it insane that people can even get to
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that level of granularity if it was me the CX-5 versus the whatever which sales
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person was nicer just just this is not a decision you need my help with do you
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have any regrets from things you've said in videos in the past things you wish you didn't maybe wish
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you edited out or regret when I make a mistake oh yeah you feel like this too like
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and and sometimes they're small but sometimes like I still lie awake at night you know
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um but no I I don't think I've ever been wrong you know yeah there's like there's
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being a little bit wrong where it's like maybe you slip and and say the wrong number or the wrong part name or
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whatever but it doesn't substantially change the point you were trying to make and then there's like being wrong where
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you're like this is bad when it wasn't bad or this is yeah right relying right
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making a making an objective individual mistake like a number or something those are annoying I always wish I could take
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them out I guess the flood of email starts coming in immediately and I'm like oh crap but actually being wrong
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about a review I don't know I I like to think that I got them all right the viewers may have different opinions but that's kind of the whole point of this
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you know that's kind of what we're doing here uh I wanted to ask you about your background because you came from
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uh I guess I would say a more traditional media I mean you're writing basically before you're making videos
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and then went to being a YouTuber and in this Tech world
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there is there are Tech writers and there are Tech YouTubers and the tech
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YouTubers I feel like are still trying to earn some level of respect and and
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and consideration that traditional media have always had do you find now that
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you've been in both worlds do you find there's a big difference between doing written and doing YouTube and the way
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you talk to Brands and companies for example you know that's a really interesting question a lot of people ask me just on a general level how do the
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brands handle YouTube but it's a really interesting question the difference between writing and and YouTube one one important point is I never wrote for
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print um and in the car space print is still probably this isn't true in the tech
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space anymore I hope but print is is still in the car space sort of viewed as like the the old medium that's the most
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important the brand still view it as the most important which I think is beyond insane but
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um compared to digital writing versus versus YouTube I don't see a huge
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difference but I still have an enormous amount of trouble getting some Brands to to care about YouTube and I can look at them and say look I'll get two three
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million views this is more than the circulation these magazines that you're bending over backwards to try to impress
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um you know this is going to be a big thing and it's still like you're an influencer
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you're not a journalist we don't you know some for some of them some of the brands have clearly figured it out but
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it's amazing because there are studies out there that say over 80 percent of new car Shoppers will watch at least one video before buying and I think it's
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probably more like 90 plus but you know I don't know who's not right and I try
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to tell them that and it's just kind of an old there's still an old mentality of that sort of thing I imagine in the tech space it's a little bit better I hope um
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I mean there is some element of both sides to it like I I think it probably
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depends on the demographic I think for a lot of people under probably about 30 somewhere around my age maybe uh they
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look at YouTube and they look at videos just as seriously as they would anything else if we're buying a phone for example
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like you're gonna watch a new video about the phone before it comes out or before you buy it right but you know
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there's obviously a lot of older people like my my grandparents basically can't find a way to acknowledge anything that
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I do unless it's printed somewhere and they're like okay now that's cool that is real like that's very cool so I
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always found that funny and I I've recently started contributing to Top Gear magazine which is a printed
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magazine and that was the same like sort of experience I've been making these autofocus videos for like a couple
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months now it's not as many but Top Gear magazine oh that's that's established
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that's traditional so that that's always it's always been there it is kind of funny I um when when this started and
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people start coming up to me on the street recognize me and said people people would say oh you're internet famous and I I I've tried to it's an
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interesting thing when you get to a certain level I mean you it's the internet is it now I I don't know like
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TV actors anymore really like when I was a kid you grew up with like friends and Seinfeld you knew all those people would be if you ever saw one on the street
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which you I would be like oh my God this is the craziest thing in the world but that stuff is fractured and splintered so much that like this is kind of like
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what it is now but yes it's very hard to explain that to older generations and I still have older relatives being like so
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are you still doing that that video stuff still yes he's still doing that that's Mom but I'm like yeah yeah I'm doing it
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yeah all right next up a chat with a fellow Creator as well this one in the tech space this is with Quinn from
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snazzy Labs do you think uh full self-driving is
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like the future of all cars on the road like Tesla can get really good at this as good as they want but there's still
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going to be a very large percent of other cars on the road not doing self-driving for many many more years is
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that like a future you can imagine oh absolutely I mean the question I I think
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that we again get to is a when do we reach the point where in all instances
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computers and self-driving cars are safer than human drivers up until that they're always safer I don't think
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there's going to be regulatory requirements or whatever and then the other side of the equation is when does it become accessible to everyone because
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if I can only buy a 20 000 car and I'm used to and now I need a car that drives
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itself you know how long is it going to take for this Tech that's in Tesla's now or in Tesla's 10 years from now going to
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come down Market to the masses and I think it's going to be decades before nobody's really driving
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their cars anymore I mean it might not even happen in our lifetime um but I'm a bit uh
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more skeptical than a lot of people certainly more than Elon Musk um and so so maybe it's coming sooner
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than we think um and we've certainly made huge steps in the last few years and Tesla's system
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make no mistake is impressive but I think it's going to be years probably at least more than five
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probably ten before you can get in your Tesla you put the address in where you want to go and you don't have to watch
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the road a single time it's a long time away yeah it feels like every year at CES we see like a a prototype of a car where
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like the driver's seat faces backwards and the screen is like a projection and you don't even look at the outside of the car it's like that's very optimistic
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and yeah I applaud that optimism but I don't know how soon that's going to happen I feel like the the approach
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towards everyone going electric is much more quickly happening and that's
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frankly more interesting to me yeah and I think that that kind of ultimately will affect the world at a at a greater
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I think that's more valuable to the planet and to civilization moving to more sustainable fuels and electric
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vehicles than it is to to fix full self-driving now don't get me wrong I think it's important if we can get to
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the point where we've reduced the millions of of automobile crashes that happen every year and and millions of
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deaths that happen that's awesome but uh it chicken before the egg I guess like
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you gotta one thing at a time and I think we're still a ways out and the transition to electric vehicles is is
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probably more likely but the great thing that Tesla's demonstrated is that you can kind of do both at the same time so
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I know the the Cyber truck was going to be a lot of people's first truck also yeah probably for a lot of the same
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reasons like if you didn't think you needed a truck at all but You Were Somehow enamored with other parts of it
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like the fact that it's an EV or it has this this crazy design or the the quad in the back whatever else it is about
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that it was it was going to be a lot of people's first truck um but I guess
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do you want me to say something controversial I would love that I would love that I mean I think that the F-150
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no I'm gonna get in trouble by people the F-150 is the truck you want if you want a kind of everyday truck I'm gonna
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haul lumber from Home Depot occasionally I want to go to the grocery store but if you're Towing stuff every day you're not buying
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an F-150 you're buying a super duty uh or a heavy duty truck from one of these larger Brands and so these these early
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electric vehicles are not going to replace that because those are people that need to tow 20 000 pounds hundreds of miles a day and they're out on a
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ranch and they're not people that are interested in these small form factor trucks and I think that the F-150 is
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probably unique in the sense that it's the only truck I guess the entry level uh so Silverado is in the Tacoma kind is
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but they're these these small trucks that are mostly just bought by normal people that go to the grocery store but
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they are powerful and capable enough to tow a boat or whatever and these early kind of EV trucks are more grocery store
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Getters than they are I want to haul you know the haze and Bales or I don't know
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what people do with drugs that was my thing it's like okay I've seen all these videos about people who are like this is why I have a truck this is why I use a
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truck anytime I need to carry something or like I need to put a bunch of rocks in the back I'm like I've never seen any
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of this happening but okay I'll Trust it um but yeah you're right the second I
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learned there's definitely a a name for I forgot the name of this phenomenon but when you learn something you start
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seeing it everywhere oh we did the video on the F-150 Lightning and we learned about how popular it was and then I just
