Hello Internet - H.I. #89 -- A Swarm of Bad Emoji

Episode Date: September 28, 2017

Grey & Brady discuss: mint condition, American news, X and the new iPhone, the Firewatch copyright strike against PewDiePie, being a TripAdvisor parasite, papercuts 'lightning' round, not The Buzz but rather bee emojis 🐝, and the movie version of The Circle. Sponsors: Squarespace: start building your website today with a free fourteen day trial and 10% off first purchase Harry's: Quality Men's Shaving Products - go to www.harrys.com/HI for a free trial set Hover: The best way to buy and manage domain names - get 10% off your first purchase at www.hover.hi Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit Brady's unopened lego box with Audrey for scale Cassini-Huygens mission How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster iPhone X Calculator unboxing Brexit news, I guess? Firewatch PewDiePie Copyright strike basics Casey Neistat Objectivity CGPPlay Euro/America Truck Simulator RedLetterMedia H3H3 TripAdvisor Contribute to The Wikipedia Podcast Apps and Grey's current podcast app of choice that allows different speed settings for different shows Hello Internet on YouTube Bee news, I guess? Honeybee Emoji on Emojipedia The Circle

Seeing as you and I are both wearing Hello Internet merchandise at the moment, you wearing a Reunion Swamp Hen t-shirt and me, the Mighty Nailing Gear, it does remind me of a question I've been meaning to ask you for a while. Yeah. I don't want to put you on the spot here, but I am. I had made for you and had sent to you a pair of Hello Internet limited edition sneakers. Oh, yes. I didn't really expect you to wear them because, you know, you're you. But I'm curious as to what's happened to them. Well, I mean, Brady, I think, you know, I'm a real sneakerhead. I'm a big fan of collecting sneakers. One of the things when you're in the sneakerhead world, or the sneakerverse, as call it right is you you want to keep your really special sneakers

in mint condition yeah absolute pristine mint condition shooniverse is a good name as well shooniverse i'll pass that on to the other sneaker heads and see okay see how that gets accepted on the icq where we chat don't get me wrong i know i mean i have a pair i wear and a second pair in mint condition. So I have my mint condition pair. I'm just wondering where your mint condition pair is. Oh, you want to know where it is? Yeah. I don't think you're wearing them. Okay. It's pride of place in the house, Brady. They're in a box, which is behind my laundry hamper so that it is as safe and as protected an item can be in the house if robbers were ever to show up. They won't find the Hello

Internet sneakers. I'm impressed they're in the house. I'm happy with that. I'll take that. Do you feel like that's a victory? Yeah. Did you honestly think, Brady, that I might tell you that I had thrown away the Hello Internet sneakers that you had lovingly handmade? Well, I didn't think you'd tell me you had, but I still think there is a chance you have. I think it's more likely you've re-gifted them, like you sent them to a relative or someone who listens to the show. With my same shoe size, is that who I would send it to?

Well, yeah, I imagine you must have some relative with the same shame chouchage as you. Probably, yeah. Family trees are quite extensive. But no, you haven't re-gifted them? No, they're in my house. They have not been re-gifted. They're in mint condition and shall remain so forever, I think, maybe.

I have a bit of a mint condition conundrum at the moment because for my birthday, which was back in June, I really wanted the Saturn V Lego rocket that was released around that time with 1,969 pieces. It was one of the most impressive Lego things I'd ever seen. So I said to my wife, because she never knows what to get me for my birthday, I said, that's what I want. So she got it for me.

I was over the moon. Sorry. I was very pleased with it. But I haven't made it, partly because I haven't had time, but also, like, I like that it's in its box and in mint condition. And, like, I kind of like the box and box and like knowing that all the pieces are in, they're all beautifully arranged and I kind of don't want to make it. I'm seriously wondering if it's still on sale,

whether I should buy a second one so I can make one and keep one in mint condition in a box as like a display thing. I have some follow-up questions here, Brady. So I feel like I have ended up with a mint condition item in my house through a series of extraordinary circumstances. I've started a podcast with a friend. That podcast ended up creating merchandise

straight from the brain of my friend who shipped some right to my house. It's not ordinary circumstances that such a thing would exist. Yeah. You, however, are looking to intentionally have a mint condition Lego box. I'm imagining this is quite a big Lego box. What's the size of this thing? I would say it's about the size of two cake boxes, two or three cake boxes.

How do cake boxes compare to bread baskets? I don't know this measure. You know, the Hello Internet sneaker box. Yes. It's about the size of three of them. Okay. I have a sense of that. But for the listeners, those who did not acquire Hello Internet sneakers, how many Audrey's is the box? How many Audrey's could you fit inside the box? That's the standard measure we use here. You could probably fit three to four Audrey's in the box. All right. But Audrey has been packing on the pounds lately. I was going to say, my mental estimate here is you could fit 10 Audrey's in, but you must be really, it depends on how tightly you pack them and how much she's been putting on the weight.

Also, I'm aware that these Lego things, if they're unboxed, have a greater resale value like years later. But I never sell these things anyway. So I don't really think that's my reason. I don't think it's a financial consideration. I think it's just liking the neatness and the beauty of an unboxed awesome thing. Right. You're not investing in Legos here. No, no. goes here no no and i just feel like the boxed rocket unmade just feels like a nicer thing to

me than if i made it like if i made it i'm just gonna have this big rocket that obviously is made of lego and like i don't know where i'd put that or how i'd feel about that whereas i really like the box i just like how the box looks and i like knowing what's in it and i can't explain it i know it's a bit weird i'm trying very hard to understand and maybe i have used this analogy before when i when i try to think of these kinds of things but the closest i can come is the promise of unused stationary like an unwritten in notebook that true. It is the promise of what you could write in there as opposed to what you actually do, which just doesn't live up to the ideal. That analogy is good beyond what you know, because when I was at school in year three,

so I must've been like around eight years old or something. Yeah, that's about right. My year three teacher, who I still remember was Mrs. Delbridge. And she had this diary, which was a five year diary. You could keep five years in it because of the way the pages were configured. Like a five year schedule? Do you mean like a calendar for five years? Yeah, it was basically, yeah. It's basically what it it was and i had a little lock on it and i was completely besotted by it and it was the prize for the student who did the best work in their journal that year we had like

a daily journal where you had to write stuff in it i was just obsessed with winning it and it was going to be given out at the end of the year and while most of the kids didn't care about their journal and would write stuff about like what they did last night or what they watched on tv or you know what they did in the holidays i decided to turn my journal into like a spy novel which i just wrote each day and it was this fictional story about this spy having all these adventures he was called ijm i don't know why that's what I called him. Okay. It was this epic tale spanning two exercise books. And there was one other girl in the class who kept a really good journal and she had much better handwriting than me.

Of course. And she also really wanted to win it. And I was convinced that she was going to win it. And I still remember at the end of the year, Mrs. Delbridge saying, and the winner of the diary is, and she opened up the page, and my name had been written in the front where it said this belongs to. And I'd won the five-year diary, which I'd wanted all year. So I took it home and I was like, this is amazing. This is, I finally got it. It's mine. I've coveted this for so long and I never, ever wrote in it or did

anything with it because I was too scared to ruin the beautiful empty diary. I didn't want to sully it. So for the next three or four years, I just kept this five-year diary thinking, next year maybe I'll start it when my handwriting's better and I know I won't ruin it. That's just it. Your handwriting will never be good enough to live up to the idea of the diary. Yeah. Especially the longer you have it. As it has gone on for two years, it becomes like, oh, well, now I really need to have something great to write in this thing. It's like if you're keeping a bottle of

champagne for a special occasion, the longer you go without drinking, the specialer the occasion needs to be in order to drink that champagne. It's like, well, we haven't drank this for two years now. It has to be an amazing event. You sort of sacratize an object by not using it. That's it. That's what's happening to the rocket. I'm sacratizing it, aren't I? Yeah, I think that is what's happening. My strategy for this, at least with paper stationery, because I used to use paper notebooks all the time. I used to always have a paper notebook with me. I used to write in paper notebooks for all kinds of projects. And stationery used to be a much bigger part of my life than it currently is. But I was always aware of feeling that feeling about oh my dumb ideas are not worthy

of this pristine book and so my strategy was to just every time i got a notebook intentionally just scribble all over the first page they're like okay now it's fine because there's no this first page needs to be the opening lines of war and peace. I am, I was going to say desacratizing, but maybe it's like degrading the notebook down to my normal human level. I was like, okay, well now I can write it. Sullying it. When I got my new iPhone the other day, the first day I had it, I happened to go to the gym. And when I go to the gym, I give my phone and my car keys and my wallet to my trainer. And he goes into like a back locked room and puts them in his gym bag. So I said, I've got a new

phone and I handed it over to him. And I said, can you just be careful when you put it in that the keys like scratch up against the phone? And I never say things like that. He looked at me funny and I said, oh, I just got the phone today and you know, I don't want to scratch it. And he was like, oh yeah, no problems. I understand. I'll be really careful when i put it in my bag i went back to the gym two days later and handed over my stuff to him and he said oh i'll be careful and i said don't care anymore seriously that's the half-life of it was two the iphone is sacred for a day and after that i don't care but the first day you have it you know you're polishing it on your t-shirt all the time to make sure there's no fingerprints on it and making sure it's all beautiful and then two days later it was like ah just chuck it in it's just

my phone now so after this big conversation about how sacred your unopened box of lego is what do you think you're going to do here brady it's still open i don't know what you might have to do is buy the second box build the lego saturn rocket and then display then display the Lego Saturn rocket on top of the box with the other one. What will I do with the empty box? Well, you'll throw that one away. Have you seen how gorgeous the box is? This is the point in these conversations, Brady, where I feel like I've tried to work with you, but now it's too far. You're going to keep two identical boxes of a Lego construction set in your house. That's what you're going to do? That's the ultimate idea when you were going to buy the second one?

Is that you're going to keep the two boxes because they're beautiful? Okay, you know that's crazy, right? It would be a difficult box to throw away. That's all I'm saying. I don't know, man. I feel like we're getting close to an episode of Hoarders when you're telling me that you're going to keep both of the boxes of the Saturn V rockets.

Hey, I haven't even got a second one yet. Don't tell me off. I haven't even bought a second one. Don't tell tell me off. I haven't even bought a second one. Don't tell me. The idea that your plan is when you get the second box, you're going to keep it? I don't know, man. I could go along with the constructed rocket in front of

or on top of the box of the unopened one, but to keep the two boxes, I don't know what to say to you. Yeah. I don't know what way it's going to go because while it is a nice box, it is a little bit childish. So it's not really in keeping with the look of my office, you know, with the nice green walls and lovely framed pictures. So, but it's your office. Your office is what you want to make it. You can have Lego rockets in your office if you want to. Yeah. But I want it to have a certain grown up look as well.

Right. Of course. Grown up look. want it to have a certain grown-up look as well right of course grown-up look do you know quite often when i go through feedback like in the emails and on the reddit and stuff like that i do enjoy it and i am grateful for it but it always feels quite like sometimes it feels a bit antagonistic there is a certain heat to it that sometimes can rile you up or you don't enjoy especially when people are disagreeing on things or disagreeing with us it's like because you know they feel frustrated because they can't get their say to us and we feel a bit frustrated because we can't answer all their comments i've been going through a lot of the feedback on which is better the moon landing or

the mars landing oh the which is more impressive And there's been lots of discussion about it. Yeah, there has. And both views have been put. And do you know what? I've completely enjoyed it. I've enjoyed the tone of it. I've enjoyed both sides of the argument. I still think I'm right.

