Hello Internet - H.I. #57: Podcasters React

Episode Date: February 17, 2016

Brady & Grey discuss: recent travels, bi-weekly weigh in, the FineBros-gate, and So You've Been Publicly Shamed. Brought to You By Audible: get a free 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month Squarespace: Use code HELLO for 10% off your website Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes Discuss this episode on the reddit Brady on Instagram Audrey on Instagram Brady riding to his vila in the Maldives just before getting locked out Grey's location-tracking app Guns, Germs and Steel discussion Omelegg The FineBros FineBros original announcement video Hank Green: The Fine Brothers Controversy Explained Long Version Grey's parody: Stick Figures around the world FineBros Update video Grey's update parody Numberphile: Calculator unboxing Numberphile: Professors React to 2048 Threes So You've Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson The Sacco incident

Do you know what? I'm really stressed. I've been working really hard. I don't know if I'm coming or going. The last few weeks have been insane. But you've cheered me up with our fun chat before the show and you've put me in a good mood. And I don't think I'm at my best when I'm in a good mood. I want to tell you a story. What do you want to tell me a story about? I went on a little holiday to my favourite place in the world. This is the Maldives. It sounds very lovely. Have you been to the Maldives? The very fact that I am currently just realizing I need to pull up a map where I was

going to quietly type Maldives into it. On your steam powered keyboard. There's no quiet typing with you. I was mentally thinking it was somewhere in the Indian Ocean ocean kind of and it is sort of west of sri lanka west of india a bit just little emeralds sprinkled in the ocean and directly north of the british indian ocean territory went to it went to a lovely lovely island there and had a week of niceness a week of blue ocean if the photographs are anything to go by. Every time you sent me a photo, there was just perfect, perfect crystal light blue water all around you. Hashtag no filter. That is what it looks like.

That is what it looks like. That's what you need to do now? You have to include hashtag no filter? Okay. I actually just went on Instagram yesterday. Like, I've just started a new Instagram account yesterday. I think I want to get into Instagram. Oh, you too, huh?

I like it. I just think it's a nicer platform. I've been enjoying doing Audrey's Instagram and I thought I'm going to go on there. So I've started one up and show me the love people. There you go. Follow Brady on Instagram. And you do Audrey on Instagram too? Is that what I just caught?

Audrey's on Instagram and now I am too. If you were going to follow one, follow Audrey. Uh-huh. Yeah, of course. Because they're better. So anyway, one of the really common things you find at these Moldavian islands are these water villas. A lot of people stay in them. They're like the nice thing to stay in. And for people who are unfamiliar with this concept, because these islands are so tiny, normally when you stay on one, they build like a little jetty out to sea. I just want to understand here, you're staying on a private island? Is that what the description is here? Brady goes, I would like an untouched emerald. And they go out and they build you your own pier that you will then land upon? Is that

what's happening? No, but you see, the way the maldives works is because all these tiny little islands all around these atolls are so small is it's not like you go to an island and there's like five hotels there and you choose the hotel you want basically you choose an island and there's just one place on that island and it will have a couple of restaurants and a gym and you know a spa but like usually the islands are the size of maybe two or three football fields so what they do is they build these jetties these piers out to sea and then off these jetties comes a series of little mini jetties each one with a little villa sitting above the sea, basically on stilts, on pylons. Oh, okay, okay, I know what you're talking about.

I know what you're talking about. So you stay in a water villa, so you're above the sea at night, and this particular one we had had a partly glass floor so you can look down at the sea and look at the fish, and you've got your own little platform veranda out the back with a little ladder that goes down into the sea and look at the fish. And you've got your own little platform veranda out the back with a little ladder that goes down into the sea so you can go and swim with the fish. It's so lovely. It's so calm. So, I've set the scene. We're staying in this water villa and there's a series of water villas that come off this jetty. And I went to the island. I think I went to the gym

to do a Fitatron 5,000 meters on the treadmill. Counts double when you're on holiday. Exactly. So my wife stayed in the villa and she went out onto the deck at the back of the villa to go and look at the sea. And I think she put her Beats headphones on and was listening to music. I came back and my key had stopped working. I was banging on the door and the doorbell,

and she couldn't hear me because she had the music on. So I looked at the villa next door, and the guy who was, like, cleaning the villas, who I knew because I'd spoken to him on previous days and asked him about things and, you know, asked him about the Maldives. We'd become friendly. Of course you did.

And I said, oh, I've got a problem. I've locked myself out. So he said, oh, I'll let you in. And he got his, like, master key out and was going to walk around and let me in. And I said, no, no, no, I've got a problem i've locked myself out so he said i'll let you in and he was he got his like master care was going to walk around and let me in and i said no no i've got a better idea let me through this villa so he let me walk through the villa he was cleaning to their back their back veranda area and then i went down their ladder into the sea and i swam across to our villa the next villa so i could then emerge from the sea and just come up the ladder

and just appear before my wife, like, out of the water, like James Bond. I thought the only thing that would have made it cooler was if I'd, like, ripped off my clothes and I had a tuxedo underneath. Surprise, here's your man. And she just looks at me and says, well, I didn't see you go in the sea. And I said, I came from next door. I've been locked out knocking on the door and I swam here from the villa next door. And she went, oh, I thought maybe see you go in the sea. And I said, I came from next door. I've been locked out and knocking on the door.

And I swam here from the villa next door. And she went, oh, I thought maybe you'd gone for a swim and I hadn't noticed. I was so deflated. Like that was going to be like, that was going to be like the story that she would tell for years to come of the day her husband just emerged from the sea. And I feel like I'm mostly on her wife's side of remarkable unimpressedness because I'm looking actually at some satellite pictures of these of these villas. Like I've been I've been browsing around on Google while you're talking. And yeah, it looks like these things, these little houses on the sea, they can't be more than 10 feet apart.

So it's like you're trying to describe to describe like, you're super impressive here. Like you swam across the open ocean. To the next island. Right. To the next island when you got locked out, you know, and like blown across the ocean. But actually, what you're talking about is you just got a little wet, barely moving any kind of distance. Like I, looking at these photos, I, who hates the ocean, who hasn't touched the ocean in a decade possibly, I would feel completely comfortable swimming from one of these villas to the others if I got locked out.

Yeah, that's like, that's why. I'm totally with your wife on this one, man. This was not a great feat of swimming. I will, I will grant, I will grant you that. It's not even like some genius plan that you came up with like it's the obvious thing to do no it's the obvious thing to do this is the maltese equivalent of of walking through your neighbor's backyard to get to your own house yeah that's what this is yeah it's so impressive you've been building up this

story to me about like oh gray you just can't. I have such a story to tell you about getting locked out of my hotel. And I'm sitting here like waiting for the story to happen. But I am just as unimpressed as your wife is. when you were looking through your glass window in the floor, you had seen three, count them three, five foot long sharks swimming under your villa for 20 minutes. This water, Brady, is crystal clear. You could see sharks four miles, I'm sure. No, that's not true with sharks and fish, even when the water's clear. Literally miles. That's not true. Many times I'm swimming in the Maldives and suddenly there's a shark, a reef shark or something right next to me that you couldn't see from above. But anyway.

Yeah, but reef shark, you're not going to get eaten by a reef shark. They just go, ooh, that's the kind of thing to tell someone, ooh, there was a reef shark by me. But it's not going to eat you. This is no great white shark. Gray, I think you're missing the point of the story. I don't think I am. You actually- I think you're missing the point of your story.

You actually hit the point of the story without realizing it was the point of the story. You actually said what I think the funny point of the story is. This was not a great feat of athleticism. But the thing that I think is funny about this story is what you said, that the Moldavian equivalent of going through your neighbor's backyard to get into the house involves swimming in the ocean. I think that's lovely. Lovely, yes. Remotely impressive, no.

Well, I was- Again, like, looking at these satellite photos, the very reason they're able to build these houses where they are is because you're not over, like, the continental shelf here with this water. This isn't water that goes down forever. You're on the top of an atoll. Like, it's unimpressive in every way it can possibly be. You can, I do swim out to the dark part where the drop-off goes, because I love snorkeling, and you swim along, and it's quite shallow. And then you go to the drop-off where it just plunges down into the dark blue, and that is freaky when you swim to there. Like, that's quite scary, and I see how far I can swim out above that.

Yeah, that's terrifying. That's having fun rolling the dice on your life, right? That's something I would not do. Not under any circumstances, not ever. I'll agree with you there. Like that's why if you were telling me that these atolls are all in like a circle. And so, if you're telling me you had, you know, swam across the open abyss in the center to get to the other side, then I'd be like, now that's a man I am impressed by. Like, but this is just, it's nothing. It's nothing. Well, if you can show me the text or the email or remind me of the conversation that happened where I said I did something incredibly impressive to get into a locked hotel room, I will apologise. My recollection is that I had just a funny, light-hearted moment that happened when I locked myself out of a hotel. And because it did not involve putting my life at risk, it seems to be inadequate for the Hallow Internet podcast.

And for that, I apologise. you've been traveling quite a bit uh yeah you've traveled twice to the same place amsterdam we didn't talk about it last time but yes i went three months ago and i was just recently in amsterdam as well again and i just just came back uh yesterday or the day before yesterday so i've recently returned and you just go there work. You just go there and stay in a hotel and sit on your computer, basically. And yet my swimming in the sea story is too boring. I wasn't about to tell you. Oh, Brady, I have an amazing story about how I was on my computer. I locked myself out of my room and went down to reception and they gave me a replacement card. Why do you do

this, Greg? You have a perfectly serviceable apartment. You have a little office space as well in London. You have all your little libraries and coffee shops and nooks and crannies you can work in. Is that not enough for you? It isn't enough for me, Brady. That's true. I need more novelty in my life on occasion. This is a thing that I have always done is to take little breaks away from my normal routine. And now that I'm like self-employed and I'm on my own, it's a situation of like, oh, I can actually take a break, not just when I have off from work, I can do it at any point. And so I found a place that I liked in Amsterdam. And yeah, so I went there. This most recent trip, I was there for two weeks. And everything about this experience, I like because I went there with the intention of working. And it was just great. It just narrows my focus. So it's like, I don't have to worry about a whole bunch of other stuff. Like I'm just there and I can concentrate on a few things. Like I can concentrate on the Fititron lifestyle, of course. And I can concentrate on some work that had been on my mind for a while that I was trying to complete and finish and concentrate on writing.

And like, that's it. Like life is very simple. It's very straightforward. And I really, I really benefit from doing this on occasion. So I did it recently. I don't, I think it's weird, but... Why do you think it's weird? I know why you think it's weird. You think it's weird because you're a workaholic who is able to just work all the time at any time with no problems whatsoever. That's you, Brady.

You're the machine in this relationship, really. You're always able to crank out stuff. No, that's not true. And home has its distractions, like the knocking on the door and the things of life. But also home has all the things I need. And like, if I go away, I inevitably will not have some things I need. But I don't know. I guess I'd have to travel so much anyway that unnecessary travel, like, does not appeal to me. You mean unnecessary work travel. Like's that's the difference here because you just did unnecessary unnecessary travel to the maldives yeah but that was a vacation well here's the key difference there i did that with my wife and the other thing that i find strange about it is that you go away on your own

but i know i know you're an introvert and all this sort of stuff but my wife has to work and she's also happy to have me out of the house for a little while. That's how relationships work. You know, you got to be on the same page about this kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. I know she's cool with it, but I'm happy for you. And you just sit around the hotel do you? You don't go like to Anne Frank's house and, you know, walk the canals and stuff. Do you just sit and sit at your computer or so i actually happened to uh when i started this trip i happened to install a new app on my phone which does uh like automatic location tracking and tries to build a little report of what you've been up to which i thought like oh this is interesting let me try this thing and uh according to that i left the hotel aside

from fitatron lifestyle runs which i was doing, but excluding those, in 14 days, I left the hotel three days. Really? One of them was to meet up with a friend who came up to visit me for the final day of the trip. But mostly it was, yeah, I just stay in the hotel. The downside of this, though, is that the hotel staff get to know me way too well. While I want to just be this anonymous person in the hotel, I also have like picky requests with food or the way I want things done. And so I'm immediately identified and recognizable by all of the staff. One of the times that I went out was to fix a

problem because I was originally only supposed to be in Amsterdam for a week, and I ended up extending the trip longer for a week. But because I only thought I was going to be there for a week, I did not bring shaving supplies, and I had arrived slightly scruffy. And I thought like, oh, but I'll be leaving at the end of the week. It's no big deal. But then when I extended it longer, I realized around day 10 that, okay, all of the hotel staff know exactly who I am. I am also this guy who's like clearly not wanting to talk to anybody and is super picky and is now also becoming like extremely scraggly looking.

