Hello Internet - The Shortlist (BONUS EPISODE)

Episode Date: October 21, 2015

Grey and Brady discuss the upcoming Hello Internet flag referendum.  Brought To You By:Harry's: Quality Men's Shaving Products. Promocode HI for $5 off your first purchaseShow Notes:Click here for the voting instructions, and scroll down to see the candidates.....................Club & Claws: ............................White Cross: ..........................Flaggy Flag: ......................H.I. Logo ..........................Nail & Gear

What are we doing here? Didn't we just put out a show? This is crazy. A podcast famous for its long and sometimes unpredictable gaps. And we're back already. What's going on? Do you have any idea? We're spontaneous guys. Like people cannot put us in a slot. You don't know what we're going to do. We could put this out and there could be another one 10 seconds afterwards. You don't know what we're going to do. We're crazy guys.

When the idea of this project first came up, one of the things that attracted me to it was the very notion of releasing so shortly after a main podcast has gone up. It's like, this is going to mess with all of those charts that people like to make about hello internet upload frequency. I can't remember being as excited about one of our podcasts as I am about this one. I am quite giddy. So should I tell the people what we're doing? Yeah, this is a one topic show, this one, isn't it? This is like, we're just here. We're here for one thing and one thing only.

Yes, we're here for one thing. And that is a flag referendum. Yeah. Our flag referendum for the Hello Internet podcast. The Hello Internet flag referendum. This is, is it a referendum, Gray? Isn't a referendum about changing your constitution? Is it a vote or a referendum? We're calling it a referendum because I think, in no small part, we're trying to show New Zealand how it's done. After weeks and weeks, if not months, of commenting on the New Zealand flag referendum,

we're putting our money where our mouth is and saying, this is how you do it, my friends. We decided to take matters into our own hand, show New Zealand how it's done, and hold a flag referendum for our podcast. This is, I mean, this says a lot about the esteem in which we hold flags because people familiar with the podcast will obviously be aware after the rice rat and swamp hen fiasco that pretty much the official appointing of anything with the podcast is me doing it on a whim and you just not resisting enough. Right. But when it comes to a flag, it's like there's no there's no brady going off on his own and just doing something here this is this is serious business no we have been working on this together possibly too much because we are both men who do things our own way and are particular

and control freakery in our own ways and so we have come together to try to figure out how to make this referendum happen. But there has been much discussion of details. We even had an in-person meeting discussing flag candidates. There's been a lot of preparation for what is ultimately going to be a very short show. I wouldn't count it being a short show, but the thing I would love to have been in the booth next to us at that pub last night in London,

just overhearing the conversation where we were just going into incredible detail about how the voting is going to work and what flags we should and shouldn't choose and why. It's crazy, crazy. Yeah. So to catch people up on things, several episodes back, back in the early 30s of our episodes, we called for people to submit Hello Internet flag designs. And so what we have done, finally, as we approach our 50th episode, is sort through all of the submitted flags. And we have picked out five designs for possible flags for the show.

This is like our shortlist, basically. We learned the lesson that what we're not going to do is create a long list to show everybody, to have them talk about stuff, and then arbitrarily pick a short list. That's not the way to do it. We're skipping straight to the short list of five flags for people to vote on to help select our podcast flag. There's still quite a bit of danger here. We are putting our necks on the block because when the New Zealand committee, just the committee as we call them, released their shortlist, we got stuck into them and said, you had one job, it was pretty easy,

put together a good shortlist and let us have a vote. And we said they mucked it up. And now we're putting out our shortlist. And if people don't like our shortlist, well, we're going to look pretty silly. I think we have done an excellent job. And in our assessment of ourself, it's quite high on the shortlist that we put together. I have to say, it has given me a little bit of extra sympathy for the New Zealand committee, though, because you suddenly start second guessing and putting yourself in a lot of

people's minds and a lot of people's shoes. And you start thinking quite tactically. And if we give them this option, is there a danger they might do this? And you do sort of, even though it's supposed to be sort of semi-democratic, you do start kind of, I don't know, you do try to almost manipulate it with your shortlist, don't you? Well, that's exactly what the shortlist is. Because if we just ask people to vote up or vote down on the flags in that thread, we would have gotten one of those horrible Comic Sans blue flags with the Hello Internet logo that looks like a state flag. That's what people would do if you just let them run

crazy. So in the shortlisting process, one of our criteria was, it has to be a flag that if it wins, we would be fine with this as the Hello Internet flag. You can't run the risk of putting in a joke flag because guaranteed that's what everybody gets attracted to is the joke option. So we were basically trying to stop the rebel rousers before they roused some rebel. Exactly. There will be no rebel rousing here.

This is serious business. This is flags. Now, before we get to the short list, and that's obviously going to be quite a conversation, and I can already sense the anticipation in the airwaves. But before we get to that, the other thing we've done, I think, to minimize rabble rousing is the voting process itself. This is quite something. Yeah, we have had many conversations about how do you try to hold an election on the internet just as two guys?

