Hello Internet - H.I. #70: Bun Fight

Episode Date: September 30, 2016

Grey and Brady discuss: a hypothetical experiment, the Hello Internet YouTube channel crosses 100,000 subscribers, celebrity news corner, The Great British Bake Off, listener photos, Brady fights the machine, and YouTube heroes. Brought to You By Audible: get a free 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month Harry's: Quality Men's Shaving Products. Promocode HI for your free trial Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes Discuss this episode on the reddit Hello Internet on YouTube Objectivity 2016 Kelvin Medal and prize of the Institute of Physics Angelina Jolie files for divorce from Brad Pitt H.I. #64: The Quiz Show The Great British Bake Off Listener photo: where's Waldo HI Flag in Norway Trolltunga Brady's payment envelope YouTube Heroes

Naughty check. Naughty check. Naughty check. I was a bit naughty. You know how I don't like totally understand the difference between you and I when it comes to objects and memorabilia and mementos and things? What's not to understand? It seems very clear.

Well, I realize we're different, but I'm just always trying to understand it better. So I've come up with a hypothetical scenario. Oh, okay. And I want to know how you would react. And I know this is just a crazy hypothetical scenario, but it will help me better understand you. So just go with me for a second. Okay. So we're doing a thought experiment. A thought experiment. Yep. I was trying to think of someone who's famous, who I think you hold in high regard. So I've gone for Elon Musk, right? Okay. All right.on musk came to london and for some reason he emailed you and said uh cgp gray i hear you live in london and i've liked a

couple of your videos and i just wonder if you want to go for a coffee okay i'm assuming you would say yes to that so you go for a quick coffee with him and you just chat about whatever you two want to chat about and while you're at coffee he like has a napkin or something, and he's just sketching and drawing. And he draws like just a funny picture of you two sitting at a table. And at the end, he just signs it and says, oh, do you want this? I just drew this of us sitting here having a chat. To Gray, great to meet you. Elon Musk. What do you do with that napkin? Well, there's two things that occur here. One of which is trying to navigate social graces. Yep. So I think there are many times when you need to be seen as receiving a gift that you have

no intention of actually keeping. So you're not going to screw it up and throw it in his face, obviously. Because as I have learned in my interactions with people over my life, sometimes you have to try to accept what the person is doing, not like the actual nitpicky details of the situation. A person is just trying to extend a nice gesture. Yeah. And you need to accept the gesture because rejecting it is a whole other indication that is not intended. I love how you explain this like you've just discovered the sky is blue and it's like

you're imparting wisdom when this is just called like normal human behavior and manners. This is a thing humans have to learn. Yes, of course. And I like to think anyone above the age of 10 will take the gift and say thank you very much, regardless of what they think of the gift. So let's say that you've said thank you, Mr. Musk, shook his hand, said I enjoyed coffee. Thanks for the napkin. See you around. Now you've got this napkin with a hand-drawn sketch by Elon Musk signed by him of a moment you two shared. what do you do with it? Well, I would do what I do with almost everything, which is I would take a picture of it and get rid of it. That's what I would do, right? Because what you want is the memory. You want the signifier of the thing. Okay. But you don't actually want the thing. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. How do you interpret the results of this thought experiment? I remain baffled. It's kind of the answer I expected, but is there any object

other than something that you're keeping just for pure cash reasons that you would keep for sentimental reasons? Is there anything I could have come up with in my hypothetical that you'd have said, oh yeah, I'd probably get that put in a frame and put it on my wall. Did I just think of an inadequately cool thing or is there nothing you would frame? I feel like there has to be an answer to this where an object also has a decorative value. So you're talking about framing a thing. I'm not against having stuff in frames and displayed in the abstract. I'm not necessarily an advocate for pure bare walls. Like framing a napkin would seem like a strange thing to do. So it wouldn't necessarily have that sort of value. I can imagine a situation where there's an object that has

decorative and sentimental value that I would want to keep, would stay around? Can you concoct one in your head now? Or does one exist in your house, which would be even better? I just had an object framed last week. That's what made me even think about this. Okay. Because, you know, I'm a little bit obsessed with Graham's number, which is this hugely

big number. It used to be the biggest number ever, and it's still a famous number. And I met Ron Graham in the US, and we made some videos together, and he got out the big pieces of paper we use in Numberphile, and he drew numbers and diagrams and explained it to me. And then at the end, I got him to sign it from Ron Graham. And I've had one of those big bits of paper of Ron Graham's description of Graham's number in a frame, because for me, it was like,

oh, I was always obsessed with Graham's number as a kid. I met the guy, we shared a day together, we went for dinner, he drew all these pictures for me. I'm going to keep one. And it's like special to me. I'm trying to find what your equivalent of that is. Yeah, but the Graham's number thing, like to me, that is cool. I can totally understand why you would want to frame that and have that on display. Like that makes sense. I have no objection to that. I have much more of the objection to your box full of astronaut photos that you never look at. Your multiple chests full of astronaut photos that you never look at. That to me seems like just hoarding objects for no benefit whatsoever.

But the gram-number thing makes sense. And also, you know, like mathematical proofs and explanations like that, they have a particular kind of austere beauty about them. So, they make sense as an object to frame. My other hypothetical I was going to give you before I came up with my coffee one was, I was imagining that if Elon Musk said, oh, by the way, Gray, here's the first sketch of a Tesla I ever did. When I first thought of it, I just quickly put something down. But the only reason I didn't give that to you as my hypothetical is because I knew you'd get all rational and say, well, that's worth a lot of money. So of course,

I'm going to take that and keep it and sell it. That's exactly the clockwork that's going through my mind right now as you're talking. It's like, oh, this is like a Leonardo da Vinci sketch of a helicopter, right? It's like the thing itself is not valuable, but like the thing that it represents has value to other people. And so now you can start playing this game of what do other people value giving objects intrinsic worth that they don't necessarily have on their own, right? Because, you know, Leonardo did nothing useful in terms of engineering. He just drew pictures of things that couldn't be invented, but we all sort of like collectively agree as a society that they must have worth. So they have this incredible worth. So yes, I have a hard time separating Elon Musk's original sketches of Tesla have intrinsic value because humans would

value them as interesting, valuable objects from the thing itself. I feel like you can't separate those two things. I shouldn't be surprised anymore, but you still managed to surprise me with your lack of sentimentality. I think it's just the way some people's brains work. And I've said before that I find rooms with lots of objects in them. It's almost similar to being in a room that's kind of noisy somehow. It's distracting. Like it makes focusing on things harder when there's lots of things in a room. So I feel like reducing the number of objects is like a way of focusing on the few things that you actually care about or want to do. It's why like with almost everything I have, I try to reduce it down to like the minimum number of necessary parts. That is a thing that is like unrelated to sentimentality. There's a certain kind of noise that I find with a bunch of objects, but some people just don't find that. And I think that's what the difference is here, that there's like a benefit to the minimalism,

which is separated from the aesthetics of the minimalism. I thought maybe it's more related to like, you know, your extreme personality. Because you know how you're like really funny about like germs and stuff as well. I'm not really funny about germs. I'm actually just quite reasonable about germs. Well, of course. Just because I've thought it through. This is not an extreme personality trait. I fundamentally disagree with you here and I will not let you just throw out such an aspersion. I'm a Howard Hughes-like character with germs.

Okay, okay. No, that's what I'm saying. No, no. I really was putting it there for you to go either way. I'm quite open to the fact that it's completely unrelated. But I'm just wondering if it could also be related. You can find distraction and worry quite easily, I sometimes think. I don't think that's fair. And I think this is the fundamental nature of our podcast here. It's like a difficulty or an inability to understand the minds of other people.

Human communication between humans is just so hard sometimes when you're really trying to get down to like a fundamental question of what is it like to be a Brady? What is it like to be a Gray? It's a very hard thing to know. Like, I don't really know what it's like to be a Brady? What is it like to be a Grey? It's a very hard thing to know. Like, I don't really know what it's like to be a Brady. I think I have some ideas of what it's like to be a Brady, but I don't really know. And your life is mysterious to me as well. Like, I don't know how you do all of the things that you do. I find that also mysterious. Like, I don't know what it's like to be a Brady because I'm not a Brady. That's why I come up with stupid hypotheticals

about you having a coffee with Elon Musk. This is just another line of attack in my never ending quest to understand what it's like to be a grey. It's so hard to convey the contents of one's mind. Yeah. That's ultimately the difficulty. Yeah. But I can imagine you sitting at your computer about to work and then like the thought comes into your head that you didn't put your

toothbrush away and I can imagine you wouldn't be able to start work until you went and put your toothbrush in the right place because like the thought that maybe your toothbrush is too close to the toilet or you know has fallen onto a dirty surface I think you would not be able to work until you fix that and it's the same with maybe a picture on the wall like you are easily distractible and everyone's a bit like that. But I think you're very like that. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you could just crack on and work knowing that your toothbrush is not being put away properly.

