Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep.4 Freddie Wong - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: October 18, 2013

Freddie Wong, whose YouTube channel currently boasts over 6.5 million subscribers, talks to Rhett & Link about growing up as a first generation Chinese-American, his initial taste of fame as the World Champion Guitar Hero Player, and how he became arguably the most successful VFX mastermind on the Internet. *NOTE: This conversation contains adult themes and language. 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 Rhett. And I'm Link. On this week's show we have Freddie Wong joining us. We had a good conversation with Freddie you are going to enjoy. We talked about what it's like growing up as a first generation Chinese American. How he made money off of a feature-length film that he made while he was still in high school. And how he became a world champion guitar hero player,

for reals. Yeah. And more stuff. I mean, those are just some of the things that... World champion. The best in the world at one time. Yeah. I mean...

I've never played the game at all. You've heard it here, folks. It's called an ear biscuit. There's plenty of biscuits to be dulled out into your ears today. But you were telling me how you've used two women's restrooms today. Yeah. Incidentally, it has just worked out that, first of all, I don't make a habit of walking into women's restrooms or using them in general, but it was- I think it's illegal, by the way. You know what? That was what I was wondering, because when I was in the first one,

I was thinking, is this, can I be arrested for this? But what? For what? Indecent exposure? I mean, was there a woman in there? No, no, it was a single person at the time. Single use. We were at the coffee shop that we were at this morning, and I needed to take a leak.

Sorry to say, it's got to be blunt with you. You don't need to be blunt. You don't need to be specific. Well, I needed to go to the bathroom. And, well, I think there's a difference. If I had to have to do the full thing, I don't know if I would have gone in the women's restroom. But, so I go to the men's restroom. It's locked.

And I'm like, listen, we need to leave. I need to go. And I look, and I can tell that there's no, the women's restroom has like a little crack in the door. And I just like look around real quick and boom, I'm in there. And I lock it behind me, do my deed. And then I leave. And I'm thankful at the time when I walk out that there's not a woman standing there.

That's what it comes down to, doesn't it? I've used that same women's restroom, by the way. It's a good one. Because you never, there's been guys who just stand there a long time. Some of them may be homeless. I don't know. They may be doing the whole shower thing. It happens in LA. The birdbath. But the going in is easy. It's the coming out that gets dicey. You can't make eye contact with a girl if you stand in there. Is she gonna be waiting?

Is there gonna be a female there waiting? But I do to say that yes, and then when we ate at that- Yes, a woman was waiting? No, no, no woman was waiting, but yes, it happened two times a day. Now, the first time I was in there, I was thinking legitimately, is this like against the law or against some restaurant code or something? Probably not. I think it's just suggested this is the men's and this is the women's. I don't know.

If anybody out there does have an informed legal opinion about whether it's illegal to go into the wrong restroom, please tweet us at Rhett and Link and let us know, and we'll see that. Now, let me ask you a question about this. Did you sit down? You just said you had to do number one. I'm not a woman. I know that, but did you feel like you should do as the women do because that's the restroom you were in?

No, I just took special pains to not splash a lot. And I made sure the seat was up. Splash a lot? What are you doing? Throwing stones in there or something? Sir Splash a Lot is my rap name. So, but I, you know, okay. So, you know, I was very, first of all, I noticed,

and that's what I wanted to get to, was I noticed that it was A, clean, and B, smelled good. And I was like, it is so weird that it smells good in here. And then we're at the Indian restaurant, and I needed to do the same thing. This is lunchtime. Right, well, I had to pee multiple times in a day. Five hours later.

And I got to find another women's restroom. I'm waiting outside of the men's restroom at this Indian restaurant, and the guy who works there, the waiter is like, uh-uh. He says, go ahead, use that one. There's no ladies here. And I was like, okay. And so I walked into the women's restroom again,

and again, it just hit me like a wall when I walked in. It smells good in here. And then it hit me as I began to think deeper on this, that in general, women smell better than men. Of course they do. All the time. You know, now that we're married to women, we're basically in charge of the way our house looks and smells. The house smells good all the time. But I mean, that's not their jobs. They have other jobs. They're not just- I'm saying in the particular, in our household, that is what the girls in our lives,

they've taken that upon themselves because they know that we're not gonna do a good job. They have developed opinions about these things. Yes, and I'm just like, if you want the bed to look like a princess bed from like a Barbie house, then you go for it. You know, I'll sleep in it. It'll be great.

But the house- It looks dark when my eyes are closed. The house smells good and women smell good in general. And I know that they typically will wear some perfumes and these kinds of things, but there's dudes who wear a cologne, but you can still smell that there's a guy underneath that cologne. You know what I mean? What is it? It's just a futile covering. That's what cologne should say on it because men use it. It's pheromones. Oh, really? Oh, really. It's pheromones. And that's what makes me feel better about it.

It sends a signal that to women and now just to my wife. I only send it to her. Oh, you're saying... That I am masculine and I stink because I do things that... I conquer things like earth and sod and... I go in women's restrooms when women aren't looking. I haven't seen dirt under your fingernails

in 12 years. But there's still something there and it smells funny. I can bet you that. Yeah, it's some sort of hormonal thing. It's not that we smell bad. It's that we don't smell good. Let's just put it that way.

It's just guys in a room. Over time, it gets bad. But girls in a room, over time, it doesn't get bad. Are you saying that by speaking of the smell of women's restrooms that women's poop doesn't stink?

Is that what you're getting at? Are you questioning? I'm beginning to develop a sincere inquiry. Inquiry. I can't say that word. I live with inquiry. I am inquiring

into whether or not women's poop stinks. You live with a woman. I do not go in there when she's pooping because if it doesn't poop. Is this really where this conversation is gone?

Are we doing this again? Are we having... It's just so pathetic, man. wondering when she's pooping because if it doesn't poop... Is this really where this conversation is gone? Are we doing this again? Are we having... It's just so pathetic, man. Did we do this in one of the first episodes? Was there bathroom humor? There always is. I wouldn't call this bathroom humor.

I would just call it bathroom talk. I'd call it pathetic. I'm sorry. I know there are those of you out there who have an aversion to bathroom conversation. If you're above it, you must be some sort of alien. That's all I gotta say. I live with two women, and there are times when they rival anything I've ever put out.

Okay, let's get into this conversation that we have with Freddie, and in case you don't happen to know it already. This guy is a YouTube powerhouse. Yeah, he's got over 6.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel that he shares with his friend Brandon. That's the Freddie W. channel. You didn't want to say Brandon's last name because you don't know how to say it?

I mean, he's got a lot of vowels. Brandon Latch. He's got a lot of vowels. It has a T, S, C, and H all together. So if you say that phonetically, it's Latch. I mean, there's no way that's how you're supposed to say it. So latch. Let's just call him Brandon.

They just completed the second season of the narrative series, Video Game High School. You've probably heard of it. It's got, you know, bazillions of views and it's narrative. So it's breaking some ground on the YouTube space. It is. In my opinion. And we broke some ground today with

Mr. Freddie Wong. Here it is, our conversation with him. So you found this place. I mean, it could be kind of shady, but we turned on the yellow light. Oh yeah, yeah. As soon as that yellow light was on, I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, no, I found it. Okay. It's a mysterious location. Purposefully. It's almost as, I would say,

you've been in Nice Pete's old, is he still in that recording studio? The little house. It's a house? Yeah, right. It's just the most random, like, huh, you, hmm, this is, okay. This is nice.

Yeah, this is. That's what you mean, right? That's where you're going with that. But that's also like similar stealth mode. You never find that. Well, you don't want to put a sign up, right? No, but it looks like a freaking house. He's like a house.

We did make the mistake though one time of putting up a sign because we had some people coming for interviews. Yeah, you're talking about at this location yeah yeah yeah and so we put up a little sign on the front because there's no indicator that we're here and it was like

Red and Link Studios or whatever we came up with just a temporary name to put Rink and Let and we put it up

for about 30 minutes and in that 30 minute window no way a family a dad and two kids came knocking no way and did you give them the job or?

