Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - 8/12/17 - YouTubers ZombieGoBoom Strive To Stay Alive

Episode Date: August 12, 2017

YouTube is demonetizing channels, costing content makers thousands of dollars. Chuck Meré and James Sweet, the creators of ZombieGoBoom, a YouTube channel that has seen revenue drop to next to zero tell their side of the story to Jeffy and also talk their favorite zombie killing gear. Check them out at http://www.zombiegoboom.com Contribute to their Patreon https://www.patreon.com/zombiegoboomtv   Follow Jeffy on Twitter: @JeffyMRALike Jeffy on Facebook: www.facebook.com/JeffFisherRadioFollow Jeffy on Instagram: @jeffymra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Blaze Radio Network On Demand. The Jeff Fisher Show. Saturday mornings, 9 to noon Eastern. On the Blaze Radio Network. One big platform that we talked quite a bit about last week is, of course, YouTube. And we know that YouTube has, well, we'll call it the adpocalypse going on. And there's several channels that are a little wound up.

A little wound up. at YouTube. One of them is a zombie go boom, which of course, you know, as a as a, as a, as a connoisseur of zombies, walkers, the dead. And of course, you know, the, the podcast of Talking Walking Dead that we do hear when the show is up and running. I'm a fan of zombie go boom. And I was sad to hear that they were getting a little bit of the YouTube shaft. And so I kind of thought, well, you know, we should talk to the guys. And I have a feeling that, okay, they're not going to be able to talk about the lawsuit. James Sweet and Chuck Murray, the two founding members of a zombie go boom,

and they, you know, talk about different items that can be used to protect you during the, you know, if you ever had to. If you ever had to go up against walkers and zombies in your life, I've always often said that, you know, I'm probably, I'm gone, I'm dead. My wife would probably save me for the first five or ten minutes and then go, you know what? No. You know what?

I love you, but no. I'm done saving you. I'm going to be more concerned about me. But I'm sure that, you know, they're going to say, hey, the case is over, and we're able to talk to you about it, Jeff, because we've settled with YouTube and everything is good, and the world is shiny, and it's a beautiful thing, and we're creating more and more zombie-go-bo. Boom videos, and we've got more sponsors and better public viewing than ever before. James Sweet and Chuck Murray.

Is that the truth? No, it is not, Jeff. I'll see. Now they're mad at me. Now they're mad at me. They're pissed at me. Because they didn't want to talk about the lawsuit. But I know that.

It's okay. It's all right. I didn't want to talk about the lawsuit with them either. I want to talk about their damn YouTube channel. So James Sweet and Chuck Murray. All right, so you got mad at me already. You hung up the phone at me already? I didn't even question you yet.

What? Oh, no. You're mad at me already, James Sweet and Chuck Murray? I haven't even questioned you about the lawsuit yet. No, no, no, sorry. No, I'm mad at my phone. I was trying to get on the show and it dropped the call twice. Oh.

Different phones. Those damn phones. Totally unrelated. and very, very happy to be here. So is this Chuck or James? This is Chuck and James. Hey, how you doing? Okay, hey, James.

So I've got both of you. Oh, man, my heart just skipped a little beat. I have both of you here. So I know that, look, I don't know how much you heard, but I know you can't talk about the lawsuit or, you know, you're up against it. But I'm hoping that you can tell me that as of right now, the lawsuit has been settled, it's over, the sun is shining, the world is all right. You've got your money back, and it's a beautiful.

place. Yes or no? Oh, I wish. I wish. It's just very, very slow going. We can probably say a little bit about the lawsuit. I think mostly we're just advice to not get too emotional about the whole thing, regardless of the fact that, you know, it wrecked our livelihoods. That's it, though. of our family. But, but yeah, no, it's just slow going. YouTube is supposed to respond any day now

to our deposition, and that's basically all we know. So there are other channels that are up against, you know, having some of the same issues, and I don't know if they're the exact same issues or if they're just a part of a YouTube issue all around that are having problems

with the pay scale. And are they joining you in this fight, or are you all alone? Yeah, there are quite a few channels that have contacted us or our attorneys and had very, very similar stories about their views being bottlenecked, their views not going out. But more importantly, the revenue that they used to make going down between 80 and 95% overnight. And a lot of these channels are, you know, weapons channels, second amendment channels or channels with very, very strong opinions. But the weird thing about it is that it's not like

a person, at least as far as we know, it's not a person looking at the content on YouTube and figuring out whether or not something is, quote, advertiser-friendly. It's basically an algorithm that looks for things in the titles, descriptions, and metadata, and that there are certain words that the algorithm doesn't like, and if there are a lot of words like that, then you're either going to get demonetized, which YouTube would, for the most part, will warn you, saying that, you know, this video is now demonetized, or soft demonetization, which we we had evidence of, but YouTube never came out and said anything until about three days ago, and they actually said yes, by the way, some of your videos may be softly demonetized,

which basically means that most of the views are not, they're not placing pre-rolls in front of those views. So to put it into perspective, last month, not a great month for us. We got four million views. normally we average well before the apocalypse we average between six and ten million views so four million views but only 95,000 were monetized and which is which is basically I mean nothing you know we have a company with five people which means five families rely on what we do and and and we've had to just find different kinds of work I was actually up all night making props for MythBusters because we do, we do special effects here.

