Hello Internet - H.I. #93: Mr. Chompers

Episode Date: November 30, 2017

Grey 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)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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,
Starting point is 00:00:32 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,
Starting point is 00:01:16 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
Starting point is 00:02:16 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
Starting point is 00:02:51 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.
Starting point is 00:03:40 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
Starting point is 00:04:38 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
Starting point is 00:05:14 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
Starting point is 00:05:58 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.
Starting point is 00:06:56 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?
Starting point is 00:07:22 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.
Starting point is 00:07:54 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
Starting point is 00:08:28 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,
Starting point is 00:09:02 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
Starting point is 00:09:31 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
Starting point is 00:10:18 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
Starting point is 00:10:50 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.
Starting point is 00:11:09 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.
Starting point is 00:11:27 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.
Starting point is 00:11:46 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.
Starting point is 00:11:56 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
Starting point is 00:12:14 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.
Starting point is 00:12:47 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
Starting point is 00:13:23 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
Starting point is 00:14:01 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
Starting point is 00:14:40 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
Starting point is 00:15:17 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.
Starting point is 00:15:45 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.
Starting point is 00:16:05 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.
Starting point is 00:16:23 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.
Starting point is 00:17:03 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
Starting point is 00:17:31 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
Starting point is 00:17:58 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
Starting point is 00:18:54 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.
Starting point is 00:19:56 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
Starting point is 00:20:32 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.
Starting point is 00:21:11 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
Starting point is 00:21:25 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.
Starting point is 00:22:03 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.
Starting point is 00:22:33 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.
Starting point is 00:23:11 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.
Starting point is 00:23:46 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?
Starting point is 00:24:04 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
Starting point is 00:25:18 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
Starting point is 00:25:57 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?
Starting point is 00:26:34 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
Starting point is 00:27:00 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. Hello, Internet. Is there a career that you want to inspire kids to go into? Well, the best way you're going to reach the kids these days, or anybody, is by building a
Starting point is 00:27:26 website. And as you know, there's only one place you want to go to build your website, and that's Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one solution that allows you to create a beautiful website without any hassles. Whatever idea you have in your head that you want to turn into a website, you can use Squarespace to take that idea and showcase your work, write a blog, or publish other serialized content, perhaps a podcast even, or sell products online. Squarespace makes this easy to do by giving you access to beautiful templates created by world-class designers, a powerful built-in e-commerce functionality that lets you sell anything online, and the ability to customize the look and feel and settings and everything just by
Starting point is 00:28:20 clicking and dragging. There's no need to learn HTML and figure out how to properly close that blink tag with Squarespace. Nope, just click, click, click, and you get it exactly the way you want it to look. And if you have any trouble at all, just reach out to Squarespace's 24-7 award-winning customer support. So if you are ready to take your idea and make it real, just go to squarespace.com slash hello and get a 10% discount. That's squarespace.com slash hello, where you can sign up for free for 14 days and receive 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace, think it, 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
Starting point is 00:29:13 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,
Starting point is 00:29:52 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.
Starting point is 00:30:40 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.
Starting point is 00:31:17 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.
Starting point is 00:31:57 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...
Starting point is 00:32:39 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,
Starting point is 00:33:31 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
Starting point is 00:33:54 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
Starting point is 00:34:29 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
Starting point is 00:35:05 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
Starting point is 00:35:59 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.
Starting point is 00:36:43 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
Starting point is 00:37:15 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
Starting point is 00:37:45 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
Starting point is 00:38:16 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
Starting point is 00:38:54 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.
Starting point is 00:39:21 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
Starting point is 00:39:49 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
Starting point is 00:40:35 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.
Starting point is 00:41:00 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
Starting point is 00:41:29 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
Starting point is 00:42:13 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
Starting point is 00:42:57 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
Starting point is 00:43:40 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
Starting point is 00:44:15 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
Starting point is 00:44:46 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
Starting point is 00:45:29 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
Starting point is 00:46:04 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.
Starting point is 00:46:48 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,
Starting point is 00:47:31 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
Starting point is 00:47:57 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?
Starting point is 00:48:31 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
Starting point is 00:48:50 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
Starting point is 00:49:36 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,
Starting point is 00:50:17 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,
Starting point is 00:50:47 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,
Starting point is 00:51:03 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
Starting point is 00:51:40 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,
Starting point is 00:52:27 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.
Starting point is 00:52:38 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.
Starting point is 00:53:21 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.
Starting point is 00:54:00 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
Starting point is 00:54:34 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.
Starting point is 00:55:02 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
Starting point is 00:55:49 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
Starting point is 00:56:20 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
Starting point is 00:57:11 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.