Yeah, we gave the kids the job. We charged them for photos. The other funny thing is, and I'll tell you what the complete opposite of that mentality is, is this madman, Rob Dyrdek. So Rob Dyrdek has the Fantasy Factory very close to where we were downtown. And it's like, we're like, well, I wonder where it is. Because we were downtown and it's like we're like well i wonder where it is

because we're doing a shoot with them and stuff like we we know it has to be around here has to be we've seen these you know the videos it's like it's it's just like this area has to be right and then we're like where is it we got google maps and there's one street in the entirety of that area next to us that's completely not google mapped out like that's got to be it like who why would this one street not be mapped out when every other street is we go there sure enough it is but he has his name on the side of the buildings deer dick enterprises so he went through the trouble of blacking out google maps but then he plasters his name on and what's crazy is we go in and it's like every time we were doing like a tech scout or just you know check the space out or talk to him every time we came doing a tech scout or just to, you know, check the space out or talk to him.

Every time we came out without fail, three or four people holding signs being like, Rob, Rob, is Rob in there? Hey, hey, hey, you know if Mr. Dyrdek is in there? And everybody was pitching him business ideas. Like they had like, I got this crazy, like this dude was there with like this bizarre bike looking contraption. He was like, I got this unicycle bike man and I think Rob would just dig it dude and I was like

whoa he's pitching to you because he knows you're going in yeah and what's crazy is because I think it's because there's a couple

of his shows it's like he's all about like yo man I'll take the crazy ideas that you have and turn it into you know like

and that's like a couple of the shows so did he let the unicycle guy come in no he's just like those people out there man I don't even send him our way that's crazy I'll let him know hey we'll be seeing just

tell him to sit outside our door on the unicycle on the unicycle you mean the unicycle guy i thought you meant rob no i want i want to get in on the unicycle it was a double unicycle thing that's called a bicycle yeah well no it was the double unicycle well what it was was both well here's what it was it was both wheel sets were independent

so you could like turn them and do like the tightest radius to turns you could imagine so it was two wheels right next to each other no no no

two wheels in a bicycle formation but both had independent torque ability torsional ability so it'd be like a bicycle but both

if the handlebar side was on if the handlebars worked on both sides so you could do like crazy it's like a hook and ladder uh fire truck it steers from both ends yeah right i have a story about that by the way one of the funniest stories that we've ever had okay are we rolling now are we going yeah yeah this is it oh this is it oh good times good times um so you have a story about a hook and ladder firetruck. So we have been, so, you know, okay. We'll get, okay, here's what we'll do, okay? We will get to this story in just a bit.

Teaser. Because in order to properly contextualize a story, we need to go back. Yeah, well, we were going to ask you to go back all the way to the womb. Do you guys have an intro or is this just it? We're on. We do the intro after you leave. Oh, I see. Don't try to produce our podcast. I'm just saying. We've got this, but let's go all the way back to baby

Freddie. Okay. So Seattle, I was born in Seattle. I was born in a neighborhood called Normandy Park and Normandy Park is notable for two things as far as I'm concerned, retirement homes and churches. And that's it. And that's all that we had there. And that's what sort of, you know, I lived on a cul-de-sac. And so- Who'd you grow up with in this cul-de-sac?

I grew up with my brother, my younger brother, Jimmy, who was like a year and a half younger than me, and a small smorgasbord of neighborhood kids. And we would, you know know they'd be behind seek they'd be street hockey a lot of street hockey because it's cul-de-sac right you need the cul-de-sac for street hockey you can't have a through street and you play street hockey nope you missed out too dangerous no he lives on one now right now is there street hockey going on

out front but you could introduce it you could introduce it man you could be like the hero yeah you could be the the cool dude on this. Hey, kids, this is my PVC pipe. What is the puck for street hockey? It's a puck that has three spherical balls in it to elevate it a little bit and give it less of a roll. Yeah, some roll off the ground. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Or in a pinch, a tennis ball. Yeah. So street hockey was the thing on our street and i was the goalie i was always the goalie which looking back now because all the other kids that were playing with were older than me like three or four years older than me looking back now i was the one that was getting the bum deal at the time it seemed like a cool thing oh yeah and i was like yeah i'm the thing they need this they need a goalie man like they i'm the one stopping the puck and then now i realized oh they needed someone you were the target i was the target yeah exactly but i will say i was a hell of a goalie

street hockey goalie i was good i'm not gonna i'm not gonna step back from that i was pretty good so okay anyway you need this you need the cul-de-sac for street hockey right because otherwise too much too many through too much through traffic man this is ridiculous you can stop the game every 30 seconds you know playing a game you know so that was the thing. We would run around summertime growing up, schools just around that area. Did you have both your parents growing up? Had both my folks, my dad and my mom. Dad was an anesthesiologist, so a sleep doctor. And he worked at the hospital, which was like five minutes from my house. It was really close. It was funny. So basically, he was really good at counting backwards. Yeah. But his patients

never did it. I mean, it had to be frustrating being an anesthesiologist. They never get down to one. You know, you start with 10, right? Yeah, you start with 10

and it's always like, I bet you there's a pool going on in the OR operating room. A little medicine lingo there for you all. I can take him at nine. Yeah.

It's like like that doctor's a full-on nine-and-a-half doctor. Holy shit. Step back from him. Yeah, there's the most boring show, most boring medical show ever about anesthesiologists. A bunch of guys sitting there

looking at heart monitors and being like, do you think we should adjust the dosage for this guy? Let's kick it up a little bit. All right. Yeah, he's a hefty guy. Beep, beep.

Yeah, and that's it. Let's bite his finger and see what happens. And the funny thing about so the funny thing about growing up so my folks are both from China

originally. So they immigrated here in the They are Chinese. They are full Chinese. Yes. So I'm first I don't know what it is.

Am I first generation? They're zeroth generation. I'm first generation Chinese technically. Yes. And when they went to Seattle it was interesting for the people who know sort of Seattle geography, they were looking at places to get a house and to settle down. And they looked at two places. One is Normandy Park. By virtue of the fact that nobody has ever heard of Normandy Park, even in Seattle, you know that they did pick the wrong choice because the other place,

which was like really cheap and like, maybe we should go here, was this place called Mercer Island. And Mercer Island is in the middle of Lake Washington. And in the time since, I think the property values on Mercer Island has probably like quadruple quintupled because it's like literally every rich Microsoft executive is like, that's where my house will be. So it's like Bill Gates' house, Mercer Island. Oh, really? Yeah. All the crazy rich people in Seattle, all the tech guys came. They all came and they just bought up all of Mercer Island. The first place to get cable internet in the United States,

Mercer Island. Really? And cable internet, by the way, when it showed up, this has been jumping all over the place, which is fine. But when it first showed up, my friend Barry lived on Mercer Island and he had cable internet. And he came into school one day and he was like,

guys, what year is this? This is like probably seventh grade, sixth grade for me. So what do you mean when you first showed up? When he, cable internet, you mean? Oh, I thought you meant you. When it first showed up. Barry got it. Barry got it first.

You've been there. I've been there. We were there dialing up 56K DSL. DSL was huge. You kidding? 35 kilobytes down. Are you kidding? Are you kidding? He comes in. He's like, hey man what kind what how fast your internet dsl man 35 kilobytes down i can get any

real player stream i want and he goes dude i got this internet it goes through your tv and it's 500 kilobytes out and we're like shut up barry you liar you liar barry and then what then the next week one of my friends was like dude i was at barry's house he's not lying man it's insane like what barry was great and then he was also the guy who first saw the matrix when it came out and he was like guys guys there's this movie you gotta see it's about it's rated r so you gotta tell your parents to let you in but it's like about these it's a second world and there's like telephone lines shut up barry this sounds like the dumbest movie ever no i'm not kidding then the next week we all go like that was amazing how do you know so anyway

barry big influence so he was an advanced kid but in your mind he was a futurist he was like every single week he would have so he was like the and i think every school had this, but he was the kid that was like laser pointers, five bucks each. Yeah. There's always that one kid. There's the guy. We had Ben Greenwood growing up. He was the guy who you're like, okay, this is before the internet. For us, this is before the internet.

