F**kface - Regulation Takes 5

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Anticipate a deep dive into new Takes. Who even goes first? It's a strategic take session that sees a lot of retrospect and a lot of money. Support us directly at https://www.patreon.com/TheRegulationPod Stay up to date, get exclusive supplemental content, and connect with other Regulation Listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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we all did one take when we typically do two there's so much to go into with these takes and it was led by Gavin who excitedly said that he has a new take

so I'm anticipating another deep dive into some sort of new take that Gavin has what was my last take I didn't remember I don't remember but it went a lot

we circled around it quite a bit you don't you don't I keep like a list of takes and I use like strikeout font. Yes, I do the same. No, I just delete it once I say it. Okay, I got to say the fact that Andrew's the only one who's also doing this is making me nervous that I'm not doing the right thing.

How do you handle it, Gaz? What's your method? I just don't even strike out. So I don't know if I've done it or not. You don't even delete it? Three different ways to handle it. Andrew, I feel better about our way of doing things now. Yeah.

I think you nailed it. You're a psycho. So are you looking at them and you're just assuming, I guess I did that one? Yeah, I did 24 hour clock isn't maths. I've done that one. Okay. What's the next one?

Oh, so I'm going first. You can if you want. It's up to you. I mean, Andrew definitely queued you up to go first. Yeah, but then we just got into our strategy, so I just thought, you know, maybe someone else wants to remember it. All right, I'm gonna go first. Are you ready for this?

I'm ready. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Hang on. Okay, now I'm ready for this. Go for it. Emails should cost money. Meetings should cost more. What if you email yourself?

It's free. I feel like anyone you already talking to is free. The first email, the blind email, should cost money. So should it be like a digital postage stamp? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For just the first, the introductory email? Yeah.

if the person replies, then it's free. But you've got to pay to get in. Stop, stop sending me shit every day. Stop sending me 18 pieces of shite every time I open my inbox. Sifting through crap to get to the real stuff. Hate it. When you say sifted through crap, do you mean spam?

Or is it just unsolicited email from people who are genuinely trying to get in touch with you? It's mainly like mailing lists and stuff that I didn't sign up for. Didn't want anything to see with The unsubscribe button Oh yeah And just nothing

I hit that button Maybe 10 times a day Oh my God Get off me You should have to pay to hit that button Oh that's a good take Yeah It's free to join

But it costs money to leave Interesting I think the meetings The meetings part of this I would have agreed With probably like two years ago When we worked at a company That was so

Boy they loved meetings But now I'm desperate just to have the one meeting a week so we can go over what we need to. Well, I think everyone can agree. Like if everyone in the company agrees that meetings are free, they're free. Like for our company, they'd be free. But, you know, if you work for a corporation, right, there's no way all the workers are going to vote for free meetings. Oh, if I worked at rooster teeth, I would keep telling them that it costs more money. Like, there's no way I would have agreed to it.

If you got $100 for every meeting you attended, you probably wouldn't hate that. them as much. No, that's great. Oh, I would get paid to go to the meetings. But, I mean, yeah. Taking a step back, if you look at it from a, from a macro level, isn't that essentially what the last like four years of rooster teeth was? Weren't you basically just paid to go to meetings? We didn't make anything. The meeting was like seven hours of the workday. Yeah, it definitely was. You just didn't put a dollar figure on it, but your salary was basically covering you going to non-stop, unending, useless meetings. TRIA like this, right? Say I went in, we made five videos, right?

No meetings. That's my normal salary. If I couldn't make two videos because of one meeting, that's extra. You're gonna have to pay for that. I'm with Gavin. I think this is, I love that idea. Yeah. I just don't think we were making anything anyway, so it was either. What? Budgets dry up left and right. Making stuff every time I was in there. Begging to fucking make stuff constantly, getting projects canceled left and right.

I was a big fan. I was a big fan of being told, no, we can't make that because we can't pay that. And then going, well, we're getting paid anyway, right? And they go, yeah. And then you go, okay. So I just think about that, pretty cool. All of the valid meetings would have happened as normal. They'd have been happy to, you know, pay everyone to be there.

And all of the dog shit could have been an email, could have been an argument somewhere else, shut up. Wouldn't have happened. Is it in a meeting? No, what would happen is they would reduce budget. on productions to pay for more meetings. All you're doing, like, let's be honest here. We're dealing with corporate.

All you're doing is siphoning money away from, more money away from productions so that you can fund more meetings about how we can't afford productions anymore. Well, to be honest, I think that has to happen for them to realize, oh, no, we can't make anything now. Let's have less meetings. You've got to go down into the valley of dog shit to come back out. I'm sure Bernie has a no meetings policy in the new rooster teeth. I'm sure.

So it's just like he's not meeting with himself or what's the? No, yeah. Oh, okay. So it just, it could have been an email. How many good meetings would you say you've had, Gavin? 20? Yeah, I think that's,

20 good meetings. I think that's probably a good number. I've had loads of good meetings, but like they're short, like they're much, I think a good meeting typically is when it's scheduled for half an hour and it only goes about 15 or 20 minutes because it's just to the point.

I guess my only question with this specific take is in all the time we did regulation. I think I was in one meeting with you and it was disastrous. It was a bad meeting. You were checked out in a way that was completely understandable. But regulation? I felt like yes or no. We have a lot service. Oh.