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I couldn't stop seeing F-150s everywhere all over the highways at every grocery store there's F-150s all over the road
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that's the best selling car in America it's the number one selling car number one selling vehicle and that made it
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much more apparent that it's like no these this isn't like the the Landscaping truck or like the actual
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like heavy duty use this is just like people who just get them who just want one yeah they're fine and uh yeah it
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turns out I can put like two bicycles in the back of my car without any like equipment and just drive around with
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them so I've never needed a pickup truck but maybe one day I'll carry rocks around I don't know we'll see all right next up a
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conversation I couldn't wait to have which is like your favorite Creator's favorite Creator and I mean this because I also love their channel uh they just
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talk about creators in general the Creator economy I got to chat with Khan and Samir
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there is one thing that I think we would like to come back that would help us a lot and that's and I get why they took
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it away but annotations coming back for us would be huge I mean ultimately being able to re-upload a video in the same
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position would be the best but I also kind of understand why you know you don't put that in but the amount of
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times we make these like very very small mistakes that don't change the video at all like we say the new iPhone has
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titanium rails instead of aluminum rails and the amount of people that call us out for stuff like that if we could just
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toss an annotation in there like good for engagement though uh yeah engagement yeah that is true yeah it just gets to
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this point where like I'd love to just put a little like asterisk like we meant the Snapchat any 88 not the 887 or
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something like that yeah I think in the tech world that specifically it would be so useful like product names are eight
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long eight words long and you have to get every single one right and specs are very very long and very detailed numbers and you just want to be able to just add
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a little asterisk inside a video and when there is one the best I can do is pin a comment in the top of the description but there's no way to just
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or just tweet about it annotations but that's not on YouTube so it doesn't really help I don't get why a Partners
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like having partners like getting annotations I remember the days of you know like 12 annotations or a full
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screen clear one so when you click on it it brings you to a link get rid of that but yeah partners with
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annotations feel like it would make sense I do think that in in a tech review like purposefully
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sometimes not not not the tech itself but even like fumbling or saying a word that's
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completely off at times like would create a lot of like you know retention of like wait what did he just say yeah
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we did it one time in a short which was really fun yeah we said we said the head
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of Robert Kinsel YouTube like we should have said the head of YouTube Robert Kinsel said this and we said Robert
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canceled tripled yes yes that's funny I think some people assume we'll say
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that's why we're doing it yeah I think people assume that that's what's happening when it really it's like we just went from reviewing a phone to
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reviewing a camera to reviewing a car to reviewing a tablet right it's like I forgot that it's the Triple Eight my bad
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um so annotations I'll put in any if anyone on YouTube is watching this annotation we'll take it we'll test it
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for you yeah I also think we're gonna see video replies make a comeback really yeah I liked video responses because now
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that they have YouTube shorts so that's really interesting that so they can tie in so yeah people would reply to videos
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with shorts with a short yeah yeah and that would create more creators because
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there's this whole ecosystem where even people like us we talk about YouTube creators so you could just go into the comments drop a short video yeah yeah
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and start building an audience that was a really big part I mean you see the way Tick Tock does it now where videos are embedded in comments but like that was a
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that was a whole YouTube ecosystem thing there were reply channels yeah and under any video you could either so if I was
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the creator I could enable anyone to submit a video reply and they'd all just show up but then people started spamming
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them or people would just like spam replies or whatever so you could only approve uh you could set it to approve
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only and then approve whichever ones you wanted and so you would often find that the biggest creators would always
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approve replies from the same creators and then those creators who were just replying to people would have their own
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ecosystem because of the people they replied to which is fascinating and I really like the idea of bringing shorts
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back as video reply or bringing video replies back as shorts because if we made a video about you and then we
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approved you to be able to make a video to buy if we got something wrong or if you wanted to add something yeah and
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then it's on my channel so people link to what I just made a video about interesting that's actually really good it's honestly the best idea I've heard
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Four Shorts yeah actually I'd love to talk to you guys about shorts to do them we've been pretty um
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negative about them maybe I mean are we've been vocal about them all day but we don't really do them they're very
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against not against but they're not like they're very different they're definitely not our original content and
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that's like on the main channel the number one thing we know is like we have a format and we're sticking with it and
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we love it so obviously it's a 40 second video doesn't fit in that form a vertical 40-second video and the same feed as our regular videos it feels off
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yeah but you guys have you've done shorts on the main Channel you guys have experimented with shorts in the past how
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would you summarize first of all your experience with YouTube shorts because I've had I've heard variety of versions of responses
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very positive yes generally positive I would say that for us
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you know we had um we had a Creator on our show who goes by Nas daily and he said something to us
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about platforms which is really interesting around like just the the concept of supply and demand there are
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some platforms that have enough supply of content and enough demand they've
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reached equilibrium there's 50 000 pieces of videos uploaded per day and 500 million viewers per day like that's
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average of 10 views per video or whatever that's equilibrium platforms there are platforms that don't have
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equilibrium right where they have incredible demand for views not enough supply for Content
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that is the place you want to be in and that's why creators have such big opportunity uh because the platform
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wants that content they want to experiment with it they want to try it yeah but on the other side of it for us what
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we notice is it takes us a really long time to make a video but we have a lot of thoughts like we have quick takes that we want to get out
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and yes there's you know there's a vlog or like just pop open the camera and start talking but then they're still
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editing and like they're just so much and I think vertical short form content lowered our barrier entry to just have
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like some forgiveness around it and be like it's okay it's just a vertical video Yeah and we shoot it straight through the phone and we do some editing
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but it is this first opportunity for us in a long time to film something and get
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it out on our YouTube channel in the same day so if something happens we can react to it yeah and from our
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conversations with people at YouTube the you know the the shorts feed and the
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main Channel feed like short form videos and long form videos are kind of bifurcated in the back end and so it's
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not it's not one in the same it's not like you know they know it's a different type of video it's not going to bring your average view duration down or
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anything like that so for us we were like okay if there's no real big risk to the channel yeah
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why not like why not try them and from what we've seen is you know in the past 28 days I think
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we've done around like 25 million views on the channel and there's like I think above 60 of that is coming from shorts
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and um that has just generally made our entire
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catalog of content uh generate more viewership because there's just more traffic to our channel right and so if
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you think about it as like a retail shop like our channel is like a retail shop we've just increased our traffic significantly uh and when that happens
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then they're going to look at other stuff in our shop too right and so they're going to look at our back catalog they're going to look at all of our and and our subscribers have grown
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our just overall brand exposure has has grown because of shorts I mean one of our shorts has 15 million views and that
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converted about 16 or 17 000 subscribers wow okay and the value prop in the short is you know explaining things that are
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happening on YouTube and in media so if someone likes that and that's their first entrance to us yeah
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makes a lot of sense I mean I so my experience has just been watching other
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people experiment with shorts and so I've seen people try it on the main Channel I think I probably will
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eventually start a channel just to experiment with shorts because I have a lot of ideas that I think would be good
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shorts that channel should be called mkb shorts it's like the shirt version yeah MKV HD
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but but also like the studio to me feels like a space to experiment like why not
00:25:37
experiment yeah with shorts on the studio Channel true and especially for me I look at it as like right now again
00:25:44
that like the demand is high and the supply is just catching up right that's what I was gonna say so like there's
00:25:50
going to be a moment where that swaps viewership's Gonna Change it's gonna they're gonna they're gonna test and
00:25:55
iterate and test and iterate and there's just a moment right now where they're just serving everyone the same
00:26:01
small amount of shirts yeah or they're just like at least from what we've seen we've seen creators who have just taken
00:26:07
shorts and grown to six million Subs true there's a Creator called Dental digest have you seen him no he's like a
00:26:13
dental Creator and every short form videos is very similar it's it's like one format
00:26:18
where he test different brushes and sees how well they brush his teeth he's a dental student he grew from zero to six
00:26:24
million Subs this year um that's a while all through shorts and now he's making long-form content right
00:26:30
and it's trending and it's doing well yeah one of his one of his longer form videos was uh number one on trending and
00:26:37