That's super funny because that to me falls into the like OCD like behavior. And I feel like I've never had that feeling of, oh, something is not right. I need to go fix it now. And so that's why I want the minimum number of things because there's few things to keep straight in the house. The toothbrush thing, it hits on like, it kind of drives my wife crazy that I tend to just leave the electronic toothbrush and the toothpaste in random locations around the house all the time because I sort of pace around when I'm brushing my teeth and then I don't pay attention when I'm done like with the toothbrush and I just kind of put it down and leave it there and totally forget about it.

So it's a perfect case of like, it never even occurs to me to worry about like, oh, where is the toothbrush? Is it too close to the toilet? What about those germs? I'm surprised by that. That's interesting to know that you would just leave your toothbrush somewhere random. I wouldn't have thought you would do that. Yeah. There's something about it which slides below my threshold of recognizing it. there's like a little bit of a habit of just walking around while i brush my teeth and then i just put it down and totally forget about where it is but speaking of objects and what to do with objects brady you and i were going to have a bit of a problem on our hands because the hello internet YouTube channel has recently crossed

100,000 subscribers, much to my amazement. I still have a hard time believing how many people actually prefer to listen to the show on YouTube, which is baffling to me. But yes, we have crossed 100,000 subscribers. And as you know, because you have done this many times with many channels, when you cross 100,000 subscribers, YouTube sends you a trophy of sorts with their silver play button for 100,000. How many of these do you have now, Brady? Well, I have six here. Are we even going to pretend there's like a debate to be had here?

Like, why are we even talking about this? Everyone who has saw us go past 100,000 knows what's going to happen. You know what's going to happen. I know what's going to happen. I know what's going to happen is I would like this trophy for myself. I feel like you have six trophies. If I'm going to get any of the trophies, this is the one that I want.

You want this one, dear? Yeah. I want this one. I want to put it above my mantle. Yeah. I want to put it above the mantle. Yeah. So that I can look at this great accomplishment of the Hello Internet YouTube channel,

which is this kind of island related to the main project of the podcast. I want this trophy. I want to have it. All right. Well. I want to keep it. I actually have just had one of my other channels, one of my first channels, Nottingham Science, actually just passed 100k. Oh, congratulations. Numberphile 2 is on 97k and Objectivity is on 92K.

So, if people want to help me out, if any Tims want to help me out, go and subscribe to Objectivity for God's sake. It's such a good channel. It needs more subscribers. So, if you want to subscribe to those, I could potentially have another three anyway in the coming months. I was hoping you'd give me the Hello Internet one so I could have 10. But it looks like I'm going to have to be content with nine.

I think precisely because you want it for number 10, I'm going to receive it for my first trophy. And my plan is I'm going to take a picture of it and then I'm going to throw it away they're not very impressive the silver buttons the gold buttons are impressive and i know you haven't got your gold button that you're entitled to but the gold buttons are very impressive but the silver buttons they seem a bit cheaper and they're not as nicely framed and they're loads smaller and they're still nice they don't have to do it guess, but I don't think you'll be overly impressed by it. Do you hear that YouTube? Brady, collector of

silver play buttons, not impressed. Yeah. I guess they seem a bit boring when you start getting close to 10, but unremarkable. They're still in their boxes and they're stored under a sofa at my place. Oh, God. Okay. Okay. So, let me ask you. If you have them in boxes unopened under your sofa, why would you even want the Hello Internet 100,000? I do still like the idea of putting them on a wall as a little collection. I have loads of framed stuff I haven't put on walls because I never actually get around.

I'm not very good at hanging things on walls. So, I always worry I'll do it badly or especially trying to hang 10 silver buttons. How on earth am I going to get them all straight and lined up? I know I'll do it crooked. I'm so bad at handyman stuff. They'll be all crooked and all over the place and they won't form a nice grid on the wall and it will drive me crazy. So for that reason, I never get around to it.

But I do like the idea of having all 10 one day like on a wall. I think that could look quite nifty in an office or something. Yeah. But you'd be sitting down at your computer trying to get to work and then you'd think, oh, they're not quite straight. And then you'd leap up to fix it. That would do my head in if I was looking at like really unstraight things on the wall. It's unacceptable. Well, I know you're going to let me have it. You're so confident. How do you know that I'm going to let you have it? Maybe I'm serious. What would you do if I was serious about this, Brady? I'd be really surprised. You don't strike me as someone who

would do something terrible to people you don't like, let alone someone you kind of get along with. So I just don't think you'd do it. But, you know, I'm open to being surprised. You know, I'm probably putting fuel on the fire now, being so sort of sure that you won't. But well, I actually wonder, like, how would YouTube resolve this? Because if YouTube is good at anything, it's good at making sure everybody's happy all the time. And so I presume that they only give out one button per channel. Yeah.

So what I would love to know is what would happen if we both told YouTube that we each wanted a button? I would like to test YouTube's system here. I'd like to test YouTube's patience and see what happens if we each demand a button. I think we should do it. I think we should see what happens and ask them. Do you think we should do it? Yeah. I think maybe you have sufficient clout that they'd do it, but I think they probably won't. You know what the thing is, Brady? Yeah.

I really don't want to do that because victory would just be defeat. Because as you know full well, I cannot even pretend for the sake of the podcast that I actually want a YouTube play button. And if we made YouTube send out two play buttons, I would just feel like, oh, I really have to keep this. I have just received a bowling ball that will now have to travel with me for the rest of my life. Victory would be defeat. And it's not even a thing that I can pretend like I want to mess around with. Someone at YouTube right now listening to the podcast is getting ready to type an email to someone about sending off two. You know what? I don't want that. I can't even pretend that I do.

I don't want the play button. I'm very happy for Brady to have it. Well, I mean, there are other things that could be done here, Gray. I mean, you could give me both and then you could take delight in knowing I had 11 silver play buttons and how difficult they would be to display. That would be pretty funny. I did see someone suggest that we could melt down the silver play button and cast it into the Hallow Internet Medals of Honour.

Oh, yeah. And if it was meltdownable, that would actually be an excellent idea. But you can... Because obviously, like, Victoria Crosses are made from, like, a melted down cannon, aren't they? And stuff like that. So that would be quite a nice touch. I did not know that.

Yeah, I think it's a cannon from the one big lot of metal. Hmm. That's an interesting trivia fact. I know. I'm not checking it right now. So if I've got it wrong, I'm just going to take a thumping on the Reddit. No, it's just a fact. Just say it confidently. People will go along with it. They're definitely made from the one source of metal from some war relic. I mean, I've actually encountered a not dissimilar problem, if I can have a little humble brag for a minute, Gray. No, please go ahead. 60 Symbols, the physics channel, has recently been awarded something called the Kelvin Medal, which is the Institute of Physics in the UK gives out like this medal each year for outreach. And we've won it this year, which is this huge honour.

And we're picking it up in December, I think, at some awards ceremony. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I thought you'd like it because it's called the Kelvin Medal. I know you love the name, Lord Kelvin. It's named after him. Very cool. But the problem is, this is the humble part, they will only give it to three recipients at the most, much like the Nobel Prize.

You have to have three named people. And obviously, 60 Symbol symbols is this big ensemble cast so the decision was taken that my name should be on it because i make all the videos so they thought well that's probably the one the easiest one decision and then we've put two other of the scientists on the project's name in the submission so we could get our maximum three and we just sort of arbitrarily chose two who probably have done the most videos. But then we have all these other scientists who have been involved in the project. Some of them have done loads and loads of videos who aren't named.

But what we've done is we also get prize money. I can't remember how much it is. Say it's like a thousand pounds or something. And we're going to use all the prize money to have replica medals made and we're going to give medals to everyone on the project so we've kind of got around the problem that way the people who get the replicas will their medals just have their name on it or will you also stamp your name brady harron above their name on all of the replicas so that everybody understands that brady gets the respect he deserves on every single medal

is that what's going to happen right like here's your medal Joe right but at the top it says Brady Harian and below it says Professor Joe or we could be even meaner and like make them true replicas and just have the medals with our three names on them and the medal they get given doesn't even have their name on it it's got the name of the other three people how are you going to do this brady what is the plan is it just going to have their name on it or is it going to have their name and your name i certainly hope it hasn't got my name on it thank good i am not actually responsible for this process oh okay i will happily take credit for suggesting it but i will not be involved in the execution of it. So,

this will be a decision for other people. But I think the best option by far and away will be just to have the name of the recipient on it, I think. That's probably the best. I don't even know if on the night when we get like the real medal at the ceremony, whether we get three or we get one to share between us. So, I don't even know what's going to happen there. It could be a real bun fight. A real bun fight? Yeah, bun fight. That's like a term.

I've never heard the term bun fight. It's something my parents would say, so that's why I realised I probably shouldn't have said it. What does it mean, bun fight? I don't think this is a real thing. I think this is just a Brady family term. A bun fight is a sustained overblown argument about a petty matter. So it sounds like just the sort of thing I'd get into. It sounds like a hello internet topic, right? It does, yeah. It sounds like every episode we've ever had. Are our disagreements petty? Yes. Are they sustained over a long period of time?

In some cases, years. We should have called this Hello Banfire. 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. I don't know about you, but I've been watching a lot of Narcos on Netflix. I've been really enjoying it. But the one thing that I always find frustrating with shows like this is I feel like they never really go into enough of the details of exactly how the business works. They'll talk a little bit about how you try to smuggle drugs across the border or the difficulty of getting payments back across the border, but never enough for me. This led me to go looking around to see if there were any good books written on the business of drug dealing, and I came across Narconomics, How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright.