This is like when you wanted to learn something, you had to look in an encyclopedia or go to the library and he knew everything. And I'm like, how do you know all this stuff yeah there's always a barry there's always a ben and you gotta have him as a friend you have to oh he was and he was the guy that uh yeah he knew his dude's acoustic guitar it's where it's at boom like he was like yo get the ladies dave matthews mixtape check it you know it's like whoa dang ben was the ben greenwood was the type of guy who would go over to his house, and he would have this grand scheme. Let's hike out miles behind my backyard,

and let's dam up the creek back there. To create a fishing pond. It's going to take a few days, but we can do it. So we would dam up the creek, and then we would go and catch fish from a pond, and we would bring them, and we would put them into the creek. And for a couple of days, we would have a fishing pond until the dam broke. He also smoked these things called Big Georges.

Big Georges. It was just this weed that we found out in the woods that had a big, it was just a hollow shaft. And he was like- That's like ideally suited for this activity. We should smoke these. But he didn't put anything in the shaft. No, you just light it.

We didn't, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we're like, of course we should smoke these. Yeah, because this put anything in the shelf. No, you just light it. You know, of course we should smoke these. Because this is sixth grade. Right. Yeah, it was pretty horrible. We had a guy like that too. So I grew up, so I went to high school. I went to grade school, whatever, you know, just

hung around high school. I went to this super duper preppy ass rich kid high school, which was all the way on the other side of where Seattle was. But weren't you one of those too? Not compared to some of my classmates. But what were the, you know, I have, and tell me if I'm wrong about this, but the impression that I've gotten from first-generation Asian Americans

a lot of times is that there are these, especially your dad being an anesthesiologist, there are these expectations. Societal pressure. Oh yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. So did that exist in your household? So here's what it is. I think it's kind of interesting. And my brother and I have amongst my peers a sort of unique experience growing up, which is we had that at first. And then over time, our parents kind of rapidly figured out that that's not the way to do it. So what was it like starting? So when starting out, it was like I did piano lessons.

I'm wicked at classical piano. I'm that Asian kid who will be like, yo, Haydn, Beethoven, sonatas, sitting there, 12 years old. I have no anxiety when I get on stage or if I'm in front of a group of people. And I think that was completely pounded out of me from being like, all right, dude, it's time to play piano. You better, you've been practicing four hours a day on this, this, uh, this prelude and fugue. You better nail it. There's three judges here who are Bach experts, you know? And it's like, everyone's listening. Don't screw this up. Don't screw this up. Like that kind of performance anxiety, so to speak, from an early age.

I think every Asian kind of gets a little bit of that. So we did piano lessons. And I think they kind of slowly, they figured it out. They're like, you know what? Because at a certain point, I was like, mom, I don't like, I was in high school. I was like, mom, I don't want to play piano anymore. I don't want to keep practicing. What am I going to be?

Am I going to be a professional piano player? Like what, what's the end goal here? Right. And she said, no, you're not going to be a professional piano player. You're not good enough.

Number one. And then number two, she's like, well, we wanted to instill an appreciation of music. And, and she's like, one day you're going to thank me for that.

And she's right. You know, like having, being able to understand music from, from that level, it's one of those things where it's like, one day you're going to thank me for that. And she's right. You know, like having, being able to understand music from that level, it's one of those things where it's like, dang, I, here's what it is. Looking back on it now as a 20 year, 28 year old adult, quote unquote, male. Quote unquote male. I put the quote unquote on the wrong side.

Quote unquote adult male. Male. Quote unquote male. Thanks for that. adult male male male thanks for that it's

you don't remember sitting at the front of a piano for two hours a day in summer and being like I want to play video games you don't remember that

at all it's just like a wisp of memory in the back of your head what you do remember is the end result of that and that is like

wow I know I can appreciate music in a different way and I can pick up an instrument really quickly now and I understand this and I understand all these sort of things from music. I forgot all the crap leading up to it. But right now I'm in this island of memory where I don't remember that, but I have all the advantages from it. It's similar also to, I think people who like their parents put them through like

gymnastics or dance, because it's like, I have a friend of mine who, who, who his, his parents put him through like three years of gymnastics.'s like i have a friend of mine who who his his parents put him through like three years of gymnastics and he's like this is emasculating and it's just horrible blah blah dude's ripped now dude doesn't need to do crap like he's just like hey uh i just want to lose some weight and just ripped instantly it's like dang that's like gymnastics that's perfect it's the horse this is becoming borderline motivational I like it so that was kind of the internal

pressure in your family it slowly let up what about externally growing up externally not really you know because it was

I was in a area that was it was not a lot of it wasn't okay to use the Asian term it wasn't a fobby area right

so fobby is fresh off the boat and so there are areas that are like it's very fobby area, right? So fobby is fresh off the boat. And so there are areas that are like, it's very fobby, quote unquote. You know, it's like, oh, these guys, it's very insular community wise. You sort of retain a lot of the sort of cultural aspects from, you didn't really see that. There's only, I can think of maybe a couple neighborhoods in Seattle. It's more prevalent down in Southern California, actually. You know, when you talk about like Alhambra or places like that, where it's like, it's a little more insular. So it wasn't like that. so we kind of were just very

much americanized very quickly did you have a did you have a uh i want to be a so-and-so when i grow up back in high school earlier well early on the thing that i was i was convinced i was going towards was computer programming because i was like a total computer nerd and my dad's a computer nerd too and he would, and we got like, we, first computer, like the Apple 2C

on a five inch, five and a half inch floppy disk and I was like messing around on the, on basic, on the 2C and using the dual floppy disk drives and stuff

and I remember all that stuff and, and that was kind of like the direction. I was like, I'm sure, I think it's gotta be, it's gotta be video,

it's gotta be programming, it's gotta be computer stuff, you know, and that was kind of the the direction. I was like, I'm sure. I think it's got to be. It's got to be video. I'm sorry, not video. It's got to be programming. It's got to be computer stuff. That was kind of the direction that my inclinations were going towards. Even in high school? Even in high school, yeah. I think that's where you were and you were kind of walking us through it. So I went to a high school with a really interesting group of people. And it was a very, as I said, sort of college preppy high school.

It's called Lakeside. And Lakeside is known for, most specifically known for, Bill Gates was the guy who went there. And Lakeside is where Bill Gates met Paul Allen. And they started the little computer club that started, like literally the seat of Microsoft is there. And then I like to point out Adam West went to Lakeside and Vanna White. so two sort of mavens of industry uh vanna white yeah it's weird vanna white is from myrtle beach yeah south carolina i don't know this is the maybe she didn't this is something that has been in my head everybody's said as like famous alum i don't know i gotta check we're not calling you i mean you know i mean you could be right you could go

to myrtle beach after after seattle or vice high schools in america try to claim vanna white you know if you're going to claim somebody... Vanna White went here. Better be a letter turner. Vanna White went everywhere. And she's like, by the way, can we just talk for a second about how her job has been down... She doesn't even turn those letters anymore. She just touches them.

She just presses them. Some touch screen enabled thing. It's like, come on. At least... I don't even think... It's like when I am gesturing to something at the computer here, I don't touch the screen because I don't like to get my fingerprints on it. I think't even think. It's like when I am gesturing at something at the computer here, I don't touch the screen because I don't like to get my fingerprints on it. I think they've even told her, we want you to look like you're touching the letters. Oh, it's all just backstage. Don't actually touch

them. There's a guy on a computer who's waiting for her to get close to it and then he's hitting a button. Oh my gosh. She doesn't even have to be there at all. That's a pretty heavy, that's pretty heavy, I gotta say. If you really think about that in terms of like looking back at your life, it's like now I just, I don't even actuate these buttons.

A man does that from behind the scenes. But we love you for it, Vanna. She's listening. Yeah, she's a big fan. We appreciate all that you do. Come on, Freddie, work with us here. Sorry, sorry. We have famous fans. I didn't notice the poster behind the door on the way in.

Okay? It's signed. I see that now. So, excuse me. Sorry about that. So, you had some pressure. Lakeside? Lakeview.

Lakeside. Lakeside. Yeah. And so, it has this reputation. And it was kind of a weird, hardcore school when it came to academics and all that stuff. It was very notoriously difficult to get into. The kids all went there and had a reputation. It was very notoriously difficult to get into.