Of course. And the moon landing is more impressive than the Mars landing. But I've enjoyed what the Mars landing people have had to say. I've enjoyed engaging with a little bit of it. It's been one of the more enjoyable bits of civilized feedback and discussion we've had as a result of the show. That's nice to hear, Brady. There is also always the problem when you're going through feedback. If you've made anything online and then people are leaving comments, and I feel like this is also one of the fundamental problems of the internet,

is that there is no indication of tone of how the person is saying the other thing i think it's very easy when you're reading feedback that is critical of you that the the narrator in your head for the comment that you're reading has like an angry tone which might not at all be what the person is intending which of course is why we have a proliferation of emoticons and smiley faces everywhere. But at least on Reddit and YouTube, like the emoji encroachment has not reached there to a full extent. So I think it can be hard to understand how did the person mean the comment. But I'm very happy that you've been enjoying the Moon versus Mars feedback. I also enjoy all those comment threads. I still think that Mars is more impressive to me,

but I felt myself a bit swayed by the idea that for humans on the long scale, the moon is objectively more impressive. I felt myself pulled in that direction by the feedback. Yeah. I think maybe the reason I've found it so easy reading the feedback is my assuredness that I'm right. Okay. Maybe it's that. You're so confident in your opinion that it's just like oh yeah there's no there's no arguing with the brady on this also there was another big space event since we last recorded and this was the cassini space probe which had been doing doing the business around Saturn for years now and sending back all these great photos, that that mission finally came to its end and it was sent

plunging into the atmosphere of Saturn for a big dramatic finale because they didn't want to leave it just, you know, cruising around the orbit of Saturn. As space junk. Yeah, basically. And I have in the past been critical of hype and space cheer pressure and things like that. And admittedly, when this was happening, I did go on Twitter and I was a little bit naughty and made a few provocative tweets just for fun. But I will say, overall, I thought the level of Cassini hype, in my timeline, at least in the social media I was seeing, was pitched just perfect. It was right this time. I was very pleased. I thought the mainstream media maybe slightly underplayed it, but of course a space nerd is always going to think that. But the space cheerleaders around

the place, I thought it was about right. They were passionate and emotional and I teased them about it a little bit on the Twitter, particularly when I said that taking nice pictures of Saturn is low-hanging fruit. But overall, I thought it was about right, and I wish that all science events were treated at about that tone. It was a proportional response. You think taking pictures of Saturn is low-hanging fruit? Yeah, it's a bit like, oh, wow, isn't it amazing we got all these beautiful pictures of Saturn is low-hanging fruit? Yeah, it's a bit like, oh, wow, isn't it amazing we got all these beautiful pictures of Saturn?

I mean, anyone with a 2005 Nokia pointing vaguely in the direction of Saturn could take an amazing photo of Saturn. But don't get me wrong, I did like Cassini. Preferred the Voyager missions myself. Oh, you're more of a Voyager man, are you? I said that on Twitter as well. I said I'm more of a Voyager man. But I was impressed by Cassini, and it was a really cool mission. Is Voyager man, are you? I said that on Twitter as well. I said I'm more of a Voyager man. But I was impressed by Cassini and it was a really cool mission.

Is Voyager 2 still going? I'm just realizing, I don't know. Is that still? Yeah, I think they're still getting signals from both of them. There's a new story every few weeks that they've finally left the solar system as the definition of the solar system keeps changing for PR reasons. Brady, you're so cynical. There hasn't been a Voyager lift the solar system story for a few weeks now, actually. I'm sure we can redefine the edge of the sun's magnetosphere once again as the true edge of the solar system

so we can get that story. And just quickly, can I praise SpaceX for a minute? Are you trying to win over our commenters, Brady? No, no, they did something I liked. Credit where credit's due. They posted a YouTube video, montage of their greatest failures and crashes. It was this brilliant montage of rockets exploding and everything that went wrong.

And I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really cool. And I liked that they were able to take the mickey out of themselves in that way. It harked back to a famous scene in the film The Right Stuff where they show a whole bunch of rocket failures. So maybe my NASA nostalgia kicked in again. But it was a really cool video. This was on the official channel. They published a compilation of their failures. Yes. Is this it? How not to land an orbital rocket booster?

It probably is, yeah. You know what? I've got to give a company credit for doing that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, if you've got that incredible a company credit for doing that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, if you've got that incredible sexy footage, why not use it? Because there's not many things more amazing to look at than a rocket going wrong. But still, some companies would not couch it in this way. So good on them. I'm watching the video now. It's pretty good. And it certainly helps that these are all unmanned rockets. Yeah, it did occur to me that the first time something goes wrong with a rocket with a person on it, that this video is going to maybe come back to bite them on the backside,

which is why a lot of companies wouldn't do it. That's exactly it. You're putting something out there in the world for people to hold against you, but I'll give a company credit for doing that kind of thing. These are definitely some impressive explosions. Yeah, they're nice. Nice footage. I'll put it in the show notes for people to watch.

So speaking of your approval of the Cassini news coverage, there's something I want to touch on from two shows ago. There was a topic that came up briefly, and it was when you were discussing the overhyped eclipse in America. The eclipse of the millennium, I believe, was what it was being called. I know when you're poking me on purpose, so I'm not even going to bother correcting you. Is that not right? I might be mistaken. I don't know. By the way, I do realize when you deliberately say things wrong, like a dad, you know,

who does it just to wind the kids up. Like how you keep not understanding what Oka means. I do know you do that on purpose, by the way. Oh, I understand what Oka means, Brady. I think I understand ACA better than you. I think you're too close to it and you can't understand what ACA really is. All right. But yes, I was critical of the eclipse of the century hype coming from our friends across the Atlantic. Yeah. So you made some comments about the American centricness of American news. And speaking of feedback in the comments, there were about a bazillion comments in the Reddit where people were jumping on this bandwagon about how American-centric the news is.

And I am not one to defend the news. People might be aware of that. But this is one case, we didn't touch upon it at the time. But I have to say, reading the comments where people were complaining about how American-centric the news in America is, I'm fine with that. Of all of the myriad of things I could complain about American news, the fact that it focuses on America is like the most minor of complaints there could possibly be. I think it's actually totally justified. For example, there was a comment that I'm sort of picking at random, but I think works well as an example, where there was someone from Brazil who was complaining about having moved to America, that nobody in America knows anything about Brazil, right? That it never comes up on the American news.

They were, you know, sort of making fun of Americans for saying Americans would ask him if he speaks Brazilian as a question about like, what's Brazil like? Or not knowing where in the world Brazil is. That's like, I kind of get that it's funny to make fun of Americans for not knowing these things. But what I was thinking about was I was trying to think, okay, what is to Brazil as Brazil is to America? How do we measure the different sizes of countries? And this may not be a perfect comparison, but I thought, I think you could use the GDP of a country as a rough first order approximation for how important is it in the world. I'm not saying that's a perfect measure, but I think we can ballpark that. And it works out just about perfectly that the Brazilian GDP is one-tenth the size of

the American GDP. And of course, United States GDP is the largest in the world by a pretty decent margin. So the country that is to Brazil as Brazil is to the United States is a country like the Czech Republic or Romania. And I just kind of would love to know how often the goings on of Romania or the Czech Republic are in Brazilian news. And if someone from Romania could be like, oh, the Brazilian news doesn't cover Romania as often as they think it should, but it would feel like, well, of course it doesn't. How does the Czech Republic or Romania impact Brazil? Like,

not really a lot. And so I really feel like American news is American centricness. It's totally fine. And it's a thing that I am very happy to defend as far as American news goes. Well, maybe I didn't put my case properly. I think it is okay for news to be parochial. I worked on a newspaper in Adelaide and everything was about what's the Adelaide angle. If a huge disaster happens on the other side of the world, the first thing we wonder is, I wonder if anyone from Adelaide was there. Parochialness is fair enough. I think the American news does go too far. Like I think they're too parochial. is fair enough i think the american news does go too far like i think they're too parochial i think they could just turn that dial down just a little bit but i'm all right with

parochial news coverage because you've got to play to your audience but my problem is they kind of it's almost kind of like a well i hope it's a willful ignorance for example if a new building got built in america that was taller than every other building in america but it was shorter than the burj khalifa which is the tallest building in the world and say it was built in chicago and then the american news in the chicago news ran a story about this new building and called it the biggest building ever i'd be like no it's not the biggest building ever it it the biggest building ever, I'd be like, no, it's not the biggest building ever. It's the biggest building in America.

It's like how the finals of the baseball in America is called the World Series. That's the classic example, isn't it? This is not the World Series to decide the world champions. They crown the world champions of baseball every year based on who won a domestic US competition. Well, it does include Canada, Brady. This is more where my problem is.

It's kind of this ignorance of the bigger picture. And I think that's the problem. I think you need to know how you fit into the world. I don't mind skewing the coverage and, you know, not covering every minor incident that happens in Romania. But I think it's degrees. And I think America goes a little bit too far. There are some TV channels in the UK when they're covering the news

and they try to be all high and mighty and be really international. And I get really bored. I think, oh, enough of all this boring stuff about stuff that's happening in other countries. This is so worthy. Tell me why there was a big traffic jam on my motorway today. You know, I want my local news. So you can go too far the other way and be too un-centric. But I think America goes the other way. And it's too America-centric. I want my porridge just right. Is that too much to ask?

I mean, look, as a man who wants to bend the entire world to his will, I understand you want your porridge just right. I can sympathize there. I think of a lot of this stuff in life, like, I don't know how to articulate this very well, but it's a bit like it's tuned just right. So you have to think about it in terms of like, well, what happens if this dial is tuned too much? And what happens if it's tuned too little? And think about like, what are the consequences in these directions? Because you just don't know where the exact correct setting is. And I look at the American-centricness of American news and feel mostly like, well, of course, this dial is going to be turned way to one side. And it's because the United States is any meaningful way. And essentially, the only foreign news that Americans get is about the countries that may be able to impact the United States in some way. And that is a tiny handful of countries. And to expect that it's much broader beyond that, I think is kind of unreasonable. Like stuff like the World Series is just funny.

And that's why the eclipse of the century was was a perfect example because as you said last time, I was like, how is this being measured? There's no objective way it's the Eclipse of the Century, except that it's happening right now in America. That stuff is funny. My personal peeve is a kind of beating on Americans for not knowing about the world outside. And I think it's because it's such an asymmetric relationship. Like people in other countries know all sorts of stuff about America because what America does affects those countries.

But Americans don't know about the countries that their policies affect because one, there's vastly more of them. And two, like, well, frankly, those countries, their actions don't really affect the United States nearly as much. So like, it's just, I just think their actions don't really affect the United States nearly as much.