So we've just been taking as much work as we can. Luckily, MythBusters came up to us and asked us to make some stuff for them. Well, I mean, that's great. I mean, that's good. That's good news. Yeah, yeah, you know, so we're just, we're just trying our best. But like the last video, it's just, it's just really difficult because you, you spent, we spent six years building up our company with 175.

bucks to begin with from nothing. And then finally, when we get to that milestone, which is over 1 million subscribers, they push a button and then our company is basically worth nothing. The last five videos that we put out, they got like, and I'm not joking around,

100,000 views, some of them, and 80 cents of revenue. 80 cents, 80 cents to $5. It's been. basically what we get for 100,000 views now. So their argument, at least, and I know you can't, you know, we're getting deeper into the suit than you probably need to, but I really am boggled by, it's really almost with the,

with the algorithm, it's almost worse than having, you know, Bill sit there and say yes or no to a video. Because it just grand sweeps everything and throws everything down. YouTube, though, however, is claiming they're out is obviously, well, you should have paid attention. But if you should have paid attention to their changes, how do you change what you do to match their algorithm? There is no way to do that, right? Well, that's correct. They keep it kind of secret because they've had issues in the past with people trying to, like, rig it.

So, you know, put in certain words or, you know, you've seen like a thumbnail of some, you know, woman. in a bikini and you click on it or whatever. I just want to go on record as saying that I've only done that a few thousand times. Okay, so not all the time do I just click on a woman in a bikini that's a thumbnail. I'm sorry, okay, not every time. Well, and that might be a reason your wife would, you know, kill you after a while. But anyway, you know, but hey, but like, you know, that kind of stuff because like, so people would game the system basically is what they call it.

So they're constantly kind of changing it. And also they change it based on what they think will help build them. So, for example, they might want more views. So it'll be a certain way for a while. And then they might change and go, well, we want people to watch more videos longer. And it's called like watch time, the minute. Right. So then they'll change it back to sort of say, well, if you get more of that,

we'll reward you. But the thing that's always been frustrating, even from the beginning, especially in this case, they don't tell you. It just happens. And there's no way to, even if you are on the up and up, there's no way to even, like, not even a hint. Like, hey, we're going to start counting more watch time now. Like, they don't even tell you a generic thing like that. It just occurs. Right.

Yeah. And one other thing, and maybe this will put in a little perspective, too, is, is with robots doing it, obviously they can't tell the content of something when watching it, right? Right. So one of the things that's going on, especially right now, that happened with a lot of the news kind of shows and are getting really hammered too, is let's say you were doing a show where you were talking about the Taliban or how we were going to defeat them or some kind of thing they did wrong, you know, something like that. if it just sees the fact you're talking about the Taliban, it'll stop that video. Whether it's in a talk frame, a news frame, or any other frame, because they're just worried that an ad will get put on a video in any way,

shape, or form talking about, say, terrorism or something. So it's like a blanketed thing a computer sees. And so you have no idea what words will trigger that off or anything. And so that's what everybody is struggling with. Like, we make an entertainment show more, but the news kind of shows are really struggle with it because they can't even really talk about issues and things anymore, you know, because the minute they do, they get hammered.

So that's kind of in a nutshell how it works and what's going on. And specifically for when this happened on the 27th of March, like literally we just woke up and it was boom down and we were like what is going on we tried to talk to everybody no they wouldn't tell you anything and it took like maybe a week or two if I can remember correctly where they finally put out something that said oh by the way we're doing this now and you're like okay well what do we do and we never got any answers and then that's kind of what led to the lawsuit because we would have been more than happy to work with them if they would have just told us what they wanted to do you know

it's like in any under industry or television or movie thing you submit a film and it gets rated right and there's certain standards to that or whatever well it let's say you make a movie it comes back rated r and you go well we really want a pg 13 we'll take out a couple of scenes yeah yeah they'll tell you what to do and so we were kind of like if you think ourselves rated R or whatever how do we get it to PG-13 basically, right? And they were like, we can't tell you. And that was the end of it. And it was like, well, now we're just flying blind and we don't even, you know,

we don't know what to do. And it's weird specifically because we, you know, people are just, a lot of it is basically conjecture because it's so secretive. But you hear from other YouTubers when you, when you reach certain milestones on YouTube, you get to work with other YouTubers that have reached that same milestone. And all of these YouTubers are constantly trying to figure out what YouTube wants, what the algorithm is. And still trying to be entertaining and reach an audience. Exactly. And then that's the issue. It's hard because if you kind of watch time, then maybe you make your show slower and the audience doesn't like it as much.