The kids all went there and had a reputation. I had the fortunate sort of thing of my class. So class size, about 111, 112 people. My class was all really interesting people. And it was like the kind of thing where I think even the teachers made a note of that. I remember when we were graduating and even visiting back now, they're like, yeah, your class was weird. Because I think pretty much everybody in that class was just friends with each other. Like there was no cliques. There was no, like there were, you know, groups of people hung out, but it wasn't just like, oh yeah,

I don't like that guy. It's like, no, it's just like, oh yeah, he's cool. Everyone was kind of just cool with each other. We just kind of did our thing. So it was at Lakeside, I started off doing computer stuff. I have actually a good story about that. I was working in making websites internally at the Lakeside School, and I made one for the Parents Association. Okay. Parents Association, kind of like the PTA. Right. And they needed an update on their website,

and so I'm like, all right, okay, I'll do that. So February 14th rolls around. By the way, this will give you an idea of where I was socially before the movie thing happened. So I'll talk about that. We'll get to that in a second. Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day rolled around.

You were working on the high school website. Yeah. Hold on. With a small group of people. For the Parents Association. We all have cubby holes at the school, a little mailbox. And there's a, what did they call them?

Candy grams, aka you could purchase through some student organization, a couple bucks, get a little Valentine thing delivered to a person of your choosing. Oh, yeah. I had one that year. I was like, oh my gosh, who is this? You received one. I received one. I saw it from across the hallway.

This little thing sticking out. I was long. Last letter of the name, bottom right corner. There it is. I'm like, oh my goodness. Previous years, it seems that you did not receive was no it was according to precedent that this would be this is a unprecedented event in every definition of that word so i go to like holy is this it's on all right open up i do not dear freddie thanks for help on the website the parents association so. So your first Valentine was from the parents. Was from everyone's moms, which is how I flipped it around. Yeah, well, that's a good twist.

It is. It's a good spin. And so end of sophomore year, no, end of freshman year, the iMac came out. And the iMac was the big thing about the iMac, if you remember, was it could take mini DV and editDV and iMovie. So in this little class... It was different colors. It was different colors. Had the blue one and this little class

thing. And this little class thing that we had, it was like five or six people and it was just a bunch of students just helping out with the IT side of the school. So what the class was. That's how I was doing the Parents Association website. So the iMac came out and we had a camera and my friend Reed and I were like, well, let's just kind of mess around with this camera and just shoot something stupid.

It was kind of like a class assignment. And this was a time, and I think this is still the case, but if you do a video for a class assignment, welcome to instant A territory, ladies and gentlemen. Instant A. Like the teachers are so blown away by the fact that you have combined image and sound in a moving form right like it's a just you don't have the feeling to think about it they have no context tape they just literally put an a on the tape they have no context to judge

it right it's impossible to give anything less than an a because it's just the sheer effort there anyway so by the way that's the the trick. Still works, I think, to this day. But we did a, so it was like a, it was a class project for a Chinese class. And it was like,

we shot this ridiculous little action piece movie, like I'm sneaking into a thing. Everybody wanted you to be in their group for that one, I guess.

Well, no, this is, this is actually just on our own almost. It wasn't actually, it was kind of a thing where just,

I don't even remember the details of it. We were just messing around, you know? And so we shot this little thing, you know,

we're all over the school and it's got like, it was like me sneaking around. It's got like the freaking Metal Gear solid music in it and stuff.

Like again, nerd territory, ladies and gentlemen. And we decided to do just like a little, hey, we got this done. It's five minutes long.

We edit to get it on a movie. Let's do a little thing. Let's put it out and do a little screening in the library. The library had a little auditorium. We did it at the end of the year. I'm like, whoa. A lot of people showed up for this. We packed the place. 250 kids just showed up to watch it. People were

losing it. I thought it was really funny. I was like, oh, ****. My friend Reed and I were like, let's do a feature-length movie. Let's go all the way. He was a junior. I was a sophomore. I'm like, let's do it. Let's do a feature-length movie. And we'll do it kind of off this original little thing. We called it the Buhao movie, which was in Chinese

because it was for a Chinese class project. It means the not good movie. And what are you shooting on at this time? At this point, it is shooting on a... What is it? It's like a... It's a mini DV or a high... Oh, no, it's a digital eight camera.

Digital eight, fatty camera with wide angle adapter bought from ebay for 35 which was a princely sum at the time right to drop on something like that and so we're like okay let's let's do it so that was like i shifted from doing wanting to be a computer programmer to movies is really interesting to me and like movies is actually something that i really enjoyed doing during that year like i I really enjoyed that process, that trying to get people together to, to, to, to do something ridiculous in front of a camera and trying to just get all these pieces together and putting it out and seeing people react to it. So for the rest of my high school, we were doing just, you know, little short videos and stuff. Some of which by the way,

exists on our channel, uh, to this day, it's just like little high school things. Like I did one where one night we were sleep over a friend's house. Uh, and we're like, Hey, it's those three. I'm like, Hey, let's, let's put cardboard all over your Volvo, like sedan and make it look like a racing car. So we put like side skirts, like a mass car. No, no. I think like rice rocket. So like front hood scoop spoiler, we went to his laser jet printer and print out a bunch of fake, like logo brand names and stuff and like tape them on like this is ridiculous let's make a video out of it and we did we made like a quick video we're just driving around at night we got pulled over by the cops and and and the cop was like he came up and he was like well i was gonna write you a ticket because your side skirts need to be higher than the rim of your wheels but i mean it's cardboard so he's just

like what are you guys so can i ask you what you're doing at three in the morning driving this thing around and my buddy smooth talker was like well you know we were doing this for a school uh project and we figured if we drove it around during the day it would be a little more distracting oh the old school project excuse and the guy was just like all right yeah you can ride that school project thing a long ways until you get gray hair oh yeah you can you can oh i still have my student id in my car are you kidding i go the movie theater i'm like um i can't get the student discount i'm a graduate student and because as far as i'm concerned that's like that's like come on man like you gotta get your tuition back somehow right like one three dollar discount at a time one half one small popcorn with every small drink purchase at a time we're getting that

student discount back so okay so you're you're in high school you make this discovery that you you you like filmmaking yeah yeah and then you begin to put together a, the idea that maybe this is something bigger than a hobby. Yeah, absolutely. And at the time, I was like doing little short videos and stuff. And, you know, the funny thing is I always think, what I think about a lot is the idea of timing,

you know, and I was reading, you know, like Gladwell even talks about this, you know, where he, where it's like Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Steve Jobs and, and, and Bill, Bill Pope and like all these like computer pioneers that are all like within two years of each other in terms of age,

because when the technology hit, they were the right age to take advantage of it, to not be too entrenched in a career otherwise, and not be too young to be late to the party. Like they're just the right age. And I think about that a lot with like youtube because what we were doing that's just sort of messing around you know doing these little assembly videos like i would i would do little videos for like the soccer team or the uh the rowing team or something it'd be a little fun like literally what i end up doing which is like short kind of visual effectsy two minute videos we play in an assembly and that was the only avenue we had we put out an assembly that'd be it and i think about now where it's like you have youtube and it's like these kids you see kids who are like rock stars in their schools

like these guys play video games and they got a call duty commentator and i'm buying the mercedes with this and i make more money than my parents and and here's me with girls. It's like, what? What? No, what? That's not, come on. Right. So I think about that, and I think about now, sort of my time, you know, and timing in terms of where I am right now,

it's like, it feels very much like this is the, just right in terms of timing, you know, just the right time for it. We're at where there was video and there was a thing and I got familiar with it and it was, it was the idea of it was there. And if YouTube was around in high school, you know, maybe that was even, would have been a better sort of time for us. It feels like maybe a little late to it, but I was kind of doing something similar in high school and I didn't even realize it. And until later, until looking back and be like, wow,

I was just doing that. I was doing a lot of what a lot of these high school kids got into and have gone into youtube from back in high school but i was there was nothing to put it there's nowhere to put no outlet no outlet for it and how'd your parents respond to that and so this is this is where i think i have to give a lot of credit to my parents where they're like cool if you want to do this go for it that was it there's no you know and i think it was the kind of thing where like my dad reads a lot of business week and and wall street journal he does a lot of thinking having come from communist china to adopt a new home here in the u.s he thinks a lot about like where is the u.s going and what is this place that i'm in and how you know and obviously you know he has he's very strong sort of political beliefs but his but his thing has always been, look, America's,

what do we have that we're doing? Like what, car manufacturers? What, India and China are going to do that. Physical manufacturer, India and China. Programming? And he, I think, recognized kind of,

he recognized at the end of my high school, he was like, look, I think you're getting into the right field because the only thing America's going to have is cultural exports.

