Hello Internet - H.I. #104: Fruitbooting

Episode Date: June 29, 2018

Grey and Brady discuss: the cost of platinum, Twitter-less phones, chick flicks and airpods, comments on comments on The Internet, stealing from the self-checkout machines, YouTube subscriptions, and Solo. Sponsors: Brilliant: go to http://brilliant.org/hello and sign up for free -- first 200 people get 20% off the annual Premium subscription Squarespace: head to squarespace.com/hellointernet for a free trial and when you’re ready to launch, use the offer code HELLO to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain Hover: the best way to buy and manage domain names - the first 100 clicks on http://hover.com/hi will get 10% off a domain name from Hover Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit Brady make a GIF Tabulating Comments to “7 Ways to Maximize Misery” Amazon Go Solo

Brady, I dribbled some coffee on myself today, like an idiot. And of course, I looked down, and what do I see? The hole was put directly above the seam. I didn't check first. You know what? It was my own fault. I should have known. This will, I'm sure, much to your delight, become part of my Starbucks check all the things routine now. Now this is definitely going to be a thing that I do. Look for the seam.

Make sure it doesn't dribble. Is that why you're wearing that garish green shirt today? Garish? You think my shirt is garish? I think I am. I'm very colorful today, Brady. Yeah, well, kind of the same thing, isn't it? I was so colorful that I startled you a great deal when our FaceTime conversation began.

I was amazed. It was the first time I've seen you wearing a color since you wore that Alabama jumper to the football game. It may be. It may be. That's true. As you know, Brady, it is summertime now. It is very hot. By very hot, I mean it's approaching 80 degrees, which is far too hot. Then I have to start breaking out my special gear for hot weather. And, you know, they don't make hot weather clothes in the kinds of shades I would normally wear. So suddenly I'm like a bright, colorful person when summertime comes. CGP lime green.

Yeah, there you go. That's exactly right. We should release a range of lime green nail and gear t-shirts to mark the occasion i don't know i'll get on that like i don't know why you see me in color once and you're so taken with this brady i don't understand it's like it's a man in a green shirt i don't understand why this is so striking. I mean, sure, it has been literally three or four years since you've seen me in any other color, but still, I don't think it's that big of a deal. I'm sorry about the coffee spill. Was it on that green shirt? It was on the green shirt. I haven't had time to change. I've been out all day, so sorry. But you know what? You

were so distracted by the bright greenness that you did not notice the sad coffee dribbles. No, I had to look away to protect my retinas. Oh, good, good. If people don't look directly at me, maybe I should change up my wardrobes a little bit and make them brighter. So it's like, look away. Do not cast your eyes upon the gray. All right. But if nothing else, all joking aside, people, check the same. Check the coffee same. This is danger. This is a new danger. Not even a hot stopper can save you from that. I've had a fair few people get in touch with me offering to make metal hot stoppers since the last episode. Are you going to follow any of those up, Brady? I might do.

Someone said they were willing to make one from platinum, which really excited me. But then it made me realize, well, hang on. I guess I'm going to have to fork out for the platinum. And that could actually be quite expensive. How much would a platinum hot stopper cost? I don't have any sense of this. Hundreds? A thousand dollars at least? Would it be a thousand dollars? I don't know. Like how much is platinum per gram? How many grams would a hot stopper be? I don't know. You could end up platinum plating it

very quickly. Yeah. I guess you might have to go plating. Let me have a look. Platinum price per gram in the UK. Can that be right? 20 pounds a gram? I haven't been in the platinum market lately, so I don't know. Did I ever tell you about when I went to a platinum factory? No. It was like super precious metals, including platinum. It was really interesting. We filmed there for periodic videos. We made some really interesting videos, actually. I'll pop some links in if I remember. But when we left the place, it was super high security, as you can imagine. Right.

And when we left, we had to stand on this machine with rotating brushes on the bottom to brush the dust off our shoes. Just for any platinum dust we'd picked up while we were walking around the factory. And the guy told me they recover something like 30 to 50,000 pounds worth of, this is money. So, you know, 70, $80,000 worth of platinum a year is recovered just from taking the dust off people's shoes before they walk out. That's great. Like I was going to suggest, oh, surely this is a kind of security theater. So they're letting you know how serious they are about don't steal our platinum. But that sounds like it's ROI positive for the machine that's dusting off the platinum from your shoes. That's crazy. Big time. It's been suggested if the price of platinum goes up too much,

it would be worth recovering dust and muck from roads and sidewalks just from the platinum spat out by cars and their catalytic converters. Oh, is there platinum in a catalytic converter? I didn't realize that. That's very interesting. But I'm looking at this website that does say that platinum is 21.84 pounds a gram. I presume that we probably clicked on the same top link there. But it doesn't seem like a crazy amount. I don't know. It was less than I expected, to be honest. We're going to be rolling out those platinum hot stoppers in no time then, right?

So I thought platinum was worth more than gold, but gold's worth way more. Well, that was the joke of saying platinum, because I thought platinum was worth more than gold as well. Uh, what's gold per gram? Oh, gold's 31. I'm using pound. I'll go to dollars because just to save people getting confused. $41 for a gram of gold, $29 for a gram of platinum. Huh. I am surprised by this. How much is a gram of diamonds? Can you buy diamonds by the gram? Is that how that works? I think that depends on the diamond. No, no. I mean, like, I just want a pure gram of diamond, right? How much does that go for, sir? It doesn't work like that. I went to Amsterdam for a mate's stag party.

Yeah. And it was just three or four of us and we were pretty boring guys. Right. He wanted to buy the diamond for his wife's ring. And we went to like this diamond place, like diamond merchants. Yeah, yeah. There's a ton of them there. And like, we went into these locked rooms and the diamonds were being sent to the room through those, you know, those tubes where capsules come in tubes.

Like the pneumatic tubes, you mean? Yeah. It was awesome. It was like science fiction. We'd say what diamonds we wanted to see, and then it would appear in the tube and he'd take it out of its little canister and show us. And my mate was pretty experienced with diamonds. So he was like, you know pretty casual about it so me and the other mate who like we're just having our minds completely blown we're trying to look cool and peruse the diamonds as well go hmm yeah not bad we just kept looking at each other going this is amazing send another tube hmm i think this classifies as an e clarity rating i mean just but just yeah that's that's i mean while you're

squealing with glee at all the sparkles yeah that's pretty awesome all right so diamond hot stoppers that's what's going to happen oh yeah it's nice wouldn't a platinum hot stopper with a diamond encrusted in the middle of the nail and gear oh you know what that's pretty classy that's a pretty classy piece of jewelry right there. You know, we've just discovered the price of platinum, not as high as we thought. Little diamonds in the center at the top there. I feel like I can envision this.

What do you get the coffee drinker who has everything? Custom hot stopper jewelry, that's what. Certainly not for stopping hotness for stopping coffee no this is clearly a beautiful work of art hot stoppers are a gray's best friend i think we've started i don't know i don't know this is a day where it feels like we're really winging it brady just like in the old days what like the episode? I feel like we've been unusually prepared the last two episodes, sort of. I don't know. So yeah, we're sort of winging it. But I would like to know, Brady, how is your new phone post Twitter, post Reddit? Do you feel like a new man? Do you feel

like the same man? How has this gone for you? It's going well. There's been a bit of a development on that front. But I would say it has been life-changing, not in the way that like an amazing experience that's made me, you know, change my whole direction, but it has changed my life. Right. The most literal way you could say life-changing. And the removal of Reddit has been really good. And I only use Reddit on my computer now, which I'm at a lot anyway, so I can still go on Reddit a bit. But my Reddit use is a lot more targeted now. I find I mainly go to subreddits to engage with Hello Internet or my own subreddit and

things like that. And less just, you know, scrolling Today I Learned for pointless trivia that may or may not be true. And Twitter has been more difficult. And I have found a middle ground. It was actually occasionally causing me serious inconvenience not being able to go on Twitter on my phone. So what I've done is I sometimes leave Twitter open on my web browser as a tab. So I use it like through the internet rather than the app. Okay, so the web browser as a tab. So I use it like through the internet rather than the app. Okay. So the web browser on your phone, you mean, so you're just opening up Twitter and Safari,

which is a real pain in the butt to use. Exactly. And it's such a pain in the butt to use that it prevents me using it as much, but I can use it when I really need to. And I think that is the right compromise for me because it definitely is consuming less of my life, but I still have the convenience of being able to occasionally tweet from my phone if I really want to or really need to, or check a Twitter thing if I really want to or need to. And I think for now, that's how I'm going to stick with it. So it's like inconvenient Twitter, but I still have access to it. And that's what's working. That's an interesting way to go about it. Yeah. I can see that working as a,

as an in-betweeny state. Hmm. Hmm. So you feel like your life has been changed? For the better. Good. Good. I mean, it's early days, but for the better. Well, this is the thing though. Do you think it will stick? If we talk to future Brady three months from now at the end of the summer, do you think he's still going to be doing the same thing that current Brady is? Or do you think he will have backslid as we all do? I think it's 50, 50 on that. 50, 50 on that. I can imagine putting the app back on my phone when I go overseas because I'm bored a lot more.

I have a lot more time to myself. I want to be able to tweet more probably. We'll see when my, my next big overseas trip will be the first challenge. It may be that I just put it on my phone when I'm abroad and leave it off when I'm home. Yeah. I mean, that is in theory what I do. I have a little checklist that I run through of like, here's all the things that I want to turn back on on my phone when I'm traveling simply because, because like you said, there's, you either have like all of this weird downtime or much more of the connections with the outside world now become things that are necessary to have when you're traveling in the modern world. But I do find that that is always the danger point is taking it off when I come back. It's like my brain is always tricking

me like, Oh, we'll take Twitter off the phone tomorrow. Right. We're just back today. We're still a little jet lagged. We don't need to take it off right now. And I find that it's like that's a thing that I have to be careful about. And if I'm ever realizing like, oh, I'm in a bad place with my phone, it's extraordinarily likely that I have come back from a trip or a conference within the past week or two. I always have to like try real hard to reboot that part of it and to not accidentally just realize like, oh, I've left email and I've left all these other things on my phone. It really is just this process of fighting against your own brain and the way these apps are designed and all that kind of stuff. We'll see. Look forward to hearing about how it goes for you, Brady.

So, Gray, like Dr. Halsman in Dirty Dancing, when I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong. Okay, I don't know this reference, but I'm going to run with it. You're not a Dirty Dancing fan. I thought you liked your chick flicks. I have seen more chick flicks than probably almost anyone alive. I've worked through so many that now now we're having to expand our our boundaries into non-english language chick flicks because yeah english has runneth dry but dirty dancing i don't know it's like a movie i can never remember i know i've seen it

and it just slides right out of my head i couldn't tell you a thing about dirty dancing except that there's there's dancing in it. Oh, I reckon I must have seen that 20 times. Wow. Okay. So you're able to make the dirty dancing deep cut references there, like Dr. Hausman. I could recite the whole film almost. I would enjoy that someday.

When I go over to your house, I would like a one man performance of dirty dancing from you, Brady. I'm a big fan. Big fan. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't remember it. I feel really bad in this moment.