And I realized like, okay, I am falling into like a Howard Hughes type situation here in like the minds of this hotel staff. You know how you just have this feeling like, I think the perception of me is suddenly changing. They're beginning to wonder if when I check out, they're going to find bottles of pee in the hotel room stashed away or something. One of the reasons I went outside at one point was solely to get shaving equipment. Not because I wanted to shave, but because I felt this like responsibility to give some kind of indication to the hotel staff. Like, don't worry, don't worry. I'm still a normal person who is able to take care of himself. I am not just a weirdo who has checked into this hotel and is going to end up living here, but looking like a homeless person in his hoodie, unshaven and scruffy.

So I have never, ever shaved more thoroughly or more carefully than I did at about day 10 in that hotel because I thought, I need to look so well put together. I need to not be coming out with like cuts all over my face because I've done this wrong. And I swear, I swear to you, Brady, the staff in the restaurant and everywhere else did stop treating me like maybe this guy's a little weird, like after I had shaved. This totally did, in their minds, reset the clock to like, oh, okay, he's a person who can take care of himself. He's not just a freak who's going to live here indefinitely. That was your James Bond moment when you came down the lobby stairs and your tux all clean shaven and all the waitresses turned their head and went, wow, I had no idea. Who's that guy?

That's the guy with the beard that was on OmniFocus. That is not. It is. It's the same guy. Oh, he looks amazing now. Let me ask you this though. Amsterdam, you know, it's one of the great cities of Europe and as such, it is therefore not a cheap city to go to. If you want to stay in a nice hotel and pretty much stay in a hotel most of the time, why go to a city as expensive as Amsterdam? Why not find a luxurious hotel in some remote location where you can get more, a nicer hotel for your money? Okay. So Brady, the thing is I didn't go to Amsterdam the first time because I thought, oh, I want to go to Amsterdam. Like this is a city that I want to go to. No, I did this the exact reverse way, which is I was trying to find a hotel that I would want to spend a significant amount of time in.

And I didn't care where in the world it was. So I was trying to find a place that looked like a place that I want to stay. And the number one thing, the number one thing that I cannot stand with most hotels is that they're just so fancy, especially European hotels where they have like all of this French 17th century furniture looking stuff and they cramp up the rooms with everything. I just, I cannot stand that kind of thing in a hotel. I wouldn't want to stay in that sort of hotel because it's just mentally cluttering. It's just overwhelming.

So what I was really doing is I was looking all over the continent of Europe, trying to find hotels that were relatively minimalistic. And that was actually my primary thing. And the fact that it was in Amsterdam, that was just a secondary effect. It could have been anywhere and I would have traveled to it. Amsterdam is quite close, which is handy as well, I guess. It's not a long flight. Do you fly there? No, no. I took the train out. I took the train out. I thought, like, I'll do this the nice way. So, I spent like a day traveling out on the train, spent a while at the hotel, and then I took the train back. What do you do? You get the Eurostar to Paris and change?

Or Brussels? Yeah, it's Eurostar to Brussels and then Brussels to Amsterdam. Brussels, which is one of the ugliest train stations I've ever seen. Brussels is horrible. Nice one. So, for a lot of people listening, I think Amsterdam is famous for its tolerance of activities that would be illegal in many other places. And you are obviously like one of the squarest people I know. So, do you ever wander around and sort of experience, well, not experience, but, you know, experience the city and look at all that stuff going on and think, wow, this is cool? Or do you sort of, how do you feel about that side of things? Because

if we don't talk about it, everyone's going to comment on it. Turns out you can't go to Amsterdam on your own without your wife for an extended period of time without people making a lot of assumptions about the nature of the trip. Yes. And no matter how much you try to talk people out of it, they're just not going to believe it. This is the thing that I have come across. But as I think we've discussed before on the show, like I'm actually quite boring. I'm not a person who has done any illegal substances.

I would never have guessed. You would not have guessed? No. So you've decided enough of that and now you're just going to go crazy in your later years or? No, that's not it. So I am still boring in that way. Also, some of the other services that Amsterdam makes available, I have not partaken in those services either.

But I think it is great that a place like Amsterdam exists. I am so on the side of like, if you, if grownups want to do something and they are consenting or they are not hurting anybody else, like I am very much on the side of like, obviously that should be legal. That's my position. And like, I actually, I quite like being in a place where stuff that to me seems like, obviously this shouldn't be illegal. I'm kind of happy to be in a place where it's allowed,

even if I am not partaking in any of it. It just feels quite reasonable. Even though I am totally on board with them being legal, it is kind of weird nonetheless, sometimes to turn a corner and find yourself quite literally face to face with this. Like even though I'm totally on board with it, sometimes I did find it quite surprising

on the occasions I was walking around or even just sort of by the hotel, like go outside and turn the corner. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, I am literally feet away from someone selling the Amsterdam specialties. And also it's like, wow, the actual buying and selling of these services, that seems to me quite socially awkward. You're talking about the physical services, not the chemical services. Yes, the physical services, not the chemical services, because there are children in the room, of course. So we have to talk in broad terms.

But yes, it's a little weird to look one of those vendors in the eye, like at close range, unexpectedly. It's like, oh. Do you ever, and this is not a seedy question, because this is one of the main tourist things of Amsterdam. do you ever walk through the bespoke area of Amsterdam that is more red in its illumination? The Red Lake District. Yes. I don't know what we're saying now.

You've reminded me of all the little people listening. But that's one of the most interesting things to do in Amsterdam. And I can assure you there are about 4,000 tourists for every one person who is actually there trying to partake in those services. Whereas my feeling was mostly just like, well, this is very strange. Like, again, I'm glad this thing exists, but it's kind of weird that it does. I'm always surprised that it's quite, like, it's quite a beautiful area, isn't it? The little laneways and canals and the complete foreignness of what's happening obviously makes it quite a bit disorienting.

But, you know, obviously it's really a strange thing to see sort of a glass door and there's a lady there wanting to do business. Think of the children, Brady. But I certainly, yeah's it's certainly very different it's certainly a very exotic and interesting place and uh but also a good place for business obviously for gray's business yeah definitely is i got a lot got a lot of work done got a lot of things done very happy very happy today's sponsor is audible.com who has more than 180 000 audiobooks and spoken word audio products you can get a free 30-day trial today by going to audible.com

slash hello internet as always audible wants us to recommend to you a book to listen to and this time i'm reaching into the classic archive of books that I have liked to bring you Snow Crash by Neil Stevenson. It's a classic science fiction book that was written at a bit of the dawn of the internet age in the early 90s, but that I reread recently and still holds up marvelously. As always with these things, I don't want to spoil any of the plot for you. So if you trust me, this is just a recommendation that I'm passing on. Though I will say the book has one of my favorite lines ever about companies. We'll just say that companies play a large role in this book. And that line is, the franchise and the virus work on the same principle.

What thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder, its DNA, Xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left turn lane. Then its growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines. That's a hell of a paragraph. I just love that. And I think about that every time I see franchises along the highway. That's what a good book can do. It can plant a thought in your mind forever. So that's my recommendation today, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. So of course, Audible has books on absolutely everything in every genre you can possibly imagine. And what I really like is if you start a book and you don't like it,

you can just return it, no questions asked. It's very easy. It makes getting into a new book a no-risk proposition. So once again, go to audible.com slash hellointernet and start your free Audible trial today. And thanks to Audible for supporting the show. You were saying before the show that we should talk at length about gun germs and steel? No, no, we're not going to talk about gun germs and steel today. We've had a lot of feedback. We have had a lot of feedback, but I need to load it all in my brain

to be able to talk about the whole thing. I can't talk about this now. Don't worry, Brady, because I know there's nothing you love more than really picky, detailed follow-up about a topic that you're not super interested in, don't worry, we'll get to it at some point. But not today. Not today. One person wrote a response that I saw, and I think their response was longer than the book. Yeah, there have been many, many comments we will talk about at some point. You're not going to draw me into it now. I can tell what you're trying to do.

Honestly, Grey, I cannot draw you into it because i have not i have not processed it and read it like i you know i i flip i i skim read the reddit when it was early days but i sort of i didn't understand most of it yeah we'll get back to it later okay let's get to what you really love which is the bi-weekly weigh-in bi-weekly weigh-in. Bi-weekly weigh-in. Which is more like a tri-monthly discussion. Yes, that's why I was saying today, we have to do the bi-weekly weigh-in, because we haven't done it in, I can't quite remember how long. The last time we did it, I just remember saying I'd gained a bunch of weight from Christmas. Yeah.

And I think you hadn't weighed yourself then, but then you told me today that you haven't weighed yourself again. So how long has it been since you've weighed yourself, man? I don't know. How would I know that? I don't know. Don't you have a spreadsheet? You haven't been keeping a spreadsheet? I haven't been keeping a spreadsheet. And I haven't actually been running for the last couple of weeks either for a few reasons. So, the only reason I opened the spreadsheet is to put my running times in and I have not been running either. So I'm basically rubbish.

He said as he reached for another Skittle and sip of Dr. Pepper. You reach for a single Skittle? I can't eat lots of Skittles when we're doing the podcast because that'd fill up my mouth. But I can sneakily get one in occasionally. Is that what you do when we're recording? You're sneaking Skittles into your mouth? No, not normally. But I've got a pack here at the moment.

That sounds like a pretty big pack. One of those jumbo packs of Skittles into your mouth? No, not normally. But I've got a pack here at the moment. Here they are. That sounds like a pretty big pack. One of those jumbo packs of Skittles. Yeah, limited edition dark side Skittles. So I've gone for the dark side. Skittles, not officially part of the Fititron lifestyle. That's why they're dark side Skittles. Right.

Oh, I just dropped them. Oh, they're all over the floor. They're all over the floor. Oh, they're all over the floor. They're all over the floor. Oh, no. Oh, you dark side Skittles. I'll have to make sure I pick them up before Audrey gets back. Oh, they're everywhere, Gray. I bet they are.

It's like a big rainbow carpet. I think those are the Fitatron gods punishing you. Oh, no. That's great because they're too big to vacuum up as well. You're just going to have to pick them all up. No. Oh, it's messing with my head now. I still hear you eating them, though.

I still hear you shoving them into your mouth. I just put one in. Oh, now my fingers are all sticky from picking them up oh it's all going wrong this is great um anyway so while i pick up skittles why don't you tell people uh you know what your weight is are you seriously gonna try to be picking up skittles while we're doing this podcast yep no you can't do this i? Yep. No, you can't do this. I'm doing it now. No, you can't do this, man. Oh, they're everywhere.

