Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 59 Steve Kardynal - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: March 6, 2015

Comedian, YouTuber, and Chatroulette sensation, Steve Kardynal, joins Rhett & Link this week to discuss his unorthodox approach to creating YouTube content, receiving a bottle of champagne from Miley Cyrus, and how trying on his sister's bikini in a basement would eventually lead to some of the most popular videos the internet has ever seen. *NOTE: This conversation contains adult themes. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. Joining us today at the round table of dim lighting is YouTuber Lip Syncher, AKA that dude dressed up like Miley Cyrus on Chatroulette, Steve Cardinal. For those of you not familiar with Chatroulette, it's a site that pairs random people

from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. And Steve has used this site to help create some of the most popular videos on the internet, including one he did for Miley's Wrecking Ball. If you hadn't seen this, he basically is on Chatroulette, he lip syncs the song, and then he films the stranger's reaction.

And he's dressed in a Miley Cyrus getup. Or not dressed at all. Or dressed in nothing. Completely naked on a wrecking ball. On a medicine ball suspended on a rope or something. Yeah, this thing. Not a medicine ball, an exercise ball. You know, the exercise ball, yeah.

I knew what you meant. This thing blew up on the internet in 2013. It continues to rack up views, currently at over 130 million views. That's a lot of millions. Wow. And we would play a clip for you, but it would just be Miley Cyrus' wrecking ball.

And you know, you've probably heard that before. Steve also makes videos for a series he calls Songs in Real Life, where he lip syncs moments of various songs and then places them into everyday situations. Steve, would you stop sleeping in my class? No, you're not. Well, don't blame me, teach.

Why do you look so sad all the time? I'd be sad too if I came to school wearing my granddad's clothes. We covered a lot of topics with Steve, including why he lost millions of views on some of his chat roulette videos, the awkward source for his bikinis, and the reasons why behind there's so much time,

sometimes over a year between his blockbuster releases. This guy is a talented performer. He has really helped define a genre of web video and we were glad to get to sit down and get to know him a little bit better. Building a website can be tough. And even if you do know your way around coding, creating something that looks good and works well

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RET A-N-D link link to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for Ear Biscuits. Thanks to Squarespace for their support for Ear Biscuits. Again, squarespace.com, offer code Rhettandlink. Now onto the biscuit. What's your favorite condiment? Like pepper, salt, soy sauce. That's not a condiment, really.

Pepper and salt are condiments. I thought condiments were usually sauces. I like mustard. Mustard's my kind of thing. When I mean hot dogs, of course. You do ketchup on a hot dog? I'm not really a big fan of ketchup. Yeah.

I like it, but I definitely don't do it on a hot dog. I like it, but the smell of ketchup throws me off. Mm, really? Because it's got a high vinegar type smell. Yeah, like- But mustard is even higher of a smell. But mustard just, I like it, I like the, something about ketchup just really throws me off.

I can't really explain it. It's like blood, it's like congealed blood. Yep. Is that your reason? Because don't let him put words in your mouth. No, just- If you don't think ketchup's like blood, don't be like, yeah, because that seems like a stupid reason. Well, it's more of the, yeah, it's more of the smell. Okay, just. If you don't think ketchup's like blood, don't be like yeah because that seems like a stupid reason.

Well, it's more of the, yeah, it's more of the smell. Okay, good. The smell just really gets me. That's better. Yeah, I mean, that's a good reason. Was that the opening, was this the intro? I guess so, yeah. On January 31st, not too long ago, you tweeted,

I think YouTube needs a new chat roulette video this year. Yep, and they're gonna get it. Really? Is this a commitment? It's a commitment, yes. Have you made it? It's a work in progress. They take a long time to make, and I've been gradually kinda like working on it, taking my time with it, but. Okay.

Yeah, I'm not gonna say what song it is, it's kind of a surprise, but it's gonna be a good chat roulette video. It's gonna be big? I mean, it could rival the other ones? I hope. I don't really want to talk highly of it and it kind of flops, but I'm feeling really good about it so far. I think it's going to be great.

Well, I don't want to skip to the process. I certainly have some questions about the process, especially when you say how long it takes, but I don't want to get into that yet. But we probably should just go ahead and talk about the Miley Cyrus wrecking ball Chatroulette video because I mean- We're gonna have trouble saying Chatroulette. Chatroulette.

Both of us are gonna have trouble with that. Like Russian roulette, like Chatroulette? Yeah, I mean, you can say it as many times as you want. Are we saying it wrong? Chatroulette, I know what it is. We can't even get it out. Yeah, Chatroulette, yeah. But I'm gonna say Chatroulette.

Yeah, we've both swallowed it already. Chat roulette video. I mean, when I see your face, I hear a wrecking ball. You know? I mean. How's that make you feel? Yeah. I mean, I don't mind.

It's my biggest video to date. So, I mean, yeah. Like, every time someone, like, sees me in the streets, they're like, oh, the wrecking ball guy. And I usually have this face where, like, when a video goes viral, I have videos go viral in the past, and people always recognize me for, like, I used to be the bikini guy. And then Wrecking Ball went viral, and then it was Wrecking Ball. And then I have a series called Songs of Your Life, and I was a Songs of Your Life guy.

But as of now, it's just, like, always a Wrecking Ball guy. I don't mind it. It's pretty cool. So, is the goal, it seems like maybe the goal is to continually come up with something that then you become the guy from the thing. Yeah, exactly, that's what I'm going for. That's how you measure success. The next time I'm gonna be the guy

from whatever I do next. Yeah, you almost said it, but you didn't. You kept yourself, you kept the secret. But we read your mind, and now we have the power to say it or not. You know, I will say that before this podcast, Link and I, for the first time ever, went on Chatroulette. Well, speak for yourself.

And well, you were there as far as I remember because it was just like an hour ago. I had been on it before. Oh, really? I'm gonna be honest, I went on it once before. I think it's when I saw your video the first time when it was blowing up, I was wondering what it was and I quickly found out that it wasn't the place for me.

I mean, I knew, I understood what it was and kind of had some idea, but kind of going into that environment just for like 15 minutes, just to be like, we need to have experienced this a little bit, right? It's a- Well, you describe uh well you get a wide range of people yeah why don't you just describe it give us the uh the for the people that don't know what chat related yeah okay chat roulette pretty much is a website where you turn on your webcam and you see

other people with web with webcams and you have the choice either next to that person or talk to that person so you can skip them yeah you can skip them and. And usually, if you're a guy on Chat Roulette, you're going to get skipped a lot until, you know, if you're a female, you're going to have, you know, people that don't want to talk to you. That's what that... Yeah, of course. So, yeah, it's a site with a big range of people,

and yeah, it's... And there's a webcam window in the upper left-hand corner that is the person that you are looking at and then underneath that you see yourself, you see what they're seeing of you and then there's a whole big open space to the right which is the chat window. The chat window, yeah.

So the video window is actually pretty small and there's a lot of room for chat. I feel like there should be more room for the video. Right. Yeah. I can see that. The whole screen is just like the chat, but. And then I want you to describe what like a typical seven minutes on Chatroulette is like

to see if our experience earlier today was correct. Well, are you guys talking, have you seen like the naked guys on there? Is that what you're talking about? There seemed like there were a lot of guys who, if the camera had it tilted, they would have been naked. Yeah. But Chatroulette has gotten pretty strict

where they have certain, there's rules now where if you have your shirt off, they're going to ban you. You're going to be suspended. So it's a lot more difficult to film videos on there now. Really? Yeah. Omegle is the side of,

I think Omegle came after Chatroulettelette so omegle is the same kind of thing but they have like no like you can go out on there naked i think and they wouldn't be as strict as chat roulette but oh meagle yeah but chat roulette when i'm on chat roulette uh if they don't next if i'm in like full costume people usually stick around but when i'm just go on there to like talk to people say hi just dress like this i usually get next to it all the time. Do you think that's because they recognize you and they're like, I don't wanna be in a video? There's been a few, people will recognize me

and talk to me, but I think most of the time it's just guys on a quest to find the love of their life. And they see a beard and they're out. Yep, that's exactly it. But yeah, because when we started scrolling through, it was just a bunch of guys who were kind of zombified, just kind of- A lot of Eastern Europeans. Staring blankly into their webcam,

or I guess into the picture that we were sending of us, which was just us staring blankly back at them. And then they would just be gone, because they would next us. And then we started nexting people. And then there was a girl. So we stopped because whoa, they were actually- Naturally you'd stop.