Like we don't have voting machines or anything for people to use. And we went back and forth about precisely what to do. Do we set up an online poll? Do we have a Reddit thread? There were very, very many options. But what we have settled on as I think the best choice for this, and also, to be honest, the most fun choice, is we are going to have people physically send us postcards as the ballots for the flags. So it's a postal election.

It is a postal election, yes. Even though I mightily complain about votes that have to be done by post or in person, and why can't they be done on my iPhone? I'm not going to have this election on an iPhone. We're going to do it with postcards. It's a ballot election. It's with post. And can I just point out, by the way, that you were the main advocate of this. Like,

this wasn't old school Brady sort of convincing Gray away from technology. You were Mr. You know, when will everyone get with the system and get with the program and have electronic voting? You were Mr. No, I want to do it old school. I want postcards. I want snail mail. Oh, yeah. Yeah. A couple of times in the setup process for this, I felt like we were arguing what should have been the stereotypical other person's position. But I will totally admit, I like the idea of the postal vote. And I feel charmed at the notion of people going out and selecting a postcard to use as their ballot. I like this idea. I feel that it's a romantic idea, almost.

I feel like, Gray, I'm rubbing off on you a bit. No, you're not rubbing off on me, Brady. All right. I'm just in a really good mood because it's flags. All right. Okay, so we're going to talk. What was your main reason for choosing a postal election? I'm just in a really good mood because it's flags. All right. Okay. So we're going to talk. What was your main reason for choosing a postal election?

Was it the charm of the post or was it preventing voter fraud? See, I don't know if we should even discuss the possibility of voter fraud, but because this is already tipping over into rabble-rousing territory. But my feeling was it is very, very hard to, again, just as two normal dudes who don't say have officially issued ID to all of our listeners or anything like this, it's very hard to coordinate an online poll that has any kind of meaning. And as someone who spends a lot of time on the internet, there is a sizable contingent of people who delight in nothing more than screwing with anybody's online polls. So it's just sounded really dirty. Well, I was rubbing off on you a minute ago.

Gross. well i was rubbing off on you a minute ago gross but yeah so i thought we're not going to be able to hold a secure online election not even not even close so i won't even try yeah and so i figure that the postcard is just enough friction that people who want to mess around with the vote you you know what, if you're going to try to send us a thousand postcards, it's a lot more work than trying to just fake vote a thousand times on a website. So this is a vote fraud minimization technique, in addition to a totally charming technique. I know, I'm really excited by where the postcards are going to come from and what pictures people are going to choose as the sort of the face of their postcard. I mean, that's irrelevant to the election, but that's going to be really fun. Yeah, that is going to be fun. And we have also decided that at some point, you and I are going to get together in person to actually count up all of the ballots. Now, Gray, everyone

knows how much you love elections and how interested you are in voting theory and things like that. I do love a good election. Finally, you are holding one. So, everyone's going to want to know, what voting method did Mr. Voting Method choose? Well, I actually decided that we should probably just use First Past the Post for this election because it's the simplest. Everyone can understand First Past the Post. People just pick your favorite and that's all you need to do. It's just one simple thing. That's it. Yeah, whatever. No, of course not. Of course not. We're not doing First Past the Post. There's not a which is approval voting, and the other one is an instant runoff voting. And I debated it. I was judging the merits of simplicity in voting versus simplicity in counting versus the ability to rank and to order preference as opposed to

just expressing preference. In the end, I've decided that we're going to do an instant runoff vote, or as people in the UK will be familiar with it, the alternative vote. So what people are going to do when they vote is they will be able to rank their favourite flag to their least favourite flag on the ballot that they send in. Okay. So, there are going to be five flags and each one's got a name and we'll be revealing those soon. So, when people go to the back of their postcard and rank these, and we'll talk more about that soon, do they have to write five names or can they write, do they write one name? How many names do they write? What are you asking them to do? So, this is the beauty of a well-run alternative vote. Unlike some countries that we could mention that require you to write down absolutely everything, we're going to do it the

right way. If there's only one flag that you like, you can just write down number one and that flag name and that's it. You're done. You don't have to do anything else. If there are three flags that you like, you can write down number one, the flag name, then on the next line, number two, the flag name, next line, three, the flag name, and then you can stop. When you don't care anymore, you don't have to keep ranking them. If you are some kind of completionist nerd, you can indeed write down the names of all five flags in the order that you like them and then you can feel as though you have reached the completion achievement. If you want to do that, that's perfectly fine. Of course, the real nerds will

recognize that you only need to write down four to express complete preferences, but I'll leave that up to the listener about what they want to do. Bottom line, you rank as many as you like. You don't have to rank all of them. But what we do want on the postcard, and we're going to reiterate it later, and there's also going to be a link to instructions that you're going to need to take a look at. It's going to be one flag name on a line so that it is easy for us to count. So you're going to write number one and then the flag name. And then think about it as though you were typing on a computer. You're going to press return and start another line and write number two and that flag name and so on. That is

what's going to count as a valid, unspoiled vote. But link in the show notes that you can go check out for the description of how that's going to happen. I do have to say, Gray, and maybe this says a lot about our jobs and just the number of people we get exposed to. We seem to be spending a lot of our time thinking and talking about ways to make this idiot proof. Idiot proof is such a harsh way to phrase it. The way I'm thinking of it is how can we maximize the number of understandable, non-spoiled ballots that we receive. I have definitely learned that it is surprisingly hard to give instructions to a group, especially as we are right now, a very large group, and have those instructions received in the way that you expect.