No, I know. I bet they are. I've picked a lot of them up now. Okay, go on. What do you weigh? How you doing? For our bi-weekly weigh-in, theoretically, this is the week that I get to say that I am finally at my goal of being under 200

pounds well done thank you i am super excited about that uh just barely i weighed myself this morning and i am 199.5 which is still within a rounding error of 200 but i'm totally gonna count that i'm totally gonna count that nice one and what did how did you celebrate did you go to five guys and pick it up okay so actually i did have a celebration so we were talking before i was at amsterdam right and one one of the other things is like being in amsterdam being in that hotel one of the other things that's really easy to do was like okay well, well, I'm not at home. I don't have the refrigerator like in my room or anything. There's limited food selections there. So while I was in Amsterdam, I was super focused on doing the like the no carb diet thing.

And just like, I am not eating any carbohydrates while I'm here. I can focus on this. I can keep really, really intense with it. And so I didn't eat any carbs. And that was partly why I lost about two or three pounds each week that I was there. But the thing was, I knew as soon as I'd been there for a week, I thought, you know what, if I keep this up, I could just get under 200 pounds. And my goal and my mental reward here was that I knew that I had this friend visiting on the final day. And I thought, oh, this is great. If I can get under 200 pounds

by the time he arrives, then I will allow myself to not be a picky little person when we're going out and we're eating. If I can get under 200, I will allow myself to just have like a normal day of going out with a friend and like eating at restaurants and just not being super picky. And so on the final day, when my friend came to visit, we went out to this amazing, amazing omelette place, which is actually just by the Amsterdam Central Station. And I had a croissant with scrambled eggs and cheese. I swear to God, it was one of the most delicious things I had ever eaten. It was the first bread that I had had in two weeks. You're like, keep your red light district. I'm going to the omelette district.

Exactly. It was astounding. It was like, this croissant with these scrambled eggs is the best food I have ever eaten in my whole life. So that was kind of my celebration. And it was after two weeks, well, actually really a few days of every time the hotel staff, when I'd get breakfast there, they'd bring over like muffins and bread. And every morning I'd be like, oh no, I don't even want the muffins on my table. I don't want the bread on my table. And eventually they all learned that I was the weird guy who didn't want bread with anything. Or like whenever you order coffee in the hotel, it comes with some cookies and I'd have to keep telling them like, oh no, I don't want any cookies with this. And then eventually they just learned and brought me all the stuff without anything. But yeah, so that was my celebration. What now, Gray? What next? Like,

do you look at do you look now and weep because there are no more weights to conquer in my mind i kind of thought that by the time i was under 200 like everything would be amazing and i would be some kind of super adonis but actually you look in the mirror and i realized like oh what i've really done is now i'm just a normal person who could still go with losing a few more pounds. Like that's actually what it is. But I think prior to getting here, I had imagined that this was like the final end state. So now I think I realized like, I still want to lose maybe five more pounds and give myself a little bit of a buffer to never be over 200 again.

So 195 is the new target? I think 195 is the new target. It might take me a long time to get there, but I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable having a buffer because if I can, I really never want to be over 200 again. But yeah, I feel like a normal person. And I realized, I was looking through some of my data before and I realized that I am now 30 pounds lighter

than I was at my absolute fattest, which was about two years ago. Nice work. Yeah. Did you get, because your wife hadn't seen you for a while, when you got back from Amsterdam, did she like notice a difference and say, wow, you look awesome? Yeah, pretty much.

Which was very satisfying. Yeah. She noticed right away when I came home. There was a big like, holy cow, you look like a different person, followed by the very satisfying, you should go to Amsterdam more often. Hi, everyone. It's time for another one of our sponsorship reads. And this one's a little bit different for me, because I'm currently standing at the top of a hill overlooking all of San Francisco and the Bay Area. It's quite the sight. The Golden Gate Bridge is right in front of me.

And out to my left, stretching away, is the direction of Silicon Valley. And it's here in San Francisco, this place of technology, that our mind must go to the thing that underpins all of our data-led lives, and that is backup. You guessed it. I'm here to talk about Backblaze, the place to go for online backup. I use Backblaze, and I cannot tell you how backup. I use Backblaze and I cannot tell you how much peace of mind it gives me. It's just installed on my computer. It's whirring away in the background, continually backing up everything to the cloud. They've got a really cool interface. It's really easy to use. Some ridiculous amount of data, I think it's like 150 petabytes,

has been stored on the Backblaze servers, which I think aren't that far away from where I'm talking to you at the moment. So in a funny way, I guess I've kind of come all the way from England to be closer to my backed up data. Now, if you lose something on your computer and it happens, it could just be a single file. You can really easily go to Backblaze and just have it restored. Or if the worst happens and you have a catastrophe, you can recover all that data, not just through the web, but you can also contact Backblazer and they'll send it to you on a hard drive, which I can imagine would be somewhat quicker than trying to do it through the internet pipes. It's also really cheap, $5 a month per computer. So you can have it running on your

main one, on your laptop, on your wife's, on your husband's, on your boyfriend's, on your girlfriend's, on your relatives. In fact, I should probably get it on my mum's computer. I can't imagine how upset she'll be if she ever loses all her photos. Now, if you want to check them out, go to backblaze.com slash hello internet. If you put the slash hello internet, they'll know you came from here. Now, you can give them a trial, no credit card required. Get Backblaze running, see how easy it is, see how much peace of mind it gives you, and I feel really confident you're likely to sign on for the real deal. Well, I've just come back inside and unbelievably, while I was outside recording that, I've had a tweet and it says, thank you, Hello Internet FM for making me get Backblaze,

which has just saved my brackets, vegetarian bacon. So literally while i was telling you to make sure you're protected one of our listeners has had their digital life saved by backblaze so i think if people are listening contemporaneously the thing that they expect us to be talking about is the youtube kerfuffle involving the film creators known as the fine brothers fine bros fine bros i don't know what you call them yeah you you explain you explain what happened great because this is a i'd be interested to hear your explanation of the controversy for anyone listening to the podcast when it goes up like i have seen an enormous number of people asking us to comment on the fine brothers gate apocalypse like whatever you want to put it however you want to like what suffix you want to affix to this uh this this big thing that

has happened and i think perhaps for people who are unfamiliar with what we're about to talk about, maybe the shortest way to describe the facts of the situation is that the Fine Brothers run a very popular YouTube channel, which before all of this happened had something like 14 million subscribers. and they put out a video which was aiming to discuss a new licensing program that they wanted to put in place and then the internet reacted very badly to this video of theirs that they put out. They made an update video and the update video made the whole situation even worse and it kind of exploded into a massive massive kind of internet fight over copyright and trademarks and ownership of things and how to make videos for large groups of people and the value of the work of the fine brothers like it spilled over into just everything possible and was, I mean, I'm going to say

probably one of the biggest like internet explosions I have seen in a long, long time. Like it was just constantly on the front page of sites like Reddit. It was all over Twitter. It was just this big, big explosion that connected to a whole bunch of stuff. I don't think you've done a brilliant job. Well, I think you have very accurately given an overview, but I think you've gone a bit too overview there to really be much use to people. Fine Brothers, as Gray said, very, very popular YouTubers, way, way bigger than, you know, way bigger than us, leagues above us. They've become, they're a huge big thing.

Like 10x the size of our channel huge guys one of the formats that they make which has sort of been their big format that they've become really famous for is this series of videos about reactions it's become a genre of videos this react format they've got one called kids react they've got one called elders react they've got one called elders react which is older people and they'll basically show them viral videos or objects or things and they'll just film these people's reactions to them they'll interview them about it and it's a pretty banal thing when you think about it but they make them very well and they've become hugely hugely popular now i think it would it seems to be the case that to me i'm editorializing a bit now that these people are feeling a bit

proprietorial about this format and although they most certainly did not invent the idea of people reacting to things or filming people to react to things i think because they had made it quite popular they felt a degree of ownership of it and they announced to the world they were going to license to people the ability to make react videos so you could make a video just like theirs and they will take some of your money and they will help you make that make these videos and once they announced this which seemed kind of odd to a lot of people, people started scratching a little bit below the surface and it was realised that the Fine Brothers had in fact trademarked the names of some of their series

and they had also trademarked just the word React in this context and it seemed to be the case that they were now going to attempt to own the whole genre of reaction videos. And in fact, other people started saying they've taken down all my reaction videos. And there was an active campaign by someone associated with them to take down videos that were about reactions. And at this point, the internet turned on them. I mean, you say it was a huge, big thing. It was certainly big on Reddit and in certain spheres, and it certainly affected them.

They sort of did a half climb down and sort of apologised and made this apology mea culpa video, which was not very successful, didn't go down well, and wasn't good. It wasn't good. And that made things much, much worse for them. And then a couple of days later, they did a complete climb down as they were hemorrhaging subscribers and everyone was, even some of their sort of friends were saying they haven't done very well here. They did a complete climb down and said,'re sorry we're we're releasing all our trademarks on the word react we're releasing all our trademarks even on the ones that we do

we're ending this whole idea of licensing videos and they went back into their shell completely beaten to death by the internet now uh one of the people who beat them with a stick was our good friend CGP Grey. What do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about, Brady. Grey was like, obviously people were writing blogs and making videos and really getting stuck into these guys. satirical jokey video that I'm sure most of you have seen where he pretended that he was going to trademark stick figures which he uses in his videos and anyone else who ever wanted to use stick figures would have to license from him and it was a rather rather sarcastic video and it was done in a a way that kind of parodied and satired the original things that the Fine Brothers were doing.

So, Grey was one of the people in the mob that publicly shamed the Fine Brothers away from their position. It has been very interesting. Like, I have been talking to a lot of people in the business about this, like, because the phrase that i keep using to describe what happened to everyone i talked to about this is perfect storm this thing exploded into a big conversation because it just like it hit all of the like the trigger points that it possibly could to make this explode into a big thing what are some of those well one one of those is even in your own description. I think a thing that is very tricky about this is in the first video that the Fine Brothers made, I came to this very late.

I saw both videos at the same time because I was just minding my own business, you know, not on the internet very much and just happened to accidentally come across this thing. But in the first video that they made, they explained what they were doing kind of poorly, because I watched that video. And I thought, wow, okay, one, this is horribly made. I don't think it's a very good video. But as someone who works in the field of intellectual property, right, Like my business is built on intellectual property. I watched the thing and I thought, oh, okay, they're doing, they want to do licensing deals, right? This is what they want to do. They want to license the Fine Brothers name, or they want to license the particular assets they use to make their videos to other people to use

to create, you know, sub channels. And they themselves use an example like, you know, America's got talent and Britain's got talent, right? That this is a common thing in the entertainment industry to do. Yeah. Because it's not unremarkable. No. It would be certainly a new thing to do it on YouTube and just have anyone in their bedroom starting to license video genres, but someone's got to do it first, I guess. Yeah. Doing it on YouTube is a, is a slightly different thing, but it is,

it is by no means like some kind of outrageous thing to do, right? It's exactly the kind of thing that a media company would do if they have a successful property. Cause that's what media companies do. Yeah. And so as I'm watching it, I'm like, Oh, okay, well, you know what, this is whatever about this. But the but the problem that happened was that as the video went on, they were talking about other people like using their format or like making similar videos to them and asking their audience to kind of boycott people who are infringing on their intellectual property rights.