There actually are girls on here. There's like one out of 30 and she knew us. Oh, nice. And then it was like, hold on, who should feel guilty for being on here? She was fully clothed by the way. Yeah. But there was a wave of self-awareness of,

what does she think of me being on Chatroulette? Did you tell her? I was like, she was like, I could tell that it was both of us. And I could tell that she recognizes. We actually had matching hoodies on that just kind of worked out that way. We both were wearing Good Mythical Morning hoodies

because they were in our office. So it was like Rhett and Link in uniform on Chat Roulette. But is it people just wanting to have video sex? I think people, actually people would go on there just to talk to meet new people but. Well he's saying no if they've changed the rules, you can't do that now, you get suspended. Yeah, it's a lot more strict now but back when I,

years ago when I used to do it, it was all like, I feel like every other guy was naked and I was always getting nexted but very rarely running into people that just wanna talk and make new friends. Well, and that's the interesting thing about it is, I heard it was all about penises. Like you'll see a lot of penises on there.

But then I watch your video and it has this, I mean, you're buck naked by the end of the thing, or at least you seem that way. That's another question. I had a tube sock on. You did? I go right into it. I had a tube sock on. Okay, that was one of our questions.

But we can mark that one off the list. Not a crew sock or ankle sock? Ankle sock, no, that'd be too risky with a tube sock. I had my roommates surround me so I couldn't have an ankle sock on. Yeah, they were holding you up on the wrecking ball. Yeah, they're holding me up. On the exercise ball.

Yeah. But there exercise ball. Yeah. But there's an interesting quality, I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it's like a fun, everyone's having fun, people are connecting and this isn't dirty. This is actually a celebration of humanity. Look at these people smiling and reacting. And it took something dirty,

or at least something that had a stigma of being dirty and your video or videos kind of turned it into something that was like, wow, this is, people are coming together. This is like freaking Montel Williams. Look at the happiness. Mixer of happy reactions. And was that a discovery on your part or? Well, going into it, I wanted to go for more of the happy reactions.

Occasionally, I would get the disgusted reactions, but I wanted to have a video just full of joy because people see people smiling. They smile. They love it. They share it. That's what I was going for, but I had to go through a lot of the naked guys.

I have a lot of that footage, by the way. It's deleted now, but I used to have a lot of footage of the stuff I had to find the good reactions. I can imagine. Yeah. I'd rather not imagine, but. And you got the attention of Miley.

I mean, kind of give us the touch points on how big this thing got, which really culminates in you meeting her, right? Oh yeah, well opening day, I was expecting maybe like a million, because my Shia LaBeouf videos have a pretty loyal following, pretty big following, and I was expecting maybe like one or two million views opening day, I was expecting maybe like a million, because my Shire of Love videos have a pretty loyal following, pretty big following, and I was expecting maybe like one or two million views opening day,

but opening day got like 10 million views. Within the first week, it was like 60 million views. Whoa. Yeah, it was just taking off, and now it's at like 130 million views, 131. It's insane. Yeah, that's crazy. And when you released it, it wasn't long after that,

that her song, which wasn't number one anymore because Lorde's Royals was number one for like nine weeks in a row, and then it was pretty much everyone speculated, and I think they were right, that when your video came out, she immediately went back to number one on the Billboard Top 100.

Billboard wrote an article about that, and I couldn't believe, like, I'm like, is this a real article? And then, yeah yeah sure enough yeah cause I mean what's it called Royals was top of the hot what it's called hot 100 billboards for like 9 weeks straight and then I think billboards they

take the YouTube views to like calculate that into like the total like billboard score so they took my views and like put it into like the mix of okay so that's what happened it was the fact that they were counting the views because they tag your song because they tag your song, they tag your video because it has the song. Yeah, the legit song.

It wasn't like a cover or anything. Yeah, right. And how did you first know that Miley had seen it? Her management company emailed me asking for my address. They wanted to send me a gift. So I'm just like, all right, yeah, here's my address. And then a week later, I got a bottle of champagne and it said, for Miley and my pimps.

For Miley and my pimps. From Miley and my pimps. Really? Yeah. So that was- Handwritten note kind of a thing? It was more of just, yeah, it was just a handwritten thing from Miley and my pimps, that was it, and then just a bottle of champagne. Okay, and then- Like expensive champagne? No, it was, I looked into it,

it was just like a $20 bottle of champagne, which, it was still cool though, it was the idea of getting champagne from Miley, which is really cool. Yeah, right, that's cool. You're asking if it was cheap and he's like, yeah. It was cheap. It was still cool though, the idea of getting champagne from Miley, which is really cool. That's cool. You're asking if it was cheap and he's like, yeah. It was cheap. Well, I mean, this is the kind of thing that you look into.

Oh yeah. I don't know anything about champagne. I think the first thing I did was like Google the kind of like champagne it was. You did? Yeah, and then you were like, this is $100, right? Oh my, yeah, I can buy it from Walmart. This is cheap champagne.

Yeah, yeah, she's got that thing on stockpile. Yeah, but I have it as a trophy now. I'm not gonna. Oh, you didn't crack it open? No, no no that's a trophy pop the top no and then you eventually met her how did that happen well uh that i went to that same because the management or her manager emailed me then i saw she was coming to la to perform for concert so i'm like i wonder if i emailed her manager if i could if i could meet her so sure enough i you know i typed out an email saying hey like you know i'd love to see miley at concert I'm like can I go backstage and meet her and then like the day of the concert I got an email back saying hey we got your backstage tickets to meet

Miley oh yeah so I'm like oh shoot we got to go over there and then I met I met her very briefly it was more of like a like a backstage meet and greet and I kind of like went up to her we didn't talk about the video but uh yeah we just got a quick picture i pulled my shirt up in the picture and she slapped my belly but she knew who you were i yeah i think i think so but oh but you're not you're not you're not 100 sure because she wasn't like i love the videos you you just got the opportunity yeah when i met her i was like hoping she would like bring it up but i wasn't gonna be the one to bring it up like oh hey by the way i made the videos i was waiting for her to like say something because i thought like she was like and i thought she knew i was coming you know right so then like yeah i just got a quick picture like said hi and

like went on my way it was a really quick meet and greet yeah but it was still really cool thanks for the champagne i looked it up twenty dollars yeah twenty dollars i'm saving it now um you said that it quickly went to 60 million views or whatever, now this is the same video that you initially had to take down, right? Or did you not have to take it down? Because the controversy over somebody saying that they were in it.

My last video was taken down, it was called me maybe on Chatroulette, because some person didn't want to be in it, so I had to take it down, blow their face out, then repost it. But for Wrecking Ball there was a false complaint where when you get a copyright complaint, you get an email saying hey so and so

from this time to this time filed a complaint. So when I went to it I'm like I have all our written consent and permission. This is a false complaint. So then I went back and told YouTube and we got it all cleared up. Okay, so when you go back and look at some of the articles that were being written at that time,

Numenia Rockstars and then there was your Facebook post, that was about the Miley video, right? Yeah, that was about the Miley video. You thought that you were gonna have to take it down, but it turns out you didn't. Yeah, because there was like, I think, three reactions. I usually, before I go on to the next person, I usually say, hey, are you cool with being in the video?