So like, I just think it's not surprising that this is the situation that we're in. That's a bit of a shame. Like, it's a bit of a shame that something so powerful and that can affect so many other people is so unaware of those people. But I hear argument. I guess it bothers me mostly because I remember coming to the UK a long time ago and getting into conversations with people about how like, oh, it's amazing how you don't know anything about all of our countries. And I was originally on the side of like, oh, I should feel totally ashamed by this. But then eventually, I kind of changed my mind on like, wait a minute,

why? Like, why would I know the details of like how the politics in France works? Like, why would this ever be a thing that would come across my attention before having moved to Europe? Like, it never would in any meaningful way. So I shouldn't feel bad about not having known it when I showed up. So I think that's why it's like a little personal thing for me. I'm okay with you defending your countrymen. But I do think one should strive for more information and more knowledge in life in all ways. And that includes knowledge of the world. And, you know, we should know how the electoral system in France works. I don't, but I shouldn't be proud that I don't. I should say, I wish I did. I wish I knew

everything. But I do feel like a statement like, oh, we should all strive to know more about the world. Like it's very easy to say, but it's very hard to agree with the specifics of what exactly does that mean. Because like there's an infinite amount of things to know about absolutely everything. And so if we accept that as a premise, we immediately have to start filtering out almost everything about everything. It's not possible to know about all of the things. So there has to be some sort of filter. Again, that's why I'm not surprised that Americans, they know about America and maybe not very much beyond her borders. you want to make. Perhaps you want to make a website where you can inform Americans about

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and receive 10% off your first purchase. That's squarespace.com slash hello to make your website a reality. Thank you to Squarespace for supporting the show. So Gray, since we last spoke, I know there's been another announcement from the temple. The temple. Apple has announced new iPhones for all the fans. And I'll tell you what, if you went to a dictionary and looked up unimpressed, you could put a photo of me watching the iPhone announcement there. Oh yeah? Yeah. As far as I can tell, and you set me straight if I'm wrong, but this new iPhone,

can I call it iPhone X? I know I'm supposed to call it 10. Okay. No, let's get this on the record here i am boycotting the 10 i'm not going along with their it's iphone 10 it's like i'm sorry if you're going to put the big letter x there i'm calling it x it's it's not going to happen on apple but i feel like like pulling out the x in any branding time it's like your big gun, isn't it? That's like, okay, it's time. It's time for the X version of whatever we've got. So I expect it to be pretty awesome, like game changer. And as far as I can tell, this is not a game changer.

This is just more faffing around the edges. And I think they've wasted their X. I think they've gone early on the X, whether it's out of desperation or they were just running out of time because they were approaching the number 10 and they thought that was when they had to use their X. Well, I would argue that they had,

if they didn't want to use the 10, they could have had several more years of not using the 10, right? Because they have their little S, their little in-between years. So we had seven. They could have done 7S, 8, 8S, 9, 9S, and then gone to 10. So they could have had what? Was that six years? I heard there was some technical reason they couldn't use nine. I find that hard to believe, but okay. What do I know about this stuff? But anyway, I am

disappointed from what I've seen so far. I'm not yearning to get one for a thousand pounds. Am I wrong? Should I want one? What would you want the X to have? What would make you feel like, wow, that's the kind of X you want to see in the world? Emojis that move when I move my face. Oh, wow. I have good news for you. I don't know. It feels like it should be like a new birth. It should be the monolith descending from the sky. If I knew the answer to that, I would either work at Apple or I would have a really trendy, cool designed monochrome blog where I wrote about it every day.

I'm not thinking of one in particular, by the way, because I don't know any of them. That's just what they all sort of seem like to me. All these like really minimalist design blogs. I'll tell you another thing about podcasters that annoys me is when they refer to the fact that they wrote about something, like that's a big deal. Like, you know, yeah, I can talk on a podcast all day, but actually, I wrote an article about that. Like suddenly that, oh, hang on, you wrote an article about that? Well, that's different. Political podcasts are really bad for this. Political journalists

who will just waffle about politics and they'll say, actually, I wrote an article about that this week. They're probably worse than the Apple people for that. Somehow now it's scripture because it's written down and it's more important than just waffling. Don't you think it is though, Brady? I mean, this is one of the things I like about podcasts is, I mean, you and I, we've just shown up, we're having a little chat here. Even like we were just talking about the American centricness of American news. And I feel like that's a very different conversation than if I sat down and I was going to write an article defending that same topic, right? If you write something, I think it is a bigger deal than doing a podcast because in

a podcast, you're just talking, right? Yeah. Okay. I see what you're saying, but I think it puts an importance on what's written basically just on a blog on the internet into some kind of important sphere that like it's not like it's gone through peer review and it's more right you're still just some joker who wrote an article on a blog actually i wrote an article about that so now now what i'm'm saying has more credence or something? No, it doesn't. You just also wrote down what you think. I guess I know what you're saying,

but I still feel like they're very different things. What is your, you don't like it when they're simply referencing that it's like, oh, I have an important piece of work and you're listening to a podcast and you're thinking like, hey, you're a guy I listen to talk about politics all the time. What's the difference if you've written it down versus you're talking about it? It just sort of seems irrelevant. It's like, okay, good for you. I'm listening to the podcast. It's okay if they say like, there's a lot of things about that, that, you know, I'm not going to say now, so you should read the article. But they just sort of say it as

an aside. Oh yeah, I wrote an article about that. And then they go on to regurgitate sort of the article. I don't know. There's something about it that just rubs me up the wrong way. It's like a paper cut. The thing that's funny to me about this is I just, I always feel like, we said before, like everything we're talking about on this podcast is sort of off the record because we're just talking. Like on my Wikipedia page, I sometimes see quotes from things that I've said on the podcast, like on my own Wikipedia page,

explaining a thing. And I always feel like weirdly annoyed by that. Like, but it was just, I was just talking like, but now this quote of a thing that I just said offhandedly is like the representative thing on this topic. Whereas I would feel very differently about that if I had written an article and then the Wikipedia article was like quoting the article that I had written. It just, it does feel like they're very different things to me, Brady. Yeah, I know. I know you feel that way. That's fair enough. And also like, it is also just cross promotion. And I mean, we often talk about things and I'll say,

I made a video about that and it's completely extraneous to what we're talking about. So I'm guilty of it too. So mea culpa. You should make a video about it, Brady. I should. I haven't made a video about the new iPhone or written an article about it or seen one. You have to do an unboxing, Brady. Do you have an unboxing channel yet? It could be more popular than all your other channels. Actually, I make calculator unboxings. We'll put a link in the show notes.

I think you should really spin that off into something else. It could be a full-time job. Dwarf number file immediately. Is the iPhone X a big deal? This is the one time I feel like you're really asking the wrong person, Brady, because I didn't actually watch the keynote this year. I was in an extremely low internet area. So I haven't actually seen the presentation or anything. I just read a couple of those articles afterwards. People wrote down their thoughts

to get a summary of what's going on. I'm not saying people shouldn't write articles or write down their thoughts, by the way. Like technology articles and blogs are not only like good, I like them and I read them. I'm not against writing. You heard it here first, people. Brady, colon, against writing. And there are some really good ones. There are a few people who we know who I think write really cool tech blogs. It's when someone's on a podcast saying, I wrote an article about this. I was like, okay, that's good. But I'm listening to your podcast at the moment. So let's talk. Let's have a little chat. I feel like I've misrepresented myself.

But anyway, let's move on to the new iPhone. Yeah. But you know what? Thank God this is a podcast and people can hear that in the conversation as opposed to if it was just transcribed and written in an article. And then it seems like it's something set in stone our confused thoughts about about these matters i don't know man like i'm not the person here who's going to try to sell you on an iphone x have you ordered one they're not able to be ordered yet but i mean yes i will order one as soon as i can right but i think that is also for anyone who has listened to this podcast and has heard both of us do our various iPhone switches over the years, the past, what is it now? Four years of this design, I have been unhappy with and

frustrated with the phones at both sizes. So I am excited far less because of the technology that is in the phone and far more simply because, oh, thank God it's a different size after four years. And maybe I'll like this size better than the phones that I've been living with in the past. What size is this one? What's it the size of? It's in between the two sizes. It's like a little bit bigger than the regular iPhone.

And it's as if that iPhone was all screen, except obviously for that notch at the top. So I'm hoping the fact that the screen size is larger, if not the body size is much larger, we'll get rid of some of my typing frustrations that I've had with the phone. That is the reason that I'm ordering it is I feel like please let me like this size. If you're looking for someone to evangelize how technically impressive the iPhone X is, you are with the wrong podcasting partner for this one. I'm sorry, Brady. I cannot sell you on this device. I'm worried about the lack of the home button because whenever I have to swipe things from the bottom of my iPhone as it is now, I'm so hopeless at that. I'm like,

it takes me about eight goes to bring up that swipey thing at the bottom. So if the home button is anything like that functionality, it's bad news for me. I mean, look, Brady, we all know that the future is no buttons, right? All of the buttons go. I'm sure someday we won't have volume buttons on the side. It'll be nothing but swipe gestures all over the place. That's what's going to happen there. You're passing on the iPhone X? Yeah. 10. Would you like it more if it was called iPhone Pro, Brady?

I would suddenly be tempted if they cracked out the Pro. I think this exact same phone, if they said it's iPhone Pro, you might feel the call of Apple tugging on your wallet. Yeah, I'd be thinking, oh, well, I'm supposed to be a professional person. Maybe I, why haven't I got a pro? Do you not, Brady, literally watch videos professionally on your phone? Is that not one of the primary use cases?

I probably will have to get the pro. When they do that, that's when Apple's going to get your money. Yeah. Did you hear that, Apple? That's how you get a Brady on the hook. There's a few bucks to be made over here in the UK. You got one customer waiting for the pro. Well, we'll see.

I'll have a look at yours when you get it and decide from there. I'll talk to you on the podcast about it, but I won't actually believe a word you say until you've written an article on your blog. Now, Brady, the one topic that relates to YouTube that never stops is copyright. Copyright on YouTube is the topic that never, ever ends. And we were talking about it two shows ago. We were talking about it last show with regards to H3H3 and their copyright lawsuit that has gone on. And I thought, oh,

we've gone through the copyright topic. We probably won't talk about it again. But just recently, another thing has occurred in YouTube land with regards to complications over copyright that I thought was a tricky case that I just kind of wanted to bring up. Are you aware at all of what's been going on in the world of PewDiePie

and video game copyright? Is this a story that's crossed your radar? What's your guess? I'm going to guess no. Correct. No idea what you're talking about. This is one of these funny little moments where I feel that we do live in these non-overlapping bubbles of what's going on in the world. Do you know what happened with Brexit negotiations in the last couple of days? I literally didn't know Brexit negotiations were going on. I love it. I love it. But you know all about what's happening on a video game channel on YouTube. This is the moment where, again, I can be very sympathetic to your position because I am sitting here thinking, I kind of can't believe that as someone who makes their

living on YouTube, like you haven't come across this thing that's going on in some way, shape or form, but obviously you haven't. But you would be quite right to say you can't believe that as someone who lives in the UK and has professionally made videos about the politics of the UK, I have not heard anything about Brexit. We're as bad as each other. We are bad. Is there anything I need to know about Brexit?

Is there anything I should worry about, Brady, just before, just to catch me up? No, it's still a big balls up. Oh, okay, great. So I haven't missed anything yet then. No. All right. Well, let me tell you about something that really matters. Okay.

Tell me what's happening on YouTube and with PewDiePie. I'm going to do a very high level overview of what's going on here, because in some ways I don't think that the details really matter. But I think the broad point is more interesting. Okay, so PewDiePie, the largest subscribed YouTube channel at the time of recording, it's got 50 million something subscribers, crazy number that makes no sense. He's also recently gotten in to live streaming. So playing his games live on the internet. And he got himself into a whole world of trouble by saying a very bad word that he shouldn't have said. What was the word?

It was the N word, Brady. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. That doesn't go down well. No, it doesn't go down well. He said a naughty word, but not the word naughty. It was even naughtier than that. He said a naughty word, but it wasn't that N-word. That's not the word that he said. Yeah. So he got himself into a whole load of trouble. Yep.