so he basically used shorts to build a platform I think the thing that's dangerous is if the shorts have a
00:26:43
completely different function than the long form video right it has to all fall on the same value prop and if it does then
00:26:48
why not I think it's YouTube's play to get creators from Tick Tock over to
00:26:53
YouTube as you saying it it makes perfect sense because I I've heard from multiple different people you know Tick
00:26:59
Tock creators are getting huge but ultimately even the biggest tick tockers want to be YouTubers but converting that
00:27:05
from a whole different app is is hard so if you're in the app already and you can just be on the same channel and there's
00:27:11
the long form of contact that they now converted for that's perfect they just took away the barrier to entry which was
00:27:16
really high now you can literally just repurpose a lot of your tick tocks yeah download them take the logo off upload
00:27:23
them to YouTube shorts and you could have if you've if you've been on Tick Tock for the last three years you could have years worth of valuable content
00:27:30
ready to go also though you don't have to upload a thumbnail for shorts I mean we just don't even do it we don't have
00:27:36
to but you can you can yeah so if you go to our like videos tab it's not very
00:27:41
aesthetic anymore right it's like it is just these like vertical shorts mixed in
00:27:46
with like our edited thumbnails so yeah that is not very aesthetic but the fact that it's just playing in a you know
00:27:52
auto play yeah so you're not really thinking about getting that thumbnail on the shorts you're not thinking about the packaging because actually the audience
00:27:58
isn't even choosing to watch it the app is choosing the audience and so it's like the inverse of the traditional
00:28:05
YouTube video and I think for that it's it's really interesting and I think YouTube
00:28:10
the thing that YouTube has from an opportunity perspective is that Tick Tock like you mentioned a lot of tick tock creators are coming over to YouTube
00:28:16
to like graduate for their career right and we've heard the classic you know comparison on Twitter all the time of
00:28:21
like would you rather have 50 000 YouTube subscribers or 5 million Tick Tock followers and almost it's like so
00:28:27
amazing that it always Trends towards 50 000 YouTube subscribers just because you can make a career on YouTube so I think
00:28:33
this is the play to say hey we are the We Are YouTube we are the better place
00:28:38
to launch your career so we'll have these short form videos too and so if you were thinking about Tick Tock just do it over here because
00:28:45
then you're already building that Foundation like Dental digest where it's like now you have six million subscribers now you have a career it's
00:28:51
YouTube yeah already there you're already there yeah I think that one point you brought up about supply and demand is really interesting the the
00:28:57
when I see new features get launched especially by YouTube but kind of by any Social Network I always really like diving into how much it looks like
00:29:05
they've embraced this new feature does it look like they're just kind of trying it on the side or does it look like they
00:29:11
are building part of their site around it and to me shorts does look like
00:29:16
YouTube is like committing really hard to making sure it's a big thing sometimes I see features where like you
00:29:23
know for example there's podcasts on Facebook or like there's a video podcast on Spotify and I don't really see that many of them and I kind of wonder how
00:29:30
committed they are because I see the feature ad but I don't want to Pivot my whole business around something that might disappear in a year
00:29:37
um so I am glad to see shorts get the attention that I think that it's rightly
00:29:42
deserving and I'm I'm definitely going to want to experiment with a little bit you know those restaurants and strip malls that say like we have these in La
00:29:49
I don't know if you guys have these here it says like Chinese food and donuts this sounds amazing but I want one yeah
00:29:57
I see where you're going okay all right you see where I'm going but basically like for me personally I want to go to a Chinese restaurant for
00:30:03
Chinese food I want to go to Donut shop for donuts yeah so when I think about apps that are trying to do a lot I think
00:30:09
that like it overwhelms me I'm like I are you are you a specialist in this is this the thing you make are you trying
00:30:15
to serve me Chinese food and donuts at the same time yeah because you saw an opportunity so I think for me as a consumer I I I'm so specific like I
00:30:22
listen to podcasts on Spotify I watch video on YouTube I might also be the old guy who's just like doesn't want to
00:30:28
change my ways I worry about that but but that's just who I am uh and and I think a lot of consumers are like that
00:30:34
too where it's Simplicity wins a lot in singular Focus wins a lot of the time so
00:30:40
yeah YouTube was based in short form video when we first started in 2011 we were uploading 20 second videos to
00:30:46
YouTube because that's where short form video lived there's no Instagram video there was no there's no tick tocks there's no Vine at the time so short
00:30:52
form video lived on YouTube so I think they actually do have an expertise in it where they can solve how to serve your videos and then
00:31:00
their video monetization is better than other platforms so they will also solve down the line how those are monetized I
00:31:07
think it's only a matter of time until you know you open up the Instagram app and you're just in reels and potentially
00:31:12
even with YouTube as well because it's an extra step that keeps you away from A View keeps you away from Creator
00:31:17
Discovery right all right it's time for a quick ad break we'll be right back
00:31:26
thank you okay next up is a chat with uh with Sam
00:31:33
and Micah from so crispy media this was hot off the heels of them helping to edit and produce the Mr Beast squid game
00:31:41
video that now has like 300 million views or something ridiculous probably my favorite Mr Beast video ever uh so
00:31:48
this is a chat with them our Channel audience really likes tech gadgets and they really like film and
00:31:54
production and you guys are bringing that about as close together as possible I mean we we do a lot of uh a lot of
00:32:00
practical effects in here like almost all the stuff we do is practical we have a Motion Graphics person but that's mostly titles and stuff like that you
00:32:07
guys are bringing that just right on top of each other with like motion tracking and all that and it's fascinating to
00:32:12
watch I think our audience would super super enjoy that and I was dying to see behind the stuff did behind the scenes
00:32:18
stuff of all of your things Sam you might have a better way to explain this I'll take a song but there's kind of
00:32:24
this Mantra that we found that like we love to be able to like kind of like I didn't explain like like
00:32:30
find the marriage of technology and Innovative technology and how can you apply that to storytelling like a lot of
00:32:36
it boils down to like this idea that like you know we can take Tech that's you know being used by Massive Hollywood
00:32:42
Studios and find ways to democratize it to be able to allow content creators to utilize it like a great example is like
00:32:47
motion capture right like you know five four years ago that was very inaccessible to now for Content creators
00:32:52
like now we've been able to access motion control suits that are cheaper and we can use them and now we can find ways to like integrate those in our
00:32:59
content so we love to be able to find those like whether it's Innovative Tech or these little moments where you know new software's coming out whatever to be
00:33:05
able to say oh hey actually let's try to take this and let's tell a story with it and that's kind of like the thought process of how it eventually evolves in
00:33:11
these short films like we have a lot of really fun short-term ideas for the sake of like oh that would be a hilarious short film but more often than not
00:33:17
there's even Tech behind it that we can think oh now that this is possible let's make a film I feel like that's the
00:33:24
robots for us like that too it's like we have the robot now we think think of an intro shot that we want to do of it or
00:33:29
just we're begging for a video that we can use the the robot arm yeah he brings up an interesting point because it is
00:33:36
kind of about like a marriage of tech where we have we for a while we we've always like we
00:33:42
don't make a lot of content but when we do we try to make it something new and you're like refreshing with what we've
00:33:49
recently learned so a good instance of this is around 2015 2016 we really got into VR and then we did a cool uh VR uh
00:33:58
series with Google Daydream where we made like three pieces of content so we have like 25 minutes of content where
00:34:03
it's literally in stereoscopic VR and like that might not sound that you might not know what that would mean but for
00:34:10
video wise like for video sake making a YouTube piece of content in 360 degree with stereo that's the equivalent of
00:34:17
making like six videos per one video because you're literally doing a left eye and a right eye and it's and then it
00:34:22
had a stereo or it had a spatial audio so when you turned yeah as well it felt
00:34:27
very immersive I think this is the year I also did my only 360 video yeah like when it was like a huge deal and I did a
00:34:33
studio tour in 360 and I had sort of like navigate around like having this camera in the middle and walking around
00:34:38
it and and I remember that it was like back when the like the Odyssey was a thing
00:34:43
right was that what it was I think that's what we used yeah super cool stuff but yeah we we loved like getting involved with that and then figuring out
00:34:49
a way to make our content with that so when you watch those videos it's like those were a production Nightmare and I
00:34:55
think if anyone who is like making a YouTube channel where we're like yeah we need to get content out regularly we would have never done that yeah yeah
00:35:00
okay so the Mr B squid games project I think was the maybe the perfect
00:35:06
combination of like how you would get maximum interest in a behind the scenes
00:35:11
because most Mr Beast videos and I've talked to Jimmy about this it's like people want to know how it was done and
00:35:18
kind of the most amazing part of the video is that it was real it actually happened he really did say that word a
00:35:25
million times to a camera he really did run a marathon in the biggest shoes like that's actually what happened and that's
00:35:30
the amazing part of the video and this latest one was like all right we all know what squid games is we've seen it
00:35:36
there's these crazy challenges and he's gonna put real people through these challenges to find an overall winner at
00:35:42
the end and watching that video to me I'm in the mode that I sort of go in
00:35:47
when I go to watch Mr Beast video which is all right this is going to be real let's see how I pulled it off and so
00:35:52
slowly my mind starts to realize more and more oh there's a little bit of VFX happening in this video this is really
00:35:58
interesting um I'm curious multiple people here said no it's good that's what it is so I mean
00:36:06
if that should be a compliment to y'all hayato is like no this is real I was like I think it's close to real but
00:36:12
there's some some help involved yeah it's interesting because it's such a like hidden like it's interesting because
00:36:18
it's like in a way the better we do our jobs the less people realize we're doing the job always the joke it's like if we
00:36:24
do our job well you're not supposed to know we did our job yeah which is awesome and hurts at the same time right so it's like it's like a great thing and
00:36:31
a bad thing is it's like oh it's awesome you didn't notice those VFX but also the same time it's like hey like you know we did do a lot of work to make that it's
00:36:37
kind of like a like a really well done video game you can tell when something runs really smoothly it's just great and
00:36:42
immersive and when someone steps weird over a curb it's like yeah what were they thinking this is terrible and just
00:36:47
broke emergency exactly and going going back to the practicality of Mr Beast like
00:36:52
I think it's the perfect marriage when he added these visual effects because everything that you saw was still done practically it was all still done and
00:37:00
like we can tell you that stuff the stuff he does is real like yep it was done practically and it was it's like
00:37:05
incredible and we are really just bringing in our style and being able to allow them to do stuff that is
00:37:11
impossible yeah you know it's like an enhanced yeah version yes yeah like I want I I'm trying to imagine like you
00:37:17
guys like put yourselves in our shoes for a second when we're there and we know like for VFX it's really important to shoot things a certain way and do
00:37:23
things a certain way and you know think like the footage you get is like you know that's that's our canvas that we paint on you know and if that canvas is
00:37:30
perfectly white and clean and ready to go and it's like you know we can we can do whatever we want that's fantastic if the canvas gets muddied that's a problem
00:37:37
so it's a little bit terrifying going into a production where they're literally and this is completely true
00:37:42
there is no take two like you go in and when the cameras rolling the game's played you get what you get so there's a
00:37:48
little bit of that like oh crap kind of feeling of like when you're getting this all set up we're like oh man like you
00:37:54
know let's let's we have one chance to knock this out and do it right and so we're really fortunate like the footage
00:37:59
came out fantastic like you know the final end product we're super proud of so but it was definitely a little bit it was pretty scary getting up to that
00:38:05
there was a moment I think before the first game in your video where he comes up to you and is like everything gonna
00:38:10
go well oh yeah at least from your side okay good you can look out there man
00:38:15
let's do it right man you all ready you're ready for this and there's like a pause for a second I was like they're
00:38:21
nervous that's gotta be terrifying to like go through all of this man it yeah I mean it's it's interesting because you
00:38:27
know we do with so much preparation to like you know get everything right but there's variables you can't control you
00:38:33
know I mean like it's just like when you're out there and you're filming like you know the game is gonna go on all right next up is a chat with a fellow
00:38:39
Creator again this one is Hank Green how do you feel about Twitter as a
00:38:47