And they'll say yes or no. And there was, I think, two to three people that had such good reactions that I couldn't ask them in time and next to me too quick. So I thought for sure that it was a real complaint coming in. But it was a fake complaint. You're saying with the Call Me Maybe video, you kind of learned some lessons about getting permission?

Oh, yeah. Because what happened with that one? Did you have to take that one down? Yeah, I had to take it down. I think it had, yeah, it had like 30 million views and I had to take it down and repost it. Without one person in it who didn't want to be in it. Yeah, had to blur their face out.

And the person that I blurred out was actually a fan of the videos, but I believe he was underage. So that was one of the main things. Wow, so you lost 30 million views on that Call Me Maybe video. Yeah. And so then with Wrecking Ball,

you said I'm gonna get verbal permission from every person. Like video consent and everything, yeah. So would you get permission, it sounds like you got it afterward, or would you start the chat and then be like, hey, I got this thing. There's sometimes where I would be dancing as I was going through,

and I would catch a reaction right there, then I would ask them. But sometimes a fan would recognize me, and be like, oh, hey, are you filming? I'm like, yeah, do you want to be in it? And then most of the times they're singing, it was pre, we talked about it. Like, hey, we're going to be singing this part.

But some of the reactions are just like, I ask them afterwards. Okay. Yeah. I mean, because the way you picture it is, as a viewer, it's all right, he set up this whole elaborate thing, and then he just kept, he just ran the chat roulette, and he just went through the performance.

Maybe, you know, maybe he took all night and just went through the performance. Yeah, but I have, I do certain parts, I don't do the whole song all the way through. Like, I'll get like, if I get a good take, a good reaction, I'll be, oh, all right, this one's done. Then I go to the next verse and I'll keep doing that verse over and over again until I get like, I'll get what I need.

Right, because it's got different stages. Like you've got the part where, okay, well, this part I'm going to be with a sledgehammer, this part I'm gonna be on the wrecking ball, and this part I'm gonna be on the wrecking ball naked. But you could also cheat the reactions in the edit if you wanted to. Say, all right, I've got five great reactions

to me being naked. I'm gonna cheat one reaction a little bit earlier for just me being on the ball for the first time. That's what we would do. That's what we would do. Yeah, yeah. They're all like the real reactions, yeah. So every time I see a reaction,

it is to the corresponding video of you beside it. You didn't toy with that. There's been a few like, to sync it up better, I had to like kind of toy beside it. You didn't toy with that. There's been a few like, to sync it up better, I had to like kind of toy with it, but like they were seeing like exactly what I was doing in the videos. You didn't do any reality TV? No, no, no, no, no.

Okay, then that actually as a viewer makes me feel great, you know, because that's what I assumed you were doing. And so there's, it's a purist approach, which I think is pretty cool, but it also means that it takes a lot more time. Which one took the longest at this point? Was it the Miley one? I would say, I think it was Call Me Maybe took the longest.

Okay, so how many different sessions of recording we're talking about? For the Miley one or? For the one that took the longest, for the Carly one. A lot of different, there There's been different days. I'll take a week off and go back to it a week later, or I take days off and I'll spend hours on it, go away from it, come back to it.

So how many nights do you think you've committed to it? It was definitely over a month process of the, what's it called, the calling maybe. Same with Wrecking Ball. But I think I'm definitely more experienced now making these videos, but the earlier stages of me making these videos, it took me a lot longer because I was kind of like learning the ropes and how to like get these reactions.

But yeah, I'm a lot better at it now, so. Well, I do think we want to come back to, you know, I think you're kind of in one sense, kind of answering a question that a lot of people have for you that you've also talked about because other people have asked you in other interviews about your video frequency. You're kind of getting at the heart of that,

at least part of it, which is how long it takes you to create these videos. Yeah. But before we get to that and kind of come back, let's go full circle and go back to little Steve. Oh, little Steve. Where are you from? I am from, I was born and raised in Macomb, Michigan.

So, well, we moved to Macomb, Michigan, but I have a beautiful mom, beautiful dad, two sisters. I'm the middle child. Okay. And, yeah. Little Steve didn't have a mustache or a beard and didn't wear bikinis. I was really big into, around fourth grade, I discovered that I liked music. Because, like, in third grade, I heard music for the first time. I thought music was a passing phase growing up.

I'm like, oh, music's not going to be around. It's just a passing phase. Okay. You mean like in the world? In the world. That's how I knew music. I'm like, oh, people always ask me my favorite song. I'm like, I don't like music.

It's just here now. It's just like, you know. Wow, that's an interesting perspective. Yeah, but that's how I was thinking back then. I get it. I thought music is something that my older stepsister is into, but not me. Yeah, exactly. Then fourth grade came around, and my sister was like,

hey, do you want some Shady CD? I'm like, yeah, I'll take it. And then ever since, I became a huge Eminem fan, and I started dyeing my hair blonde. From fourth to eighth grade, I had my hair bleached blonde. Really? And I wore baggy clothes and everything. I was really big into Eminem.

I still am today. And you knew all the words. Yeah, I would actually print off his lyrics and read his lyrics and study his lyrics. I was a really dedicated fan. You were a student of Eminem. I was. What'd you learn?

I learned a lot about his life. I learned that he came from nothing and made a lot of his life and it's very inspiring. Yeah. Did your beautiful mom and beautiful dad have concerns about the fourth grade obsession with Eminem? They did. They made sure to have,

whenever I got an Eminem CD, it was always edited. And looking back- Like the Walmart version? The Walmart, and it really bothered me because- Boy, I bought one of those one time. That was a mistake. Yeah, it seems like a broken CD. You can't even give the content for what it is.

So, yeah. So when you printed off the lyrics, were there blanks in the lyrics too? Oh no, I was seeing the lyrics, I was learning all the words, yeah. You could fill it in. Yeah, I could fill it in. You were using context clues to fill in curse words.

Yep. But that satisfied their concerns, and so you made it work. Like my sisters were always like talking in comparison to getting a dog, But that satisfied their concerns, and so you made it work. My sisters were always talking in comparison to getting a dog. We always wanted a dog growing up. My parents were like, mainly my dad. Oh, you can't have any.

No pets. You can get a hamster or something, but no dogs. And my sisters were always all about getting a dog, but all I wanted was a parental advisory CD. That's what I wanted the most. Parents were like, no, you're not old enough yet. Wait until you're older. I'm like, all right. So what's the first one that was unedited?

The first CD that I actually bought that was parental advisory was some Little Wayne CD. I remember going through her store. I didn't even know what Little Wayne CD it was, but the cover looked cool. I'm like, hey, mom, can I get this CD? Because I saw parental advisory. I saw Little Wayne. I'm like, oh, what is this? And she's like, all right, fine.

You can get it. So yeah. You wore her down. Well, no, she advised him. That's what parental advisory is all about. But I kept breaking her down and then she finally, she's like, you know, yeah. And then what did it feel like to listen to that? Do you remember that?

I felt like a grown man. I'm like, this is what I was missing out on. I can actually hear these words now, this is great. It wasn't a letdown. He's like, well, I've been filling in the blanks. It's not really that different. No, it was definitely very rewarding to be able to get Print Televisor CDs.

Was that Lollipop's song on that one? Lollipop? Lil Wayne. Oh, I don't think it was. No, this was like an earlier one. Okay. Yeah, this was before that. It was Lil Lil Wayne.

Lil Lil Wayne, yeah. Before Lil, yeah. Still had a foul mouth, though, I guess. Oh, yeah. And so were you the kind of kid who was willing to kind of make a fool of himself in front of class like i think it was fourth grade where i it was no it was before like the bleached blonde where i cracked a joke and i think yeah it was third grade i cracked a joke and then people were laughing i'm like oh wow like i could be a class clown

and then uh i actually i was pretty like all through like you know like school i like i wasn't really that like talkative. I kind of kept to myself, had a small group of friends. It wasn't until like after I got out of school where I kind of like, you know, did the whole YouTube thing, but. You weren't actively trying to be the center of attention as a, you know, a middle schooler.