So now PewDiePie has made videos of a video game called Firewatch. Right. In his past, he's recorded them. They're up on his YouTube channel. He didn't say any naughty words in those. It was just very typical. He's recording himself playing a video game and putting it up for his fans. So then what happened was the company that makes that video game, because of the thing that he said on his live stream, decided to file DMCA takedowns against all of his videos featuring their content. Right.

And he got a copyright strike against his channel. Now, in the YouTube world, getting a copyright strike, getting an official real strike against your channel is a pretty big deal. Because if you get three strikes, your channel is just totally removed from YouTube. All of your videos are deleted. The channel's just gone. I think they elapse after a certain amount of time. I'm not 100% sure about that, but getting three copyright strikes is a super big deal. I feel like this is right in the heart of this complicated topic about copyright and also like being able to selectively enforce the copyright on their content based on whether or not they like the creator or not. When PewDiePie first uploaded these Firewatch videos, the ones that are not naughty, did he have their permission or had they just turned

a blind eye to the copyright because it was great publicity from a really famous YouTuber? Did he have permission and they're removing it retrospectively? What was the status at the time before this N-word thing happened? The short answer is the company that makes Firewatch on their official webpage have an FAQ where they say, you can make videos about our game, you can stream this game, and you are allowed to monetize this game.

Go ahead, go nuts. So the developers of the game did give sort of a blanket permission to the world of go ahead, you can record this video game and you can stream it. And that was just sort of given out to everybody. And that's part of what I think is this kind of dangerous thing that I really don't like YouTube going along with this of allowing the company to retroactively remove someone's content simply because they don't like that creator anymore. There's something about that that feels really dangerous as a precedent that sets on YouTube. And it makes me as a

sometimes very rare game streamer, a bit uncomfortable with how that has worked out. I mean, there's a certain arbitrariness to how you can enforce your own copyright. Like if the Daily Mail pinched one of my videos, I may go to town and try to get money out of them and kick up a fuss. But if another organization freeboots me, I might just be in a good mood one day and do nothing. I can see how you can be arbitrary on who you prosecute, for lack of a better word, for taking your material. And Firewatch could potentially be within their rights. If they hadn't said in the past, this is okay. So I don't think you can move the goalposts after you've done that. Like if PewDiePie was taking a risk and Firewatch had always said,

this is our game and you shouldn't be streaming it and had turned a blind eye to PewDiePie for years and then one day he turned into a bad character and they said, all right, now we're going to enforce. Like that would be a bit douchey, but like it would sort of seem within the rules. But if they have already said, as you say on their FAQ, you can stream the game and it was done in good faith,

I think that is very unfair. It seems unfair. I really don't like that YouTube has gone along with that and has issued a copyright strike against PewDiePie. It seems like two entities deciding that for content reasons, not for the official rules reasons, that they're going to enforce the thing. And that always just kind of makes me a little bit uncomfortable.

But it's an interesting situation because Let's Plays and people who record themselves playing video games on the internet, this is like the grayest of gray areas when it comes to a question of what is fair use. And when we were talking about with the H3H3 lawsuit, and I kept saying, oh, I think this is the bare minimum of what I might consider fair use under the rules as they were written. The live streaming stuff and the video game streaming stuff is like, oh my God, we're in this fog and there's no ability to see in any direction where we're actually standing. And there is like this, I almost want to call it like a like a detente between most video game companies and video game streamers where nobody seems to want to bring up any kind of court case that would actually resolve this. It is astounding to me that this far into YouTube and this far into game streaming as

a hugely popular thing, there have been no court cases that have set any meaningful precedence on the concept of, is recording yourself playing a video game, fair use or not. No companies want to make this move. And many, many companies take the policy, sort of like what you were saying before, of simply not saying anything publicly about it. It's very interesting. I kind of wonder if this thing between PewDiePie and the company that makes Firewatch might actually end up becoming one of the first precedent setting court cases, depending on how far Firewatch wants to take it.

But the very concept of should someone recording themselves playing a video game count as fair use is a thing that I feel like I have no ability to come to a decision on that. Even as someone who has streamed himself playing video games, I will happily acknowledge that that feels like it's in a really big gray area about how much of this content is like transformative versus how much of it is just showing what the game developers themselves have created. So Gray, as you know, I haven't been following this debate, but I do know that PewDiePie is not famous for being silent on such matters has he been kicking up a ruckus and saying

this is an outrage and going to the mattresses he's made a few videos about it but of course that's his stock and trade he's a controversial character and then he gets to make videos about his own controversies which become popular as well said the guys that are still doing feedback an hour into the episode well look look you, everything feeds on itself in some way or another, Brady. But yeah, of course, he's taken the position as well that it's, that the copyright strike is ridiculous, and that he had permission from Firewatch. But that's exactly the position that you would expect him to take. I mean, my initial thought, like a minute ago, I was thinking maybe this is just like, for show, you know, like a PR thing. And it's just like, you know, like when you get officially

sanctioned, and no one's really angry at anyone. But you said the videos have been taken down too. His Firewatch videos were taken down, he got the DMCA copyright strike. And the thing that I find a little bit, a little bit in in this threatening kind of way is that the developer of Firewatch was on Twitter and was calling for other developers to issue copyright strikes retroactively against PewDiePie. And it's like, man, you only need two other people to do that. And if he gets three copyright strikes at once, his whole channel goes. They're not going to do that to him. YouTube won't let that happen to their biggest channel.

Well, this is a topic for another time. But let's just say I would personally suspect that YouTube might not shed a tear if PewDiePie, of all people, were no longer the number one YouTuber on their platform. I don't think YouTube would be crying themselves to sleep at night thinking, oh, PewDiePie, he was the one that we wanted to hold up our brand to the world. Fair enough, yeah. I think YouTube would be way more happy if someone like Casey Neistat became the number one person and was the representative of YouTube to the world. Or objectivity.

Or objectivity, of course. The finalist list is those two. Which one do they think they should have represent YouTube itself? Keith. Keith's famous. loves keith yeah so great what are you gonna do what does this mean for cgp play or whatever you've called your gaming channel my incredible gaming channel yeah like what happens now is this gonna scare you off are to, like a little frightened rabbit, are you going to run back into your hole and not make any more of those truck things, driving channels things? Well, luckily, my CTV Place live streaming channel is a trivial portion of the massive empire that is Grey Industries. So from a personal perspective, I don't have to worry about that because it's a it's a separate thing it's not connected to my main industry right you've got it you've got it registered like on the isle of

white or something yeah that's exactly right all the bank accounts are offshore yeah yeah it's in a trust it's in the isle of white that's actually owning a company in the bahamas right yeah we have three trustees yeah it's a very secure situation so the people who make euro truck simulator aren't going to be able to get their hands on the main channel dollars. No, that's they're all quarantined. Yes, it's very quarantined. But it really is like when I started doing that just for fun. The whole copyright issue around this, I really do find sort of fascinating. Because a lot of the argument for why a Let's Play video should be fair use is that the streamers will argue it's a kind of performance. It's like, well, yes, the thing that you're looking at on the screen is content that's created by somebody else, but there is a performance that is occurring on

top of it. Like if I went out and bought Adidas juggling balls and made a video of me juggling, Adidas couldn't say, hey, those are our juggling balls. Right. You know, I was just using their thing for my performance. Right. It's like, oh, they have a copyrighted sequence of colors on them or the pattern, right? It's like the Eiffel Tower at night. You know, you can't photograph it.

Yeah, like this is the argument that the performance makes it transformative. But then, of course, like with all of these things, there is this slider that goes from, you know, red letter media being totally transformative down to the H3H3 video, which is this slider that goes from, you know, red letter media being totally transformative down to the H3H3 video, which is like minimally transformative. And you have stuff that's in between there. And Euro Truck Simulator or like Driving American Truck Simulator, when I'm doing that, there are reasonably large portions where I'm simply not saying anything. Then all of a sudden, we get into this very strange situation where it's like, okay,

what is occurring on the screen here? It's like, well, a man is driving a pretend truck on a pretend road, and he's saying nothing. Is this transformative? I would say it's not transformative at all. But it's also just a virtual representation of a real road. Like, does anybody own the copyright to this road that we're driving along? Well, not really. It's so hard to understand, is this fair use? And I think it's another example of the internet really changing and distorting what these laws

were originally written for. And you end up in all sorts of situations where it's hard to understand how this stuff should apply. And I can't come down with any clear decision in my mind about should stuff like Let's's plays be considered fair use or not i think a lot of the companies that are making games don't want to push that issue either i think they're very happy with this detente of not saying anything but i think this firewatch thing is the first little breakdown in maybe this detente can't last forever. And at some point, someone is going to have to force the issue and the courts will have to decide whether gameplay is fair use or not.

Can I just ask a quick thing about the truck simulator game? Yeah. I haven't watched a lot of your playing videos, but I've occasionally dipped in once or twice when I've seen people saying, you know, oh, he's playing now on Twitter. Every time I look at you playing that game, you seem to be crashing the truck into stuff. Yeah. Like, are you good at it? Am I just happening to watch at times when you're making mistakes? Or, because every time I've watched you play it, you're dreadful at it.

Now, I want to get this on the record. I'm very good at that game. The problem is that- You're drunk. No, Brady. Although I will say, if you ever want to see an actual demonstration of how much alcohol affects you, play a truck simulator game. Because sometimes I play the game on the couch, like when my wife and I are just sort of watching TV. And I like to have it as a mindless thing to do with my hands. And it is very noticeable, like hilariously noticeable that what I would consider to be a minimal amount of alcohol, like, oh, I have had a glass of wine. Surely I don't feel like I'm affected. This doesn't affect me at all. It's like truck simulator says different. Like it's, it is

fascinating to see. It's like, wow, I would not have guessed that my reflexes were different, but they sure are different. But no, when I'm live streaming, it's a, it's a different thing simply because there's a whole bunch of stuff going on and there are people chatting. Like there are people who are interacting with me. And so when I crash, it's a different thing simply because there's a whole bunch of stuff going on. And there are people chatting, like there are people who are interacting with me. And so when I crash, it's because people have distracted me in the chat. You're like texting and driving. That is exactly what's happening. When you see me crashing on the Euro Truck Simulator, I'm not drinking.

It is an advertisement for how bad texting and driving is because that's essentially what's occurring there. Don't text and drive, kids. You'll crash. Seriously, don't. It's such a bad thing. Yeah. It's horrific. I'm serious, Gray. It's bad, man. I'm deadly serious as well. I've seen a bunch of studies saying that it is as bad or worse than drinking. Frequent topic on the podcast, Uber. That is one thing I will give drivers

really harsh ratings for is if they're texting while driving. Yeah. And I did it recently. I gave a dude one star and contacted Uber about the, this dude was driving dangerously because he was, he was texting through an intersection. I was like, okay, forget it. I wouldn't put up with it if you were drinking through this intersection. So I'm,

I'm certainly going to write it up if you were texting through an intersection. I'm off Uber now, Gray. Oh, really? What are you doing? There's not Lyft in the UK. Are you walking?

What are you doing? I don't know yet. I just got in black cabs the other day. I was going to install Lyft. I didn't know I couldn't do it in the UK, but I hadn't actually got around to replacing Uber. Okay. So you're back on Uber. That's what you're saying. Well, no, I'm not. I'm not back on it. Yeah. And I'm not going to use it in America. Why are you off it? They didn't show me the respect I deserve. Oh, no. Do I even want to know, Brady? What happened? It's a boring corporate compensation corner. Okay. All right.

Yeah. We'll leave it at that with the respect I deserve. We'll just leave it for another day. We'll leave it for another day. I'll let you know. Once it's resolved, if it's interesting, I'll let you know. Okay. But for now, Uber are on my blacklist.