But Dr. Hausman, he's a man who says he's wrong, apparently. When he's wrong, he says he's wrong. Okay. He makes a wrong assumption about Johnny Castle all through the film. And at the end, something happens that made him realize he was wrong. And he says to him, this is the guy who's like courting his daughter. Right. And he comes up to him and says, I know it't you he got penny in trouble is that the one with

barbara streisand barbara streisand no who isn't dirty dancing well patrick swasey is johnny castle maybe you're thinking of jennifer gray yeah that's who i'm thinking of yeah she's frances gray yeah she's she's kind of like a barb Streisand type, sort of. They look a bit alike. Yeah. I don't think there was like an outrageous confusion there. It was. No, I totally disagree. Like Barbra Streisand's like iconic though. And Jennifer Grey's like... No, I completely disagree. It's not like I was like, oh, is that the one with Emma Stone in it? No, like that would be outrageous. I think confusing Jennifer Grey and Barbra Streisand

is totally, totally understandable. I think thinking that Barbra Streisand is in Dirty Dancing is ridiculous. They're the same genre of woman when they're younger. I think this is totally fine. Yeah, but Barbra Streisand... No, this is like Bryce Dallas Howard and Jennifer Champlain. That's what this is here. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, but Barbra Streisand is like royalty and Jennifer Grey is like not royalty. So it's a bit like, you know, just because they look a bit alike. It's like, I don't know.

Look, I don't care about these people's lives outside of the movies. They only exist in the movies. You separate the art from the artist, right? So it was like Jennifer Grey. Yeah, she was in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Dirty Dancing. That's the dancing one.

Has that got Fred Astaire in it? No, that is also totally unreasonable, Brady. No. I stand by my confusion of Barbra Streisand with Jennifer Grey. 100% that is reasonable. They have similar shaped noses, basically. Yeah. Until Jennifer Grey got her nose job, right? And then her whole movie career died, right? So I stand by it it brady i think they are confusable in their younger years 100 okay i'm not confusing them today i'm confusing them then whenever that was the 80s i remain amused by the thought of barbara streisand being a daddy dancing but anyway let's move on because this has been a very very roundabout way for me to talk about Apple ear pods.

AirPods. Okay, is that where we're going? AirPods. Everybody wants to say ear pods, but you have to try to remember to say AirPods, but they obviously should be called ear pods. I always want to say earbuds and they're AirPods. Like nobody thinks AirPods. Nobody thinks AirPods.

When you got them, Graham, showed me the picture and asked me what I thought, I remember I thought they looked ridiculous. Oh yeah. Yeah. We FaceTimed with that. And I can't remember what else I said, but I wasn't like a fan of them. They looked weird. Yeah. And I bought some a few days ago, Gray, as like an impulse purchase. And I have to say, I'm delighted by them so far. They're great, aren't they? It's like air in my ear. They're so light. It's like they're not there. It's like some sort of pod made of air.

Is that what it is? Yeah. And they don't fall out. It's like magic. I'm hitting the Fititron pretty hard at the moment. Yeah. So I'm spending a lot more time in the gym and I'm starting to run again. So I wanted some appropriate headphones and I went and checked out

all the options. And I was, I almost got these sort of Beats ones at the Apple store. And although he wasn't supposed to, the guy basically talked me out of it and said, you know what? Get the AirPods. Were you looking at those Beats connected ones? The little magnetic blank Beats connected ones? Yeah. I got those. They're garbage. They're terrible. That guy did you a favor. I'm amazed how well they stay in. It was so funny. My wife was in hysterics in the shop because he got me a sample pair to try on. And I was shaking my head and holding myself upside down and almost doing a headstand and doing everything I could to try and make them fall

out in the shop. And I couldn't make them fall out. I have to say, Brady, I'm very much enjoying this review of AirPods from you a year later. Can I ask, what made you change your mind? Did you get used to seeing people wear them? I feel like all of a sudden they've hit a critical mass where now I see people wearing them constantly. Just problems in the gym and problems running with all my other headphones. Like the other ones were just like, you know, just those little 1% inconveniences, whether it was a cable causing me inconvenience or uh falling off my head when i'm lying on a bench doing weights and things like that i just got impatient i thought i'm gonna try i want something that will stay on my head so i went in thinking i was going to get

those like beats or something that i thought would be better at staying in my ear but the airpods have done the trick i mean there's i've only had them a few days i may change my mind and there is nothing more certain in the universe that i'm going to lose them. Oh yeah. That's going to happen. Because I'm not designed to have something that small, but like, trust me, the AirPods that I currently own are not the AirPods I first bought. Is it like a ship of theseus? Is it? So yes, it is a little bit like a ship of theseus because I've had to replace them a couple of times and then the thing happens where so i've somehow lost the air pods but then an air pod surfaces and then they get mixed up and so i have learned that the air pods get grumpy if they're not paired with their original partner

which i think is a very interesting software decision it's like quantum entanglement yes that is 100% it. They are quantum entangled. I have learned many times that just because you have a left AirPod and you have a right AirPod and you have a charging case does not mean you have a working pair of headphones. You can stick them both in the case and the little LED flashes angrily at you to let you know that you've mixed them up. I think there should be a button that you could press to reset them to say, no, you

are now quantum entangled AirPods. But obviously that was not very high on the list of software features they were looking to implement. But anyone suggesting it's a money making exercise for Apple is being cynical and unfair to that mighty Californian company. Apple's got to eat and what are you gonna do they're always just scraping by with their trillion dollar company that they're on their way towards but i tell you what i bet the uh coffee shop at the apple campus has platinum

hot stoppers with diamonds on the top and it does i bet they can be a purchaser of such an exclusive item for sure and they can they can just have one nicely laid out on a white table under glass. Humans can't touch it with their fingers. Johnny, I would be, no, it has to be smaller. Yes. It's too thick. Too thick. It's too thick.

Too thick. Can we make it thinner? Can we make it so thin that it will for sure not work as an actual hot stopper, but it will be lighter? Let's work on that. Have I ever told you that I used to be pretty obsessed with blackjack? I'm not sure that I have, but I used to just deal out hands and I was hypnotized with the decision making and mathematics of blackjack. When do you hit to get closer to 21? When do you split?

When do you double down? I loved it. It's the only game in the casino where, if you can learn how to count cards a little bit, you have a chance of actually taking money from the house. Blackjack was my main obsession, but really all of the games in a casino for a while. I just loved. There's a mathematical magic to it all. I mention it now because I was looking through some of the courses on offer from today's sponsor, Brilliant. They have a ton of beautiful, beautiful math and science classes. And the one that caught my eye today was their one on games of chance, which you can take and learn how to try to win at blackjack, how probability works with different size dice, say you're a dungeon master, and many other different parts of how games of chance work mathematically. It really brought me back to my younger self.

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for supporting the show. Brady, you made a gif today, didn't you? I did. Tell me what you made a gif of. I'm so pleased that you made a gif. I don't know why. I just, I feel like this is not a thing that a Brady would ever do. I've done it before. Have you? What have you, what gifs have you made? I didn't know you were in the gif manufacturing business. Yeah, I've done it. I've done it a bit. I don't find it particularly easy to make it.

I think this is why I'm feeling really proud of you because every time I've wanted to do it, I usually give up because it's just a giant pain to make it look remotely good. And it's like, oh, where am I going to rip the video file? I just want a gift machine that I can just press a button and the gift pops out exactly as the way I want it. So that's why'm very pleased i go into photoshop and do a bit of tweaking and get it in the end but yeah so what was your gif of brady well i mean it's gonna lose a bit of impact talking you through it on a podcast no no tell the people the gif is a is a very famous scene from close encounters of the third kind which is a film I've loved for as long as I can remember. It's a good film. And it's the scene when the aliens are coming

and tormenting the house with the mother and the little boy in it to try and take the boy away. And he swings open the door dramatically and the whole sky is bright orange with trees swaying and the alien spaceship, which you can't see but is there, is this sort of sinister presence. Yeah, you just have the scary lights coming through the trees. It's just scary light.

And the little tiny boy's silhouetted against this bright orange sky for a few seconds as he opens the door. And then his mother runs up as quickly as she can and slams the door so that he doesn't go out the door. So that's what I turned into a gif that little moment. Little boy opens the door, looks into the bright moor of danger before the mother slams the door shut. Don't open that door.

And of course, in true gif fashion, you need a snarky caption. So what was your caption for this, Brady? My caption is, I told you, don't look at the comments. I made the gif for the caption. It's not like I wanted to make a gif of that and thought, what can I say? I was looking in the comments of a recent video and just like, I was thinking how when you look at YouTube comments, don't get me wrong, there are lots of good ones and nice people and praise and constructive conversation, but you also just see like the worst of humanity. And it reminded me of sort of for a few moments, you're standing at the edge of this abyss, just looking at all the terribleness out there. As I always sort of had this mental picture of looking into the abyss of all humanity

for its good and bad. It reminded me of that boy opening the door and looking into the abyss of the alien presence for just those few seconds and then slamming the door shut. So I thought, oh, it's just like in Close Encounters. Oh, I'm going to make a gif. So I did it. Good. I like it. Do you want to share what video it was and what the comments were in particular, or was it just a typical example of this? It's my daily experience. It wasn't like a particular thing. It's just every day, really. Just lately, I've been, as we discussed in a previous episode, I've been a bit

dispirited lately by YouTube comments for whatever reason. Don't get me wrong. I'm not like woe is me and I'm very lucky to be in the position I am and I'm grateful for the comments too. But just lately I've been a bit feeling funny about them. So I decided to make this GIF and I made another tweet the other day as well, which I think better explains how I feel about YouTube comments. I sent you that as well, actually. That was a photo of someone on the summit of a mountain. And they've obviously just

summited this mountain and they're wearing this orange jacket, which is quite a garish color, not unlike your lime green shirt. This is what i get for wearing color once i'll never again even if i'm wearing color in the future i'm going to switch to my regular gray outfit just so i don't have to put up with this this constant poking about the one time i wore a green shirt and sort of my comment on that was that posting youtube videos to me is sometimes like climbing a mountain and when you get to the top, the first thing everyone says is, oh, I don't like your jacket. And I sometimes feel that's what it's like when you spend weeks crafting a video and then you put it out there thinking, oh, I wonder what people are

going to think. Are they going to agree? Are they going to disagree? Are they going to like it? Are they not going to like it? And the only thing they comment on is some like frivolous, pointless, stylistic point that has nothing to do with all the effort you've put in over the last few weeks. Yeah. You must get that spending as long as you do on your videos and you put them out thinking, oh, you know, I wonder, is this going to be a force for good? Are people going to like it? Are they not going to like it? And then they comment on some trivial thing that even you probably didn't think they'd comment on. Yeah. Well, I enjoyed your postings, particularly the GIF, because I do think that both of them capture something in particular. And it's been interesting thinking about comments and feedback, particularly for me, for a couple of reasons.

One of which is like the dragon video we talked about last time has never received like a wider range of different kinds of comments from all over the spectrum. And also just like not quite the thing of where, you know, someone's commenting like on the orange jacket, but it's like, oh, people interpret the thing in ways that I find just totally strange and could never have predicted in a million years. Or it's like, oh, okay. That's a strange, interesting comment.

