Hello Internet - H.I. #117: Bandersnatch

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're watching, say, Pitch Perfect 3. A suspicious amount of this movie takes place on a military base. Hey Brady, on your podcast I was excited to hear from someone else email you about synesthesia and ask for a list of words to say. I want to describe what listening to Hello Internet is like for me as well. Your voice tone gives a fruity taste when happy, similar to a sugary cereal, but a more sombre tone gives an earthy, mild, tea-like taste. Both are very pleasant, and I have to say, your voice does taste good. Grey's voice gives more of a smell impression.

Starting point is 00:00:40 It's much more mild and much stranger. Gray's usual talking voice smells like glass windows or screens. And when he talks in a more excited voice, it's similar to fresh paper or cardstock. And sometimes like a freshly opened pack of trading cards. That was a letter. That was from JD. Is JD a synesthetic sommelier of voices? Is that what was going on there? I'm not even going to try to repeat that.

Starting point is 00:01:10 I'm very impressed by your pronunciation. I have to say I'm a bit jealous because now I think about it, there's no smell like from my childhood that I've carried through to now that gives me more excitement than the smell of freshly opened pack of trading cards. I love that smell. Opening a new pack of trading cards. I love that smell, opening a new pack of cricket cards and seeing who you've got. I mean, when you say trading cards in particular, I'm thinking, yes, I did open many a pack of Magic the Gathering trading cards as a child. I'm not sure that they smelled the same way that

Starting point is 00:01:40 sports cards did. And they don't actually have a smell memory in my brain, as opposed to just like a regular deck of cards, like poker cards. That smell, I know immediately. Is that what trading cards smell like? Well, it depends if it's trading cards that have also got gum in them. Oh, is the gum the important thing? No, no. Both have their own smell and both are equally important and valid. Okay. Well, then I can pull out a childhood memory that some people will respond very strongly to and most people will be confused by. But my cards that smell like gum memory is then associated with dinosaurs attack, which was

Starting point is 00:02:18 a collectible trading card. I don't know what when I was a child, but you would buy a little pack of cards that had pictures of dinosaurs attacking people. And I'm pretty sure they came with gum. Attacking humans? Yeah, it was like, brontosauruses destroy Washington, D.C. All right. So it's in modern times. They weren't attacking people back in their times. They'd come to our times to do the attacking. There was a whole story about like a scientist opened up a rift in time and now triceratops can storm across the Kremlin, you know, like whatever. And what these are for little kids to look at while chewing gum, like watching humans get destroyed by dinosaurs. Like, I guess, I mean, sports trading cards and collectible cards somehow seem like a natural

Starting point is 00:03:01 element in the world, like a thing that just exists. And I don't question why do they exist. They seem to make sense. But I guess I never really thought about, like, was this a genre of thing, like cards that weren't a game? They're not sports. They were just like installments in a little story, but not really. I don't know what the hell it was in retrospect. I don't know how it came into existence in the world.

Starting point is 00:03:29 It was just gruesome art of dinosaurs attacking people. And I'm sure it would never fly in today's world, but I totally loved it as a kid and they smelled like gum. I have so many memories associated with collector cards. Like Return of the Jedi cards were like probably the fondest memory. I also remember various seasons of cricket. How do you like that description of your voice? I think you got the better one. I think it's supposed to read like mine got the better one, but I like yours. Trading cards. Like yours is like a stationery shop.

Starting point is 00:03:54 That's where I want to be. No, so you focus on the stationery. I'm completely sold by window glass. It's like, oh yes, I can go along with that very well. I'm very happy that someone out there listens to the sound of my voice and it makes them think of window glass. That works perfectly for me. It's been a long time since we've spoken to each other, Brady. It has been a very long time, actually. So the last time we did speak, we did the 12 days of Christmas, obviously, the 12 days of Hello Internet, sorry.

Starting point is 00:04:21 Get it straight, Brady. One thing I'm not clear about, and I know everyone seems to have a firm opinion on this but i don't know this is what i'm thinking when you sing the 12 days of christmas and each verse you repeat all the things again you know does that mean you'll be given all those presents again as duplicates or is each verse just a recap of what you previously got? Like, are you ending up with 12 partridges in a pear tree? Or do you just get a new present each day? And then for the sake of the song, you just reminisce about the other things you received on the other days. You're asking, what is the canonical number of gifts given in the song as intended by the

Starting point is 00:05:00 songwriter? That's what everyone likes to talk about. And trust me, there've been plenty of Reddit comments about that since we did the episode. Oh, you end up with 12 of these and 24 of these. But I don't think that's what's happening in the song. I don't think you are being given all those things. I think you just get one partridge in a pear tree. And each day when you get new presents, you then reminisce about what you received on the previous days. Here's my take on it. If we're going to factor in authorial intent, which I don't think really matters, but I'd imagine the authorial intent was you're getting

Starting point is 00:05:32 the gift on each day. The song was written, whatever it is, a thousand years ago, and it's passed down through oral tradition and you have to have people remember all the previous verses and that's why you're singing it and then it's just fun so is the authorial intent reminiscence like i just said or you're getting this compounding present that you get more and more of each time i think authorial intent is that you're just repeating what the earlier days were yeah it does not imply that you're getting more birds yes thank you i don't think it implies that. Good. But in any media representation of this song that I saw as a kid, you know, where like Oscar is getting piled on by a whole bunch of birds and is really annoyed. So like, I'm pretty sure that if you're ever going to show it in media, particularly children's

Starting point is 00:06:35 media, there's an obvious funny way to go. And I think that's why everybody ends up doing the whole thing about like, how many birds do you get? How many golden rings do you get? How many drummers drumming do you get? I think that's why that happens. It's just funnier that way. I just feel like everyone's taking crazy pills and everyone's like, oh, you end up with all this stuff. I'm like, come on, man. Who seriously thinks that? You're all a bunch of idiots. But like, is everyone in on the joke or do people seriously think that's the intent of

Starting point is 00:07:02 the song? I don't know. Here's the thing. I i agree with you brady i'm on your side with this of how is it supposed to be now you're making me wonder i feel like it's a bit of everybody's in on the joke that this is the funnier way okay but never underestimate internet commenters' abilities to take things literally beyond literal. And so I'm willing to believe that there are many true proponents of the, no, you get all the gifts every day, school of thought on this issue. All right. Well, let me know in the Reddit where you stand on this and have a discussion and I'll

Starting point is 00:07:40 bring it back to the table in the next episode. But I want to know what people think. Also, in a recent episode, no, it wasn't recent. It was a million years ago. In an episode a million years ago, we were talking about Trafalgar Square and you talked about, did you call them floating Yodas or what was the name you gave to those people who stand on a post and it creates the illusion that Yoda is just floating in the air with a walking stick or something. Yeah. I use floating Yodas because I have some picture in my photo library of three different floating Yodas, not 10 meters apart from each other in front of Trafalgar Square in this one spot. So obviously these things are like,

Starting point is 00:08:20 they're not going anywhere, these floating Yodas. They're just more and more of them everywhere. It's just become the thing to do now. A pox upon the world is what they are. They've become such a thing and such like a mainstream thing, like pigeons or an annoyance of Trafalgar Square. I read an article today in the Times, because the National Portrait Gallery, which at the moment sort of faces away from Trafalgar Square, and for such a cool place, it has quite an obscure little entrance.

Starting point is 00:08:44 Yeah, it's an easily missed, but well worth visiting museum. Like it's right behind the National Gallery. And I actually, I think it's the more interesting of the two. I agree with you. I really, I always recommend people go there. Anyway, they're giving it this big 35 million pound revamp, and it's going to involve having a more public facing entrance but one of the big problems is and this was the headline in the times this morning portrait gallery turns to face floating yodas in 35 million pound revamp and one of the big concerns about this revamp is that it's going to create this new place that all the floating Yodas are going to congregate to. And they actually identify floating Yodas as their problem. So, like, this fictional Jedi master has become this huge problem now in London. And whenever you create some new public space,

Starting point is 00:09:35 your number one concern, you know, above security and pigeons and public health is, what are we going to do about the Yodas that are inevitably going to come here for anyone who is unfamiliar with the plague of yodas upon us i'm going to make a thousand air quotes around this word they're performers right they're public performers on the street you know like buskers you know this kind of thing except that they just wear a mask and literally sit in a chair that just creates the mildest of optical illusions until you think about it for two seconds It is kind of effective though

Starting point is 00:10:13 it is kind of effective on your brain Anyway, when I saw this headline I did think to myself how are they going to explain what a floating Yoda is in the article itself because if you've never seen one it probably sounds really weird so this is how the journalist is in the article itself, because if you've never seen one,

Starting point is 00:10:29 it probably sounds really weird. So, this is how the journalist who wrote the article did it, and I thought they did a pretty good job. The levitating living statues, in quotes, impersonating the Jedi guru that are often street artists hoping to earn a few coins from passersby. I'm going to give that description a B. That's probably about right. Okay. How would you have done it if you were writing the article you've got to do it in a you know in a sentence what's a floating yoda the weakness there is the living statue part that's the one part that's in quote marks as well uh okay if that's in quote marks yeah living statues in quote marks yeah like could i describe it in one sentence no because i would not be able to do anything other than write an op-ed just railing against the existence of these things and wondering why oh why can't the police just

Starting point is 00:11:13 sweep them off the streets but i like how like in years gone by it would have been like people on a unicycle or a juggler or you know a painter or something like that. Someone who would do your caricature. And now, like, the go-to annoying busker is a floating Yoda. I do wonder, because, I don't know, I have a suspicion, let's put it this way, that I think these things aren't individuals. I feel like this is a coordinated group of people. Yeah. Do you think they're licensed by Lucasfilm?