If you want to start a drug empire of your own, I guess this would be the place to start. They go through the personnel problems that you have as a drug dealer, the difficulty of managing customer service over the internet when you're selling your drugs via the darker corners of that global network, and a whole other bunch of details about how it is that drug cartels are run. So check out Narconomics on audible.com, along with their 100,000 plus other things to listen to. Audible is where I get all of my audiobooks and you should too. You can download

your audiobook files, you can listen on your phone using their player, you can listen on your Android device, you can listen on your computer, you can listen just about wherever you want. If you're one of those people who uses a Kindle, you can actually get the audiobook and the e-book and Amazon will synchronize both of them together, which sounds quite nice. It really is the place to go for audiobooks and I think audiobooks are a way that I can read much more than I would otherwise. So check out Audible, check out Narconomics if that sounds interesting to you. Go to audible.com slash hellointernet to get your free 30-day trial and to let Audible know that you are supporting this podcast. Just for anybody who didn't know, I feel

responsible to break some celebrity news, which is that it seems that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are breaking up. They're getting a divorce. I feel the need to mention this mostly so that I can just re-solidify the concept that I was right at the time in the quiz show that they were still married, but they're getting a divorce. And I found it an entertaining experience to be on the receiving end of a very large number of messages from strangers informing me that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were breaking up. This divorce was occurring and finding out like through my email inbox from random feedback from strangers on the internet who wanted to let me know that my answer to a quiz show question on the previous episode

would no longer be the case going forward. Sorry, Bradgelina. It's all over. Isn't it Brangelina? I don't know. Bradgelina? No, I think it's Brange. I think you need the N in there.

I'm simply realizing this is never a word I have heard out loud. I have only ever seen written. Brangelina. I think that'sising this is never a word I have heard out loud. I have only ever seen written. Brangelina. I think that's what it is. Whenever one of these stories gets like, you know, like BBC will do a breaking news alert, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to divorce. And some people will say, how dare you make that breaking news?

It's so trivial. People are dying all over the world. Haven't you got better things to report? This always happens, right? Does it? Okay. Yeah. people are dying all over the world haven't you got better things to report this always happens right does it okay yeah but i'll tell you what there was another big breaking story in the last week that was truly a big deal great do you know anything about the television show the great british bake off i only know that it exists because it has this funny name right i've heard people reference it. I think maybe you have mentioned the existence of this to me before or somebody else has.

So I know that there exists a show called The Great British Bake Off, but I know nothing else about it. Well, I think this has been a big story this week and it has had many interesting components to it, which if you did follow it, you would find quite interesting. But for those people who don't know, which is anyone who probably lives outside the UK, just so you understand what this show is, there's a big posh tent, like a marquee in the grounds of like some big famous mansion in England. And that's where they host this show. And they've set up all these little mini kitchens in there. They've all got their own little kitchen bar and they can all see each other or something. And they've got like ovens and mixers and things. I think at the start, there's something like 12 or more contestants.

And it's like a baking show. It's a baking competition show. And each week it'll be like bread week or pastry week and things. And they all have to do these challenges and then they have to make their own recipes. And it's a competition and it's really good fun. And it's got these two hosts who are really funny these two women who deliberately make lots of corny puns and it's kind of the twee joke of it and there are these two judges this old

grumpy yorkshireman who is a an expert on baking bread but he's also a bit of a silver fox so i think he's a bit of a housewife's favourite. And there's this old lady who I think she's about 80 years old or something like that. And she's like everybody's grandma and she's called Mary Berry. And she's like a celebrity chef for a million years in England. And now she's this matriarch. And these two are the judges and they decide each week who goes home. So, it's just a contest and everyone in the country gets gripped by it. Who's going to go home this week and who's going to win the bake-off this year? Okay.

So, there is an elimination round each episode. Yeah. Someone's getting booted off the island. Who's it going to be? Exactly. Okay. It's quite arbitrary and just the judges decide, but it's based on these three things they do throughout the episode.

And there's like a star baker who wins for the week. That means nothing except a little bit of glory. And then one person gets booted off. And then last man or woman standing wins it. I think there's been, I don't know, six or seven series. And it's just growing in popularity. It's become a real institution. And the media is obsessed with it.

And like they're always reporting on it. Oh, so-and-so got booted off this week. Can you believe it? It'll sometimes be on the front page of newspapers. And I think what's really British about it in some ways is i think the british people revel in the trivialness of it that like that's the scandal will be you know so and so took someone's eggs by mistake and you know so and so's left something in the oven for too long and burnt the cake and and it becomes this big national story and i think everyone's kind of in on the joke that we're so obsessed with this baking competition. Is it a joke though? I mean, human politics seem to be vicious directly in

proportion to their pettiness. People seem to get the most upset over the tiniest things sometimes. Yeah. Although the thing is, one of the things that's so good about the show, it's important to say it's a BBC show. It's made by a production company, but it's always been on the BBC. And I think one of the things that makes The Great British Bake Off different from other shows is there is a really pleasant streak running through it. No one's ever angry and anyone gets booted off. They're always very gracious. They always help each other, the contestants. When these scandals happen, when someone takes someone's thing out of the fridge early, people never get angry at each other it's like it's really good spirited it's just in a cynical world of evil it's this like bastion of like niceness it's just niceness in a tent

where everyone's baking cakes it's always pretty and even when someone burns their cake mary berry the old granny will tell them they tried hard and like it's always pretty. And even when someone burns their cake, Mary Berry, the old granny, will tell them they tried hard. Like, it's just this lovely thing, right? Okay. It's huge at the moment. And, like, 10, 11 million people are watching it a week. And what happened this week was the production company that made it

are obviously pretty greedy, and they've been trying to extract every last cent out of the BBC. And they just wanted too much money for their show. And the BBC were like, well, we're not paying that. And everyone obviously wants this show. So, one of the commercial television stations in the UK, Channel 4, have swooped and paid some ridiculous amount of money, like £75 million for the show. So, the next series of it next year is going to be on Channel 4.

And this was a huge story because the BBC, you know, is an institution, obviously. And this is one of their key shows. And they've lost this show. It's been stolen. And there's huge amounts of money involved. And everyone was like, oh, can you believe it? You know, it's leaving the BBC. Sounds like the BBC always loses their big shows.

Didn't this happen with Top Gear? Am I remembering that even remotely correctly? Was Top Gear BBC? Yes, that's for different reasons. But it is true that the BBC sometimes do lose their stars because they get poached off. But that's why this is so interesting. Because I always think when the BBC makes someone really famous, like a news presenter or a TV presenter, they very often get pinched by the corporate channels that can offer them bigger salaries. And then they kind of just sort of disappear because the BBC, while not being able to pay

you quite as much, has all the profile, it has all the reach, it has the market penetration and it's what makes you famous. So, it's interesting how often people become famous on the BBC, think they're Charlie Big Potatoes, go over to a commercial network and then they just disappear into nothingness because the BBC is not making them famous anymore. So everyone's like, what's going to happen to the Great British Bake Off when it goes to Channel 4? Is it still going to be as nice and good or is it now going to be commercials and they're

always going to be trying to sell you products all the time? And is it going to lose its magic, right? So I know this is gripping for you so anyway the next day the two hosts who are really funny and really make the show these two comedians i mentioned they're called mel and sue they announced publicly we're not going to chase the dough they said to use a pun and they said we're not going we're going to stay at the bbc we're not going to be on the show anymore and everyone's's like, oh, my goodness. This is amazing.

What would the Bake Off be like without the hosts anymore? I can't believe this has happened. And then the next day, unbelievably, Mary Berry, the old grandma of cooking, also says, I'm not going either. My loyalty is to the BBC. The BBC made this show what it is. I wish everyone luck and have fun, but I'm not going to Channel 4 either. My loyalties to the BBC, the BBC made this show what it is. I wish everyone luck and have fun, but I'm not going to Channel 4 either. So all of a sudden, Channel 4 has paid like,

you know, £75 million, basically for one judge and a tent in a garden, and they've lost all the stars of the show. And now everyone's thinking, well, is this show going to be any good? But now there's all this intellectual property stuff going on, and everyone's saying, well, is this show going to be any good? But now there's all this intellectual property stuff going on. And everyone's saying, maybe the BBC are going to make their own baking show and just keep all the same hosts. And it makes you wonder what Channel 4 have bought. This is the strange thing with the world of companies acquiring things for talent or talented people.

Yeah. If you're buying the show, but this old granny, she's not going, your Silver Fox guy isn't going. No, Silver Fox is going. He's the one. He is chasing the dough. Okay. Well, that's because he's a smart Silver Fox, right? That's why.