So that one feels a bit like opening the door at Close Encounters because it's just like, there's this thing, like there's so much going on out there. Like it's overwhelming. Right. And the kids being blown back from the door. And then the other thing that I've found interesting is just by the chance way the schedules have worked out. This is going to be our third episode of Hello Internet in a row where we have not seen the comments from the previous episode before we're recording this episode. And I was trying to think, like, I don't think we've done three in a row where we haven't had feedback on the previous one since the first three that we

did. We have had it happen that there's been one or maybe two in a row where we don't have the feedback because of the recording schedules. But a hat trick of no feedback is just I think it's notable and I don't think it's happened since the beginning or at least at least not in my my memory. And it's interesting because I don't know about you, but I do feel that it does make something about the show different. I don't mean different better. I don't mean about you, but I do feel that it does make something about the show different. I don't mean different better. I don't mean different worse. I just there's something about it that it does make it feel like it is more a little isolated bubble of you and I talking to each other. Like right now, the last episode we recorded, we talked about the conspiracy

book and a bunch of other things. And we have no idea how that conversation went. We have no idea if Peter Thiel has destroyed us with his great wrath for the way that we discussed something in that book. We have no idea what's going to happen to us because that episode has not been released yet. I don't know. I find it interesting because I do really like reading those comments. I like this little feedback loop that it creates in the shows yeah i mean we have seen the feedback to episode 102 right yeah but we haven't seen the previous

cinema episode in our timeline yeah that's where we're up to yeah we're like constantly one behind yeah but we'll catch back up soon i don't know it makes it different and i guess what I was thinking about is there is this thing like if you make things for the Internet, as we do, we make videos, we make podcasts. There's this very delicate balance that you have to try to strike because if you're making something for the world, obviously you hope that there is some audience for it in the world. You were always hoping that your news stories would end up on the front page, like, oh, it's going to be really popular with the sub-editors and it's going to be a big story and it's going to go on the front page. And like when we release videos out into the world, we want there to be an audience who appreciates those things. And you can't do that without having some sense of what does the world think of what you do you have to be involved in this loop of getting feedback from the outside world and creating

things and then getting feedback from the outside world and you have to take it into account but that's why like i talk to a lot of people about like this relationship that creators have with the commenters and it is sort of fun and easy to say things like, don't look at the comments. And I do agree with the spirit of that. But there is a more nuanced part of it where we are in these jobs because there's no one who follows that rule perfectly. Right. Like there's basically nobody who's like, oh, I don't read the comments. I don't even think that don't read the comments is a sensible ideal to aspire to perfectly. It's just an interesting thing.

And I see people sometimes go in what I think is the opposite way where it's like, oh, they don't read the comments. Or if they do read the comments, everybody who disagrees with them is just a hater. And then that person's criticism can be dismissed. Maybe it's obvious to the audience but i feel that there is this interesting aspect of making things and making a living by making things for the internet that is hard to explain which is this delicate balance of letting in feedback from the outside world, but not letting it affect you personally, but also not becoming overexposed to it, but then also not becoming insular and isolated and thinking that everybody who disagrees with you is just a hater. It's a really narrow path with precipices on both sides that you can fall off that is difficult to navigate for many

people. I do have to say though, Gray, I mean, I know you follow a lot of stuff on the internet and you're not blind to all these issues, but I do think you see it differently to me. How so? Because I think the feedback you see is less personal because your face isn't on the screen. And while people will disagree with you and, you know, attack you in positive ways and negative ways, I see a lot of stuff in comments that is more inappropriate and personal. And usually it's actually not aimed at me because, as you know,

I'm not on screen much myself, but I put a lot of people on screen. So I have to read the comments being thrown at those people, particularly women who I film. And like some of the comments that are made about those people, there's nothing to be gleaned from it that's going to help make me a better creator or them a better interview subject or help anything in the process. It's just plain awfulness. Yeah. I mean, again, you are in a difficult situation where there's three parties involved. Like there's the commenter and there's you, but then there's your interview subject. And yeah, I, like, I do not envy that position. That's really hard, especially then when you magnify that by you are doing interviews. So the other person is just on camera the whole time. So I

don't mean to be saying that like there don't exist comments which have nothing to be gleaned from them. Obviously, those those comments do exist. But I still say like, when you do these interviews, then do you advise your subjects to not read the comments? Say someone for the first time, they're a young, hopeful math professor, and they want to do some number file and they approach you and they say, hey, I want to do this thing. You film an interview with them and you're about to put it online. What do you tell them before that video goes up? And they have no experience with being a public person of any kind. I apologize in advance for some of the comments that they're likely to see. goes up and they have no experience with being a public person of any kind.

I apologize in advance for some of the comments that they're likely to see. I jokingly say don't read the comments, but most of the time I do want them to read the comments for the same reason I do still read the comments. And that is there's a lot of good stuff in there that's either positive and affirming or just useful and constructive amongst all the terribleness but if it's a woman who i've been interviewing sometimes i i wish i could say don't read the comments because some of the stuff people say that is that are aimed at women like it baffles me that gif i made of opening the door and looking out at that sort of red sinister sky wasn't demonstrating that there's some kind of maelstrom of activity and variety it's more looking into the dark heart of some of people's worst characters i sometimes read through some of the stuff luckily some of

the stuff that has been filtered because you know youtube has filters in place and some of that stuff never gets seen in public but i do see some of it because I have to wade into that to pick out the good stuff still. And it's like, man, who says that? Who does that? Who are these people? I feel like we get this insight into the badness of people that are out there. I'm a big boy, by the way. Like, you know, I'm not, I'm all right with it. Yeah, no, I didn't, I didn't think you were crying yourself to sleep at night over there. No. Like, you are right that you have a very different kind of feedback.

And again, I think your third party situation makes it much more difficult to deal with because people aren't talking about you directly. But like when you say among all the badness, one of the things that's difficult with online feedback is, as everybody knows, is that people take to heart and they remember negative comments way more than they remember the positive comments. Because it only takes one comment that happens to strike a dagger right into your heart to be quite memorable and is definitely not balanced out by a thousand well wishes. And it's like the comment version of loss aversion, where people hate losing a dollar way more than they like earning a dollar. And there's something like that with comments. I think if you're going where I think you're going, Gray, the interesting experiment to

do would be to go through all the comments on a video one day and pretend that I had the power for the subject of the video, like my interviewee, to see that comment or not see that comment. How many of them would I prevent the interviewee from being able to see for their own good? What's the percentage of comments that I wish in my heart hadn't been made? I wasn't quite going there because I almost think that's a little bit simplistic. I was thinking like, for example,

the professor I worked with who wrote the book about how to be miserable that I made the video on, after that video went up, he went through and did a tracking of, I think seven or eight different kinds of comments that people were leaving on that video just to see like a pie chart of of what is the distribution of various kinds of comments. This is also where everybody feels like, oh, I'm a totally unique individual.

But like turns out, if you have about eight categories, you can identify and classify 99.99% of all of the comments, right? It's like, oh, the human response is not as various as the humans themselves think it is. Do you remember what those categories were? The one that I remember in particular was this video describes my life exactly, which was the number one category of comment and is like quite a crushing comment because it was that separated from any comment about

positive action right so there's like a separate category of like i intend to take positive action was a different sort of thing so it's just like a person was simply affirming that this video seems to describe their life exactly and then there were a bunch of other different categories. The reason I mentioned it though, is because I think you did it and I hear everybody do it where they'll say like, find the good among all of the bad comments. If I said it that way, which I probably did, I did misspeak. There is more good than bad. Yeah. But what I mean is like, I think it's an interesting thing that almost everybody will phrase it that way right in in casual conversation they'll talk about like oh there's all of this awfulness like the whole of the internet is a sewer and like i think if even if you go to a place that has a sewer for comment sections which is youtube because they they're

structurally bent towards not great comments i would be very curious to see someone i mean obviously it's going to be somewhat subjective but i would love to see like go through a bunch of different kinds of videos videos where there are people videos where there aren't people and see if there's a way to categorize them into these different things because again like the things that are the like the worst and has no value is like direct attack on a person's physical appearance. Like that is a comment that has no value. Like there's nothing to be gleaned there. And that's on one end of the spectrum. I think the interesting and hard question comes in when someone makes like a cutting comment, but maybe it's true, I would be curious to see a kind of breakdown of that.

I mean, I don't obviously I'm not on camera, but like I sure do get a pretty sizable number of personal comments on like the couple of vlogs that I put up, which is just like it's interesting just to see they're not the majority of comments but like you could do a pie chart of that and be like oh yeah these videos have a direct attack on a person in a way that is like has no redeeming value like without a specific one what do you mean by that do you mean something like oh my goodness you know your hands are so hairy or something like that people do comment on my arm hair a lot which i find surprising it's much more directly things about like this guy speaks like a total asshole or like i can't stand the quality of his voice or the way this guy lives his life is disgusting or like all these like just that kind of thing where it's just a very direct like there's no criticism you had you do have a nice voice gray the place that i was going with

that though is for me i don't really have any problem reading those comments because i don't personally feel like oh ouch like you got me right in my soul i as a man whose living is entirely dependent on him speaking thinks that i have a terrible voice like i don't think that i have a terrible voice i have like a particular sound of voice which some people may find annoying and that's totally fine, but it doesn't strike me at the core. But that's why, like for me, I don't really think about those kinds of comments very much because they're not cutting in any way. So what's the conclusion that we should be taking from all this then? I don't know what the conclusion is because as often happens, Brady, like you throw an interesting monkey wrench directly into the conversation because I think you in particular

are dealing with interviewing people who are semi-public personalities and this is a category that I feel like I don't really have any advice for and most of the time when I'm talking to people it's people who are public personalities. Like they are very much making the thing directly. And then how do they handle criticism or not handle criticism on the internet? That's why I was asking you, what do you tell your interviewees? Because it's a in-betweeny case that I just don't think has a clear answer of how should that sort of person who happens to be a public figure, that's not their primary job. They're doing something else. And public

communication is just an incidental part of their job. They're smart people. They know the world well enough to know that the internet and YouTube is a place where people make all these comments. It's not even the attack or the criticism. It's the constant reminder of how many people there are out there who I consider to be rude and behave in a way that I find despicable. Like it's just this constant reminder that I live on this planet with all of these people who think nothing of saying these comments to someone in the hope that that person will read the comment. It upsets me that I have to breathe the same air as you sometimes, but you know, there you go. I'm just going to say my experience with

that though, is maybe I am wrong, but I am under the impression that a large number of those comments are made without a kind of consideration that there's an actual person on the other end. It's an interesting theory that they're writing that thinking it won't be read. I don't believe that's true, but it's an interesting theory. No, no. I'm not saying that they're writing it thinking it won't be read. What I'm saying is I think that they're not fully conceptualizing another person. And I will mention what to me is maybe one of the dumbest things I ever thought when I was a kid. And I remember having this like sudden realization and feeling like an idiot. And I will describe it and I'm going to sound so stupid. So just like bear with me,

people. I was a child and like something in my brain wasn't quite wired right. But I remember for the longest time, like when my family, when we traveled places when I was younger, I didn't have a concept that people really live in these places that we're visiting. Like we would go on vacation and we would see people as like, obviously I'd interact with people who were there. But I remember at some point it like it clicked with me that like, oh, Hawaii exists when I'm not there. Right. Like this thing, there are people there and like they're living their lives.