platform Twitter's Twitter's just sort of like all over the place at this point I actually really like Twitter and
00:38:52
there's not that many pieces to review but I use it more than I think any other social platform other than Tick Tock
00:38:59
right now yeah Twitter is such an interesting case because it is like far more influential than it is successful
00:39:06
especially in you know by like market cap um metrics like Google and uh and you
00:39:13
know even Tick Tock and of course Facebook just dwarf the valuation of of Twitter but Twitter is extraordinarily
00:39:20
influential and important and like the the people who use it are oftentimes
00:39:27
um defining culture and really in specific and uh powerful places
00:39:32
um it's big in journalist circles and then it's big in DC and so uh it's a
00:39:37
it's a huge deal uh and and I like I like it as a platform and I hate it as a platform I like it when I when I can
00:39:43
convince myself to use it the in the ways that I enjoy it and I hate it when I am subject to its whims and and get
00:39:50
drawn into things that I you know know aren't my lane and I know
00:39:57
um are just me being mad about something that I'm oversimplifying in my brain which is something that all social media
00:40:02
are good at um and I like I just feel like you know there's a beauty in Twitter's uh
00:40:09
long-term inability to innovate yeah because it just remains what it is
00:40:16
but there's also like a just a huge uh you know missed opportunity there like
00:40:21
Twitter owned Vine and like they had this extraordinarily interesting
00:40:26
powerful short form video platform do you know how many employees Vine had when it closed that's a really good
00:40:33
question I could guess I'm gonna guess Vine had a hundred employees had 50 employees I
00:40:40
had fewer employees than I do wow that's insane that is incredible just just try
00:40:46
to just invest in it just figure it out but like they can't like they just can't you know Jack Dorsey obviously has
00:40:53
always been very drawn in many directions and not interested always in focusing on one thing and I think that that was not
00:41:00
all the love to jack if you're listening no I think it's not it's a hard way to be a CEO and I know that because I'm the
00:41:06
same way um and uh I think that there were there are a lot of missed opportunities with
00:41:11
Twitter but at the same time I kind of like that it's like chugging along making zero dollars
00:41:17
um having having not a lot of intrusive advertising and and not like launching
00:41:24
shorts like the moment that that story becomes interesting like all the other platforms have yeah yeah no they kept it
00:41:30
simple for sure I mean that's kind of how it started it started with just like 140 characters or 160 or whatever it was
00:41:35
and text message exactly um yeah but I think maybe the most interesting platform of the hour is Tick
00:41:43
Tock I mean it's yeah it's ever consuming what was the stat now it just passed
00:41:51
it passed something right it passed uh one of the other largest sites in the world to be like one of the top five
00:41:56
biggest sites and I think by traffic they're probably one of the biggest period
00:42:01
um Tick Tock is fascinating to me so we've got these top these couple top
00:42:07
creators that are household names we've got the dimelios Addison Rays all these
00:42:12
at the time everyone knows who these people are they're basically broken into mainstream and then you have the sort of
00:42:18
upper tier of of the biggest tick tock creators and I I pay attention to a lot
00:42:24
of them because the the for you page serves me videos from them all the time and it seems like they're all sort of
00:42:30
itching to graduate from Tick Tock and it's kind of fascinating to see and a
00:42:36
lot of them go to make a YouTube channel a lot of them graduate from social media in general and they go on to do TV stuff
00:42:42
you talked about this in your video but I'm curious for your like quick take on like why are all the biggest tick
00:42:48
talkers trying to just get out of Tick Tock even though Tick Tock is massive
00:42:54
and gaining momentum the way it is I mean so there's two reasons one is you
00:43:00
know the the story that you feel like you're a part of and this was a thing when when I was coming up on YouTube
00:43:05
Every YouTuber wanted to be on TV and so like they wanted to be a part of the story that their Heroes were a part of
00:43:10
rather than the story that they were inside of which is just how we are and that is a bad reason like like in my
00:43:17
experience YouTubers who focused on YouTube did way better than YouTube YouTubers who were like how do I do TV
00:43:22
now there's not a lot of examples of YouTubers who made that transition well um but uh there are examples of
00:43:29
certainly people who started on Vine and made the transition to YouTube really effectively and have become household
00:43:36
names um and I think that that is also a definitely an option for for tick
00:43:42
talkers and the the other reason is a very good reason which is that uh you
00:43:47
can't it's it is more valuable to be a YouTuber than to be a tick tocker and that is both economically like you make
00:43:55
more money per minute of time people spend on your content but also because you develop a deeper relationship with your audience because you have them for
00:44:01
more than 15 seconds or a minute or three minutes at the outside and that uh
00:44:09
that is how you um that is how you like you know Tick
00:44:14
Tock is very intentionally a user first platform and and like to the extent that
00:44:21
um it will sacrifice everything else for the user experience like ads are extremely easy to skip by the content is
00:44:28
um like it's like I know that you I know that deep in your heart you feel like you would want to give that Creator who
00:44:36
you like Vibe with you feel like you want to give them more of your time but you don't really you want to watch
00:44:41
this guy hurt himself on a snowboard let's be honest with ourselves and they're they're maybe they're right so
00:44:47
so like they are giving you what you not what you would choose but what you actually want and that's wild and so
00:44:54
that's uh that's why it's such a sticky platform but it makes it a a more a harder place to build a business as a
00:45:00
Creator and to build an audience as a Creator so it's harder to develop a deeper relationship with people
00:45:06
um which is democratizing it gives it creates way more opportunity for people to constantly be breaking in and getting
00:45:12
that first exposure to audience and to uh attention but it is because of that
00:45:19
you know opportunity for breakthrough you're there's always somebody ready to take your place uh and so you have to
00:45:26
figure out how to convert those people into something except for just a tick
00:45:31
tock audience and you know YouTube is the best place for that yeah and with YouTube launching and and being
00:45:38
successful about shorts it does seem a little a bit like maybe there's it's amazing to think that this is the way
00:45:44
I'm thinking now but maybe there is a threat to to tick tock in YouTube's short strategy interesting um whereas
00:45:51
you know a year ago I would have been thinking like you know is Tick Tock a threat to YouTube now I'm like I mean
00:45:56
abs of course it's a huge threat to YouTube it is the it is the first threat to YouTube really like Facebook couldn't
00:46:03
take them on but Tick Tock can and the you know that
00:46:08
uh now I'm thinking like how do how does YouTube Take market share away from Tick
00:46:13
Tock because yeah YouTube is much better at making money um I was just about to say the platform
00:46:20
I have a stat just recently that YouTube had a larger quarter four of last year
00:46:26
than Netflix in Revenue I think it was like eight and a half billion dollars of Revenue YouTube is making a lot of money
00:46:33
now it costs a lot of money to run but they're making a lot of money um and also one of the points you
00:46:39
brought up earlier that I I've thought about a lot is like the the intrinsic value of an audience on one platform
00:46:44
versus the other like would you rather have 10 million views on a tick tock or one million views on a YouTube video and
00:46:52
it's kind of still waited for the YouTube video at that point yeah yeah so that's always been really interesting
00:46:57
and you look at the numbers actually the the biggest piece of content I have ever created by views is a tick tock of
00:47:05
course it is uh and it's like 33 use on a seven second video or something crazy like that yeah
00:47:12
um but yeah if you're if you find yourself like if you come up as a tick tocker you've built your your brand but
00:47:18
not your business necessarily you do as a smart person want to build a business around it on something more stable
00:47:25
um like a YouTube channel so it does make a lot of sense to what we see it being built are you you make tick tocks
00:47:30
do you do you consider yourself a tick talker at this point you've made enough of them you have like a presence there
00:47:36
at this point I it it would be almost embarrassing to not call myself a tick tocker like it'd be like I'm trying to
00:47:42
pretend I'm not a dick talker yeah um and the other reason I kind of consider myself a tick talker is because I really
00:47:49
admire a lot of the people I follow on Tick Tock and and we have you know in
00:47:54
the same way as my colleagues on YouTube you know talked a bit on on Direct messages and stuff and I just think that
00:48:00
they're so cool and interesting and smart in the way that they are approaching their their content and
00:48:05
Their audience that like I feel like if I if I the only reason I don't have to
00:48:11
call myself a tick tocker would be like that I don't think it's it's a uh
00:48:16
that I would that I'm embarrassed by it and when I think about those people I'm like I'd be I'd be like almost um
00:48:24
uh deriding their creativity and thoughtful content if I pretend like I'm
00:48:30
not one of them I mean it used to be embarrassing to say you're a YouTuber and now it's it's got a different
00:48:35
connotation every other every month but now it's like oh nice like I understand what that is uh which is that's like
00:48:42
kind of funny because I've said to people I don't know that like an Uber driver if you just say you're a YouTuber
00:48:47
they're like oh yeah I know I know some of those like they understand it already all right next up I actually got to talk with the inventor
00:48:53
of Wordle I still play Wordle every morning to this day I know not a lot of you guys are still on that grind but I
00:48:59
am and I also got to chat with Josh Wardle himself I went to
00:49:06
powerlanguage.co.uk and I played the world game that I have played so often uh I've never gotten it in two before so
00:49:13
I was really excited because on my first guess I got three greens and I really thought this was it I thought it was finally happening I was
00:49:20
gonna get three Greens on the second I was gonna get all of them green on the second one uh my second guess was wrong
00:49:25
though and then my third guess was wrong and then my fourth guess was wrong and so I got in five out of six and I was
00:49:31
kind of mad but I also felt I posted it on the internet and I felt sort of united with the rest of the world in our
00:49:38
Collective frustration so um today we have the man responsible for that United Collective frustration Josh Wardle
00:49:45
thanks for joining us on waveform today thank you for having me on so I guess
00:49:51
first of all your your name is very close to the Wordle game it's or it's
00:49:57
one letter off basically but well done yeah yeah please uh please break down the the background of of I guess how you
00:50:04
how you created it why you created Wordle this sort of origin story I'm sure you've probably told it a million times
00:50:10
yeah yeah so on the name front yeah it's a play on my name it's a word game it was one of those things I'm sure you've
00:50:15
had this with a project where you start it and you just give it a dumb it needs a name you give it a dumb name and you're like this is a dumb name I'll
00:50:21
change it in the future and then obviously like a bunch of things about this project the domain for instance powerlanguage.com UK forward slash word
00:50:28
or probably not where you want to launch a viral game uh given that no one can remember any of that and they have to Google it uh but yeah so uh I actually
00:50:37
this was a game that I made for my uh partner she and I really enjoy playing
00:50:42
word games uh especially some of the ones that the New York Times offers so
00:50:48
they have daily crosswords a game called spelling bee that's kind of uh you play once a day and it's a word game so my
00:50:55
goal was to make a game for her that she would enjoy playing and Wordle was it like I I made a prototype of it a long
00:51:02
time ago um back in 2013 and it it it was similar
00:51:07
but had some key differences and I basically just put it away I shared it with a few friends people were like yeah not really and then uh at the beginning
00:51:15
of 2021 we were playing a lot of games I got a bit more confident as a developer and I was like I think that there was
00:51:20
that idea had some legs so I dusted It Off and I made it and it was literally just the two of us playing it for six months
00:51:26
and then I introduced it some friends and family in the UK and then
00:51:32
kind of November it just started uh it got picked up by a few like Tech bloggers and then it really really took
00:51:38
off uh beginning of December and then yeah it's been a been a rollerco roller coaster so it started really just with a
00:51:45
couple people you shared it with and did it always have that uh that share metric at the end because as soon as I saw
00:51:51
those uh those bars I knew that was going to accelerated but at one point did that get added
00:51:57
yeah so that was added sometime in late November I think so what happened a tech
00:52:04
blogger Andy bio he runs uh waxy.org where he kind of collects interesting things online he had tweeted about it
00:52:11
and posted a blog post about it and it got picked up in a New York Times newsletter and then as a result of that
00:52:17
for reasons that I don't understand it got really popular in New Zealand and I've heard about New Zealand that it has
00:52:23
a very interconnected twitterverse right doesn't not many people live in New Zealand comparatively to somewhere like
00:52:29
the US so people tend to be very connected and at this point that share grid the Emoji share grid that you're talking about didn't exist so people
00:52:35
would just say I got the world in three you know and uh a player over there who
00:52:41
I don't know a woman named Elizabeth S she started typing out her results as
00:52:47
that emoji grid and then I saw other people copying it so people literally opening their emoji keyboard and then
