Hello Internet - H.I. #93: Mr. Chompers
Episode Date: November 30, 2017Grey and Brady discuss: cute puppy photos, HI hotstopper distribution, inspiring kids with the right stuff, Periodic Videos approaches one million subscribers, the state of our YouTube channels, the d...elivery cartel, adpocalypse eternal, and the crossing of corners. Sponsors: Squarespace: start building your website today with a free fourteen day trial and 10% off first purchase Fracture: print your memories directly on glass Eero: Happy Wifi, Happy life. Use code hellointernet for free overnight shipping in the US and Canada Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit Cesar Milano HI Patreon address form Universal Paperclips -- WE TOLD YOU SO Frank Lantz Cow clicker Periodic Videos -- Subscribe before Dec 16th Martyn Poliakoff 72 Hours in Las Vegas Grey vs. parcel delivery on twitter The Daily Mail Stop Funding Hate Sports champagne celebrations Grey Health Bot
Transcript
Discussion (0)
We drive the listeners crazy because we love them.
I do never cease being surprised by how bad your spelling is behind the scenes.
It seems like it's not your, like, strongest suit.
I would say that spelling is perhaps my weakest suit.
Way better at socialising at big parties.
Probably way better at skydiving than I am at spelling.
My method of spelling words is just type quickly,
right? Just type quickly whatever comes into your head first. What I'm about to say, of course,
of course, as a former teacher, I would never endorse that students do what I'm about to say
that I did when I was a student. But when I was back in like high school and middle school,
I would cheat the hell out of spelling tests.
How would you cheat?
One of the years, I had a homeroom class that then rolled over into an English class.
And so I would be able to just write very lightly in pencil some of the spelling words that I knew were going to be on the test or or like the likely spelling words that were going to be on the test, or I'd conceal them
somewhere else. I think most industrious kids know if you really put your mind to it,
it's not super hard to cheat if you're not in a standardized test environment,
and there's any kind of regularity to it. But here's the thing. The reason I felt no guilt about cheating is because I could only cheat my way to like a 50% score.
Right. If I wasn't cheating, I would get like a 20% score on the spelling.
It would have been atrocious. But if I had cheated my way into like, oh, wow, I got a got an 80% this week.
It would be way too obvious,
right? Like I would have been caught for cheating immediately because it would be so obvious that
there's no way this kid actually did it. So I felt like I cheated myself into a less bad failing
grade to try to not entirely pull down my grade average for the class on a whole. So, that was my history with spelling in school.
Normally, between you and I, there is a one-way flow of pictures of cute puppies. I often send
you pictures of Audrey and Lulu in action and stuff like that. But everything has changed.
You have been sending me videos and pictures of you playing with a
super, super cute dog. What is going on? Tell people what is happening in your world.
What is happening in my world is not what the listeners are probably imagining. I have not
gotten a dog. The Grey family has no intention to get a dog.
Yet.
But no, no. We make decisions uh not promises for
our future selves but you know for the moment we've decided that we're not going to get a dog
but but we talked our way into dog sitting uh our neighbor's new puppy i have been like a like a
stay-at-home doggy dad for the past week, taking care of
a little bulldog breed puppy who is very cute. And I feel like someone who has a baby and then
can't help but just send photos of the baby to everyone in the world. I think I have sent photos
and videos of this little dog to lots of people, lots of people like on social boundaries.
It's like, should I really be sending this person the picture of the dog? Like,
but the dog is so cute. Like why I can't not send this photograph. So, uh, yeah, there, there's been,
uh, there's been an exodus of, of dog photos and videos from my phone to many other people.
So I can see how your wife would get herself into dog sitting I cannot see how you would
have agreed to this it seems like the it seems like something you wouldn't do like like you know
you're a nice guy and right stuff but I can't see you agreeing to dog sit like someone else's dog
okay so I have to ask you this because because when I have sent out these pictures to people,
I have gotten universal feedback, which is exactly what you're expressing, which is,
I don't understand why or how you've agreed to this. And to me, I feel like my only response is,
what do you mean, why would someone agree to this? I can barely understand like what what do you think is the reason that i wouldn't do this well it's such an encroachment upon your time and your space for something that
is not yours and like i know you've been involved it's not just like you've just been keeping an eye
on it you've been like training it you know trying to make it a better dog a better puppy
very important it sounds like it's been you know and i know it it a better dog, a better puppy. Very important, yeah.
It sounds like it's been, you know, and I know it's encroached on your ability to do other things in your normal course of your day.
You've made it sound like it's, you know, become a real, a big thing in your life for
whatever period you're doing this for.
And that just seems like something that you would be reluctant to agree to.
You know, you're so, you you know organized and set in your ways and
like to organize your time and you're quite like a self-contained unit this is true like you don't
seem like someone who does lots and lots of things for the benefit of other people and yet this dog
sitting thing goes against that and i get you get like you know some fun times and cut out of it, but I wouldn't have thought that would have been enough to have overcome
all your other traits. I guess I could see that. On the other hand, puppies are great.
My parents mostly let it, but I helped out with the training of Lucy, my parents' dog,
when she was a little puppy. And that was the first time i ever had any experience doing formal dog training
and so like i found that a really interesting experience and as i've mentioned many times
on the podcast like a helpful experience and looking back now you do talk about that
season milano show a lot don't you and like you have got a bit of an interest in dog training
now i think about it yeah like actually we can we can revisit that in a moment um but but so like
this this to me is now like another little uh step up of the ratchet where it's like, oh, now there's a dog that I have total responsibility for for huge portions of the day.
And so that's a very different level of behavior training.
And I personally just find that very interesting. But I will say, you are 100% right when you talk about an encroachment into my life.
Because in the main room of our house, the room where we have the kitchen and like a couch and space to watch TV, the main living area of the house,
40% of that floor space is now taken up by a doggy pen that we got for this dog that I'm dog sitting, which contains within it a doggy bed and many doggy toys.
We also got a harness for the little dog and a leash.
We've purchased many, many things for this pupper.
You've purchased them?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, my God, yeah.
How big a commitment is this?
Are you just doing something temporarily while they went to Europe for a week,
or is this while they go to their job every day? You've said, I will care for your dog during the day while you do your normal job every day of your life.
So basically, I'm taking care of the dog during the day. What we've signed up for is the puppy is very, very young. He's about 10 weeks old now.
Give it a name. What's its name?
Oh, I mean, for the privacy sake for the dog, I don't want to give his name.
That's true. That's true. Safety, Grey. Safety. Yeah. I'm going to call him Mr. Chompers because he chomps on absolutely everything. And that is the number
one behavior that we're working on right now is that Mr. Chompers has to get less chompy.
Is Mr. Chompers chomping your personal possessions? No, no. He's very good about
that, actually. Mr. Chompers's favorite thing to chomp are hands.
I would count your hands as your personal possessions, but I see what you mean.
No, they're just part of the meat sack that I live in, Brady.
They're personal possessions.
That's a very different thing.
But yeah, so Mr. Chomper's, we're doing lots of redirection.
You chew on toys.
And it's great to see him learn over time and change his behavior. I find that very rewarding.
I was like the most proud father in the world the very first day when he went on his own and
picked up one of his chew toys instead of having to be directed towards the chew toy. Like this is
very, very young puppy behavior where they're just, you know, it's very hard to train them at
this stage. But no, I'm taking care of him during the day. And I will say that I suspect, right, that we were like angels from heaven
descended upon these neighbors of ours with their dog
because they had taken a bunch of time off work to be around Mr. Chompers.
And then they had to go back to work and they were trying to arrange
like some things with their other family and like daycare situation,
like a whole bunch of other stuff.
And then we showed up like, hey, I work from home. I can look after Mr. Chompers. And
I'm more than happy, yay, nay, delighted to help out with the training while he's a little puppy
for a while. But how do you get out of this now? Like, at what point do you say, okay,
I'm not having a dog anymore? Have you put any kind of expiration date on this agreement or?
Yeah.
The implied expiration date is just when he's old enough to actually be able to be left
alone for some period of time.
Like he's just, he's, he's too young as a puppy to be on his own all day.
So like they have to do something with him.
And so, and so this way, like he doesn't have to have to go you know into like a doggy daycare
facility for the day i can i can just go i can just go pick him up bring him to my place drop
him off and then and then have uh this little puppy be essentially an all-consuming focus of
my life for the entire day it's it's exhausting it's genuinely exhausting is there any concern
you're going to get into one of these like cliched sort of surrogate mother type positions when they say, okay, it's time for us to have our dog back. And
you're going to be like, your dog? I'm the one who's brought it up and taught it shoe toys.
No, no, no. But see, this is the thing that nobody understands, right? This is the best way
to have a dog is the ability to give him back at the end of the day or like this weekend,
right? We don't have Mr. Chompers this weekend because he is with his actual parents. It's like,
oh, wow, my wife and I now have like, look at all of this space we have. We can collapse the whole
dog pen situation. We can put it off to the side. We can just relax. It's great. I feel like this
is what Brady, grandparents are always talking about, this is what, this is what Brady,
grandparents are always talking about, right? When they're like, oh, grandkids are better than
real kids because you get to give the grandchildren back, but you also get to spend some time with the
grandkids. But do you find yourself sitting around ever thinking, oh, I wish Mr. Chompers was here?
We do wonder what Mr. Chompers is up to, right? I wonder what he's doing right now. We've definitely
reviewed Mr. Chompers videos that we've I wonder what he's doing right now. We've definitely reviewed Mr. Chompers
videos that we've taken and photographs because Brady at this age, they grow up so fast. Like
he's legitimately bigger every day. And now that I will, I will not have seen him for a long weekend
when I see Mr. Chompers tomorrow, he's going to, he's going to be, he's going to be so much bigger
already. You have to, you have to cherish the time that you have with them when they're young.
Are you dealing with poo and wee?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we have...
In the house?
Yeah, we're doing piddle pads.
He's not potty trained yet.
So we're doing the piddle pads on the floor for now.
So we have that all.
We have that laid out.
A little dog goes through mountains of piddle pads.
So yeah, that's the situation.
Have you had to pick up a poo yet?