And it's like, this is so obvious. But, you know, I don't know. I was like 12 or 13 or something. And like suddenly it was like, oh, right. These are really people like I intrinsically understand this. And the whole world is not like some kind of bizarro Disneyland. It's not like artifice in In the same way that I remember, we did the foreign language classes around the same time when I was a kid, like we started doing foreign language when I was 11. And I remember thinking for a while, like this was some kind

of weird abstract game where we pretend that all the words we say in a different way. You basically thought you were Truman. I don't know if it's that, but it's just just i just think it's part of being a kid and growing up and like your brain just isn't wired right and i remember having that same kind of feeling about spanish of like oh there are people who just speak this language like spanish is not yet another arbitrary pile of nonsense work that school is giving me that means nothing it's like this is a language that people speak and the thing that i'm trying to convey here, which I think it may be, since we've had this conversation about trying to understand another person, this may be impossible to explain in words, but it's not as if you had asked the child me, does Hawaii exist when you're not there? He would have said yes,

right? Like when you visited London, were the people there, do they live lives? And they do like, I would have answered all of these questions, right. But it just like, I just didn't really think of them as other people in some way. Like, I just sometimes wonder if commenters on the internet have something like that, where if you spoke to them, like they know that's a person and they know, oh, I'm leaving a mean comment. And they know, yes, the person in that video probably will read that comment. But something's not clicking all the way. They're not fully conceptualizing the idea that the person is reading it. I mean, what you're saying is partly vindicated by what people do when you call them out sometimes and the way they suddenly withdraw and apologize profusely and they kind of come to their senses. But

not everyone does that. I have done that rarely. And I know people who have done that more frequently and everybody responds with the exact same thing, which is exactly that. Almost always, it's like the person wakes up from a dream and they go, oh, I didn't think you were going to respond to me. I'm so sorry. And it's such a strange response. I don't know. There's another thing back when I was a much younger YouTuber. I'll never forget. Hank Green said a thing to me the first time I met him where he was talking about comment sections and to keep an eye out for when your community stops talking to you in the comments and they start talking about you. And I always thought like, man, that is a really interesting observation. And it's one of the reasons why I've always tried to be really present in the Reddit to have this feeling of like, this isn't a place where you're talking about a video in the

abstract. Like I'm a person who's here and we are all talking to each other. But I definitely notice in the comments when people are doing the talking about hello internet, they're not talking to you and I. I'm not saying like this isn't like a blanket excuse for terrible comments on the internet. I just have a suspicion that maybe something like this explains some reasonably sized portion of the comments. It's like a lack of true, intrinsic, full conception of another person. I don't know. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. You know the zipper in your trousers,

do you call that fly or flies? It's a fly. Right. How would it be a flies? Some people refer to it as flies and don't call it a fly. And it's always been something that interests me. I've never heard this in my entire life. This is wrong. It's a singular thing. How could it be a flies? Is it like the verb action of it? Like it flies? Some people call it flies. Some people say your flies are open and other people, I guess one half of the zipper is one fly and the other is another fly. Some people say flies, your flies are open. Other people say your fly is open. I was just wondering where you stood on this. I think you're hearing them wrong, Brady. I think they're saying- No, no, no, no, no. No, this is definitely, there are definitely two camps on this.

You're hearing people say your fly apostrophe S, right? They're shortening the is open. They're saying your fly's open. That's what they're saying. I'm not, I'm not, I'm going to try and see if it's a thing now. No, it's not. Brady, this isn't a thing. This is not they're saying. I'm not. I'm not. I'm going to try and see if it's a thing now. No, it's not. Brady, this isn't a thing. This is not a thing that exists in the world. Fly versus flies in America British. God damn it.

Fly or fly in trouser. Google knows. Yeah. See? Okay. Well, I mean, first of all, you have to say fly, right? Just let's get this clear. You say fly, right?

Like I say fly. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank God. The podcast would be over. You say fly, right? I say fly. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank God. The podcast would be over. Why did Hello Internet end? Apparently, Brady says flies.

All right. Let us know, people. Let us know where you stand on this. Because obviously, Gray and I haven't got much to talk about because we're in the same camp. I'm just baffled. But there's definitely a flies camp. And I want to know, if you are someone who says flies, what do you think there are two of? Are you counting the two halves of the zipper?

You've got your left fly and your right fly, and they come together to zip up or why do you say flies? I'm also having my mind blown here because looking at the internet now and this discussion discussion around it. The fly is not the zipper. The fly is the flap of material covering the zipper or the fastenings. Well, there's still only one then. I've never really nailed it down, but I think my brain thought of the fly as a generic term for the fastener. Like that the zipper when it's in your pants is a fly. I don't start on pants now, Grave. We're going to start another England-American debate

if you start using pants. No, we're not. Just move right past it, Brady. And that the button is also the fly? I never really thought about it. Apparently it's a UK thing to call it flies. Your flies are undone. And that is when I started noticing it

when I moved over here. So maybe that's it. It's British. No, I've never heard it. It's crazy and wrong. So Grey, there's been a bit of news going around this week. I was just listening to some on the radio as I was driving home before the podcast. And there was a lot of talk about self-checkouts. In fact, I was listening to this big interview about self-checkout and then I went and did some shopping. I didn't do the self-checkout though. I went through the old-fashioned one. Right, yeah.

Bought too many things for the self-checkout. Never too many things. The thing is, the story is, and this is becoming the growing problem, is more and more people are stealing stuff because of self-checkouts. Apparently in the UK, they reckon the big shops have lost three billion pounds worth. Again, that's pounds money, not pounds of weight. Three billion pounds worth of stock because of people stealing at the self-checkout. Okay. Wait, hold on a second. That's a headline that's using the big number trick. Is this three billion pounds, what, per year?

In a year. Three billion pounds in a year. I don't know. Lost. That doesn't seem like a lot to me, really. Like, I'm thinking, how many stores are there in the UK? That's a lot of stealing. Oh, are they using some dumb UK billion? Is that what they're doing here?

And it actually means like 20 pence was stolen. That's millions of dollars a day. Stealing. Okay. There's a billion, let's take a billion dollars per year. There's what, 60 million people in the UK. Let's put that to one side, Gray. No, no, no. We can't put it to one side. No, no, no, no. I'll tell you why we can put it to one side. Rather than blaming the journalists, let's just say the problem is so big that the shops

have started to take action about the problem. So they think it's a problem for them because what they're doing is they're starting to install CCTV cameras above the self-checkout to stop people doing it. And so whether it's the journalist exaggerating or not, the shops have decided to act. I wasn't going to go after the journalist, Brady. What I wanted to know is what does that work out per citizen in the UK, right? Because there's 60 million people in the UK. Is that right? It works out to be so much per person that the shops have decided to act. Oh, it's 16 pounds a year.

I don't know. That seems pretty... Yeah, but that's assuming everyone's a shoplifter. 16 pounds. I don't know. It's not even worth worrying about. If every single person in the UK admitted to stealing 16 pounds worth of material a year, I would be shocked. So anyway. This is going to be a real, a real Pareto distribution though, I think. It's becoming a problem. So shops have started putting in CCTV cameras, but interestingly,

the thing they're doing is putting in CCTV cameras, but interestingly, the thing they're doing is putting in the CCTV cameras and then streaming the footage at the checkout. So people know they're being watched. Oh, interesting. That's an interesting way of dealing with it, isn't it? You have like a selfie cam thing there. There is a lot that shows that people behave better when they think they're being watched, including,'t know there's there's one of these like studies that goes around it's like maybe it's true maybe it's not but it's had an effect on the real world or it was uh it was a study about people taking extra bagels at work or something and if you put a little picture with eyes above the basket of bagels the stealing goes down

yeah and it's like well my local council has put little pictures with eyes above all of the places people leave garbage but so now they have like these don't leave garbage in your street signs with little eyes that look at you it's made no difference at all there's still garbage everywhere but the streaming one is interesting i would bet that one would work pretty well even if you weren't recording anything like even if there's no record at all because then the person has to see themselves stealing 16 pounds worth of bananas under their shirt that's actual physical pounds of bananas not pounds worth of bananas and then they're like oh what like what am i doing with my life this is terrible they reckon that the main

people who get pissed off by these cameras though are, are not the people who steal, but law-abiding people who are like, oh, I don't like it. It's icky that you're filming me. I don't want to see myself being filmed. And they're the ones who are now being put off self-checkout, not the stealers. Well, yeah, everything in life has trade-offs. This is a thing that I do know from Hawaii, the signs about taking seashells or taking sand off of the shore, that if it's worded in such a way that it implies people do it so you shouldn't it actually causes the seashells and sand to go up because then people feel like oh everybody's stealing these seashells off of the shore i can take one too stuff always has these weird trade-offs i think the cctv camera is an interesting

one to stream it i would like to know where that is because i think i would feel uncomfortable having to watch you know just having to watch me perform the mundanities of life like oh here i am beep beep beep running some items through and putting them in a bag and looking sad in front of the camera i don't know i like i don't want to see that i don't want to have to see that it wouldn't make me want to go talk to a person, but maybe I could put a little sticker over the camera while I was checking out the items. I don't know. The example that gets used a lot for stealing and sort of what I've been reading about it is carrots because carrots are quite cheap. And I think what people do sometimes is because it's not always just like, it's not, you know,

shoving things up your jumper or things like that it's usually scanning something as something that it's not and people will often say oh these are carrots when really they're scanning something more expensive like a posh avocado or something so it's getting things at a discount more than just stealing oh that's interesting i could see people feeling like they're not stealing if they're doing that. I feel like I can imagine how someone would work that out in their mind. Like, oh, I'm just giving myself a discount on this posh avocado and I'm not stealing. I wish I'd had time to find this list before the show, but I didn't. I read it in the newspaper a few days ago, but there was a list of all the justifications people use when stealing at the self-checkout that you wouldn't normally use and one of them is well the supermarket's saving money by not

employing someone so it's okay for me to get give myself a bit of a discount right right and there are all these other justifications people have too like i couldn't find what i was looking for so i'm going to give myself this is a discount or the scanner's not working properly it's your fault it won't scan properly so i'm just going to chuck it in my bag anyway. There's this whole list. There's been a name devised for these people by criminologists or one criminologist, which is swipers, seemingly well-intentioned patrons engaging in routine shoplifting. It's a new genre of shoplifter, people who would never do something like that, but feel okay doing it at the self-checkout.

Like, obviously it is shoplifting, but there's even my brain, suddenly it feels like we're going right back to theft versus copyright infringement. It feels like there's something slightly different about discounting yourself an avocado versus stealing an avocado. Where I don't think there is morally anything

that's any different i just i'm realizing that it's fruit booting oh jesus christ you like that one you're happy i want to make it very clear people hello internet is against fruit booting i enjoy these conversations with you brady both, both because I never know what crazy words you're going to come up with. And also because you find these topics where I feel like I've never explored these boundaries of what my mind thinks. I'm like, ah, why does my brain somehow think that fruit booting an avocado is different from stealing an avocado? That is like, I don't think it actually is different, but something just feels different about it in my brain, even though I don't agree with my brain on

this, on this topic. Could you envisage a situation in which you swiped grey? I mean, no, I guess if I was like desperately poor and hungry, yes. What if something wasn't scanning right? Like you couldn't get it to scan, would you be like, ah, stuff this, I'm just going to chuck it in the bag. No one's around. No, I haven't done that. There's's always somebody around but if there wasn't i just realized the way that sounded no no there's always somebody watching no i like i am much faster just to give up on the world i will go into a store and it's too busy and i'm like oh the hell with this and i'll just leave yeah so i like on the world, I will go into a store and it's too busy and I'm like, oh, the hell with this and I'll just leave. So on the occasions where things haven't worked, I will give up and say,

whatever it is, I don't need it that badly and just leave as opposed to fruit booting any particular items. That's not something I would do. What about you, Brady? No, I wouldn't do that. I'm pretty square. But do you know, Gray, when I was at the supermarket today, I thought to myself, I'm going to do the self-checkout today because I've been listening to it on the radio and it'd be interesting to do it. And then when it came time to do it, I didn't, I didn't want to. And I came to a realization in the previous episodes, you know, we've bigged up about how, oh, Brady's a really social guy. He likes to talk to the people and things like that. I don't think that's what it is. I think I'm just fundamentally a little bit lazy sometimes. And I don't want to do the work. Right. Because that's what it is. I think I'm just fundamentally a little bit lazy sometimes