Starting point is 00:11:41 No, I don't. I don't think they're licensed by Lucasfilm. Then I'm surprised they haven't been swept off the streets yet. They're normally pretty red hot, aren't they? I reckon maybe they are licensed by Lucasfilm? No, I don't. I don't think they're licensed by Lucasfilm. Then I'm surprised they haven't been swept off the streets yet. They're normally pretty red hot, aren't they? I reckon maybe they are licensed. I would be shocked to know if they're licensed by Disney. But I also had to do the split second thing of, I was going to make the joke about, I'm going to try to get in touch with George Lucas because he's a total control freak and let him know that these Yodas are earning money that he's not getting anything from. And then I realized, oh, wait, no, we live in the world now where Disney owns Star Wars. And I forgot for a moment. And I'm almost

Starting point is 00:12:12 briefly nostalgic for the crazy figurehead of George Lucas to rail against versus just the mouse, like the mouse who no one can defeat. So I assume that they're the licensed buskers they have to be but i hate them and i'm glad to see that they're getting national attention as being a problem and a total eyesore in like the center part of london just such a major tourist attraction oh look there's nelsonumn, a national gallery. Oh, I can see Big Ben. And there are five men painted gold pretending to be Yoda from the Star Wars movies. What?

Starting point is 00:12:53 Yeah, it's like, look, we have enough whimsy already in Trafalgar Square with the fourth plinth, like that statue that rotates and is usually some terrible artwork. That's all we need. A little bit of like, okay, the modern world is here and that's enough. The Yodas are too far. We don't need them. And I still don't understand how we made this trade-off of like, pigeons know, Yodas, yes. It's totally backwards. We talked recently about pilots introducing themselves over the intercom.

Starting point is 00:13:26 Hello, this is John Smith, your pilot speaking. We're going to be doing X, Y, Z. You said this was completely pointless. Yeah. People have been responding to this. Okay. What's the feedback? A few people have said this is the official reason.

Starting point is 00:13:39 Okay. So I'll just encapsulate what they're saying. You sound dubious already. I don't want my fingerprints on this one. They say, apparently, the reason this happens is to build some kind of knowledge or rapport with the pilot so that if things go pear-shaped and the pilot comes on later on with instructions, you're more likely to follow and be obedient. So if they say, everyone, you've got to do this quickly, we'll do it because we're familiar with the pilot. That sounds completely like post hoc reasoning. That's ridiculous. It's not like you're going to be, the pilot's going to come on and you're

Starting point is 00:14:12 going to be in this free fall and the pilot's going to say, everyone move to the left. And I'm going to be, no, who's this person speaking? I don't know. I'm not sure. You didn't introduce yourself earlier. I think I'm just going to do the exact opposite. No, that's total post hoc reasoning. And also, can I see the studies? Can I see your A-B testing on this? Even if that is your supposed reason, do you have anything to indicate that it's remotely effective? How effective?

Starting point is 00:14:34 How many additional oxygen masks are put on when people have heard the pilot previously? It only has to save one life, Gray. Yeah, it only has to save one life before you're going to hear a thousand idiots tell you that it only has to save one life to matter. That's the rest of that sentence that nobody says. I'm going to say like anything that the cabin crew does is going to matter a million times more than whatever the pilot says in terms of getting people in the aircraft to do something.

Starting point is 00:15:05 Seriously, if it's an emergency, I'd do what the person next to me told me to do. Someone could walk in in a clown suit and say, everyone go to the back of the plane right now. And I'd be like, all right. Oh, I see what you're saying. You're saying that you're just very open to suggestion in that moment. That's what you're saying. Anything, help. I've got no idea what to do. Oh, poor Brady. Someone just emailed me a bit earlier, though, and wrote,

Starting point is 00:15:28 it's a brilliant opportunity because when they come on and they say, this is your captain, John Smith, you can say, oh, no, not him again. Oh, I can't believe they're letting him fly after what happened last time and, like, put a bit of panic through the plane. Oh, that is a terrible, terrible joke. That's like the dad joker, isn't it? Yeah. Who sits there doing, yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:47 Oh, that's really brutal. So I know you're not on Twitter at the moment. Mm-hmm. But you obviously are still familiar with how the platform works. I'm familiar with Twitter, yes. I'm aware of its existence. So the other day. Wait, can I just stop you here though?

Starting point is 00:16:04 Because like I know you're making this joke, but one little observation I've had in my life, lo these past months, is almost every time I'm with someone in person who knows about me not being on the internet, in the course of almost any conversation, they want to show me something that's on the internet. And so I do have people, like, showing me their phone to be like, oh, there was this really funny thing on Twitter. Like,

Starting point is 00:16:29 this is what Twitter is like, take a look. It's like every one of your friends has become a human Twitter. Honestly, that's a little bit what the feeling is. And I don't mind because of this bandwidth rate, it's perfectly fine. But I think it's funny, because even when I tell people it's like, it's fine to tell me things that happen on the internet I haven't lost my mind here there's something about this way that everyone shows me their phone that it's sort of like hesitant but it makes it seem almost reverent this very common pattern of people hold the phone up for me like I'm not supposed to touch it and become unpure they don't want to break your streak great because, you know, they probably think if you break the streak, you'll feel bad about it.

Starting point is 00:17:07 I do weirdly appreciate it, but it has given this funny feeling of everyone is like, lo, cast your eyes upon the Instagram, but for a moment for me to show you this cute picture, right? It's very weird. They should show it to you in like the reflection of a mirror or something. So yes, I'm aware of Twitter. I know that it exists. I'm familiar with the platform. So the other day, someone I think followed me, and they were like a verified user of some sort. So I was like, oh, that's good that they're following me. Interesting that they will give me an opportunity to influence them. I wonder how

Starting point is 00:17:39 many other people they follow. And I went and looked, and they were following 50,000 people. I get slightly annoyed by people who are following were following 50,000 people. I get slightly annoyed by people who are following more than 50,000 people on Twitter, because that says to me, you're not using Twitter properly. You're being very cynical and you're obviously just following people so that they'll follow you. So you want them to follow you, but you're clearly not following them. Because if you follow 50,000 people, I assume you don't even look at your timeline. What do you think about people following 50,000 people on Twitter? This activity I think should totally be banned.

Starting point is 00:18:12 It's bait, isn't it? They're baiting you. Yeah. It's a kind of Twitter spam. So for those unfamiliar with Twitter, the thing that Brady's talking about here is what some accounts do. And what I find really crass is a lot of celebrities do this. Yeah. And I'm going to point to musicians as being particularly bad about this. Musicians will have accounts where they're following 50,000 or 100,000 or 2,000. I've seen them in the millions where like they have Twitter accounts following millions of people. and all they're doing is what happened to you giving your random twitter normies a moment to feel excited that popular musician has followed them even if they know it can't possibly be real

Starting point is 00:18:54 it like it causes that moment of making them look like a politician kissing a baby almost yeah that's what it is and it causes them to look and then maybe follow them back and you feel this loyalty to them forever because i'm going to keep following Bill the guitarist. Can you believe it? Bill the guitarist follows me. No, Bill the guitarist doesn't follow you. Of the many behaviors on the internet that people may want to police and ban and prevent, this one seems like a no-brainer because it's also really easy to track. Like, hey, is there a Twitter account that's following tens of thousands of people a day?

Starting point is 00:19:26 Maybe don't let them do that. Like, maybe that is illegitimate behavior on the system. I find it really annoying, particularly because the thing that I still feel now and that I think is one of Twitter's best features is its ability to be a little bit of an like an informal point of contact between people like twitter can be really useful that way and this sort of behavior it's noise it's spam in that value of like oh when someone follows you it's a little bit like a door is open that if

Starting point is 00:20:04 you mutually follow each other oh you can send messages you know you might not ever, it's a little bit like a door is open that if you mutually follow each other, oh, you can send messages. You know, you might not ever, but it's a little bit of a like a door is open for a communication channel. And so, yeah, I find that stuff incredibly annoying. And it seems like a no-brainer behavior that Twitter should just totally ban. at why they think it means anything to have accounts that have millions of followees, except just it's a million spam invitations that have been sent out across their platform. You know, I found myself interested in card games quite a lot lately. It's not just the reminiscing over the dinosaur attack cards from my childhood. No, I found myself thinking about new games like Magic and traditional games like Poker.