00:52:53
going back and forth between the two and typing it out so I was like I can integrate that into the you know into the game really easily and then that
00:53:00
obviously has had a huge uh impact because it gives you this artifact that's even though I did a bunch of
00:53:06
things and I did this throughout world I did a bunch of things that are the opposite of what you're meant to do if you're trying to make something go viral
00:53:11
or grow like there's no link back to the game for instance in the in the share grid it did give you this artifact and
00:53:17
invited you to share and that's obviously done wonders for it in terms of it uh catching on and spreading
00:53:23
around yeah that is definitely how I found it I think there was a couple people who shared their grids in my
00:53:29
timeline and by the way a funny story is I still know some people who typed out the Emoji grid manually for some reason
00:53:36
which is hilarious yeah yeah yeah but yeah that's how I found it it was funny though you mentioned you know you did a
00:53:41
couple things in the game that were not necessarily designed to help accelerate
00:53:47
its growth it was just like it's almost this like pure simple thing that you sort of stumble across on the internet
00:53:53
kind of like the old days almost a little bit um were there things you thought about like it started growing growing and then
00:53:59
you've you've had other experiments like this in the past I want to talk about but did you think of other things you could do with Wordle to maybe change it
00:54:05
up or was there sort of a beauty to keeping it simple yeah I think that's a really good question I think because I had started
00:54:12
it simple and I had a really clear idea of what I was doing with it it made it really easy to say no to any
00:54:19
of those compulsions as they came up because you know whereas if my goal had been to
00:54:25
make a viral game from the outset I think I would have been you know capitalizing on this in like a bunch of
00:54:31
different ways and like maybe but but it felt like I don't know with all the projects that I've done that have been successful I found part of it is not
00:54:40
it's just kind of doing the thing that feels authentic to me and if people happen to like that then great if they
00:54:46
don't not and so then allowing wordles success to like make me change it which
00:54:53
obviously I was willing to do right I did add the share grid which was something that wasn't wasn't there originally so there is a boundary there
00:54:59
but it I don't know if I start I have to think about what are my motivations when I'm
00:55:04
doing this thing and are they aligned with it gets really hard when you're doing things for the wrong reasons basically so I find it simpler to keep
00:55:11
it uh the same are there any features you would like to see uh is this uh some feature request coming yeah no no I I
00:55:17
like that it's simple I think as soon as I saw it I was like oh well I can't believe there's only one word a day I just want to keep playing but like or
00:55:23
maybe they'd add five six letter words seven letter words maybe they do a bunch of other stuff but I like that it was simple it was just a clean one single
00:55:31
purpose for it the entire time and I actually wanna I wanted to talk to you because I feel like as a Creator I I
00:55:37
feel like I relate a lot to you because one of the things I've said for a long time is one of the best things that
00:55:42
never happened to me was having a video of mine just Spike and just go super viral and then feel like I have to chase
00:55:50
that carrot or and like evolve and become sort of defined by that Viral
00:55:56
success um how do you feel about like you've had other projects I want to talk about out the place and the button and what those
00:56:03
are um how do you think about like the success of those projects and not
00:56:09
letting it Define you yeah I mean this is incredibly hard and
00:56:15
uh it kind of does defy me in a way that I don't actually feel comfortable with uh like I
00:56:22
feel good when a project I make does well I feel bad when a project I make doesn't do well and that is not healthy
00:56:30
I think and I I think to a certain degree it's unavoidable there's a Creator putting stuff out sharing it but
00:56:36
at the same time I think it's like it's led to some quite unpleasant places for me personally and uh and then again in
00:56:43
terms of when we're talking about what is your motivation it kind of gets confusing if you're making things to be
00:56:49
a success but that wasn't the motivation when you made the original things that were successful like how does all that
00:56:55
get it all gets a bit uh all gets a bit murky and so yeah I had these projects at Reddit that are kind of more I would
00:57:01
call like social experiments than games um and they uh Silicon Valley tends to do these really dumb April Fool's Day
00:57:08
things where they like make a prank and it's super lame and everyone looks at it and I read it I was like what if we do
00:57:13
something different like we use this day where we can do we're kind of locked in so that things
00:57:19
we can do with our users what if we use this one day a year where you can kind of do anything online that people are really kind of wasting in my opinion and
00:57:25
we do something just try something completely different and so that is where kind of the Reddit approach now of like
00:57:32
often doing a social experiment that explores the way that humans interact at large
00:57:38
scales online um kind of kind of came from uh and and just like a general disappointment with
00:57:45
the lack of imagination in the in the tech world I think we're on the same page about tech World April fools yeah I
00:57:51
the button was really interesting I kind of vaguely remember it because it was so long ago but you so you were working at
00:57:56
Reddit and you had the opportunity to try something cool something fun like a social experiment on and that was a
00:58:01
great day to do it what was the button just break down what exactly that was yeah so the button's super simple it is
00:58:07
as uh subreddit so Reddit is organized into communities called subreddits of uh people who share similar interests
00:58:14
there's a subreddit called the button and at the top of the button there was a button and a timer the timer counts down
00:58:19
from 60 Seconds if you press the button the timer resets back up to 60 and starts counting down
00:58:26
the key thing is that you can only ever press the button once you have to be logged in and once you press the button
00:58:31
you can never Place press it again so then the question becomes how long will
00:58:36
the collective internet decide to keep pressing this button right like if it reaches zero it stops and it will never
00:58:43
run again and so you have a 60 second window in which to press a button and it turns out the answer is two months so
00:58:50
over two months every 60 seconds someone somewhere chose to press the button
00:58:56
which ended up being over a million people and there was a bunch of stuff there like the time that you pressed we
00:59:02
gave you on Reddit we called it flare it's like a little tag that appears next to your username in the community and so
00:59:08
if you pressed it early you got a different color next to your name than if you press it later and then so all
00:59:14
these social hierarchies started forming you know people who pressed it early were seen as impulsive and they couldn't
00:59:19
wait whereas if you held it if you waited for two months you could press it when they were only two seconds left on
00:59:25
the button you get red flare and then people will be like whoa but uh so they're all these weird social dynamics
00:59:31
emerged from this like really really simple uh idea and and that's one thing
00:59:37
that I found works really well for me is kind of we were talking about earlier like have you been you know all the what
00:59:44
ifs like what if you change this what if you change this and I think what I found worked for me with this projects at
00:59:51
Reddit and to an extent Wordle is like trying to make things as simple as possible it's so easy to say with a
00:59:57
creative project what if we do this what if we do this because no one knows the answer right and instead I found it
01:00:02
easier to be like well how much can we remove and still leave the core idea here and still make it an enjoyable
01:00:08
experience all right next up is also a fellow YouTube Creator Tom Scott I mean he's got a bunch of different channels
01:00:15
about a bunch of different things kind of hard to Define actually what he does we talked about that a bit but this is
01:00:20
me chatting with TomSka I'll I'll tell you a video that I I want
01:00:27
to do but can't okay uh and I'm gonna throw this out because because by throwing this out here I will finally
01:00:32
get the video out of my head and I don't have to I don't have to pour over this on my ideas board right I've got it out
01:00:37
someone out there can have it which is on content for kids on YouTube
01:00:45
not really being uh so we're not talking about like the other stuff from years ago with like algorithmically generated
01:00:52
Elsa and Spider-Man videos and we're not talking about stuff that is for younger kids we're talking about stuff that's
01:00:58
for so the ages maybe nine to 13 that kind of age
01:01:04
um if you ever looked at YouTube trending that'll show up there quite a lot and what so there's a couple of
01:01:10
reasons I don't want to do this first it would involve actively calling specific creators out I could not tell the story
01:01:16
without naming people and I don't want to do that I don't think that's a fair thing to do certainly if you're ever
01:01:23
going to do that then the thing to do is do right of reply you reach out to them you get their response to it like there's a whole ethical thing that
01:01:30
you're required to do that apparently he's mostly ignored on YouTube but like basic ethics you reach out you get the response I don't do that
01:01:38
I don't want to do that I don't want to name this is the problem but in for the examples I know I would have to specifically go yeah this is the problem
01:01:44
find doing that for television on the uh I did a video about advertising disclosures and I'm okay I'm okay to
01:01:51
call out a television show yeah because that is run by a corporation with a hundred employees I'm not I'm not saying
01:01:57
you there you have made the mistake most YouTube operations I'll be I'll be pointing at a person and I don't know it
01:02:03
also feels like punching up instead of punching down absolutely yeah so anyway setting that aside yeah I
01:02:10
would have to make specific examples maybe I could maybe I could like get someone to animate but you're still
01:02:15
talking about people and secondly I don't want to deal with the backlash from that audience you know I don't want
01:02:20
kids angrily I I don't want internet kids defending their Heroes
01:02:26
to come at me because yeah you're not going to be able to reason with that you're not gonna be able to reason with any internet crowd but it's just
01:02:33
I don't want that hassle so this is this is what this came from is comparing two
01:02:39
videos and what was judged age restricted and safe so again the title
01:02:44
would be something like how safe is YouTube for children or something like that again so your first comparison is
01:02:50
to uh the TV I grew up with and to all the regulations that broadcast television has to have for protection of
01:02:56
kids and the one that that is in my head aside from all the stuff about sex and violence the obvious ones there is one
01:03:02
about uh imitable Behavior I might be using the right I might be using the wrong word there in behavior that could
01:03:08
be imitated yeah so the two videos I really want to compare neither of which like I endorse as a thing just to be
01:03:15
clear um there was a British YouTuber team about three years ago I think now who
01:03:21
are doing big uh just hurting themselves for views which like it's jackass it's a
01:03:27
genre right I have no problem with that like I grew up in there yeah yeah um he like the the title was cementing
01:03:34
my head inside a microwave Jesus it's not actually cement it's um I think the
01:03:39
US term is like spackle it's the stuff you put on walls it hardens like it's like fix drywall patches and stuff like
01:03:45
that yeah and like I'm not gonna call these guys out because the first 15 seconds of that video is some of the
01:03:50
best editing I've ever seen for coming up it's it's brilliantly done yeah but obviously
01:03:55
a stricted backlash like no adverts on it absolutely like YouTube still has
01:04:01
that up I think but obviously like that was a news story because the fire brigade had to come and save his life because it went wrong
01:04:08
but yeah it was it was a news story public apology kind of thing like no ads anything like that
01:04:14
and that was in my head because I saw something on trending a few months ago which was and again I have to call out a
01:04:20
specific video here there's there's no I I don't want to imply that this is a deliberate thing this is I would read it
01:04:27
as folks who have no one in the loop who is saying this is maybe not something we
01:04:33
should do so I'm not I'm not gonna I'm not gonna criticize overly I'm criticizing the idea which was uh last
01:04:39
to escape concrete wins yeah and you've got three guys doing all the the the the
01:04:47
hyperactive cuts that has become common for YouTube
01:04:52
pretending to be in setting concrete and it's clearly not because like that's
01:04:58
yeah like a Alkali burns like uh
01:05:03
physical Burns because it's it's an exothermic reaction that is obviously not real but they're playing it as real
01:05:10
and that's the sort of thing that would be completely utterly blocked from
01:05:18
broadcast at least in in any European country I don't know how the First Amendment affects that in the US but certainly for for kids yeah um that like
01:05:26
growing up we had uh the US terms public service announcements we call them public information films about not
01:05:32
playing on construction sites or with construction equipment the idea that a show for
01:05:38
kids teenagers anything like that would encourage something like that is just no
01:05:44
absolutely not you don't you don't even if there's a million kids watching that and one of them now thinks that it's
01:05:51
safe to play in concrete then not only is that that a bad thing obviously because the kid's gonna get hurt but
01:05:56
also that's a lawsuit in enormous liability for them just from a a self it's from a purely selfish perspective
01:06:03
for them ignoring the welfare of kids that's a lawsuit waiting to happen
01:06:08
but YouTube will happily serve up adverts on that that's suitable for everyone that's suitable for all ages
01:06:14