And that's to me where it flipped over into this perfect storm, because then there is this like misunderstanding that the Fine Brothers are claiming ownership of all kinds of React videos, which I don't think was their intention in the original video. But it's like, man, if you guys make a video and you put it out to 14 million subscribers, the vast majority of your viewers, they don't have a clear understanding of the difference between copyright, trademark, and licensing and branding deals. Like you can't expect them to understand the distinction of these things because they're really complicated things. And even as someone

who works in this field, like you have to think about it sometimes like, okay, what are the difference between these different things? And so I think like that was one of the things that made it like a perfect storm is because tons of people make React videos because frankly, they're very easy to make. And so then this video ends up kind of unintentionally sounding like the fine brothers are going to own all reaction videos and i just i don't think that was that their intention from the first video but it sure as hell sounded like it i disagree with you i disagree with you grow okay i think it was i think i think it was their intention they trademarked the word react on its own yeah they did they didn't

say that at the time yeah yeah but they had done it and let me tell you something else let me take you back in time to april 2014 okay i made a video a reaction video which was basically it was really a parody of reaction videos. You know, you know how I make those parodies of calculator unbox, I make unboxing parodies where people open calculator boxes, which is like my comment on the silliness of unboxing videos. I made a reaction video, the same thing. I got a bunch of the professors in my videos to play the game 2048. Oh, I remember this one. Yeah, that was the very zeitgeisty game. Don't all start sending me messages about how threes

is better. I know threes is better. I was just about to say threes is way better. I know threes is better. Threes is the one that I play, but 2048 was the zeitgeisty thing that week. And that's what we did. I know threes is better. That one has the mindshare. that one has the mind share that one has the mind share anyway so i made that i made that video i received an email from the fine brothers now i i am not one for sharing emails that are sent to me by people because i just think they're correspondence between people but this does not feel like a very personal email to me they didn't know who i was they didn't use my name.

So it was clearly quite a generic email. And in it, they were pretty much warning me off starting a Professor's React series in 2014. Really? They were really polite and nice. And part of it said, we saw your video. We thought it was really cool. You know, we assume this was a one-off, but are hoping the plan isn't to start doing things like this all the time, calling things blank react to and playing games or watching videos

like our company does. They then held out. And they were obviously already thinking about this licensing thing because they then talk about maybe there's a way we could work on something like this together but it would be difficult with the distance but we could maybe start talking about it but and then they start talking about but in the spirit of the youtube uh community we're hoping that this is just a one-off and you're not planning to do more of it. So, this was two years before I made one reaction video and I was basically being told, you shouldn't do it again. It would be against the

spirit of YouTube. We hope you're not planning to make more of them like our company does. So, I think they were thinking about this then, you know? Yeah. I mean, yeah, that doesn't look good. I don't know these guys, by the way. And I think, you know, they obviously make good videos. I saw them gave a talk once at VidCon. But, you know, I have no... Yeah, we should say, I mean, it's a funny position to be in

because as well, like, I don't know the Fine Brothers. I don't watch their videos, but it's the thing where like the Fine Brothers know lots of people because they have a whole channel that's like whatever, or the whole series is just YouTubers react. Yeah, they're very well connected in the YouTube community. not know them i am not familiar with their work uh very much but yeah i guess part of the the stories that were going around at the time and i can't say i like i didn't go in and verify them but apparently they had some spat with like tv channels that were doing people reacting to stuff like i think they they clearly had some sense of propriety over the idea of react channels that are react videos that was out of scope with reality yeah that that's what happened i think they they made something very good and very successful and and it continued to be successful and i think they suddenly thought i think they got yeah they got they got a bit carried away with how much it was theirs. I think they also forgot that it was not a new thing.

Yeah. I mean, okay. So like to, to, to go into the details of this for a second though, when I, when I was watching this thing and they're talking about licensing and trademarks. So this thing comes up every once in a while where you hear that a company is trying to trademark a word, right? This time it happens to be the Fine Brothers and React. But this kind of thing comes up on the internet every once in a while when companies do this. Sony tried to trademark Let's Play, didn't they? Yeah, I think they did. So, I mean, one of the things with trademarks that people need to understand is that trademarks are relatively narrow. And of the three kinds of intellectual property, copyrights, patents, and trademarks, I think that trademarks are the least problematic of any of them.

Because the idea of trademark is it's supposed to be you as a consumer, by seeing these words in this circumstance, know that this company is the one behind it. This is the whole idea like coca-cola right like you you can make soda but you can't call it coca-cola because that is a trademark to let you know that the coca-cola company has made this thing like this is the purpose of trademarks and when people apply for trademarks you have to specify where and how those trademarks are going to be used. And the thing that's funny about this whole Fine Brothers thing is it's like it blew up over trademarks.

But it's like I have a trademark. And I that very morning this Fine Brothers thing occurred, I had actually used a trademark. I had enforced a trademark to gain control of like a URL squatter, basically. And like, this is what trademarks are for, to like, you can't have someone represent themselves as you or your company if you have a trademark. Like this is the purpose of these things. But presumably your trademark is your name. Yeah, well, that's the super weird thing, right?

Like I have trademarked CGP Grey, which is just this very funny thing. But yeah, and that's what I was using. It's like someone else was using CGP Grey and it's like, okay, that's nobody else's name. Like I have trademarked this thing. You can't represent yourself on the internet in this way. So when people talk about like they were trying to trademark the word React, I would be shocked if that trademark was actually granted and even if it was granted if it was enforceable because it's just it's too broad it's too generic

and like there's no way they were going to be able to take down everybody's videos that were using the word react but apparently they were gray apparent because obviously the draconian way that the youtube system works and YouTube's fear of running into legal problems is they kind of err on the side of caution. And if someone says, oh, I own the trademark on that word, they kind of take down first and ask questions later. And a lot of React stuff apparently, I don't know, they didn't take down my video two years ago, by the way.

They made no attempt, as far as I know, they made no attempt to take it down. So I'm not saying they tried to take mine down, but a lot of other people on the internet more recently have been saying they have had problems with it. I don't know if it's true, but a lot of people were saying it and they've acknowledged it because they have said, oh, we're trying to undo those. They said we had nothing to do with it. I think they said it was their multi-channel network that did it on their behalf. And they said they were trying to undo those uh they said we had nothing to do with it i think they said it was their their multi-channel network that did it on their behalf and they said they were trying to undo that mess now but um so it does seem that it was happening so i mean this is again why i think partly this this blew up into this this big thing is because there's a lot of frustrations that people have with the whole way that youtube deals with intellectual property and enforcement. And yes,

there is a bit of a like, take down first, ask questions later policy that YouTube has. But one of the things that I was just astounded by is that Hank Green wrote an article which was talking about explaining the whole controversy, which he put up on Medium, which I'll link to. But there's one line in there which was astounding to me, where he said that YouTube apparently gives some creators, some of the big creators, the power to, on their own, without oversight, take down other people's videos, which is amazing to me. And I think maybe that's what's happening or that's what had happened with some of these people saying like the Fine Brothers

were able to just take down my video is that like the Fine Brothers, it sounds from this, were one of those people who had the ability to just like press a button and nuke someone's video off of the YouTube platform. And I just, I cannot believe that this is part of YouTube system. system and it just it's like fuel

on the fire uh so like i'm not sure if they were you know properly enforcing trademarks or what but it seems like they were able to take down videos that they thought and they felt were just too close to what they were doing and it's it's just bad it's just really bad to do i don't want to come to your i don't want to come to your video yet, right? I want to ask you separately about your video that you made on this issue in a couple of minutes. But the funny thing is, the way we've been discussing it so far, you almost sound more sympathetic to them than I do. And I actually do feel a little bit sympathetic towards them. So, it's kind of this conversation has gone differently to what I expected

because I actually feel a bit sorry for them in some ways. But you're talking like you think they had pure motives and it just came out wrong. And I actually don't believe that. I think they were getting a bit greedy and they got caught with their fingers in the cookie jar. They got disproportionately slapped around because of it. We can discuss whether it was disproportionate in a minute.

They certainly got slapped around very hard because of it and they climbed down from this position either because they changed their mind or it was starting to have serious business implications for them. I don't know which, but they certainly climbed down. And you seem to be saying they just didn't communicate it very clearly and therefore they got in trouble. I think they were doing a bit of smoke and mirrors and making it sound like a great opportunity for everyone

when really they were trying to take ownership of something that I'm not entirely convinced they had the right to take ownership of and they were and they were getting dollar signs in their eyes yeah I think there is there's no argument about them owning the idea of react videos like there's there's clear prior art there's there's no there's no universe in which they own the idea of react videos just just without a without a yeah without a doubt the question is of this whole idea of like licensing what they do in particular like i think that's a very different question and yeah great they were clearly trying to set up this licensing program but i think it was running in

parallel with a more concerted campaign to stop other people making reaction videos i think that was happening in parallel. They weren't talking about that so much because that's not such a nice thing to talk about in a positive let's do it together video. But that was clearly happening at the exact same time. These two things were happening in concert. Yeah, maybe. I guess this is the exact conversation that I've been having with many people. Like, why aren't you more angry about this? Like, aren't you the guy who made some videos like super angry about this? And I do feel like my opinion on this is largely like

their trademarks would have been just unenforceable anyway. Like the worst case scenario here is that they would have gotten some trademark, but it would never have held up. You know, the idea of trademarking the word React, just like every other company that tries to trademark a single word it just never holds up or it never gets accepted because it's just too broad it's too it's not specific enough right it's not like you're trademarking mountain dew

at when you are selling sodas right it's just it's just not specific enough so that's that's why i think like it's not the trademark that it's not the trademark. It's more the intent at Signals. It's more the intent that we're getting, you know, mate. They were trying to create an arsenal of weapons that would help them stop other people make react videos. And a trademark is one of the arrows in your quiver. And whether or not that arrow was successful or got taken out of the quiver doesn't matter. It shows what they were doing. Another thing that shows what they were doing with these takedowns, another thing that shows what they were doing is maybe emails like the one I alluded to before. This was clearly happening. They clearly thought it was their thing and other people shouldn't be doing it.

So whether or not the trademark is a red herring. Let's not talk about whether the trademark was enforceable. Okay, well, there could be court cases and whatever. But there was a whole other thing going on that was not being talked about and was being hidden by this whole licensing thing they clearly felt a ridiculous ownership over the idea of people reacting to stuff and i like i just i just found it here which is um the the thing where they were criticizing the ellen degeneres show because they ellen degeneres did it's apparently some bit where she was showing kids old technology. Yeah.

And the quote here from the Fine Brothers is, wow, the Ellen show did kids reacting to old technology, didn't mention us, didn't check with us, not cool. You need to go to their Facebook mob against the Ellen DeGeneres show for having people look at things and make comments about them. And to me, that is like, okay, you are just out of touch with what you have made and its importance in the world and your ownership of it. And that's the thing that for me was the really galling part about it. Because like, I totally agree with you. Like if the trademark in some way doesn't matter, I think the idea of doing a licensing deal, it's like whatever, it's just boring business, who cares? It's a totally standard thing. But to me, the galling thing is like the way they presented themselves was, that was the thing that just really set me on edge like i cannot believe you guys have made this video about how amazingly important

your react videos are and and how you want everybody to to join in on this thing didn't they say change the world i downloaded the video as soon as i saw it because i thought surely they're going to take this video down and i want to make sure I've got it. Because I thought there's no way this video is going to last another hour on the internet. But I'm sure every man and their dog did that too. At this point in the podcast, I'm going to edit in some of this video because you just, you have to hear this, people. It is unbelievable. I really think you should find some of the many re-uploads on video to see it.

Like seeing it is a whole other thing because it's just strangely put together. But for those listening, I am just gonna put in a couple of clips just so you can hear what we're talking about. Hello, everyone. Our company has grown so much over the years and we are so grateful to have experienced this

with all of you who've been with us for years, as well as new people who join the Fine Family every day. We're now announcing this big thing that will bring us closer than ever before by creating a new way for us to create content together. This is not only a huge step for our company, but for the entire global media industry. Ever since React first debuted over five years ago, we saw the impact of the series. We strive with React to be making episodes that will not just be interesting and entertaining now, but live on forever as a time capsule even a hundred years from now that people can look back at what various generations were saying about culture and the issues of

our time. We are excited to announce React World, which is a first of its kind program that allows people and companies to license all our popular shows online so that anyone, even you watching right now, can create your own versions in a fully legal way and be part of a new and exciting global community. As digital media has become more corporate, the spirit of wanting to do things differently than traditional Hollywood has started to dissipate, but our company has never lost that spirit. By licensing our formats and trademarks, everyone will know that you're doing this legally with

our company's guidance. We are so motivated for this to know that our formats can inspire millions of people and opening that up for all of you to have a chance to do the same is as exciting as anything we have ever done before and we look forward to the time when we can look back to this moment to this video with all of you knowing that this was when we all stood together change the way things were done and created this first of its kind global community we can't wait to work with so many of you and change the world together.