His name's Paul Hollywood, too, which you'll love. That's an amazing name. It's also so un-british i know that's not real that's like an actor's guild name that can't be real that's not his actual name my name is max power like no it's not but it's an interesting question about like what have you bought what is a show how do you transfer it from one location to another who are the key players in this like how do you get the loyalty of the people necessary to make the thing work i often notice with tv shows in general like everybody knows this experience

like you're watching a tv show and the first two seasons are amazing and then the next couple seasons you're thinking like oh it really just lost all of its oomph. Like what happened? Oh, this isn't so good anymore. And every time I've ever investigated, you find that it's like a TV show or like a movie is much, much more dependent on a handful, like maybe three or four key people than you think it is. That like one or two writers make all of the difference in a show being really good or not being really good. Or just like a couple of key people on a movie

are what makes the difference between like, why is this movie amazing and this movie isn't? There's like a talent disproportion here. If I was like a network buying a TV show, I feel like that would be one of my primary concerns is trying to isolate something like the Great British Bake Off. And from the outside, trying to figure out like,

who were the actual vital people and we have to make sure that they're on board and that they're coming along and it sounds like these two hosts were part of like the charm of this show it's like oh now by trying to buy this thing you have broken this thing you've split these two key hosts and maybe now everybody loses like you've spent all of this money for this new show and the BBC is also going to lose because they've lost half of their vital crew. And now everybody's sad and everybody loses. I mean, I won't go into all the details because it's full of intrigue and there's a lot of

intrigue about the rights and formats and things like that. But it's been a huge story. But coming back just quickly to breaking news and alerts and things there was a breaking news story when mary berry the old grandma quit it was like a breaking news on twitter bbc mary berry quits the great british bake-off and i saw a few tweets and people saying i can't believe that's breaking news like some old lady quits hosting a tv show but i tell you, that's the first story that's broken in weeks and weeks that the minute I saw her, I phoned my wife immediately. I'm like, you're not going to believe it.

You're not going to believe what's happened. Mary Berry's quit the bake-off. Like, I'm not ringing her up saying, you know, what's happening in politics or wars around the world or, like, disasters or plane crashes or anything. It's like, oh, my goodness, I've got to tell my wife immediately. This is huge. And do you want to know why you ring your wife to tell her immediately

that the woman has left the Great British Bake Off? Because unlike most of the things in the world that the news reports on, the supposed important things, this one directly affects you every week if it messes up with a TV show that you like, right? You're like, oh, some genocide in Africa. Like, whatever. It's not going to affect me today. This is why you can brush it under the rug and be like, whatever. Tragedies around the world. Like, oh, there was an earthquake in some third world country and thousands are dead. It's like, am I going to tell anybody about it? Am I going to call anybody? No, not really. It's like am i gonna tell anybody about it am i gonna call anybody no not really it's like

but the great british bake-off this actually affects you in a way every single week if your show is ruined so that's why you call this is what's happening here it's is the dynamic of what is important in the world versus what actually affects you in a way that you care yeah i'll tell you what else, though. It does make me think. It is interesting how this touches on our world of, you know, video making and podcasting and things like that. Because if you decided tomorrow that you'd had enough of making YouTube videos

and you wanted to pack that up and you decided, okay, well, I've created this like brand and this channel and this cool thing. You couldn't do a thing with it. You couldn't sell CGP Grey the channel, could you?? And walk away from it because it has no worth without you. So, I mean, what could you do with that? Not much. I guess you could sell the rights to the back catalogue and stuff, but that's... It's true. From a business perspective, it's a terrible decision. I can't sell the thing because I am the key person in my own organisation. It has my name on it.

There's nothing to sell here. You have channels to spare coming out of your pockets that you could sell off to organizations. Yeah. Sell off Numberphile tomorrow and periodic videos next week. And yeah. Yeah. And just keep growing more channels with 100,000 subscribers here, 100,000 subscribers there.

Sell them off. Here I am just like an idiot, artisanally crafting individual videos into a thing that is ultimately not a sellable business. What a fool I am. Artisanally crafting videos. Listen to him. I can't believe Channel 4 agreed to buy the show before knowing if all the people were locked in place. I mean, they're not idiots. They must have known that this was a risk they were taking and it blew up in their face.

But it just seems like they obviously see the value in it without having the people locked in. I'm sure they made this decision. But to outsiders, it seems crazy. It seems like they bought the thing and then they realised they haven't got what they thought they got. But I'm sure they still think it's worth having the brand and the name. Or perhaps they simply overvalued how convincing money is to an 80-year-old granny. Yeah. Maybe they just assumed like, oh, of course, she'll go for the paycheck. But if you're an 80-year-old granny, I think maybe you have more ability just to say no.

Like, I don't want to do this thing. I don't care. Of course, of course. But shouldn't they have seen if she was going to sign on the line first, like before buying the whole thing? I'm just saying, I'm just speculating. Yeah. Or so am I. So am I.

I'm thinking maybe people who think in terms of money would think that it is much more convincing than it actually would be. Like, who's going to turn down this crazy salary? Yeah. Mary Berry is the one who's going to turn down this crazy salary? Yeah. Mary Berry is the one who's going to turn down the salary. Yeah. That's how that goes. Yep. There you go.

Breaking news. It has to be about the things that people actually care about. That's what makes it breaking news. Like, yeah. People care about celebrity divorces and British bake-offs. Backblaze is the unlimited native backup solution for Macs and PCs. For a no credit card required, no risk free 15 day trial, go to backblaze.com slash hello internet.

Now, I think it's a bit of a tradition that Gray and I are the good cop and bad cop of these Backblaze sponsorship messages. Gray fills you with fear that your computer, nay your whole house, is about to be lost to a huge inferno and Backblaze will save your digital bacon. And that is definitely something you should bear in mind. But Backblaze is handy not just for those worst case scenarios. For example, its handy app means you can access your online backup from your mobile device. So say there's a file you want to get your hands on, but you don't have computer

access. Backblaze is the answer. Now Backblaze now has over, I think, 250 petabytes of people's data locked safely away just in case. I have no idea how much that is, but it sounds like a lot. They've also already sent over 15 billion files back to customers who needed them after something went wrong. You could be one of those people, so keep that in mind. And a reminder, these are external offsite backups, not something like a hard drive or time machine which is also in your so vulnerable house. Now, there are no gimmicks here, no additional charges.

It's $5 a month for unlimited, unthrottled backup. Make sure you visit backblaze.com slash hellointernet so they know you came from here and continue to support the show. And remember, there's a 15-day free trial first. Try before you buy. See how you like it, and then you can commit. As always, thanks to Backblaze for not only backing up my computer, but for supporting Hello Internet.

All right, Greg, can we do some quick viewer pictures? We can, maybe. Let's see if it makes the cut. We're going to have a little theme to this one. This is one that the viewers can... Well, not viewers. They're listeners, but they're about to become viewers if they choose to. They might be viewers if they're on the Hello Internet YouTube channel. That's true. That's true. That's where all of our viewers are. Yeah. Confusing, not viewers. They're listeners, but they're about to become viewers if they choose to. They might be viewers if they're on the Hello Internet YouTube channel.

That's true. That's true. That's where all of our viewers are. Yeah. Confusing, confusing people. It's a multimedia world we live in. We're going to put these pictures in the show notes. The first one, Gray, you haven't seen.

Okay. And I just think this was just fun, I thought. So I'm going to send this to you. This has come from someone called Adam. He is in a group photo here at some, what is it? It's the International Center for Theoretical Physics. They had a big group photo at their eighth international conference on the exact renormalization group, which sounds awesome.

It was held in Italy. There's this huge photo, and he proudly says, I decided to wear my reunion swamp pen official bird of hello internet t-shirt for the group photo. And I just think it's fun to look at the photo and see if you can find it because it's a huge group of people. And one person there is wearing a reunion swamp pen t-shirt. Have you found it yet, Gray? I'm looking, I'm looking. Don't give it away when you find it. Oh, okay. You will know why when you find it. I'll know why when I find it,

huh? Okay. Looking, looking, looking. Not as easy as you thought, hey? When did I say, oh, I think it's going to be easy? I never said that. Did I say you said it? I said you thought it. No. I didn't say you said it. But I didn't think it. You sent me a picture of a whole bunch of people. Never even thought it. All right. Never even thought it. I think there is nobody wearing a reunion swamp head t-shirt in this photo. Nobody's wearing a Reunion Swamp Hen. You are wrong. Someone is.

And there is the Where's Wally challenge. Can you find the person wearing the Reunion Swamp Hen t-shirt? There is a twist to it. Yeah, I figure there's a twist. The twist is proving beyond my capabilities right now. Do you want me to tell you and you can cut it out? Yeah, you tell me and you cut it out. Oh, I could have spent a hundred years looking at this photo and I would have never seen that.