Yeah, I've picked up poo.
That's what you do with dogs.
Oh, man.
I will pay you £50 for a video of you picking up a poo.
Why?
I don't know.
I just can't imagine you doing it.
We bought one of those little dog poo bag dispensers in the shape of a bone, right?
So you can pull out a little dog poo bag.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
You know what I'm talking about?
The kind you keep in your pocket.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we've just got one of those.
I take Mr. Chompers out for walks.
We're trying to train him to go to the bathroom outside.
And so, yeah, you pick up poo.
That's what you do with little dogs.
You have to change.
We have to organize a Mr. Chompers Audrey play date.
Oh, yeah?
Does she do well with other dogs?
Depends on the dog. She's quite quite territorial but away from home she's pretty
friendly with all dogs in her park only certain dogs are allowed right of course of course i
forget that audrey does own that park it is hers she does so but on away from away from home she's
pretty cool with all dogs and she gets used to any dog within about a minute well you know
socializing is an important part of puppy life.
But this has absolutely not moved your own personal needle for getting a dog at some point.
Oh, you know, I can see at some point in the future, we get a dog. I don't see it in the
near future for a whole variety of reasons. And again, everybody says to me, they're like,
oh, you know, oh, you've adopted somebody else's dog, essentially, during the day.
Like, you're going to have a dog within weeks.
And my view on this is the exact opposite.
We are, in fact, satiating our doggy needs.
We are not amplifying doggy needs.
We'll see.
Once your Mr. Chomper's access is no longer on tap, you may feel differently.
Hot stoppers i don't think we've got to the end game
yet but i have now activated the section of the hello internet patreon page so that any existing
patrons and any future patrons can provide a postal address like they can fill in a postal
address section now and if they decide to do so, it's a voluntary thing, obviously,
but if they decide to do so,
they will be going into a specially devised semi-random ballot
and I will occasionally be sending out random hot-stoppers to people
and they will just arrive unexpectedly, like a gift from Santa Claus. I will not be emailing or informing people that they will just arrive unexpectedly like a like a gift from santa
claus i will not be emailing or informing people that they are coming right partly because i like
the surprise and partly because if i did do that and then for some reason someone's gets lost in
the post right i get back to that original problem that i'm trying to avoid of administration so you
would not know it's coming right now we get back to fulfillment problems yeah exactly even it's like a free gift, people will still get upset if I email them and
say, you've got one coming and then it doesn't arrive. So I'm not doing that. I think that's
great. Remind me, Brainy, there's a thing I want to talk to you after the show, after we're done
recording about, about that, about what to do with that. Cause I've been thinking about something
along those lines, but I do have to say it was very interesting reading through the feedback.
I always really like it to see all the feedback in the Reddit and people coming up with ideas about
what to do. I'm going to stay away from any specific solutions right now. But what I will say,
my general feeling reading through people's ideas is I was aware, I was aware of myself
getting pulled toward and sort of repelled away from two kinds of ideas.
I really liked all the ideas that people had that were just fun ideas.
Like some people came up with some fun, possibly impractical and maybe not really doable ideas,
but just like fun things.
What could you do with a thousand hot stoppers, right?
And people came up with great ideas.
And I just found it interesting that even though my question was help us solve this economic problem last time i found myself
repelled away a little bit from the actual solutions to this problem like there were a
couple of really good write-ups where people were going through like oh here here's how you can
solve this problem in a in a in a very efficient way. And just thought, no, I think these are whimsical hot stoppers.
I agree.
I think these should be used in some kind of fun way.
I also think a lot of the suggestions I read indicated to me that people hadn't really
understood the problem.
And they were saying, oh, no, no, this is an easy problem.
Just like set this price and do this and organize this distribution person.
And like they just then outlined a solution, which was the exact thing I was trying to avoid, which was a whole big thing.
Right.
So it's still unresolved.
You've got yours now, though.
I did send you some.
Yes.
What are your thoughts now that you've seen them in the real life flesh?
I absolutely love that.
Or plastic.
They're not actually made of flesh, of course.
That would be weird.
Flesh hot stoppers.
AKA fingers.
Yeah, if I'd opened up an envelope and gotten some flesh-based hot stoppers,
I don't think we'd be recording this podcast right now.
I think our relationship would be terminated.
Mr. Chompers would have liked them.
No, we can't train Mr mr chompers on human flesh that's be very much against the training that we're working very hard with with him there's no joking about mr chompers training sorry it's
absolutely serious no it's great it's great seeing them as a whole big bunch and i feel like it it uh
it compels the mind with fun ideas seeing a big a big bunch of hot stoppers like that. Have you actually used one, though, to stop hotness?
I have not yet used one to stop hotness.
I promise when I do use the first hot stopper to stop hotness,
I'll post it up on Twitter or on my second channel somewhere.
So people can see the virgin use of a hot stopper.
So many people have responded to it.
I guess we should just shout out to all the people who had something to say about our
discussion last episode about the astronauts dressing up for Halloween.
Oh, man.
I've got to say, yeah, there was so much feedback about this.
And this is also one of those moments where even after, well, we've been doing this show
together now, what, 10 years?
I, my ability to predict what people are going to comment on about in the show, I feel like
it's not even, it's not even bad.
It's like, my predictions are exactly opposite.
Like if we just reversed what my predictions would be, that would be the truth.
And I thought like, oh, the astronaut thing, like, oh, no one's probably going to talk
about that.
And then I was, I was deeply concerned, like concerned like oh man there's going to be so much feedback
about the 9-11 memorial it's like that 9-11 memorial thumbs down i don't like it it stinks
right and it's like feedback a couple of comments that agree and mostly science silence right but
astronauts have dressed up as a minion it's like boom so boom, so much feedback, so much feedback. And I felt like you were kind of
backed into a corner by a lot of that feedback. I mean, I feel like I brought it upon myself to
a degree because I was quite flamboyant about it. You know, I was quite over the top in my
criticism. Maybe that caused some of the pushback. But also it was overwhelmingly people disagree with my position.
They disagree that it was silly and wrong for them to dress up as Spider-Man and minions and that.
I've read almost all of the feedback.
And I have to say, having read all the feedback and absorbed it, in what people had to say i'm pretty much
unmoved from my position i still think i think all the people responding have maybe misunderstood
they've definitely have misunderstood some of my criticism because i certainly don't really blame
the astronauts for it yeah some people i felt like were going into bat for the astronauts. But I also think some of the feedback was maybe a little naive as to how NASA works and life on the space station works and how tightly controlled the media operation is with anything NASA related.
I think people had in their minds the idea that the astronauts were sitting around on the ISS drinking their morning coffee you know
their day off on Halloween thinking about what to do and came up with the idea that they were going
to do a fun thing and take a photograph of it and then then if you are complaining about them
in their Halloween costumes it seems like you are the world's biggest Grinch.
But it's like, hey, these guys are on a break.
They should be allowed to just, you know, be themselves.
There was an enormous amount of shouldn't astronauts be allowed to have spare time on the ISS?
And I think that this really drives to the heart about what's occurring here.
If you think this is a spontaneous outburst from the astronauts
and they were just doing a thing because it was fun to them,
no one in the world is going to have a problem with that.
Even I, who do not follow space very much,
know that their time is incredibly regulated
on there. Like they are so scheduled that my, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but I'd be willing
to bet my entire net worth that those things are scheduled zaniness, right? For PR purposes,
that's what it is. And I think that that that's the the feedback that you were getting
is the idea like if it's genuine then you you are like a monster but if it's scheduled zaniness
like that's a very different that's a very different thing yeah if these people you know
took this stuff up because they wanted to do something for their own kids or something
okay if if you want to go with that story you you can go with that. But, like, they're there in the PR position,
all as, like, the group in front of the TV camera
for the scheduled downlink.
Like, this was not something that just happened
and someone down at Mission Control said,
oh, that's classic, let's grab this for the cameras as well.
Yeah.
Like, this was an organized PR event.
What a magical spontaneous moment.
The other argument that really...
All the arguments people were making
i didn't really agree with but you know you know it's a bit unfair i have the microphone so it's
not fair that i just you know they have to have their say as well and i and i have read their say
but this whole thing about our even astronauts need to relax and decompress and do fun things
like of course that of course and astronauts have do have a lot of time off on the space station
and their time off is very protected, by the way.
Like getting someone to do work on the space station during their break is a big deal.
They do have a lot of their own time and films and things to do.
And the other thing that, again, was driving me a bit crazy was this whole inspiring kids.
Like, I don't think that's the way to inspire kids to
become an astronaut and if it if that is the way to inspire kids to become an astronaut i'm a bit
worried about the sort of people who want to become astronauts oh my god like like people are saying
oh some kid dressed as spider-man will take a lot of inspiration from seeing an astronaut dressed up
as spider-man that was kids dress up as astronauts that's what kids dress up as Spider-Man. That was crazy. Kids dress up as astronauts.
That's what kids dress up as.
They don't need to look up at the astronauts
and see them dressing up as Spider-Man.
So anyway, look, I don't want to dredge it all up again.
I've read all the feedback and I get that people disagree
and I'm yet to read something that has made me change my mind i think i have dealt with
astronauts and international space station things before and they are very tightly controlled all
the photos and the videos that come down anything that's publicly released has layers upon layers
of bureaucracy involved and if you think this was just a bunch of cheeky astronauts doing something for fun
and then saying, look what we did, no one knew what we were up to.
Maybe you're right.
I don't know.
I don't know the actual details of this case, but I would be very, very surprised by that.
There's an item in our show notes, which I think is maybe one of the oldest things in
our show notes that I know I listed in one of the, for like their first 10 episodes, which was this very idea of like inspiring someone to become an astronaut.
And I just will never actually really do it as a full topic.
So I'll just mention it now.
But like, I find that stuff crazy making because we, you know, my feeling is always like, guess what?
Hard things are hard.
Do you want to become an astronaut?
It's hard.
Like this is one of the hardest career paths you could go down.
And I remember there's like so much in the sciences of this idea of like,
we want to encourage more people to do physics.
And it's like, oh, okay, great.
What's your plan?
How do you want to make more people do physics?