Okay. The Brady blacklist. Beware. Beware companies. You don't want to be on that. Hi, everyone. Welcome to my bathroom. I'm just going to be running you through a Harry's shave while I talk about them.

Get some water going here. I've got my Harry's weaponry ready here. I'm holding in my hand the Handle I've gone for this weighty silver one. You can't see it, but you can hear it tapping against the sink here Very nice looking and looks very expensive although. It's not and now just let me put my Blade onto the handle always very satisfying as a new one clicks into place Lovely Harry's is a company that's so confident that you're going to love their shaving products that they'll send you a free trial shave set when you go to harrys.com slash hi. All you have to pay for is shipping.

Now, they're all about a great shave, but they're also about a fair price. And that's why over 3 million guys have started using them. The blades are made in Germany so you know they're going to be made to the highest quality they're going to be super precise and they're also going to be pretty good at taking penalty kicks in soccer tournaments if my experience of Germans is anything to go by. Let's get things moving here. Bit of cream. Not much of an audio experience this is it? I'm rubbing it on my face. Getting things ready to roll here. Now Harry's products are all backed by a 100% quality

guarantee. You can buy replacement blades over the web and they are at a way better price than comparable rivals. Hang on, I better concentrate here. Let me move the microphone so you can get some shaving noise. Listen to this quality Harry's shave. That's done the job nicely. So let's be clear on the offer here. Harry's.com slash H-I, short for Hello Internet, for a free trial offer, that's $13 of value for free.

When you sign up, you've just got to cover the shipping. And that set's going to include a weighted ergonomic razor handle. I'm holding such a handle in my hand at the moment. Just getting in there on the neck. I'm not lying. It's a good shave. I'm literally shaving right now. In the set you're also going to have five precision engineered blades with lubricating strips, trimmer blade. You get a rich lathering gel. I actually use the shave cream. I like the Harry shave cream but the gel apparently is really good too that comes in the kit and you get a travel

blade cover that's harrys.com slash hi go and have a look at their website because they've got some other nice products as well including sort of lotions and potions for your face and i know a lot of people like years ago were always complaining they could only really get their harry stuff in north america but i know for a fact they're shipping in the UK now. So go and have a look at their website and see what's available. They're great for you. They also make really great gifts. I'm going to finish this shave

and let you get back on with Hello Internet. Is TripAdvisor on that blacklist? No, TripAdvisor is not on my blacklist. But as you have seen in the notes, that is what I would like to ask you about next. I was trying to do a segue there, Brady. You took a leaf out of my book there. I'm proud of you. You're learning from your vice host. Don't say that, Brady. It's awful.

It's already a thing. That genie's out of the bottle. You degrade yourself when you say vice host. Don't do it. I already get emails from people calling me vice host now. All right. What do you want to know about trip advisor buddy so you use trip advisor presumably like you know when you're going places and and so do i it's a useful resource my question is a simple one do you ever contribute to trip advisor or are you like me, a parasite? I am not like you, a parasite. Yeah. But it's just by a technicality.

Let me tell you a little story, Brady. Please. Two summers ago, my wife and I were driving across America. We're going to a family reunion And we wanted to get some breakfast. And at that point in my life, breakfast was a very important meal to me. At that point in your life? Yeah, I don't do breakfast anymore.

Okay. Turns out breakfast is bullshit. You don't need it. It's a lie. But two years ago, Gray was real grumpy if he didn't get his breakfast. Okay. So my wife and I, we look up on TripAdvisor. We're trying to find a place.

And we eventually pick a place that looks like it's nearby and has a reasonable TripAdvisor rating. So we go into the restaurant. And you know, when you're with another person, sometimes it's a little bit hard to judge what's going on in the other person's mind. And when you're traveling, you have a certain amount of like you want to go along with things. But I walk through the door of this restaurant and I just immediately thought, I don't know about this. I can't put my finger on what it is. Something is amiss here. And were I on my own, I would have turned around right then. But you're with someone and there's like an inertia that the two of you have rolled through the door together. And so you just don't say anything. Did you think it was like unsafe or unhygienic or like, what was the feel?

It's hard to say what it was. Just a little bit of something's not right. Okay. The decor in the restaurant was, I would say, quirky, but something just seemed off and I couldn't place it. I hope this is going to end up like from dusk till dawn and it was like a vampire hangout or something. I'm afraid it was not a vampire hangout. But there was nobody else in the restaurant, which is objective thing one. Yeah, that's a problem. It's not a good sign. There's a little bit of confusion. The waitress eventually shows up with what I presume

is like the owner who's sort of standing nearby by the counter. Like I can't quite figure out what the situation is. We're looking at the menu. We order what we're going to order and they disappear off back into the kitchen, the two of them. And I'm realizing it's super warm in this restaurant, like uncomfortably warm as we're sitting there. And then suddenly a fly lands on my wife. And then I noticed there's some flies on the window. And all of a sudden your senses just tune into it immediately like there's flies everywhere. There's a fly in her hair. There's flies in my hair.

It's like, this is disgusting. What's going on in this restaurant? And then as I'm looking at my wife, she's looking at me, and she's recognizing all the flies all of a sudden. And we're getting to that moment of like, uh-oh, what have we done? And then we hear from the kitchen. The two people are arguing arguing and they're arguing about how the things that we just ordered were supposed to be made. There's some kind of like great disagreement occurring in the kitchen.

And so my wife and I, we got up, I took her hand and I said, we're getting out of here. And we essentially just ran to the car and drove away. There's so many flies. This place is so disgusting. There's an argument occurring in the kitchen. We're just getting out of here. No explanation required. We're just leaving.

That was the last time we ever went to Big Joe's, sloppy buns. Yeah. That restaurant is the only time I have left a review on TripAdvisor. I gave them one star and I wrote a review warning everybody else away that I could. So that is my one and only contribution to TripAdvisor. Which is now desperately sought by Tims across the internet. Aside from that one incident, I'm essentially a parasite.

I have not reviewed anything. I incident, I'm essentially a parasite. I have not reviewed anything. I think you're pretty much a parasite. And the funny thing is, I can't think of a nice holiday that I've been on where my wife and I haven't sat over like a lovely meal or a cocktail saying, oh, what would we write on TripAdvisor about this place? And we go through all the different things we do and like the lovely review we write. And we always say we must do that when we get back that would be really useful so many people have helped us with reviews let's write a really useful review of this place you get home never do it just forget about it you discuss the theoretical trip advisor review that you would write yeah like we don't like you know craft the wording yeah you're not writing an article about it now

are you you're just having a conversation about it. Yeah. They're two totally different things. I completely understand. Writing an article about it would be a much more important thing to do, wouldn't it? I don't know. I feel like people have been doing us a service and we could return the favor because it's not always just like praise, you know, oh, this would be a useful thing to know, but we don't do it. I don't think you should feel any kind of guilt about this though, Brady. Because one of the ways all of these kinds of things work, like obviously they are a useful reference. But there is a part of it, which is that if you are writing a review for TripAdvisor or Yelp or any of these kind of services.

In that moment, you're essentially doing advertising work for the place that you were visiting. Well, I don't think you were advertising Big Joe's sloppy buns when you wrote that really negative review. Or you're anti-advertising. You're kicking sand in their face. I've read reviews where they've said things like, you know, try to get Watervilla number seven because it's got the best view of the sunset and stuff like that. You can get useful information in these things. Yeah. But see, that's a different thing,

because I feel like if I go to a place and there's, oh, this is the thing, this is the good thing to do. I feel like that's, that's like a trade secret that I want to keep for myself. I don't want to let people in on what the secret is when they, when they visit the place. I'm going to keep that information to myself. Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah. But you've benefited from it when you read the review in the first place. Oh, of course. Yeah, of course.

Yeah. That's a bit selfish, isn't it? Fine. It's okay. But that's where the guilt comes from. I don't feel any guilt about that kind of thing. I'm not sitting here wracked with guilt. And I don't like, you know, I'm not thinking like I'm the world's worst person.

And it's fine. I think TripAdvisor would be more useful if more people like me wrote reviews. It's like when you're really angry at Uber and by the time you record the podcast, you've like, you know, you've just lost the fire in your belly. It's the same with a holiday. Once you're back home, you've lost your creative flame for writing a bit of purple prose about how lovely the place was. Yeah. I don't feel any guilt here because there's like, what's occurring here is the flame for writing a bit of purple prose about how lovely the place was.

Yeah, I don't feel any guilt here because there's like, what's occurring here is the interaction between two corporations. And while TripAdvisor and services like it, they're obviously useful to everybody. It is also totally the fact that it's because of all of the user contributions that TripAdvisor has any value at all. And so even if you don't feel like you're doing advertising work for the restaurant that you have just visited, because you're writing about how there's flies everywhere and they argue in the kitchen, whatever you write, you are still then doing a kind of unpaid work to build up the value of the company of TripAdvisor. Yeah, okay.

But the thing is, you're willing to extract that free value. You're just not willing to put any back in. Right. Which is fine. It's selfish, but it's fine. And it's okay. And they get their value in other ways. I mean, they are running ads and, you know, I'm not feeling sorry for TripAdvisor here.

Again, this is a kind of company that can exist very differently in the internet than traditional companies could. Yeah. And it runs aground of some of these things. And don't get me wrong, I totally get what you're saying.

And I will be the first to admit that I am like a parasite on the review systems of the world. Like I just, I rarely contribute and I constantly extract value, but I don't feel bad about it because I do think these companies, part of the way they're able to do it is that like they themselves are treading on a kind of social expectation among the users to contribute. I just can't feel that way about the company where it's like, well,

you company are making this available to me for free and I am happy to enjoy your free resource. See, I think the difference between you and I in this conversation though, is that I'm not even thinking about TripAdvisor as a company. Like to me, that's an abstraction. I'm thinking about the other holiday makers and me as a holidaymaker and the relationship between us. Right. I feel a bit like, you know, if I stumbled and fell down a pothole in the street and then just walked away quietly and didn't tell anyone else it was there and the next person fell in the pothole, I'd feel like, oh, maybe I should have told some people about it. I'm not thinking of TripAdvisor. I'm not thinking of the businesses that run holidays and the restaurants and the hotels. I'm thinking about my fellow internet citizens. Yeah. I totally get it. And actually,

the pothole comparison is great because I think it runs parallel to what I was going to say would be a different situation. So the different thing with the pothole is we are all members of an involuntary corporation, which is the municipal government, right? Like we're all paying taxes into it. Like we're all here as part of society. Like this is a coordination that's occurring between the large number of people. And so the like reporting a pothole kind of thing, like, yeah, I would totally do that. I know that I have done that kind of thing. Something like TripAdvisor, it just feels different because it's a for-profit entity.

If TripAdvisor was something kind of different, if it was like a not-for-profit, open-source, collaborative thing, kind of like the Wikipedia is, sort of, like I would feel more guilt about it. Which is why, like, my wife and I do contribute to Wikipedia because it feels like it's so much more on the end of, like, a social good. And people have tried to get distributed review systems off the ground or things like distributed social networks off the ground. They've never really taken off because I think this is a space that just ends up being one where commercial interests will naturally dominate. But for me, there is a part of it that I cannot ignore, that this isn't just a direct interaction between me and fellow citizens, that there is an entity that is profiting from the interaction

between me and fellow citizens. And if it was more peer to peer in the way that I think a government interaction would be or the way a different sort of system would be, then I would genuinely feel more guilt for being like a parasite upon the system. Again, though, you just can't get your brain away from the company and the money. I will totally agree. Like that is a thing that is unignorable for me.