There you go. So here's the other one, which you have seen. And again, can you find the Hello Internet fan? Well, yes, you can this time, but it still has a sort of a Where's Wally component to it because the fan is so small in such a big picture. But I'll read you the message that goes with this because it's a nice message. Dear Dr. Harron, see people are learning. I'm a big fan of the HI podcast and I know that you love mountains. So I made a special picture while I was hiking in Norway. This place is called Trolltunga, which means a tongue of a troll. It's a piece of rock jutting horizontally out of a mountain about 700 meters above the lake. I had to stay in the mountains overnight in order to be there in

early morning. Normally the hike takes 10 to 12 hours. I hope you and maybe Gray will like it. Best regards, Stan. That is a fantastic photo. It's amazing, isn't it? It's a really epic Hello Internet, someone brought the flag to an amazing location photo. In no small part because I am incredibly biased towards the particular beauty of Norway. I think Norway looks amazing. And this photo of being in the mountains, holding up the flag with the reflection in the water below is fantastic. This makes me so happy to see the Hello Internet flag in a stunning location. So well done on this one. This is absolutely great. It's amazing for people who have not seen, I mean, look at the picture in the show notes, but also just go and look at more pictures of this Trolltunga. It's an amazing place. Like,

even if it didn't have this ridiculous piece of rock jutting out on this unnatural angle, the view is just incredible of a lake below and mountains and greenery and snow. And it's incredible. But I have since been reading a little bit more about Trolltunga and some people got in touch after I tweeted a picture of this midweek. Apparently, it's becoming a bit of a controversial place for sort of safety reasons because more and more people are trying to get to it. It's not easy to get to,

but more and more people are going there and taking photos. It doesn't look like the world's safest place to stand. And in fact, I was just reading that recently a tourist, well, not a tourist, I think it was an exchange student from Australia was on the Trolltunga asking to have their photo taken and stepped back or didn't look what they were doing while they were having their picture taken and fell off it. That didn't end well, obviously, but they can't put safety rails on it. So, whether we should be encouraging people with

this photo is probably questionable too, but I'd certainly go there. Would you go and stand there and have your picture taken? I don't know. That kind of thing makes me a little bit nervous. I mean, it does look perilous, doesn't it? Yeah, it looks absolutely perilous. I don't know. I think if I was there on the day, I might not go very far out on the troll tongue there,

but people are always going to risk their lives for this kind of stuff. And it looks like an awesomely beautiful place to risk your life if you're going to do this it does so you wouldn't go out onto the tip of the tongue but maybe you just go part way like to the middle or something yeah i might go part way but i look at something like that and think it's going to break someday and or might be quite windy right but i'm sure, Brady, would just crawl out right to the edge, wouldn't you? You'd be on the edge. I don't know. I am cautious with heights, but I remember when I was in the Forbidden Kingdom of Bhutan, we walked up to a place called Tiger's Nest Monastery, which is

this incredible monastery perched way up on a cliff. And it's a big long walk along all these rocky paths along the cliff. And we stopped at one point where lots and lots of people take photos because it's amazing. You're looking from one cliff across to the other. And our guide said, oh, you know what? It was actually just a few weeks ago. A tourist from Thailand was having their photo taken right where you are, but they leaned against the wooden handrail, which they shouldn't have done.

And the handrail gave way and they just went right off the cliff all the way to the bottom. And when I was told that story, it affected me. Like, you know, when you're standing at the place where it happened and you're told a few weeks ago someone fell down there, suddenly you're like, gosh. And then every time you have a photo taken, you're like setting your feet and making sure you're standing in the right place.

It's so easy when you're taking photos to do something stupid. Yeah, especially because you're so often looking away from the danger. You're trying to back up to get into frame and whoops, over you go. Especially seeing Stan was holding this flag when he had the picture taken, like a big sail. So I'm not sure how wise that was, but he lived to send the email. So remember I told you about this, this company that every three months or every six months sends me this bill for two pounds for this ground rent or something where I live? Oh, yeah. So, anyway, I got my latest invoice from them for two pounds, which I have to pay every six months just to live in my house because of some old 1800s law.

Right, right. I resent it, but I have to do it. So, we wrote the check this morning and I'm about to send it off. But what I did was I put it in an envelope and then I folded the envelope in half three or four times and then wrapped all the sticky tape around it. And then I put it in like another envelope and I wrapped it in all this packing tape and things like that. And then I put it in a third envelope and I've really taped that up. Because if they're going to get their two-pound check off me, like I want them to work for it.

I want them to do two pounds of work to get to it. So I've created this big like pass the parcel taped up thing. So if they want to get their check, I don't know. I was just like in a half funny, half weird mood and I did it. And I've got it on my desk now. Now I'm thinking, which would be ironic if I decide not to do it, because then I'm going to be the one that has to dig into it and undo all these envelopes and cut all the tape and everything.

Okay. I mean, there's so many things about this, Brady. I don't even know where to begin. Hang on, let me send you a picture of part of it. Okay. You're going to make me feel bad now, aren't you? I know. I can just tell from your tone.

It's like you're not angry at me. You're disappointed. I think the thing I've sent you is one of the envelopes going into one of the other envelopes. You're disappointed in me, aren't you? Okay. So, I feel like I want to walk you through a few things here, Brady. All right. How to think about the world, right? And I guess for listeners who don't remember the details, this was just because there's some company which collects up a bunch of old title deeds and land deeds. And like this is their entire business, having people pay them small amounts of money from contracts that are like 200 years old on some technicality.

And so Brady has to pay this little fee, two pounds every six months or whatever it was because of some land deal from 300 years ago. I just love the UK for this kind of stuff. So first of all, let me say that I can sympathize with your frustration about the situation. Okay. I too would find it very frustrating to be in this situation. Okay. Okay. Right.

So like we're on the same page here. Okay. However, what I don't understand is why on earth would you take more of your time to cause essentially a trivial amount of frustration to whatever company is in charge of doing this sort of stuff. Like you have changed a situation from annoying company from old technicality is getting two pounds off of me to company is getting two pounds off of me and they're costing me whatever it is, 20 minutes of my life more than is necessary. As you're sitting there folding up the check, scrunching it in an envelope, I can see wrapping it in this brown tape. You're going to stick it in another envelope. I mean, I hate to say this, Brady, but this actually looks really ineffective. Like, how long do you think it's going to take someone with a pair of scissors to get through this envelope?

I think five seconds, right? Someone sitting with a pair of scissors, I would just cut open the top. There's no way you've even caused real inconvenience here. This to me is like pointless human frustration manifested. Oh no, I say I've thought about that, Grey, because the final envelope is folded several times and then taped. So if you just cut it, you'll also cut the check. So you have to be careful how you open the envelope. Right. But here's the thing. If they cut the check, what do they care? The check is just null and void

and they'll just bill you again, right? Like, I guess what I'm trying to walk through here is like, what's your end game here, Brady? What change do you wish to affect in the world? Right. It was cathartic. Did you feel better after doing this? Yes.

Yeah? You feel better? Yeah, I do a bit. But now I don't, because now you're making me feel bad about it. I was sitting there chuckling away to myself, thinking, ha ha, this will show them, and ha ha, you know, thinking this is fun. And, you know, it was like a little fun thing for a few minutes. Still, when I think about a Brady sitting down at his desk, receiving a bill for two pounds, and instead of just writing out the check and sending it off, gathering together tape and envelopes and thinking about how to fold it in such a way to be frustrating to the person who was receiving it. I know of no other way to describe this than what is in my mind, which is like, this is just childish venting. That's what it feels like. It just feels like you're a little

kid who is pointlessly flailing against the system. You should just pay the two pounds. But you know, if it makes you happy, Brady, I can't argue against that. I mean, I can't totally disagree with you. But, I mean, I see it as being akin to the people who, like, respond to spam emails, knowing it's spam and just string them along and waste some of their time. And that also is pointless and childish. But it's just something sometimes people do. I think I'm doing the snail mail equivalent of that. Like, they've automated

their frustration process they've obviously got this printer that's a thousand years old that prints these things in dot matrix and you send it to some post box and you know they're impossible to speak with and so they're obviously just this got this lumbering frustration machine where they've just minimizing all of their costs and effort to make this money. So, I'm like, well, if you're going to do that, if you're going to minimize all of your effort to take my money, I'm going to try and make you at least up your effort a little bit, you lazy bonzers.

I know it's stupid. And when I like with a big smile on my face went downstairs and showed my wife what I did and saw the look on her face, that's when I knew it was stupid as well. i was gonna ask how well was this received yeah it's like just like i just don't think she had the energy to even like comment she was just like rolled her eyes and i enjoy that scene in my mind where your wife thinks you have been upstairs busy doing something productive and you come down and show her show her your wadded up taped up envelope all to cause minor frustration to a company that you need to pay two pounds to it's like oh is this what you do all day it's like i thought you were doing something useful

nope brady causing pointless frustration to others. Oh, here's the question, right? I kind of realize now that I've made a mistake, right? Okay. But I've already done it, right? I've done it. It's sealed. It's addressed.

Should I go to the trouble of opening it all myself and extracting the check and just sending it in a normal envelope? When you said this before, why don't you just throw it away and write a new check if you're going to do that? That's true. That's true. You're going to cause yourself all the frustration. Oh, no, because there's a little piece of paper. No, great. Listen, there's a second piece of paper you have to attach with the check that it comes with so they know who the check's from. So I would have to open it to get that second piece of paper out. So I can't just throw it away with the check and write another check. You just have to send it now, Brady. You just have to send it.

I would be willing to bet you one pound that you will simply just receive another bill from this company. They're going to get this envelope, just throw it away, and then later in their system, six months down the line, they're going to send you a bill for four pounds. That's what's going to happen. That's my bet. No one's even going to open this envelope.