Starting point is 00:20:45 And one of the books that I have read, or should I say listened to, was Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. Now, of course, there's only one place I'm going to listen to audiobooks, and that's with the amazing Audible. Listening to audiobooks in your spare time can make you a better, more informed person. And I particularly liked Thinking in Bets because it's a book written by a professional poker player talking about how to make decisions, how to make better decisions, especially when you don't always have all of the information at hand. You can pick up Thinking with Bets at Audible by going to audible.com slash hellointernet or texting code hellointernet to 500-500. Using that URL or offer code will get you a 30-day trial and let Audible know that you came from us. And if you haven't already, you really should give Audible a try. They have one of the largest selection of audiobooks you're going to find anywhere, and they're also producing their own

Starting point is 00:21:45 new Audible Originals. And as an Audible member, you can choose three titles every month, one audiobook and two of their Audible Originals that you won't be able to hear anywhere else. I really like Audible. I've been using them for forever. Audiobooks sync just everywhere, including on my Kindle, which will play audiobooks and synchronize it with the actual text of the book if you have the Kindle copy. It's just great. So why not join Audible today? Find a book to help improve yourself, like perhaps Thinking in Bets. And go to audible.com slash hellointernet or text hellointernet to 500 500.

Starting point is 00:22:21 Thanks to Audible for supporting the show. Speaking of advertising and things, just a really quick thing that I saw, and also speaking of Twitter, a cool thing I saw just in the last week or two. I'm not going to be particularly political about it, but it has been related to Brexit. Oh yeah, what's going on with Brexit? Oh, let's not go there. No, Brady, you have to tell me. You have to tell me. Because look, all I know is like an economist showed up in my house the other day, and it has a picture of parliament being ripped in half.

Starting point is 00:22:49 And it says something like, the worst thing that could ever possibly happen. And I saw the cover and I thought, I'm not going to read that because Brady, we've established now Brady can tell me what's going on with Brexit. So like, I didn't want spoilers. We'll come to that in a minute. But the thing that's been going on is because Brexit's obviously full of lots of politicians who said lots of things during the campaign before the vote. Right.

Starting point is 00:23:11 And those things either turned out to not be true, or very often the politicians are now saying something which is the exact opposite, hoping that people forgot what they said before. I don't know who's behind it, but what the people have started doing is getting their old tweets that the politicians made during the campaign blown up to the size of billboards and buying like billboard advertising space and just putting these people's tweets up. Okay. So it's like Theresa May who used to be against Brexit. And now, you know, before she became Miss Brexit means Brexit. Okay. I didn't see one of hers, but it would be like, yeah, at Theresa May, I think Brexit's a terrible idea and no one should do it. You know, before she became Miss Brexit means Brexit. Okay. I didn't see one of hers, but it would be like, yeah, at Theresa May. I think Brexit's a terrible

Starting point is 00:23:47 idea and no one should do it, you know, and it's there with the profile picture and the, it's an actual, you know, like a screen grab of a tweet, but blown up to this enormous size. What an interesting idea. And I think that's a really powerful thing. I saw some pictures of it in the paper and I thought, yeah, there's no spin here. There's no editorializing. This is just a tweet that this person made. There it is. They said it. What do you think? I thought it was a really interesting thing to do. I'd be curious to know what group is behind it. Obviously, I'm just imagining it in my head. I presume it looks like Twitter, right? Like they're

Starting point is 00:24:17 replicating the tweet. It looks just like a screen grab, yeah. Right. Okay. That's a simple and powerful idea to show hypocrisy. Not that I'm going to feel bad for politicians, but politicians are particularly vulnerable to hypocrisy, because their job is to be willows in the wind, and they're always going to be open to that. But I feel like that seems like a very effective attack where you're just letting them speak for themselves. I just sent you one just then, and it is a Theresa May tweet, actually, from 25th of April, 2016, where at Theresa May tweeted, remaining a member of the European Union means we'll be more secure from crime and terrorism. Now she's saying that we're going to be less secure. I think that's the natural conclusion to draw from that. Anyway, I like it. So what's going on, Brady?

Starting point is 00:25:01 You got to tell me. I need my Brexit bin. What's the situation? I'll try and put it as simply as possible. Was there a general election? Not yet. Okay. So the Prime Minister, Theresa May, who leads the Conservative Party,

Starting point is 00:25:15 has brokered this deal that all the 27 other countries in Europe agreed to. So she said, okay, now I'll take this deal to my parliament and get them to ratify it. And this will be the conditions under which we leave the EU. It went before the parliament. It lost, and it was the biggest loss in the history of the UK parliament for the governing party to have lost a vote by. They lost by like over 200 votes. So it was rejected by pretty much all the opposition and most of her party as well or something like, you know, it went down in flames. So then the leader of the opposition, the Labour Party here, a guy called Jeremy Corbyn, did a motion of no confidence against the prime minister saying, you know, you've lost the confidence of the parliament.

Starting point is 00:25:58 And if she'd lost that, that would have sent the country to a general election. Right. But she didn't lose that because obviously all the people in her own party then voted to support her. And the funny thing was, all these conservative politicians voted to support her and say the prime minister has her confidence. But a whole bunch of them voted against her when they had their own internal confidence motion against her a week or two before. So obviously everyone just voted for her to keep their own jobs. You mean a political vote was determined by self-interest i'm shocked i'm shocked to hear this piece of information

Starting point is 00:26:29 indeed so anyway she won that but there was this rule that she had to come back to the parliament a motion had been passed that she was going to have to come back to the parliament within three days to tell them what her plan b is what's she going to do now so she's come back and she's basically just sticking to her guns saying, oh, no, I think my deal is the best. I'm going to tinker with it a little bit and then bring it back again for another vote, which no one thinks will pass. Isn't the deadline next week? I mean, I feel like we're really running out of time here.

Starting point is 00:26:59 It's about a month or two. And if we reach the deadline without being granted an extension by Europe and say, hey, can we have a bit longer to sort ourselves out? Then we get this so-called hard Brexit, just crashing out where there were no deals and nothing. And everyone thinks it'll be catastrophic, or most people think it will be catastrophic for the country. Basically, you've just got a few people that think that's what we should do, just leave Europe hard and be on our own and make new deals. Some people think Theresa May's deal is all right. Some people think we should do, just leave Europe hard and be on our own and make new deals. Some people think Theresa May's deal was all right. Some people think we should renegotiate with Europe. The

Starting point is 00:27:31 Labour Party seem to want a general election because they get a sniff of getting into power years earlier than they should have. But if a general election happens, no matter what the result, as far as I can see, all the same problems will be in place. It's not like a new prime minister is going to get a much better deal from Europe. There's increasing call for another referendum. Now the people have a better idea of what Brexit actually means, as opposed to all the lies that were told during the referendum. Maybe there should be another vote so people can have a second say, the people's vote. Lots of parliamentarians want it, but neither of the leaders are willing to say they want it because that's so seemingly undemocratic to go against

Starting point is 00:28:10 a vote decision that's already been made. And it would certainly be a very divisive thing for the country if it went to a vote again, because the people who voted for Brexit would feel like they're having their win snatched away from them by the establishment. I can't see a solution. I know what I personally want, but in terms of- Would you say what you personally want? Well, I personally want there to not be Brexit. Right. So I want whatever it takes for that to not happen.

Starting point is 00:28:36 And I think the only way where that would happen is another vote, because I don't think the politicians can just decide there's not going to be a Brexit. I think they would need a mandate, so they'd have to do another referendum. So the only way to get what I personally would like is another referendum. But I can't conceive of how another referendum can happen without the country tearing itself to pieces. And if there is another referendum, I'm not also sure what way it would go. It might just go the same way. I always give you a hard time about, tell me about Brexit. And there's many examples of me doing that on the cutting room floor where you didn't tell me about Brexit. It's just because this to me is the most astounding example of a news story that has gone on for, what, two years?

Starting point is 00:29:17 I mean, is that an over-exaggeration? But I feel like it was two years ago. Yeah, yeah. I think it may have even been just over two years ago, maybe. Like the way I mentally place it is I know I was at vidcon when i found out about the results i remember where i was sitting in like the lobby of one of the hotels where it came across probably on twitter about the brexit results it was june 2016 okay like there was this huge wave of feedback where people wanted me to make some video about brexit and for a long time I didn't. And then because nothing happened, I ended up making that video about like,

Starting point is 00:29:47 oh, the situation is who knows. And it is hilarious to me that that video is still relevant. Like I totally adjust the odds now, but it's like, I can't believe that a news story and something as important as this can be in suspended animation for so long? I think a big problem with this is, like, well, it's not, the reason this is such a problem

Starting point is 00:30:11 is that it doesn't split down partisan lines. That's an interesting point. That's a really interesting point. You have two massive arguments going on, right? Like, you've got all the parties themselves are split. The Labor Party and the Conservative themselves are split, the Labor Party and the Conservative Party are split about how they should deal with it. You can't just brute force it through Parliament, as Theresa May showed catastrophically. But also, if you started thinking, okay, what other coalitions could we form? Could we form a coalition of Conservatives and Labor people who support this method and get them to vote together to push it through.