We do. Regulation, phenomenal. Fuck face. In the entirety of that run when we weren't, we were part of a different company. You and I attended one meeting together. I don't even remember what that was. And you were... It was a stupid meeting, but you didn't say a single word the entire meeting.

Was it a meeting about how we should embrace Pokemon in the break show or something? Not, sort of. It wasn't specifically that, but it was like... That was sort of a thread to it, but it was a thing where Jeff was supposed to be there, and you were late, Jeff, or I'm sure the completely valid reason. This was with marketing. Yes. I do.

Oh, no. Oh, no. No, I remember that. It was just a long spiel of them said a bunch of stuff that we weren't going to do. And then we said no and left. No, that's not. There was a preamble and you didn't say a single word in the preamble. So it was me trying to preamble with these two people that were not interested in hearing a single word.

I had the second. Yeah, I don't think I was even. But I was trying. I think maybe I didn't even have my headphones on them. I've been around my name. I was like, oh, Gavin's here. Thank God. somebody that I can bounce off of them

just silence. I'll say this. Your image. If my company's going to pay you to come to a meeting, Gavin, you better have your fucking headphones on. Yeah, fuck yeah. Happily, I put my headphones on. So I guess the email, I'm just wondering, like, how often are you dealing with

terrible meetings at this stage? Not anymore. Not anymore, okay. But, you know, most of the world is subjected to dog shit meetings? Yep. I will say, I agree in principle to the not the email thing, because to me it's white noise in the same way when I open my mailbox every day. I have one piece of real mail and nine flyers for shit that I don't care about. That's a good point.

So that's what I view email as. You gotta just sift through the crap to get to the real mail. But if it costs them like 25 cents to do it. It costs them that much to send you that physical mail and they still do it. I don't think it slows anybody down. Hmm. They pay for postage on every single piece of mail you receive. and you still receive 10 times the trash versus real mail. So I don't know that the quarter thing is a financial disincentive.

And I imagine it was more. What if it was like $1.50? Sure. For me, it's a negative. As somebody who has reached out to such people as the tuxedo director to get them to reply and then become mad at me. All the random emails. If you've paid 25 cents.

send that though, then surely a lot of people haven't paid, right? No, but I'm getting less emails. I just wouldn't have, I wouldn't have done it. Oh. It's not about his email count. It is about because it's free, I'm willing to throw these Hail Marys in different scenarios, reaching out to the Jane Goodall Foundation about Dustin checks in. I wouldn't have paid to do that, but because it was free, I did and I got to reply. Dustin checks in

Hey Dustin what are you up to Dustin Whatever Whatever that monkey's name was That Gavin loves Wrangutan It a whole rangatangetang thing I still hear people say

orangutang and I was that person Okay what if I was like you once I get that I understand that mistake What if the domain is from like a giant corporation then they have to pay What if it's like from a personal Gmail or something? It's free.

Well, then they're just going to use dog shit g-mails, though, aren't they? Nah. Yeah, I mean, I'm fine with your initial thing. Make them pay. I want money. Do you think the money comes to you? He told me it did. I see said I get paid for meetings.

I assume I get paid for email. Yeah, I don't think you get paid for the email one. What the money goes to you, but you're not getting, you're not getting, when you receive a letter in the mail, it's not like you get 35 cents for the stamp too. They should pay me for that. That is interesting. Was this the take that you said Like you excitedly wrote this down?

No This is just one of my own of my takes This isn't even the one I was teeing you up for That's crazy that you went with just some other take And not the one that you've been excitedly talking about I've got a lot on the list I read this one I thought you know

I think that would change my life Yeah but I feel like I did this whole preamble that like we ended up only doing one take last time because the takes went long and you just decided to not do the take that was really like the inspiration behind recording this thing. You'll get out of me. We'll keep doing these.

I also think you said it you thought it would change your life but when? 2014? We don't do meetings anymore. No, that's true, but the email thing would help. That just means you're going to get the same amount of email but Google gets paid 25 cents a pop. Should pay me.

Yeah, maybe it has a similar issue with Gary. 50 cents and I get half. There you go. So it's like a rev share split? Now that's interesting. Yeah, like if I open it, I get paid. Get paid to read emails. Well, I mean, you already I've already read it. I saw Craig's just like that one.

I should delete it. I went through this with Imail. Do you use Imail? When I was on an Apple platform. I had this annoying. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Email. Does that not exist anymore?

No, does it? I think it's like Cloud now. like me or whatever. Really? That's what their email client was. It was Imail. You had the little icon and it would be like a mailbox

and it would have... I would try to delete all my spam because it would have a number and it would be read. And I was like, that's annoying. And then I eventually went through the Gavin process of there's just too much of this and I gave up.

And I think last time I checked I had like 87,000 unread emails. What? Just because it's all like spam and nonsense And I was like, I'm just not going to click any of this. I give up. I surrender. I can't be taking down.

Imagine if you got paid a quarter for everyone. Wow. Oh my God. Wow. Wow. There'd be several bankrupted businesses beyond what's already occurring. I can't believe IMAil isn't still a thing. I just don't even know what it is.