I'm just trying to do the maths in my head to see whether it's worth taking that bet and what all the implications will be. Because then I'd have to pay five pounds if I lose the bet. If I win the bet, you'll pay half of my next two pounds. Can I get back to you on that? Okay, yeah. You let me know. You spend 30 minutes working out the odds of whether or not it makes sense to accept this one pound bet. You go right ahead and then I will be happy to accept or reject based on whatever you want to do, buddy. You have another fruitful 30 minutes of doing something for a trivial amount of money. Not everything is about money, though.

Not everything is about time to money. Sometimes you do something just because you do it. Like not everything can have like a cost benefit analysis attached to it. I think everything has a cost benefit analysis attached to it. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by Harry's. Harry's is the place to go online to buy your shaving equipment. Harry's is so confident in the quality of their product that they're offering their customers a chance to try a shave with them for free. Just cover the $3 cost of shipping. You can't say no to that.

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Use offer code HI at checkout and look great. Thanks to Harry's for supporting the show. Tell me about YouTube Heroes. It seems like we can't go between two podcasts without YouTube coming up with another harebrained scheme that upsets everyone. And this YouTube Heroes thing has been the latest kerfuffle to be filling up my feed. But the last couple of weeks, I've been pretty busy with my own work and I haven't really dipped into these things. But I know about this thing called YouTube heroes. And my understanding of it is like people can flag content and they're

going to give these people powers they shouldn't have to ruin our careers. And can you talk me through it, Greg? Can you give me the idiot's guide? Yes. Wow. That's a sigh. I'm settling back, mate. I'm leaning back. Tell me all about it. Yeah. YouTube Heroes. I mean, first of all, I have to say how much I absolutely love that name. It's a fantastic name for a program.

Yeah. YouTube Heroes. It doesn't make me cringe in any way. No. It doesn't make me feel like it's overblown in the slightest. It inspires me. Do you feel inspired by it, Brady? I do. I want to be a YouTube hero. Would you like to be a hero?

I don't know. How many silver buttons does one require to become a YouTube hero? I don't know. Maybe 10. Maybe 10. Maybe 10. I don't know. I don't know any of this stuff. You've got to tell me. Okay. So- NAF name, obviously. maybe 10 maybe 10 i don't know i don't know any of this stuff you could have told me okay so naff name obviously yeah obviously a naff name and if i was going to rename it just to show my hand at the beginning of this i propose two alternative names for the youtube heroes program

yep it should be either called youtube tools or YouTube hall monitors. Okay. This is the way I feel about this. Okay. So it's like prefects. Yeah. Okay. So what YouTube has rolled out just earlier this week as we are recording is essentially a kind of moderation program that they're implementing.

And so they put up this little YouTube video with happy music and little cartoon characters try to explain this program whereby which some YouTube users can apply to become a hero. And what a hero can do is a hero has abilities to flag videos and to moderate content in some ambiguous, not clearly defined way, and to add subtitles to YouTube videos. These seem to be the primary things. But what everybody kind of flipped out about is this notion that there's some level of people that have the ability to flag what was originally labeled as like

inappropriate content on YouTube. But great, anyone can flag videos. They flag it with extra power, presumably. Like their flagging means it gets pulled down or? Yeah, so this was what I think caused a bunch of the confusion. Because exactly this, like if you log on to YouTube right now and you go to any video, there's a little button to report it as inappropriate content, right? Like this is already a thing that you can just do.

Anybody can do this. Yeah. And that doesn't mean it's going to get ripped down. It just means if 100 people do it in 10 minutes, I assume someone then says, hang on, let's have a look at this. Right. Exactly. Like presumably that's what's occurring. If you press the report button, it doesn't immediately remove someone's video. No. But I think that this is in the long line of like YouTube not being super great at communication. I think this is partly what caused the problem because if they release a video saying YouTube heroes have the ability to flag inappropriate content

and they show someone like happily clicking on a bunch of videos, all of which get like little red X's on them. Because people can already report stuff, people are naturally going to assume that there must be more to this, right? Like otherwise, what are you talking about? You're talking about a feature that already exists. And so I think people were very quick to jump to the conclusion that YouTube heroes must be able to remove content from YouTube because otherwise, what are you talking about? In the meantime, what has occurred is that YouTube has come out to try to clarify the situation with YouTube Heroes. And as far as I can tell, YouTube Heroes just seems to be a way that YouTube is trying to create a group of people whose flagging of videos they can weigh more heavily.

Okay. If a thousand civilians flag a video, that sets off a warning bell at YouTube. But if 20 heroes flag a video, that sets off the same warning bell. That's the impression that I'm getting. That's the way it seems to be. I hope that's the case. And I hope we're not just like digging YouTube out of a hole that they should be in because they're doing something stupid well there was a reddit ama which was an interview

with a bunch of people who were youtube heroes which i still have a hard time even just saying it out loud because it's like do you want to watch because it's like the most unheroic thing ever because it feels kind of like tattling yeah they should be called YouTube snitches. I understand the problem that YouTube has. Like, I understand that there is really horrific stuff which is uploaded to YouTube constantly. Like, YouTube, I do get it that there's a lot of horrors that most normal people never see on YouTube and you need ways to figure out all this stuff. But it's like the hero name just feels so wrong for like the thing that's happening because most people's experience. It's a bit grandiose, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit grandiose.

And, you know, even the videos like every hero needs a bit of glory. And again, from like reading about what it is, it feels a lot like janitorial work. Like, boy, this place is a real mess. Like we need a bunch of people to clean it up. And how can we get them to clean it up? We'll call them heroes. Like, we'll give them points to do. It's just.

So you think they need someone to do boring grunt work and they're incentivizing them with fake glory. Okay. Have you seen the actual video that was the original announcement video? No. Well, apparently that's impossible now, because I heard another controversy was they changed the video, like with the same link. They actually went in and replaced the video with, and to change a few things that had caused the most problems.

And it's only like through dodgy, you know, pirate versions, you can see what they originally said. Yeah. This also falls into the category of how do you best extinguish a controversy online? Probably not by using powers that nobody else has to change your video and to make no reference about the changes that have occurred and hope nobody notices. That's probably not the best way to calm the situation down is to literally 1984 style throw your original video down the memory hole and replace it with a new video that has changed the wording of key points. It's like, guys, this is not the way to do this. This is going to calm nobody down.

This is going to make everybody angrier because now they can point to a thing where you're trying to go back and like retroactively change something. Like it's fine to try to be clearer, but if you're trying to be clearer, you have to do that in a clear way. Not like, oh, we're going back and we're just changing a thing and we're not going to make any reference to it. Yeah. It's the worst way to do this. The minor problem with that is as well, it's not just like being caught in a cover-up, which is the worst possible thing to happen, but it's also dredged up this old

acorn of people wanting to be able to replace and fix their videos, which is the last debate they wanted to get drawn into because that's a whole other thing. Now they're being pulled into that bloody storm as well. Right. I think that's something we brought up on the first episode of Hello Internet two years ago, right? About the desire to replace videos as a thing that all creators would love to have. And as like, obviously YouTube as the owner of the platform is like, of course they can go in and modify their own database like surprise is none. But it's just dredging up another thing for creators to get really angry about. And I do want to have just like a little moment of sympathy for YouTube, because while YouTube definitely, I think, as we have mentioned many times, does not handle these situations of communicating with creators well. Because ultimately, like the Heroes program, I think is relatively innocuous,

but came across in just the wrong way and turned into a gigantic storm. It's like YouTube, you must know by now that there is a growing industry of people who make a living off of YouTube outrage, right? It's like people know now that there is profit to be made by getting furious at YouTube immediately about stuff. And if you're aware of that, you need to be careful. I'm a bit worried people think that's us, which I don't think we are. But whenever these scandals come up, my Twitter fills up with people going, oh, Brady and Gray, you got to go and kick YouTube about YouTube heroes now as well. Like, I feel like we're being put in that boat a bit. And I have sympathy for YouTube too. I don't want to kick them. I really like them.

All the people there I've met, I like, and like they've created this thing that's given me like a career. So, I don't like that there's this industry of kicking them in the guts, but they're sure as hell is. It's crazy. I think this is the one, especially because we just went through the demonetization thing whatever it was two or three weeks ago and then this happens yeah i think it's close enough that it becomes obvious that in a way like it's funny but i see a similar pattern with whenever a new iphone comes out there is obviously an industry of people who are just desperate to find what is the thing wrong with this phone to turn it into the scandal about this phone yeah because it means that there is a ton

of money to be made if you are the first person who can find something wrong with the phone like this is just a thing that exists yeah the antenna that doesn't work or the battery that overheats right or like bending it on purpose right to try to like if i exert a lot of force on it like this Like this is just a thing that exists. Yeah, the antenna that doesn't work or the battery that overheats. Right. Or like bending it on purpose, right? To try to like, if I exert a lot of force on it, like this phone bends. Like how outrageous. It's like, yeah, of course it does. Why wouldn't it?

But this is like a thing. And so I think YouTube finds themselves in the position of there are people who will want to get angry at everything they do immediately because now this itself has become like a meta genre that exists on the platform in the same way that like youtube drama exists that people love to get angry at other youtube channels and that like youtube channels creators being angry at other creators is a like a total thing that I think is sometimes done like quite cynically, right? Where I'm not sure how much people really care, but it's like you get a lot of attention if you're creating like a fight between two YouTube channels. So I definitely have sympathy for YouTube in this situation.