Starting point is 00:30:45 But if you tried to do that, people would straightaway start running back to their partisan corners and say, you know, the labor's still saying, no, this is a chance for us to bring down the government and get power for ourselves. So we can't form coalitions and negotiate with them because, you know, this is our big chance. And likewise, the conservatives will be saying, no, we can't

Starting point is 00:31:05 do deals and sit down and be cooperative with the Labor Party because that will make them look prime ministerial and be taking the lead and we have to be opposed to them. So, people are still opposed in a partisan way, but they're also opposed to each other on this particular issue. So, it's just caused this fracturing that can't be stuck together. Maybe I'm missing something, but surely for the Labour Party to win, like if they're scheming that they want to get back in power, in a general election, wouldn't they have to be against the idea of Brexit? Yeah. This is a huge problem. Lots of people say- Okay, so I'm not being dumb here. I felt like I was missing something for a second.

Starting point is 00:31:42 Because Corbyn won't go out and say, oh, we'll let there be another vote. Because still saying I think there should be another vote or no Brexit is still, it's a bit of a third rail that you can't touch. So, he can't afford to align himself with that. So, what's he going to run as? His only thing he could run as is saying, I will make a better deal with Europe than Theresa May did. I'm a better dealmaker. I'll be able to get it done. I'll be able to get Brexit done the right way. And well, can he? I don't know. I doubt it. But he's still got to negotiate with these 27 countries that have a lot more power than the UK. And you're right. What will the election be fought on?

Starting point is 00:32:24 They just want another election, you know, because that's all oppositions do is wait for elections. And they've got a chance to have one earlier than they thought. Okay. So now admittedly, I'm about to express a very uninformed political opinion because the entirety of my Brexit news has come through you on this podcast. But like, just listening to you talk talk i'm thinking it through and i haven't really given it much serious thought and i'm not really doing that at this very moment but i suddenly have this real sinking concern that we're on a train of inevitability and that train might be called the worst of all possible worlds. If some kind of negotiation does happen,

Starting point is 00:33:12 it feels like surely the only way that happens is you end up with that Britain is still sort of in the EU in a way that nobody who voted for Brexit wanted. A lot of people will tell you that's exactly what Theresa May's current deal is. It kind of achieves Brexit and we're no longer part of the EU. We're still beholden to them in lots of ways. We've still got some deals with them that are okay, some that are not. We've got no power over them. We've got no voice at the table to change European policy, but we're controlled by it.

Starting point is 00:33:44 People who are opposed to Theresa May's deal, which is most of the parliament and most of the country, think that it's like nothing. And I think it's also probably what will end up happening, some form of it, because I think people are sick of it. And I think in the end people are going to just be like, well, we can't afford to crash out. We don't want an election, a general election.

Starting point is 00:34:02 We can't have another vote because it's undemocratic to ignore the first one. Oh, for God's sake, I'm just sick of it being in the news. Let's just sign Theresa May's deal and be done with it. I think that's what Theresa May's banking on, just some kind of fatigue. Well, again, this may be me being uninformed and also a man who sometimes doesn't mind rolling the dice, but just sitting here in like an isolated black room, knowing nothing about the outside world, I almost feel like I would rather roll the dice. But just sitting here in like an isolated black room knowing nothing about the outside world, I almost feel like I would rather roll the dice on maximum Brexit than worst of all possible worlds. Like the worst of everything just seems so terrible to have given up all of the special advantages that the UK had with the European Union, to have given it up for nothing.

Starting point is 00:34:43 Like it's totally cutting off your nose despite your own face. You are in like probably the smallest of the minorities of people. There are certainly people who think your way, but... I'm not saying that's a good idea, right? But I'm saying it's like, maximum Brexit is the high variance outcome. It could be totally terrible, but has a possibility of being good? Whereas the worst of all possible worlds just seems so terrible and stupid and like, like my mind reels at the thought of the lost human hours across the globe spent on thinking about and arguing over and negotiating Brexit, all to end up in a situation where the UK just lost all of the advantages but keeps all of the... It seems crazy. It's like, don't get me wrong. If I could make things happen, my preferred outcome would be to snap my fingers

Starting point is 00:35:40 and undo this whole thing. But if I have to choose between the worst of everything and maximum Brexit, I don't know. I kind of want to roll the dice. Like, how are these the options? These are such terrible, terrible options. And it's like, talking about redoing the referendum, I feel like I can make an argument for how democracy is never really settled. And if Brexit's really something people want to do, then you should expect that they would still vote for it if we had another referendum. It's like, I can make that argument, but it's unavoidably still feels undemocratic to be like, well, we're going to do it again. It's like such a perfectly bad situation from every angle. I can't believe it. I've also heard the argument, and I've heard every argument a million times. I have also heard the argument that it's very democratic for the parliamentarians to say,

Starting point is 00:36:29 we've been trying to do what you've asked for. We can't make it work. So we're taking it back to you again. And when you say it that way, suddenly it seems beautifully democratic. It's like, you gave us this instruction. We've tried to do it. We can't make it work. We can't figure out exactly what you want. We can't figure out how to make, you know. So just tell us again. Let us reframe the

Starting point is 00:36:50 question for you. Here's what the prime minister is taking to Europe. Or would you prefer this? Or would you prefer that? Or if you changed your mind, do you want to stay in Europe after all, now that you've seen what the negotiation looks like? If you put it that way, it seems quite democratic, but that's just spinning it. I think there are a couple of interesting different democratic systems where that's a fundamental idea that actions of the state or actions of the group require the ongoing support of the voting members of that group. It's also how it works in the UK, isn't it? If we have a general election and they can't form a government, you know, they can't get the numbers or no one can form a government,

Starting point is 00:37:29 we have another general election. That's the parliament saying we couldn't form a government based on the vote you just did. Do it again. What I mean is, like, you can have democratic systems where you have a proposition, like, where the UK is part of the European Union and that just requires a constant amount of support

Starting point is 00:37:44 in the general public for it to be a thing that is maintained. That's a kind of system that you can have. But the reason why I say it still feels a little undemocratic is because how it was pitched in the beginning matters in the kind of system that currently exists. Even though it was like non-binding, nothing thing, like it was pitched as we're going to make this decision and so then like i think that's the problem is like an optics problem of the government going back on the thing that it pitched but it's just i cannot believe this situation i can't believe that nothing has changed in two years i can't believe that we're a month away. Yeah, I know.

Starting point is 00:38:30 Well, again, keep me informed, Brady. I look forward to hearing more. There could be a whole other hello internet between now and Brexit. Apologies to people who follow it closely and are upset by my ham-fisted description. And then the inevitable apologies to people who follow it closely and think I sound like a totally uninformed person, because on this topic, I 100% am. You are. Are you having problems remembering your countless passwords? Are you worried about security? Are you sick of storing your passwords in a notebook, which is full of crossings out and some words, which aren't quite legible because you wrote them in a bit of a hurry and now you can't read your own handwriting? Look, if you're answering yes to these questions, well, it's quite possible you're me,

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Starting point is 00:40:18 slash hellointernet. The first 200 people who use the offer code hello internet will get 10 off dash lane premium that's 200 tims getting the discount so get in there while you can dash lane.com slash hello internet and the offer code is also hello internet our thanks to them for supporting this episode. I have bullet points, Brady, for my corner. YouTube wants to be TV corner. There's always lots of bullet points when you put anything about YouTube in our show notes. I always just do these like three or four word teasy things and then you always have this like document of bullet points.

Starting point is 00:41:03 Well, I mean, I don't know if I should even tell you this, but whenever you see a bunch of bullet points well i mean i don't know if i should even tell you this but whenever you see a bunch of bullet points on our shared document yeah i have a private hello internet show notes document that's just for me that has more bullet points but you don't get to see all the bullet points why don't i get to see that one it's full of secrets that's why okay but yes the youtube wants to be TV Corner has many bullet points from me. And when we brought it into the world last time, I wanted to talk about a whole bunch of things. But of course, the dreadfully delightful YouTube Rewind, just like it does, came as a hurricane that destroyed all other conversation on this topic. And just like a real hurricane hurricane like it comes through the

Starting point is 00:41:45 youtube world and it's it's this maelstrom of energy and fury and destruction and rage then it dissipates and is gone and everyone totally forgets about it until next year like yeah when i was clearing up the show notes i saw the thing about youtube rewind which at this point is what six weeks back in the timeline i was was like, oh yeah, I forgot about that thing already. Which is kind of an achievement about like, oh, your corporate thing is both tremendously enraging and completely forgettable. That's pretty much how American politics works these days too, by the way, Greg. Sounds like a missing out. There's some new scandal that everyone's like, this is the biggest scandal to rock American politics in a thousand years.