It's just the mail app now. What is my mail? I just don't know what it is. Huh. Huh. Are you in an Apple phone? Yeah. Yeah.

It's not on the phone. I don't know what it is. It might be on the phone. It just became the name of it. Like iTunes became music. Imail became mail. Are you just saying the app where you read your mail? That's what it was called.

You had to click the Imail to go into your email and Gmail. But you were using an IMac until pretty recently. It didn't have Imail still, surely. Oh, absolutely it did because it was from 2009. That was the whole issue. If you go down to that computer right now, there's no way. my email is on it. Oh, I'll screenshot

and I'll see what the mail client is on it. I bet you it is. I think the IMAQ I was using was from 2011 that I just stopped using and I think the one downstairs that's still being used is 2009. You're getting good use out of those. I applaud you.

Oh, I'm getting so much use. The screen doesn't work on it anymore. It's connected to an HDTV. Getting that money's worth, though. Buy it for a lot of time, right? Right? Absolutely. So overall, does the room agree or disagree with my take?

Disagree. No, I'm for it. Okay. So I'm just trying to process because there were a lot of layers added as we talked about it. So I get paid to go to meetings or I get paid to be saying. It's like a bonus. You get a little bonus. Okay.

I think I'm going to be pro this for the world at large. And then the second one, I get paid for emails that I read. let's say that emails cost 50 cents to send if it's like a blind new email, start of a new conversation. And then you can add people as you would like followers and friends and stuff and then it's free for all those people. And then you get half of that money. I've had that fully in as long as it's like corporations that are doing this. Have you to pay. I think if the day to day every like average consumer email has to pay, I'm against it. I'm telling you once we introduce the idea that email costs,

money per email and corporations do get involved, it is only going to fuck the end consumer that much harder. There was a time when it was laughable that we would pay for water here in the world, and now you pay more for water than soda in some places. You are going to, the unintended consequences of this down the road are only going to fuck us in ways that we can never imagine. And you will rue the day that email ever existed because of how much it's ruined our lives. I'm already kind of there.

It's just such God, though. It's just like if I had to, if I sift through 40 emails every time I wake up and I had, you know, 10 bucks in my pocket at the end of it, I'd be like, oh, that wasn't so bad. I think the issue is, and Jeff brings up a great point is let's say we go through the legislation of making this all possible, everything it's approved. I think suddenly there'd be an introduction to a thing called F-mail, and we would just go through this all again. they would

I think just make a new email that didn't qualify under Can I use I mail to read my Fmail? You might have to hop in the time machine and go back to like 2009 apparently But also My email does a great job of filtering out Most of my spam these days

Oh really mine's dope shit I very rarely I'd say like Oh I don't know it's pretty rare though I don't see most of the spam You don't go into your spam and see what kind of cool offers you might get? No. There might be some full offers.

Yeah, dude. About promotions and stuff? No, those don't exist. Hop over to chat, have a couple of chats in your Gmail, and then go check out your promotions. Yeah. Okay, what about this? You know, emails have to say like, oh, you know, unsubscribe from this mailing list,

press this button on all that. Mm-hmm. Those emails cost money to send, and that's it. Oh, yeah, 100%. Sure. Totally fine with that. I think Jeff brings up a good point, though, where they'll work around. this somehow. You're going to get fucked.

You're going to receive that email and you'll be fucked worse than before somehow. You can't conceive of it yet. And it'll be annoying for 18 months and then in three years it'll just be the way the world works and you'll barely remember in the time when email was only annoying and not somehow financially frustrating to. No, Gavin, I'm with you. It should cost money

and I should get the money. Did fax cost money? Ooh, a fax? Yeah, was that? I was a bit You would pay... If you had a fax machine, it was free, but you could go and, like, pay for a fax at FedEx. Yeah, if you have a fac-simity machine, it's just a phone call.

You want to fax somebody something? Yeah, I don't know who or when, but I feel like that's a bucket list item for me. Should we just have a fax machine with a shitload of paper in it in the office? No, because it's going to be loud. It is pretty loud. So...

And we have to have a fucking landline, then. Yeah, and our landline's already plugged into the Garfield phone, so... That's true. Is there a Garfield fact? Ooh. Oh, the Jim Davis make a Garfield... Garfield facts? No, it doesn't look like it.

Oh, man. I think Garfield is more of like a... Call and chat sort of guy, more than anything else. Yeah, I understand the fear with not wanting to screw over the, us, the end consumer. But, yeah, there's just got to be a... way for me to get less shit. Shite. I know what you mean, dude, and I understand the frustration. All I can think of is just at my, the ripe old age of 50 is how much I bitched about cable in like 2000. Yeah, I get that.

And how I wanted all a cart TV. And if I could just pay for the channels that I wanted, I wouldn't be wasted with hundreds of channels I don't watch. And, uh, and I would do anything to go back to that. It went so wrong. And I just couldn't see it. You always think about the The problem with the future is you have these grand ideas, right? But the future is built by two entities. People that want to siphon as much money from you as possible, and people who do that in part by hiring the lowest bidder. So the future just gets built like 70% of what it should be,

and you just get fucked. The future is never better than a C plus, which is fucking lame. Well, because we're in the future now, but I feel like the pre-future, the bit just before this bit, It was actually pretty good. We had it. We didn't know. Yeah, we didn't know what it was.