and rather than the the overt worry that this is clearly bad for kids there is
01:06:19
this subtle thing of this is this so that is sorry that was a
01:06:25
long diversion um but there is a lot of stuff out there that is
01:06:30
not obviously unsafe for children but with a moment's thought that the
01:06:37
algorithm doesn't have and that human reviewers generally don't have time to have they'll be often all right is this
01:06:42
is this obviously a stunt is this uh uh is someone messing about on some gray slime okay right we're fine there's a
01:06:48
lot of stuff that could cause imitable Behavior I would love to make that video like I can see like the copyright video
01:06:53
like the advertising video I I have the structure got my head it's 30 to 40 minutes long it's got a few jokes in
01:07:00
there and a really nice conclusion and nope I'm not gonna call out specific people just like I just kind of dead but
01:07:07
you know what I mean by that I'm not yeah I'm not gonna put someone's face in the thumbnail um and I don't want to have to deal with a
01:07:14
load of kids defending that crowd all right time for one more quick ad break we'll take that and we'll be right back
01:07:21
oh
01:07:30
all right next up we got everybody's favorite engineering educator uh also fellow Creator on YouTube uh Mark Rober
01:07:37
kind of feels like he's doing in engineering what we had the bill nye's and Neil deGrasse Tysons of the world do
01:07:44
for astrophysics just just a lot of people following along his videos are always incredible so anyway this is my
01:07:49
chat with Mark Rober I think about like engineering and
01:07:55
Science in school I I wonder like you you basically are an educator now and
01:08:00
more more so than ever because we'll talk about crunch labs in a second but are there things that you like wish were different about your education maybe how
01:08:08
you maybe there's different types of learnings that would have helped you more or do you find that you know the
01:08:13
normal school path got you to know you enjoy math and Engineering because I when I see crunch Labs I'm like oh
01:08:19
learning at home physical learnings like visual learnings things in your own hands that's what I would have wanted
01:08:26
that's way more down my alley but I wonder how you look at it yeah for sure like I think to the degree
01:08:35
that you can learn without realize you're learning like realizing your learning is like that's I mean if I
01:08:43
think about all the things I'm the most passionate about and I'm like the best at like I mean take I still edit all my
01:08:49
own videos right and it's like I I feel like I'm pretty good at editing and writing
01:08:55
coming up with like a good story uh and like a way to communicate something at
01:09:00
this point because I'm passionate about it and I love it and it's like I never I never took a class for that right like
01:09:06
no one's ever like officially taught me it's just something I'm so passionate about and I enjoy and therefore I know
01:09:13
it better than I know almost anything else and to the degree that you can just
01:09:18
tap into that and and just tickle that part of someone like I my favorite thing in life is that
01:09:25
like aha moment where it's like you a a new principle becomes or you see
01:09:31
something in a different way like I'm addicted to that feeling I love like reading books or challenge the way I think and get me to like just just just
01:09:38
like learning like that that excitement of learning something new is like such
01:09:43
an addictive feeling and I love giving that aha moment to like other people like I know and I'm gonna drop a juicy
01:09:50
nugget in a video that's like I'm gonna say this and a lot of people don't realize this is true
01:09:56
um and and so if you can make learning about that feeling and just like the excitement I did a TED talk about
01:10:03
a tedx talk about like what I call the Super Mario effect which is basically like you know when when you're playing a
01:10:11
video game you're not afraid of failure if you fall into a pit on level one of
01:10:16
of Mario you're not like you don't throw the controller down and be like oh that's so embarrassing I can't believe I
01:10:22
died like I never want to play this game again you're like no like okay there's a
01:10:27
pit there okay next time I gotta remember I gotta kind of met with more speed I'm gonna try jumping a little earlier might take six or seven tries
01:10:34
before you land that right level eight one that little you had to make that big jump and there's that tiny little block
01:10:39
you had to land on and then do a quick jump like yeah got me every time right uh but I was that meant I wanted to
01:10:46
figure it out that much more and like as as kids as a result we got really good at that game really fast and we never
01:10:52
went to school the next day and we're like you know talked about all the different ways we died the question was like did you beat the game last night
01:10:58
and it's like you know I said in the talk like the most meaningful high fives of my adolescent this is when it's like
01:11:04
yeah dude I beat it I beat it and so it's like I try and approach in my own
01:11:10
life like challenges that way and so as a result you're just way less focused on
01:11:15
the failure and being embarrassed and and looking dumb and if you gamify the
01:11:22
object of the thing you're trying to learn and you will just learn it so much faster and it's a totally pleasant
01:11:28
experience and you love it just like we love playing video games and so yeah that's a long way to answer your
01:11:34
question like heck yeah like the more you can make learning exciting and something that the kid the the students
01:11:41
see the passion in the teacher uh because they're genuinely passionate about it like that's the secret sauce
01:11:48
and I had a couple teachers like that so what did you work on an apple
01:11:55
is that a question I can ask it's definitely a question you could ask and like they are very clear when you leave
01:12:02
of like the large stack of things you signed that says you're not going to tell about it talk about this here's
01:12:07
what I can say I did product design in their special projects group and uh
01:12:14
there was like a leak so it's kind of a funny story I don't know that I've ever told this publicly but um they um
01:12:23
first of all they approached me and wanted me to work for them and then they told me when I came there I can't make
01:12:28
YouTube videos and I'm like and granted at that time I had like 250 000 Subs I
01:12:34
was pretty small but I'm like forget you guys like you came to me like I didn't like then I'm not gonna work with you
01:12:39
and I don't feel like you can even tell me I can't make videos anyways like is that even legal So eventually they
01:12:45
backed off on that and they just said fine but wait at least three months till you make a video so you kind of get the
01:12:51
culture here and you can't say in your videos you work for Apple I'm like fine I'm like I don't even have like part of
01:12:56
me convincing me I was like I don't even have that big of a channel anyways it's not gonna get that many views so I come
01:13:01
there and the very first video I upload after three months is how to skin a watermelon
01:13:07
which to this day is my most popular video ever with like 140 million views
01:13:13
it just had a really bang your thumbnail at a time when thumbnails were like
01:13:18
really important to the algorithm it was just like weird timing so I'm like guys don't worry I don't even have any views
01:13:24
anyways I upload this and in like a week it was like 25 million views it just like totally popped
01:13:31
um yeah so anyways so I'm making videos and then eventually maybe a year later
01:13:39
um Jimmy Kimmel asked me you know his folks are like hey do you want to come on the Kimmel show and I was like well
01:13:44
so I asked I asked Apple that and it gets bumped all the way up to Dan riccio
01:13:50
who is like one below Tim Cook and Dan riccio's response was like we should be
01:13:56
focused on making great products and so that comes down so he didn't exactly say no but it was like
01:14:05
and I and then I honestly realized from that like oh they can't actually tell me no if I'm not saying I work for Apple
01:14:11
like if I want to canoe after hours you know they can't tell me like I can't canoe because we should be focused on
01:14:18
making great products so I did Kimo anyways and that turned out to be you
01:14:23
know a really good career decisions because him and I are like good friends now I'm staying at his house next I'm
01:14:29
hosting a show next week and staying at his house and going on vacation with him you know the month after that
01:14:37
um so it's like I'm glad I didn't listen to Dan riccio there that's for Dave
01:14:42
so I kind of kept it secret you know that I worked for apple and then my channel got bigger and bigger and
01:14:49
they're concerned like to their point is like there's nothing beneficial that there's no upside to them by having me
01:14:55
be an Apple employee and having a large following it's only downside because if I now have a platform to talk about them
01:15:01
like they don't need me to get their story out right So eventually there was I get a call one day after working for
01:15:07
Apple for four years and it's a reporter from variety I think or something and
01:15:13
it's like can you comment on your work you do for apple and I'm like uh what
01:15:19
are you talking about and as I'm talking to him I get a call from Apple HR like pinging in on this
01:15:25
and uh so I go over and they're like hey look someone's gonna leak this story that you were for us just be you know
01:15:33
don't say anything you know just keep it very surface level so anyways I did it
01:15:40
ended up being this big story that leaked and all my co-workers like gave me a hard time about it or teasing me
01:15:45
but after that it was like not a big deal and I still worked for them for like another year and we they loved me
01:15:52
working for them and I loved working for them the reason a leaked though getting to the everything and this is the answer
01:15:57
to your question what did I do at Apple uh I was lead author on a patent
01:16:02
and I could say this because it's like public domain about um using virtual reality and
01:16:08
self-driving cars and like what are all the implications of that you know and the main one being again because this is
01:16:15
listed in the patent like 40 of people folk suffer from motion sickness
01:16:20
and wouldn't it be interesting if you could use Virtual Reality to solve that
01:16:28
because notion sickness is when like basically your your internal gyro doesn't match up with what your eye is
01:16:33
seeing so that's why if you're like in the back seat you can't see forward you get motion today because you don't know what's happening and so if you could
01:16:39
really know exactly what the car is going to do and where it's going to turn and how it's turning
01:16:44
and show that to you in virtual reality uh then you could potentially not get
01:16:51
motions because well when autonomous cars eventually come we'll have all this free time but if you get motion sick
01:16:56
there's nothing you can do with it so the idea that you could strap on a virtual reality and and by the way
01:17:02
imagine virtual reality is like sunglasses not these big bulky things now but it's like very lightweight thing
01:17:07
you put on your head in the future um and then and now you can work on your laptop because essentially the screen is
01:17:15
like way over on the horizon you know it would show you a fake Horizon and the screen would be like in the sky
01:17:21
basically and so if you know no one gets motion sickness looking way over the horizon so now all of a sudden you can
01:17:27
look down and see a virtual keyboard and you're typing or you could watch a movie um but then there's also tons of other
01:17:33
implications that are listed in the patent of like what does that mean for
01:17:39
um entertainment because like a car in some ways is the best version of emotion simulator later because you know if you
01:17:46
go on Star Tours remote simulator they have to simulate Gravity by tilting your seat back and then your brain's like I'm
01:17:53
not feeling like pressure on my butt as much so something just feels off when you're supposedly quotable accelerating
01:17:59
but in a car you're you're you still keep your G's pointing down and you actually can accelerate and break and
01:18:06
turn and impart these G's to you in a way that could be pretty entertaining or
01:18:11
relaxing or engaging depending on what kind of version you feed into the OR
01:18:16
thrilling into the VR so um yeah there's a lot there and I will
01:18:22
say again because this is public record Apple has continued to make updates to
01:18:28
that patent and it's it feels like from my perspective they're it's an interesting one for them so I don't know
01:18:35
it's really exciting to be and that came about because Apple's like one of my managers at Apple was like Hey dude
01:18:40
you're coming up with all these Bangor ideas on YouTube like come up with a bigger idea for us and so I started like
01:18:46
thinking about it and then like I was in a meeting and I was just like I started shaking because I'm like oh my gosh this
01:18:53
would be so crazy and so then like I started coming up with all these versions of it and to their credit
01:18:58
management it's very supportive there when you have ideas they let they let you run with stuff and they have the
01:19:05
funds to invest in it so they were very supportive of letting me just go crazy with this idea and
01:19:10
um yeah it's really fun cool experience to be able to do that because it's like you know there's one idea of there's one
01:19:17
thing of like you know we come up with ideas on our own which is cool you own the full idea and you can really you
01:19:23
could technically own it and run it cradled grade but it's like working at the largest tech company in the world
01:19:29
you know the most valuable company in the world with like so many resources if you come up with an idea there it's like
01:19:36
you're going to really affect the world in you know what would be you know hopefully a very positive way so that
01:19:43
was kind of an exciting thing about working with apple it's just like if you do have an idea like The Leverage that
01:19:48
could come from that idea is so much more than if you just had it on your own yeah that sounds like the most
01:19:54
fascinating like conundrum of like being in a meeting like oh I have an idea but is this better for apple or for a video
01:20:00
later huh which one which do I do
01:20:06
I kept the glitter volume to myself that would be bad I cannot imagine I I
01:20:14
ask for Apple all the time to get into various things like yeah you actually make a camera that would be sick there's you guys should make a printer printers
01:20:21
suck right now I don't know glitter bomb yeah that's a YouTube video for sure I don't like the idea of that being real