I had my moments. I'd have my moments where I'd try to be funny, but it wasn't like always I'd try to be funny. There was those kids in school that would always actively try to be funny, but I was more of just like, I to be funny. There was those kids in school that would always actively try to be funny, but I was more of just like, I would like kinda slide in, say my thing, and go on my own way, but.

Right, because you know, even like you uploaded your, the Katy Perry firework speech where you basically just read the lyrics in dramatic fashion as your speech. I got a good grade on that speech, yep. And that was in college, right? Yeah. And so when I saw that that speech, yep. And that was in college, right? Yeah. And so when I saw that,

because we really relate to that, like that was sort of the start of us developing an audience was class, was school, was, in fact, I remember the speeches that we had the opportunity to give in middle school was the first time we like commanded an audience, right? And so, and that was the first taste of like, okay, you can develop something

that makes a group of people respond in a certain way. So I saw you do that in college, I was like, oh. You were probably doing this all along. I was very nervous for that speech. I don't know if you can tell in that video, but I remember, like, we had like, I forget what the speech had to be about,

but I remember like, I had the idea to like, kind of like, you know, say like the lyrics for the speech. Right. And I remember going to, like, lyrics for the speech. Right. And I remember going to, it was a very crowded class, I remember being very nervous, and I got there, only half the class was there, and I was kind of bummed out. But I was still, even the class was half full,

and I was still really nervous giving that speech. In some ways, that makes it more awkward. Yeah, and the class was very, I was hoping for a very lively and energetic crowd, but the whole class was kind of like, oh, all right. Yeah, there's that one pan to the, to the four people on kind of like, oh, all right. Yeah, here this guy goes. There's that one pan to the, to like the four people on that side of the room. Yeah.

And they're like, is this happening? Yep. And yeah, now that you say you were nervous, I guess you could tell at the beginning, there's like, there's the intro where you're kind of saying, this is what I'm gonna do. Yeah. And I don't know if you were like trying to bait them

that you didn't, you know, because then once you go into the lyrics and it's like spoken word, baby, you're a firework. Yeah. That's where you explode. Once I got into like, you know, reciting like lyrics, that's when I became alive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It brings me back to when I was in like my school day, I took out, I was in the theater arts. Okay. And sorry for stuttering, I kind of like talk a lot. I talk very, am I talking too fast, by the way? No. Coming in clear? Okay.

Bring it on. You're good. I'm going to try not to talk too fast. We're Southern, so we talk too slow. Okay, yeah. You need to balance this out. We make everyone feel like they're talking too fast. I started taking theater arts from like ninth to twelfth grade.

And I remember before I would do improv or go on stage, I'd always get really nervous. And the second I got on stage to do my lines, that's when I became alive. And I feel the same way towards YouTube videos where I get extremely nervous and then once I'm actually doing it, that's when I'm like, all right, I'm in this character until it's over. And so much of YouTube videos are, they're performance oriented in kind of a theater way.

So I can see that resonating maybe from those high school years of being involved in theater. Yeah. When you left high school, what was the next phase? Well, in like the- College or- Well, yeah, back to when I was taking theater arts in 12th grade, I started in ninth grade

and then when I went to high school, it was like from 10th to 12th grade, it was theater arts. Like ninth grade was a different school. And when I got from like the 10th to 12th grade, when you're in 12th grade, your final year of theater arts, you can be a part of and when i got from like the 10th to 12th grade uh when you're in 12th grade your final year of theater arts you can be a part of the student news and student news is broadcasting from the entire school where you can like oh yeah all over that and that and that's where i kind of like spawned into like oh this is this is great because i would make we would make like school related videos weekly and they would premiere like first

hour of school people everyone would see it so i remember like after like first hour would get out everyone would be like oh like i saw your you oh, I saw your video on student news. It was great. It was hilarious. And that kind of gave me inspiration to be like, oh, this is something I could do. Were they sketches? Were they comedy? It started off as a movie quote where we would take a movie scene and recreate it,

and it would be the very end of student news. People would talk about sports or school-related topics, and at the very end of student news, we would be would be movie quote people look forward to movie quote uh-huh and then like midway through we're like senior year we kind of got bored with it we're like i wonder if we can like switch it up and like do like comedy sketches so we asked our teacher who can make comedy sketches and sure enough we could and then we just ended up making these sketches based off like well for example one was called serialereal Killer, where I was force-fed waffles growing up as a boy. Okay.

And fast forward 10 years, I'm now a serial killer because I could never have cereal growing up. So I break into people's houses, take their cereal, and I kind of just torture it and kill their cereal. Yeah. And that pretty much, it played in front of the whole entire first hour, whole entire school. And at the very end of the video, we said, make sure to eat your breakfast before school. It was like a PSA. Yeah, which is important. Most important meal of the day.

But the whole thing was just a random video, nothing to do with school, then at the very end we just said, make sure to eat your breakfast. As long as there's a moral, you can do it. For all these sketches we just had these random things, and at the very end we kind of had a school related thing we would put in there.

Well, you know the thing that high school teachers and administrators don't tell you is that they want you to do these things because it gives them a thrill man. Yeah. They want that in their life too. They don't, that's a secret for all your high schoolers out there.

So you wanted to be an actor, not a YouTuber. Yeah I wanted. Even though that did exist. We're talking, when did you graduate from high school? Oh, oh wait, 2008. Oh, eight, so YouTube was very young, but it existed around your senior year in high school. Acting came first, playing characters came first,

then I realized after I graduated, I can post these old student news skits to YouTube, and then from there, my friends that I made student news with, we all came together, formed a little group, and we would make sketches on YouTube, and then yeah,, my friends that I made student news with, we all came together, formed a little group and we would make sketches on YouTube. Okay. And then yeah, I was more just like,

I wanted to just play characters, get into acting. And are those still around? Oh yeah, they're still out. Is that on your channel? Some of my favorite ones are on my side channel, but if you do some digging, you can find some of those. What's your side channel? Like Steve Cardinal, Steven Cardinal, Steve Cardinal 2.

Oh okay. So if you go back, if you sort by date to the beginning of that, I would see some old stuff. Yeah, Serial Killer and another one called Prom, those are on my second channel, but there's older ones. There's like, there's a good handful of them that are just kind of floating around lost on YouTube.

No one even really knows about it. Okay, so you kind of get a taste for this acting thing. You get a taste for the comedy thing, for making an audience laugh, and you graduate high school, and what happens? I graduate high school, and then I wasn't really into

the whole... I didn't really want to go to college. I wanted to keep making videos. I wasn't really into going to college. And then my parents talked to me, like, you know, like, YouTube's not paying your bills, or making videos isn wasn't really into going to going to college and then uh my parents talked me into like you know like youtube's not paying your bills or making videos and paying your bills you should probably you know do the right move and go to college so i ended up you know going to like uh community college and i was going for like in michigan in michigan i was like i was going for like communications i was aimlessly going i didn't know what i was like i was just kind of like going there to like figure myself out and then yeah i I think, I don't know,

about two years into going to college, I realized, you know what, I should just focus more on just making sketches and do it full time. And that was like 2010, probably, two years after graduating high school? Yeah, 2010, I would say so, yeah. Which seems like if you look at your YouTube history, that seems like the year that something did click for you.

Yeah. Yeah, because if you look back now on your Steve Cardinal channel, you've got a parkour video with 800,000 views and then your second video that, I don't know what's private, but the public videos, it's fun on chat roulette, five minutes, almost 2 million views four years ago. Yeah. So was that just something you were fooling around

or were you thinking I'm gonna go big with this? Chatroulette was more of just, it was a new site and I was more of, I was kind of fooling around on it. I didn't know it was gonna take off. It was more of like a side thing and then it took off. I'm like, I can actually play characters on here and have some fun with it and then- Chatroulette took off or your video?