Like the owl watches over us all, right? As we're contributing those reviews. I don't agree with you, right? Like I feel like I'm the same as you. I'm a parasite, but I feel like that defense doesn't work for me. And I feel like, to me, that's not an acceptable position that you're taking. Like, I don't care if you write reviews or not, but to me, that argument doesn't hold water as you make it there. But if you then said to me, I once wrote a review on TripAdvisor for my fellow man,

and it was removed by TripAdvisor or they edited it, then I would completely agree with you and think, oh, hang on a second. This is just a company. This isn't between me and the other holiday makers. They're editing things because their customers are unhappy and that. And then I would totally agree with you. And actually, I think that does happen on TripAdvisor. So I kind of probably am on your side in a way. But the single argument that this whole system was set up by a company that makes money, like, doesn't stop you taking the value from it. reaction long ago was, this is ridiculous. They're having me work as an unpaid employee, bagging my own groceries here. I guess it's outrageous that the grocery store wants me to do free work for them. I will do no such thing. And now, of course, as listeners know, it's like,

I couldn't be happier to be bagging my own groceries. So I'm not perfectly consistent on this issue. But yeah, that was a place where I felt the same way. I was like, I can't ignore the commercial interaction that's taking place here. Like, look at you, grocery store, so cynically saving money on wages by deferring the labor to the actual customers. And now I'm very happy to be part of that system. Got time for a quick paper cut blitz. We haven't done Brady's paper cuts for so long. I feel like every time we do paper cuts, you say we haven't done paper cuts for so long, but it seems like we do paper cuts all the time. Maybe one of my paper cuts is you not letting me

do paper cuts enough. Have I ever stopped you from doing paper cuts, Brady? No, never. No, you haven't. I stop you in the edit sometimes. In the actual moment, have I ever stopped you? No, I never have. No, you just go and make a cup of tea and let me waffle for a few minutes. Yeah, I throw down a delete marker and then I come back. Yep. All right. I'm going to do a lightning round. Okay. Lightning round.

Lightning round so that people won't get bored. One of my paper cuts is when I get an email from someone usually wanting some kind of commercial or work interaction, and they will make a really big point of saying what a huge fan they are of my work and they have been for a really really long time to try and like curry my favor and then they get to what they want and then i go and look at their twitter and they don't follow me and there's no indication that they have any idea who i am whatsoever because i will do that if someone makes a big enough deal about how how much they're personally engaged by me

and how they've loved my videos for so long right and i'll go and look through the four or five hundred people they follow on twitter and none of my twitters or channels or anything i do is there that's like a well you're not getting a reply now if you ever want to trick me into thinking you really are a fan who wants to do business with me, at least follow me on Twitter a few weeks before you send the email. Like, I'm not stupid. I'm going to do my homework. What if they follow hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter? Does that change the situation?

Well, yeah. Do you feel less special then? Well, I can't go through and check that, so I don't know. But sometimes they'll make a really big deal of it. You can tell they've even gone and done a little bit of like sneaky homework like oh i loved your recent video on graham's number which is obviously they've just gone and had a quick look at the channel and seen the first title they could you know i'm going to investigate you further than that before i do business with you and if you're not following me on twitter well you've you've fallen at the first hurdle fair enough if you're not following me on Twitter, well, you've fallen at the first hurdle.

Fair enough if you're not a fan and you just say, I want to do a deal. Okay. All right. We don't have to be mutual appreciation society here, but don't tell me you are. Like, don't lie. Oh, the problems that Brady has to deal with. As someone who gets these kinds of emails, they are hilarious sometimes. Another funny one you get when you do a podcast is when people who say they listen to the podcast obviously don't because they're wanting to suggest like one of their clients as a guest for your next episode. Like, oh yeah, we'll put them on that queue of guests that we've had recently. I've gotten that one so many times. Yeah, it's great. I love the show. You should

have my client on as your next guest. It's like, I've got some bad news for you because unless your client's Brady, I don't think it's going to be on the show. I'll tell you another pro tip for the people who have that spammy, sad job. And I kind of feel sorry for them because, you know, it's a pretty soul destroying thing to have to do. When you're like copying and pasting all the stuff you're plagiarising from the net to create this impression that you know who I am, go through and fix your formatting so it's all like the same font size and colour and type, like the same.

Like don't make it like painstakingly obvious that you've copied this from that because that's bold and that's in italics and that's four points bigger than the word before. Like, if you're going to do this cobble and paste, like at least make it look like you wrote one coherent sentence. I have a unique situation that occurs that is hilarious to me every time where I can tell that some sort of algorithm has been involved in creating this business email that's coming to me because the email will be addressed, Dear CGP Grey. And it's CGP, like the way I write it on the YouTube channel, all together, and then grey. But it's capital C, lowercase g and p, and then capital grey, because it's like, nobody would write three initials together. All capital.

That's crazy talk. Like the computer just thinks like the CGP must be a name. So the first one must be capital. And then the G and P must have, they have to be lowercase because that's like, your name is. Yeah. Gray.

And it's like, as hilarious every time it's like, oh, okay. I can see your inner workings here. Algorithm. Like this is the first line of the 10,000 emails that you have sent off and you are just scraping data from YouTube or Twitter. And this one, the way I happen to format my name just doesn't fit your expectations of how

the form email is going to go out. All right. Well, that was supposed to be a lightning paper cut, but we seem to have gone on a bit of a rant there. Do we ever do any topic very quickly? I don't think we do. No. It's funnily enough, though, it's a segue to my next lightning paper cut is to do with things being done quickly. This is dangerous territory

because people who do this are really proud of themselves about doing it. But my next paper cut is people listening to podcasts, particularly our podcast, at a higher speed than it was recorded at. This is not a paper cut about people who have put the feature into their app. I'm also talking about, you know, the ability to remove silences

and stuff like that. Like, you know, there's these, I don't know, they've got all different names and stuff. And it's very clever and I have no problem with people putting it in their apps because that's what the customers want and you have to make your apps. But I think it's counterproductive to do it. And the best example was in a recent episode where you called for a moment silence for CGP Grey, the Lady Penguin, and we were both

silent for a few seconds. And anyone listening to it with the silence remover just then got the start of the next sentence straight away. And I also think like speeding things up or removing pauses, like just tramples all over things like comic timing and like emotion can be lost. Like if I say something to you that you can't believe because it's just another stupid analogy and there's like a few moments of silence from you, that speaks more than a thousand words. And yet someone like a few moments of silence from you. That speaks more

than a thousand words. And yet someone listening with all of that stuff snipped out is missing out on that. They're missing our art. Is that what they're missing? So do you think that the people who listen at higher speeds- Or with silences snipped out. They're only cheating themselves from the full podcast experience? I think they are. I think they're missing out on the true human experience. But I also know the people who use these features love the fact they use these features. So I know I'm not going to convert them, but it's just an annoyance of mine. You know, I do this, right, Brady? Yeah, I know. And I know you edit.

I listen to this very podcast at 2x, although I think that's not quite a fair comparison. But I have occasionally by accident sent you the 2x version, which I know you always enjoy when I make that mistake. But that's okay. You do what you want, but I think you're missing out. And I have seen some people who say, I listen to podcast X at high speed, but not podcast Y. Those people, okay, I think maybe you are using these features the way they should be used. Maybe, you know, some picking and choosing is good. But overall, I don't do it myself because I feel like I'm missing out on really knowing. Because I like the people whose podcasts I listen to,

and I want to know what they're really like. And I think you really know what someone's like when you hear everything about them. It's all about nuance. These things are nuance removers. I know what you're saying. Obviously, I can't get entirely on board because I don't do this. I use silence removal. And on my podcast that I have, I will crank some podcasts up to about one and a half speed, which when you also then add in silence removal gets it very close to 1.8 or 2x. But I'm also in that category of it depends on the podcast. So I have different settings for different shows. Are there ones that you will leave untouched because you want to hear it you know as god intended if a show is a funny show or like if i just personally find the hosts funny i do genuinely think that removing the

silence messes up some moments it does mess up the way the timing comes across but i think that like the higher speed stuff is totally like i listen to a bunch of shows that are sort of like tech newsy kind of shows. Yeah. And there, I think it's way more appropriate to crank up the speed a little bit on that because it's, it's not quite the same thing.

It's like, I want to listen to a show, but maybe I don't want to spend an hour on it. I want to spend 30 minutes on it. I guess it says something about my podcast listening to then. Cause I like a long podcast and like the longer, the better. So the last thing I'd want to do is like you know i don't feel like i'm like number five needing input and having to read get everything into my brain as quick as possible

my podcasting is like it's sort of leisure time in a lot of ways i wouldn't like the idea of just cramming it in as fast as i can so i can get on to the next one that's why i like having different settings on different shows and it depends on what the kind of show is. Obviously, people who are listening to this very show right now at 3X with the silence removed, if that's the way you want to do it, that's totally fine. I'm okay with that. I will not look down upon your choice. if you ever meet Brady and I in person at some event someday, it may seem like we are the slowest talkers in the world if you are used to listening to us at super high speed. And I do see that comment very often when people jump on the YouTube version of the show, because it doesn't have

whatever their podcast app settings are stuck at. Like, oh, I thought the two of these guys were drunk. And then I realized, oh, I'm just listening to it at 1x speed on YouTube instead of reacts like I normally do. So I've had my paper cuts. You know what that means? I think we need a quick episode of The Buzz with CGP Grey. Have you got a buzz for me? I don't really have an episode of The Buzz because there isn't that much B news.

Rubbish. Despite what people are trying to always tell me, that there's tons of B news. There is. That's not necessarily the case. I'm Googling B. No, you don't need to Google B news. Clicking the news tab. There is a lot of B news there is it's not necessarily the case i'm just i'm googling bee no no you don't need to google clicking the news tab there is a lot of bee news gray no there's no there's no bee news so we don't need to we don't need to do that i could read you seven excellent news stories

from the last five hours that are all about bees it's not true the bee world is very calm. It's very staid. But I did just want to bring your attention to the Emojipedia page for the honeybee emoji. I've sent you the link in iMessage. I'm looking at all the pictures of the bees. We have brought up emoji fragmentation on this show. Primarily in the context of you being upset that the wolf emoji no longer looks like Audrey, which is of course the way it should be because it should look like a wolf, not like a little chihuahua. But I've got to say, this page for what do bees look like? So we've got all these different bees for like Apple and Google and Microsoft and Samsung and LG and Facebook and Twitter. And yeah.

I don't understand why everybody has to have a totally different set of emojis. And these bee ones, some of them are like unspeakably terrible. Can't we get our act together with the different emojis? Can't we consolidate them? Why do we have to have these different ones? Why do we have to have different communication between people? If I want to send someone a picture of a bee, and I think I'm sending them like a cute little bee, and then I actually end up sending them something that just looks like a bug,

we need to consolidate these things. Yeah. There is some differences in tone that could cause problems. The question I have is, if you were in charge of emojis, whose emoji on this list would you use as the default for bees? While I have an iPhone, I have to say personally, I have always thought that Apple's emojis are terrible. I've never liked Apple going for this little 3D emoji space. They're like too small and yet too detailed. I have never, ever liked Apple's emojis. I think for on a small scale, you should have a flatter design for what your emojis look like. You've clearly thought about this loads. Like I love how you think about this stuff. But don't you think that makes sense? It does make sense. It does make sense. I agree with you. I think typically emojis

are looked at. Well, that is changing how small we look at our emojis. But okay, yeah, like Apple and big in their emojis last year, and they made them three times larger, but they're still they're still not huge icons. Right? They're drawn with a lot of detail. I mean, what do you think of the Apple ones? I don't mind Apple emojis. I'm not someone who would necessarily favor cutesiness, and Apple maybe is going a little bit down the cutesy path. But I can see why you would favor 2D. But in the case of the B, I don't know. You haven't answered my question yet.