and I don't want to do the work. Right. Because that's what stopped me today. I wanted to do the self-checkout and I'm like, oh, I'm going to have to pick them all up and put them through and find the barcode and rotate them on the angle and put them in the bag. Whereas if I just walk up and dump them on the conveyor belt, I've just got to sit at the end and have some man or lady hand them to me and just put them in a bag. And I've got like no effort. It's just easier. The ultimate solution to both of these problems, your laziness and fruit booting is of course, more technology. I've had it in the show notes for a while, but Amazon is working on these totally cashierless stores. I don't know if you've seen, they have a

couple of demo ones, like I think there's one in Seattle and one in New York, but they're using just a crazy amount of a combination of things. So they're using object recognition cameras in the ceiling combined with pressure pads in the way the food is stocked combined with RFID chips. And their whole pitch is it's a supermarket that you just go into. It recognizes who you are because you have some little Amazon card, presumably, that it's picking up in your pocket, or it recognizes your face. I don't know. And then you just walk out with your items, and the store has tallied everything that you have. So this is the solution both to fruit booting, because the machine is going to see that you're pocketing avocados and not carrots,

and ultimate laziness. You don't even need to wait for somebody else to do the work for you. The machine is just billing your Amazon account. Yeah, if it's got that, it's all right. As long as you don't have to do the scanning. My supermarket's actually got these handheld scanners you can pick up when you walk in and scan all your items as you're shopping

and putting them in your trolley. And it's just tallying it up on the hand. I don't like those. That one, I feel like, no, I'm not being your stock boy, even though that doesn't make any sense. I refuse to use those hand scanners. I do not like them one tiny bit. What's the difference?

No difference at all. No, there's no, I concede immediately. There is no difference, but it's something about if I'm going to do this work, I prefer to batch process. It's just the optics of it. You look, you look more like an employee when you're walking up and down the aisle scanning stuff. I feel more like an employee. I think I've done it maybe twice. And there's something where it's like, oh, I'm 18 again. And somebody's telling me to stock the shelves and i'm thinking i don't want to stock these shelves i want to burn the world to the ground for having to be in this position so yeah i don't want to use them did you have a job

stocking shelves uh no and i didn't have a job stocking shelves i had a job stocking library shelves which also made me feel like i wanted to burn the world to the ground sometimes because i was being minorly inconvenienced. I had a job stocking show that I hated so much I didn't go back and I didn't even go back to pick up my paycheck. What do you mean? You just went in for one day and then left? I think I did two or three shifts and then I thought, oh, this is rubbish. Never went back. This was a short period of my dad trying to get me to get a proper job for a while because he was sick of me sitting around during my one year at uni. Yeah. That's how people end up with

jobs. It's because their dad gets sick of them sitting around. Yep. I went and did like a trial shift, a local like garage, petrol station behind the counter. They were just to see how I went. And I did, you know, I did it. And then at the end, I had to count the money and then they had to check it against what the checkout was. And there was like some discrepancy. It was out by like, I don't know, $5 or something. And the boss, like the guy in charge, I think he was getting a bit mad about it. I don't know. He just didn't seem very happy about it.

And I was pretty relaxed about it. And he said, are you worried about this? Are you concerned that you're able to do this job? And I said, no, I'm not worried. I'm not concerned. And he said, well, I'm worried about it. I'm concerned. What do you say to that? And I just replied, well, you asked me if I was worried. Whether you're worried, it's a completely different question. Oh, I have such sympathy for that story. That is the conflict between employers and employees summed up perfectly. We have different dreams and desires in this situation here.

But I have confidence in my mathematical ability. Obviously, something's gone wrong here, but I think I've added correctly. Anyway, I didn't do that job either. Then my dad got sick of it and got me a job at the newspaper where he was working which was a great job to do and then began the great career of brady harron no that was a copy boy that wasn't a journalist so you sat in the newsroom until someone yelled copy and then you had to run over to them to see what they wanted in theory your job was just to take pieces of paper and like copy and stuff that had been laid out from the sub editors down to the printing room. It was a bit of an old fashioned process.

But in reality, the main thing you did was buy sandwiches and place bets on horses for the boss. Copy. Oh, you run over. Oh, this must be some breaking story. Go and put 10 bucks at the local bedding place on horse number three in the eighth race. Okay. One last thing about fruit booting. The big story that is being used as a really good case study

for this gaming of the self-checkout system is, I think it was a woman somewhere in England who photocopied loads and loads of barcodes for pot noodles. And as she went around and shopped, she was sticking pot noodle barcodes on everything. And she finally got caught at a self-checkout because she was scanning this really expensive coffee machine maker and it had a 60 pence pot noodle barcode on it. It's like, beep, beep, 60 pence for this pretty posh multi-hundred dollar coffee machine.

Clever girl bringing her own barcodes. Clever. Until she got caught. I like it. Go big or go home. That'd be another good name for it. Pot noodling. Pot noodling. That could be so many things. Fruit booting. That could only be one thing. This episode has been brought to you by Hover. If you've seen the film Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, you may remember there's a scene set in the Oklahoma land run when loads of people with wagons and horses go racing into the distance to claim plots of land. It's ruthless as all the participants vie for the best tracks on which

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in theory right now when you go to youtube there are these three different tabs at the bottom there's home which is youtube algorithmically showing you the stuff that it thinks you probably want to watch and i don't know about you i feel like youtube's algorithm is has gotten way worse in the past couple months who knows with these things but like you go to i go to home anyway and i feel like all it's doing is showing me videos that are exactly like some video that i clicked before like it's been over tuned for me but anyway no nuance or a guy just yeah it's like it's over optimized for oh you you clicked on one list video let me show you every list video on the whole internet it's like no i just there was one one

of them got me because you bastards show them to me constantly and of course like no man is perfect like i clicked on a dumb list video and like aha now you're in list purgatory forever so there's the home tab there's the trending tab which is supposedly the stuff that's popular on the whole website. But everybody has suspicions about its bias towards content that YouTube wants to promote. And then there is the subscription tab where people would go to see in reverse chronological order all of the videos from all of the creators that they follow. Those are the three main areas. Now, the first two, obviously, controlled by computers and meddling humans.

And the third, the subscription tab, is the only place on YouTube where there are not meddling humans and there are not meddling robots. But just a couple of days ago, some YouTube Twitter support channel blew their cover on YouTube. Like that is really what it totally feels like is YouTube was running some of their A-B tests on a small number of users, changing around the subscriptions page and algorithmically, or they called it personalizing the subscription page for you. But yeah, so some YouTube Twitter channel just blew it and said like,

some guy was like, oh, hey, why is everything out of order on my subscription page? And they said, oh yeah, we're running some tests with personalized subscription channels. And there have been many a YouTube drama over the years, but I think this one really caused a lot of people to freak out. And particularly, I think that people who have been on YouTube for a longer time, because it feels like here is the one place where maybe the user has some kind of control. And now YouTube is removing or adjusting that final level of control on the subscriptions tab. How do you feel about it, Brady?

I have to admit, I don't really know if it's in my best or worst interests. I don't know. I mean, I'm quite a frequent uploader, but that's because I have lots of channels. Any one of my channel probably isn't that frequent an uploader. Like I imagine you would think this is perhaps a good thing as a very infrequent uploader because it decreases the chance that your one teardrop in the rain doesn't get missed.

Right. So I would have thought this is good for you. For me, I don't know. I don't know how frequent I am in the scheme of things to know whether it hurts or helps me. But I don't like the idea of it. I do feel like there should be one thing that is kind of untouched by YouTube knowing what's best for me.

And it seems like that they think they know what's best for me even there. So now it's like, no, God, what am I supposed to do? I think YouTube always, they always use the language about giving viewers what they want to watch. And they say that in person too a lot. And I think it's very presumptuous of YouTube. Yeah, it's patronizing. To think they know what people want to watch.

Just as a simple example, but my wife and I have been rewatching old vlog series of Casey Neistat and PewDiePie. And it's like, God help you if you're trying to watch old vlogs in order, right? Because YouTube has just no ability to do this. Like, guys, these are vlog episodes. They are chronological. They are freaking numbered. They're all one right after another. And this is where this like party line of YouTube be like, we're going to show you what you want to see is infuriating because it's like i feel like i'm trying to accomplish a very clear task a clear task that even if you didn't have algorithms could be very accomplishable which is

hey i'm watching things that are in order show me the next one but it's like oh no we think this video is the best one for you so you're like you're gonna jump in like crazy out of order time instead of just seeing the thing the way it is and yeah i agree with you i've heard this language both from pr and and in person and it's like i know what they're going for i understand this as an idea, but it is frustrating. Like there is no tyrant worse than the tyrant who thinks they're doing it for your own good. It feels like the same thing of like, oh, you want to watch all these list videos? Like, no, I don't. I don't want to watch all these videos.

If you were magic and like if this was just you were hitting it out of the park every time, maybe I could go along with it. The reason why I think this is interesting is it's not like do subscriptions matter? Because I think subscriptions don't matter anymore. Pulling back the curtain of the business, I would say that YouTube has turned the subscription numbers into a total joke. They have monkeyed around with it for so long over so many years and made so many changes that it means nothing and they've designed their system so that these numbers just never go down and so you end up with all these channels that have bizarrely big subscriber numbers compared to their views and like i think youtube really regrets probably connecting their award system with the subscriber numbers because that that also kind of locks them into like oh we reward you for the subscriber thing but over the years we have made sure that the subscriber number is totally meaningless like

I honestly cannot think of a number on my my spreadsheet of things that I track about my business that matters less to me than the subscriber number because like it just doesn't correlate with anything. It doesn't seem to relate to anything. And if I dig through my analytics, I can see that the number of people who come across my videos through the subscription feed is negligible. Like it's, it's basically nobody. And like, I don't know whether or not that's because YouTube is not sending out notifications. Like I don't have any view into the system. I just simply know that like at this stage, if I look at my analytics, my view numbers are 100% reliant on how much does YouTube suggest the videos on the homepage or on the trending tabs.

And it has like nothing at all to do with the subscriber numbers. You're using a lot of very broad, like definitive words, like nothing and 100%. Like, I assume you're sort of exaggerating for effect because like... I looked into it for the last couple of videos. If you look at the dragon video, like views from the subscribe feed was something like 5% of the total views. That's not views from subscribers. That's views from the subscribe feed. Yeah. Yeah. I'm still saying like where YouTube pushes those things, that is 100% what matters. And I feel that years ago, it used to be much more of a shield that if you had a bunch of people subscribe to you, you could reasonably count on the idea that those people

are going to see the videos. But like those days are long gone. Like that doesn't exist anymore. But Grey, those people who watch the Dragon video because it appeared somewhere else, like their homepage or on the sidebar of the video they just watched, do you think the fact they subscribe to CGP Grey might increase the chance that they're seeing it there and therefore the subscribers are important? So the impression that I get from talking to people at YouTube is that all of this stuff is just data that is fed to the algorithm. So it matters. It is weighted in some way. When you say it is weighted in some way,

the devil is in the details there, right? What does this mean in terms of how much does the algorithm care? It may mean very, very little. It may mean a bunch. But what I'm trying to say here is YouTube's messing with the subscriptions and people get angry about it because we lose control. a bunch. But what I'm trying to say here is like YouTube is messing with the subscriptions and

people get angry about it because we lose control. Like I think if YouTube just totally destroyed the subscription feed and they say, surprise, like we're just getting rid of the whole thing. I don't think it would really actually change what happens to very many channels. I just want to be clear on something where you're coming from here, Gray, because I a hundred% agree that subscribers and looking at people's subscription number means much less than it did three or four years ago. And having a million subscribers now isn't the same as having a million subscribers back then. But you kept saying subscribers like me, nothing like this number is irrelevant.