What do you mean? Are you just saying this website is blown up, I need to do something on it? Well, yeah, the chat roulette, I forget when it first came out, but when it first came out, everyone was going on there. It was pretty big when it first came out, so that's when I decided to go there

and play a weird character, and that's where the first bikini video came through. It's not actually on, it's on a different channel. Oh, it is? My very first chat bikini video came through and it's not actually on it's on a different channel my very first uh chat roulette video was on a different channel it's on uh it's it's after my i was very big into i still am very big into playing video games and uh my name was dominator 005 on playstation and at the time i'm like i made i was very big on playstation i'm like you know what i should make a youtube account. I'm like, you know what? I should make a YouTube account. So I just took my gamer tag, put it on YouTube, and then it just blew up.

I'm like, I don't want to have this big random name. Dominator 005. I was Dominator 005 at 789 when I first saw you guys, actually. Oh, really? Yeah, I remember walking by you guys at 789. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way back in the day. And I went there going as like,

as Steve, but like, people knew me as Dominator. There's the Dominator. Yeah, so like, it was 789 that kinda like, was like, actually, I need to like, cause a fan came up to me, was like, oh, Dominator005, I love your videos, and I'm just like, my name's Steve, like. It kinda like brought me down,

so after 789, I kinda, I went full blown into Steve Cardinal, and I made that channel. So, well, so you had done the bikini, a bikini clad chat roulette video on the Dominator 005 channel, which went viral. Yeah, it went viral. How viral are we talking?

Like millions? Yeah, it was, I think, like three million views right now. Oh, okay, and it's still up there. See, we didn't even find it. Yeah, see, it's very hidden. Well, I know what to search for, though. And you were doing,

you didn't wear a bikini or lip sync in all of your Chat Roulette videos, and you were trying other things. Yeah. But you were all in to YouTube. Or were you also in school? I've always been big into YouTube. I love watching YouTube.

I watch it to this day every day of my life. I'm always on YouTube, and I'm just very fascinated by the whole, like, everyone on YouTube. There's so many different genres, like, there's a lot on YouTube, you know? Well fascinated by the whole like everyone on YouTube, there's so many different genres, there's a lot on YouTube, you know? Well, and the fact that you went to 789. And this was long before, I had like I think 50,000 subscribers during 789.

Very, very few people actually went to 789 and that's a, it's interesting. I didn't realize that you were there and that it was that, it goes back that far. Oh yeah. But anybody who was at 789 was already thinking, I wanna do this. This is, I'm all in.

And we were definitely thinking that. Yeah, this was a time, cause we actually, we drove from Michigan to New York and this was a time where I didn't really wanna do the whole college thing. I was trying to pursue YouTube and try to figure it all out. So this was like, 789 was kind of,'t really want to like do the whole college thing I was trying to like pursue YouTube and try to figure it all out so this was like 789 was like kind of I was opening my eyes to the whole YouTube thing like I don't know it was yeah it was that

way for a lot of people I mean a lot of conversations on Ear Biscuits goes back to 789 I still have a visual of I was walking to the meetup and you guys were I think walking you were walking away from it I was walking towards it and I remember just walking by you guys I'm just like wow they're a lot taller than I thought they were going to be. I'm a small guy, so you guys are that much taller than me. Right. So did you have a lot of traction as a gamer as well? And are you still doing that?

Yeah, I'm very active in playing a game called Gears of War on the Xbox 360. But I've recorded a few sessions. And I've been meaning to kind of like record some of it, put like store it on YouTube, but I'm more of just like, I'm very competitive, competitive gamer. And,

and I try recording and when I record, I'd never really talk as I'm playing. I'm more of like the camera's rolling. I'm like, Oh, what do I say? What do I say? But I've,

I love playing, I love playing video games. That's like my thing. Okay. But, but more as an outlet, not as a, not as a, an entertainment source for other people.

Yeah, I can't do what PewDiePie does, that's not me. So if we look at your Steve Cardinal channel, you can kind of see the evolution of things. You know, there's chat roulette videos, and then other videos that are like the public demonstration of absurdity. Like just dancing in public or in a, you know, the iChat of a

Apple store. Apple store. You know, you were really putting yourself out there. It was performance art, really. I think it all started from back in high school. I'm very big into cosplay, dressing up as certain characters. I think it was, I was 11th grade where Super Smash Bros. Melee was coming out,

and all my friends dressed as Mario, like Mario, Luigi, all the characters, and we just ran around school. I got this rush of dressing up as these characters, and then after I graduated, my first time going to a bigger, like beyond school, I went to, are you familiar with Warped Tour?

Yeah. I went to Warped Tour the day of, I went to the midnight screening of Dark Knight with Heath Ledger. And I went there dressed as the Joker makeup, you know, the Heath Ledger Joker makeup. And then after that movie got out, I was just too wired to fall asleep. I'm like, that was a great movie. I'm a big Batman fan. And then that same day was was like was like the warp tour so i went to warp tour in you know in the joker makeup and just like the energy i got from people which is oh joker like that's a great movie and just like it felt so cool i felt like i was

actually i knew it wasn't the joker but i'd be like i was like so in it like i just came from the movie i was just kind of like spreading like the joker batman love and i actually met katie perry because of the joker makeup oh really yeah yeah we just kind of spreading the Joker Batman love. And I actually met Katy Perry because of the Joker makeup. Really? Yeah. We were kind of laying on the lawn. It's like Warped Tour. Everyone's kind of walking around, waiting for the next band to play or whatever.

But I remember Katy Perry was up in like 40 minutes. I'm like, hey, we should kind of lounge over here and wait for her to... This was when she had to act as the girl. That was her big song back then. Yeah. And I remember we were laying on the grass. I was in all my Joker makeup. And then I kind of let my friend say,

I think that's Katy Perry coming. She's going like to the backstage area. I'm like, oh yeah, that is Katy Perry. And she actually, she locked the eyes with me and approached me and been like, oh, Joker, like Batman. And she came up to me like, hey, it's cool if I get a picture. And I actually have a picture of Katy Perry

in Joker makeup. And then. Really? Yeah. And that's what I think what spawned me to like just dress up in these weird, you know. And you're like, I should probably put it on YouTube, and I should probably dance a lot too. Because I'm not really, whenever I meet people, they're always like, I thought you were going to be more energetic or more dancing around.

But I'm like, no, that's just like, I get into these characters and like, I break free from my like, you know. I'm not shy, but I'm not really, you know, I don't know. You bottle it up and kind of release it. I bottle it up and I release it on my videos. No, I get that. Turn it on and turn it off. Yeah, turn it on and turn it off. You have self control.

Yeah, there's been a lot. You're a person. There's been a lot of people that met me like, wow, you're a chill dude, you're a chill dude. I think what it is, for me at least, I hate doing things that draw like a public spectacle, but if we decide that we're going to do something, once you start doing it, all you're thinking about really

is the audience that's gonna see it on YouTube, right? You're thinking about not the person that's being embarrassed, but you're thinking about the audience that's gonna watch this and enjoy it. Yeah. And when you have that audience in mind, it really changes your mindset. Yeah, I always get a little nervous

going into those videos because I dress up, you know, as a lady in some majority of my, not a majority, but a good amount of my videos. A lot. A lot of my videos, yeah. Now there's, go ahead, finish that thought. You dress up like a lady. Yeah, well.

Because you love it? You wanna know how it all started? Yes. Okay, well this is, okay, so my bikini day started when I had the whole house. Tell us the real reason you dress up like women so much. This is how the whole bikini started. Me, yeah, my parents, my mom, dad, and sister,

like they were all gone. I had a house to myself. I was living in my parents' basement at the time. This is a great start to this story. Home alone. Some of my best moments throughout my life so far were my parents' basement. I had the whole basement to myself. I had an awesome room.