Which one are you going to favor of the ones on the list there? Because I have to say, it's a bad bunch. There's nothing nothing that's really great here it's a swarm of bad emojis at the top we have apple with a fat bee that looks like no bee i have ever seen yet it's still trying to be like a like a drawing of a bee it's like if you had a yellow balloon and you drew a couple of stripes on it and you said that's that's a a B. Great. You know, nailed it. You're not going to like me saying this, but that's almost the best of the bunch though. It almost is though. I agree.

Looking down at the bottom, there's like emoji decks and emoji one Bs that are terrible looking. Although I've never come across those things. I don't know what they are. The emoji one one is okay. The emoji decks one. I don't even know what emoji decks is, but I've got a terrible emoji for a bee. Whoever is out there using Emojidex, I'm sorry that that's what your thing is. I can't

even like invent what that is in my head. What Emojidex is like from the name. Whatever it is, the representation of a bee is like a man in a bee costume wearing a mask, stealing some honey. Oh, that's honey. You said, okay, yeah. What is Emojidex? I do not know. Anyway, come on, pick one. The Facebook one's all right. It's ugly though. It's sort of 3D, but not really.

Too much brown and not enough black. But like the Mozilla one looks like I designed it. That's how bad it is. The Twitter one is also terrible. The Microsoft one, like, I don't know what's going on there. Someone went crazy with the stroke tool in Photoshop. Microsoft is a big fan of thick strokes on their emoji. Now, here's the thing. I'm actually going to have to say that I would probably go with Microsoft or I would go with Twitter. But part of that is the overall design aesthetic

of emojis. So if you click on the icon for the Microsoft B or you click on the icon for the Twitter B, it'll bring up what all the Microsoft emoji look like and what all the Twitter emoji look like. And I feel like it is inarguable that the flat designs look more consistent as a bunch together than the 3D designs of emojis. They definitely are more consistent. Yes. Yeah. I really like Twitter's emojis. I think the Microsoft emojis are very good.

And I think the Apple emojis are terrible. And I don't like them every time. And as my wife often points out to her great frustration, the apple emojis are also really biased towards everything being happy. Like the apple ones, it's hard to express a wide range of negative emotions with the apple emojis. It's like we're all locked in some kind of black mirror future where smiles are the things that are best for us to express. Does your wife feel she wants to express a bit more negativity in her life? Yes, yes, that is exactly correct. She's the most positive texter I've ever met. She's the most positive texter you ever met because she's doing it through the Apple system,

right? And so it's nothing but smiley faces, right? That's the range of expression that she is limited to. Okay. So I'm going to say if I had to pick a bee emoji, I would go with Twitter or I would go with Microsoft. But that is in the context of them looking better as a series of consistent flat emojis. Well, that wasn't what I asked you for. I didn't ask you for like, you know, to appraise the whole system. I just wanted it to be like a B versus B.

The Google one though, the Google one, what's going on? Brady, I'm trying to, I'm trying to rot the whole world into the way I want it to be, right? So it's like, which B emoji is it going to be? I want to change all of the emojis. The Google one is like, what were they doing? Like, because the eyes are on the same side of the face as like the wings.

So it's like its head's been like yanked around. Like, do they even know how a bee works? Yeah, the Google bee emoji is an exorcist emoji, right? It's the bee should be looking the other way, but they've given it human eyes and it has rotated its head 180 degrees to be looking at you as you select it. The Samsung one is like a cute image, but it's not an emoji. It's like a little drawing. So I'm going with Microsoft. I'm going with

Twitter. That's what I'm going to have to go with here. And although I generally agree with some of your sentiment about the Apple emojis, I'm going to go for the Apple emoji. Really? I like that, B. I'd like to watch it fly because it's kind of fat. And so it looks like it would struggle to fly. I'm kind of rooting for him a bit. Like I feel a bit sad for him. I can see what you mean. It almost looks like he's a bit dopey.

This is also a case where if it's going to be this detailed, I feel like it should be fuzzy. Like bees actually are. It's not enough detail. It just looks like a balloon. All right, Graham, throwing it out there. I want to see Tim's design a bee emoji. Put them on the subreddit. See if someone can come up with a bee emoji that is worthy of Gray's praise. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Hover. Hover is the best way

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purchase. That's hover.com slash hi. And thanks to Hover for supporting the show. Grey, just to finish up, we're going to quickly talk about a film, which obviously means there'll be a little bit of spoil in us, but we like to do that at the end of shows. Right. So there'll be nothing else in the show except you and I talking about a film called The Circle starring Emma Watson or Hermione Granger, as my wife said every time she came on screen for the first 10 minutes of the film. Yeah, I was going to say, why was there such a question mark at the end of her name?

But that's what it was. You were trying to think of what is her actual name as opposed to Hermione Granger, right? And also starring Tom Hanks and quite a few other good actors. Starring the guy from Star Wars whose name I don't know. Yep. And I'll tell you what, you'll be happy. I went into this as spoiler free as a human could almost be

because we were thinking what film we're going to watch tonight and my wife said oh what about that new netflix one that's got uh tom hanks and harmonia granger in it and i said yeah okay that can't be bad it's got tom hanks in it and i had no idea whatsoever what the film was going to be about no idea that's interesting because you must have forgotten that a while ago on Hello Internet, we were talking about Tom Hanks in a passing way about how he always plays a good guy. And there were a bunch of comments on that episode about how,

oh, there's a movie coming up with Tom Hanks where he's going to play the villain and it's called The Circle. Well, we'll come to that then. We'll come to that issue. But no, I didn't remember that. That did pass me by. And even when Tom Hanks is playing a bad guy, he's still a good guy. Like in that one where he's like a killer for the mob or whatever

and he's still like a good guy. Tom Hanks, this is lovely. But anyway, so I watched this film knowing nothing. And at the end of it, I thought, I wonder what Grey thinks of this film. So I sent you a text saying, Grey, you need to watch this film because I think we should talk about it on Hello Internet. And you told me you'd already watched it. Yep, yep.

I watched it a few weeks ago with my wife. It was the same thing. She was looking around on the Netflix thinking, ooh, what should I watch? And thought, oh, here's a movie with Hermione Granger. This looks great. Let's watch this. And I was happy to go along.

This is a case where I had actually read the book. It was originally a book. And sometimes I read a book and I have a very hard time getting into fiction. I have a very hard time finding fiction books that I really like. And there is a complaint that I would say I've had more frequently about fiction books that I really like. And there is a complaint that I would say I've had more frequently about fiction books that I have picked up, which is fiction books that feel like they are

begging to be turned into movies. Like it feels like less like I'm reading a book and more like I'm reading a sales proof of concept that a thing should be turned into a movie. Yeah. And I read The Circle. It was fine. But that was one thing that I felt, intentional or not, felt very strongly in that one is like, I think you really want this to be a movie. Yeah, yeah. in that one is like, I think you really want this to be a movie. And you've actually just written a book that you can sell enough of to convince someone to turn into a movie.

I get you. I haven't read the book, obviously, but I have read books like that. So I understand. So you watched the film, but you obviously went in with considerably more knowledge than about at least what the film was going to be about. One could say I had a head full of spoilers about what might happen in the movie, unless they took a dramatically different turn, which they mostly didn't. So for people who are listening, who have not seen the film, but want to hear what we have to say about it, do you want to kind of just like encapsulate what the film is about in the nuttiest of nutshells? It's a movie that is very much of its time right now. And the basic plot is that Hermione Granger

gets hired by a company that is clearly a kind of Google stroke Facebook amalgamation. And she is working at this company. And the purpose of the company is to spread these very small, high-resolution video cameras all over the world. Well, no, that's their new product. Yeah, that's their new product. Like you say, they're like a Facebook-y, social media-y, Apple-y, Google-y. Yeah, it's a bit unclear precisely what this company called The Circle does right now. But it's like, oh oh there's a search engine

social networky kind of company with lots of everything in one yeah exactly yeah and the driving force of the plot is that they are manufacturing these video cameras that they're going to put all over the world that will eventually then be able to record all of the information that's occurring everywhere like that that is the driving force of the plot. Okay. And then, yeah, and Hermione Granger, although she's a bit of an underling at the company, gets heavily drawn into it all by a series of coincidences

and becomes a real linchpin to the whole marketing campaign. And she also then becomes like the subject of a test run with these cameras where everyone in the world follows her life and stuff like that. So, Grey, you know, early on, I like to get a thumbs up or down. Of course. Which way is the thumb pointing? This is one time I'm very happy to just say it at the beginning, because I thought this movie was terrible.

Grey, I think you are overrating it by calling it terrible. This film, like, almost made me angry overrating it by calling it terrible. This film like almost made me angry, taking time away from my life. I don't know why I kept watching it. I just sort of felt like, oh, I guess I have to know how it ends. It was very interesting having read the book, which again, I would describe as kind of a meh, but like fine book. But it was so interesting to have read that and thought like, oh, well, obviously, this should be a movie. So many of the things that are happening in this book would be much better as a movie. Turns out, not. Turns out, you really wanted this to be a movie and the movie is

terrible. And it's funny that you say that because I would say that my wife and I have watched a very large number of movies that I would fairly describe as terrible. But my wife was also in the kind of like angry that she had spent time in her life on this film. Mine too. Mine too. It was the angriest I've seen her for years. I'm not even joking. She was like really mad at this film for being so, just for being bad. Not because it raised issues that upset her or anything, just like that, just the badness of it. Like it was insulting that it came into our lounge room. But yeah, so this movie was shockingly awful. And I think it was also interesting that it's a movie with two pretty big stars. That was just terrible. Because I felt like you're like, oh, they've taken a book that was begging to be a movie. They've put Tom Hanks in it. They have Hermione Granger as the

lead. They must be super confident about this. This is going to be great. And it was not. Did they read the script? I mean, did Tom Hanks read the script? That's the thing I always wonder. I would love to know, do actors know that they're in a terrible movie? This is a question I find myself asking all the time. I suspect not because I think there has to be so much that happens after the production. A movie must depend so heavily on the edit, how things turn out in post-production. Sort of famously, a lot of the documentaries about Star Wars say that this was the edit, how things turn out in post-production. Sort of famously, a lot of the documentaries about Star Wars say that this was the case that the first cut of the movie,

done by George Lucas, was unwatchable and bad, and it was totally saved in the editing. And when they were filming it as well, I think some of them thought, what is this nonsense? What are we doing? Ben Kenobi has these letters that he wrote home to friends about how he's on this terrible movie called Star Wars, which is hilarious

to see where he's like i can't believe i have to do this nonsense it's ridiculous so i i do wonder and i i just have to assume that you don't know as an actor that you're filming a thing and you just you hope it comes out well but you don't know for sure do you think they know when they watch it like do you think when they sat for the first viewing, they were like, oh my God, well, that turned out bad? Or do you think maybe they're so invested in it, they kind of can still see it through rose-tinted glasses? I think everybody knows bad movies. I think Tom Hanks was probably slinking down in his chair at the premiere going like, oh God, this ended up being terrible. I think he would know. Don't you? I don't know. Maybe you don't.