Are you saying the subscription feed is irrelevant or subscribers are irrelevant? Because I think having pressed the subscribe button, while it means a heck of a lot less than it used to, still means something. And it's going into the recommendation algorithm. And if those people unsubscribed, that would be bad. And you would be slightly less likely to be recommended to those people. Because I look at my numbers and still some of my channels, half the views maybe will be from subscribers. And I don't think they've come from the subscription feed, but I do think maybe I've reached them because they have expressed an interest in the past and that is playing some role. So I think your kind of absolutist position you're taking

that subscribers mean nothing is kind of a little bit overstated. To clarify, the subscription feed I regard as basically pointless at this stage. So step one, I think if YouTube removed the subscription feed, even though many creators would cry to the high heavens, like I don't think there are very many channels who would suddenly find, like, oh my God, my views have tanked since YouTube took away the subscription feed. Because what I'm saying is, how well a video does is essentially down to the algorithm. And yes, the algorithm is using data like,

do you subscribe or do you not subscribe? But I am very convinced that that number is a pretty weak signal. And the reason I'm convinced it's a weak signal is because they keep adding more things. Like this is where YouTube added in the bell, right? So you could be a subscriber and then you could hit the bell to be notified that a video has gone up. So the bell became the new subscription feed. But then YouTube changed,

I don't know, was it like a couple months ago? They made the bell algorithmic now as well. So the bell won't always notify you. It will notify you occasionally unless you specifically click the bell twice to tell it notify me every time right and so what i think is happening here is one of the reasons that this is occurring is because whatever they're seeing in the algorithm they're seeing seeing that subscribe status, yes or no, is a factor that the algorithm is not regarding is very important. And so then they put in the bell. They're like, oh, let's adjust the bell. And then maybe they're seeing like, oh, the bell isn't actually very important either.

I suspect that that's the only reason that additional things are coming on is because the algorithm is saying, like, yeah, subscribed. It counts, but it counts 7% towards whether or not someone will see the video. I'm kind of appalled that YouTube is taking away the last bastion where people have any control. But I also don't think it matters at all. So I feel like I'm kind of on both sides of these things that YouTube already has so much control over how videos do that it's not really a tremendous disaster. It's almost just like a symbolic gesture. This is the last place where you, user, had some control. And now we want to take away the last place where you as the user have some control. I think they're messing with stuff in a way

that's not best for small, independent, particularly educational creators. But I don't know why or how it's happening but you know it seems like lots of people i know that do similar things are you know having a slight dip do you think it's particular to smaller and educational creators like is that is that what you're hearing from people well i don't know because i don't talk to vivo and people like that so i don't know it can't't talk to Vivo and people like that. So I don't know. It can't be across the board because unless less people are watching YouTube, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

You know, we haven't heard anything along those lines. So I don't know. I think maybe it's getting bigger, smaller people getting hit. But who knows? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. But I do think that it's just YouTube is in a strange position. And also, I mean, the subscription feed, I suspect that hardly any views come from the subscription feed because they give you no tools to manage it. If I was advising YouTube, like within three seconds, you can come up with a few things

that would make the subscription feed way better, but they've put no effort into it. And it's just a waterfall of content. Well, that's what they're trying to change, Gray. They would argue, we realize it's just a waterfall. We're trying to make it more useful. I know that they're trying to make it more useful, but my suggestions would all be in the realms of things that the user can control. So the person would personalize it, not an algorithm.

Yeah. Yeah. An actual person would personalize it. Hence the word personalize. The person whose subscription feed it is i've been like i don't think that's what youtube means i mean if you just think about it the most obvious thing would be say hey after i've watched a video don't put it on the subscription feed because like if you go to the subscription feed you're like oh hey here's a video and you watch

it and then you go back to your subscription feed, it's still just sitting there. Like it makes that feed less useful. Or as a user, it would be nice to say, only show me the most recent upload from the channels that I follow, right? Which would be a little option for the user that would immediately get rid of the problem. And these would all be options. Yeah. Both those things would be optional. I'm just simply saying like YouTube has not put in any effort to the subscription feed and it wouldn't like, it doesn't take a genius to think, how could you make the subscription feed a better experience for the users? It's like, well, let's sit down for five minutes and come up with some things. And I don't suspect that most people would be like, you know

what I want? I want YouTube to tell me much more what it is I'm going to watch versus me telling me what it is that I'm going to watch. The only other thing here is if the subscription feed falls to the algorithm like every other thing, I just I think it's another indication that creators should obviously don't depend on YouTube for your business. It's almost like YouTube is encouraging creators to make sure that they don't rely on YouTube. Whereas like if I was if I was the CEO of YouTube, I'd feel like you would want to have creators feel like they can double down on the platform. Whereas my feeling is always the exact reverse. Like, man, if you make a living on YouTube, you better make sure you're diversified elsewhere. Like you better make sure there are other places that your audience can hear about you. You better make sure you have other sources of income that are not YouTube itself. And I mean,

YouTube's in a really strong position. I don't think they're going anywhere. But the more this stuff happens, I just feel like it encourages creators to be less and less dependent on YouTube, which then it just does weaken their base a little bit in the future. Hello, Internet. Given that conversation that we just had about YouTube subscriptions, it won't surprise you to hear that I think everyone who does anything online needs to make sure that they spread out their locations a little bit. Sure, I make YouTube videos occasionally, but I wouldn't want YouTube to be the only place that people can find my work. And if you make things for the internet, you should keep that in mind too. Now sure, you can spread out across the various Snapstagrams that there are, but ultimately you're going to need some kind of home base, some place on the

internet that is the ultimate nexus of you. And that will always be a website. Now, you may be great at whatever it is that you want to share with the world on the internet, but that doesn't mean that you're good at making a website. And you don't need to be, because there is Squarespace. With Squarespace, you don't need to learn how to code HTML by hand and upload it via FTP like it's 1999. No. With Squarespace, you can create a beautiful website to show off your work or publish your content or sell your goods without having to know anything about how to build a website. Squarespace makes this possible with beautiful templates created by world-class designers and by handling all of that server and

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All right, Brady, let's talk Solo. All right. Spoilers. We're talking about the new Star Wars film, Solo. I wasn't intending to talk about it but it seems like the internet really had there was a lot of feedback from the internet that had other ideas that they wanted us to talk about solo so we're going to talk about solo you saw it yesterday if i'm i did that's correct i saw it just an hour before we started recording yeah so it's it is fresh in the minds of both of us fresh in the minds of both of us. Fresh in the minds.

I usually go first. Why don't you go first with the executive summary that I always insist upon? Oh, you're going to make me go first, Brady? Yep. Okay, fine. Make me go first. All right.

Expectations couldn't be lower. Yep. Walking into the cinema, I just had no expectations. God damn it, Brady, because I was thinking after the movie, like, how do I want to summarize this? If I have to give you, like, the bullet point,

I'm going to say it kind of won me over. I think I liked it. It started off rocky. I think I liked it. It started off rocky. I think it ended rocky. But somehow I found myself at some point like, oh, I'm enjoying watching a movie. So it kind of won me over. That's my summary of Solo. Do you know?

What? My summary would follow yours almost exactly word for word. Really? Oh, how interesting. I had really low expectations. I was almost angry at the film before it started. Yes. I'd already decided the things I wasn't going to like about it. And while it was imperfect and it did cause me a few little concerns at the start, and there were a few little things at the end I didn't like, I liked it. I was like, this is good. There were lots and lots of things I liked about it. And at the end of it, I felt like I enjoyed that movie.

It was very charming. I think almost everything worked. It had a really good tone. It was good. Yeah. It was good. Like I found myself after the movie, I was playing the game of where do I rank it in the new Star Wars movies?

I was like, I guess it's my second favorite of the new Star Wars movies? I was like, I guess it's my second favorite of the new Star Wars movies. Like in terms of like a cinema going experience, I'm like, oh yeah. But it really is this feeling of like the movie won me over. Because I was the same way. Like walking into that theater, I was like, boy, was I ready to be like,

this is terrible. And like I was already thinking about the things I'm probably not going to like about the movie. And I can actually pinpoint it. It was right around the train heist sequence. That is the point of the movie where I'm like, oh, I'm sitting here enjoying a movie. What a surprise.

This is not how I expected my afternoon to go. That was the moment where I felt like I can kind of get on my afternoon to go yeah that was the moment where i felt like i can kind of get on board this train i can remember the moment where i thought actually i like this and it was a little bit earlier and it was during a scene that did have its faults but the scene where it happened for me was when they were at that kind of spaceport trying to escape their planet and it was a bit like, you know, going through customs and immigration. And the thing I liked about that scene and that environment, it was the first time I can remember in the history of Star Wars

that I felt like I understood how the universe worked and what it was like to be on another planet or just a normal planet under the empire like the empire kind of integrated with the planet in a way and i saw the interface between the empire and the people beyond just star destroyers hovering above planets blowing things up it was like oh this is like real life you know there's a bureaucracy and there and there are soldiers and there are police and there's this police state forming but it's very real and it rubs up against the people in a kind of realistic way. I kind of liked that. Yeah, you know, that's a good point.

And there was a little detail in that scene I liked where the guys who have the two angry chomper dogs that are chasing after the protagonists, when they come into that station, they're able to blow past the stormtroopers it's not really focused on but it is a little moment that makes the world feel real and the woman was corrupt you could bribe the woman at the customs desk as well these were just like these imperial people were bureaucrats that were a bit dodgy as well yeah or like well of course the local huge crime boss their henchmen are able to like you you say, there's an interface between the empire and the local power structures. It was just a nice little detail that made it feel more real that the stormtroopers didn't have complete control over this semi-permeable membrane.

The local crime guys could go in there looking for someone and kind of ignore the storm troopers there we know we know where we stand wow i'm glad we're not doing this as a whole discussion then because it's always harder to talk about movies that you like versus movies that you don't like yeah i'll tell you something i didn't like in that scene at the uh station or the port and that was when you saw like tv screens advertising to work for the empire the recruitment empire advertising had the star wars empire music i was so aware of that yeah that was a mistake yeah that was 100 a mistake like oh wait you mean the imperial march exists in the universe i don't know like wait a minute i never really thought about it but now you're

making me think about it movie i don't like that one tiny bit anyway how do you want to do this then are you gonna be I made some notes as it was going along on my phone I mean the truth is having just seen them like I couldn't really go through the whole plot anyway but I feel like we do have these three parts there's like the beginning the middle in the end and for me where i did feel like oh okay so the way the movie starts was where i was feeling like oh i am not going to like this is they're like hitting on all of the bullet points of like this is han solo like look at his dice look at his jacket he's doing han solo-y things and i was just like oh no here we go this is going to be the whole movie is this objects of nostalgia and these tours of items that

either will become sacred items or that we want to become sacred items and yeah like that is the stuff in the movie that i liked the least and And I feel like it was much, much heavier in the beginning. And it sort of let up as the movie went on. That was in the beginning. I was like, oh, God, I can't deal with this. It's like the jokes in the Marvel movies where they're joking about their own universe. Like, please, could you stop? Could you just be a movie?