We didn't know. We didn't know. That was a great take, Gavin. Great take, Gavin. Does anyone want to follow up Gavin's take? I'll do it because it's, it's, mine's sort of business-minded as well. Okay. If your AI customer service phone system agent that you've implemented as the CEO of the company

does not help me in the timely manner. it's supposed to, I should get a direct line to the CEO that greenlit it and they can help me instead. Ooh, I agree. That no more AI customer service agent, I need to talk to a person or if you implement this thing, I can talk to you directly and then just, I'm probably not even going to be able to get help from you, but boy, I'm going to berate you about this AI customer service phone agent thing. Oh, man. Does the CEO have to answer?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. That's their job. Their job is that now. That's their job. That is part of it. They're not doing anything anyway.

So like, just do that. They're not, the easiest job in the world is CEO. Like, just you can answer the phone a little bit now because your customer service agent thing that you said, oh, this is going to revolutionize the way customer service is going to, oh, now your health insurance is going to be so easy. No way. You have to help me figure out my problem now because you implemented this thing. That is what I think should happen.

I want it to be like that Chris Pratt movie that just came out where he's on trial and there's an AI judge. Yeah, hell yeah. And he has an hour to prove his innocence or else to kill him. I want it to be the reverse though. Or if you are dealing with an AI agent, it has an hour to solve whatever the problem is. And he isn't able to help you, you can kill the AI agent.

I like that, dude. That's awesome. That would just be like AI serial killers going around not getting help, just murdering him. Yeah, I think that's fine. nothing at that point and also yeah they got to get a better agent i guess yep this is useless this is a great idea Andrew i think this is great i think great about killing AI agents i got no problem they it's just never it's so annoying yeah i it's never a thing where i go dude i'm so glad they have this AI agent

talking on the phone to help me because i don't think once i've ever been helped without going eight representative yeah i finally get someone it's just one of those things where it would be fine if you weren't surprised when it works. Oh, yeah. You know, but that's the thing. Like, I'm delighted on the rare occasion it works as intended. Like in the one and like five times I ask Siri a question and she responds intelligently or with useful information, I'm like, I can't fucking, I can't believe it worked.

I just like to do it to beat my head against a wall because it's so, you know, you're just like, fuck. Stuff always gets implemented and gets into common use before it's ready, though, right? Like video took over from film way before video was good enough. Like 80s, 90s video looks like toilet. It looks great now. But the thing is with AI is obviously it's not ready to be actually helpful. But there's no scenario where anything's better when it gets better.

It's just doom and sky net and like awful privacy issues. Yep. It feels almost like a troll move to put AI in a position to deal with people that are dealing with issues. like you're dealing with people that are frustrated and are upset because their thing is broken and to knowingly put in its place to deal with that consumer a thing that is going to drive you even more insane because it's unhelpful like i feel like ai if a company is going to deploy it should be for like when things are going well like have it work in systems where you're not dealing with people that are dealing with things where it's broken

Like whatever, it's just such a terrible thing to have to interact with when you're at your most frustrated, trying to make this service that you're probably paying for or something that you spent money on to work as intended. Yeah. I would have so much blood on my hat because I think I would have murdered every single bot I've spoken to. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because it almost never works. And it's always like, my internet is down and I just need to tell this, like, I need to tell Spectrum, the internet. is down, someone needs to fix this thing, and they're like, it's an AI rep going, have you reset the router? And it's like, we're, I'm about to go insane. We're so past this point, I would murder them

immediately. The worst is you have to deal with an AI chat bot first to then get you kicked out to a phone number that you can call to deal with an AI representative that then kicks you to an agent. And listen, I'm not trying to be a dick. I work tech support for a long time. That's where roosterteeth was created. who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing and has zero capability of helping you to escalate you to a senior level technician who takes two seconds to look at it and goes, oh yeah, you're right, you're down,

I'll get something scheduled for you. It's like five fucking steps you have to go through to get one fix and you know what the problem is when you call in because it's the problem. Yeah, yeah, it's infuriating. Or to be, oh, just thinking about having to be in line

and call support and all those things and all the ways it goes wrong and how frustrating it is. Oh my God. Oh, yeah. Being on hold for like an hour and then them just hanging up on you without advancing you got to hop back in the line again.

Oh. You never have to be on hold anymore there. Ah, that's not true. Mostly you can get the callback thing. When I get that option, I'm so thrilled, but I have several different things in my life that I've had to call in for even recently and just wait.

brutal. But that's my take. I just want to talk to the CEO. And they can do a job for a little while. It would be hilarious to have to talk to them because then they would theoretically have to actually learn all these different aspects of the company that they're part of.

Yeah, absolutely. Which they don't know and they don't know how to do. So now they're going to learn. Or you should just make the CEO call in and use the system all times a day. Could you imagine? Yeah. Like you're required to call.

call in every two hours. Like, do you remember back at the end of the full screen days, I think before the jump to Warner, we had these things called small improvements we had to write down. Oh, yeah. And you had to sit down and write down like five things every day you did for the company and keep on a spreadsheet and keep track of it. And it's like, it's like every hour you had to essentially annotate what you had done. It would be like if the CEO had to do that, like five times a day he had to punch a clock that says I called in and successfully used the AI agent. But imagine it in your situation, Eric, so you're the president, right, of our company. I edit most of the live action videos.