01:20:27
okay next up is a chat with a fellow YouTuber a tech Creator again this time uh we do have a lot in common but a very
01:20:34
different approach to a lot of things and it was fun talking about it a chat with Zach from jayrig everything
01:20:42
it's a story behind the name I think you probably have the the sort of like people don't know if your name is Jerry
01:20:49
or not happening um I wonder where Jerry rig everything came from it it makes intuitive sense to
01:20:55
me but maybe you have like a story behind coming up with it yeah so most of the time like when someone recognized me on the street you know at a restaurant
01:21:01
or at the store or something like that they'll be like hey you're the you're Jerry right and I'll just just kind of roll with it um but my name is actually
01:21:07
Zach um the Jerry rig everything came from um I was
01:21:14
when I originally started YouTube my channel name was green do ocean because
01:21:20
I really liked Mountain Dew at the time but I realized as I had you know a
01:21:26
couple thousand subscribers that you know YouTube could actually be like a viable job and like I would have to come
01:21:31
up with a light a slightly more memorable and reputable name I guess
01:21:38
um and so I was laying in bed one night at like 2 A.M when most of my good ideas come and I realized that
01:21:44
um you know my channel and kind of like the theme of what I do is you know Jerry rigging stuff and Jerry Rigg is also the
01:21:51
name of my grandpa who is kind of like one of the people I would really look up to
01:21:57
um you know when he first got married he lived in the back of a gas station and then when he died he you know was a very
01:22:04
very successful businessman had a bunch of houses it was just a really cool he's so when I look up to a lot and so Jerry
01:22:10
Rigg is both a combination of the phrase Jerry rig as well as kind of like a way
01:22:16
to remember uh my grandpa Jerry that is pretty cool I I know now I think I when
01:22:24
I first was watching her videos I was like oh yeah Jerry I definitely thought that that was your name so I'm glad that
01:22:29
that's much more clear well is that your current account though you had that name for your current account that you
01:22:35
changed to Jerry everything so back then so I think I've been doing YouTube for like nine or ten years back
01:22:40
then you couldn't change your name you had to just delete your account start over and so you'll notice if you go back
01:22:46
to my first videos there's like 40 of them that are kind of all uploaded on the same day or the same week and that's
01:22:52
because I deleted my old account and uploaded all the videos to a new account with the correct name now YouTube is way
01:22:58
more you know you can change your name whenever you want wow so you had like a moment where you were like oh I'm going
01:23:05
to be doing this YouTube thing to a degree where I want to be proud of the name of it I think I should make that
01:23:11
conscious decision when in your life cycle of a YouTuber was that exactly it
01:23:18
was so like when I first started uploading videos I kind of just wanted to do it um just kind of like a video Journal of
01:23:24
all my different projects you know I used YouTube um for a lot of things and I just kind of want to contribute back to that
01:23:31
um that platform um and one of the ways I was using it is I was my Jeep at the time broke down and
01:23:38
so I got on YouTube and I found someone with the exact same problem I had and instead of taking it to a shop to fix it
01:23:43
for a thousand bucks this guy could fix it for 80 by himself and so I messaged him and I was like you know your video
01:23:50
was so helpful to me and saved me so much money like why do you do this and he said it's because
01:23:56
um I want to decrease World suck help people out and at the same time you
01:24:03
know YouTube pays me a little bit of money and so that was kind of like what got me going on the platform and I kind
01:24:09
of you know filmed my my Automotive projects motorcycle projects and then I realized it was a conscious decision
01:24:14
that if I wanted to grow my audience past you know the small circle of people interested in automotive repairs I would
01:24:21
have to expand the type of content I made into phone tear downs and then durability tests and then into EVs and
01:24:30
then building my own EV and then accessibility and just kind of grow it out from there each kind of chapter of
01:24:35
my channel is a conscious growth decision I guess yeah I feel like a lot of the same a lot
01:24:42
of the same stuff I've done where like you have a core topic that you start off with but you you have more interests and
01:24:49
you're able to sort of loop them in because they work with the the theme and you're good at it obviously like I I
01:24:55
watch you tear up out a part of phone sometimes and I just sort of like mesmerized a little bit I like oh that's
01:25:01
kind of awesome that you just sort of know right off the top of your head also do you know right off the top of your head like you open a phone you you know
01:25:08
where all the ribbon cables are supposed to be when you put it back together you you've done this many times does it ever
01:25:14
go wrong like how long did it take you to get it taking apart phones I would say most phones that I take
01:25:21
apart I have one or two screws left over afterwards so I would not say I'm like the most professional at putting them
01:25:27
back together again although um when does this podcast go up uh let's
01:25:32
call it a week and a half week and a half Okay cool so by the time this podcast goes up I will have already
01:25:38
um done the fold four tear down oh the flip four tear down and I actually took that completely apart screen off and
01:25:45
everything and put it back together so I'm very impressed with the build
01:25:50
quality of that I am also I mean that seems like probably one of the harder ones to take apart and put back together
01:25:56
I haven't actually taken apart well okay this is the question I was gonna ask you this is something that's been on my mind
01:26:01
for a while when you when I get a review unit of a phone there's a very specific
01:26:07
set of things that you're allowed to do with it and not allowed to do with it and at the top of the list every time is like you can't take it apart you can't
01:26:13
durability test it you can't break it you can't do any of the stuff that Zach does to the phone so don't even think
01:26:18
about it you know so I see all that I'm like all right Zach so you you spend the extra time you probably buy it from the
01:26:25
manufacturer you do what you got to do but is there a difference in the way you
01:26:30
work with some manufacturers are there some that are cool with sending you something knowing that you're going to
01:26:35
take it apart yeah I mean I've always been super super up front like there's been several times where a company has
01:26:42
reached out to me and been like hey um you know can we send you a review unit and I'm like do you know who I am
01:26:49
and what I do to phones and then they're like oh yeah never mind we're all out of review units dang and so that's happened
01:26:56
several times wow um but I mean there has been companies that have been okay with it like you know nothing sent me
01:27:01
their phone knowing what I was gonna do to it OnePlus sent me their phone knowing what I was going to do to it
01:27:07
um and you know that super and like I've been straight up front like you know there's no special favors or anything
01:27:12
like that um even though I get the phone and you know that has kind of come back to buy it OnePlus a little bit but no those are
01:27:18
I was gonna say those are literally the two companies I would have thought of of who would be cool with getting you a
01:27:25
device knowing what might happen but being fine with it
01:27:31
um okay have you been have you been surprised by any durability test results I mean you squeeze an iPad it breaks in
01:27:37
half that's kind of nuts I'm imagining your your face off camera is a little
01:27:42
bit wide-eyed when that happens but have you been impressed by something passing or super shocked by a by a failure
01:27:48
um I would say the one that comes to mind first of all is just the folding phones like I seriously thought that they would be able to be snapped in half
01:27:55
you know every single time I grab one I'm like yeah this can definitely break but then it doesn't yeah and so that's just nuts to me yeah denting it
01:28:02
backwards seems like it should just snap right in half but they do survive right with impressive with impressive
01:28:08
consistency that's pretty sick all right next up is a segment that I did when Austin Evans A good friend of mine
01:28:14
fellow YouTube Creator and Tech head visited the studio I would say take it away but it was
01:28:20
recorded already so here's me in Austin all right welcome back to waveform for a
01:28:26
new segment that we call identify the phone behind your back and then try to remember everything you'd
01:28:33
remember about it with uh flows right off the top yeah with your with your hosts I'm Marquez
01:28:39
I'm Andrew Andrew's here I'm Austin hello our friend Austin is here and that's gonna make it more fun because
01:28:46
Austin and I don't know the phones that are in this box that Andrew has Andrew's going to give us the phones one by one
01:28:52
we're gonna try to try to identify it behind our back and I'll pass it to you and then you can ID it and we can sort
01:28:58
of uh take it from there see if we can ID the phones and remember stuff about them so we did this back in 2015 for
01:29:05
team crispy live on stage low-key great format it was a lot of fun great format we've also tried it in like you remember
01:29:12
igtv yeah when I used to use the thing we're like we should we should shoot some stuff with phones in vertical and
01:29:17
it was like a little segment we would do and we would just hand people phones and it's actually really fun because it's
01:29:22
probably gotten harder now though right I feel like a lot of phones a little bit more similar and sort of build like I feel like back in the day there's a
01:29:28
little bit more flexibility like oh that's an HTC or that's a Samsung S4 or whatever yeah yeah there were metal
01:29:33
phones there were plastic phones there glass ones uh Andrew I have an idea you
01:29:38
hold the phone up to the cameras while our eyes are closed first so the audience knows and then when you're
01:29:44
ready put it in my hands and then we'll open our eyes okay okay sounds good eyes closed yep you you have full control
01:29:50
over everyone I'm I'm closing my eyes we'll probably have a caption on the
01:29:55
screen to ID the phone and then we'll attempt it my hands are open behind me
01:30:01
now this will be fun for audio listeners give it to you are you guys just keeping your eyes closed like the whole time no
01:30:07
I'm gonna open my eyes but I'm gonna not look at it okay has the phone now okay my eyes are closed my hand is out oh I'm
01:30:14
gonna I'm gonna try first oh you're fine okay you can open your eyes I'm just holding it real quick while you're doing
01:30:19
this are you gonna guess right now or you're gonna hand it to Austin and then you'll both guess at the same time internal guess oh and then we'll guess
01:30:26
at the same time okay makes sense we're definitely not making this up on the spot wait I need to make sure
01:30:33
okay okay what are you what are you looking for um well you're gonna know as soon as you
01:30:38
pick it up okay well you'll hear something real quick oh so you know you know what's happening but I'm just
01:30:44
trying to figure out generation okay all right close your eyes okay yep all right okay I've got it okay okay
01:30:55
so yeah certainly a little of uh yep that kind of action
01:31:01
um okay so here's the thing right so I feel the camera which is yeah yeah but also let me feel the hinge
01:31:09
because obviously I'm used to a particular kind of this phone but now I'm like that's not that's there's no way oh no but I
01:31:16
feel the little oh wait a minute so there's only two little rubber stoppers instead of
01:31:23
four oh do you remember which one has two and which one has four I don't know cameras and then power button
01:31:30
Can You Feel the color I think I know which one this is okay
01:31:37
all right so yes ready yeah count it down three two one
01:31:43
well the same thing right Z flip two is the 5G one yeah that's the first 5g1 yep
01:31:49
yes wait actually it's not that's the first one isn't it it's the first one you guys actually confused me with that
01:31:55
because I forgot there was the 5G I also didn't pick these phones well the 5G is the same design as the
01:32:01
first one yeah just added 5G yeah but this is the this is the first one with the tiny front screen and the dual
01:32:07
camera I believe it's the first one just because we would have saved the first one okay so wait so do we get a point on
01:32:12
that yeah we both get a point right okay the little check mark sound um this is a good one because we know
01:32:18
Austin likes his flip are you still so what's your flip situation now I keep saying you sweet pictures of it flip four right now I've got the baby blue
01:32:25
one um I do need to get a skin for the back because I was uh flying recently and it was sliding off the uh the airline table
01:32:31
because it's so slippery but uh I'm on flip Now flip four now the math finish we saw one in the wild for the first
01:32:36
time yeah in San Francisco yeah I've never seen a flip in the wild I actually see a lot of them these days really like
01:32:42
I was at like a tea shop the other day and I pulled out my flip and the breeze is just like oh dope and she pulled hers
01:32:47
out I was like yeah let's go weirdest bonding moment but totally that's incredible yeah do you remember the flip
01:32:53
uh briefing and hands-on experience yeah that was the worst first that was the
01:32:59
one we were all in the same room and everyone only got five minutes with it right oh yeah and they had a limited amount of units
01:33:05
over each other's shoulders trying to this is back when Samsung were really terrified after you know the fold had
01:33:10
fallen apart so they didn't trust any of us did somebody break a fold what happened with the phone you know I think there was some kind of drama with that
01:33:16
it was always a while ago though couldn't have been me anyway all right let's check the next phone uh I also
01:33:22
like when I handed it to you yeah fully had my yeah straight out of time I'm gonna I'm gonna close your eyes well you
01:33:30
put your hand I'll put my how do I pass it without looking at it I have to see where his hand is we have to hold hands
01:33:35
you you hold your hand out I'll look at where your hand is and okay away and then audio listeners we love you I
01:33:40