You don't have to show me these dice. You don't have to show me all the things. Like, just be a movie. Something I noticed early on, and I noticed it a lot in the first hour, maybe. And it was beginning to worry me. And then it kind of throttled back. So it was all right. And it felt like for the first sort of four or five set pieces of the film,

they were like Star Wars-ing genres and cliches. Like, I'm going to ignore the whole godfather thing with the naming of han solo which i thought was a little bit too much for me i don't know if you know that scene in the godfather but in the godfather part two the way the godfather gets his name at the immigration at ellis island is exactly like what happened with han solo i thought it was a joke like that they sort of star wars that scene and made it like the godfather but obviously i didn't pick up on the godfather but that that aside it felt like okay now we're gonna star wars a train heist now we're gonna star wars a world war ii trenches combat scene yeah and i thought are they just gonna do this all the way through the film like and i

realized the original star wars films did that but when the original films did it like you didn't know what star wars was right yeah so you couldn't say oh look they're star wars in you know world war ii air combat films you didn't really notice that because star wars was new but now star wars is its own genre when you star warsify something else it's more obvious oh okay you've you've done a world war ii thing except you've put a few storm trooper helmets in it to make it you know but it's still muddy trenches and that so i thought it was relying a little bit too much on cliches and tropes and movie genres at first but again that kind of just sort of faded away a bit as the film went on and as you said it sort of started to win me over and worried me less i mean mean, they even Star Wars Robin Hood and

Little John, didn't they? With Han Solo and Chewbacca, that famous set piece from the Robin Hood story got Star Wars. Yeah. I mean, look, when you buy Star Wars for a billion dollars, you need to turn Star Wars into a thing that you can put on everything that has ever happened. Right. Like you said, Star Wars is now a genre star wars is uh it's like a location in which movies can be set and so yeah i agree with that i was i was feeling the same thing too like oh man this is this is a real some real trench warfare we have going on here yeah i mean they star wars casino royale with the sabacc or whatever it's called the card game scene that was so casino royale wasn't it like yeah when they're playing baccarat and all that sort of stuff so it's like come on let's do

our own thing a little bit here guys yeah so brady what did you think about han solo in this movie because you're a big you're a big fan of han solo yeah i am a big fan of it and you know what from the trailers i was against him i was like no that's not han solo but you know what he won me over i think he got it just right he was like funny but not too funny like i wasn't laughing out loud but the jokes were okay he was kind of charming and he became han solo for me i can't believe i'm it. I'm almost angry at myself for saying it. But he was fine. He was really good.

By the end of the film, he was Han Solo. I was all right with that. Wow, that is really interesting. I love the feeling that you're angry that you're okay with him being Han Solo. I feel like I completely understand that. You know, he was a different, he was a bit different from Harrison Ford. It certainly wasn't like a flawless performance. I don't think he needs to like, you know, dust off his Oscar tux or anything like that.

But he was good. I lied to the guy. I wanted the best for him. This is where I am going to disagree with you because I thought he was a terrible Han Solo. I did not like him. Just like when we watched that episode of Black Mirror, I thought it was fat Matt Damon who was playing the captain role. That got lost in the edit, but I really did think that was Matt Damon through the whole episode.

I kept thinking like, wow, Matt Damon really roughed himself up for this episode. This is an amazing performance. This movie, I knew, unlike that time, I knew this wasn't true, but I couldn't stop thinking, wow, Jack Black has really gotten fit for this Han Solo role. Something about this actor's voice and his mannerisms are super Jack Black to me,

and I couldn't get it out of my head. I did not like him as Han Solo at all. And one of the reasons I warmed to the movie as it went on is after they stopped laying it on so thick, I kind of forgot that this was a Han Solo movie. It felt much more like, oh, I'm watching a heist and Lando and Chewie are involved in this heist. And there are other people

involved too. There were big stretches of the movie where I wasn't thinking of him as Han Solo at all. I was thinking of him as just a character in this movie.

And like, I actually think that's what the Star Wars movie should do more. Like they should just have other people. Like there's all of these problems with doing prequels and all of this, all this kind of stuff. But the movie worked for me almost because I thought he was such a terrible Han Solo that I couldn't read him on screen as Han Solo.

And then it's like the Marilyn flag. Like now it flips. Right. He's so not Han Solo to me. It's like, oh, whatever. Now I'm just watching some guy in a train heist. So yeah, I'll disagree with you there. I thought he was terrible, but it worked. It worked for me too, even though I didn't like him as Han Solo at all. The other thing that kind of worked for me, despite me before the film deciding it wasn't going to, was the kind of filling in a bit of backstory,

like understanding what the Kessel Run is and dealing with this whole parsec debacle that they've had hanging over them for 30 years and, you know, how the Millennium Falcon was won and setting up the soon-to-come meeting between Han and Jabba the Hutt and various little things like that, that were kind of are alluded to in the original films. And they kind of shade that in a bit. I was kind of, I was quite accepting of how they did it.

I didn't resent it. I thought I would. And I didn't, I was like, cool. Okay. Yeah. I kind of accepted the new canon more easily than i thought i would why do you think that the movie won you over in spite of itself if you went into the movie with higher expectations do you think that you would not have felt this way like how intrinsic to your enjoyment

do you think were the low expectations versus say the technical competence of the movie i mean that's an impossible question to answer isn't it in some ways i bring it up because like when i realized i was enjoying the movie i was noticing something in particular and it's why i mentioned the train sequence like that train heist that happens i was very aware of like oh this is a well-directed technically competent well-shot action sequence and it sounds dumb to say but so many movies you don't have any sense of where are all the major players what is everybody's goal where is the action occurring and like that train sequence was super clear it was reasonably clever and it was interesting to watch and there were a few

sequences like that were like oh this is just shot well it's clear like i know what's happening versus like oh let you know let's say you want to do like a world war ii storm the beaches star wars movie and you just are like cutting scenes so it feels like there's action and it's like i don't have any sense of where things are. How did everybody get all over this enormous island so quickly? That's the kind of stuff that can make a movie bad. So I feel that there was a lot that was technically well done that I would have enjoyed even if I had higher expectations. So that's kind of what I'm getting at. I think that's fair too, Gray. I think it's nice that you and I also will give the benefit of the doubt to the film itself and say it wasn't just

the low expectations. I mean, I forgot that Ron Howard had directed it in the end and that says a lot. You know, he's a pretty safe pair of hands, makes a lot of good films, and maybe that's it. It just was a well-made film by a guy who knows how to make a film that most people will enjoy for the most part you know it's got runs on the board and maybe that's it i mean it's the same you say

why do i accept the kessel run why do i accept that that's the way it was it was a good looking sequence you know the actual concept of that like you know pathway through the moor and looked really interesting it was a really interesting idea that that's what it was and that you could cut time off by being an amazing navigator and risking going off into the clouds. That was a good concept. It looked good. Sometimes I find those sort of spaceship sequences where a spaceship's under attack and getting pulled into a black hole and asteroids are everywhere can sometimes be a bit messy and confusing and action for the sake of action. But I could follow what was happening all through that

sequence. And that was a quiet, it wasn't the highlight of the film, but it was very engaging as well. And, and easily understood. It was just well put together. The Kessel Run sequence is a sequence where for me, again, I felt like I'm divorcing this from Han Solo. Like I thought the Kessel Run thing and the distance thing was sort of dumb. And I'm like, oh, I feel like maybe just don't try to address the Kessel Run. I personally still will always prefer my headcanon version that Han Solo

was just kind of BSing Obi-Wan with his statement and he messed it up. I'll never agree with that. I still say if you watch the footage, Obi-Wan gives him a look like you're full of shit. But anyway, that is now officially not the case I didn't like that thing but again you understand

what's happening in this sequence there's a tunnel this is the clear path the clear path is blocked they're going through the shady path maybe if I'm a gigantic space Cthulhu squid monster I'm not gonna take a nap next to a gigantic black hole that could tear me

from bits to bits but like you know okay at least it's understandable what is occurring in these different moments like find somewhere else to nap giant kthulhu monster and it fit into the film like it fit it made sense in the story of the film why he was having to do it it wasn't totally shoehorned in it made sense and there were little moments of care and one of the moments i thought was actually quite great is it's such a small detail but it is the ship that made the kessel run because han solo has done none of the navigating right it is all the brain of the bot so it's like yes the ship made the kessel run in this distance right han solo had almost nothing to do with this like i thought that was a nice little touch a nice little detail but yeah

there were just a bunch of times where i thought like oh this is this is competently made and i can't believe that this movie is winning me over despite me not liking the main actor and being against the whole concept of the film and this is like the problem of this modern era that like if you buy a franchise like why is everything prequels like why is harry potter prequels like why are all of the movies prequels and it's because it allows you to tell the story with the characters before the story has been resolved so it's, I kind of hate the concept of prequels and I have a very hard time thinking of any one that has ever been done well.

And so they just feel like cash grabs. So that's why it's like, oh God, you're going to do this solo thing. And it's like, it has to be Han Solo. And I'm like, oh, I don't like this at all. But I'm kind of going along with it. There was a lot of fan service sprinkled through the film, like all these films.

And again, I thought it was done better than in most of the other films. Like all the little things they drop in for fans to giggle at and notice, and there was plenty of it, I was on board with, from the subtle to the obvious. Like, you know, not perfect, but... Yeah, not perfect, but better than we've seen it done before yeah yeah i think though my like my only problem with prequels and going back before it's like these like sacred objects one thing i don't like about prequels and i think this movie had just a perfect

example of it is characters or the movie reacting to things because we know that they'll be important in the future not because that's how any character would actually interact with it in the moment the scene when han solo comes across the millennium falcon for the first time there's like this tremendous swelling music and it's like han is totally like it just this is happening because the millennium falcon has become such an icon but nobody would act this way and it's it's weird that the movie takes this moment to really do like a sweeping shot of like this is the first time han sees the millennium falcon i just always think a prequel would be better if it played it much more like this is an object in the universe and people are going to interact with it the way they would, not because of what will happen to it in the future.