So imagine someone's called into the company saying that there's like an error in a video I made. Uh-huh. What are you going to do about it? It's going to give them your phone number immediately. Yeah, absolutely. They can talk to you about it. Yeah, but I'm not involved. You're a CEO.

You're on the phone. No, no. Because then I've solved the problem. They need to talk to the person who put this thing together so that way the fix is in. That way this thing can be solved. I mean, surely you're just fielding their issue to me. You're not putting me on with them. Right. I am.

I'm putting them in direct contact with you, the person who's going to solve it. That's what I need the CEO to do. I need them to put me in contact with the person that's going to solve the problem. Yeah, I mean, Eric didn't know shit about how to fix their video. You're the one that made it. Exactly. So that's all the CEO needs to do. you're in your words, you should know how to fix the video, though.

No, I'm saying I need to talk to the CEO, so that way I don't have to talk to the AI agent anymore, and they can direct my call or put me in contact with the person that's going to help me. All right. I'm unavailable, though, so. No, that's unfortunate. I'm going to need you to pick up that phone. See, it's CEOs like you that make this impossible, Gavin. Mm-hmm.

He doesn't care. He just found a workaround for painting. for email. That's a small improvement. Write it down. Did you really have to do that? I had to do that. We were supposed to.

Andrew had to, you remember it, right, Andrew? Yes. I never did it once. I had to submit it to who was my manager at that time. Probably Trevor. I thought it was very odd.

No. You were allowed to cool that bluff and all that stuff. Some people were. I don't think most of the. people could. Oh. I don't think I filled out a time card for, like, my last two years, I didn't fill out a time

card at all. It was just a big waste of time. I never filled out a time card once. Right. Or an expenditure. I have my little notes. Well, I think you and the expense report is why we couldn't get any cards. Oh, you guys all had cards.

Well, my take is about athletics, Jeff. Does your take intertwine in any way? Uh, no, no. Uh, yeah, no, I have a couple. Yeah, I, I, I, sure. Well, what is your take, Jeff? Uh, my take is about the Olympics. Oh, so is mine.

Okay. Ooh, interesting. It's perfect. We're gonna go back to back on this. What is your Olympic take? All right, this isn't a big deal. It's just something that I've been dealing with, uh, this Olympics in particular. I like curling.

I'm enjoying it. I understand it. I've watched many of, uh, 10 ends of, of, of curling. but how fucking long does it have to go on? It started. Curling started the day before the Olympics started. It was going before the opening ceremonies. Opening ceremonies were on Friday.

Wait, what are you talking about? Curling started on Thursday. What? What? Yeah, there were a few events that were before the opening ceremony. It goes uninterrupted until the closing ceremony. It doesn't end. Women's curling ends on the same day on the top.

22nd. Men's curling ends the 21st. It spans the more than the entirety of the Olympics. And I like it, but God damn, there's other sports. So your issue, to be specific, is the duration in which it, it's playing in an 82 game in a season in two and a half weeks. Yeah, you're not upset by how long each individual game is. No, just how many of there is. 86 games during this Olympic. How long is a game, how long is curling? Long. It's 10 rounds, are called 10 ends, and each end is both teams throw in, I think, 10 stones. It's like horseshoes, but more horseshoes. Yeah, I would say one match, like one 10 end will go, like, easily an hour.

What? I would say. Oh, my God. Yeah, Emily's been making fun of me for how much curling I watch. And I watch it because I want to support the Olympics, and it's often the only thing that they're replaying. I just can't believe that every time I tune into Peacock, it's the, it's playing and it's live and it's like how is it?

Snowboarding is a thing in the past already and it's like still just like fucking Curlin's going strong and they're talking about semi-finals now and it's like what were we doing the last 12 days? I had a funny thing with curling this Olympics where I was getting ready to sleep because all of these events are taking place like starting at like midnight to like 1 a.m. And Curling was on and I thought, oh, I'll just fall asleep to curling. That'll be nice. So it's like you got the stones clicking each other.

Like there could be some kind of nice sounds in relation to curling. And I completely forgot about the sweeping part. And it was immediately a terrible idea of I'm laying there. I'm like, I'm going to listen to some nice thing. And then it's just hard, hard, sweep, sweep, sweep. It's just people screaming as loud as they can. It was the least relaxing thing to listen to. I'd do immediately bail off of that idea.

But I've never thought about how long. curling goes throughout the Olympics. That's a very fine point. I'm stunned. I can't, you said it started before the opening ceremonies and like I just don't, I can't wrap my head around that.