Their lines of like, we are going to make this a global phenomenon with all of you. There's the part where they talk about how React videos are going to be looked back upon in a hundred years as an amazing time capsule of like current day events. And yes, they do talk about changing the world together. It's amazing. It's amazing because... Okay, so listen, like something I just want to make clear before we continue to talk about this. React videos, when you use that phrase, it covers a wide variety of things. Some of which I think are just like the worst, lowest content on YouTube, and which I think are just like the worst, lowest content on YouTube, and some of which are just like barely acceptable content. But if people

like react videos, I have no problem with that. They're not for me, but I don't care if like if people like a thing, that's totally fine, right? You can't argue against people liking it. But there's no doubt that this is just the minimum amount of effort that you can possibly put in to create content because you you take somebody else's thing and you film some people reacting to it just occasionally making comments about you're not creating the emotion someone else's hard work is creating the emotion of the video exactly right the other person is doing the heavy lifting here and then you are just filming reactions you're not like you're not lighting the fire you're just warming your hands up with it yeah you're warming your hands up with someone else's fire and i think this is another

element of like the perfect stormness of this because i don't know for a fact i have heard second hand that the fine brothers uh do get permission for all of the videos that they react to. I don't know if that's true. Let's just assume that it is for this conversation. But there are plenty of React channels that just, they're just copyright infringement channels. They take other popular videos and they film themselves as a person looking at their computer screen and reacting to the thing that's on screen. But then they'll put whatever it is in the corner so you can just watch it there. That's a transformative work, right?

That's transformative. Yeah, it's not even remotely transformative. And I think like that's another reason why this really blew up as a thing. Because on YouTube, like those kind of react channels, like people just hate it because you're just taking someone else's work and you're making money off of it and you're giving like no credit to the original person the worst thing is many of those channels will then sanctimoniously say like oh we're doing this to promote the other channels it's like exposure yeah it's exposure and it's like yeah if it was i'd be happy to receive it but i don't like please don't react to my videos where it's just your face looking at the screen saying nothing sometimes as my actual video plays like that stuff is just infuriating

yeah right but i think that like that's why the fine brothers thing blew up is like okay there's plenty of people out there who just can't stand react channels but then on top of it to to make this video where you're talking about how like react channels are going to change the world together and like you're doing this amazing culturally important thing. I mean, when I watched the video, it's just like, oh, come on, f*** off, man, right? Like you're just filming someone reacting to a thing that you didn't make. And again, I was not familiar with the Fine Brothers before this, except only in like the dimmest way of like, oh, right, Fine Brothers, I've heard their name. But I went and I watched some of their react videos. And it's like, oh, yeah, this is exactly what I would have expected. Just like the easiest type of content to create in the world. And again, there's nothing wrong with things being easy, right? The world doesn't reward people in proportion to how hard they work nor should it but it's it's that contrast of like you're just making this super easy thing and you're also telling people how super important it is like that that's one of the like triggers in this

perfect storm of like why people got so riled up about these videos so can i move on to your video for a bit okay all right let me tell people how your video unfolded from my end because it's just something a bit different. Then you can tell me your end. I coincidentally started communicating with you via text messages not long after you first heard about this and saw this. Right. Because I had meant to bring it up with you, but I thought you'd probably be off in one of your bubbles and didn't want to know about it yet. And then you messaged me, I think, something about it. And I said, oh, that's funny.

I did want to talk to you about it. And you were not acting like outraged or really, really upset, but you were more engaged than usual. I could tell you thought it was really interesting. And you and I were joking, were sending each other a few jokes. And I actually sent you, I actually, you'd it was really interesting. And you and I were joking, we're sending each other a few jokes. And I actually sent you, I actually, you'd already thought of it, obviously, as we soon find out. But I even sent you a joke saying, ha-ha, you know,

you could trademark stick figures. Right, yeah. But, you know, we were making a few jokes about it like we do. And then within a minute of me making that stick figure crack, you sent me a recording of your script, which you'd obviously already had, where you did that exact thing and made a joke about you trademarking stick figures. And you did it in that funny voice, that kind of enthusiastic California voice that you

did it in. I thought it was really funny. And I actually went downstairs because I'd told my wife a little bit about the controversy. And I said, listen to what Greger sent me. And I played it to her. And she thought it was really funny as well. So we had a laugh about it. It's the self-important vlogger voice.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, sort of. Yeah, a lot of beauty vloggers sort of talk like that. So anyway, I came back upstairs. And I think in the space of time that I had been downstairs, you had put the video on YouTube. I thought, I didn't actually know if you were going to do it, but I thought if you did, you were going to have to animate it.

But obviously you didn't go for animation. You just sort of went for a single card. So you had turned it around really quickly and it was up. And funnily enough, my wife then came upstairs and she actually said, you are going to advise Gray not to put that on YouTube, aren't you? and i turned to her i said i said too late he's already done it like and and i have to say i thought it was funny i thought it was clever i thought it was a very uh fair criticism and i always find satire a very effective way of criticizing someone. And I am still, and I'm definitely not the only one among people who know you,

I'm still absolutely astounded that you did it. I cannot believe it. It's like someone else took over your body for the day that you would do that. Because I will say this, like, i think there's lots of things that you do are weird and i know they work for you and i find them really interesting uh and you know you're a good friend and i'm happy things work for you but if there's one thing that i have learned from you that that i have taken from our friendship that has made me a better person and a happier person. It is your ability to kind of ride above controversy, to not get involved with things that don't affect you. You are the master of not being,

having your feathers ruffled by things that shouldn't ruffle your feathers. And very often, things that used to really upset me and I'd take to Twitter or I'd send angry emails and I'd get upset. So often, I just sit back and I even think about Gray. I think, you know what Gray would do? It would be really good here. He would think it through. He would think, this doesn't affect me. I don't need to get involved.

I don't need to put my oar in the water. I'll just do my own thing. You know, think before you act. And in this case, something that had nothing to do with you it didn't affect you in any way uh you didn't need to put in your two cents worth and kick these guys who were already being kicked from a thousand different angles it's not like they needed a kicking and you just jumped in with this huge kick and like you know and you know hundreds of i don't know how many people have watched it hundreds Hundreds of thousands, a million, I don't know.

But it was a very, you know, did really well, the video. But I can't believe you did it. I still can't believe you did it. Why did you do it? I told you after I uploaded this video that this is something I would have never done a year ago. And I actually put it down in no small part to your influence through this podcast. I'm not saying that it's your fault or anything but you are constantly constantly berating me for not just going with things like when we're doing you always want to

make sure like gray you have to just go along with this thing right and you're always trying to get me to just be more spontaneous and just do stuff and i felt like putting up that video that was totally a brady influence right if we had never done this podcast, I would never have put up those videos. Well, I think that's good because a criticism I would have of you is I sometimes think you don't have the courage of your convictions. Like, there are things that I know you feel about and, you know, you have opinions of what's right or wrong. Or even if you don't know what's right or wrong, you certainly have opinions. And then you'll say, we shouldn't talk about it on the podcast. It'll just cause us a world of trouble.

It's not worth the hassle. Let's just talk about something else. And that's fair enough, and I've learned from that. So to see you feeling passionately about something and act on it is a good thing, I guess. But I still think, I still don't know why this was the thing that made you do it. And yet this one, you know, with these, in a community you move among as well, you know,

you're a YouTuber, you don't know the Fine Brothers as far as I know, but you're certainly friends with some of their friends. Yeah, like in some ways, this is like an incredibly career stupid move. Yeah, like I think you'll probably meet them at them at some point just at some i know you don't go to many things but there's a there's a certainly as you would say a non-trivial chance that your your paths will cross with the flying brothers and now you've made this quite well-known video completely ripping the piss out of them two videos oh yeah two videos sorry yes that's right gray also spoofed the apology video so yeah so he had kicked them twice okay so just like i think this was a perfect storm of of things that may turn this into a big deal on the internet the reason i reacted is is i felt like this video was a perfect storm of things for me right right? Which is why I reacted. So again, like just with everybody,

with every opinion that everybody has on everything, like there are levels above and below which you're going to cause actions and not. And so yes, I am very much a person who just like doesn't care and avoids internet drama for the most part. But I felt like almost like these two videos that they made, the first announcement

and then especially the update video, that was really the one that put me over the edge. I felt like these two things couldn't have been more perfectly crafted to annoy exactly me. Like that's how I felt about those videos. Like they had sat down and looked at an MRI scan of my brain and come up with the thing that could maximally frustrate me. And so this is why I reacted. And I also reacted because I thought as soon as I saw that update video, I made the two videos, right? One as a mockery of the first announcement and one as a mockery of their update video. But I only made the two because I really just wanted to make the second one. So to make the second one, I had to do the first one as a mockery of their update video. But I only made the two because I really just wanted to make the second one.

So to make the second one, I had to do the first one as well. And that's why I made both of them. Thing one about this that annoys me, and this is just my own personal situation, but I get frustrated by these huge channels that have like big staffs of people working for them that then also want to talk like they're just a person in their bedroom making videos i mean this is this is the funny thing like you and i brady like for the large part we we are still individuals making videos like we work with people on occasion to help us make videos. You have someone who is making the computer file videos for you. But neither of us have like employees and just like omnipresent dozens of staff who

are helping us out with stuff. Yeah. And the Fine Brothers, we're just being like this pinnacle example of trying to talk like, oh, we're just some normal people and we wanna make videos too and bring this to the world and it's amazing. But like, we also are sitting on top of these hundreds and hundreds of millions of views and 14 million subscribers.

And we're showing pictures of our company that has 20 employees. The distance between like what you are and the way you are portraying yourself, that just kind of infuriates me. Like, my feeling is like, there's nothing wrong with being a giant company. But if you are a company with a whole bunch of people, like you have to talk in a different way when you're discussing your plans. So what, because I mean, obviously, obviously you don't think people who have this success and go in this direction of starting companies, like lose their right to

be people and talk to their audience. No, not at all. Obviously, you're not saying that. So, what is it about the way they spoke? Because these two brothers sort of fronted the video and spoke directly out to their audience. So, I wrote down a couple of quotes, but like almost in the very beginning, they do this thing that companies do that I just absolutely hate, which is talking in terms of a family. So they have a reference about like everybody who's joining the fine family.

And this is a thing like when I would work in schools. Okay, a school is already so much closer to a family than a company ever is. But boy, did it irritate the crap out of me whenever the administrative staff in any of the schools that I worked at talked about like everybody is a family. It's like, you know what? We're not a family. You want to use the word family to have a certain feeling in the people who are working for you. But family is not even remotely this word, right? Like I just, it just sets me right on edge. Like I hate that kind of thing where someone's trying to appropriate a more friendly word in a situation that is not even

remotely applicable right so they're talking about like join the fine family it's going to bring us closer than ever before like excuse me uh could you explain to me what about your licensing program is going to bring this, quote, family closer than ever before? Like, it's a business deal. There's nothing wrong with the business deal. There's nothing wrong with doing licensing. But I think it's just gross to present it in this way. And then they transition from talking about a family to talking about, like, the community., like we want to do this with the community and for the community and how this is great for the community. And that's the other one that just, again, is a kind of a YouTube thing that just really bothers me.