That's the only thing we have. You have the music industry, you have Hollywoodllywood that's it like what else is there that we do that some other country is not hungrier for and can do it cheaper than us and we'll do it cheaper than us like there's nothing like that that's it like hollywood movies still have that stamp around the world music still has that stamp it's export our chief export is cultural products he's like, I think you're actually getting into a field where, because he was like, if you were doing the programming, he called this like literally five years before this happened. He's like, if you get into programming,

you're going to have a hard time getting a job because look at India, look at China, all these kids are growing up and they're going to be better programmers. They're going to do it cheaper. And they're just going to be willing to, and they're going to work harder for it than you because you're in this environment where you have so many things handed to you and it's a nice environment compared to China or India.

Well, that's a little different than the conversation that I had with my dad because our story is pretty similar in that we were- Yeah, well, and the conversation with your dad, I'll let you tell it, but it was a hinge point for both of our lives because for me it was, well, we both talked about going

to film school and it basically came down to what Rhett's dad thought because I knew that my mom would just say okay whatever whatever you want to do but Rhett's dad had we had to get buy-in we were shooting on just to give you a little this is a little bit of the uh the indicator of the difference in our age we were shooting on a vhsc oh yeah yeah so and just just for reference vhsc high eight digital eight that's sort of that was the timeline right so we were shooting on that we had uh begun to shoot a feature-length film uh in high school gutless wonders which we've read the script on good mythical morning last season but um so we had these aspirations.

I'm sure that what we were creating was not as impressive as what you were creating at the time. But it was difficult. You had to edit on two VCRs. Two VCRs, right. No iMac here.

See, that's what I'm saying. Again, that's timing, right? Right, yes. If it wasn't for that, because I remember early on, my dad got this thing called the Matrox 1000.

I believe it was the Matrox 1000, which was the first Mac card that could do 640x360 or 640x480 high-8 capture off of S-video. That was the big deal. There was no digital stuff happening with us. No, absolutely not. But when I told my dad, I was like, Link and I decided that we want to go to film school. Yeah. And he was like, well, that's that we want to go to film school. Yeah. And he was like, well, that's great.

I'm not going to pay for it. He says, but if you want to do something where you'll actually get a job, then I'll pay for it. So that's why we both have engineering degrees. You're good at math. Yeah, yeah. That's what our counselor in high school said. You're good at math and you're good at science.

You should be an engineer. It all worked out in the end. And I do think what you're saying with timing has played such a huge role in it because by the time we had, Link and I are kind of slow developers in a lot of ways, but I think we've kind of discovered. Late bloomers.

We're late bloomers. But by the time we got to a place where what we were making could work in the YouTube space, that was when we were ready for it. I had hair. I had hair on parts of my body you didn't even know about when we were young, it. I had hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had hair on parts of my body you didn't even know about when we were young, man.

Well, I'm glad I didn't know about it. Yeah, that's true. I'm glad you didn't know either. So anyway, so you're grateful to your dad for having that foresight and that perspective. Yeah, for both my parents,

you know, and I think that, yeah, for the sort of Asian thing, if we want to get sort of racial and kind of pontificate on that for a little bit, it's kind of an interesting place that we operate in society. You know, we are

in terms of like the minorities, we're not high up on the list, you know, comparatively to like Hispanics, African Americans are statistically just percentage-wise higher part of the country. But there's this sort of weird thing that we do. And the thing that we do is we keep our heads down and we just kind of do our and we don't bother other people and we kind of just do it.

And that's kind of like this attitude that I see a lot in terms of, you know, it's doctors, lawyers, dentists, it's like, hey, just keep your head down, get good grades, get the job, you know, family, just provide for it. And it's very non just keep your head down get good grades get the job you know family just provide for it and it's very non-intrusive it's not like it's only relatively recently you ever hear about like oh asian american protest about something and it's like and who are this usually you know it's the berkeley kids almost always as berkeley kids like you know but it's just like it's not a thing you just never hear about that sort of side of it. We've just sort of kept out of it. And I think it's interesting.

And I think it's repercussed in kind of interesting ways in American society in terms of what that role is. We can go forever on this. This is a whole separate podcast. But anyway, the point is, to me, it's really interesting because I think the family structure encourages Asians to kind of like stay out of the spotlight, you know. And I think for a number of historical reasons, for a lot of reasons that make sense, but I think that's just sort of the way that it's been, you know. So when I say like, hey, I want to make movies, it's very much like, boom, I want to get into entertainment. I want to do this. And, you know, at the time, I had no idea about music.

I had no idea that this was how it would end up. At the time, I had no idea about music. I had no idea that this was how it would end up. But it's a very big difference between doing that and wanting to just be like, hey, I can play piano and I'd like to be a doctor, please. So I went to USC. I went to University of Southern California because supposedly it was the better film school. And that was that.

And so I went there. I met a lot of the people I work with today there and just have been sort of working on that stuff ever since from that point. And that's where you met Brandon. Yep, met Brandon there. Is he your roommate? He and I lived on the same floor. I met Brandon there. Our floor is an interesting floor.

So I met Brandon there. I met Brian Forenzi there, who is the creator of 5secondfilms.com. I met Matt Arnold, there who was the creator of five second films.com uh met um yeah everyone i matt arnold who co-creator video game high school with me and co-writer des dolly also is our co-founder of rocket jump with me he and i were all three of those guys we were all in the same practical special effects class like the first thing he took everyone that was like a practical vfx class and we were all in that same class and then only by the way only like until like a practical VFX class and we were all in that same class. And then only, by the way,

only like until like later was like, oh crap, we were all in that same class, even though we were all like kind of paired up in separate groups, but we kind of knew each other. And it was just like, yeah, I guess what you get in film school is you get a group of people you're forced to work with.

And that's nice for some people who aren't like, you know, total social butterflies who don't know how to necessarily work a room and network around and get a whole bunch of contacts. It's like, no, it's nice for some people who aren't like, you know, total social butterflies who don't know how to necessarily work a room and network around and get a whole bunch of contacts. It's like, no, it's nice to be able to be in an environment which there are no stakes because you're supposedly learning things and you get to mess around and you have a bunch of people now upon graduation that you can collaborate with, you know. Essentially are living proof that, you know, that deciding to put your stuff out there for an audience is, that's a strategy that works. It works for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so how did that transition take place? Okay, so after graduation, you know, the first gig I got was doing freelance editing at this horrible, horrible startup. I have no problem saying that. The boss was crazy. Dude was a crazy, he was a yeller, and everyone was kind of scared of him. And they made inspirational short films. And this is, by the way.

It's kind of ironic. Yeah, I know, right? And here's their model, by the way, and this is insane. You will make this inspirational film! Hey! Not too far removed from the reality. But here was the model that they did. It was the things that they were trying.

They're like, all right, this film is free for you to watch. But you send it to a friend. They have to pay a dollar. It's like, what? That's a good plan. It's like, because since they're your friend, they're more likely to pay. And you're like, where? It's like, because since they're your friend, they're more likely to pay. And you're like, what? So I literally left that after like 30 days.

I was like, I'm done. Forget this place. Hey, where are you going? Yeah. We're making inspirational films. You got to charge your friends to watch it. You crazy. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. And then I worked at 20th Century Fox in the licensed video game division, which is to say the crappy video game division because licensed games are all horrible. And so how long were you there? How did that work out? I was there for about a year.