There's nothing wrong with living in your parents' basement. It's awesome. So my whole family was gone. This was when Chatroulette was first getting big. So I'm just like, I have the whole house to myself. What can I do? And then we had this storage area of the basement where we had like all these like i thought they were old bikinis like they were like my old sister's old bikinis i thought they were

being like gonna go to like goodwill or something my mom was gonna give them away so i i i'm going through the box and there's a lot of bikinis in here so like i'm like i can wear these for chat roulette and like play as like as a girl on chat roulette and dance around and i did that that's how it all started. I'm like, I had to hold off on myself, put on the bikinis. My sister's bikinis, which sounds really weird, I know. And you framed yourself such that the guys

who would next to you would then see your backside and your back and think you were a woman. Yeah, so I did some of those and that's when I did my first chat roulette song video. It was to a lady guy on a telephone, and I just danced around and tricked people into thinking I was, yeah, I started off kind of like being like,

showing a little bit of myself, and I would come in like, oh, you're a dude. Yeah, those are great. But yeah, it all started from being home alone. Lots of things happened. But then- When did your parents first see it? Well, what happened was,

after I danced around in bikinis, I put the bikinis back in the box where I got them from. But I didn't know my sister was keeping those bikinis because when the video, after the video went viral, I wasn't expecting the video to get millions of views. So the video got all this traffic, and my sister's like... I just hear a loud... Because I live in the basement, right?

I hear this loud scream. I'm like, oh, is that for me? Then I hear stomping towards my... To my direction like towards the basement and she's like the door busts open she's like were you wearing my bikinis and i'm just like yeah and she just like lost her mind on me and i'm like she told my parents my parents like you weren't your sister's bikini i was like yeah i ended up like giving her money for new bikinis but i didn't i thought they were all being sent away i didn't know those were you had to get her new bikinis yeah she's like your stuff was in there i'm soil them your's like, your stuff was in there.

You didn't soil them. Your stuff was in there. Your stuff was in there. And it's weird if, yeah. Yeah, I get it a little bit. I can see where she's coming from. But on my side, I thought those were like being sent away. It's fine if people at the thrift store get bikinis that had junk in them.

Yeah, ever since then, I went and bought my own bikinis and did my own thing. Yeah, well, it fits you a little bit better. How did songs in real life start? What was the genesis? Well, as I was going, aimlessly going to college, going for the communications thing, I was, there was this one random class, I forget what it was called, but in the class we had a lot of free time, like, we worked in groups, but there'd be certain groups of the class where you kind of go off and do your own thing, so we had a lot of free time, and I had this

idea, me and my buddy had this idea where we kind of, like, take songs, put them into, like, for those that don't know what Songs of Real Life is, it's where you take like, you take a random song and mix it in with dialogue to make songs more exciting. So pretty much I had this idea going, I had this idea going into class. I'm like, hey, do you guys want to be in this? This is the first Songs of Real Life.

I'm like, hey, do you guys want to be in this video? They're like, yeah. So the very first Songs of Real Life, the classroom scene, that's the day I met my classmates. That's the first day. Yeah, the very first songs where I left the classroom scene, that's the day I met my classmates. That's the first day? Yeah, the very first, it wasn't the first day of class. It was like, I never really talked to the people in that class, except for the people I was working with.

You would just show up and leave. Yeah, show up and leave. And then, we had the whole class to ourselves. I'm like, hey, this is the perfect time to film this video. I had everything written out. I'm like, are you guys cool with doing these lines? And they're like, yeah, and then.

You were like, you, you, what's your name? You look like you could be the instructor, or at least you look the most like the instructor of all of us here. Yeah. He obviously was not the instructor. Yeah, he wasn't, I'm like, do you wanna be a teacher? He's like, yeah, and then we're also really close,

we also like talking and everything, and I met them because of Songs of My Life is the coolest thing. Now, so it's normal dialogue dialogue and you've written this thing, but then all of a sudden it'll go into lip syncing a little blurb out of nowhere, which it's just, it's one of those things that it's a great idea, but until you really see it, it doesn't totally click,

but then it's like, oh, that's brilliant. I should do 800 of these. Yeah. Were you playing the music in the room, like on your phone, for them to lip sync to? Well, there was some where we played a song beforehand to kind of like get the idea of how we're gonna be in sync with it, but then there were times

where like the verse was too long, we couldn't get it in sync properly, so we would have it playing in the background, we would like time it up and stop it. So yeah, but for the most part, we would just like kind of say it without playing the song. And it just worked out. You get the rhythm in your head.

It just worked out. There's a few if you go back and watch, mainly the first one where like one girl is really off sync with the song but. Right. Well, I got a question about that, it really relates to a lot of your videos because there are two things that they have in common.

I mean, one thing is a lot of them feature popular music. Yeah. You know them feature popular music. Yeah. You know, copyrighted music. And the other is a lot of them feature a lot of people, you know, now that you're trying to work in and get permission and that kind of thing. But specifically with the, and those are both sort of really dangerous areas when you're making videos, right?

Yeah. Because you can come back to bite you. But specifically with the copyrighted music, how does that work in terms of, and the guy trying to make a living on YouTube, your billboard is picking that up and basically crediting Miley for that. She's getting some money, I guess, for those plays.

You get a portion of the, I mean, how does it work in terms of monetizing those videos? For Songs of My Life? For anything that features music that's either been tagged or whatever for like majority of my videos on the steve carnell channel i'm not like making any money from it recent like as of recently i'm like when i do these new like songs in life videos i try it like i'm doing i'm working on new songs in life right now and i try getting all the songs cleared but like a lot of the song companies are really strict or like they charge too one of this i'm not gonna say what song it was but one of the

songs they wanted to charge like i think five, it was like five or 8,000 for every five million views the video gets. And I'm like, I can't afford to pay this company for the rest of my life for video doing well. But for all those videos, I'm not making money from any of those videos. Even Wrecking Ball, I didn't make a dime from it. Okay, so that money just goes right back to Miley.

Yeah, I got no share. I got nothing from the Wrecking Ball, unfortunately. But yeah, I got no share. I got nothing from the wrecking ball, unfortunately. But yeah, I got my start making money. Before I started making videos, higher quality videos, I would enter video contests. I would go to Google and type in online video contests, and that's where I got, I think I saved up about $12,000, and that's where I got my big start

into doing what I'm doing now. But if you're not making money off of the most popular video you've ever made, where are you making money? It kind of reflects on my other videos and like a lot of the money I've made came from like things off of YouTube. Like recently I did a thing with Captain Crunch

and that was like, you know, like things I do like off of my channel, it's where I kind of like. What was that, that as an example? Captain Crunch? Yeah. I was animated with Captain Crunch on their channel and we just talked in the cereal bowl on the YouTube Captain Crunch channel.

The cool thing is that growing up, it's all my favorite cereal. So being able to work with him was just insane. It all spawned from Wrecking Ball. You met the captain. I met the captain. It all spawned from Wrecking Ball. They saw Wrecking Ball and were like, hey, we want to interview you

on the Captain Crunch talk show. It's all gonna be animated, we're gonna animate you. I'm just like, this is amazing, I love Captain Crunch. Well, you know, the interesting thing is, one of the most recent videos on your Steven Cardinal channel is, when we started watching it, you know, it's the one that starts with Jay Leno.

It's like your feature video right there. Yeah, that was for the Lady Gaga video, the first Charlotte video. Right, and the second thing is, like you show a picture of something kind of, you know, just a video that like a static shot, and you hear a phone call from a commercial casting agent that you've recorded, a voicemail.

Yeah, that was, when we talk about that, that was for our audition. Right, so tell, because you're talking about these other opportunities. When I first heard that, I was like, is this gonna be some artsy video where he's trying to make a point about how he's bigger, he's more than just the guy from that video.