But even with just the words, the keywords that the algorithm is looking for, we've heard that even the word kiss can get a video demonetized. And now the big issue is that we have changed. we've changed our show a lot and we've alienated our fan base a lot by trying to make content that is not just advertiser-friendly, but family-friendly, which it seems that that's what YouTube wants. And it doesn't matter because it doesn't matter what we put up on our channel. Everything makes hardly any money at the most, maybe 10% of what we used to make. And it really doesn't matter how family-friendly we make it. It seems to us based on the analytics that we have that our entire channel has basically been put in this sort of blacklist.

Let me ask you a question. Just as a side note. The channel, zombie go boom. How much family-friendly can you make that? Well, that's a good point. The crazy thing is like I wish they would say, no, it has to be family-friendly. What they're saying is that it has to be advertiserable. Right.

No, we used to work in television. We have a marketing background. We created zombie go boom to be advertiser friendly, to be entertaining. In fact, we get sponsors outside of YouTube all of the time. It's a little bit harder now that our views have, you know, gone down and everything. Yeah, well, I mean, it's a domino effect. There's no question about that. I completely understand that.

But we are. We are advertiser friendly. Are we a show for kids? No. Our main demographic is 18 to 35-year-old males. But that's too crazy, I guess. I don't know. All right.

So James Sweet and Chuck, I want to say your last name, right, Maray. Two gentlemen that are up against the big dogs, okay? The big dogs of YouTube, James Sweet and Chuck Moray, who inside of the big dog of YouTube became big dogs themselves and created zombie go boom. and I'm a fan and I've enjoyed a lot of your work and I'm disappointed that some of the algorithms

that we'll call the inside computer network of YouTube has decided that you guys are not ad friendly which is insane but I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about what got you started doing this and what gave you the idea of hey we can do something on YouTube and create

a fan base and make a little money at the same time yeah no absolutely James and I have a television background and we've been doing television and film for quite a long time and then we were lucky enough to work together at an NBC affiliate here in Fayette in Fayetteville, Arkansas

and we were always talking about just creative projects and how we wanted to get away from basically making local commercials and promos because we didn't feel like it was fun anymore. So I was into martial arts, and I was writing a zombie movie at the time. The Walking Dead wasn't yet a show. It was a comic book, and I was a big comic. And I started making this YouTube channel that was completely unrelated to zombie go boom.

But while I was doing that, James came to, he used to be my boss. He went into my office, and he said, what are you trying to do? And I said, I don't know. You're not my boss anymore. Get off me. Yeah, I was like, I'm just starting, you know, just trying to figure out new media. I just gave him some BS because I thought I was getting in trouble. And then he left, he went to his office, and he came back 30 minutes later, and he said,

hey, why don't you try something on YouTube with a built-in audience that you already know, and it's huge, and it's growing? And I was like, what he talked? And he said, zombies, why don't you and I make a show about zombies? And then we started developing it, and we realized that for consistent. see it could be like a reality kind of series like myth busters so then we were just basically like okay myth busters meet zombies this is awesome so we just developed it from there and uh reached out to zombie fan pages on facebook and and they started talking about it once we came up with a promo and then

it's just been a slow burn ever ever since you know six years later but we finally reached one million subscribers which was a great day for us and then you know not that's Too much later, this has happened. I mean, right. That's fantastic. Really, you guys, look, before we get into how people can help because you've had your income cut and you're trying to keep people's jobs and livelihoods so they can feed their families, and we get into that and some of your favorite tools for saving your life during the zombie apocalypse.

But during this adpocalypse, I mean, are you guys asking, do you want to bring YouTube down to the ground? or you just want, the object is so that everybody makes money and everybody's happy, right? Of course. And, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we would like to make it a better platform that can work really well with creators. And I think, honestly, you know, not to get too political, but right now, it really is an assault on alternative viewpoints in media, in news, in actually weapons and gun channels are really affected by this a lot. Like, that's mostly our fans. So, yeah, there really is a huge thing against this.

And, you know, it's bordering on, you know, free speech and, like the bare arms and all that stuff. And, you know, it's really, you know, YouTube is a great platform for people with independent voices. In fact, that's what they pitch to you when you first started. Right. I mean, that's the whole point. Times, it's never been better. Let's, I mean, anybody can do anything.