And right when the housing crisis happened was when I quit. Because I heard word from Brandon that a couple of his friends from Minnesota were up in Vancouver. And they had linked up with this sales agent who was giving them money to do a feature film for direct-to-DVD

direct-to-TV called Dark Island. At the time it was called Infected, but then they had to change it because there was a book series called Infected and the author threatened to sue them. And it was about basically a creature feature featuring the smoke monster from Lost, more or less. That sort of thing. Because they

had this plug-in called FumeFX that could do smoke, CG smoke. And it was like, this is it, man. We could do a smoke monster. So they did a smoke monster. So they took, I think it was $40,000 to go shoot a feature film up in Vancouver. And they were finished with it. They were coming to LA. And they were looking for a place to stay, which

was eventually where the loft that you see was where they stayed. And they have stayed since. And they were looking for people place to stay, which was eventually where those loft, the loft that you see was where they stayed and have stayed since. And they were looking for people to help out. And I was like, all right, I want to do movie stuff anyway. This is what I want to do. And I'm not doing it right now, doing this video game thing. Although I learned quite a bit from that in terms of just how the entertainment industry and these companies work. It was okay. Oh, hey guys, what do you want me to do? can do music i can do sound effects i'll do sound design whatever you guys need i'll sit down and do it so that's how i met them i remember walking in to this loft and everyone's sitting at computers pounding away it's cold because there's

no there's no heat here at all and i was like hey i want to quit my job and i'll help you guys doing this and like all right you have a keyboard i'm like yeah like all right a keyboard yeah keyboard for for midi for making the music. Got it. And sound design. I was hopped up on my USC sound design classes. I knew how to use Pro Tools. I knew how to do sound design and that was it. And that's how I linked up with Sam and Nico, Core Digital. And we made, we sat there for about like eight months post doing post through this movie. And well, everybody will be the first to admit like, yeah, it's not that good of a movie, but it was a good learning experience.

It was really interesting. Dark Island? Dark Island, yeah. You can torrent it too if you really want to see it. So 2010 rolls around. And my friend David and I, he was like, hey, there's this contest to go to Vancouver. You want to go join this and see if we can get in this contest? It's for the Olympics, for the Winter Olympics that Samsung's putting on.

So we do it, and we get picked as one of the teams. Again, drawing upon my history of doing little short crappy internet videos and little short videos in high school, it's like, okay, yeah, okay. So we get onto this thing, and there I met Daystorm. Daystorm was one of the other guys on it. And he was like, I'm a YouTube partner. I'm like, what's that mean? He's like, well, yeah, I make money doing this. And I was just like, what? How? How many views do you need? other guys on it and i was like he was like i'm a youtube partner i'm like what's that mean he's

like well you don't make money doing this and i was just like what how how many views do you need how many people do you have subscribed to you how long does it take before you get paid how much money can you make in a month i just i just went and just info dumped and he's just like yeah no problem he just told me everything that he knew he was like just say another day another challenge and it just kind of the money rolls in yeah and it was like it was crazy because he was like telling stories about like just oh yeah this guy does it like this and i'm like holy crap so i'm recalling brandon from vancouver and being like hey i think we can we should do this youtube channel thing man like i met this guy daystorm and he's like he he makes

a living off of it and at the time i had the option of directing a direct-to-DVD movie or doing something else. And I remember in October – so two things happened. October 2009, I got flown out to Finland for Guitar Hero because if people don't know, I was really good at Guitar Hero for a while, and I got flown around to play Guitar Hero. Yeah, saying you're really good, and then you got flown around well you were the world champion i was for a bit according to the world series of video games and now people the guitar hero purists will argue that my technical ability is insufficient compared to a couple of

other guys which i will not bemoan them that fact however i don't think anybody was i made the point of playing it ridiculously like like air guitar style, like, you know, windmills and showmanship. Right. Because I'm like, this has got to be entertaining.

Cause I'm getting style points, style points. So my style points were off the, off the charts, man. We have to go back a little bit here because I, I'm fascinated by this aspect. Oh yeah.

Yeah. And you were in 2009. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause 2007, 2007 world series of video games. Guitar Hero came out and

Thanksgiving I remember buying it because I was reading on the forum some forum they're like yeah this game is really cool I bought it ps2 and I was like easy and it's too easy as I'm gonna

try expert and I just played through the whole game on expert which didn't seem weird to me at the time but apparently it's a hard game that pretty unusual again this is weird this

is like so everyone's like how much time do you practice like I just kind of the piano maybe and i play a little guitar anyways i don't know i just don't really i just get it i don't know i don't really practice that much so 2000 so 2006 there's like there was a one up.com contest for like a video contest for the guitar hero 2 so that was the original guitar hero yyz yyz video on our channel which was something we did for that contest brandon and i and that was me playing through yyz and just being ridiculous with it and that was that and then it was like so the world series of video games starts they're gonna

play in guitar hero 2 and it's in it's in dallas texas and i'm in seattle in summer and my friends are like you gotta go to this dude you gotta you could got it. You could win this. I'm like, I don't know, man. Like, what are you talking about? Like, dude, go. I'm like, it's kind of expensive. And my friends is like, how much is it? I'll pay you to go. We'll pull it together. You pay me back if you win plus 15%, but I'll straight up stake you in this tournament, dude. So I'm like, all right, I'll do it. So I, that was an interesting, that was a weird dinner conversation. Like mom, dad, uh, this weekend I was thinking of flying to Dallas to compete in a video game competition for, right, for Guitar Hero. Yeah, the one that, yeah. And my dad's like, could you win this?

Are you any good at this game? I'm like, I think I can win it. So he's like, all right, go for it. I think I can win this, dad. The strings came in and the score. It was much more like, I right, go for it. Oh, my goodness. So it was. I think I can win this, Dad. Yeah. The strings came in and the score. It was much more like, I don't give a **** what you're talking about. It was so much more like, what? Where?

This weekend? Okay, fine. Whatever. Who's paying for it? Your friends are paying for you? 15%? Okay. Whatever.

Fine. So I went down. I went in one of the, like, I wasn't one of the tournament rounds. I was like one of the open rounds. They pick people from the open rounds. I played Heart Crazy on You, and I took off my sandal and strummed it. I just went crazy with it,

and everyone's like, oh, this is, okay. You went crazy on it. I went crazy on it, man. Of course. And then I won that tournament that weekend. So you were a walk-on. I was a walk-on that came, yeah.

And you won the tournament playing in dallas you remember it was uh let's talk more rock the freeze pop song of course yeah uh and so this is dallas this is the world series video games in dallas and i i could i i use that as like i was a world champion because they called it the world series of video games and there wasn't really many that guitar hero things going on at the time and that was it you know so but then the world series videos before they got to LA, we had this plan out for LA that I'm so

bummed it never happened because one of the stops on this World Series tour was going to be LA, the LA leg of the tournament. And it was going to be,

and I was like, I'm going to play Freebird. And then Brandon was going to lower these wings onto my back during the solo with a fog machine

and everything. Just ridiculous. We had this ridiculous thing planned out for the show show but then they lost all their funding and they canceled the world series so you got to recreate that i know right but that's you said that was your first youtube video that was uh that was the first youtube video that was like um yeah that was actually it was uh before that i know there was one other before that which is aces which is brandon and myself and just screwing around

in one of the practice in the common room at USC. But then the whole Daystorm conversation where it was clicking that you might can make a living doing this was after that. After that, yeah. Okay.

A couple of years after that, in fact. So we go and we come back and if you look at the timestamps on the videos that we did that first week, we were just going crazy. We were just trying everything. Twilight trailer parody, green screen me in there, boom, do it.

Final Fantasy XIII is coming out. Let's make a funny video about that, boom, do it. Portal Gun, we've been wanting to do a Portal Gun video for a while. What's stopping us? Let's do it. This is so you could then make the case to join a partner program.

You were making the case. You were putting all the material out there. Yeah, exactly. This was before you could just get in. Now luckily, at the time, prior to that, because of Guitar Hero, I had a contact within Google, within Google YouTube, because I went to YouTube Live. Did you remember?

Yeah, we were there. Yeah, that's right. San Francisco. That's right. YouTube Live, San Francisco. Do you remember we were there? I don't remember you were there. I remember.