I would like to see then like a time pie chart of all the sports. Would curling be like half the chart, like half the pie? It would have to be. We were, when we got to Detroit, Thursday night,

we watched curling. And then Friday we watched the opening ceremonies. What? I just don't think it's the opening ceremony if it happens after something. I gotta agree with Gavin that's crazy there were like four different events

yeah what felt exciting to me I was like this is like a sneak preview it was like yeah it was like it was like Wednesday night at Comic Con what are your favorite Olympic event do you guys watch the Olympics at all Gavin and Eric

nah uh no my I had I had a hot take written down about the Olympics but we don't I don't need to share that one um It sounds like you guys enjoy the Olympics I don't need to share my heart take about the Olympics I fucking love the Olympics I'm gonna erase this one real quick

Can't get enough I would understand your dislike of it Based on the coverage the US gets compared to Canada We get such superior Olympic coverage it is insane I don't understand I don't know why you're knocking the US coverage You don't like the sound of drones

Just incessant drones Honestly I kind of like the sound of insane Yeah, they're going to bother me. I'm over it. Psycho. It's, it has ruined so much. It sucks. The shots are so cool, it more than makes up for it.

It's awful. The shots are cool. And also, I like to pretend that the sound is actually coming from the athletes. Like, if they're skiing so fast, they sound like cars. Because it sounds like a car going like, dude, like when you watch racing. And it makes me happy. A drone following a skier down a mountain is so fucking cool. It looks cool.

It sounds like shit. It's pretty awesome. The footage just easily outweighs the sound. It sounds bad in a way. I like the footage is great. I like the sound. It just is silly. They're going car like speeds.

They're going, they're skiing. But, yeah, and like for Canada, our Olympic coverage, we get every event live for free, and you can watch it online anywhere. That's great. That's great.

Incredible. It's so accessible. What have you enjoyed the most in the Olympics so far, Andrew? That's tough because I would typically default to hockey, but yesterday was heartbreaking and last I saw Canada was losing

in a game that's occurring right now. If it's not, I like the curling quite a bit. I like the hockey quite a bit. I enjoyed watching the ski jump because of the penis gate scandal. That was a lot of fun. Oh yeah, yeah, very interesting.

Trying to figure out which guy injected his dick and who didn't based on how baggy the suit was. Yeah. That's a good one. It's just been a good Olympics. Yeah, it has been a lot of fun. It has been a lot of fun. And my Olympic take, and this is, I think, a kind of, not necessarily hot take, but how it applies to me, I think is interesting.

In the sense of, I think that steroid should be allowed in the Olympics because I don't drink coffee in real life. Okay. Wait, hang on. All right, hang on. Let's try to parse, before he explains, let's try to figure out what the connection. is here. I'm excited. Are you saying because you opt out of coffee, like people can opt out of steroids if they want? Are you saying that because the Olympics is such a grueling thing, you start drinking coffee

so you can watch more of it, so they should be allowed to go above and beyond performance and enhancing drugs? Or, Andrew, here's my take. Are you saying that coffee is a drug and caffeine gives an unfair advantage to people over people who don't drink caffeine? But don't you drink soda? I'm not drinking a soda at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. Like I'm not, my morning, I'm dealing with people.

I'm dealing with all you guys. And Gavin, I know you're more of a tea drinker, but I'm dealing with people for the morning for me on the West. And you guys are like two cups in and you're fine. And I'm struggling out here. And that's my choice. I choose to not drink coffee. I don't get that caffeine bounce that you guys are getting to help you throughout the day. Have you tried jumping? It's not going to help me for energy.

Sometimes if I'm not in a position where I can get a hold of coffee or any caffeine, I just do like 15 jumps and then it gives me energy. Yeah, you got to get the blood flowing, baby. Yeah. How about, how about like a meo, those caffeinated water squirts or something? I'm just not a caffeine guy. So you just don't like, you wouldn't want to, okay. So you think, okay, so there's that.

It's not coffee that per se. It's caffeinated drinks in general. Right. So that ties back around to the Olympics and the use of steroids. Because the idea of being anti-steroid is that it gives other people an advantage, right? An unfair advantage. But we live in a world in which advantages are always naturally occurring. Like there's not this concept that everybody is on a fair playing field without steroids is ridiculous.

And then I guess the counter argument to steroid usage in the Olympics would be some people don't want to do it. and I think that's totally fine. I choose to not drink caffeine or have coffee in the mornings and I suffer through it and that's my choice but I don't think that you guys should not be allowed

to drink coffee because of that. Well, what if there was a second Paralympics that was just all steroid use? All performance enhancers allowed. I think one of Trump's kids

is trying to do that so I don't know if you want to lean into that. Yeah, they're actually... It's a thing. Oh, yeah. My counter argument is that I live day-to-day life in a way in which I'm at a disadvantage because I do not ingest a substance by my choice. They can handle it in the Olympics.

It's fine. I think you're in a good position, though, because I'm just addicted to it. Like, I get a headache if I don't have caffeine at this point. You say that, but every morning that we record, I don't feel like I'm at an advantage. There's zero point in which I feel like I'm being, my experience. is better than what you're going through. Well, so what if, say you went to bed two hours earlier every night and woke up two hours earlier, would you be better? Would you feel better?

I think it's a thing where, and I, like, I've worked much earlier in the morning for starts, but I'm not a morning person. So having to wake up at, uh, we record at nine. Most recordings, I would say I wake up at 8.53 a.m. That and then I can, I couldn't go into a podcast. if I've been awake for seven minutes. That's on you. Yeah, because like, caffeine aside, I am a morning person. And even if I woke up seven minutes before the podcast, I'd be ready to go because I just,

I just wake up fully awake. Yeah. Well, clearly I am, I'm ready to go. I do it every week. I make it work. My point is, it's never the optimal scenario. So what if, what is the optimal scenario? Oh, man.