Let your voice be heard. Yeah. And, you know, they told us that the audience decides who makes it and who does it, not the gatekeepers. Well, that's turning into not be the case. Yeah. And ironically, we feel in what we've been told is they're basically the gatekeeper. Yes. But it wasn't before.

And we understand they have to make money, too. We're not dumb and we don't, you know, think that's the case, but there's better ways to go about it, I think. And it really does, you know, this isn't necessarily our words. This is other people's words that we've talked to. But, you know, they just think it's borderline coming on to censorship and different issues like that. And if you have a different viewpoint, especially what the news channels are talking about on there, and there's some that are very, very vocal about it, if you have a different. opinion than the corporate media, they don't want you to be heard. And that's,

and there's videos all over about all that. That's pretty amazing. Who owns, who owns YouTube again? Who owns YouTube again? Google. Oh, that's right. That's right. And they haven't been in the news lately. Oh, wait. Yes, they have. Where have they been in the news for? Oh, I know. Censoring some of their employees. Anyway, let's talk about you. Let's talk about your channel for a little bit. Anyway, that's what we think. Yes. I understand. And I, I want it to work out, believe for you and many others. I wanted to work out, and let's talk a little bit about that. You were creating some content that was creating some income,

which led you to have employees, and so you have people that, you know, you're not only feeding your own families, but you're feeding other people's families as well by creating this content. And now the gatekeeper has pulled the plug a little bit on that, so you're struggling to keep other families food on the table. If someone, what are you doing to combat that a little bit?

We've basically had to switch business models completely from an ad-based business model to maybe a sales business model. We started a merchandising shop at zombiego boom.com. We've designed tools of the trade to combat the zombie apocalypse. We even designed the sword called the executioner's sword, which repeal is the best sword in the world, especially for killing the undead. and outside of that we have a Patreon it's patreon.com slash zombie go boom TV and even just a dollar will help us

supplement our lost income so that the people that count on zombie go boom to pay the bills can still count on zombie go boom to pay the bills there's nothing worse than having to go up to my employees and say hey I don't know when I'm going to be able to pay you this month I mean, I'm trying not to lose it on the radio, but it's so hurtful, you know. I can well imagine. All right, so your favorite weapon is your sword?

Oh, absolutely. The executioner's sword, you don't even know. You don't even have to train in how to handle or wield a sword. It's shaped in a way where anybody would be able to kill. A 10-year-old could kill a zombie. All right, so what, I can, and I can purchase that? I mean 18-year-old. Yeah, right.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I was going to correct you on that because there was no way that a 13-year-old would ever see anything like that. So what is the executioner? That thing, I go to your zombie go-boom store. What's that thing going to run me? Uh, a 125 bucks.

Yeah, see, that's a 13-year-old. If you've got a 125 bucks, your 13-year-old's doing something he should. Okay, that's just to be clear. Right, or his parents get it for them. And, you know, with adult supervision, it shouldn't be that. bad. Well, we also designed this sword to basically help you whether, maybe going to camping, you know, you can actually put down with this. It works not just like a sword, but like a machete. I mean, you can't take a katana and cut wood with it contrary to the Walking Dead. But this

is definitely designed for outdoor and all of that. Are you saying that something in the Walking Dead is not true to life? Is that what you're saying? Because I don't know that... A lot of our more popular episodes is disproving some of the stuff that you see on The Walking Dead. Now you're pissing me off. Sorry. That's very funny.

So what are some of the other objects I can get at the store? I don't want to go to the store and actually look around while I'm talking to you because I have my producer bringing up actually the executioner sword and it looks really cool and I may actually have to, you know, buy it for camping purposes. But... What are some of your other favorite objects? It's still pretty early with our store.

We're still trying to work out the kinks and then set up partnerships with, you know, distributors and other manufacturers and things like that. So the goal is to have a full line of zombie go boom products, but really what's up there right now is literally prop liquidation. And because we got to do what we got to do. Right. Yeah, no kidding. Some items that we were.

were fortunate enough to be able to buy a wholesale. That's okay. I wish you the best. If you guys need anything, please let us know. And also when this case gets resolved, one way or the other, I'd love to talk

to you and see, you know, get your feelings on how the resolution has affected you and will affect you. That'd be great. Anytime. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. James Sweet. And Chuck Murray from a zombie go boom, you know, go get the executioner sword. I mean, what are you going to do?

Look, you didn't win the mega millions. Unless you went to Nick's barbecue in Illinois and won it. And if that's you, aren't you my uncle now? And if it's not you, it was $125. Right? You know, what are you going to do? Look, a couple of weekends that the movies is going to cost you that. Take it off.

Stay home and watch the cable you're paying for and buy the executioner. Help James and Chuck pay the bills.