promise okay it's way better in video form all right my eyes are closed all right same
01:33:46
okay I got the phone so is there a skin on this oh oh no it's
01:33:52
not there's a logo there oh antenna band skins do have logos
01:33:58
okay yeah I know which one it is okay you feel that confident that fast yep oh okay okay I'll close my eyes I'm ready
01:34:04
okay ready hand is out yeah okay got it yeah oh yeah wait is this a trick
01:34:12
I don't know I hope not maybe let me okay let me just feel really quick uh okay I've got my guess already yes I got
01:34:19
my guess as well okay same both quick guesses you guys sure there's a couple of quick identifiers for this one that I
01:34:25
think are pretty good giveaways okay so yeah ready to go three two one six S
01:34:31
Plus oh you did 6s I only did six oh okay that's actually that's a good one how did you tell us an S
01:34:38
um I don't that was just my guest house on how long you kept the phones uh also
01:34:43
the six plus was uh silver and I felt pink oh get out of here you got feel pink yeah yeah oh okay I didn't I just
01:34:50
oh but look it is yes you can there's a little badge yeah I got it right I don't even know I got it right I had to look at it I was like going for like camera
01:34:56
bump and then immediately okay I've got that then the home button and then the headphone jack I started with the logo
01:35:03
which is glossy and I thought there was a skin on the phone because it was and that's how I realized it was metallic on the outside so it wasn't a seven it was
01:35:09
definitely a six or six s yeah and then antenna bands I felt the size of the plus and yeah it was easy yeah dead
01:35:15
giveaway all right next last but not least is a segment from a two hour
01:35:20
podcast that we recently did with Hassan Minaj uh artist Creator uh writer
01:35:26
comedian he does a lot of stuff obviously but this is one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had
01:35:32
period in my life there's so much to pick from here it's one of my favorite episodes ever and it's a big reason
01:35:37
we're going to keep doing podcasts like this so me and Hassan
01:35:43
ask you guys a question that I wrote to us oh you have is this a the Post-its are here well well yeah I'll let you
01:35:50
yeah go ahead go for it please please do I'm ready wait wait wait wait Marquez
01:35:55
are you are you the script on me yeah okay go for it okay so the reason why people might be like yo
01:36:02
what you know Hassan Marquez is this is the crossover I never knew I can see the color yeah yeah so the reason why I
01:36:09
actually took the time I mean this sincerely I'm genuinely a fan of what you guys do here and
01:36:14
um there is a level and the reason why um I'm getting older and I only have so
01:36:20
much time to do media promotion interviews meetings Etc
01:36:25
but you guys what you guys have done here that I really admire is a level of discernment and reasoning and nobility
01:36:31
to what is otherwise a very um grift Centric medium and one of the
01:36:39
the things that I felt with media and I'm saying this personally you know someone who came up in comedy on The
01:36:44
Daily Show Patriot Act is news media quickly careened off of the the highway
01:36:51
very quickly and it has metastasized so quickly from stage one to stage four just awful cancer where it's like not a
01:37:00
great ecosystem yeah for sure and the the grifters that were there was maybe
01:37:07
one to three of them in the media ecosystem almost like hydras where you chopped off those three heads and 12
01:37:13
have emerged I feel like YouTube has also had that as well there was a cuteness
01:37:19
and acquaintance that the YouTube that I came up on when I first started doing stand-up conduit in 2004 and 2010 there
01:37:26
was a real authenticity to it and now there's a bunch of just algorithm hackers that are
01:37:31
kind of just manipulating you through emotion insanity and
01:37:39
um craziness and I feel like you guys have somehow maintained this like
01:37:45
core ethos through all of it and succeeded succeeded and I I was like I
01:37:51
want to spend my time being around people like that rather than I appreciate that I think a key part of
01:37:56
what you said was timing so 2004 yeah of 2010. yeah so
01:38:02
one of the one of the crazy things that I've seen so how old is your kid by the way I have a four-year-old and a
01:38:08
two-year-old okay a lot of a lot of surveys I've seen of like kids you ask today what do you want to be when you
01:38:13
grow up yeah an alarming number of them say either a YouTuber yeah or or uh or
01:38:20
social media famous or something like that yeah and I think it's kind of luck
01:38:26
and and timing that when I started doing this which is 2008 2009 yeah uh the
01:38:32
Youtube partner program didn't exist and there were zero people doing this as a job so if you wanted to to manipulate
01:38:40
YouTube or to to game the algorithm or whatever you were doing it for the views and for the fun of that yeah not for
01:38:48
money there were zero dollars involved okay and then so that was fun and that was that was a whole section of like how
01:38:55
YouTube was built by creators who were like I have something to share let me see how many people I can share this with and that was like the beginnings of
01:39:01
it yeah and that at some point we had obviously the YouTube Partner program monetization happens we get ads now
01:39:07
there's this added element of I would like to see how much money I can make from this and that's like a real new
01:39:13
thing that emerged from that yeah and so now you do see this Twist of like yeah I'm in a game
01:39:20
the algorithm so that I can maximize revenue and that's a different version of gaming YouTube than I want to just
01:39:27
see how many views I want to see if I can get on trending I want to see if my idea is worthy of eyeballs and I think
01:39:33
that slight difference is probably around the 2010 era that you're
01:39:39
referencing which is like I feel like that's when YouTube changed and I'm lucky to have started in the
01:39:45
pre-monetization era where my intentions are pure right right I want to make the
01:39:50
best video as I possibly can and make the channels that I want to subscribe to and it happened to sort of grow in the
01:39:57
background as I was making the videos I was also going to class and and playing sports and other things like that and so
01:40:02
now it's like it happens to be a full-time job but we kind of treat it the same way as it started yeah how did you not lose your head and lose your way
01:40:09
as you look to your left and your right and he say you put out a product review video and a competitor
01:40:16
is a little less uh nuanced and gentle than say you are so their their
01:40:21
thumbnail is why the new Google pixel 7 sucks you know and it's like it's
01:40:28
Sensational or like why the new Apple watch is garbage and it's all caps and
01:40:33
do you ever feel that thing where you're like oh man they're they're coming yeah I do and I feel that is again it's a
01:40:41
good question because there is there's a lot of uh I do see comments for people
01:40:47
are like I appreciate that you didn't oversimplify yeah I see those comments and I appreciate that and I know that
01:40:52
there are people who who do notice that but also it's like Tech is is so good these days it's
01:41:00
really genuinely hard to find an actually bad product and so I think what's happening is there are like you
01:41:06
said there's going to be a guy who's just like this product sucks and that I by the way I do disagree with your take
01:41:13
there overall okay we'll get to that yeah we'll get to that yeah I guess my point is like I think these are people
01:41:18
trying to differentiate their videos rather than their takes on the product so there's gonna be a hundred videos on
01:41:24
the pixel so if 80 of the First videos of the people who got it all have come to the same conclusion which is like
01:41:29
I've used this phone it's a b-plus it's pretty good and you arrive and you're like I need to make a video that somehow
01:41:35
gets views and stands out if you just show up with the same it's good people aren't going to watch it click it so you
01:41:41
need to find something that you can latch onto and pull that down and be like I need to focus on this this phone
01:41:47
sucks and here's why and people will click that video and they might not stay because you can't necessarily deliver on
01:41:52
that but people will click that video and I think that's what people are drawn to I think also real quick
01:41:58
not necessarily if there are bad there's plenty of bad technology that's fine there are so yeah that's thank you thank
01:42:04
you I didn't want to I was like yeah yeah there are so many Tech products yeah since we're large enough that we
01:42:09
generally can get our hands on them like we're gonna cover the things that we know look more interesting to us and
01:42:14
like generally are going to be a more positive video because like we want to have fun making that video we want to
01:42:20
enjoy this piece of tech we don't find the bad product as often because it's more like hey here's this we'd like to
01:42:26
do a sponsored review with you and we're like that looks really boring yeah you don't want to do that we're not going to go out and do some video on it or in
01:42:33
general make super negative videos on that I wanted to actually apply to be a correspondent for MKBHD I had a sub show
01:42:39
that I wanted to pitch you guys sure um and I thought it'd be really great and I think the audience would really appreciate it it's called this [ __ ]
01:42:45
doesn't work with us yeah and so it's just like it's like a YouTube short show so you throw it to me go you know
01:42:50
Marquez is like I want to throw it over to our you know senior Tech correspondent husband take it away and I
01:42:55
go hey guys it's Hassan I'm here for this it doesn't work without today I'm reviewing the Canon inkjet 5870. as you
01:43:02
said it's it's just you look at the Box three steps and it's ready to go say pull it out and you connect to Wi-Fi and
01:43:08
you just hit print you just hit print
01:43:13
like boxers you just hit you just hit then I just take a sledgehammer
01:43:18
it doesn't work yeah someone who did end user work yeah
01:43:23
printer stuff I yeah I love this song and every week we'd have hey guys hustle manage here um with the Microsoft
01:43:29
Surface the Microsoft Surface it says easy you can pull out the Tab tablet and you know and you can game on the go here
01:43:35
we go let me just set it up and you just connect Wi-Fi and um just pop it down again and then
01:43:41
you can just you write on it just as simple as it's just it's just as simple as
01:43:47
it's really just simple and this is the beauty yeah and then I just take a baseball bat it's so funny okay there
01:43:54
are so many in Tech it's like there are so many stories in Tech where it's like there will be pieces of tech that are
01:44:00
awful and then the rest of tech around it is like pretty good yeah and I'm like trying to tell the story of the device
01:44:06
and I'm like giving it and the other thing is like I know a lot of people who work for tech companies and they're trying really hard they are sincerely
01:44:12
they want the things to work yeah oftentimes like an example this was just perfect for this which this segment
01:44:18
would be perfect The Meta Quest Pro okay this doesn't work it's bad okay the
01:44:23
whole tablet is bad but instead of approaching it I appreciate the honesty thank you okay thank you it's 1500 bucks
01:44:29
it's bad it doesn't work most of the time okay but I thought a more interesting story would be we like the
01:44:34
company has changed their name to meta like we there's more things to evaluate here just the one bad product sure so
01:44:41
like I have info about the product in in the episode in the video which is like okay this it doesn't really work well
01:44:48
but the idea is in the future this gets better and this this point we could evolve at into in the future could be
01:44:54
cool yeah and so I'm trying to like tell that story and evaluate how we got here
01:44:59
and the trajectory towards the future but along the way we definitely need to short of Hassan slaps like destroying
01:45:06
the headset like this version you should not buy yes it's bad yeah so my issue is
01:45:12
and again I like comedy is an art form we are the lowest form of entertainers so there's probably like singers actors
01:45:19
you know musicians comedians were down here we're right above magicians
01:45:25
um and uh pretty far ahead of clowns but we're slightly above magicians and
01:45:30
clowns so we're we're we are an art form of the people and my problem is is with technology it's
01:45:37
always sold as it's easy as one two three okay so we wanted to do a segment that was called uh the commercial versus
01:45:43
reality yes because so often can I say can I be the correspondent to do this because I'm a man of the people I'm
01:45:48
holding you up on this is perfect yes because there's so many commercials that are just like look here's an example of
01:45:53
like us here's the rock asking Siri for these seven things in our own maybe Siri's pretty good yeah and we
01:45:59
just turn around and we take that exact thing he asked it to do and we try that exact task thank you and it will not
01:46:05
work the way it did in the commercial thank you it just won't I've been Vindicated this is all I've been asking yeah people are always like hustling it
01:46:12
doesn't work because you're bad you're bad with technology no it's just the tech is hard tech is hard it when it works it's beautiful sometimes it does
01:46:19
sometimes it does work sure and I love when Tech works and I think about tweeting this all the time Tech is so
01:46:24
great when it works but the when it works part holds so much water there bingo because it just doesn't work and
01:46:31
with that ladies and gentlemen that has been it for this episode of waveform a little bit of a throwback but I think a really fun one and I'm glad we did this
01:46:37
we should be back next week to your regularly scheduled programming ideally if all goes well and uh also let me know
01:46:44
what other guests you think would make good waveform guests specifically people you want to hear from conversations with
01:46:51
things like that maybe people you just want to know if they type fast or not also I am wearing the super limited
01:46:57
edition and could be HD holiday sweater get it while you can because supplies will not last very long I can tell you
01:47:02
that I've seen the numbers you guys are picking them up quick shop.mkbhd.com but either way that's been it for this week
01:47:08
thanks for watching and listening and subscribing and we'll catch you soon peace
01:47:15
waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis rovin we are a member of the VOX media podcast Network and our intro
01:47:20
outro music is by veinsell [Music]
01:47:27
thank you [Music] foreign
01:47:34
[Music]