Because physics graduates are super valuable. And the answer was always the same thing.
The answer was, oh, well, we're going to inspire more people to go into physics by dumbing down
the physics, right, by doing all kinds of demos and flashy stuff that has nothing to do with what actual physics is. And okay, if this even works, it's just a it's just a trick, right?
Like you you are hoodwinking someone into a career in which they're totally going to fail or do
poorly. Because like, guess what, physics is actually a whole bunch of math. And I feel so
strongly about it. Because like the whole reason why as a kid I felt, quote, inspired to go into physics was precisely because it felt like a sanctuary of like, oh, thank God, here's a subject that is just hard, but it's also clear and crisp and there's no ambiguity and there's no nonsense. And so, like, I always worry that this kind of stuff
actually pushes away the kinds of people that you want to go into those fields. And anybody that it
encourages, it's not actually helpful. Like, I totally agree with you. Like, if some kid
sees an astronaut dressed up as Spider-Man and decides that he's going to become an astronaut
based on that, like, that kid's not going to become an astronaut based on that, like,
that kid's not going to be an astronaut, right? It's not going to happen.
No, they're probably not cut from the right cloth. But I mean, I can see a counter-argument. I can
see a counter-argument that maybe there will be a bunch of people who will be reached by this photo
that had never considered aerospace before. And this was the tiny little spark that lit the fire and when they
looked into it further they found other things that were more legitimate about aerospace that
appealed to them so i think there is a an alternative argument but the thing is astronaut
is a job that hasn't even got that problem because astronauts like going going massive
fiery rockets and they're in this extreme environment everything
about an app the astronaut job is quite kind of you know sexy anyway it's not like a it's not
like a job where there's like a paucity of applicants yeah i'm willing to bet there are
way more people applying to astronaut school than astronaut school lets in it's really really hard
to become an astronaut because everybody wants to do it. So they have no PR problem here.
Right.
And also, you know, do you think people want to become basketballers because they once saw Michael Jordan dress up as Spider-Man?
No.
They saw him playing basketball and thought, wow, playing basketball looks awesome.
I want to be a basketballer.
It's the same with astronauts.
Just being astronauts is cool enough.
But there is this weird idea of like, oh, we're going to get people to go do a thing
by showing them the thing in a way that it isn't. That's a terrible idea. But yeah,
the astronaut school, way oversubscribed. I think they're turning a lot of people away at the gate
of like, I'm sorry, we can't let you enter astronaut school because so many people who
are applying. Like, guess what?
We need to take the best of the best.
Like, you need to be super smart and in incredible physical condition in order to get into astronaut school.
The right stuff, they call it.
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dream it, make it. Last episode, I asked feedback on whether or not normal
photography settings can trigger an epileptic seizure. And I'm here to report that the
feedback I received was exactly zero items of feedback, right? Nothing. I heard absolutely
nothing. And what are you saying? You're saying people with epilepsy are not interactive. Yes. Yes, Brady. That's the correct conclusion to draw.
No, you are lazy. You are lazy people with epilepsy. You should be on the Reddit helping
us out. On a podcast, if you ask for feedback and, you know, the audience is Hello Internet
audience, like you're going to get a lot of feedback. I think there is probably nothing
that people would love to talk about more than
their own medical problems. Like, so you're asking for medical problem feedback. It's like, bam,
people love that conversation, right? Like, let me tell you all about all my medical problems,
right? Or like, oh my God, I have a cousin with this exact medical problem. So my feeling that
like I heard nothing, just tumbleweeds on an infinite oasis. It was nothing. It just 100% confirmed to me that this is one of
these many fake safety things, right? That someone has the idea that this can occur.
This is the camera flashes. This is the single camera flashes
causing a problem during school photos.
Yeah. That this idea is written down because someone just thinks it's a possibility.
And then it's like an idea that spreads and metastasizes across a whole variety of industries.
Because nobody wants to be the person who contradicts the idea that like a camera flash can cause an epileptic seizure.
So maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe this week will be the actual feedback.
But I'm guessing not. I'm guessing not on that one. Fake safety.
And by the way, all the people who have admonished Gray and I for causing a problem in their productivity and workflow because we introduced them to that pay-per-click game, you will get no apology from us because we could not have warned you anymore that that game would take a lot of your time.
But my goodness, a lot of people seem to have gotten into that.
Oh, my God.
I have to say, I did really enjoy that because I feel like this has happened enough in my own life.
I'm minding my own business.
And then something blows a tremendous productivity hole right through the center of my life.
I think everybody knows this experience.
And I did get some unreasonable amount of joy from seeing all the people replying on Twitter saying like, I know that you warned me, but nonetheless, I had no idea, right? I lost two
days. So I feel like we were 100% in the clear on that. Because yes, we could not have warned
more clearly. But people still click the button.
And many of them click the button in situations that they totally knew they shouldn't have clicked it.
But there you go.
So Universal Paperclips, it is spreading, replicating throughout the world.
I had a nice little bit of feedback because the person who made the game, this is Frank
Lance, and he tweeted soon after the podcast came
out i can't believe i got the numberphile guy i'm so happy right now oh that's great that's great
so he feels like he's fishing in the world as well right it's like who else can i catch in my hook
i told him that he was responsible for probably preventing the
release of possibly two Numberphile videos as a result of making that game.
Yeah, that's great. Oh, actually, you know what? There is something that was really grinding my
gears over the feedback on this that I just want to mention before I forget. And it was this...
Okay, so, listeners, I need to explain something about podcasts and conversations to you right now.
Just because a thing is not explicitly mentioned does not mean that Brady and I do not know about the thing.
And I saw so many comments from people who were saying a variation of, I can't believe that Gray doesn't know about cow clicker games or idle games. Like,
I can't believe he's never come across one of these things before. That is outrageous and
shocking to me that he's never seen a game in this, in this genre before. How ridiculous. And
then like showing me a bunch of these different things. And I feel like, like when we were having
that conversation, I was making reference to these other like game mechanics that are quite
cheap. It's like, guys, that's what I was referring to. Or even if I didn't say that, it's like, yes,
it would be quite shocking if someone who likes games a lot had never come across one of these
games. But like the amount of feedback, I don't know, there's something about this that drives
me crazy.
Gra, you know better than this by now.
I know.
The internet exists for people to try to say they know something that someone else doesn't know.
I know.
But I'm just, as I'm saying it out loud, I'm just realising I have to recategorise this in my mind
as the, you forgot to mention feedback on videos, right?
Which also drives me crazy.
Where it's like, yeah, I started with 20,000 words and it went down to a thousand words.
Like, trust me, I didn't forget to mention a thing like the most obvious thing so the only thing that would have been more annoying is if someone said oh this is stupid podcast x talked
about this game three weeks ago right yeah yeah so someone else has already spoken about this
therefore it is forbidden to speak about it ever again yeah yeah that would be another kind of
feedback so i just so i just i just want to mention right now like i have played a lot of these kind Therefore, it is forbidden to speak about it ever again. Yeah, yeah. That would be another kind of feedback.
So I just want to mention right now, like, I have played a lot of these kind of games
and I don't like all of them.
If you listen to that section about Universal Paperclips and you were thinking,
oh, this is just another one of these clicker type games.
I just want to make it really clear.
This game validates the existence of the entire genre
which i think is mostly boring and a kind of a kind of psychological unfunness trap
but like this game is different so if you heard that and you didn't didn't try it because you
know what kind of game we're talking about try it anyway like i really
really think this is this is the diamond in the rough for this genre can i plug something of mine
what would you like to plug brady i want to plug one of my oldest youtube channels which is periodic
videos which is my chemistry youtube channel and i want to plug it for a very specific reason. And that is Professor Sir Martin Polyakov, who is the star of most of the videos. He's the professor with
the big fuzzy gray hair. I've been working with him for many, many years. He's a dear friend.
He's also responsible for a lot of my other subsequent work. Like he's been a key plank in
a lot of my channels getting to where they've gotten. So he's been a key plank in a lot of my channels getting to
where they've gotten so he's been a very important part of my youtube career he is turning 70 years
old in the next week or two as we are recording now i think let me check his birthday yeah it
gets 16th of december 16th of december on the 16th of December, he is turning 70.
This is in the year 2017, if you're listening in the far future.
So, and like, you know, we don't get each other birthday presents or anything.
But if there's one thing that Sir Martin is truly obsessed with, it is periodic videos, YouTube channel statistics. He follows them much
more than a distinguished professor with lots of responsibilities should be following
YouTube statistics. And anytime we reach any milestone or are about to
reach any milestone or anything happens across numerous videos, he'll be like,
this video we made two years ago just passed a million views.
He's watching it day and night.
He's got his eye on the ball.
He's got his eye on the ball.
And almost exactly on his 70th birthday, periodic videos the channel is due to hit, you know, probably the milestone of milestones that a YouTube channel hits.
And that is one million subscribers.
Yeah, that's the big one.
That's the big one. That's the one that people make a song and dance about and they give you a gold button etc yeah i think i
think the million subscribers is a bigger deal than the 10 million subscribers by a lot like
that is the biggest milestone that a channel can cross yeah martin is uh excited about this
upcoming thing and he has noted that it could have happened on his birthday.
Although looking at sort of some of the projections and the statistics,
our projected million subscriber number has now drifted out slightly
to slightly beyond his birthday.
So this is where my plea to the Hello Internet listeners comes in.
If you have a YouTube account and you're a YouTube person
and you haven't subscribed to periodic videos, but you think maybe you account and you're a youtube person and you haven't
subscribed to periodic videos but you think maybe you would or you've never looked at it and it
might interest you now would be a really nice time for you to do it for me because i would love to
get close to a million in time for his birthday i think maybe we won't quite do it but i i would
like to try and this is my plea i'm not asking you to subscribe to the channel
if like you're aware of it and dislike it
and want nothing to do with it, then, you know, fair enough.
There's not much I can say to that.