Like, I don't like the use of the word community, especially in this kind of situation with the Fine Brothers, where it's like, what community? Where is this community? I think what you have is an audience, right? Like you should use the word audience here. There's a large number of people who are watching you do a thing, and there's nothing wrong with that. But you want to use the word community to put in people's mind this vision of like a village where we're all equal and all working together for a thing, as opposed to the actual situation, which is like the two of you are the focus of everything in the world. And all of the individuals on the outside are separated from each other and their only focal point is you. I think the reason why people use

the word community on YouTube is because the word fan is uncomfortable. Like we've discussed this, right? I don't like using the word fan. And one of the main reasons why I don't like to and will try never to say something like my fans, because fan implies something about the internal emotional state of the person, right? They are a person who just loves everything that you do. Well, it implies they're fanatical. Yeah. Right.

Exactly. That's what it means. Yeah. And so this is why, like, I wish that people who were uncomfortable with the term fan wouldn't jump to the word community because the word community is a lie. Like, unless you are actually making your audience into a community by having them arrange gatherings, like where they independently of you do things, like, okay, if that's occurring, that is a community. But if you are the central focus all the time of everything that's occurring,

what you have is an audience. And so of everything that's occurring, what you have is an audience. And so like that is why I try to use the word audience. And I also like audience because it's like, well, all it says is that there are people who are watching what you do, but it again, it doesn't put a mental state in their head. These are fanatics who love you. It's just an, it's an audience. Like that's what it is.

And this is the actual relationship here. Like a person is on stage and there are people watching what they're doing. So all the community stuff, it just, again, like when they're trying to make a business deal, that is just like perfectly designed to irritate me. Like whenever I hear the word community, it just like, it sets my teeth on edge. If the, if there is no actual community there like that's that's why that first video just it it set me off on the wrong foot like i cannot believe how frustrating this is and then the other thing about that which i mentioned earlier is like this amazing misunderstanding of who are they making this video for so it's like okay have an audience, but the very fact that they are putting out this video to me seemed like some kind of amazing misunderstanding

of who their audience is. Like how many of your subscribers do you think care at all about your licensing deal here? Like this just seems amazingly tone deaf. And then to follow like follow like oh we have this licensing deal thing with I was looking at trying to like put the time for the video but like the second half of the video is then entirely all about like make sure that you don't watch any videos that are different react videos make sure you only watch our react videos and kind of like boycott people who are doing it illegally and if you want to do it legally, do it through our licensing program.

So that first video like kind of set me off like, oh, man, this is just I think I tweeted something about like this is like perfectly wrong in every way that it can possibly be. Like it's going to be misunderstood. It is aimed at an audience who can't possibly care less and will only be irritated by the implication that they're doing something wrong by watching other React videos or making React videos. And this false friendliness of like, we're a community, we're a family, like you're coming into our family. It's like, yeah, but in families, you know, you don't pay licensing deals to your parents for their names, right?

Like that's not how families work. There's nothing about that that's a family. Let me give you a prickly devil's advocate question then. I don't think we use words like family and community. If we do, I hope we don't do it often because they're a bit silly. But we do have things like we sell, you know, flags, for example, like the fun, like the Hello Internet flag. And like we make a little bit of money from that. But at the same time, we are saying, buy the flag and fly the nail and gear,

and we make jokey jokes about the mighty nail and gear and show your support for Hello Internet and that. How is that different? How are we different when we sell a flag and say, you know, put the flag on your wall and fly your flag for the mighty nail and gear hello internet i guess we are being a little bit ironic but yeah i mean we call it nation building yeah so so you think we're being sufficiently sarcastic about it or uh silly about it that because what's the difference what's the difference between what's the difference between that you know they're saying they've got a community and, you know, we have got a bunch of people that,

you know, like joking about this stuff and talking to each other about it. Okay. So, like, when you think about what a community is, right, I just think a key part of that is people doing things like independently larger than people doing things related to you and so i i still just think like we have an audience with hello internet like hello internet is by far and away the thing that comes closest to the possibility of using the word community right but i i would still stay far away from it and i don't i don't like that word and I try to avoid it although I'm sure if people go back through the podcast they can find some place where I've slipped up I just I just don't like that word and it's not something that I would necessarily use to describe this because again it

feels it feels like there's something in there which is trying to put something into the minds of the people in your audience that is almost exploitive. Because when I think about, again, like working for a school and when they talk about a family, these conversations always came up when like administration wants you to do something that you would never do if you were thinking about this as a company, right? And you were an employee in a company. They want you to think about this as a family because in a family, like you go way out of your way to help family members in a way that you would not help strangers or co-workers. You're appropriating the goodwill and emotional baggage of the word family to try and achieve something else. Yeah.

It's like, but you know what? In families, you don't give people, you know, trial memberships in families. You don't fire people, you know, trial memberships in families. You don't fire people from families. Like, you want all of the good parts of the word family, you know, to be associated with you, but you also still want all of the control of a company. Right? And that's what I don't like about the word community. Like, especially when it's combined with asking for money.

So, like, I would never want to say something like, buy a flag so that you can be part of the Hello Internet community. Yeah. Do you see, like, what happens there is... And don't, and don't, and don't fly a flag that wasn't made by us, because then you're not part of the community. Yeah, that's exactly it like i'm actually thinking like i mean because when we talked about the when the flag

thing came up like that was one of the very reasons why uh you know we we gave over the design like to the public domain right and i think this is the one of the main main this is one of the few places i think i may have used the word community because i can genuinely say like the community made this because we had nothing to do with that flag that flag was several iterations of other people and actually they're doing and they're doing what you said they're like 3d printing it and doing all sorts of making phone cases out of it and also so and that's got nothing to do with us yeah that that's that and but like that is the closest you're going to come to a community and it is a moment where like we discussed it ahead of time let's like yeah we are not going to come to a community. And it is a moment where like we discussed it ahead of time.

It's like, yeah, we are not going to be the exclusive owners of this flag. We didn't make it like it came organically without us. And so it makes sense to like throw it back out organically. Like we can't claim ownership of this thing. That's what I mean with this kind of community thing. Like it's very, very tricky. But I just think audience is almost always the correct word. It doesn't have emotional baggage and it's a,

it's a description of the situation. Now the, the, the, the update video, the fine brothers made the kind of the, the half retraction before the complete retraction happened, which was not done with the video that was just done quietly with a blog

post, but this kind of half retraction attempt to uh to stem the hemorrhaging editorially aside if you just ignore the content and what they were trying to achieve with it that was not for guys who make films for a living that was not well executed um artistically the way their looks and their expressions and some of the scripting, like, I think if they could do that differently a second time, they would take that option. Yeah, that video was the one where when I watched it,

I knew immediately I had to make the two videos that I made making fun of it. But the choice was taken away from you. I honestly felt like I have no choice now, right? Like the first video annoyed me on these things that are particular annoyance to me and just like press my buttons. But I swear to God, when I watched that update video,

the moment they used the word freeboot, it was like, yeah, no, I have no choice, right? Oh, I forgot. I forgot they used the word freeboot it was like yeah no i have no choice right i forgot i forgot they used the word freebooting and i know that that almost made me forgive them yeah i was i was watching the thing and i like i knew i was already going to make this video but it's like when they said freeboot it's like it's like they they handed me a letter of permission to make a video about this and And I just had, I really felt like I had no choice. And, you know, and those two videos I made, like, I have never made anything faster in my whole life. Like, those two videos, they were just, you know, it was like God was reaching down from heaven and

just made everything go right. Like, I did it in a take, you know, it took no editing. There was, like, it just came out perfectly the first time for both videos. And it was like, well, this is divinely ordained, right? Like, I'm not even thinking about this, like up they go, right? And then once they're up there, it's like, God ushered each video one at a time to the very top slot of all of Reddit for both videos. And it was like, well, you know, again it was like well you know again out of my hands totally out of my hands but that but that update video is one of the most unbelievable things i

have ever seen and that that was the one where it was like okay man you made this video that was poorly misunderstood that pressed my buttons in the wrong way. And then your update video, it seems like it's nothing but you expressing contempt for your audience, not understanding your poorly made first video. And it was, that was, that was the astounding part of it was it's like,

like I thought this first video was, was bad, but this video was bad, but this is not even a double down. This is like an octuple down on your mistake the first time. And maybe I'll play some audio clips from people here because you just have to hear it. It's unbelievable how they sound. And if you watch it, if you watch the video, the facial expressions they're making is again like shaking their heads can't believe that their business licensing plan that they sent out to 14 million subscribers who normally watch react videos wasn't well received it's it's it's amazing it's amazing and my personal theory here is again i do not know the Fine Brothers. I don't know

any of the details behind the scenes of any of this. Like I'm just, even though I'm a YouTuber, like in many ways, I'm just as much on the outside of this as everybody else. My guess about this is just that the Fine Brothers have to have been spending so much time as the heads of this company, talking to other media companies and talking to other business people that they just, they were just kind of out of touch with how to talk about all of this business stuff

to a normal audience. Like that this is where they spend all their time with people who are like, boy, we'd love to license your intellectual property. And so they think everybody would be interested in licensing our intellectual property.

And that's why they made this video. And then that's also why they were surprised that it wasn't well received. Because from their perspective, everyone they talked to loves this idea. Grey, this was their phantom menace. And then they made Attack of the Clones. I wish they'd made a third one just to finish it off. But it's like they'd had a great moment. to finish it off but it's like that it's like they'd had a great moment they'd become successful and but but did no one watch it i mean this is

what makes like did someone watch the second video like they must have played it to people and said we're thinking of putting this out to improve the situation what do you think and did those people look at it and go great that's that's gonna sort it guys well done every that's you know you're gonna put the fire out there well obviously obviously they just poured fuel on the fire but speaking of the prequels uh as the red letter media reviews show so well in those prequels there are many scenes where george lucas is talking to underlings and you can totally see that the underlings have thoughts on their mind that they are not saying right but everyone's just agreeing with george lucas and this is this is again where i think like this idea of there's there's nothing wrong with being a company but but one of the problems with being a company is that it can be difficult for the people at the

top to have a sense of how people below them are actually thinking and so i imagine the same thing kind of happened where it's like these guys are in charge of the company. They made this video. They're the ones who had the final say of whether it goes up or not. And they show it to a couple of people and they're like, oh yeah, it's great. You know, like, and then up it goes, right? And the whole thing goes up in flames. They showed it to some people whose salary they're paying. What do you think of this video that we appear in physically? And no one can say, well, boss, I know you pay my salary, but the way you're rolling your eyes there makes you look really dodgy. And yes, I know that you pay my health insurance, but you look really poor in there and unconvincing. You know, I don't know.

Maybe when you say sorry, you shouldn't say it with all of the contempt in the world. Could you tone it down like a little? Because when you're saying sorry, you're clearly sorry that you have to make this video, not sorry for anything that has occurred. Let me ask you one more thing. Have many of your other friends and YouTube buddies and people like that, what have they said to you about the fact that you put your oar in the water here? Have they said, you know, good for you, Gray? Or have they said, well, man, that was crazy? Or what's the general reaction been from other people like me in your life? Well, this actually just goes back to the company thing in some ways, where it's like, you don't know what people's private thoughts are. When I talk to people,

the universal consensus from my perspective seems to be like one the fine brothers thing was a total unmitigated disaster and then two the parody videos were hilarious like that's you know that's that's what i've been hearing from people but you never know what are the complete internal thoughts of other people about whether or not they thought it was a good idea to do this or, you know, you don't know that. Like, that's not a thing you can necessarily tell. Because, I mean, you're Mr. Cost-Benefit Analysis. And I don't imagine these videos have been like, I guess you've made some advertising income from them and got some new subscribers.

But they haven't been big for you. Like, you know. Yeah. I mean, in terms of dollars earned per minute spent, they're actually probably the most profitable videos I've ever made. Oh, okay. Okay. Because I was going to say, now we've come out the other end, what was in it for you?