Starting point is 00:42:27 And there's going to be impeachments and the Republic's going to fall. And then like two weeks later, it's like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. I think there's much for people to learn from that pattern. But moving right along, the thing that I actually really wanted to talk about last time, and I have to talk about this time is in youtube wants to be tv corner youtube has now officially put in the grave an old and fantastic feature of youtube something that took advantage of the internet nature of the video platform and that is YouTube annotations. YouTube, as of the 15th, has deleted all of the annotations across all of the videos. Everybody who ever spent hours fiddling with the annoying editor trying to get a square to be exactly where you want it to be on the screen and to appear at the right moment and disappear at the other moment. All of those hours of human labor, YouTube has set alight to and it is dust in the past and exists no more.

Starting point is 00:43:34 Also, Gray, that's not just setting alight to those hours we spent fiddling with like placing them on the screen. But a lot of the times we like made our videos with annotations in mind you know click here to go to part two or you could create a choose your own adventure or like you actually integrated it into your creation i think it's a real betrayal what they've done like first of all they gave us this system to work with and then they said we're not letting you use it anymore but we're going to keep the old ones because we know how much work went into it. Don't worry. And now they've gone back on that as well. I'm not particularly passionate about it, but I do think it's a total betrayal. I don't think that's an exaggeration.

Starting point is 00:44:14 And I was thinking a lot about annotations because I really do think they were, while clunky, they were a thing that took advantage of the internet nature of the video platform and again i constantly have this feeling that youtube does not leverage what its unique advantages are and one of those unique advantages is it's like it's it's a really internetty video platform and annotations allowing you to put to put links to anywhere on the screen at any point in the video. That was internet-y. It was hyperlinks for videos. And like you said, many people made interesting things around that.

Starting point is 00:44:54 Like I remember Hank had his truth or fail game show that was based around the concept of annotations. You could do a thing where there was like an invisible annotation. So someone would only know there was a clickable region if they happened to put their mouse in the right spot at the right time. And that was a thing that I loved doing on the old videos. It was like a fun game of people being able to find something that was like a furtherance of a joke by clicking an invisible link. And then it's fun for people in the comments to see like,

Starting point is 00:45:24 oh, where did he hide these things? And the annotations for creators, you know, because YouTube has over the years to some extent talked to creators behind the scenes about stuff like at various conferences and things. And in the earlier days in particular, the annotations were for a lot of people like a real ax to grind

Starting point is 00:45:43 because YouTube didn't make them work on mobile when mobile started becoming a thing. And YouTube's infuriating line was always like, annotations don't work on mobile. That's why we can't get them to work on your videos because they don't work, right? Which is this circular logic. Yeah. Like, and it's so frustrating because it was always like YouTube, they don't work on mobile because you're not making them work on mobile. Like it's not a thing that happened to you.

Starting point is 00:46:13 It's a thing that you have decided. And if you want to have interactive video, like say something like Bandersnatch, the latest Black Mirror, guess what? It's a thing that you can do on mobile. You can make something interactive. But they clearly decided a long time ago that they just wanted to get rid of this. There's this whole bunch of us now, myself included, in all these videos from years gone by, looking like fools going,

Starting point is 00:46:40 click here, press here, click on that box there, giving people instructions, like looking out of the screen at them in good faith, telling them, if you do this, this will happen. And now it doesn't happen anymore. Yeah. It really feels like a betrayal because when YouTube originally said they were not going to let us put annotations on anymore, it was always like, but don't worry, your old annotations will stay. Like, oh, but they're actually just going to stay for two or three years until you eventually decide you don't want to deal with it anymore. And you're just going to delete them. We need to put that tweet on a billboard, Greg. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:47:11 Tell me the real reason then what's really going on. Well, I think the reason that they're doing it is like the name of the corner. YouTube wants to be TV. And I think from their perspective, they want to encourage the kind of viewing that people do on Netflix, that you just like you sit in front of YouTube for a while and you just let them pour it down your throat like the passive consumer that you are and just sit there and absorb it. And why is that in YouTube's best interest? Because they can make more advertising money that way. I think it's partly that they make more advertising money that way. I think it's partly that they make more advertising money that way. I think it's partly just the idea of watch time because annotations could let you go to interesting places that weren't YouTube.

Starting point is 00:47:53 And this falls also into the category of, like, every way that YouTube is able to pull levers that prevent creators from linking outside of YouTube, they are turning up all of those dials. Like the one that really irritates me now is if you click on a link in the description of someone's video, it takes you to like that warning page where it's like, hey, I don't know if you were aware guy, but you just clicked on a link that's going to take you outside of YouTube. And they have some like dumb disclaimer, like YouTube's not responsible for the scary stuff

Starting point is 00:48:24 that's on the internet. Are you sure you want to proceed with this link that you clicked in the description? And what kills me about it is the way they design the interface. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah. I may be seeing it because I'm partly in a beta for some of the new stuff, but the way they design the yes, no dialogue, I believe is intentionally confusing because I have to really look at it every time to be like which is the one that i click so that i go to the link that i clicked on you bastards so i think removing annotations is part of that because you could link to places that weren't

Starting point is 00:48:56 youtube and then people could heaven forbid leave youtube and go do something else. So I think that's part of why they've taken it away. And I'm feeling really particularly irritated by it because just a couple days ago when I knew this was coming, now, of course, this is a side effect of my tremendous output, but I went through all of my old videos to try as best I could fix everything that was now broken because there were no annotations. And what put the little cards in instead and things like that? Yeah. So it was like I went to the end screens and tried to adjust the cards so that it would look somewhat reasonable,

Starting point is 00:49:39 but I have ended up now in what is a double frustration. I've ended up with videos that have the last 20 or 30 seconds are really ugly and nonsensical because there's stuff I've put up on the screen, which doesn't mean anything now because the annotations are gone. And then I have to try to cover it up with the extremely limited card options that YouTube gives you. It's like a double insult. It's extra frustrating. Well, unfortunately for me, I have 3,533 videos to worry about at the moment, so I won't be doing that. I think that is probably an

Starting point is 00:50:10 excellent decision. But those videos are still active things. People go through your old catalog. In an ideal world where you could pause time and go through and fix all of that, you would. I am an extreme outlier that I'm a creator who's able to take the time to go go through and fix all of that you would like i am an extreme outlier that i'm a creator who's able to take the time to go back through and like try to make it okay because you know i only have 20 videos and the last thing that really kills me and makes me genuinely angry is that youtube had this little banner when you logged in as a creator for a while that's set up at the top hey just so you know annotations aren't getting much love from users so we're going to remove them you know next week just be prepared that's the exact wording they used too wasn't it yeah that was the exact wording i took a screenshot

Starting point is 00:50:57 of it because it really made me think you like annotations aren't getting much love from users. Like what an incredibly passive aggressive blame shifting way to phrase it. Like you mean the tool that you haven't updated in four years that you've been trying to kill. Users haven't been clicking on so you're going to get rid of. And so I looked at my statistics to see how much do users actually use annotations. And it is crazy to me, because now you're talking about videos that are like three years old at this point. But my old videos with annotations

Starting point is 00:51:33 would get twice or four times as many click-throughs and pure clicks as the alternative tools that YouTube provided on the new videos that were like brand newly released. It was just infuriating. It's like, again, I know I'm a little bit of an outlier here, but it's like, hey, annotations are interesting. If you do them well, people click on them. People click on them a lot. And your new options are half to a quarter as good before we even factor in that annotations only worked on the desktop. Like everyone using it on a phone couldn't even click on it. So anyway, I wanted to mention it because it makes me really angry and I'm doubly angry that I spent a whole bunch of time trying to fix it and you can't even really fix it.

Starting point is 00:52:28 And it's the total broken promise from YouTube. And again, it's a way that they squander the best resource they have, which is this group of creators and the internet-iness of their own platform. And like, I will take my resentment of YouTube removing annotations to my grave. This for me is a real hashtag never forget moment. The time that YouTube deleted annotations. I feel like I've learned though. I'm learning that everything they do can be taken away. So I build that into some of my decisions now in the way I design my videos.