Maybe when you're in something, you just get starry-eyed and think, oh, wow, look at me on the screen. I'm awesome. Anyway, if you had to just give a couple of key reasons as to why it was bad for the sake of having reviewed it, what were your main thoughts about it? What made it bad?

Here is why I think your wife, my wife, you and me don't just think that the movie is bad, but sort of are angry at it. So I have this policy when we watch movies in the house, which is when you start watching a movie, movies don't change. Whatever happens in the first five minutes of a movie that's probably what you're going to get for the next 90 minutes whatever the tone is like or if if the first few minutes are really bad like that's not going to turn around some movies manage to have a very clever strong opening and then they kind of lose it but if a thing is bad like you are you are going nowhere in this movie what makes the circle kind of frustrating is it feels like it it stayed at the level of being like

just sort of mildly interesting enough that you wanted to keep watching it while failing to deliver on any of the satisfactions that good storytelling would actually do. So it was like, if the movie was worse, we would have stopped watching it sooner and just been like, well, that's terrible and turn it off. But it was just at that threshold of, I'm still watching this, but it is awful. It is absolutely awful, but I can't quite make it stop. I think that's why the movie is angering. Yeah. I mean, that's not my opinion, but yeah. Why do you think it was so terrible? The classic reason of bad storytelling is key. Like the motivation of the characters,

particularly the main character, is so utterly baffling. Like why she says the things she says and why she does the things she does she just changes and like one minute you think like she's like me and she can see that this is all wrong like she's doing these look she's got this look like this seems so wrong you know you think she's going to be the crusader and then suddenly she's like becomes the villain and like she's saying oh yeah we need you know we need to do more of this and this is really good. I completely do not understand her as a human being. She's so poorly written that I'm not blaming Emma Watson. She was just my cat.

She read the lines. But the motivation of that character and all the other characters is so completely unrealistic and crazy. And like the villains, like the villains of the piece, who I guess is supposed to be Tom Hanks and his off-sider who hardly ever speaks, but I think we're supposed to hate as some kind of villain. Like we never know anything about them.

So like at the end when they supposedly get their comeuppance and get stitched up, I'm like, what did they do wrong? Yeah. Like in fact they were kind of nice. Yeah. Like when things started going bad for Emma Watson, they were like, you know, take some time off, you know, do whatever you want.

They weren't villains. They were just like guys who wanted to be successful in business and thought their product was pretty good. So I didn't dislike the villains. The hero I thought was just a complete lunatic who like i never knew what she was going to do because i i don't know what she was but also just the whole idea and the way like technology and the internet and social media was portrayed it was like it was written by some corporate executive that just learned about Facebook.

Like it felt like it was written by like an old person who doesn't get it. It kind of had this feeling of like, it's about like five years too late. And all like these like, hmm, what thought provoking ideas you're posing about surveillance and social networking and the way relationships work in the online world. This is so fascinating, these insights you're putting before me. It felt like naive. Like, have you got anything else to say? It was poorly executed in so many ways.

I obviously had some money and like I kind of looked all right. Like, you know, the sets were good and the campus where it was filmed, like, you know, the Apple campus type place where it was filmed, was okay. You know, it was in focus. The sound levels were good. I can see the movie poster now. The circle, right? Pictures of the actors.

And then it was in focus. Brady Haran as the review on the bottom. The whole art of making a movie is a thing that I find kind of fascinating. I'm like, why is a movie good? Why is a movie not good? It's often harder to articulate why something works or it doesn't. This was a movie where I felt like, okay, your premise. I am so ready to get on board your premise that a global surveillance society might not be an unmitigated good. That if we have cameras that are recording everywhere in public all the time, and everybody is also live streaming their life all the time, that maybe there are some

downsides. It's like, I am so ready to get on board. But then I'm watching this movie where the whole premise is, this is a bad thing. I feel like, you're not selling me on it, movie. I feel unconvinced. But also there was no understanding how anyone was motivated by anything. Like her old friend, her old friend who's like, you know, the guy that lives in the cabin in the woods.

Why is he so anti-internet? Like what happened to him that made him so against it to a point where he like, you know, drives off a bridge because he's scared of being filmed? Like, I don't get why you were so scared of cameras. Like your reaction made no sense to me. Like, I know it's not nice, but you just overreacted. And the other guy, you know, the genius lurking in the shadows, was he always able just to hack into everyone's emails, like all the bosses, like he does at the end? And what was he motivated by? What happened to him that made him so want to go off grid

and be so anti his invention? And how did he get access to all this stuff? And when they announced this invention and they're saying, we're going to film everyone in the world 24 7 everything they do like that's so obviously like a pantomime villain idea but no one ever questioned it like it would have been a bit more realistic if someone said yeah i know you're all going to have some privacy concerns and we understand that but we've looked into it and we've got this and that like that would have made it realistic But it was so unrealistic that everyone would just like be all gooey-eyed and go, oh, what a great idea.

Let's all clap. Like it was like a parody of like, you know, an Apple launch event. You needed some kind of realism, some kind of questioning, some kind of grittiness to it. Like everything was just such a cliché. It was so cliched like i said before it was so lacking in any nuance that it made well it didn't make it unwatchable because i watched the whole bloody thing but that's what makes it worse yeah that was the fair you couldn't turn it off either

i should have turned it off yeah you'll never get those hours of your life back but it was an impressively bad movie and like i said things made no sense or hermione granger most of the time i feel like she's just like with the trip advisor stuff she's like being a chump who's doing all this work for the company and becoming like the spokesperson of their huge product she like to what benefit to her it's never clear at all why she would want to do this. It's like, it makes no sense at all. She's sitting in some board meeting that's being live broadcast to the world. And like, all these ridiculous things are being said. And she suddenly pipes up with, let's make every single person in the world be a member of, you know, our Facebook

circle, like, and make it compulsory. And like And, like, where the hell did that come from? I don't think even Tom Hanks was thinking of that. Like, obviously he was. That was supposed to be, like, the setup. But it was, like, she was so nutty. Like, all the things she was. And the end of the film, do you understand the end of the film? It makes no sense.

Like, she brings down the supposed villains who, as far as I can tell, have done nothing wrong. They've just been normal company owners, right? With products that they're trying to sell. Except it turns out they have secret email accounts. So obviously they've been up to... Maybe they're arch villains and I don't know what they were doing. And maybe they were putting bad things in the water, whatever.

But then she says to everyone, come me like you know i'll lead the way and i think i don't want her leading the company she's the one who's been coming up with all the terrible ideas and then at the end she's like being filmed and everything's being filmed and it's like oh okay so this is the confused premise of the ending. Hermione Granger is live streaming her entire life, which is portrayed as a thing which is kind of ruining her entire life. It's ruining her family relationships. It's ruining her personal relationships. But she loves it and it's great and it's fantastic.

She's like, this is great. She's rising up through the company as the spokesperson for how live streaming should work. And the comeuppance that she gets the villain, Tom Hanks, is by just sort of tricking him on stage to agree to live stream his life as well. But this is all just part of everyone will live stream all of their lives. So that is the conclusion is like, ha ha ha, we pulled one over on Tom Hanks. We're going to make him live stream his life. But as part of just making everybody live stream their lives, like what's the victory here?

I don't understand. I don't understand how this is supposed to be like, ha ha ha, she's won. Like the music is telling me that we've won, but I don't understand at I don't understand how this is supposed to be like, ha, ha, ha. She's won. Like the music is telling me that we've won, but I don't understand at all what's occurred here. It's terrible. But also, again, so lacking in nuance. Like if tomorrow Apple came out with this invention and said, everyone, you know, you have to wear a camera so we can watch every single move of your life. Right. It would be five seconds before someone said, well, I hope Tim

Cook's going to be the first person to wear one. That would take five seconds. That's such an obvious thing. But here it was like, but you never saw that one coming and you've got no answer for it or no way to wiggle out of it. The CEO of a company using their own products, that's never occurred to me. If he doesn't want to wear it, surely he would have already thought about this a million times and had all these clever answers. And yes, I'd like to wear the camera, Hermione Granger, but for legal reasons and to do with the, you know,

share price of the company or like, you know, I'm sure he could come up with a thousand reasons to not wear it and not just sit there like a stunned mullet and think, oh, you've got me. I'm pretty sure broadcasting some of those secret meetings would be like an SEC violation, right? Like I think that would take about two seconds to come up with a legitimate reason why he couldn't do it. And if that guy who hacked all the emails has always had the ability to get, like, cause she goes to him, doesn't she? She goes to this mystery, handsome man and says, I need you to help me. Like she obviously just said to him the night before,

can you go and get all the bosses secret emails? Well, if he's like really worried about this company anyway, and he's always been able to do that. So I'm sorry, Gray. This is what bad movies do to you, right? They bounce around in your head and you feel like you need to vent them out. It's like, kind of get rid of this terrible movie. This one upset me in a different way to say The Hobbit.

I think the reason maybe is because it's such a Black Mirror wannabe. And Black Mirror is so good. Black Mirror did all this stuff so well. Yeah, it's like daytime TV Black Mirror. I also personally feel like it's a horrifically wasted premise and opportunity because I genuinely think there is some interesting discussion to be had about these kind of giant technological companies that run our lives in a very different way from what's occurred before.

Do you not think that's a bit of a hackneyed, like cliche discussion though? I know what you're going to say, but it's like, I'm very fortunate that I've had the experience of being on the campuses of a bunch of these companies. And it's just deeply weird in a way that is hard to articulate. There is something that is interesting there

to be discovered and to be explored. I do know what you're saying about it being a hackneyed conversation about like, oh, you know, Weyland-Yutani is an evil company that's trying to destroy all of our lives. in a place where a very few companies have such tremendous power and influence. Going back to just touch very briefly on the copyright thing, but it is one of the reasons why like the goings on of how are people able to express themselves on a place like YouTube or on Twitter. It's so central to the conversation because those places are so incredibly important. And silencing people on these platforms is, like, I think we're way past the point where you can just say like, oh, oh, it's just a company and they can do whatever they want.

It's like, these are companies with power that rivals governmental powers. And so I really do think like there could have been a much better version of this movie, which might have had something to say on these topics. And the setting of like in real life, like Facebook is such a surreal setting for a movie to take place in that there's a way to like show the viewer how this place is so different and I almost want to use the word like cult-like than normal company experiences but that's where the circle just failed to deliver across all of these areas and so it just feels like oh you wasted a great premise and you wasted a great setting on a movie that makes no sense, which is what makes it twice as infuriating as it would be if it was just a bad

movie. It feels to me more like, oh, this could have been great, but it was terrible. Do you disagree? Yeah. Okay. I mean, to sort of slightly exaggerate what you've just done, it's almost like you've watched a really, really bad detective movie and you're saying, oh, this could have been a good detective movie. It was good. Yeah. But it wasn't, it was bad. Like yeah. Okay. I agree that you could make a really good film and you're right. There probably hasn't been a lot of films about that sort of thing. No, I will completely.

I think you can make a good movie about anything. I find myself more frustrated when I feel like there's a particular setting that has been kind of wasted. So you feel like there hasn't been or there haven't been enough or any really good movies really critiquing the culture of these big mega tech companies yeah i think this is this is a cinematic universe that has not been portrayed in a way that i feel like you know what this really nails what's so deeply weird about the

facebook campus i feel like that is that is a an area to be explored that has that has not been explored properly. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. So you're not going to recommend that people watch The Circle if they've made it to the end of the podcast? No. For whatever you do, for the love of God, go and check out some objectivity.

Oh, is that what they should watch instead? Get some Keith. Watch some Keith. Watch a couple of great videos too if you want.