If I can record in your time, 11, if I, if I, have 11 a.m. start. Why don't we do a month long run where four regulations have recorded 11 West. Not a bad idea. I love it. Let's do it. That's a really good idea. And we'll rate your performance to see if it's improved.

I don't, I'd rather just continue all right. So we gave it to him. Have you guys raped my performance for a month? You gave him the thing you was asking for. No, he didn't hand it to me. The whole rest of the company. He said, do you want to push it back three hours? And in exchange, you get a performance review every week.

No, you get it one time at the end of the month, and you have to fill out five improvements that you think is. Okay, but from my perspective, Gavin, we used to record the regulation podcast at 1 p.m. my time, every week. At three. Our time, yeah.

Yep. And since we established the company, it has moved to 9 a.m. my time. So what you're saying is that I get two hours of what would be four hours of what I used to get back, in exchange for a review. I only pushed moving it earlier

because we started doing gameplay on the same day. And I felt like doing two gameplays and then doing the podcast gave us a lower energy podcast. I'm happy keeping the podcast at 3 Central if we just... I'm not even... I want to be clear.

I'm not arguing that we should change the times of any of these things. My point is that I'm at... Like, I'm tired. I choose to not drink coffee. I'm coming in at a disadvantage. That's just the way it is sometimes. I think you like the disadvantage.

You like being able to say you go. He loves the disadvantage. He loves it. No, I hate it. He's having the disadvantage. Oh, man. He loves it. Gavin, you're right.

Gavin, you nailed it. Gavin's hot take is that Andrew loves being at a disadvantage. And I want to know, like, I want to state. I realize that this is like very privileged to be like, oh, it's 8.54 and I want to like, at 9 a.m. start time, totally normal, totally fine. Well, I've worked much earlier. I think you're definitely right. But in the context in which we're setting the hours,

there is last, yesterday, when we recorded the podcast, I woke up 8.51 a.m. for the nine recording, late in bed until 8.54, and just close my eyes thinking about, I want every minute between now and 855 to be as long as it possible. I'm so cozy. We can move it. Look, all you have to do is do the gameplays on a separate day.

Yeah, that's fine. I'm not asking for a move thing. My point is, is that if I can exist coffee, in a day-to-day world in which everyone around me is drinking coffee. And I feel like that's most of the adult population. If you choose not to, you're at your own disadvantage that you're setting.

They can figure it out in the Olympics. The coffee's not your problem. The coffee's not your problem. Caffeine is my problem. It's not. It's you in the slack at 3 a.m. Sending us like game ideas. Go to sleep.

Yeah. Go to damn bed. Most of the slacks I get from Andrew are in the 4. hour window on the sleep every night. So those could be weird slacks. Those might be things where I've walked out. They're always weird. Briefly.

They're great. They're great slacks. You love the slacks. I would say if you work up briefly and you choose to do work, that's going to wake you up. That's going to get your brain active and then you're not going to be able to get back to sleep. I might have to get up and use the bathroom.

And then while I'm in the bathroom, I might have a thought. And then it's just like, I'll throw this out there. I understand that. I feel like it's a thing too of where. I sort of enjoy being like, I'm going to throw out this idea. There's no pressure for anyone to respond to it or acknowledge it.

I'm just putting it out there. And the fact that I know that you guys won't see it immediately in a weird way for me is like, oh, they'll see it when they see it. And if they like it, then maybe we'll do it. But if they don't, then it just moves on. That's fine. Everything you bring us is great. You're great on every podcast.

I just hate the idea of you being tired all the time. Oh, I'm tired all the time. All the time. But you can figure it. It's unnecessary. I can drink coffee. We can all fix that happily. No, but here's, okay.

This is the anxiety part of this brain that I have. Let's say we move it to 11. I feel like I would self-sabotage myself and 11 would become just as bad. You would wake up at 1057. Andrew. If it helps, that's absolutely what would happen. Absolutely.

There's no doubt in my fucking mind. So I'd rather wake up three minutes before. for everybody else. And this is just what I listen. Do you know why you would do that, Andrew? Do you know why you would do that? Because all I would think about is... You love being at a disadvantage.

You love being at a disadvantage. Everyone loves an underdog story. Yep. Yep. I agree with that. I think everybody has some friction. Gavin loves to add friction in his video game life. What kind of friction we talk?

I enjoy putting it in mind. You know, like we'll be doing a mission or something and you'll just decide to blow up everybody for no reason. Send us back 20 bands. You love friction. That's not on purpose. You are a little-minute. Andrew is absolutely right here.

Yeah. The choice to be reckless is certainly there, but I'm not like firing rockets into my own legs on purpose. I'm just clipping walls sometimes. I'm clipping the gas tax I didn't see. The wall clip, that's a specific issue we're talking about. It feel,

there are times where we go into an activity and I know you're going to be just reckless crazy and it's like, we're not doing this no matter. what happened. Would you prefer a version of of GTA heists where there's a brig and you could just keep me in the brick like a sea of thieves?

No, because you're great and it's so funny when those things happen it's wonderful, but it feels like you're deciding to play in a way that is going to create friction when you don't have to. There are days... If I'm adding friction, it's in a fic... My friction is in fiction.