And it's part of the reason why I didn't want to go on Twitter and complain about stuff right away, because I did feel like, let me wait to see what YouTube says. And then I only said something on Twitter when they pulled the memory hole trick of like, we're just going to retroactively wipe the video and put something up new. And then like, now you've just made a terrible mistake. Like now I feel a little bit better coming out and saying like, this is awful. Like, this is not a good idea. YouTube don't do this. But I did kind of want to wait because I didn't want to have just like a knee jerk reaction about it. I think people expect us to be super angry about this, but in many ways, I think the YouTube heroes is largely much ado about nothing. I don't necessarily think it's a big deal or as big of a deal as people portrayed it initially.

Right. So, the obvious concern would be imbuing unauthorized strangers with a great power to have videos removed and creators penalized. If that's not the case, do you have any thoughts about it? If they're just like, you know, giving frequent flyer points to people who help them by doing lots of their grunt work, then do you have any concerns about that? Or do you just think it's like just a bit of a naff thing? Or do you have any thoughts about them enlisting all this free labour rather than employing more people themselves to fix these problems they want dealt with? Because that was one of the other criticisms I saw.

It was a bit like they're enlisting slave labor when they should employ more people to be policing their Wild West. Yeah, well, that I think is what has ended up for me being the interesting question about this whole program, thinking about YouTube heroes. And it's one of the reasons why I asked you if you've seen the video, because the video shows like sign up to be a YouTube hero. And what happens to you as you act heroically online, flagging videos and tattling and we'll give you points.

And like what happens as you earn points. And watching this video, the first thing that struck me about it was it was so job-like. One of the things they say, once you sign up, like you'll join a community. And then what can you do when you join the community? You can learn more at exclusive workshops. That sounds like a business meeting. That's what that sounds like. You're part of the HR department and we're going to have a workshop about what counts as appropriate and inappropriate content on YouTube. Like, surely that's what you mean by these workshops.

Like, what else are the workshops going to be about? Do enough free work for us and we'll train you to do more free work. Right. And we'll train you to make sure that you're really on board with how we want things to happen. And then the next one is that, like, it says, take part in hero video chats. You know, and it shows someone who's super happy to be talking to three randos right on his computer in a video chat. And again, it's like, okay, so this is a conference call. The structure of this whole thing is YouTube has a problem where they want to make sure that content that doesn't meet their appropriate guidelines like isn't on their website. And again, like, OK, so I can sort of go along with that to a certain extent.

But if the whole structure of this program is to help them solve this problem, like what are these video chats going to be? Of course, they're just going to be more meetings. Like it's just it's a meeting with someone who's higher up who's going to be telling you how they want you to do your hero job. It essentially says if you follow it through, like here's what happens. You join up to be a hero. You will be trained at workshops and through video chats on how to be a hero. If you are good enough, we'll unlock tools so that you can deal with videos on a much wider, faster scale.

So you can do more stuff for us. That's worrying. Yeah. If you do a good job of this, you will eventually be able to go to a conference with other YouTube heroes. And so like all of it just sounds like it's work. It just sounds like this is essentially a free job that we want people to do for YouTube.

I don't know how to feel about that. It's partly why I keep thinking of it as like youtube hall monitors like you have these hall monitors in school and every school does this and as a teacher when you see the kids who sign up to be the hall monitors like i have some thoughts about those kids what kind of kids sign up to be hall monitors the other thing that's a bit concerning, Gray, do you have any, I know you're not an expert on the YouTube Heroes program, but you know a bit more than me. Is there any indication that these rewards you earn come from the number of times you snitch? Because that also sounds like a problem to me because it's a bit like, you know, rewarding parking inspectors for

how many tickets they give. Suddenly they become more and more draconian and less lenient. Or they might start, you know, pushing the rules a little bit themselves because they're being rewarded for punishing others. So, I hope the heroes are being rewarded for the number of videos they watch and not the number of videos they flag, because I don't want them to start flagging things to try and get their reward points up. Right. So, reading through the interviews and the clarifications that YouTube has put out, here's my best understanding of how the system works. So videos that are flagged on YouTube now, whether it be by heroes or just us regular civilians in the trenches who are not heroes, ultimately all that happens is that those videos

then go to some mysterious actual group of paid employees within YouTube who determine whether or not the content is or is not appropriate. And so this group of actual YouTube employees makes a call about, yes, this is a video that should have been reported and we're going to remove it or not. And YouTube gave a number which says that if you look at just randos flagging videos their accuracy as measured by how often does youtube agree is like 30 accurate right so randos flag videos way more than youtube thinks the content is actually inappropriate which is not surprising it's interesting to have a number attached to it though what do you think do you think that number is too

big you think that number is too small i'd think that number is too small? I'd never thought about it before. So, now that I think about it, yeah, I guess anyone can flag a video just because they didn't like what someone's hair looked like or they could like, you know, press the wrong button. So, I guess if just one flag counts in that number, then I'm not surprised it's 30%. In fact, it could have easily been lower. Yeah. To me, that number seems almost crazily high when you think about how much people disagree about what is or is not appropriate content. The fundamental part of this whole conversation is like, what is the notion of appropriate content? But we'll put that aside

for the moment. Yeah. So regular people have a terribly low hit rate. What I think is happening and what seems to be the case is that the YouTube heroes is a way to isolate the people whose flag, 95 plus percent agreements with the YouTube paid employees. And so my speculation here is that they're not getting points for simply flagging videos, that there's some kind of algorithm about how much do you agree with what our actual employees are doing. That's good. And there were some comments along those lines of people who are flagging videos that don't really ever get an agreement or have very low agreement rates, that they're essentially pushed out of the program

where the system doesn't really recommend them. Okay. So that's why I say like the heroes thing, it seems to me to just be YouTube's attempt to create a more reliable group of people who are flagging videos. That's what this purpose is. They say, look, if we just look at all of the flags, this is very noisy data. It's only 30% right, which means we're wasting 70% of our time. Let's get a bunch of earnest busybody hall monitor types to flag videos and essentially cut down on the workload

for our actual paid employees. That's kind of the way this program strikes me. That's what's occurring here. We will reward you with something that's very much like a job, but is not a job and might involve conferences. We will reward you with this for acting as a pre-filter for the work that our actual paid employees have to do.

And that's what the Heroes Program is. That's what I mean by it's sort of a whole lot of nothing. I almost wonder why YouTube is even bothering publishing this. They could have done it secretly, couldn't they? We could have all had a secret number attached to us on our sort of flag accuracy. Yeah. And they could have just known Brady's a hero. His flags are always good.

Ignore Gray's flags because he's like, you know, he's a bit of a hothead or he's trigger happy. They could have had all the data and done this program without us knowing. I guess what they want to do, the reason they made it public, is to incentivize people to flag. Because if I see something inappropriate, I'm going to be honest with you, I don't flag it. I just think, well, that's inappropriate and probably stop watching. But I'm not a flagger.

I don't know, because I'm not a snitch. That's it. Brady's nil rat. That's it. Brady's no rat. Yeah, exactly. So, I guess that's why they've made it public, because they want people to, you know, take pride in being a snitch. I don't know. It's the kind of naff thing that you expect from a super thanks for asking company like

YouTube. They're all, you know, they're reaching out and building communities and making heroes. And that's all right. I appreciate that. I'm just a cynical old person here in England getting rained on and thinking everything's terrible. And they're over there in the sunshine thinking everything's lovely and we all can be heroes. Yeah, I don't know.

It's just, I have these conflicted feelings about this. In some ways, I think it's much ado about nothing. And if people want to participate in this program, I mean, fine, I guess I don't really have an issue with it. To me, it's also tied up with so much of the internet is related to the fact that it's a tool that allows a kind of distributed coordination among lots of people. Like the very fact that I feel like tool that allows a kind of distributed coordination among lots of people like the very fact that i feel like i really need to draw this sharp line between there's some group of people who are getting paid at youtube to take down videos and there are there's this other group of people who are doing very very similar work but are not getting paid and this is these like heroes

versus employees but this dynamic exists all over the web in lots of different forms that I feel like I can't really complain about. You know, it's like Wikipedia is the easiest example ever. There are people who work at Wikipedia who have created an entire bureaucracy within Wikipedia about who are more or less trusted editors. This actually affects us personally with our Hello Internet page, which got vandalized so many times that now you have to be some certain level of Wikipedia editor before you're allowed to make a change. I don't know why our page would have been vandalized so frequently. I can't believe that. No, I have no idea. I don't know.

It was probably the loser faction, but. But that's an example of like, do I have a real problem with that? No. Is it because Wikipedia is a not-for-profit company? I guess. But then in the exact same way, it's like Reddit is the same thing all over again. Like Reddit is a for-profit company, but every time people upvote or downvote links, like in a sense, you're doing work for Reddit. They're doing like a distributed, let the crowd find the interesting

things that people want to talk about stuff. So it's like, I'm doing work for Reddit when I up or downvote links. Do I really care about that? Not really. They also reward people, don't they, with fake glory, don't they, Reddit? They do the same thing as heroes, you know, earning all your karma and your points and your pointless glory. Yeah, you get karma for submitting links that people like and you lose karma when you say unpopular things. I don't know, it just feels like so much of the internet is different versions of this. And it's hard to have a consistent feeling about it. Even again, like my framing of YouTube heroes is like YouTube tools.