But if you've never looked at it or you'd like it
but you just never got around to subscribing to it
and you are ever likely to, now is a good time to do it
because I'd like to get close for Sir Martin's birthday
because he means a lot to me. Yeah, and I think this is a good time to do it because I'd like to get close for Sir Martin's birthday because he means a lot to me. Yeah. And I think this is a good time to mention the channel to try to hit
this mark because if you listen back at earlier shows, you can hear me sometimes speculate about
who on earth would be listening to this podcast who doesn't know our YouTube channels. I am aware
that over time, that ratio has drifted, that we do have more and more listeners
who have come across the podcast and really don't know very much about our YouTube careers
in any way.
So if you are also one of those listeners now who, back in the early days, I suspected
couldn't possibly exist, but now I do know exist in serious numbers, this is an excellent time to go check out Periodic Videos and go subscribe, right?
And take a look at that channel.
If you are one of those listeners who knows the podcast and doesn't follow our YouTube channels,
go subscribe to Periodic Videos.
Go check it out.
Go take a look at it.
It's a channel that's going through a bit of a change at the moment too for me.
It's something that I've been starting to think differently about this particular channel.
It's one of my oldest.
And it's funny.
And I know you've been going through a little bit of this too, maybe with your channel.
But when you do a YouTube channel for a long time, you occasionally go through, I don't know, it's like the YouTube equivalent of like a midlife crisis.
And you start thinking, where am I going?
What am I doing? What's the point of this? And a lot of my channels have sort of been continuing
business as usual. But periodic videos is one that I'm really revisiting in my head at the moment. So,
it's an interesting time to be subscribing, maybe.
Okay. So, how old is periodic videos?
Oh, man. I was scared you'd ask that uh it looks like it started in june 2008
oh my god yeah okay in youtube land that's more than it's more than just a midlife crisis that's
that's a pretty what you think i'm on death's door just that's a wow wow i had I had no idea it was that old. Yeah, that's very old. Okay. Right.
Okay.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let me rephrase that. But you are an established presence on YouTube. That's
for sure, Brady. You are very established with periodic videos.
Elder statesman.
You are in the elder statesman career transition of your channel. What are you thinking of?
Well, the thing is, the way periodic video started was making a video about every element
on the periodic table.
Right.
And then we did 118 really, really quickly for various reasons.
Like I'm talking like six or seven weeks fast.
So, we did a lot of videos really quickly on all the elements.
And a lot of them, for that reason, were kind of, you know, rushed and half-baked.
And some of them are just like, you know, 20, 30 seconds and not much is said.
And then once the channel sort of became a little bit successful, more than we expected,
we thought, oh, okay, well, I guess we'll keep this channel going now.
And let's redo all the elements.
So that was the plan.
We're going to redo each element video and make them more elaborate more detail and more experiments and make them you know more of a
thing to watch but then as the channel kind of evolved and it became like a general chemistry
channel not just about the elements we started doing other stuff and we started kind of you know
drinking the uh the the addictive potion of the occasional viral video doing silly things and
and and you know having travels and adventures and making all these chemistry videos and we kind of
only updated elements very occasionally and those videos have just kind of you know
wallowed in history i mean they're they're really old now they're nearly 10 years old
but a way a lot of people visit the channel is to watch the element videos and start going through the elements and i've now realized that's
a bit embarrassing because it's like oh gosh some of these videos are really old they're really low
resolution they're nowhere near the quality of the videos we'd make now so i've kind of really
got it in my head no we need to abandon all this other frivolous stuff and get back to basics and redo all the element
videos and i want almost all of our releases now to be you know a redux of an element video so
that's what we've done the last few and that's what we're recording at the moment and these days
when sir martin calls me up and says oh i've got a crazy idea for some experiment or some chemistry
thing we're doing nine times out of ten i'm saying to
him no no we are redoing the elements we're totally focusing on that and even though these videos
will never be viral the way that dipping a cheeseburger and acid or blowing something up
is likely to give you the occasional viral video i've kind of said i'm not interested in that
anymore i'm more interested in the legacy of
these 118 element videos and at the moment you know some of them are just too outdated so that's
where that's where I want to take the channel now and I think Martin and other people in the
chemistry department at the University of Nottingham are kind of on board with me on that
so that's the new direction less less look at me like fun fun time things and more
back to where we started so you are you are de-viraling the channel
yeah in a way yeah it's like yeah i'm i'm less worried about i'm less worried about
sort of view count and hitting hitting new people by being attention seeking you know there
will be there'll be no more dressing up at halloween right well this is this is kind of
what i'm wondering right is is it actually ties quite nicely into the previous conversations
yeah you're not you're not you're not pulling these these stunts for the for the chemistry
pr department right yeah you're doing you're doing some meat and potatoes periodic video
revisiting and look it
looks like at the time of recording you've done four of these these new ones so far um helium
francium uh technetium and nickel yeah they're the most they're the most recent ones and i've
got chromium coming up pretty shortly as well yeah i mean we have been updating element of
element videos all through the project so occasionally we do drop an element update, but now that's all I want us to do. So, that eventually when people say,
hmm, I'm going to sit back and watch all 118, all of them are going to be good.
Right.
At the moment, some of them aren't good. And people will say, oh, I can't believe your video
on element X is like, you know, that's nowhere near as good as your other ones.
That's what I want to fix.
I'm looking at your channel and the oldest one that's listed
as an element video is Cobalt from nine years ago and in dramatic 480p resolution and what I
really like is it's not even a full 480p because it looks like you hard exported the black bars
around the video so it's actually in
the it's in the center of the screen it's not taking up the full youtube player so yeah i didn't
i didn't do that that happened retrospectively like when you first watched that back in the day
that would have taken up the whole screen but something changed at some point and a whole
bunch of my videos suddenly got black bars all around them the really old ones and you know
that's only a minute 40 long and i mean 300 000 people have watched it which i'm a bit embarrassed by now because people love going
through and watching the whole collection and that's what i want to change when people go
through and watch the whole collection because the thing i guess i haven't pointed out is periodic
videos also has its own website which is an entire periodic table and you can click on any given
element and watch the video on that element from youtube so
it's kind of like a you know picking chocolates from a chocolate box right so it is it is a kind
of snacking channel in that way where people like to like get on a streak and go through the elements
and that's where we get found out by the old videos a bit so aren't you afraid though that
if you uh if you deviral the channel that you will fall on the on the bad side of the algorithm
i hadn't been thinking about that but i don't know i think i think i think of this channel
differently i don't think of this channel as like a a business enterprise like that
so i don't worry about that uh i think i think this channel always has a different role to play
do you think i'm doing the right thing well i don't know here's here's
the thing brady you you have what makes you different brady and what makes you special
is you are a man with many youtube channels so i think you unlike many other people who would be
in the youtube space this like this is this is, uh, periodic videos is like part of a, a, a Brady
portfolio of, of channels.
And so I think you would have less to worry about if you were going to de-viral a channel
and, and get sort of go back to basics, go back to the beginning and, and redo a bunch
of stuff.
I don't think it's a bad idea uh but i but i feel more i feel more
comfortable saying that because you have a bunch of other channels right and but also the thing to
bear in mind with periodic videos is like it it does have like nearly a million subscribers so
and although i realize a lot of them are not active and I also realize that subscribers don't necessarily mean everyone finds out about your videos.
I do feel like the channel's big enough that it can,
that it can give people just,
you know,
kind of what they signed up for.
And I don't have to worry about pandering to people who aren't interested.
Like I feel a bit like I want to service the actual audience and not,
not be preoccupied with new audience
so i'm so in some ways i'm happy just to i'm happy just to feed the existing audience and
hope that new audience comes on just gradually who appreciate it for what it is and not for
you know crazy occasional craziness so
okay it's not to say that the new videos aren't going to like have awesome
explosions would be cool they're just not going to be they're just not going to be dressed up in
that way they're going to be more you know here's the element right there'll be cool stuff in the
video the whole idea is that the video is that all the videos are cool now right right but it's
not going to be like you know as gimmicky. Well, okay.
Here's the question,
because you were doing explicit remakes of your old videos, right?
And I understand that is a very different thing
from the way they were produced in the beginning
to the way that they're done now, right?
And this is like a long period of time
and there are many factors here.
I almost don't want to say it.
I almost don't want to put the idea in your mind,
but do you have any worries that there's some kind of magic to the earlier
videos? That even though to your eye, they seem like, as the creator, you can just see like,
oh, this is older and it's shorter. But do you think maybe that part of the reason that the
channel is successful is because those earlier videos were produced the way they were and and people like them and
do you worry basically about replacing the old ones with the new ones that
maybe it's not quite the same i mean we're not taking down the old ones obviously or deleting
them they're there is like version one and when you say remake it's not like i'm doing like
experiments that we did before but reshooting them in most of the case we're replacing 45 seconds of
a guy talking at his desk with 10 minutes of experiments and samples and better stories and
information and research so it's not so the re so calling them like a remake it's not like a shot
for shot remake of psycho or something like that it is more of a that was kind of exactly what i had in my mind is like a shot for shot remake of psycho right
it's like oh god it just doesn't work it's terribly boring yeah so it's not we're not
doing that they are they are brand new videos with all new stuff and new information but
i i think the charm of the old videos you you know, they were of their time.
And they feel like they're of their time now.
People expect different things from YouTube videos now,
different production qualities, different pacing,
different stuff in the videos.
And, you know, we became successful because no one else was doing it, you know.
No one else was doing something as crazy as making a video about every single element but people expect different things now so i'm not
i'm not worried about that i think the things that make the channel what it is are still there
like a chattiness and the professor and seeing real stuff happening in real labs and real
scientists talking and martin's personality and and a kind of a homemade feel to them,
which I'm still keeping,
you know,
it's not like I'm suddenly putting everything on tripods and making like a,
a whole new look.
I'm just trying to make them better.