But as it unfolded, I was like, no, this is, that's kind of his calling card. It's almost like you're trying to convince the audience that like, hey, i did this i should be able to do x y and z is that is that what's going on that's what i was going for that video just yeah right that's it you nailed it on the money okay and so uh you were you were about to talk about that particular audition oh yeah that was okay so um yeah i got an audition after wrecking ball like went viral i got an audition to try out for a uh a willy wonka commercial and i'm like oh this is yeah this is awesome of course i want to try out so i get there and like

well before i got there i got like a week ahead of time i got a script for the commercial and i mastered i would have rehearsed in front of the mirror every day i was just like i'm gonna nail this audition and then i get to get to the audition and uh i check in and like oh did you get the new the new script change and i'm just like there's a script change no i didn't get it and then they gave me the script and all my lines are completely different. Oh, gosh. And I have about like five minutes before going into the audition. So I'm kind of reading it over, reading it over.

And then I remember the girl I was auditioning with was like, hey, I'm so-and-so. I'm auditioning with you. How did you get this call? Then I'm like, oh, the people making the commercial saw my Wrecking Ball video and they wanted me to come audition. And she's like, oh, my agent. She was very surprised. That was even a thing i was surprised too you know but then i remember going into the audition i was expecting like maybe like you know a few people there's like 20 people in there and there's like they're all on one side on the other side

there was like the you know the stage the lights and everything oh wow they had like a monitor of the script thankfully and then like the whole audition i was just reading off off the script it was like i i totally bombed the audition i'm like it was just a really it was my first like major like big audition but i remember it i mean it was like it was a rough time for me to that audition but it was it's still very memorable and i it's fun looking back at it does it inform your your strategy in terms of what you want to do as far as be in i mean to still be an actor i mean what's the split between youtube and pursuing acting well with youtube like where i'm going with it now it's just like i've been working on all these videos so we're like i'm playing

these characters that like i don't have to audition for i can just be like you know what i can put on this costume and just be this character so where i'm at now is just like i'm working on these all these videos to where like i don't have audition. So I'm just so focused on what I'm doing now. But it all started from acting. But I think I can say I'm acting on YouTube. I'm just playing these. Sure, sure. I meant in a traditional medium,

if you wanted to get into that. Because the producer side of me certainly sees it, okay, you have an innate sense of your look and what you can do to make things more ironic. So a guy with your look and a dress, lip syncing to Katy Perry, or the things that you do, it's like, okay, that guy should be in every Super Bowl commercial.

That guy should be in, he should be the comedic spot in this next movie opposite Bradley Cooper. You know, that type, the wheels start turning in that way. Yeah. And I assume that because of Wrecking Ball and everything else that there's a lot of people coming out of the woodwork to get you involved in that type of stuff if you wanted to.

Well, there hasn't been like any things that really caught my interest like the thing that caught my interest the most was captain crunch and willie wonka but i haven't really i've gotten like certain things to do like independent movies or like but with independent movies you got to like look into the director and if you're not a fan of the director then you can't really you're not gonna be able to work with that person but like yeah i've i don't know i've've gotten a lot of opportunities, but nothing really hit me where I want. I don't know. But your main strategy is YouTube. Yeah.

To be a YouTuber. Yeah, YouTube right now. That's what I'm going for. But whatever comes my way, if I can go to audition and audition for this really cool part in a movie, then I'm going to go for it. You're going to take those opportunities.

Yeah, I'm going to take those opportunities. Yeah, I definitely, because yeah, just playing characters. I'm a big movie guy. I go to movies like once or twice a week. Well, I think somebody, as someone who just, who's a fan who looks at, you know, your channel, looks at your history on YouTube, a fan says, you did this Miley video

and now I've gotta wait a year for the next one or you did songs in real life and I've gotta wait however many months. And I really feel like you sense this, you know, when you look at your Twitter, like in October you tweet something like, I go away so I can come back 10 times better, get ready to get sick of me,

I'm staying around for a while this time. You know that people's perception of you is that you don't have a regular schedule. Yeah. And it seems like you sense that and there's a sort of a sense of pressure. Or even, and then there'll be a vlog, six months ago you vlogged,

I've got a 80s theme song in real life coming out, I got a 70s theme song in real life coming out, and got a 70s theme song in real life coming out. And then it's like, and then the comments below are still not here. Crickets, you know? Well, I made sure in that video not to give a confirmed release date because I'm very bad at that.

Like a lot of my video ideas, I just did Little Mermaid in real life and that idea has been sticking with me for like two years and like I never actually went through with doing it until like, you know, just like a couple months ago. Uh-huh, yeah.

But like a lot of my videos ideas, they stick with me for a long time like sometimes a month sometimes even years and like i feel like i like grow my content if it stays with me like to the point of like over a year or two then i know it's a good idea but i have that idea so we're like like after like a month or two like that idea kind of dissolves or i'm like oh you know what that probably wasn't the best idea but like i i have i do have a very inconsistent uploading schedule and i feel like every time I upload a video, I'm always like, I wonder if it's gonna do well.

I'm always very on edge of if it's gonna do well. Every time I post a video, I'm very unaware of how it's gonna do. So you're so trigger shy that you're not shooting things is what you're really telling me. When you get 100 million views on a video and then- 130 million, 31 million, come on now. And counting. 131 million views on a video, and then- 130 million, 31 million, come on now. 131 million views on a video,

and then a few months later, you did the Mariah Carey Christmas one, and then it's over a year later, and you haven't done another one. Yeah. That sounds crazy to me! I know. Is this a problem?

I wouldn't say it's a problem, it's just like my choice of, I don't know, it's how to me, right? Is this a problem? I wouldn't say it's a problem, it's just like my choice of, I don't know, it's how I work, it's how I operate. It's very, because a lot of YouTubers, a lot of the big YouTubers, they stay consistent, like they're on a consistent schedule and I've tried to like get in that formula of always posting, but I always, it's just not for me.

I feel like I'm forcing myself into like trying to put out videos. But are you afraid? Is that what you really said a second ago, Steve? Did you say... Wait, how did I say it? What did I say? You said that you're afraid that it might not be great. No, when I go into posting a video, I always think...

Because people always say, oh, the video's probably going to do well. But for Little Mermaid, a lot of my videos, I go into it thinking, I wonder who's still sick. i like a lot of my videos i go into it thinking i wonder like who's still sick i always i just post like i take a lot of time off and when i come back i'm like i'm i always wonder who's like still sticking around because when a video goes viral you get like a wave of all these new subscribers yeah then if you don't post right away that they become inactive subscribers to where like they're not going to be like you know actively following you yeah so when i when i go into posting a new video i don't know how many people out of my like you know four or five million subscribers that I have.

Are gonna come back. They're gonna come back, yeah. But you say you take a lot of time off. So maybe it's not fear, maybe it's that you're just doing something else. What are you doing in your time off? Well, I spent a good amount of time working on an animated video called Do You Wanna Build a Meth Lab?

It was like a parody of Do You Want to Build a Snowman? I kind of was like the co-writer on that. It did very well on a channel called Animeme. And I do a lot of side things that were like, I do a lot of writing too. A lot of the stuff I've been working on now is stuff I've been building up. Yeah. So you're staying busy.

Oh, I'm staying very active, very busy. And behind closed doors, I'm still very, I'm reading all the comments, and I just want to get in there and be like, hey i want to show people what i'm working on but that like you see how that works out like for 70s and 80s in my vlog like i talk about things then like they don't come out for like months or years people like where are they where are they but i make sure not promise any release dates because i'm very bad with release dates i'm very bad with that so the 70s and 80s uh songs in real life are still going to happen. Oh, those are happening.