Starting point is 00:53:04 I'll tell you the thing that I'm afraid of is i am afraid that even the end cards we have youtube is going to take away i'm designing my videos now with that in mind that they'll go away that is super interesting because i'm in like a beta that lets me see some of the new stuff that youtube has and i'm really aware that the end cards are nowhere to be seen in their new stuff and they've even removed like some links about where to find the end cards and since they introduced end cards i don't know whatever it is two years ago maybe a year and a half ago they've introduced no new options and no new features with the end cards so like i look at those things and i really wonder like okay like my statue of liberty video and the federal land video I designed so that at the end there's like a nice frame for where I want to put the end cards but even when

Starting point is 00:53:52 I did that I thought am I being an idiot like are they just going to take this away too in a year so that this isn't even an option and if YouTube wants to be TV that's the direction that they would go so it's that is really interesting for me to hear that you're already doing that with your video productions. Well, at the end of a lot of videos, like for example, at the end of a Numberphile video, I'll usually have two little boxes on the screen of other videos that I think people might want to go and watch. So there'll be a little box, little titles under those boxes of what those videos are called. And in those boxes is where i'll put the end cards that people can click on and there's a thumbnail of the video but underneath the end card so burned into the video

Starting point is 00:54:32 i actually have the video playing in that box you know highlights of that video so if the end card wasn't there you would at least have a box on the screen with a little tv in it playing that video that i'm talking to people about so even if they can't click on it they could at least have a box on the screen with a little TV in it playing that video that I'm talking to people about. So, even if they can't click on it, they could at least click on a card or something I put in the description or they could see the title and go and find something. But so that if it was completely denuded by YouTube for some reason, it would still look like it made sense. Even if it wasn't clickable and doing me any good, at least it wouldn't look like a big hole. Right. Okay. I see what you're saying. So, so yeah you don't look like you just have two holes you have at least something playing yeah the two things that really make me suspicious that the end cards are going away one of them is again i was digging through all my analytics which i find very interesting and then like i dump into my own spreadsheets to take a look at. But one of the things I found deeply concerning is,

Starting point is 00:55:26 so at the end of your video, you can put up a link to a specific video, or you can put up what YouTube calls best for the viewer, where the algorithm bots will pick which video they think people are most likely to click on. And I was looking through my own data to see, see like what are the click-through rates for the like the various different kinds of things that you can put at the end and when i eliminated videos where i'm linking to somebody else's channel and saying like go over here like for

Starting point is 00:55:58 the crossovers that i've done if i pick what i think is the best video for the viewers to watch, I outperform on average when the YouTube bot's trying to pick the best video. And this makes me suspicious. I feel like I shouldn't be able to get a 7% click through when I pick a video. And when I let YouTube pick a video, I only get a 5% click through. I'm not surprised by that. That seems completely logical to me. Why? Well, because you have a human understanding of what's just happened and what your audience will want. Whereas the algorithm hasn't even watched the video. It's just kind of guessing a bit. Like I thought you'd outperform it by more than that, to be honest,

Starting point is 00:56:43 if it's only 7% versus 5%. Yeah. And considering some people might not even have a recommendation. So they're like, oh, bugger it. Let's just let YouTube decide. Whereas someone like you who's more thoughtful has, oh, no, I think this is the right video. Like, I'm not surprised. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:58 See, whereas I feel very confident, like, YouTube should crush me on this task. YouTube should know much better what people want to click on than I want to click on. Not with such a small sample size of material of your collection, which you know intimately. If you were giving them the whole pool of YouTube videos to send them away to, then maybe they'd start having a chance. Yeah, YouTube would totally win in that case. You're 100% right. I still feel like even with my 15 videos like they should be able to pick better than i do but okay i don't know it just made me suspicious and then the other thing is again like that they haven't added anything new and it's like youtube if you want to make me feel better about end cards here's my feature request which seems like the most obvious

Starting point is 00:57:40 feature request in the world that you haven't implemented. And I'm even going to give you what you want. I know you want people to stay on YouTube. I want to be able to put a card at the end of the video that picks the best video for the viewer from someone else's channel. Like, I think that seems like an obvious card to put at the end. So like, for example, if I put up a new video, I can put a card at the end that for the viewer, YouTube tries to our other videos i would like to be able to say like hey youtube you pick the best video to show this person from the other person's channel but you customize the channel so you're not going to send them off to logan paul by mistake yeah but like i could say right pick a video of one of three thousand of number files videos yeah and show that to the viewer in this end card yeah like don't make me pick one because and you're totally right like the bigger the catalog is for sure the worse i'm gonna do about picking something but like i think that would be really beneficial for like non-specific crossovers

Starting point is 00:58:58 like when youtubers appear in other youtubers channels yeah like i know that the click-through rates when you put up the subscribe button for someone else's channel are basically zero like that little circle of the other person's channel is garbage and worthless so it's like let youtube try to pick if these two vloggers have been in each other's videos you pick the best of the other channels videos to suggest to the user like i think it's such an obvious feature that it's crazy to me they haven't introduced it. And it'll be different from user to user as well. Yeah, it'll be different for each person. So I don't know, makes me worried. But I'm upset and

Starting point is 00:59:35 I'm grumpy about all of this. To be fair, now that I think about it, when I said to you before that I'm surprised you're surprised that YouTube wasn't outperforming you. The thing I didn't take into account was that you could only pick one of your videos for all your audience, whereas YouTube could change it from person to person. So that would give them a bit of a foot up. Yeah. And it's an interesting thing because I'm always kind of curious, like what's YouTube up to? And I sometimes see like when a video goes up, you can see like the algorithm is trying to guess about what should the video be or like doing a little testing. You can see that it recommends different things if you do different stuff. So that is also why I'm surprised.

Starting point is 01:00:12 It's like it's picking for a user. It's not just picking in general what video does it think people should watch. Hello, Internet. Now, here we are towards the end of January, and I'm willing to bet that at the beginning of January, many of you set a New Year's resolution, a goal to say, eat better and be healthier. How's that going? Well, if you're having a hard time sticking with your resolution to be a healthier person, HelloFresh is here to help you. HelloFresh is the company that does all the planning, shopping, and prepping of your meals so that you can focus on enjoying the new year and more easily be a healthier you. I don't know if you're like me at all, but boy, do I hate going to the supermarket. And especially for fiddly things like heads of lettuce or avocado. I don't know how to find the ones that I'm trying to find. But no,

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Starting point is 01:02:33 all the kids are talking about it's what all the kids are talking about they've been not overwhelming but a solid number of tims have said wow you should talk about this on hello internet because it's a black mirror thing and because it's a bit pioneering. I have a lot of mixed feelings about Black Mirror now. But one of the feelings that I have is, this is the most hipstery I've ever felt. It's like, we talked about Black Mirror before it was cool. Yeah, I feel like that.

Starting point is 01:02:58 It's if everyone's jumping on it a bit now and it's a bit like, ah. It's also the thing that I genuinely think that first season was a very different experience before there was a concept of what black mirror is and so i don't go back and listen to old stuff but i can only imagine like kind of cringing now to listen to us gushing over black mirror but i think it really was a different thing when there were just the original three episodes it was not like we've had four and a half seasons of this thing i think they continue to do interesting stuff and i've liked some of the more recent stuff but bandersnatch the most recent of recent yeah and you can argue

Starting point is 01:03:38 the most interesting of interesting in terms of like they've done something interesting yeah so do you want to explain how it works for someone who isn't familiar with it? Okay. If you used annotations on YouTube, you would know how this works very well. Bandersnatch is Netflix. It must have been an enormous pain in the butt to do, but making this custom solution so that this episode of Black Mirror is a choose your own adventure. That as you're watching the episode, at certain points, there is a decision to be made. And on the screen, it will say, you know, do you want to turn left down the street? Or do you want to turn right down the street?

Starting point is 01:04:15 You know, do you want to eat frosted flakes for breakfast? Or do you want some garbage cereal that you're going to regret? Like it gives you these little choices as the episode goes along. And then the character in the show does the thing you told them to do. Right. The character in the show follows whatever path that you have chosen. Quite seamlessly. It's quite nicely edited together. So it still feels pretty much like a normal TV program. It's not like everything stops and pauses. It just flows. I'm going to slightly disagree with you there, but I will say it was a technical achievement what they did.

Starting point is 01:04:48 It's interesting and a technical achievement. Not totally seamless, but it's not like everything grinds to a halt. Yeah. You know? That's what is going on with Bandersnatch and why people are talking about it is because of this ability for you to choose different options, which then, of course, everybody enjoys discussing which options they found with other people. And like, it makes for a good conversation point.

Starting point is 01:05:10 Yeah. So what did you think of the episode, Brady? Let me put a little disclaimer at the start. Okay. And that is, I didn't watch all in one go. I think I watched, I got like partway through, and then I had other things to tend to, and I didn't finish it until the second night. So I watched it over two nights. And I don't know what people have been saying because I haven't been reading reviews. And because it's so popular and everyone's talking about it,

Starting point is 01:05:35 I'm guessing everybody has been quite liking it. And if that's the case, I think it's overrated. If everyone hates it, then I think they're being unfair because it was all right. But if everyone's saying it's good and cool, I definitely don't agree with that either. I didn't enjoy it that much, and I'm not eager for the next incarnation of this.