Actually,
it's,
I think that's a good point that you make there because I often,
I often find that,
that some stuff that I,
I watch like when,
when they upgrade to like the new
studio and it and it becomes more professional it somehow feels like oh it's not quite the same
right is it and uh yeah so it's it's good to hear that you're you're you're keeping that particular
no no it's still supposed to be unprofessional you know when things go wrong it stays in the video
and you know those human moments are staying in it's just it's more about just making putting more in the videos and taking
more time on them because we're in such a rush the first time and and now we're not in a rush
well if you're making them longer and then and the rumors about uh the algorithm are true then
maybe this is this is the best move you could possibly make right the youtube algorithm
apparently loves long videos and keeping people on the on the site as long as possible so uh
118 15 to 20 minute long videos that's a that's a pretty pretty big chunk of people's time and
attention that youtube could uh could could get from them people always say that but long videos
are any good at keeping people on the channel if people watch the long videos for a long time yeah i know and i'm not i'm not very i'm not super convinced by that
theory anyway is the cgp gray channel going through a midlife crisis yet or you know it's
an interesting thing because this summer uh i i realized that youtube is now the longest job I've ever had,
which was,
which was just a strange realization for me.
That's just happened to me too.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Huh.
How do you,
how do you feel about that?
Strange.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My mental framework just does not match this.
I think it's partly because it felt like I was a teacher for forever.
That is a big mental landscape that it's hard for me to feel like the YouTube time is now longer than that.
And it's also interesting even just think like, you know, I made a joke before about how long we've done this podcast, but like we've been doing this podcast for quite a long time.
And there's something that my brain just cannot place in these things where I still think of YouTube as the new projects.
Right. And then Hello Internet as like, oh, the new new project.
I was like, but actually they've been going on for quite a while now and i just there's i i wonder i almost wonder if in you know double it so i've been doing the youtube channel
seriously for about six years now and i almost wonder like if i double that number
will it still feel the same will it still still feel like this is still the new thing?
It doesn't feel like the old thing? The new upstart type thing.
Yeah, like it's the upstart type thing, even though that is manifestly not true.
I don't know.
There's something about it that I just can't place correctly in my brain.
So I have a hard time thinking about it.
But when I realized it, I found it really quite shocking and surprising
to realize that YouTube is now the longest job I have ever had.
Do you think that surprise and feeling is likely to result in anything or manifest itself in any
way? Or it's just like a, hmm, okay, back on with it? Or does that make you start thinking
differently and think, should I be doing this differently? Do I need to change things up? Or
is it just like a little...
I think I have a different view of it because, I don't know,
the way people describe my channel, I feel like I have never heard someone
describe my YouTube channel in a way that I would agree with.
People would say that it's a channel about history,
and I'd be like, I don't even understand what you mean by this.
There are various ways that people have described what my YouTube channel is.
I've never come across a description that I actually feel like, I don't even understand what you mean by this. Or various ways that people have described what my YouTube channel is. Like, I just, I've never come across a description that I actually feel like
matches up with the way it is in my head.
And I can't really quite articulate the way it is in my head.
But I also feel like that the channel has naturally changed over time anyway.
Like, I forget what it is, but it takes a long time before even the concept
of stick figure me shows up in a video like that's suddenly a shift like that doing that kind of
thing has a change in the way like oh i'm talking directly to the audience now instead of this being
like a literal slideshow like it would be in a in a classroom so like that's one that's
just easy to point to but i feel like there's been a lot of little changes and evolutions over time
but i don't know it's a it's a funny thing because in my head i feel like it's sort of
it's sort of always changing and is always the same and And I think that that's always the way it will be.
Do any of the changes that happen on your channel, though, for example, the introduction
of Stick Figure Grey, are they ever like lines in the sand, like where you deliberately say,
OK, it's time for something new.
I'm going to introduce a stick figure version of me because I want to change the emphasis
to me talking out at the viewers rather than us looking together at a slideshow? Or do they happen just kind of
accidentally and you do it once and think, oh, that kind of worked. I might try that again
sometime. And then after like 10 videos, you're like, oh, well, I guess that's the thing now.
Yeah.
Like, are they, because you seem like a guy who makes a lot of strategic deliberate decisions
rather than just falls into things.
The stick figure me, I can't remember what
the video was, but I do remember that that was trying to solve a particular problem in the way
I was explaining something. And also, it was in no small part a kind of envy of a lot of what other
educational YouTubers in the space can do, where they can show you animations and interesting
graphics to help an explanation, and then they can just cut to them talking, either when a visual
is not needed, or if it's a moment where it's a little bit abstract, and what you would put on
screen wouldn't necessarily line up with anything that you're talking about. I remember being quite envious of the ability to do that cut to camera thing. So the stick introducing
stick figure gray was was partly the ability to do that, like, oh, I can cut to camera now. And
it's just me talking, I would say the biggest, the biggest line in the sand thing that I did do
very intentionally was actually that Las Vegas vlog that I uploaded a little while ago.
That was very much a deliberate feeling of, I want to put up something on the channel that is really different.
It's not like, oh, I've done a serious video where Gray's talking in serious tones, and that's different from all of the others.
Or a video like The Trouble with Transporters, which has a different animation style.
But all of those are still kind of the same.
Like they're in the same family of the videos that I do.
But the vlog is like a totally different thing and is also completely unexpected, right?
If you've been following the history of the channel, like it's weird to upload a vlog.
I did that partly just because I wanted to establish a precedent of I can upload random
things if I want to.
So that was a deliberate sort of thing.
It was also just interesting to see like, how are people going to react to when I do
something differently?
But I think maybe that's the closest one to that's a line in the sand.
Otherwise, things just evolve over time.
I don't think anything in the entertainment industry
can stay the same.
I think stuff has to change.
Even like you're redoing your videos, right?
But you're changing the way they are
because you want them to be updated for modern audience sensibilities.
And I think you also just have to change because the environment around you changes.
So, when you look at a change to your channel, for example, the saying, hey, vlogs are a thing now too. Like, you know, don't, don't, do you think that's you being like super rational business gray saying,
you know, to survive going forward
and for the channel to grow and sustain,
I need to change and adapt?
Or is it more an artistic thing?
Like, you know, I want to spread my wings
and not just be a guy who has to do animations and explaining.
And I don't want all,
I don't want to be constrained by your expectations of
the channel. Is this a business rational decision you've made or is it an artistic decision? I guess
is what I'm saying. I would say it's neither. It's actually just a personal decision that I feel like
as people who follow my work may know, I'm not a big fan of regularity and things always being the same and predictable.
And that vlog went up in no small part because I did feel like there was there had been too
much predictability for too long on the channel.
And so I wanted to do a thing that was just totally out of left field.
I wish I could say, oh, wow, it was an incredibly smart business decision.
But it was by far and away like the worst business decision I
ever made for the channel. In terms of every metric I can possibly have, putting up that vlog
video was the worst thing I could do on every one of my spreadsheets. It was really just something
personally that I wanted to do just to have something up there that was different and
establish the possibility
that like oh this can happen again in the future but as someone who seems to care so little about
what other people think why do you need to do that well unless it's something you want to make
you want to do like why do you why do you need to even put down that marker like but it's because
it is something that i want to do right like it's, it's... All right, you answer my question then.
It's like an artistic thing.
Yeah, I guess if you want to phrase it that way, you could say it's an artistic thing.
I don't mean like you're an artist, but yeah.
An editorial decision rather than a business decision, maybe.
Yeah, an editorial decision might be a better way to put it.
Because I think it's partly...
There is something about the this idea turned out to be totally wrong but i'll just specify
what my thinking was at the time there is something limiting about the animation because
it's so time intensive that it forestalls certain kinds of videos from being able to be made
because you have just have to say like if a video is going to be made,
like there's going to need to be an enormous amount of animation time.
And so my thinking was, I'm going to do a video that's a different kind of thing
that can also possibly have a much shorter turnaround time
because I don't need to animate every frame.
I'm just going to film stuff.
Now that sounds like a business decision.
No, but it's, I know why you say it's a business decision,
but it's more a question of like,
I want to make a certain kind of video.
And up until this point, the answer is, okay,
well, whatever you're going to make,
it has to be an animation.
And then that cuts off a huge number of possibilities.
Yeah.
So I can see why you're saying
it sounds like a business decision,
but it's much more a
personal decision of, I want to do a thing that maybe doesn't require all the animation
and let me-
Yeah, like you want to make Michelangelo's David, but you've only ever done oil painting.
So now you've said, no, I'm going to try sculptures instead.
That's aiming quite high.
But yes, that's the idea.
I'm going to be an amazing sculptor now.
But anyway,
joke was on me.
That vlog took up way more time than an animation of the similar length would
have taken.
So I was really,
really wrong about that estimation,
but I was still,
I was still glad to do it.
I was still glad to do it,
but yeah,
maybe,
maybe classifying it as an editorial decision is a is a correct way to frame it
interesting stuff well your your channel sounds interesting but just to get back to the main point
right go and subscribe to periodic videos go check out the elder statesman periodic videos
and to remind people you we would like to hit a million subscribers by when is the
date again brady december 16 december 16 so oh now you're gonna break the poor little prof's heart
if we fall short we'll see what we'll see what we can do uh and i will i will do i will do my part
by promising to get this episode up before up before before December 15th at the very latest.
But don't, and like people listening don't think, oh, I must go and do that after the show.
Pause the show and do it now because I know you'll forget.
Yeah, you'll forget.
You will forget.
Yeah, you'll 100% forget.
Do it now.
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I was only joking about the flaggy flag, like smashing on the floor. only joking about the flaggy flag like smashing on the floor
I wouldn't want flaggy flag to smash on the floor
I wouldn't want that
great from following you on Twitter
and from following almost everyone on the world on Twitter
not that I follow everyone on the world on Twitter
but you know what I mean
I was like wait what
are you one of those
are you one of those Twitter accounts now
that follows 500,000 people to get followbacks,
Brady? Is that what you're doing? You're pandering to Twitter that way?
I haven't got to that stage. So, one thing that causes endless frustration,
and I know it causes you frustration, is package deliveries from delivery companies. And i've seen i've seen even the normally calm cgp gray who is reluctant to
wield his mighty power against corporations get particularly upset at a delivery company recently
when they were they were doing what they do to me all the time and that is don't even ring your
doorbell or knock on your door and just drop the package and run or worse yet put a card through
saying you weren't here and run which i absolutely hate the card through the door that was that was
a it was a charm charming days of yore when i used to at least just get the card through the door
recently i've been getting pure email notifications now just like oh uh we we tried to deliver to your
house but you weren't home
cheeky so there's no proof they were even there well there is there's proof that they were there
brady which is a photograph of your front door at least that's what it's supposed to be uh but in
every single one of the emails i have ever gotten it is a photograph of what i presume is just the
inside of the delivery man's pocket it. It's literally nothing that registers anything as proof on there.