Starting point is 00:57:57 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.
Starting point is 00:58:25 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.
Starting point is 00:58:56 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,
Starting point is 00:59:22 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.
Starting point is 01:00:02 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
Starting point is 01:00:41 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
Starting point is 01:01:10 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.
Starting point is 01:01:44 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.
Starting point is 01:02:02 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.
Starting point is 01:02:19 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,
Starting point is 01:02:38 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
Starting point is 01:02:55 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.
Starting point is 01:03:33 You will forget. Yeah, you'll 100% forget. Do it now. You know, in the fullness of time, when I look back over the many episodes of Hello Internet, I think one of the greatest things I'll take from this long and winding journey will be my discovery of Fracture. That's because this company, which lets you print photos directly onto glass pieces
Starting point is 01:03:55 immediately ready for hanging and display, has transformed my gift-buying experience. Anytime I'm stuck for a present idea, I choose an appropriate photo for the right recipient, upload it to Fracture's website, and in no time, the gift arrives. And it always goes down a treat. What mum or dad doesn't like a picture of their kids
Starting point is 01:04:17 or grandkids to show off above the fireplace? What angler wouldn't like an immortalised image of that giant trout they caught on last month's fishing trip? And hey, let's get a bit meta here. What Tim wouldn't like a nail in gear sturdily displayed above their desk at work? Or, now let's be fair, a fractured flaggy flag that could be carefully hung so that it doesn't accidentally fall onto that hard tiled floor and smash into a million pieces because he wouldn't want that to happen. Now, as we record this episode with Christmas fast approaching,
Starting point is 01:04:51 I'd seriously consider this as your chance to put something special under the tree on December 25. But a word of warning, don't dilly dally because my sources at the Fractory in Florida, where these things are made made tell me that festive orders are starting to come in thick and fast. Now you can get 15% off your first Fracture order and that's a really great saving by going to fracture.me and then use the offer code hello15. That's the word hello and the number 15 all joined together. Again, fracture.me, offer code hello15. You'll get 15% off. There's a one-question survey too,
Starting point is 01:05:31 and you just use that to tell them that Hello Internet sent you to Fracture. That's good for us. The 15%, that's good for you, as are the happy family members at Christmas. Thanks to Fracture for supporting the show. 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
Starting point is 01:05:53 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?
Starting point is 01:06:09 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
Starting point is 01:07:04 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
Starting point is 01:07:36 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
Starting point is 01:07:53 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.
Starting point is 01:08:35 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,
Starting point is 01:09:19 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
Starting point is 01:09:58 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.
Starting point is 01:10:27 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
Starting point is 01:11:16 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
Starting point is 01:11:56 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.
Starting point is 01:12:41 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
Starting point is 01:13:15 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
Starting point is 01:13:52 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.
Starting point is 01:14:32 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.
Starting point is 01:15:13 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
Starting point is 01:15:49 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
Starting point is 01:16:33 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. Hello, Internet. Today's an exciting day because there is a new sponsor for the show. Eero is what lets you never think about Wi-Fi again. If you live in a house of almost any size, you know the places where you have bad Wi-Fi. You have done the thing where you're on your laptop or you're on your iPad and you need something to download or upload quickly so you go to a different physical location in the house to get into the good spot. With Eero
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Starting point is 01:20:06 HelloInternet at checkout. So visit Eero.com, that's Eero.com, and get free overnight shipping in the US or Canada by entering code HelloInternet. That gets you better Wi-Fi faster and lets Eero know that you came from our show. Thanks to Eero for making Wi-Fi better, and thanks to Eero for supporting the show. 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
Starting point is 01:20:49 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
Starting point is 01:21:16 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
Starting point is 01:21:59 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
Starting point is 01:22:34 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
Starting point is 01:23:21 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,
Starting point is 01:24:03 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
Starting point is 01:24:46 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.
Starting point is 01:25:19 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
Starting point is 01:26:01 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,
Starting point is 01:26:49 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
Starting point is 01:27:11 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
Starting point is 01:27:55 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.
Starting point is 01:29:09 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
Starting point is 01:30:05 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
Starting point is 01:31:18 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
Starting point is 01:32:00 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.
Starting point is 01:32:24 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.
Starting point is 01:32:46 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
Starting point is 01:33:27 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.
Starting point is 01:34:05 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,
Starting point is 01:34:35 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.
Starting point is 01:35:30 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
Starting point is 01:36:03 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.
Starting point is 01:36:28 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
Starting point is 01:36:47 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.
Starting point is 01:37:29 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
Starting point is 01:38:04 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.
Starting point is 01:38:48 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
Starting point is 01:39:18 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
Starting point is 01:40:05 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
Starting point is 01:40:50 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
Starting point is 01:41:15 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?
Starting point is 01:41:40 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
Starting point is 01:42:17 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
Starting point is 01:43:01 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
Starting point is 01:43:47 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.
Starting point is 01:44:14 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.
Starting point is 01:44:42 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
Starting point is 01:45:18 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
Starting point is 01:45:57 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,
Starting point is 01:46:38 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.
Starting point is 01:46:59 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,
Starting point is 01:47:48 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
Starting point is 01:48:35 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
Starting point is 01:49:10 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,
Starting point is 01:49:26 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.

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