Starting point is 01:05:56 It wasn't an experience I particularly enjoyed, and I have more criticisms than compliments. What about you? Yeah. It's funny because it didn't occur to me that like i don't actually know what people are saying about the episode but still the word i was going to say is overrated right even though like yeah i don't have any concept but it's like i just assume that the internet totally loved this and i never even really reflected on that assumption that like oh i could be wrong and people hate it it's rotten tomato score is 73 so not overwhelming

Starting point is 01:06:34 but okay well maybe then that's appropriately rated maybe i can take overrated back and feel like 76 like 7 out of 10 feels like okay yeah but my feeling of this okay well i mean there's an elephant in the room that we need to talk about which is one real problem with this episode that i just i could not get past and it shows up very early in the episode. And it's that fat moron from the British Airlines safety video is in this episode. Yeah. And it's like, he goes, Oi! Oi, mate! How are you doing?

Starting point is 01:07:14 Like, oh, f*** no! Like, what is this guy? What is he doing here? Like, this is my Black Mirror nightmare. This guy who thinks he's funny and is like maybe funny if you were like the broadest of troglodytes and at best he can make you mildly chuckle it's like here he is like showing up in your tv show and like clearly not belonging with the other actors who were outclassing it it's like god damn it he was so

Starting point is 01:07:45 distracting yeah oh it was awful and it's like it's funny because again i just i was on a plane yesterday when i was delayed and i was watching him in what i swear is the fourth incantation of this british airways safety video where now like they're they're bringing in like the poor woman from absolutely fabulous and making her say like they're dragging everybody in. But the video is becoming more and more about him. It's like every iteration he's in it even more. And I just I look at this kind of like this British Airways video is the worst decision you've ever made because you're imprinting yourself in the minds of hundreds of millions of people as this thing. Like, you'll never not be this thing, guy. And that is like my one tiny piece of feeling like I get revenge on him for like all of the

Starting point is 01:08:34 hours of having to watch him explain safety to me. It's like, you'll never escape this. You'll never outlive this. But so anyway, he's in the episode and I didn't like him. But more interestingly, I think the whole concept of choose your own adventure, it sounds like it's a good idea, but it really isn't. I think it's a fundamentally flawed medium to do the choose your own adventure stuff. I've seen it in books. I've seen games try to do it. But it's like the choose your own adventure stuff. Like I've seen it in books. I've seen games try to do it. But it's like the choose your own adventure stuff. I just fundamentally, I feel like it encourages the user

Starting point is 01:09:12 to get bored with what's occurring. And it ends up becoming like a slog through finding what the different interesting endings are. I can't enjoy any of those things as the thing they're supposed to be. A Choose Your Own Adventure book is less enjoyable than a book that someone just thought out. And a Choose Your Own Adventure episode is like, okay, it's an interesting novelty,

Starting point is 01:09:37 kind of, but it's just not a good TV show. It's just not a good episode of TV. That's my feeling on this is like people try to do this and i've i've basically never seen it done successfully yeah i mean can you think of like a really great example of something that was a choose your own adventure medium i mean i liked the books when i was a kid right you know and you did all the usual things having your fingers stuck in 19 different pages so you could go back steps and yeah like i did that too, yeah. Yeah, I think when you're young and you're just learning to read and you're just like,

Starting point is 01:10:09 your brain's more malleable and it's just more interested and I don't know, it worked as a kid. I can't imagine reading one now as an adult though. I'm not just counting those as children's books, but I view them exactly as what you said. They're not really books, they're actually tools to get children to read. Yeah, yeah. Again, when I was a kid, I didn't mind those computer games, which was, you know, you had a fork in the road, turn left and turn right. But that's because you didn't have many other options at the computer games in those days. And, you know, the fact you were even playing a computer game completely blew your mind. But in terms of this TV show, obviously I haven't experienced it on a TV show before

Starting point is 01:10:45 because the technology hasn't existed. But my problem was when I watch something on Netflix and a TV show, I want to watch something. I kind of want to be a bit more passive. And not only did I have to make decisions all the time, but I always wondered when I was going to have to make another decision. Like every single little thing that happened, I was thinking, oh, he's going to walk through the door.

Starting point is 01:11:07 Am I going to get to choose the door? Oh no, he chose the door. Oh, am I going to get to, oh no, he got to decide. Oh, now I get to make a decision. And this kind of little thing on my shoulder saying, are you going to get to decide this or not? Like really distracted me from just like enjoying the thing that was made. Also, most of my Netflix watching is with my wife.

Starting point is 01:11:29 So who's going to make the decisions? And we're talking about the decisions. And no, no, I think we should do that. I don't know. Oh, let's choose yours. Oh, you got us killed. You ruined it. So it took the communal watching thing.

Starting point is 01:11:41 I don't know, it kind of did. It added to it a bit because we were joking about what to choose but it didn't work for me in that way and my other problem was it was meta to the like point of pain wasn't it it was a choose your own adventure thing about a guy making a choose your own adventure computer game based on a choose your own adventure book and it became so meta that he then realizes that he's being controlled by someone outside, i.e. you and me. And it did all these meta things that you would do with a new technology in the first outing of the technology. Like the idea of all these funny things to do, like, let's make a Choose Your Own Adventure TV show, but let's make this one about a Choose Your Own

Starting point is 01:12:22 Adventure maker, or let's have him realize he's been controlled. These feel like something you would do with a technology several years in, you know, it's the new twist, but they kind of did every little meta in joke, wink, wink thing you could do with the technology. The first time I ever got to use the technology and that kind of ruined it in a way. Why not make the first choose your own adventure TV show just legitimately a story? And he never realizes he's been controlled. And he's not making a Choose Your Own Adventure show himself. It felt like they just went all in on the first hand.

Starting point is 01:12:54 It was way too many Choose Your Own Adventures levels. It really felt like, hey, guys, you could just pick one of these, right? Like, it could be a story about someone who is writing a choose your own adventure book and we can leave it at that, right? And that's why we are also choosing as we're watching. You could do a very interesting episode about like the concept of free will. And that could be the reason

Starting point is 01:13:16 that you're doing this as a choose. Like what does picking add to this media experience? There should be something in the narrative that reflects it. But yeah, I completely agree. It like they they had a writer's room meeting thinking of everything that could possibly work in this medium and they did it all at once and the part for me which was really like i can't deal with this is when they start talking about netflix in one of the endings that's when that jumped its own shark of choose your own adventure-ness and meta-ness, wasn't it?

Starting point is 01:13:47 Like, you know. Yeah, it was too much. It's like, guys, I'm barely along with you here. And now that you're also making this a choose your own adventure about Netflix, it's just like, it was just too much. It was just too much. I also, and this just could be the paths that I took. And obviously the first thing I did after watching it was Google to see the people who'd made the flow chart map. So I could see, you know,

Starting point is 01:14:14 all the paths. And when you look at that, it looks kind of interesting, but it felt surprisingly linear. Like I felt like any time I made a decision they didn't want me to make, they slapped me back onto the path they wanted me on pretty quick oh you're dead go back three steps I felt like I was being railroaded I think there was a very poor choice made in the show and that is in the beginning of the episode you know you're trying to make this video game and you're just a guy working on your own and then you manage to get you manage to get an interview with a company with a guy who is like your hero. And you go into the office

Starting point is 01:14:48 and they give you the choices like, do you want to work for the company or don't you want to work for the company? And this is clearly the first actual choice that they're giving you. Like there's a couple of little things. As opposed to just music choices and things like that, yeah.

Starting point is 01:15:00 There's two previous choices. It's music and it's the cereal, which are obviously just like, get used to, we're going to ask you questions they're not real choices this is the first real thing that they give you and i don't know what this looks like on the actual flow chart but it seems very clear like everyone's going to pick work for the company it's the obvious thing to do that's what i picked yeah but they set it up in the story and i like i think this was an intentional decision that that's a losing option immediately you just lose and then they start you over and i feel like that was a bad call because then it does it sets up the feeling of of like am i just getting railroaded this whole time i agree like i agree it makes every single

Starting point is 01:15:42 question feel like you're just gonna railroad me and it makes every single question feel like you're just going to railroad me and it makes the dead ends feel much more obvious like i i think that was a really poor choice to make the thing everyone is going to pick be an immediate loss it was not good for the rest of the experience you're right the first branch should have branched a bit more. Yeah. It needed to do something so that you felt like something was actually occurring. Now, the thing I will give them credit for is at some point Netflix just booted me out of the show. And I presume that's like, oh, I found all the endings or all the endings they care to show me. Like I spent an evening just like keep clicking. And then Netflix was eventually like, okay, you're done with bandersnatch and they did

Starting point is 01:16:25 have a lot of different places for you to go and things that like there were branches within it but i feel like the way they set that first thing up will make you feel like they're fewer than they really are but it's a delicate thing and one of the reasons why I feel like the choose-your-own-adventure medium is flawed is perhaps one of the best examples I've ever seen. If I have to pick, like, what's the greatest example of this? It's a video game called Firewatch, which I can genuinely recommend to everyone, even if you're not a video game player. Because it's just a beautiful game where you spend most of your time walking through the woods and there is like a choose your own adventure element and things happen but it's like going to a national park for an afternoon and it's a really good story and they have professional

Starting point is 01:17:14 voice actors and i absolutely loved it and i thought man that is just like a seamless experience tremendous a plus recommend to everyone. Spoilers. So, of course, then I go right back to the start and I'm like, I want to play this again. I want to see what the other options are. And the reason it felt like such a seamless experience the first time is because all of your choices are totally meaningless. And they're just going to move, like, they're carefully moving you down the one path. So it's like, oh, this was all just a lie. Like, I wasn't making any choices.