So it's just a lie, right?
It's just a total 100% lie.
And yeah, I did lose my cool over this a little while ago
and complained on Twitter about package deliveries
because I was waiting for something in particular at home all day.
And of course, they're like, oh, you weren't home.
You weren't home. Yes, I was, you bastards. I at home all day. And of course, they're like, oh, you weren't home. You weren't home.
Yes, I was, you bastards.
I was waiting all day.
They lie.
Before we go any further, though, I do want to get something on record here, which was
I was very, very careful in the way I was wording my complaint.
And I just want to get this out of the way before we continue the conversation further.
I do not think this is the delivery people's fault. My
view of this is it is the company's fault. And whatever, whatever way they are arranging the
incentives for the employees, I think it's very easy to just think, oh, these delivery drivers,
they're so lazy. And my first angry version of the tweet
was about lazy delivery drivers. This, of course, was back when we had 140 characters and I had to
rethink it. And then I phrased it in a much better way to place blame where I think it really goes.
So I just want to make that really clear, like from everything I can gather, I think this is
the fault of the delivery companies overloading the drivers and so then they have every incentive in
the world to just skip where they can bank on someone probably not being there so that they
can like check off that they've gone through all the things that they need to do in a day so just
just wanted to get that out of the way first well it's interesting you say that because my recent
experience that i want to share i think emphasizes how much the delivery drivers are working in these
incredibly strange straitjackets that the companies are putting on them and the pressures they're
putting on them. Because everyone has had cases where, you know, they get a message saying,
we knocked on the door and you weren't home. And they say, yes, I was. And this is how, you know,
you're a bunch of liars. I had a recent delivery experience that went the other way that really
emphasized the problem. And that was the other day there was a knock on the door. I went down,
there was a delivery driver with a package for me and I had to sign for it. And he had to scan
the barcode with his little device to say he'd sent it. So, he was about to pass it over to me
and he went to scan it and it
wouldn't scan and he's like hang on he tried again oh it wouldn't scan and then he looked at his
device and said oh i'm a minute and a half early i can't scan this until it's the right time and we
had to stand there together at the door waiting for the time to elapse until we were in the window that he was supposed to be at my door.
And then as soon as the clock ticked over, like, okay, beep,
he scanned it, handed it to me, and he could leave.
So they're so tightly controlled at both ends of lateness and earliness
of where they have to be at what times.
If they're running early, they get constrained.
Wow.
It was amazing. That is, they get constrained. Wow. It was amazing.
That is frankly breathtaking.
He couldn't give it to me because he couldn't scan it.
I can imagine maybe why this happens, just like you say, as a way to further pen in the driver's freedom of motion.
Yeah. Because later on, if there's something that has to be delivered like between four and six,
you know, they want to make sure his whole day is controlled so that he's arriving at the right
places at the right time and doesn't get too ahead of schedule.
Yeah. Wow. I just, I feel'm i'm knocked speechless by the horror of that
uh it knows more part the horror of having to stand awkwardly with the delivery guy for 90 seconds
while the two of you are waiting for a countdown counter to finish uh that's okay luckily i have
the world's cutest chihuahua that loves coming and playing
with delivery people. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, that would make it much easier. I feel like I
would be tempted to close the door. Then you'll get a note saying you weren't home.
That is what I would get. I don't know. It might be worth it to avoid the awkwardness though.
It's a problem that seems to be getting worse with time and not better with time.
I feel like it's causing me more problems in life as time goes by.
Because I was complaining mightily on Twitter, I did get some interesting sort of private feedback
that was confirming that what's happening is largely that the drivers are just banking on
places that they know where the deliveries are going to be accepted.
So it's like these delivery companies are actually just delivering to business and commercial addresses and that they're blowing off the residential addresses just the moment there's any kind of delay in their schedule and where they should be.
And this is one of these times like I don't understand how the world is the way it is.
Because isn't this, like, isn't this the company's whole job?
Like, your job is to deliver packages.
Like, why are you not better at delivering packages?
We're handing you money to do the thing.
I feel like package delivery has gotten way worse. One of the ways that I feel like
I have a subjective measure of this is because I have an office in my home, right? And we get lots
of packages sent to the house. It used to drive me so crazy, like how often the bell would ring
for the packages getting delivered. But over the last like 18 months, the number of times that has
occurred has definitely gone down. And it's way more of these like, oh, the number of times that has occurred has definitely
gone down.
And it's way more of these like, oh, there's no package to be delivered at all things.
So like, I really do feel like delivery companies are worse at doing their fundamental job than
they used to before.
And it bothers me double when I think about things like the grocery delivery, where you
can, I don't know if you have this where you are,
if the city is big enough, but you can have someone do the grocery shopping for you and
then have them deliver the groceries to your house. And like, that to me is kind of amazing,
because it's like, okay, grocery stores, your primary business is not delivering things.
This is just an auxiliary business. Yet, nonetheless, I can just pick a
15 minute window in which I want a man to show up with eggs and cleaning fluids and toilet paper
and bananas and whatever. And they're there like, bam, every time delivering the groceries. And
it's like, this is not even your job. Like, why can't actual delivery companies get this same
thing accomplished? I find it really frustrating
that's just not the incentives in place the grocery store has the incentive doesn't it that
they don't do the deal if they don't deliver the fresh fruit it's not like they can not leave the
food so they're just not incentivized yeah but i guess the feeling here is it's like there's a
delivery cartel that all the delivery companies are equally bad.
And they recognize like, okay, as long as nobody gets better, none of us have to get better.
Like that's what it feels like is actually happening.
Because it's like, I'm paying you to deliver a thing, you know, but I can't get it.
But I also just have, I have no options here, right? I just have to keep paying you to not deliver, to not deliver the thing and then push the burden on me
to go to some warehouse to pick it up off hours. I'm sure you must run into this, Brady, but
the feeling of sort of abusing your power as someone who has a bunch of Twitter followers
to complain at a company, do you feel the call of that sometimes to yell at a company
on the internet on Twitter? I do. I do. Where do you draw the line? How do you decide when to and when not to do it? I mean, you do it less than me, but you,
you know, you just use Twitter less than me. So. I don't know. It's mood, isn't it? It's mood.
Partly is like, where's the radio meter, right? Is the radio meter very, very large or is it very,
very small? But I also feel like I'm caught in a bit of a loop with these things where
companies have taught me that there is no more effective
way to get their attention than to yell at them on Twitter. And I presume that having a large
number of followers certainly helps with that. But it also seems like when I look at company
Twitter accounts, like they are very active on Twitter in replying to people. I feel like the
companies are essentially begging me to complain about them on twitter
squeaky wheel gets the oil if i'm going to complain about a company on twitter there
needs to be one of two things i need to be really angry deeply deeply angry or i need to think of a
way that i can complain that's kind of funny right i think those those are my two markers for if i'm
going to complain publicly about a company on twitter i think those are my two markers for if I'm going to complain publicly
about a company on Twitter, I think those are the two that I'm looking for.
Oh, there's a third factor. I agree with those two, but there's a third factor for me, and it's
how urgently do I need this problem solved? So, you know, I had a thing where my phone
stopped working and I couldn't make phone calls and my work ground to a halt. And I needed that dealt with. So, you know, so sometimes if I
really need something resolved because it's preventing me being able to function in the way
I need to function, that is the third factor. Companies, companies get what they promote.
And what they promote is yell at them on Twitter. So they're going to get more of that.
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I just wanted to bring up something about the adpocalypse gray, which is a subject that
I find quite tiresome, and I actually really don't enjoy talking about on the podcast.
But it does seem to be an important part of our lives, and we have a reputation for talking
about it now.
Well, yeah, and also, I find revisiting this topic personally funny because I think one of the very first
times we ever mentioned it, my opinion was like, oh, this is going to blow over and we'll
never hear about this again very shortly.
And then YouTube did everything within their power to make sure that this was going to
be an eternal problem.
And so, here we are.
You're right about that.
So, there's been some recent developments in the last few days,
on both sides of the debate, that I thought were worth just marking. One is, it seems to be almost
cyclical that the Times newspaper in London, owned by Rupert Murdoch, owned by News Corporation,
that wants advertising money to be in papers and not on YouTube and have found success in this tactic of pointing out ads are being delivered on inappropriate
content. They have done their next big wave this week. They found a new one. It was terrorism
before. It was, you know, can you believe that company, that Coca-Cola is being advertised on a story about terrorism. Now they've gone to exploitation and inappropriate images of children.
Oh, just like we were saying last week.
Safety of children.
That gets you everything in the world.
So that's the new one that they're really ramping up
and they're doing front page stories and special investigations about.
And the exact same cycle has happened.
And that is all
the companies are that are now you know fleeing and saying we're interestingly they're always
saying we're suspending our advertising until this is resolved right and this has made me realize
there were some things about this that you were right about some things that you were slightly
wrong about one is you said at the time that this is just like a temporary thing and the companies will go away and then ultimately come back the advert the
advertising companies because they have to advertise here because if they don't they they
die and you're right about that because they're always using words like we're suspending advertising
until this is fixed but the other thing is this this issue isn't going away and i can see this is going to be an
issue for years to come this is just going to be something that just gets wheeled out all the time
until the newspapers are gone maybe yeah so it's it's it's rather exasperating but i did notice it
was different this time in a way that you kind of have foreshadowed and spoken about in the past and
that is the companies aren't saying that's it we're taking your advertising away forever they're a bit more careful in their
wording and they say we're suspending advertising so and what does that mean yeah does that mean
you know the impression that i have gotten um from discussing things with people is that a lot of this
ends up becoming a situation where money is simply building up behind a dam.
And then when it looks like it's all clear, the floodgates are opened again.
Let's put it this way.
The amount of money that a company has allocated to spend on YouTube in a quarter is still maintained at a consistent rate.