Like you are being used as a literal tool by YouTube for free participating in this program. I can say that, but then at the same time, like, do I feel like a tool upvoting or downvoting links on reddit no do I feel like a tool if I correct a typo on wikipedia no so is this that different I just don't know I don't know as long as these people don't have the final say in things then it's pretty hard to complain about it. If these people don't have the soul power to remove a video from YouTube or, you know, affect creators' fair opportunity on the platform, then it's pretty hard to complain about it. And I guess they have the power to send more of us to court than previously before. They're almost like slightly more powerful policemen, aren't they? And they can like, you know, if their referrals carry greater weight, they're going to start sending more people to the court of YouTube to be ruled upon.

They're like a secret police. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really what it is, what it feels like. And I agree with you. Like more people will be before the court of YouTube. Yeah. But then again, if YouTube have got their act together, like you say, maybe they do,

and the police are being monitored. And, you know, if you're a policeman who's reporting lots of people wrongly, you'd lose your badge. Then all right. Then it sounds like they've kind of got a system in place that's kind of going to work. I think they're trying to diffuse a lot of the anger and confusion over this by saying that, like, we're just referring stuff up to the actual court. We don't have the power to remove videos.

Like, let's make it clear that that's not the case. And so to me, it feels like they're diffusing anger around the YouTube Heroes program. But it still always comes back to, like, the real argument takes place over what is it that the YouTube court decides. And the Heroes thing is just a total distraction on the side. Like that's actually what matters is what does YouTube think is appropriate or inappropriate for their platform? That is a complicated question. Their guidelines are vague and I think intentionally vague so that they can rule the way they want. From a purely selfish perspective, Greg, do you worry about that? Because, I mean, you seem to be so far from that line in the sand of what is acceptable and not

acceptable content that this must not even come into your mind. It's not like anything you've ever made is going to get ripped down for that reason. So, are you worrying just because of a general worry about the platform or free speech? I mean, you're not worried from a selfish perspective, are you? I have no personal connection to this fight in the sense that, yeah, I think it's pretty unlikely that any video that I would upload would probably be deemed by YouTube as inappropriate content. But just because it doesn't affect me is not a question of if I find it concerning or not. Again, I always want to sympathize with YouTube. Like I understand that they're in a difficult

position, but I always start getting really uncomfortable when people are outlining guidelines of what is and is not appropriate. Because ultimately this comes down to some kind of like human consensus decision even whenever you try to like write out the guidelines really what it what it boils down to is like we're going to have some group of people and they are going to decide what's cool and what's not cool it's like it's really interesting whenever you talk to people about how it's it's so hard to get people to agree on what they think is appropriate or inappropriate so i i just start getting a little bit uncomfortable and a little bit nervous when this gets set up like there is a court somewhere that makes decisions

i i like a more free-for-all approach to this stuff. Although, Greg, for as long as we've been talking about this, you know, we've been talking about this since before we even started making Hello Internet. And you've always very much had this attitude that, hey, YouTube's a company, they own it, they can decide what to do with it, we all have to live with it. You know, it's not like it's a democratically elected government, and it's not like a free open source thing. We're in their hands. We have to accept it, and that's the price we pay for being on it. And then over time, you seem to be drifting more and more towards this thing where you believe it is like this democratic place where people should

be allowed to do what they want, and people shouldn't be in charge. I'm not 100% sure where you sort of stand on that now. Well, no, there's a distinction here, which is the YouTube is a company and they can do what they want. And I think the Heroes program, along with the demonetization strategy that happened a couple of weeks ago, I think this is all combined with the knowledge that YouTube is still not profitable as far as I'm aware, at least last time we checked up on that. I think that this is all generally a movement toward make YouTube more advertising friendly and more profitable. That's what they want to do. And like, can I argue against that as the goal of YouTube as a company? No, it's entirely within their rights and partly their obligation to do just that.

Like, I'm not necessarily even saying like, if I was the CEO of YouTube, would I act differently? It's like, well, the CEO of YouTube is under a bunch of constraints. She's not just a person who can just do whatever she wants. Like she has obligations to shareholders. She has obligations to the parent company. Like there are goals that are set, like she can't just do a thing. And so I understand why this happens, but that's a different question from like, how do I personally feel knowing that there is a YouTube court who ultimately their goal is to keep the platform advertiser friendly.

I'm not a super fan of that feeling. I don't really like that. But I can understand why it occurs. It's also a very different question of like we've had this essentially this same discussion when you talk about like Reddit, like and what kind of content can be on Reddit and Reddit has gone through this stuff. Like every social media platform goes through this exact same thing of it becomes this enormous thing. It's CEOs, it's board of directors have structural obligations that they're trying to meet. They're trying to make it profitable. How do you do it? Part of the way is to remove content that advertisers don't like. Like this happens all the time, but it's a different question of like, let's say somehow I was running a video sharing company

and it was also a thing that I had never had to do venture capital funding for that I had no investors in. Like it was just a 100% privately held company. You know, what would I do with that service? I feel like I would try to lean as far as possible along the like, is it illegal in the country that it's being published in? If that's the case, then obviously it has to come down because I would have to work within the constraints of the law.

Like you can't go against that. But I feel like I would try to lean personally much further on the, like, do you say things that people really don't want you to say? It's like, well, they're words and people might not like them, but I'm, I'm more okay with like leaving up stuff that I don't personally agree with. But that's a totally different situation where you are imagining that I have way more leeway in running a thing. It's like, it's my private company. I have no one to answer to.

How would I do it? You know, but then like with all this stuff, there's always going to be edge cases and edge cases are where stuff starts to erode. And so like, I have a lot of sympathy for the people who do end up in charge of these big systems yeah and of course it also gets complicated when children get involved as well yeah i mean well that's why all of these services have at least the ostensible rule that no children should be using them in the first place

which we all know is a lie but as the uh it's like yeah there's nobody under 13 on facebook i'm sure there aren't but so that's why it's complicated. I have sympathy for the people who are in charge of this. But that is very different from like my personal feelings about how it goes. But I understand. I do think there's one complicating factor, though, which is I think we're now in a world where social media services, I don't know, what I'm about to say is probably going a little bit too far, but they're almost like public forums. They're almost like a kind of public property where it's very easy to say like,

oh, YouTube as an individual entity is allowed to do whatever it wants and shut down people that it doesn't like. And Twitter is also able to do that. And Facebook is also able to do that. And like on an individual case, it's always easy to point to one of them and to say like, oh, yes, of course, they should be able to do it. But in the aggregate, I don't know, I feel like they are very rapidly becoming absolutely vital tools of human communication. And to restrict those in ways makes me a little bit uncomfortable. But yeah, I think it might be a little bit too far to say, like, oh, it's almost like they're public squares where people should be able to talk about whatever they want. I don't really think that's the case. But I think as they become more powerful and more central in our

lives, they approach that. They really do. Where like removing someone from Twitter is damaging. I think they do. I agree with you. Yeah. I see why you're reluctant to go there and where there are a few little pitfalls, but I think they are getting very close to that. I know why you're scared to talk about talking about it because it's very complicated. I'm not scared of talking about it. I just think it's like to actually declare that there's something like a public forum is a very different thing. You know, to say like everybody should have the right to say what they want on an actually private company's property. I can't really cross that line.

It's like there's conflicting values here of should companies be able to do what they want with their property? Yes. Right. Should people be able to express themselves even if they express ideas that not everybody likes? Yes. You run into conflicts of these two things.

Maybe I'm just thinking of this as I go along. So maybe there's a stupid thing. But I think to use a UK example, I think maybe some of these platforms like Facebook and Twitter, we're almost getting to a situation where you need to treat them almost like the UK has public rights of way. What do you mean? Well, in the UK, you can own a piece of land,

like you can own a farm or something. But if there's a public right of way, if there's a path path going through it the public has a fundamental right to walk across it and you can't say get off my land i own the land although it is your land the public has a right to walk across it to get from a to b and to do certain things there's a whole bunch of famous protests and things in sort of uk history that a lot of landmark stuff happened in derbyshire where there was a big protest about this because i think a farmer was like shutting his land and not letting the hikers and the walkers go across his land and it all kicked off and in the end it was a great victory for walkers around the uk and that's why the uk is such a great place to walk to this day because we have these public

rights of way where you can walk across other people's land in certain cases. But that doesn't mean the person doesn't own the land. And I think like Facebook and Twitter maybe are getting into that sort of territory where, yes, Facebook owner and they can farm sheep on it if they want and they can plant a tree and they can make money. That's all they're right. But there still is a public right of way component to it where they have to acknowledge that if they're going to own this mega farm in a popular place, the public have to be able to use it too in certain ways that they can't just put a padlock on a gate. The public do have certain rights.

That's an interesting metaphor. That's an interesting way to think about it. If it turns out being a good one, just remember I said it first. If it's a lousy one, let's just pretend that never happened.