Starting point is 01:17:46 And I feel like that's a problem intrinsic to this medium that like it's very hard to branch and keep it a story. But if you have a very good story, it can't branch. And so you're always having to pick like one of these two things. And if you have a very good story, like why don't you just make it a story? Why don't you just make it an episode instead? There's also a real FOMO problem where if you do make good branches with good stories, when you're doing it, you're always worried, oh, I wish I'd taken the other choice. Oh,

Starting point is 01:18:22 what's the ending I didn't see? And when you come to the end, there's this real feeling of you're not satisfied. And I don't want to sit there and have to, you know, spend a whole evening on it like you did and try every single branch and see every possible ending. But my personality means I probably will do that. And I don't think that's a good thing to have created. Like, you know, when I watch my Netflix at the end of the night, I don't want to go to sleep and think, oh, what if I'd chosen that and what have I missed? Is there a way better ending that everyone else is watching? It's not good. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:18:47 A place where I will give it its technical achievement that I thought was handled really well is when you start over, the decision to just flash little sections of everything that you've done to like catch you back up to where you are. Yeah, that was good.

Starting point is 01:19:01 Like that was good. It was a great decision that could have easily gone wrong. They could have done that the wrong way and i'm pretty sure i could have to watch more closely than i cared to but i'm pretty sure that they changed some of those little flashes so they were slightly different as well like it felt more interesting to watch those flashes sometimes again it was an interesting technical achievement but i I can't feel like, like a good episode of Black Mirror leaves you thinking about something. Yeah. It leaves an idea in your head.

Starting point is 01:19:32 Nosedive as an episode is like, oh, this totalitarian nightmare is slowly coming true every day. Like, it's a thing that you think about. And Bandersnatch as a story was just so all over the place. I can't even say, like like what is the idea of this was the idea that we have no free will like not really like there's nothing here like there's just a big mess of ideas and none of them really stands out and it makes for a really poor narrative they were so preoccupied with whether they could do it they didn't stop to think if they should that's very true brady so like i don't regret the evening that i spent i don't regret it but i wouldn't

Starting point is 01:20:09 recommend it i feel like i would recommend it as a circus curiosity i feel like i would recommend it but as an interesting one-off do you think this is the start i mean obviously netflix have built the capability now. Surely they didn't just build that capability for one show. Are we going to see a whole rash of programs like this now? Here's my prediction. I think there will be at most no more than three shows like this ever produced on Netflix and maybe only one more because I think it works as a circus freak. I don't think it works as a genre. Do you think they know that and they've built it just to give themselves a little subscriber spike for a month or two? Possibly. I can easily imagine that they think it's a good

Starting point is 01:20:57 idea because being able to choose your own adventure sounds like a good idea, but I just don't think it is. I tell you what, they're also harvesting a lot of data from it. I've already seen like newspaper articles saying, you know, English people love tea more because they were less likely to pour the tea over their computer keyboard than American viewers and stuff like that. So maybe this is just going to be a big data harvesting thing about all our preferences and they're going to start reading our minds. Yeah. But again, you need people to use it. I think this would grow really tiresome as a repeated viewing experience. I don't think people are going to go for it. I think it's a total gimmick. I don't know if Netflix knows that or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are very, very few things on Netflix that are ever made like this. I would

Starting point is 01:21:41 even give it pretty good odds that there's no more than three at most including bandersnatch big co big co this episode's gonna come back to haunt you if there's like a thousand episodes of it and people are listening to you with your your big bold prediction there yeah i like i could totally be wrong like you know i'm maybe i may be taking the temperature of the people wrongly because i haven't listened to the people at all so i'm just imposing my thoughts upon them right i think it's a circus, so there's only going to be one. So yeah, this could totally come back to bite me in the ass. We'll see.

Starting point is 01:22:12 So I recommend it. Brady doesn't. Just thought maybe we should end the show with a new corner. Yeah. This is going to be Christmas card corner because obviously we've received a lot of christmas cards with questions and topics that people want us to cover we only got through a tiny fraction of them with our 12 days of hello internet since you left gray we've received that many cards again at the post box so the amount of cards we've got has doubled since you were here right so you saw how big that box was. You can double that in your

Starting point is 01:22:45 head. I'd rather not. That was a lot of cards. So if you go to podcastpostcards.com, which is the site where I occasionally upload postcards from our flag referendum, that website for a while has been taken over by Christmas cards. And I'm going to be putting Christmas cards on there so you can see what people sent in, read some of their questions and letters. At the moment I've been putting ones on there that we've already discussed just because I thought people would want to see what they look like. So at the moment you're probably going to be seeing ones that seem familiar because we talked about them. But later on I'm going to start putting some on there that haven't made it onto the show. But because we've also got all of these questions from Tim's

Starting point is 01:23:27 and the only way you can ask great questions at the moment is through these cards because of Project Cyclops, I thought maybe occasionally we could do a Christmas card corner and work our way through some more of those questions that have come in. Okay. You have a Christmas card for us? Yeah, I've got one here.

Starting point is 01:23:45 This one came from Sandra who sent a lovely card, which I love even more because inside she drew a little portrait of Audrey and Lulu, which is really cute. And a question that Sandra asked that I thought we could discuss to end the show is, which actors would play you in a movie? Maybe you can choose for each other then yourselves and see if they match what character to play you in a movie or what character to play me in a movie gray i actually know who i want to play you i'm gonna look up his name who's gonna play me gray i swear brady i'm not trying to inflate you or anything here. But there's something about looks-wise who would be movie Brady, and I can't get Brad Pitt out of my head. Oh, dude.

Starting point is 01:24:34 End the show right now. I'm rushing downstairs and telling my wife that. Yeah, just to take you down a tiny bit, closer to World War Z Brad Pitt than, say, Fight Club Brad Pitt. wife that yeah like not like just to take you down a tiny bit closer like world war z brad pitt than say fight club brad pitt right but it's like i don't know it seems kind of right in my head for the look brad pitt doesn't strike me as matching you very personality wise but he is a pretty good actor when he wants to be i feel like this actor thing is really like a discussion point that people like but rarely do i meet someone

Starting point is 01:25:06 who i feel like oh this person obviously has like some actor who would represent them i'm so happy like i almost don't know if i should tell you who's gonna play you in the movie now so you don't have to hello internet the movie is going to be starring bread Pitt as Brady Haran. And in the role of CGP Grey, I'm going to cast the actor Michael Shannon. Michael Shannon. I don't know who Michael Shannon is. You look him up. Yeah, now we'll find out the truth here.

Starting point is 01:25:36 I mean, he doesn't bear a striking resemblance to you, but, you know, put a pair of glasses on him and change his hair to a bit and it'll do. But I also think he would play you really well because he's an actor who I think plays kind of, he could play that kind of hyper rational, almost robotic, slightly likable as well, but in that kind of cold way. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen this guy in a movie. He's in one of the Superman movies as the villain. I i've seen bits of that but the villain was really bland and

Starting point is 01:26:09 so i like it didn't really stand out but here's here's the thing i know who michael shannon is and when you said the name i'm like i know this name from somewhere i haven't seen him in any movies but what i know him from is this amazing youtube video where he reads this letter from the head of a sorority to her pledges about how they're supposed to act on like a party night and how they really need to like get together this night and show like what delta gamma chi is like. And he's doing it sort of dry, and then he gets increasingly angry as time goes on. And it's amazing. I've probably watched it like 10 times, because there's something about it, which is just fantastic. If people want to know the performance that got him the role of CGP Grey, in my opinion,

Starting point is 01:26:59 is his performance in Boardwalk Empire. Oh, I haven't seen that. It's on my list. I haven't seen all of that, but I have seen him in it, and I really liked him in it. And that was the role that made me think, okay, he could take on the daunting role of CGP Grey in the Hello Internet movie. Okay, yeah, there we go. Hello Internet, the movie starring Brad Pitt and Becca from Delta Gamma Sorority.

Hello Internet - H.I. #117: Bandersnatch

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