Even if the individual weeks or months are maintained at a consistent rate, even if the individual weeks
or month are not at a consistent rate. That's the impression that I get is largely what's happening.
So, one of the things that, you know, I like newspapers, obviously, and I used to work in
newspapers. But one of the things that has always frustrated me about this is kind of the hypocrisy,
because I think a lot of newspapers do a lot of
bad things too and companies advertise in newspapers and i've always thought well hang on
like your people in glass houses here are throwing a lot of stones and there was a story that caught
my eye last week that has opened my eye to something else i didn't know was going on
and just to give you a bit of context at the daily mail newspaper in the uk which a lot of people are familiar with and isn't regarded very highly for various reasons
for its sort of sort of political stances had this front page uh promotion thing where people
could take a coupon from that day's paper to the to the news agents in london called paper chase
and could get a free roll of wrapping paper
for their Christmas presents.
Pretty typical kind of, you know, newspaper promotion.
Take your coupon from the paper, get your wrapping paper.
And it turns out there's this organisation
that I wasn't quite familiar with called Stop Funding Hate.
And they're kind of the adpocalypse version of the adpocalypse, except for newspapers.
And whenever companies advertise with newspapers they don't like, that are on their list of
we don't like you, they then go to the mattresses and give a hard time to the advertisers about that.
And Stop Funding Hate engineered this campaign against Paper chase for being in bed with the daily mail that was so
venomous that paper chase made a public statement apologizing for this promotion and have vowed to
never advertise or do a promotion with the daily mail again and stop funding hate apparently have
done this with various companies including our good friends lego who have who have been shamed
into not advertising with various newspapers
because of this campaign so it's the it's the thing happening in the opposite opposite direction
and it's actually something that i've kind of spoken about before when i said you know when we
see advertisements on freebooted videos on facebook we should we should shame the advertisers don't
don't take on facebook facebook don't care go to the advertiser and say hey pepsi do you know that your videos are running against all this stolen content
that's exactly what stop funding hate are doing so the battle is actually happening in both
directions what do you what do you think of this do you know what i'm kind of a bit uneasy with it
both ways yeah i mean that's i think it's I think it's hypocritical for me to say that Stop Funding Hate are doing the wrong thing,
except that the adpocalypse people, like saying YouTube is bad, YouTube is bad,
the people they actually have the problems with are the content creators,
the people who are uploading the bad stuff.
Whereas when you have a campaign against a newspaper,
the newspaper is deciding what goes in its paper.
It's not like the Daily Mail can say,
hey, we can't control what our journalists write.
Sorry that our columnist wrote a really racist column,
but we can't control it.
We're just a platform.
The newspaper does have total editorial control over what appears in its
pages and therefore when someone takes them to task for it i think um there's an extra level
of accountability that youtube don't necessarily have but i've said in the past that i do think
youtube does have to have does have to have some accountability for what appears on the site as
well so for that reason i'm kind of oh i don't know what to think about this
i'm a bit stuck in the middle yeah i mean you know my initial reaction is of course i think
it's funny because it's the newspapers getting what they're giving right like you're dishing
out a thing and it's like well well well you know look look who comes back around and i do agree with you that uh the newspapers have
a level of control that youtube could only dream of that is just fundamentally impossible
on the youtube platform but i don't know like
with all of this stuff i just i feel you know ever since we talked about a long time ago
like uh we initially started having conversations about like mob justice on the Internet.
There is something like I just I feel like I am permanently and forever uneasy about any kind of mob justice on the Internet in a way that I didn't used to be, you know, several years ago. And any of this kind of stuff where, like, even, you know, even if I would agree with
the mob justice, perhaps, perhaps, especially if I would agree with the mob justice, it
feels like you should be really cautious about that kind of thing, right? And this feels like a similar thing, like you're trying to
bully and shame an organization into not supporting a thing. And it's like,
I know that we can get all worthy about what the reasons for doing that are, but I don't know how
to put this, but... I feel what you're saying, though. It's like, this is the thin end of the wedge for, you know, online vigilantes.
Yeah.
If we start doing this all the time, where does it stop?
I guess what I'm trying to think about here is, it's a little bit like my feeling about politics where, you know, we don't really talk about politics on the show.
And part of the reason is because I, you know, my personal feeling is like, if we're not talking
about the meta issues, like if we're not talking about the voting system, right. Or we're not
talking about campaign finance, right. Like then we're, then we're getting like dragged down into the details of
things, but we're like, we're never addressing the root cause of problems. And there's something
about internet vigilantism that is more and more in my mind falling into a kind of like, I think this is a fundamental problem
in a way, but I don't know.
I'm not even sure I can say it that harshly or that clearly, but it is just a thing that
I find myself very, very cautious about. And it feels like we need a better and more responsible solution than a kind of
internet bullying campaign, even if it's for something that we agree with. Like, for the same
reason that in a society we have laws, no matter how much evidence you have, like against a
murderer, like we still put a murderer on trial because we have like we have to go through, we have to go through the process. And there's some there's something it feels like we need some kind of process on the internet that can can handle stuff instead of this, this sort of like, let's let's all get riled up about a about a thing like like even the name of this campaign
right stop funding hate right is like that name is designed to stop any conversation about what
this organization is doing yeah if you're not with the stop funding hate organization are you for
funding hate right it's like oh right you know no of course not um i think it's funny when you first show it to me but i
i'm finding more and more my brain has this like antibody reaction to any anything that starts
looking like let's gang up on a thing online and force them to do what we want like i just i find
that i find myself getting more and more cautious about that kind of behavior on the internet in
any way there's also this slightly weird dynamic where there's always this third party.
Yeah, yeah.
So, it's like paper chase the news agents. Other ones are also like copping it in the neck. And
you could say, well, they deserve it because they're giving their money to the Daily Mail
and they know what the Daily Mail is like. But it's kind of like this indirect argument. It's like these people have an issue with the Daily Mail
and they're like taking hostages and hurting other people
to try and damage the Daily Mail.
And there are all these sort of other parties
who are kind of copping it in the neck as a result.
And it feels like, I don't know, it feels a bit icky.
When there is this third party interaction,
it always gets more complicated.
And again, I think the internet version of this is like, they don't go after the person,
like they go after the platform that the person is on.
And that always...
Well, they go after the money, don't they?
Yeah, yeah.
It's always about going after the money, the money supply, the career, your livelihood.
Yeah, that is an excellent point.
I feel like we do, you know, Brady, you're always the master of words here.
But I do feel like we need a term for this idea about going after somebody's livelihood
on the internet.
There are so many different versions of this that it's a concept that happens over and
over again of trying to get someone removed from Patreon or
trying to get someone fired from their job or whatever. Like this is a thing that happens
all the time of this idea of like you're going after somebody's livelihood wherever that that
livelihood is. And again, I always just feel really cautious about that. And I think you're
I think you're right. There is something that feels wrong about when it's a
third-party interaction. It feels like you're not engaging directly, you're engaging in a sneaky way
instead of engaging head-on with the thing that you don't like.
You know, I sometimes worry about the adpocalypse. And I think if all the advertisers pull off the
platform and YouTube collapses and stuff, it could be bad for people like you and i but then this deep calm comes over me when i
realize that if a company completely stops advertising on google and youtube another
company will come in to fill the void and that's what that's what keeps it going like if if if
coca-cola said all right we're not advertising on youtube anymore pepsi would think brilliant yeah
we will yeah exactly so there is a hope that kind of market force as long as you know youtube Coca-Cola said, all right, we're not advertising on YouTube anymore. Pepsi would think, brilliant. Yeah. We will.
Yeah, exactly.
So, there is a hope that kind of market force, as long as, you know, YouTube aren't a really
bad company and really are doing bad stuff, which I don't think they are, then I'm quite
comfortable with this kind of toing and froing.
And I kind of hope it just doesn't hurt people too much.
It certainly has created an absolute debacle on the content flagging stuff, which we've
talked about recently. So it is hurting us regardless. And while I've said before that I
think YouTube is in a strong enough market position that they don't have to do a lot of this,
I do worry about the future of YouTube a little bit, simply because I feel like they are beginning to
cross an annoyance line with a large enough number of creators that...
I think if I was in charge of YouTube, that would be a thing I would just...
Is it a threat today? Maybe not, but it's a thing i would just have my eye on that
it as a creator who talks to other creators it really feels like every everybody is super annoyed
with the with the flagging and the way the whole system works and we're still just the mickey mice
of the system though gray it's not like son Sony and all those people who are uploading music videos
to YouTube are upset. And as long as YouTube have got them sweet, you know.
I know what you're saying, but I think if I was trying to do a startup to compete with YouTube,
which I think might be a fundamentally impossible thing to do, I think YouTube
might have a pretty secure hold on the natural monopoly of video.
But let's say I was tasked to do it, right?
And you had like a billion dollars.
It's like, okay, make a startup to compete with YouTube.
I wouldn't go after the big companies like the music company,
Vivo and Sony and all this other stuff
and the millions of hours of late night TV that's
on YouTube.
I would go after trying to sway the creators because I think if you can sway the creators,
then those big companies will just double post their material right on YouTube and whatever
the YouTube competitor is.
YouTube, I love you guys.
I'm not competing with you.
I don't have a secret startup in the works.
Venture capitalists though,
if you're looking for someone to work with,
give me a call.
YouTube, don't listen to that.
But anyway, but I do think that
that's the vulnerable point.
If there is a vulnerable point,
it's people who are individual or small creators who have loyal audiences
whereas trying to convince sony to upload onto a competitive competing channel is a hopeless cause
right they're just they're just going to make a business decision and the only question is can
you get your competitor big enough that it makes sense for those channels to start double posting and this is where i think
facebook are missing a trick like that by not opening things up to smaller operations like
people like us like this is the time to strike because if facebook said now look we'll share
half the revenue with you let's let's do it i think they'd get a lot of people and then if
they started pulling all those people across then they could start trying to get the big guns.
But they're just like, they're so closed-minded, Facebook.
They're so selfish.
Yeah, I kind of wonder what Facebook's up to.
I mean, you know, I don't want to give Facebook any tips here
on how to defeat YouTube because I really don't like Facebook.