Yes. You're a fiction friction guy. I don't want it in my real world. where I hate it in my virtual world but I don't mind in my real world I actually have a list of things if we talked about you removing friction from my real life I do have notes

for the podcast at some point of points of minor levels of friction that I have that could be is it a list of frictions that you want to keep no it's frictions that if you have a solution for feel free to fix my friction I want to go over there I want to butter your life Oh, some nice buttering.

Oh, man. I fixed my screenshot button. I talked about that. Oh, nice. Turned off. An option? Yeah, it was just a setting. I had to figure out where to find it, but it was, I don't know how, but it got, the box got

unchecked. So, yeah, it's back. I can just screenshot out the, get the button, but. Yeah, I live in a, we live in a friction world. We live in a world of unfairness. People day to day take a substance to make, uh, existing easier. And some people choose to not do that.

Eric, and that's okay. Yeah. Where do you like friction in your life? I don't want any friction at all. I don't, I want to live a butterfilled life. Why should you start company with us then?

I don't know. Yeah, there are days, there are days, man. There are days. I feel like my entire body is wrapped in sandpaper. There are days. There are days.

There are days. days. Sometimes, sometimes those days last a month, like when we have to play Mario Party every day and then we have to keep adjusting

the time. And then some days people won't be there. So we have to adjust how we play the game for one day. I just feel like they're not often actual problems. No, I agree. I don't

begrudge the problems themselves. It's that we are choosing to make the problems much in the way that you choose friction in video games like Andrew's talking about.

But isn't it boring without it? Isn't the friction the fun? No. Thank you. I'm with Jeff, I think. Hey, Gavin, I know. I think there's a line. I think some friction is fun.

I think sometimes too much friction is annoying. Too much friction is just extra fun. I feel like, like I'm in a weird position because I have sympathy for Andrew's friction. I have almost no sympathy for Eric's. I don't know why. You can't doubt that. You being the cause of the friction, I think is the reason.

Whatever you're like, fling your arms around about a problem. I'm just, in the back of my head, I'm just like, no, that's not that bad. It's so fucking funny that Jeff established himself as being made of sandpaper and then moments later argued, isn't some friction good though? The guy that's coded in it. Yeah, absolutely. The sandpaper man. Yep.

That's what I'm saying. I don't know that I agree with Andrew. I espouse the virtues. I don't know if I agree with Andrew's hot take because he's talking about day-to-day life being easier because of caffeine. And then the Olympics aren't day-to-day life. It's a thing that you hyper train for at a specific time for a specific way. But I think the notion that by removing steroids makes it fair is absurd.

I think that is an uneducated. position from when maybe it started. The idea that there aren't biological advantages already in play, I think is a silly thing to ignore. The concept of trying to protect fairness in a thing that is inherently and possibly

unfair, I think it's silly. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the most I can give it, too. Well, you counter that. You think that the Olympics are fair? I just think

your analogy is weird. In what sense? That you just, said, you're not talking, you just said that you're at a disadvantage because you don't drink coffee and it's a day to day thing. And this is a hyper specific thing where you might only make it one time in your life. Yeah, do you think you would drink coffee? I think curler every day. Do you think you would drink it there if it didn't have like Cheerios and shit in it? What? No. Because here's the thing. I'm a, I'm a consumer of, of things. And so I think I have,

I thought about this recently. I never mindfully avoided it, but I think I just understand that if I got into coffee, I would drink like seven cups a day. Yeah, you have to limit yourself. If I didn't limit myself, I would also have seven cups a day.

I have to limit myself. I just feel, my body does a great job at making like a third cup feel disgusting. So I feel like I don't want to drink more than two. I don't have that. I wish I had that. That would be really incredible.

If my body did that for me, it doesn't. Oh kidding. I just start feeling like de-brained and shaky Oh boys, I'm de-brained Yeah You have like a de-brained day Your brain just feels a little bit further away

From your body than it should be And mind I don't know if I've ever thought about it in those terms But sure I get like brain fog I understand that Yeah Is that what you mean?

That's a factor of it yeah I just feel like I'm on a bit of a delay I'm a bit laggy I don't think I've ever thought of myself as being laggy. Is that like physical leg or like cognitive leg, guys, I'm throwing the lag switch today. I'm not feeling good.

Sometimes it feels like I'm wearing three pairs of glasses and there's just like a slight barrier between me and the world. A little bit of an extra one. That's crazy. Maybe those days you need a little steroid. Oh, think about that.

And my dick. What? I think it was high alluronic acid. It was. It was acid. But we can shoot steroids into your dick too. I mean, that's, I see what happens. Yeah.

Who might have stopped? I think we know what happens. You're going to get girthy. You're going to get some additional girth. You didn't get some airflow, buddy. You're going to fly high. Well, that was an episode of Regulation Takes. We didn't get to hear the take that Gavin was excitedly telling us about that he wrote down.

We'll have to hear it in a future episode. But until then, make sure to check out our Patreon. Patreon.com slash the Regulation Pod. Watch our podcast. We got Let's Play. We do all sorts of things over here. It'd be crazy if this is the first thing that you listened to that we made.

But if it is, thanks for listening. Even if it isn't, thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again later. Bye. Bye. Bye.