Or did you just want to play? I mean, part of it was like, this was just irresistible. I really do need this feeling of like, I had no choice, right? I just honest to God felt like I had no choice. I saw those videos, I immediately recorded the audio, it came out perfect, everything was perfect. And like, well, I'm uploading them. That's why it was so fast from your perspective. Like you didn't make it down to the kitchen and back before I'd uploaded the video. So it was, that's just the way it was. And the second thing is like, it was everything about it. Just push my buttons perfectly.

I wanted to upload these things. I thought they were funny. I thought that their, their commentary was like, was on point as far as satire goes. So it was like, I just, I just couldn't not like what, you know, what, is it a great career decision? Like maybe not, but you know, I've learned to be, I've learned't not. Like, you know, is it a great career decision? Like, maybe not. But, you know, I've learned to be more reckless from you, Brady. That's what I've learned.

So, as I alluded to earlier, I felt a bit sorry for them at times. You know I don't like lynch mobs. And these guys were certainly lynched. And they were kicked from all angles. And, like, at times, you know, I thought, oh, that must be really hard on them and, you know, lying in bed at night. Because, I don't know, they're human beings and I felt sorry for them. But another part of me thinks if this hadn't happened,

if people hadn't piled on and people just tried to reason with them or have a rational discussion with them, they wouldn't have stopped. And this would have come to a head in another way. I don't know how. I don't know whether more videos would have been taken down. I don't know if it would have, you know, the battle would have been won or lost anyway. But certainly something good came from this. And that is this thing they were trying to do that I don't think they should have been

doing or been allowed to do did stop. So it felt like it did achieve something that I think probably should have been achieved. And that is them taking control of a format that I don't think they own. But I don't know if there was a better way to do it because I didn't like watching them. I didn't like watching what they had to go through. I'm not lumping you into that in terms of the really bad stuff, but I don't want to sound like I'm picking on you. Oh, no, no.

I don't think you are at all. But this is always what happens with the mob, right? And especially when you have a mob that is in the size of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, you're going to get behavior that's not great. And this is where every person always ends up drawing their own line. And so the thing I've discussed with a few people is the point at which it seemed to me like, okay,

this is, this has gone from like a fun mob to like, Ooh, a little scary is when it starts becoming the meta thing where there are all these trackers that were keeping record of how many subscribers they had lost per hour. And then it, then it becomes like live feeds that people can watch of how many people are unsubs per hour and then it then it becomes like live feeds

that people can watch of how many people are unsubscribing you know per minute to their channel and that's that's the part where to me it felt like oh this now has suddenly become like a dangerous thing because it's not even about the issue anymore now it's like a mob that just wants to see a number go down and yeah and Yeah, they no longer cared about the verdict. They just wanted to watch the execution. I don't think an execution in some ways is too strong of a metaphor there because internet mobs, like they don't kill people. But I think taking away or threatening the way someone makes a living in the modern world like that's pretty close to

threatening someone's life like to to take away the way they make a living yeah and and then to turn that and into the central focus of it is where it's like oh that's that's that's the way mobs go that's always the way mobs go this episode of hello internet is brought to you by squarespace start building your to you by Squarespace. Start building your website today at squarespace.com and enter the offer code hello at checkout to get 10% off. When it comes to giving yourself a place online, there's no place like Squarespace. All of the power of professional websites without any of the worries or hassles that you have to deal with if you're running your own thing from top to bottom. No worries about hosting, no worries about upgrading a Linux server

on the other side of a country. It's just so easy, which is why I use Squarespace for all the websites that I run. With Squarespace, you can build sites that look professionally designed regardless of your skill level, no coding required. They have intuitive, easy to use tools that can make your website look and feel exactly how you want. And while it can look beautiful on the outside, it will be secure and stable on the inside because of their state-of-the-art technology. Squarespace is trusted by millions of people and some of the most respected brands in the world. It's really easy to get started with a no-credit-card-required trial by going to squarespace.com. Just start to play around with how you want your website to look. Give it a test drive. You will like it. And if you have any questions whatsoever,

they have 24-7 support with live chat and email and teams based around the world to help you wherever you are. There's so much on Squarespace that it's impossible to talk about in a single ad. But like if you need a website, if you ever want to do anything with it, if you just want to have a single portfolio or you want to run a whole online store, Squarespace has got you covered. Seriously, try them out. Squarespace.com, offer code HELLO to get 10% off and to show your support for this show.

Thank you to Squarespace. Squarespace, you should. Hello. Just finishing my Skittles. So, Grey, this actually segues somewhat nicely with a book that I happen to have just finished reading. And it's a book that you previously recommended in one of our Audible ads. And that is So You've Been Publicly Shamed by John Ronson. That's right, isn't it?

I sometimes call him Mark Ronson in my head because he's a music producer. I always worry about getting that wrong. I keep calling him Ron Johnson, as other people have pointed out. I think in that very Audible ad, I made the mistake twice. Oh, really? Oh, no. So, John Ronson, not Ron Johnson. But yes, the segue is a perfect segue, perhaps, talking about mobs and mobs on the internet.

I had not read the book, of course. I'd heard you talk about it. I went for the dead tree version in this particular case, because it's always nice to have a dead tree version when you're on holiday on the beach and stuff. And good book, very, very thought-provoking. It's been a while since I read a book that got me that down about the world, but in a good way. I've been working on the script for the Q&A video for my channel for the 2 million subscriber thing.

And one of the questions someone asked me was, like, what was the best book of the last year that I read. And I looked over my list and I think I'm going to give my book of the year award to this book. This one is a really interesting book. And it's also a book that I can almost universally recommend. Like where some of the other books that I happen to really like that I read this year, I need to know something about the person. It's like, I'm not going to recommend super intelligence to everybody as a book. It's like, if you read a lot of crazy stuff about AI, like I need to know some things about you. But this book, it falls into the interesting category of like, okay, if you make your living on the internet, this is required reading. Absolutely required reading right absolutely required reading but also just for anybody who participates in social media on the internet i also think this is required reading and so now we're talking about

like 90 of the internet connected human population so i like i i think it's a very interesting very well written book i don't agree with everything in it as always with these kind of things but but man it's it's one that has really stuck with me since I read it like a year ago. So, for people who don't know what the book's about, basically, in a nutshell, he's talking about the way that Twitter can be used to sort of turn on someone when they do things wrong, or they are perceived to have done things wrong and sort of a twitter mob it's usually it's very twitter centric this book which is perhaps one of my criticisms of it but he talks about how a twitter mob will turn on someone and basically destroy their life

and basically shame them and then he goes off on a few tangents it's a very well written book and it's very chatty and he goes on a bit of a journey as he explores this whole issue of public shaming and he goes and meets different people. He meets some victims. He meets some semi-perpetrators. He meets other people who have interesting views on shame and public shame. So, that's what the book's about. It's about what it's like for people who have the internet turn on them, like the Fine Brothers just experienced. The prime example, the main girl that he's using,

it's Justine, what is her last name? Sacco, I think her name is. Sacco, that's right, yes. It's Justine Sacco. And her story was making a tweet where she joked about she's going to Africa and that she doesn't have to worry about getting AIDS because she's white. Like, you know, not the best joke in the world kind of.

Actually, I can't believe that people didn't realize that was a joke. Like that is a testament to people's inability to understand sarcasm. We'll get to that in a second. I have a particular theory about this, right? Okay. But she made this joke and, you know, she didn't have very many Twitter followers. She's sort of like just a regular citizen on the internet. You know, she's just a normal person using Twitter.

But so she's on her way to South Africa. She gets on a plane. And while she's on the flight, this thing explodes into people, you know, saying like, we have to get this racist fired from her job. Right. And anyone who's seen these internet mobs, like, you know, this thing, like, we have to get this racist fired from her job, right? And anyone who's seen these internet mobs, like, you know, this thing, like it explodes into a bigger thing. And just like the Fine Brothers were a perfect storm, the reason it happened to Justine,

like this perfect storm for her was like, yes, one, her job was in PR, right? So that makes the story way more delicious. Two, there was this element of, boy, isn't she going to be surprised when the plane lands? Like there were reporters going to be at the airport. So there was like a countdown clock for excitement. There was suspense and a narrative. And then the other thing, which is more like my personal theory on why this stuff happens, is that I think people were able to willingly misinterpret her tweet because she's a case of where like beating down on her allows people to signal to all of their friends how they don't like racism.

Like the beat down on her is twice as strong because people feel like, I get to tell everybody how great I am because boy, don't I hate racists. It's like, do you really think that joke is like some super racist joke? Or like, is it, it's just a bad joke or it's just sarcasm. But I think like, this is is the this is the combination of things that turns it into a gigantic storm it's like this perfect stuff and so her life is just ruined from this like she loses her job and has just been like harassed by a like an a not understandably sized large mob.

Like, I cannot imagine how traumatic this must be. Again, just for like a regular citizen living their regular lives, not someone who makes a public living on the internet. Like, I can't imagine what it would be like to be at the centre of this kind of thing. That one does drive me crazy because that tweet, the way I interpret that tweet, it actually was kind of making a racial commentary anyway. Like it was making a sort of a positive racial commentary about sort of the disproportionate number of people getting AIDS. But she was just doing it in this kind of reverse.

She was doing it the way a comedian would do it. Like a comedian would do that on a stage and everyone would get it and actually think it's actually an interesting commentary on the state of the world. And she did it and people just thought that she was some kind of moron who didn't understand how AIDS worked or something. But... John Ronson does make that same point and he goes like the history of comedy, which I do, which is one of the things where I think he oversells that a little bit because my perspective on it is, like, it doesn't even really matter if it was intended as some kind of commentary like like the amount of incredible pushback she got was disproportionate to this thing right even if it you know like there's a version of the best version of her

is like she's sitting there intentionally crafting like a commentary on the situation of aids in africa right or like or she just made a thoughtless? Or like, or she just made a thoughtless joke. Like, but even if she just made a thoughtless joke, what happened is just wildly disproportionate. Yeah. Yeah. So, I came out of this book, again, wishing I didn't, I wasn't on Twitter. And thinking that social media and, you know, I still don't think it's as, I still think it's not as bad as Reddit. I still think Reddit's the worst place, but. We got to talk about that sometimes.

But it's, it made me think of, it made me think Twitter was poison as well. But, and it's just really scary, isn't it? It's like, it's like any book or film you see where something really bad happens to someone and you think, gosh, you know, that could happen to me. You mentioned maybe a week ago that you were reading this and that it might be an interesting thing to talk about on the podcast. And of course, it ties in very well with the whole Fine Brothers thing where I was just recently part of a gigantic internet mob. I've been thinking a lot about this because, again, over maybe the last year, I've just become fascinated with the way like arguments happen on the internet and the way people talk about things. And this ties into Guns, Germs, and Steel, which we'll get to at another point. But I'm just kind of fascinated more and more by the way the internet affects people's behavior.

But I was trying to think about why do some mobs seem okay to me and other mobs don't so like the justine thing mob seems really bad to me but then when you get like mobs against a company trying to change the company's behavior it's like well that seems fine to me thinking about it and in my notes i came up with kind of three axes that make it more or less okay from my perspective. I think one of those is like individuals versus corporations. So like the more the dial is turned towards, is this mob against one individual acting alone? Like that seems worse than a mob acting against like some gigantic transcontinental company. The other axes I was thinking about is like public versus private people.