But nonetheless, I am constantly surprised at their, at the decisions
they make with online video. And it feels like you guys are so close. Like you could, you could
have this if you just changed a few things and they don't. And I don't understand why. And I just,
because I like to believe in a somewhat rational world, I feel like they must be up to something
that we can't see, or there must be some reason why they don't do revenue sharing with creators but i don't
i don't understand it and it seems like it would be the most obvious thing to do if you were in
charge of facebook should we end with a paper cut yeah let's let's round out with a paper cut
this is this is a special paper because this is brady's paper cut meets sports ball corner oh
god what happens when corners cross with each other we got yeah what do we get do you get a
square then i guess if we have two two corners crossing oh yeah i see what you mean yeah i want
to send you a picture i'll send you a few pictures and these pictures have been taken during post
game celebrations because the baseball season the ml MLB baseball season, recently ended.
So we had lots of happy baseballers in the changing rooms
celebrating wonderful victories.
Okay, I'm looking, I'm looking.
We've got players in the changing rooms, bottles of champagne being shaken,
corks being popped, champagne being sprayed everywhere,
as is the custom celebration at
the end of a sporting triumph do you have any initial thoughts uh i mean well they're all
wearing ski masks so it must be some yes violent champagne spraying there this is a this is the
this is the development in the last few years that i am paper cut by professional athletes in these spontaneous moments of
happiness for years they've been pulling out the t-shirts that were pre-made for them winning you
know congratulations on winning which are obviously made weeks before they won well yeah but then they
have but then they've also brought a bunch of sometimes customized swimming goggles and ski
masks to put on their faces before they start spraying the champagne
so they can protect their eyes. This seems like the least spontaneous and least like
rugged, cool sports thing you could do. It makes them seem like a bunch of wusses.
I feel like there's a real theme here in in your complaints as of late brady
uh but but yes it's like uh yeah uh you know you have to have your dewey beats truman t-shirts all
set and ready to go of course uh you know i have to have them ready and printed but but the um but
the goggles the goggles do make them look like a bunch of wusses uh i'm not i'm not gonna lie
and it just it just ruins the moment for me me, saying it no longer seems like this moment where we were just so happy we couldn't control ourselves.
It's like, okay, everyone, put on your goggles for safety, and now we will have the fun.
Yeah, these are fun-approved goggles.
I like that.
It's more health and safety gone mad i'm sure someone will tell me some story about a champagne cork that ruined
a baseballer's career or how the acidity of champagne can ruin your vision or something but
hey if if if spraying champagne and celebrating at the end of the game is unsafe then just don't
do it but don't don't all start putting goggles on
because you look silly.
Yeah, if it's dangerous,
you should come up with a new tradition.
Yeah.
I don't think the champagne is possibly dangerous
except for the exploding cork.
If you don't know how to handle a champagne bottle.
But yeah, this looks dumb.
I'm going to give it a thumbs down.
Do not approve of this.
And I'm sure now everyone's going to jump on Reddit like they did about the astronauts and say, hey, you know, they've got these multi-million dollar contracts and they've got to protect their eyes.
But come on.
Brady, why are you against fun?
That's what I'm getting.
All the complaints.
Brady, you're against fun. Just so complaints brady i'm not against fun just so
you know i'm not against the champagne i love i love the champagne at the end of the sport
i just think putting these goggles on not only is it like health and safety gone mad it just looks
it makes the whole thing look unnatural and premeditated and not like a celebration and
just something they all knew they were going to have to do for the cameras later i wonder i wonder if in 10 years they'll be having safety rain jackets for the
champagne as well like if you would rewound time 10 years ago and ask someone do you think people
will have to put on goggles before they open champagne no one would have said yes right that
would have seemed ridiculous and the idea now of some kind of safety raincoat for your champagne seems ridiculous, but maybe in 10 years, that's what they'll be
doing as well. They'll have special coverings for themselves so they don't get hurt by the champagne.
Hey, just so that we don't end on me being anti-fun, can I bring up one other interesting
story I saw a few weeks ago that touches on various topics here? One being like insurance
and safety and that, and the other being Twitter, which we've talked about a lot today there was a new story a little
while ago where a famous soccer player from england was on holiday with his wife and he i don't know
what they were doing that was skiing or something and he tweeted or instagrammed or whatever he did
saying hey i'm having a good time you know what he was up to and because he did saying, hey, I'm having a good time, you know, what he was up to. And because he did that, thieves knew that he wasn't in his lovely mansion in England,
cleaned out the place, took all his stuff, took thousands and thousands of pounds worth of
nice stuff. And his insurance company wouldn't pay because they said tweeting that he was on holiday
was a security breach that voided his insurance policy. And there's this whole debate going on
now about whether or not if you tweet that you're away from your house and your house gets robbed whether you
should be insured and i want to know what you think of that i agree with the insurance company
on this one and uh this is actually a moment to answer a question that a bunch of people have
asked which is um you remember for a while i had the gray health bot that was tweeting out my weight every
day um yeah i stopped that in no small part because i realized uh after i was traveling that
that thing was was essentially an indicator of if i was traveling or if i was not traveling
because i'm i'm not bringing my internet connected scale with me wherever i go and even if I was traveling or if I was not traveling, right? Because I'm not bringing my internet connected scale
with me wherever I go.
And even if I was bringing it,
I would be in a different time zone
and the weight measurements would go up
at a different time.
And I felt uncomfortable with having a very clear indicator
on the internet about when I was or was not home.
So I stopped that.
I stopped doing that. And I feel like I got to go with home. So I stopped that. I stopped doing that.
And I feel like I got to go with the insurance company on this one.
Yeah, if you're tweeting about not being home,
I can see that that's definitely like an invitation
to burgle a house in a way.
Difficult situation though, isn't it?
It's a funny, it's an unfortunate situation where, you know, people who like sharing their adventures and though isn't it it's a funny it's an unfortunate situation where you
know people who want who like sharing their adventures and stuff can't okay let's let's
take the internet out of this do you think if so brady the next time you go on vacation
you pack up all your things you're going to be really diligent on twitter you're not going to
say anything but you put a big sign in the front yard that says we are not home and and you only take
it down when you return how how do you feel about that well there's two different there's a different
thing going on there but yeah oh i know it's i know it's a different thing going on there this
is what i feel like this is a patented brady analogy right like this is like it's it's we've
subtly shifted the ground here but i'm just i'm
curious if you had done such a thing and you got robbed and the insurance company said you put a
please rob me sign in front of your your house no we're not going to cover it no no no no you've
changed the analogy now you've said please rob me sign is different to i'm not right okay i think
insurance companies should cover you for normal behavior and it is normal
behavior to go on a holiday and share pictures while you're on holiday and like how far do we
have to take this you're saying we have to create like all these deceptions like next they're going
to say you have to start pre-programming facebook posts of photos of you at home that automatically
upload every two or three
days when you're on holiday as an extra layer of protection. Yeah, that actually is a good idea.
How far is this going to go? How much onus is on us? Like, if you left a sign at the front saying,
my house is unlocked, you are free to come and take stuff. Okay, the insurance company could
probably say, well, hang on. Yeah, then it's not even burglary. Yeah, but posting a picture,
it's not like the house wasn't locked. Like, you are allowed to be not home and go and do things.
I mean, this happens to footballers sometimes when they're playing games overseas. Like,
you know, they're playing a big famous game. Like, there was one footballer who was playing
something like a Champions League final or something over in Europe. And because it was
such a big game, they knew his family would all be going to watch.
And he got robbed while he was playing in that game because everyone knew everyone associated with him was going to be away from the house.
So, I mean, I don't know.
I don't know.
I think.
That's interesting.
I feel like that puts a real wrinkle in my thoughts there, that comparison.
Because I agree agree the insurance should
cover it if he's at work right but how is how is that different if his work happens to be going to
a sports game that's out of town right is that any is that any different from posting on twitter
his family vacation photos i would have a very hard time articulating why i feel like that's different and so maybe
maybe you're finding a little bit of a there's a there's a wrinkle here that i feel like i'm um
i've cast doubt on my certainty from before hmm interesting it is an interesting dilemma
do you tweet though while you're away yeah i sometimes do sometimes do. It's interesting. It's interesting. Not always, not always,
but yeah, I do. I do. I feel, I feel very aware of it. I mean, you're unusually, um,
go ahead, Brady. You can say whatever word is popping into your head. I know there's some word.
I would describe you as a worrier. You are a person who finds things to worry about.
So I can imagine when you're traveling, you would, you would a worrier you are a person who finds things to worry about so i can imagine when you're traveling you would you would see the worry there is a side effect here that often when
i'm traveling uh i have a very hard time keeping up with even just the normal things in life like
i'm usually traveling for a very clear purpose and so i don't want to do a bunch of other stuff
so it is much more easy than normal to not tweet when i'm traveling. But I... I'm the opposite. I find I suddenly have all this spare time and I get angry at myself for
tweeting too much. You know, I'm sitting, you know, by the beach and, you know, I'm in the
shade because I don't like being out in too much direct sun and I've been sitting there for like
two hours and I'm thinking, hmm, a bit bored. Might tweet.
Once again, I find that that so interesting our completely opposite
experiences yeah it's i'm i feel like i am very monomaniacal when i'm traveling uh and and so
yeah i don't i don't tweet very much but i but when i do i i am always aware of tweeting stuff
and i often and i put it not't know I'm not even sure
I'm not even sure I say it exactly but I do often
really time shift
when I'm traveling when the actual
tweet goes up
like I think I have
never
tweeted about being
at a place when I'm at the place
like it is always
later in time than it would place when I'm at the place, right? Like it is always later in time, uh, than,
than it would be. So I'm, I'm also just aware of like moving things around even when I am tweeting
and I'm on, um, and I'm on a trip. Uh, but yeah, I might be a bit of a, a bit of a special case
in that one, but, uh, for sure an insurance company, no matter what,
we'll always be trying to find a way to not pay on the policy. Thank you. Teksting av Nicolai Winther Yeah, that's a microphone, Mr. Chompers.
That's how Uncle Gray does his podcasts.
Okay, now no chomping the microphone. Chomp your bone.