I was like, you probably don't remember. I'm trying to remember. I remember a couple people there and i won't name the names because they were total dicks to me and then they totally have are no longer dicks to me now because of how the tides have turned but but it was interesting because i was a nobody i was like a fucking i was like i was a kid who activision brought on to intro joe satri mother fucking ani to play guitar i remember you oh yeah so i was the dude in the little corner of the weird set playing the first bits of joe satri a song butchering his song through a video game and then they threw it down to him and we were there we were in the crowd we

remember that's right i do remember that was so so i had a contact from youtube there yeah so then i emailed that person when i was starting to go with him hey this partner program thing how does that work uh here's a bunch of videos and like oh oh yeah sure go for it approved you know so we actually got approved in real quick compared to some people who put a lot of time and it's like just get disapproved etc etc but yeah youtube live what a weird and i and i drove back to the airport with uh some of the lxd folks and it was like with the kid the kid remember the breakdancing kid yes he was in my car on back to the airport i'm like what's up dude so uh now this was you're really good at dancing just to give you some perspective for people youtube live this was 2009 2008 and it was

it was the first youtube organized event basically ever there have been gatherings that other people had set up but but this was in San Francisco. And I remember it incredibly so because, by the way, here's my nerd background coming back into me. I remember it specifically because it was the first event that the flip camera was

introduced at. They were trying to give them out. They gave everybody a flip, a YouTube themed flip. They did not give us a flip, so we were not to that level, but we performed on the outside stage. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were musical performers. And I remember sitting next to a girl who plays ukulele, probably Julia.

Yeah, yeah, it was Julian Innes, yeah. Yeah, it was a strange thing at that time. And I also had a incredibly insightful conversation, by the way, one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had with Katy Perry's guitarist. Right, because Katy Perry played. Because she performed, right. Well, about what does it mean to play guitar

and be technically proficient at guitar, but play the easiest things of all time? And what was crazy is he went into this big, long, sort of philosophical like just discussion about it's like you know like because i've trained for this many years and it's weird because i'm getting famous for this but it's not the kind of music i would like but at the same time i can't say a thing about it i'm making such an incredible living off of it so what ended up he said he was like well you know what it is is i've turned my sort of creative energies towards the recording

process and that side of it because i I'm not getting creatively fulfilled from just playing guitar. You know, this is just major minor chords and bar chords. It's like, it's not difficult at all. Anybody could do this. And I need to went on this whole thing about like, what does it mean? You know, if, if, what does it mean to be a guitarist? If almost anybody who has picked up a guitar could do this job, there's almost no barrier. Like, it's not like you're some crazy good, you know, you're not,

you're not freaking, you know, Zach Wilde just laying it down. It's like, no, you're, or Satriani.

Or Satriani, right. But it was really interesting to hear this guy who was like, in this sort of point in his music career, dealing with all these issues.

I was like, this is the most interesting conversation I think I've had in years. So how does that apply to where your YouTube channel went? I don't know if it does. Did you sell your soul for virality?

By the way, I will say this is, one of the early on we met with Ray, Raylon Johnson and he said something that is I think the most interesting thing that a YouTube person has said to me about this whole ridiculous thing, whatever this is. And he said,

at some point you'll have a choice and your choice will be to give the audience, your audience, what they want to see or to let, or to do what you want to do. And you have to make that choice and you have to be conscious about it. And it was, it was really interesting. Cause I think about that like every day I'm like this and it's, it was really interesting because I think about that like every day. I'm like this. And it's so true because at a certain point, what you're doing builds a momentum and an inertia and a size. And you either address it and you roll into that snowball and you give yourself to the people like that or you stay away from it and you continue doing what you want to do whatever that is so it's really interesting so how how does that apply to to what you and brandon were doing on the channel that

obviously things started to snowball yeah yeah so we started so we started you know early on we had a lot of blog attention because at the time and this is something i learned and again this is like every single thing that you do sort of like always informs the next step, even as weird as it is. So one thing I knew from working at Fox doing video game stuff is that video game news is very sparse. Nothing comes out. Game blogs are just always just hurting for information because when the game starts, nothing to talk about until the first screenshots come out, then nothing to talk about until the alpha beta. And then when it comes out and that's, that's three years three years right so like for a game gets announced oh i want to see this game you're not going to see anything from that game until a year and a half from now and then a year after now you

might see a little bit another year before you see anything else and so it's quiet around games all the time so there's there's so much stuff that there isn't that isn't out there and so early on we're like you know we weren't doing game videos like specifically but they were game themed and they had that sort of you know they were informed by our experiences playing games you know and it was we would draw upon a whole bunch of different games to do stuff so it wouldn't just be counter-strike or call of duty it would be all the first person shooters we ever played would kind of fill into it you know so we started getting a lot of attention from game blocks because these guys are hurting for content they have no con they come in every day and they're

like well what can we say about all these games well nothing's coming out well uh hey here's a video that's kind of game themed all right we can do that so early on like that was a lot of our attention a lot of our traffic was coming from outside of youtube you know and i remember a lot of the conventional wisdom around youtube at the time was people were saying like, Hey, if you, uh, it's YouTube is mostly girls, man, all girls, me, I'm 70, 30 female, female, female, female. Everyone would say that. And we're like, really? Because I bet you it's more like 50, 50 because it's a giant site.

Why would it be so skewed towards women? And like, no, man, all the people who subscribe girls. And so I think, you know, we found a new sort of, we began to find a new audience that, and that has continued even, I think to this day with the, with the prevalence of sort of, you know, PewDiePie and these gaming channels, we found a more male audience. And we started, and when we were saying people like, our demographics are like 90, 10 male, female, and people were like, no, no, no, no, no, no way. No way.

Like nobody could believe it. Like what? Really? And I always thought it was funny because getting into YouTube was, I always felt like, like we went to some of these youtube parties early on back when people were sort of more closely knit and had parties to throw and go over someone's house and i was like brandon this feels like high school again it feels like high school but the difference is every single person in this room has a number above their head and that number is how popular they are and whether or not they're more popular than you and that dictates how you treat them how weird is this it was it was weird and unsettling because

i think there's a sort of weird there was a sort of weird attitude towards whatever this thing is that we do where it's like holy holy i can't believe we're doing this i can't believe i'm making money off of doing this this could disappear at any time i better hang on to it while i can and to me that's a remarkably short side of the way of looking at things. You know, it's like, that's not, that's not, I don't think that's necessarily the case. It's like, you have to understand, you know, in a larger context, I don't think that that makes sense.

So, so early on, like we were, we were, you know, getting some, you know, blog attention slowly and surely. And I remember specifically Phil, one of the first big boosts came from Phil Deil defranco when he um posted about or you know pushed his people towards a video that we did um uh called chrono trigger which was one of the first action videos that we did you know and it was a gunplay video effects slow-mo and he pushed people to that and a lot of people you know talking to them that's where they sort of was the first entry point and that first year was a very sort of fruitful year we did uh shortly after that we did a video called

flower warfare and that was like pretty much any girl i talked to is the video that they know from ours because it has i remember that one yeah that was that was my favorite yes so that you know the girl shooting flowers out of that was our entry point the flower yeah oh interesting yeah and it's to me it's always interesting where people get in on it. And then at the first VidCon happened. And even at the time the first VidCon happened, we had a breakout panel, which was just talking about visual effects. And it was like maybe half full, like a side room, half full thing. We were nobodies still at that time. And I remember specifically, I'm like, where are we in this spectrum of things?

When they were interviewing Phil on stage at VidCon for the first one and he mentioned our channel and it was like, oh, it was like three people in the back. I'm like, okay, all right. We know where we stand. We know where we stand.

It's interesting though. And it always shifts, which is always kind of interesting. But the focus for us has always been at least for, you know, it's been filmmaking. You know, I went to film school.

I was doing movies in high school. It's just, it's filmmaking. It's storytelling for, you know, it's been filmmaking. You know, I went to film school. I was doing movies in high school. It's just, it's filmmaking. It's storytelling. It's visual storytelling. What's fascinating about YouTube is that not everybody on here has that same focus or has that same goal, you know, and the ecosystem supports it just fine. But that doesn't mean that somebody on here is necessarily someone who's trying to do narrative storytelling. You know, they may be trying to do something else and they may find success in doing that. But, you know, I don't look at PewDiePie and say, this is a guy who wants to make films. I see this as a guy who

understands gaming videos and does this really well. And I see vlogging no different than the skill. To me, vlogging is the modern equivalent of the talk radio DJ who can sit in front of a microphone and just talk for an hour and a half and entertain you through it. Like that's Howard Stern. That's, you know, like that ability is no different than the ability to take a camera and point at yourself and make a story out of your day-to-day life. You know, whatever that is, I see a lot of similarities in that, in that it's a single person point source broadcast against that sort of thing. And there's these analogs to sort of older media, but here's the difference. And here's what we struggle with every day. Uh, you know, so at, at, you know,

at rocket jump, the company that I have now, it's that while all these skillsets are diverse and all these things are different, they are treated the same by every, by the, by regular sort of like the lay person. It's the same thing. Oh, you make YouTube videos. That's not true though. I make YouTube videos, but my, my stuff is different than gaming stuff. It would be like putting Howard Stern, Tom Cruise, and the Weinstein brothers in a room, and Katy Perry. You guys are media creators. That's it.