And this again is where like he has a few examples in the book. But again, I'm just like regular Internet citizens that get swept up into a thing that is way beyond them because they are are the spark that kicks off a fire but their normal life is that they're just normal people so not public figures yeah and the closer you are on the end of being a public figure the more okay it is or like the less of a problem i would have with a mob depending on the circumstances it doesn't mean that it's totally okay to just like beat down all public figures but But I'm trying to think like, when do I get mad about witch hunts on the internet? And when am I less likely to get mad? So like, the more famous a person is, the more you can have angry mobs seem normal. And at the most

extreme end of this, you get all the way up to something like politics, right? The most public of all public people are politicians. And they just seem to have constant standing armies of angry mobs that hate everything they do, right? And it just seems like, oh, but that's just part of politics. And then the last one on my three axes here is like context versus lack of context and this is my big big problem with the internet is when people take like a single piece of information and decide everything about a person based on that so like one poorly worded tweet is reason enough for people to decide you are a total racist or you are a total sexist and then once they decide that's what you are now it's okay to hound you until the ends of the earth because i have defined

you as a bad person yeah if there's one thing that the internet has convinced me more and more of There is a large segment of the population that is either incapable or uninterested in understanding people as anything other than absolutes. And that to me is the most dangerous kind of mob. You take one sentence and then people just decide that person is evil, which totally justifies their behavior. And that links back into the thing that I said before, where people doubly enjoy a beatdown because they feel like they are crushing badness beneath their boot while also waving a flag to all of their friends showing how virtuous they are. And that to me is like the most dangerous aspect of what makes mobs more or less frightening. It sounds that last thing you said there, Gray, that's almost like two points.

Because like I completely agree that context is really important. You know, if they'd gone back through this Just Dame Woman's Twitter feed and there'd been a pattern of comments that were not that were racist basically um that would that would be different to one tweet and that's a really important a really important point you make but i feel like this is a whole separate point the empowering nature of social media it's almost giving people too much power it's becoming like a drug a drug for them they're not they're not just

they're not just attacking the racist person because racism is wrong they're doing it to like to show off to their friends so it has this has this double double effect i think that's separate from the the context issue yeah i think you're right maybe that doesn't add that doesn't exist on the spectrum but that's like uh that's like an accelerant to every other yeah yeah it's it's uh we're giving a powerful weapon to people and it's got the extra problem that it makes people feel really good to use it. This is slightly tangential, but boy, do I hate the fads that pass over Facebook and Twitter where people are supposed to be changing their icon to support whatever. And that to me is like the purest version of this kind of

thing. People change their Twitter icon to support issue X or, you know, or to support issue Y. And really, like, what have they done? They have done literally nothing. The actual thing that is occurring here is that they are just wanting to signal to their friends, like, oh, look how virtuous I am because I care about this thing. Like when someone tweets, oh, my thoughts are going out to the people who've all lost their homes in that fire. And someone replies, if, my thoughts are going out to the people who've all lost their homes in that fire. And someone replies, if only your thoughts could rebuild all their houses. Yeah, that's exactly the thing.

It's like you want to get all of the credit for being a good person, but you're actually doing nothing. Like that is the purest version of this kind of thing. And, you know, again, just a few of his examples in the books, I think the ones that I find most galling all had that element of it where this person is being beaten down in no small part because then the crowd is able to show how virtuous it is. Like, I forget the other girl who had that like dumb picture of her in front of the, like the soldiers. Yeah, at the cemetery. Yeah. Yeah. So, she's taking a picture of herself in front of the sign at Yeah, at Arlington, at the cemetery. Yeah, so she's taking a picture of herself in front of the sign at Arlington,

which was asking for quiet and respect. And it was a picture of her pretending to yell and flipping the finger. It's a stupid picture, but that has the additional problem of like, now everybody who's on the side of like, let me show how virtuous I am and how much I love America, right?

Gets to feel awesome by beating down on this girl because of this one picture. Yeah. And to put that in context, her and her friend had like a running joke of them in front of signs, directly disobeying a sign. So, smoking in front of a no smoking sign or running in front of a no running sign. So, it was just the fact that the sign said, be quiet and respectful. So, they thought, oh, let's pretend we're being loud and disrespectful. And the fact that it was just the fact that the sign said be quiet and respectful so they thought oh let's pretend we're being loud and disrespectful and the fact that it was at arlington cemetery was was irrelevant to the joke right but then everyone thinks this is a chance to show that they how much more they respect you know the war fallen so the mob you joined you don't normally join these mobs

obviously but the mob you recently joined i'm just figuring out where the fine brothers are on the spectrum there they are sort of a company and as far as their individual people they are quite public context wise uh my feeling on the context was when i came to this story i saw both videos so i did not exist in this time period where there was only one yeah and so that that to me was like i got to see your thing and then i got to see your clarification of this thing yeah i think i have all of the context to do this so on all three axes they were they were ready for a whipping you reckon yeah and and and also the like the virtuous thing i just want to point out again is extra funny because it's like that very morning I had enforced my own trademark against somebody else.

So there's no version of this where I feel like I am defending people against trademarks. It's like I have a trademark. I just used a trademark. That's not what I'm feeling like. We're going to defend everybody against trademarks. So that's kind of why I think it's okay. And it's also why, you know, again, I think people have the right to do it. But I didn't want to do a video that was insulting them as individuals.

And there was no shortage of that. There was no shortage of videos going after them personally. I don't know. This is like the tricky thing with these public mobs is it also kind of runs up into issues about what can people say on the internet? How much do you want to limit people's actions? But it's also just connected to a lot of other things about how people interact with each other and the nature of public and private space and the nature of shame in the modern world. Like, I think it's a really interesting book that I think everybody should read. in some of those issues, though, did he, in terms of anonymity of the commenters and, you know, libel and what you can and can't say, or the criminalness of some of it as well? Like, he didn't go there. He sort of, he talked about, you know, is it wrong or right that people are

doing this? But he didn't go into some of those finer details, which maybe are important. They are definitely important. But I think when you're reading the book, you can't help but think of those things, even if he's not talking about them explicitly. And, you know, when I think about this stuff, it's like, what would you do if you were in charge of society to change this? And I think there's like, this is an incredibly different or difficult question to answer. Because it's like, okay, when I think about the kind of mobs that I don't like, that seem

scary, that seem illegitimate, and then you try to separate them from the particulars of any situation, it's very hard to know if there is even anything that can be done about this. Or, I mean, in some ways, if there even is anything that should be done about this, because like I can't think of any kind of systemic solution that doesn't also then rub up against other things that I also value, like people's ability to express themselves on the internet,

even if it is in ways that other people feel isn't nice. I think that that's an important thing to have. And so, that's why I feel like this book puts me in an interesting, like, pensive mood about like, there's a lot in here that I don't like, but I'm also not sure that there can be any solution that isn't ultimately worse than the thing that it is trying to fix. I haven't thought about this as much as you. So, whenever I talk about it, I feel like you run rings around me, sort of debating wise. But I do think the internet is changing so much, or the world is changing so much with the way the internet is integrated into it, that I think things should be changed. Because I know you're all about the

free speech and people expressing themselves. And I know how empowering the internet has been in that way. For goodness sake, I mean, I've been able to start a whole new career expressing myself on the internet and having my own business and making my own films. That would never have happened without the internet, you know, I'd still be working at a newspaper or something if it hadn't been for the internet. So I'm very grateful for it. But as we live more and more of our life on the internet, I think maybe we need to think about whether or not we need to protect people more. Because if it was allowed, if it was legal for when you were walking down the street, for a hundred people to come up and start screaming in your face or saying racist things or doing that, like there is a law to stop that.

There is a law to stop people being harassed. But on the internet, we say, well, this is great because normally these people would never get to express how they felt or they'd never get to tell Tom Cruise that they think he's an idiot or they'd never get to tell these famous people this or they'd never get to go to tell strangers what they think or they'd never get to tell these famous people this or they'd never get to go to tell strangers what they think or they'd never get to speak their mind and now they're getting a voice well that's that's nice but as as we move more and more into the internet i think the modern equivalent of walking down the street is becoming spending a bit of time on twitter or facebook and if that is the new walking down the street,

I think we should be afforded some of the protection that someone walking down the street has. And at the moment, we don't have that. At the moment, you can get away with things on the internet. You would never get away with face-to-face in real life with people. And that's fine, but our lives are moving onto the internet. We're spending less time walking down the street. And now we're walking down the cyber street and we're having 100 people scream in our face and assaulting us. And everyone's like, well, it's different because it's the internet, man. Well, I think it's always good to try to find like what is the fundamental point of disagreement which which is not always an easy thing to do and i think what you have expressed is is the fundamental point of disagreement

between us on this topic which is the thing that we've sort of talked about on the podcast before and then not we've had like vigorous conversations that we totally cut we've talked about this before my view on it is that there is a difference with stuff that is online versus the real world. And I think that is the fundamental difference. And like, I'm not saying that getting harassed on the internet isn't upsetting, but there is no doubt that behavior that you would never accept in the physical world is accepted on the internet. I would find like, I've gotten into like these huge arguments about guns, germs and steel. And like people have been calling me idiots, like in hundreds of comments.

And like this stuff is all over the bad history section of Reddit. And my feeling with that is like, awesome. I totally love this kind of debating on the internet. I think people should be able to call me an idiot and say that like, I'm dumb and I don't know what I'm talking about. And then I can argue with them if I want, or I can leave it alone.

I have a feeling about that kind of thing that it's like, I am happy that this can exist. Even when people disagree with me in a very vigorous, sometimes super unfriendly way, I am happy in that world in a way that like, I totally agree with you. If I was walking down the street and hundreds of people were yelling at me that I am a moron, that would not be so welcome. That would feel incredibly threatening in a way that it just doesn't on the internet, at least not to me. I'm not so naive that I don't see some differences,

but telling me that the internet is different to the real world is absolutely fine up until the point that Justine Sacco flies back to New York and gets fired from her job because a mob turned her on the internet. Like, that's not on the internet anymore, man. She's now not getting paid. She now, she's not allowed to walk into her office now. That's not just on the internet anymore, man. That's why, like, I find this book is really sticking with me because it's, I don't know how we can legalize the distinction because, we are both in agreement and i even said before like

when you take someone's job away that is that is the modern equivalent of threatening their life you are taking away their ability to live in a world that requires them to work and when you have done it in this way so that their name is forever associated with the thing that like nobody wants to touch justine sacco because she's radioactive not because of the thing that she said but because of the controversy around her you know it's it's like an execution and so like I totally agree like that is awful that shouldn't happen but I like I don't know like how how do you systematize the difference between these things? Like I, I have a very hard time thinking about like, what is the solution to this problem?

Because I will, I I'm with you on this. Like that is too far. That is too much. That is without a doubt awful, but I just don't know what the answer is. And I think, I like,

I think about this a lot. When you made your video poking fun at the fine brothers, and then like a day or two later, you saw their subscriber count was dropping, which means their revenue is dropping. Admittedly, it's still in the millions. I don't think they're going to be on the breadline. But when you saw that in some tiny, tiny way,

the bottom line of that business that employs people is being affected, and you were a minor contributor to the mob. I'm not saying it was all you, far from it, but you played a role. Did you think, maybe I shouldn't? Or did you think, fair enough, you know, you do the crime, you do the time? Well, those are two different things. A question about maybe I shouldn't have versus do they deserve this? I would make those videos again, doing what I was doing. Like, I would make them again. Like, I think it's totally fine to criticize public companies for doing dumb things. And also, again, a company is not taking't like the let's focus on people unsubscribing, like that starts to make me feel uncomfortable. I think you can make a pretty good argument that that is not that different from a boycott. I don't have any problem with people boycotting companies whose policies they don't agree with.

This just happens to be like a super internet-y, super public way of making this very clear. But there's no way I would be like, oh man, if there's some company that you don't like and you want to boycott them, I would never try to argue like, but you're taking away that company's living oh man if there's some company that you don't like and you want to boycott them I would never try to argue like but you're taking away that company's living man like people work for that company that's not how this works it's so different when you get down to the scale of like a single person especially a single person who doesn't live in this public way I hope you don't make a video kicking me though gosh after that incisive or in your super cali voice you do it I was divinely inspired at the moment I don't think I can