They're going to be good. They're going to be very good. I will say for 80s songs in real life, they're all 80s songs, of course. I play overweight Marty McFly. I'm going to have a fat jumpsuit and everything. I'm going to have DeLorean. I'm committed to making,

because songs in real life one through four, they have a very cheesy homemade feel to them. And for 70s and 80s, I'm trying to go for a more professional production, have it done in a different light you know how are you achieving that is that is that you know taking advantage of friends out here yeah yeah like where i'm located i'm having like friends like better equipment and everything like better lighting because like some of my videos like all songs were like one through four like i don't have like proper lighting and like it's not filmed the best you know kind of like kind of pull the camera out and just film like oh i read that like here's the

line like let's let's film this but like what i'm doing now is kind of like just putting a lot more thought into it like taking more time away to like make sure i want to post what i'm posting yeah i don't want to like get an idea then like that week like post it because i feel like if i do that i might not be the biggest fan i don't know i like being active for small amounts of time and kind of like taking a step back where people get sick of me i get sick of myself then i kind of come back and like i don't know because yeah like i said before to be like you know successful on youtube you got to be actively like you got to be like consistent you know but i'm not really i can't do it you know i gotta like go away to come back all the time it's very yeah it's it's hard to explain but i just i

love how it's doing and then what i learned from all this is that um like, after a video goes viral, I have this whole, like, wave coming through. But then, like, people actually want to stick around. We'll stick around. And people that, like, that leave because you're inactive, they shouldn't be there anyway. I want people, like, actually going to, like, stick around. So what I've learned from being inactive is that the true viewers do stick around, which is really cool. Well, I've never really understood why people have a desire to unsubscribe to a channel that's not active. Yeah.

That doesn't make any sense to me. why people have a desire to unsubscribe to a channel that's not active. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, I've got. Unsubscribing to a channel that's very active that you don't like, that's different. Well, yeah, I've gotten like, there's been. I think it's just a threat to get more content. Yeah, exactly.

For a guy like Steve Brogdon. Yeah, but there's been comments saying, if you don't post videos, I'm gonna unsubscribe. And I just see those and I'm like, please unsubscribe. I don't want you to like be subscribed for a consistent material. That's not who I am, that's not what I'm doing. So what's the release date on the next video?

Oh no. I'm not saying nothing. Okay. All right. Okay, we gave you the opportunity to do that. It's funny because we, you know, I'm trying to feel the facial expression that I'm directing at you.

And I think that it's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like do it because we are so, I'm trying to learn from your perspective right now. Okay. Because Rhett and I are so, okay, this is going well, we gotta double down, you gotta keep it coming. You gotta keep giving it to them because they might,

they might not come back. But the place we do relate though, it's interesting because there's a little bit of a split personality in our YouTube lives because we have what we still call our main channel, which hasn't had a video in six months. Yeah, and I will say we do have those in the pipeline and there is a release date but I'm not gonna give it

because maybe we won't miss it. But I think I can relate to that too. But when you have daily videos, when you do five or six videos a week and they're doing so well, it's like, okay, then that's a comfort to take the time off the main channel. So it's not really a fair comparison.

When we took a week break or a two week break for the holidays for Good Mythical Morning, we were, you know, I was very anxious, especially a year ago when we did it because are they gonna come back? And yeah, everyone came back two weeks later and a little bit more came back because we took it away for a little bit

and it actually was a good thing. But the way that entertainment is built, the way that the machine of entertainment is, not a YouTube thing, is that you're only as funky as your last cut, so to speak. You know? Yeah, that's true. You gotta keep giving them something or they're gonna forget about you.

And then, you know, but you seem to have totally come to grips with, this is who I am, this is my approach, I'm going away. I want to go away. Yeah. And then I will come back. Oh, I'll come back, baby. I'm coming back. And you've already proven that.

I mean, when you look at, even before Wrecking Ball, you went away. Yeah. And you had a big win. And the coolest thing about coming back is all your fans are just like, oh, he's back, he's coming back. And seeing those comments is very inspiring. I love it.

Is there a new thing in your mind that you're going to bring? I know there's another chat roulette and that there's more songs in real life, but do you have another thing that could be your next big thing? There's a big dance number. A big dance number is going to be coming. I'm not going to give any release dates on that, but it's inspired from the video. It's called Kaiza Hideaway.

The song's called Hideaway by Kaiza, and it's all filmed in one take. And I'm kind of doing something like that all shot in one take, like a big dance number where I'm going to be dressed as certain characters cosplaying, and it's going to be fun. So that's one idea right there. And yeah, there's been a few things I kind of like venturing because I never want to be known for just dressing up in a bikini

or dressing up as women. I want to kind of get away from that and try new things and have different categories on my channel. But yeah, I'm definitely trying new things, and it's going to be interesting. It's going to be fun. All right. Well, we'll stick around for it.

We'll be waiting. We will not unsubscribe. All right. Thank you. I do appreciate that. unsubscribe. All right, thank you. We're waiting. I do appreciate that. No threats. Sign the table, man, thanks for making this Ear Biscuit.

It's already over? All right, yeah. That's it, that's all it takes. All right, all right. And there you have it, our Ear Biscuit with Steve Cardinal. Tweet at Steve, let him know what you thought of this. Use hashtag Ear Biscuits. His Twitter handle is Steve, S-T-E-V-E, Cardinal.

Spelled a little different than you might think. K-A-R-D-Y-N-A-L. We also appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes, and you can comment along in the conversation on SoundCloud. You know, I've noticed a pattern that has been established here. When we talk to people, really this has been multiple people that we've talked to that either we want them to make more videos

or we want them to do this, we want them to do that. And we start trying to convince them to do those things while they're here with us. Like it's some sort of motivational interaction. Well, I think, yeah, I mean, I acknowledge just the incredulous look on my face when he talked about how him deciding not to put out content or to wait or to get things right.

Cause we just want to, you know, we get things out there. I mean, we talked about our reasons, but yeah, the reason why we want to push him is, I want to see more content from the guy. It's a selfish motivation. And we're also producers. We've talked about that before too. I think there's an interesting third thing

in we've learned to let go of certain things. Okay, hire an editor, hire a producer, hire qualified people to help us create more content. And this is a conversation way back at VidCon, there's people, I don't know if this is Steve, but there are a lot of YouTubers who are hesitant to turn the corner of relinquishing any level of control on their content and it holds them back.

I think, because we were refreshed in having let go of some of that, you know? It's like, oh, we can, oh, this has actually worked. I don't have to do everything. I can give notes and we can get more stuff done. There's a lot of people who, because we're all self-made, that there's just a resistance to letting go of any aspect of it. Yeah, well, yeah, and I just, I don't, you know,

people already have this feeling that, okay, I'm gonna go on Ear Biscuits and I might end up crying. And I don't know if anybody has actually cried yet. Okay. People have maybe gotten close, but I'm gonna talk about something personal or whatever. But now they're gonna add to that, Rhett and Link are gonna try to get me

to do more of whatever I'm doing. I mean, you know. Maybe we don't need to come on so strong. Maybe we should, maybe that's what this is about. And I just, you know, for me, I was wondering with Steve, is it a personnel issue? No, he doesn't have people working for me, I was wondering with Steve, is it a personnel issue? No, he doesn't have people working for him, or is it a motivation issue?

Or I think the thing he was able to describe what it was, it's a choice, it's an artistic choice on his part and it's neither of those things. And what he is doing takes more time than you might think. Yeah, so that was cool to find out. See, that's what happens when you get a biscuit is that yeah, we might apply some pressure, but we learned some things.

Hey, have you learned something today? Let us know, hashtag your biscuits. We have learned that we will be back again next week. That really didn't make any sense, but you know. Cause we kind of knew that all along. Right, you have learned- You just learned it. That we will be back next week,

even though you probably already thought that that was the case. So maybe if this is the first time you've ever listened to an Ear Biscuit and you don't know what you're listening to, well, thanks for listening. We will be back next week. Our names are Rhett and Link. We make this podcast.

It's called Ear Biscuits. They're learning a lot right here at the end.