It's like, well, everybody's different here. They do different things. Right. But there's no delineation in terms of the understanding of that. So when you go to people and you say, what what do you do it's like oh i make youtube videos in their head directly so you make a cat videos and yeah kimmel kind of and what was that that's what i mean and well and you've obviously i mean with video game high school that you've obviously uh moved way beyond what you were doing with the with the short action videos which got an

audience and now you've taken that you translated that audience into a narrative story so is that what you were doing with the short action videos, which got an audience. And now you've taken that, you translated that audience into a narrative story. So is that the point that Ray was talking about with you, where you're going to do, make that choice? Is that the choice? I think so. I think it is. I think it is.

And for myself, and I can verify this with, I do not like the idea of like, oh, you're such a puppet master. You knew what you're doing from the beginning. It's like, we had an idea. We had goals that we had set, but I remember very distinctly in Finland when I got flown out in Finland in 2008, 2009 for a guitar hero, drunkenly calling a friend of mine who's a producer and being like, I don't think we should do this directed DVD movie. I think I need to do something online. And I think that you need to grow an audience online first and then make something for that audience later. But the first part is you

need an audience to do it because it's the same idea in my head. I was like, it's the same thing as like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to see how rad it was that you chopped down this freaking tree, then nobody's going to know that you chopped this freaking awesome tree down. And it also doesn't make a sound. So you need to get a bunch of people around you for your woodworking skills first, and then you can chop down trees. This is kind of like the mentality. That's how you talk when you've been drinking.

I get very intense. I get very intense and sleepy. It goes intense. It's a weird mix. It's a cliff. It's like intense. All right. So you got, a weird mix. It's a cliff. It's like intense, intense. What? All right. So you got to bring us back to the

hook and ladder fire truck. You know, as we land the plane, we got to do it with a fire truck. Here we go. So anyway, so YouTube, we got going on that and that was that. And so, you know, lived with Sam and Nico for a while. Then Brandon and I moved over to the different part of the same building. Then, you know,

we are living in different parts of the city now. Anyway, it's Brandon's birthday. And we have always talked about these hook and ladder trucks. I'm like, the guy in the back steers, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, he could just swing that back out all the way, right? And the front wouldn't see it. Like, yeah, he's completely independent.

It's not locked in at all. I'm like, okay, theoretically, you should be able, if the guy in the back swings the back out, okay? You're in a bad situation. But then he quickly adjusts his wheels parallel to the road. And the guy in the front

quickly adjusts his wheels parallel to the road. So now all the wheels are facing the same direction. You can make it look like this fire truck's f***ing drifting and it could go nonstop.

You could drift four lanes across the road. And we're like, yeah, but I don't know. So we've always talked about it. Sam, Nico, and Brandon, we always theorize it. We're like, how would you do it?

Well, you have to coordinate it. It'd be a timing thing. The guy would have to turn right really hard. We had the whole thing planned out. But they are wearing comms. And they are wearing comms too. So we had this like just idea for a while.

And then one day, the day before Brandon's birthday, we smelled smoke. And I'm like, what the fuck? And it's coming from our neighbor's place. And we pound the door, nothing. Call, we try, and to be fair, we try everything. We try to call the landlord. Landlord tries to call their cell phone, nothing, nothing. It smells like smoke.

Fire alarms are going off in their side of the thing. And we're like, should we call the fire department? Probably. Probably. Yeah, we should call the fire department. should we call the fire department? Probably. Probably. Yeah. We should call the fire department. So we call the fire department. That's what they're for.

Yeah, exactly. Right. And we're like, well, and we're like, well, let's,

let's, let's quick do a cost benefit. Uh, if we don't call the fire department, it could be nothing or the whole building could burn down. So let's call the fire department. So call the fire department. There's a fire department right nearby.

They're like, they're in like a minute flat. They roll in and they, but they just straight up ax that door down. And it took him a while too. There's a fire department right nearby. They're like there in like a minute flat. They roll in and they straight up ax that door down. And it took them a while too. So we're like, if anyone ever is going to break in, it's going to take them at least a minute of hard ax throwing in order to get the store down. Turns out the neighbors like left a hard boiled egg boiling

and then the water boiled away and it caused a little mini fire there. And that was it. Nothing real dangerous. The old egg fire. The old egg fire. Yeah, everyone's little mini fire there. And that was it. Nothing real dangerous. The old egg fire. The old egg fire. Yeah, everyone's had one of those. Yeah, not a big deal. So these firefighters, we had, so from earlier that year at E3,

we stole a bunch of NOS energy drink from these NOS energy guys because they were like going, they're cleaning up their booth and they had just cases and cases. So I filled up my station wagon with i think 200 cases of nos so it was like it was like a stack that was taller than you and and it was just non-stop nos for a while so we were giving them to the firefighter like yo hey how's it going you guys want some energy the guy's like all right awesome all right so we have this theory come here we have this we start drawing it out like if you swing the back end out and do this

you could drift the fire truck and the guy was like yeah i guess you could and then we're like okay all right sweet and like they left and then as they were leaving we're standing in the middle of the road it's sunset it's la blazing red and orange and this fire truck leaving the scene we see the back end swing out no and we see the wheels correct and the fire truck drifts down our road and we lose our minds like it worked it's true it worked and we were jumping up and down and like high-fiving it was the greatest day of my life that is unbelievable and it was all made even that much more vivid because you're all hyped up on energy drink oh yeah oh yeah every pupil completely dilated you can't even see straight, and it's just like they did it.

They drifted the fire truck. Well, on that note, you should sign the table. Thank you for joining us here. Yes, absolutely. On Ear Biscuits. All right, so let me see here. Let's see right here.

Here's what I'll do. I will draw the diagram that we were using to illustrate how a drifting fire truck could conceivably work. Can you give some sound design to the drawing? Here, boom. All right. Thanks, Freddie.

Thanks very much, guys. Thanks for having me on. And there you have it, our conversation with Freddie W. I'm going to be thinking about that fire truck thing for quite a bit of time. Yeah, I have thought about that. I've thought about how you could do whole circles while going in the same direction. Well, I thought what he was going to say is that if the back starts to turn out

and doesn't stop, it will get ahead of the front. Right. Will that happen? And then you can keep going, follow momentum and make it into a circle. That's what I was thinking. I think that will happen, but neither one of us momentum, and make it into a circle. That's what I was thinking. I think that will happen,

but neither one of us are capable of making it into a realistic video that illustrates it. He has the power to do that. But you think how easy is it to come across like an old fire truck? Like you can buy an old school bus. I know people who've bought old school buses, and you can buy old police cars.

Why can't we get hold of an old fire truck and just own it and drive it around? Sometimes you get the front, sometimes I get the front. I think the reason is because the investment is not justified. I mean, we could also put out fires with it. Like we're a private fire brigade that we have like a- When you need to get-

We have a ham radio. We like tap into police frequencies. Show up with our hook and ladder. Like, we're here. You can get really high. We could probably come up with other things to do with a ladder that tall. We're a two-man bucket brigade. Well, we want to thank Freddie W. for showing up.

I think he's listening back to this. He sure is. Freddie, you're a beautiful man. Thank you for listening. We're going to be doing this next week. In the meantime, check out Freddie's work at youtube.com slash freddiew. And also, stay safe this week. Stay safe, stay out of trouble, stay away from fire trucks, and cuddle up next to your significant other if you have one of those,

and cuddle up next to some sort of blanket or pillow if you don't have one. Why are you ending this like a radio DJ? I like giving people some instructions. I like leaving people with something that they can take action on. Cuddle up next to someone, and we'll see you next week. Or you'll hear our voices. Yeah.