While I wasn't a huge fan of Han Solo, I think that Donald Glover did a pretty good job of being Lando, a young Lando. What do you think? Yeah, liked him a lot. The only thing, I wish they had done more takes with his dialogue, because there were moments where he was so good at being Billy Dee Williams and delivering the lines in that Lando style, that sometimes when they had takes where it just sounded like oh this is just Donald Glover talking it was jarring because he was so good when he

really nailed it it's again a case of where a movie really won me over because I always thought like Lando was so cool in the original Star Wars movies I think it is very hard for movies to pull off the thing where an important and pretty major character shows up as late as Lando does in the original trilogy. It's hard to make that character feel like they're a part of the universe. But I think the original Star Wars movies do that really well. But part of it is that they don't overuse Lando. Like, that's a thing that keeps a character cool is, like, don't overuse him. And I feel like they did a pretty good job of not

overusing lando in this in this movie either like he's there and he's cool he's in the background he's being lando he's got his capes but i feel like they didn't overuse him to the point where you where you feel like tired of this character or like just the repeated experiences wear off the coolness a little bit. So I thought he was really, really good as the young Lando, as opposed to whoever's playing the young Han Solo. Did you think that Lando's attachment to his robot was believable and in character for what we know of Lando? That didn't hit the spot for me. Yeah. When his robot gets shot and he like is in love with it and goes and saves it. I felt like that doesn't seem like something Lando would do,

even if he had a soft spot for his robot. That was a bit creepy, that bit. Yeah, we got to talk about droids because that was, for me, definitely one of the weakest parts of the movie because it felt tonally very strange and it felt like a place where you could use a few more drafts here because leaving the robot aside for the moment lando makes an off-handed comment when we first

meet him about how oh he would wipe her memory but she's really great as a pilot so he has to keep her like this and i really love that comment because i felt it is delivered not as a joke. I took it as Lando is dead serious. Like he would wipe this robot were it not for what a good pilot she is. And it especially makes sense directly after the scene where she's causing problems and she's talking about droid freedom. And so then it's like, like okay they're kind of buddies i did like the humor where l3 was talking to um boring sarah connor i can't remember her name calise oh that's right she's in game of thrones the calise yeah i think of her as boring sarah connor um yeah i did like the humor there where l3 is joking about or

like i interpret it as l3 is talking about how lando is in love with her and it just won't work because she won't feel anything about him this little scene did get a smile out of me where she's also like i think of it sometimes but it wouldn't work and then the calise says like how would it work and she goes goes, oh, it works. Like, I enjoyed that sequence. But I enjoyed that sequence because it's built on the premise that she's wrong. She wrongly thinks that Lando is in love with her. And actually.

Like it's a malfunction. Yeah. Like he'd actually wipe her in a heartbeat if he could. Yeah. Right. Which then also works into her character as she wants droid freedom in the sequence where she gets shot at the end and lando rushes out to save her and is like totally heartbroken i found it weird like it just it did not work it was also just very strange that they essentially pull out her brain and shove it into the ship. Like that whole thing,

you needed a different first half of this movie? Like, I don't know. Yeah, I think that I just think they've kind of got that a bit wrong. Because presumably now, we're supposed to look at all the Millennium Falcon in the future as having this kind of spirit of this droid in it. And it's one of the reasons that's such a unique and amazing ship. I don't know if we're supposed to think that but i think that's an unfortunate thing to think well as soon as lander said it he's like oh she's part of the ship now i i interpreted that in a poetic manner like the database of maps that she had as part of the ship i also thought that's a weird thing to put on the ship i mean if it's true we're in some kind of like black mirror universe where han doesn't seem

to really think about the like the co-pilot who's alive in the ship. He just doesn't interact with it in that way. We're also setting up a future where maybe Lando and the Millennium Falcon will rekindle their old relationship. I think it's a strange... So that's why I was like, as soon as I was like, oh, she's part of the ship. I'm like, oh, he needs to say that right now because he's really emotionally cut up. Right. But no, she is dead. She is dead as a doornail. She's gone to the chip i'm like oh he needs to say that right now because he's really emotionally cut up right but no she is dead she is dead as a doornail she's gone to the robot farm yeah because otherwise this is really weird like thinking through the consequences of this so yeah i don't know i felt conflicted because i obviously i sympathize with robot desires for freedom and i've mentioned in previous podcasts that I always think the relationship

of the humans with the droids in Star Wars is interesting and unexplained. And it's just sort of there and they're kind of slaves, but they can feel pain, it seems like. The droids are so weird in Star Wars. And so I kind of don't mind that there's a character who's like droid freedom,

but I think she was poorly written on a bunch of ways. Just like the love doesn't make any sense in the later sequence where she frees the first droid in the mines. She like, she does it incidentally and she doesn't seem to really care at all. She's like, she frees a droid because he's in the way. And he's like,

like, what am I supposed to do now? She's like, Oh, I don't know. Go, go free your friends or whatever. Like she's got some stuffes a droid because he's in the way and he's like like what am i supposed to do now she's like oh i don't know go go free your friends or whatever like she's got some stuff to do yeah i think she was the weakest part of the movie by by far and and was just not consistent and was at times distracting but like there were parts of it i really liked i don't know it just felt like i could use a few more drafts. Yeah. One thing I didn't particularly like, and I've reflected on it more. I think I didn't fully understand it

and the repercussions of it until I thought about it later. And even now that I think I understand it a bit better, I still don't like. And that is what the Khaleesi ends up doing at the end when she leaves Han Solo. I think the fact she left is brilliant. I was hoping she would

because it would have really helped us understand Han Solo. I think the fact she left is brilliant. I was hoping she would because it would have really helped us understand Han Solo better. But the reason she did it and bringing Darth Maul back, I like cringed a bit when Darth Maul came up on the hologram and she started talking to him. I was like, oh, no, you didn't have to do that. I mean, that's one step away from having brought Jar Jar Binks back or something.

It's like, well, while Darth Maul was a lot of a cooler character than Jar Jar Binks, it's a bit like, oh, you don't have to do that i mean that's one step away from having brought jajabinks back or something it's like well while darth maul was a lot of a cooler character than jajabinks like it's a bit like oh you don't have to attach yourself to those films and keep justifying those films like do we have to go here brady when you spend a billion dollars you do have to attach yourself to those films right as like you have to wring profitability out of every character. I kind of didn't mind surprise Darth Maul when I first saw him. But the thing I was thinking at that exact moment when she's like closes the curtains and she's walking towards the communicator

and right before she presses the button, my thought was, wow, I think I've just seen a Star Wars movie without a single lightsaber and the movie is better for it. And then it's like, boom, Darth Maul shows up and takes a single lightsaber and the movie is better for it and then it's like boom darth maul shows up and takes out his lightsaber and turns it on just to show her for no reason but it felt like oh there must be a one one lightsaber minimum rule for every star wars movie

it had just occurred to me just before that as well and i thought how much because in the fight scene before with his like weird dagger with the little light on it was getting close to a lightsaber and i thought good on you for not having someone crack out a light yeah it was like oh what what great restraint and then oh no and it also made me realize that just as a character is cool if you don't overuse them darth maul is way cooler when he doesn't talk and so when he appeared i was like oh i don't i don't mind surprise darth maul here and then with each additional word he spoke is like his welcome was less and less and less like no you need to be a silent menace and if you're if you're what like you're managing personnel

now like you're way yeah that was the one moment it slipped into sort of george lucas talky talky yeah personnel management moment it's like no i don't need to do that i just think i can see all the benefits of it right i can see why disney want to sell more darth maul dolls and maybe have him appear in future films and i can see how it makes calise more interesting and i can see how it makes Khaleesi more interesting and I can see how it was a twist. She always alluded to you don't understand my dark side or my bad side and we thought it was going to be all the things

she'd done, you know, in servitude when in fact the thing she was hiding was that she was in cahoots with a Sith. But I feel a bit like it would have been really kind of powerful if she had like turned her back on Han for more human reasons. Like she just sort of thought, no, I want to go and be my own person or I don't think it's going to work. And she just flew off, whether she thought it was for Han's own good or her own good. If she'd just like done him over and flown away for human reasons and really burned him it would have been i don't know it would have been really powerful human moment but instead it was a it became a mystical jedi moment and you know it was less emotive for me knowing she was flying away for

that reason if she just looked at the diamonds and the ship and looked out at the han in the desert and thought you know what i think maybe I should just go this other way. That would have made her stronger as well. It would have been, wow, she's done him over for her own reasons. She's a strong woman. It would have made her more interesting all of a sudden. But instead she was kind of just kind of under the thumb of a Sith and flying away. It wasn't as cool. I completely agree that it would have been way better that way. That she like, oh, guess what? People change and she likes the taste of power. And your life of thinking that you're an outlaw, it looks like it sucks. And meanwhile, flying around on my own space yacht seems awesome.

Right. Surrounded by all my diamonds and stuff. Yeah. That would have been like, I mean, I know Han doesn't know why she flew away, but it would have explained more of like the man that Han becomes. Because like, you know, he's like, I don't know, he's a bit skeptical of this rich princess later on that he meets and stuff. It would have gone more to describing that and informing that. And it would have given more meaning to his subsequent early relationship with Leia.

This gets to the prequel problem again for me and as we discussed like i think the the movie is really shaky until they they get off the first planet uh you know they pass through customs and now now the movie starts really picking up and then the movie is like it's enjoyable it's kind of like a fun film to watch. And then it gets super shaky again as soon as they land on the sand planet at the end. For me, it starts really falling apart. And part of that just has to do with Han's arc and the fact that he needs to be a person

who exists for these next movies. But this movie, they want him to be so clearly the good guy. And I don't know, I found like nothing in the ending really works for me. It's like, oh, you have this incredibly valuable substance that's going to be refined at like a like a hut in the desert. I don't like, OK, whatever. This is very strange that this refining facility works here. And then the pirates show up. But the pirates, they're the proto-rebellion. They're actually the good guys.

They want to take the hyperfuel to go do good guy things with it. And I don't know why I'm supposed to believe them. Like I believe them just because the movie wants me to believe them as opposed to like, they're just telling me lies to get my hyperfuel. And han seems like kind of a chump like he he's he's giving up all of this valuable fuel and engage in this incredibly dangerous double cross because like a person told him

that they're the good guys based on nothing and even if you sort of go along with that i think that the arc of the movie then ends with han solo is clearly the good guy who helps the rebellion and it feels like that should not be where han solo is left off at the beginning of this movie and it feels like the studio hands are coming in of like oh we want to we want to make it very clear that han solo is the good guy i hear what you're saying i don't think the end of the film was a total disaster and i think it ended adequately yeah i'm not saying it was a disaster but it's like it's where does it fall apart like where do i start thinking about things it certainly would have been more courageous for him to have been a bit less good yeah and again it would have imbued what he does at the

death star in new hope with more meaning if he hadn't done this good thing before like if he didn't help them out this time it would have made what he does in new hope more powerful and redemptive not just another example of han helping out the rebellion 100 agree because this is a movie where han is telling me many times that he's not a good guy but he's doing nothing but good things the whole time and it's like well movie you're not selling me here he did shoot woody harrelson whatever that guy had it coming just like you wanted the the calisi to walk away and burn him i agree that it would have been a much more powerful and much better movie if han solo doesn't turn over

the fuel to the proto rebellion because i completely agree that that in the scope of the movies then makes him helping the rebellion better and you could have you know have some line about like you know maybe one day you can undo the harm you've done here. Right. And it's like, I think that that's a way to foreshadow without really leaning into it too hard. Like I really think that movie should have ended with him not doing the right thing for the fuel. And I just, it falls down for me because he's going like so far out of his way with this crazy double cross and putting himself in jeopardy for just because like

they say they're the good guys. And then like you as the movie, you're just supposed to believe them. So that's what I mean. It fell apart for me. They also could have eliminated that problem altogether by not having those pirates end up being good guys because then he wouldn't have to like do something so overtly good he will have lost his woman and shot his best mate in the space of five minutes and it would have ended he would have ended quite kind of a hero but sort of a slightly tortured character and that would have set him up nicely for the man he becomes but they did they went for a bit too much for the happy ending and so be it yeah i tell you what is an interesting thing to think about now though

that chewbacker spent a lot of time eating humans that's quite a disturbing thought i didn't think about the implications of that but you know what you're totally right he was the thing they threw humans to and you just sat down there and ripped them apart and ate them. Fair enough. He's like in a cell and he's got no food and, you know, he can't starve to death. But it's quite an interesting thing to think about when you think about Chewie's backstory. It involved spending a lot of time sitting in a cell eating live men who were being thrown into his cage. I wonder what the canon answer is for how many people did Chewbacca eat?