And so we have been thinking about the way to make this as easy as possible. And without a doubt, going the postcard method, as opposed to some of the other things we were thinking about, definitely makes it a little bit harder. We're sacrificing some ease for the charm of postcards, which is one of the reasons why I'm trying to emphasize one name per line and look at the instructions to try to make it as as clear as possible. But as we were discussing last night, we definitely have a little bit more sympathy, not just for the New Zealand Flag Commission, but also for anyone, anywhere who has ever tried to run an election. Because as soon as you start thinking about what could people do to possibly mess this up, you realize people will always be able to think of things that did not occur to you that will mess it up. It's amazing, isn't it? And I'm sure we'll talk about it shortly as well. But

all sorts of things like we've been thinking about, like the names of the flags, making sure they're sort of fair and a little bit dummy proof. And almost any topic we think of straight away, it's like, oh, hang on. No, people are going to mess this up. People, this is going to not work for... How many different versions of the names of the various flags do you think we have been through? 30?

40? It's hard. It's hard. It's hard. So, the shortlisting process here, what do we want to tell people about how this has happened? It has been rather ad hoc and mostly been done via text messaging, it seems. But how would you say we've come up with this shortlist of five? I'm not sure that we had official criteria. But I was looking for something going through the thread of a flag that I felt somehow expressed

hello internet. That you could look at that flag and feel, yeah, yeah, this is hello internet-y in its own way. That was my main thing when I was looking through the various designs of trying to pick out stuff that matched. It would also have to be a flag that was acceptable to both you and me, which was not always easy to do. But this has been a surprisingly collaborative process because my list was remarkably short in the beginning.

Well, actually, it was two, wasn't it? And then I would say that you, Brady, you opened my eyes at our in-person meeting to other options that I had just dismissed. But then I thought, no, you're right. You're right. These deserve to be in our referendum. These are totally valid hello internet flag options. And about an hour ago, the list was seven. And then we just chopped it down to five. We let a couple

go with some regret. What was your thinking there? You just thought seven was too many or you didn't like a couple of them? Seven was too many because we're slightly doing this just like the New Zealand flag referendum. Although we must say here in advance that we have chosen our five and we will not negotiate with flag design terrorists who come up with additional flags to try to get on our referendum at the last minute what if someone comes up with a really good one we have chosen our flags these are what we're going to stick with we went with five we did have seven And when I was looking at the list, there were two that I did have slightly uncertain feelings toward. I asked you if you had to get rid of two, which would you pick?

And you picked the same two that I had on my mind. And so I thought, okay, perfect. This reconfirms it as well. Off those two go. Now we have five. It matches New Zealand. Perfect. We can get on with our flag referendum. Now, Gray, before we reveal the five and talk about them, what's our policy going to be in terms of expressing our preferences? My gut reaction is that we should not express the way that we intend to vote. Right. I think our personalities are too strong and too great that we could influence the voters too much.

Yeah. And the whole reason for having a referendum like this is that we also genuinely want a flag that the greater hello internet community will also be happy with. Yeah. So this isn't just about you and me. It's about all of us, dear listeners. And by the way, when we say

influence the voters, we're not necessarily saying that you're all going to vote the one we want. In fact, it might be the opposite. Right. Well, yeah, I wasn't going to say that out loud, but I'm also aware that entirely out of spite, people could decide to vote in a different way. Yeah. So we're going to discuss them. We have some thoughts on each of the flags, but we are not going to express what our ranked preferences are although i will be voting in our own referendum yeah and we will be sending in a postcard yeah i'm going to send in a postcard that's how you have to do it you have to send in a postcard too all right you can't just add it to the pile in your house okay um now in our

now and also don't think you know which one we like by what we say. There could be a bit of double bluffing going on here. We're both very clever people. Now, we are so keen for this to be unbiased that we're even going to reveal them and then reveal them on the website in a random order. Yeah. So, I believe you in front of you have a... Some very loud...

There we go. There go i have i have bowls yes you have a series of marbles one for each of the five flags yep that you are going to draw at random yeah there we go yes we can all hear it brady okay and the order that you draw them in is going to obviously determine the order that we discuss them in now because we didn't want to bias anything and it's also going to determine the order that they appear on the website because i have no ability to make them appear in a random order which is what i would really like what's a cold when someone gets the ballot paper and just ticks them in order that's a donkey vote isn't it uh i don't know this phrase i believe that's a donkey vote, isn't it? I don't know this phrase. I believe that's a donkey vote. Maybe we should check that. Let's check it. Let's do a bit of on the spot

research. I think if there's a ballot paper and someone just walks in the booth and does them all in order, one, two, three, four, five, just so they can leave the booth and say they voted. That's why it's an advantage to be on top of the ballot. And I think those people are called donkey voters. A well-designed if like if you're doing it for a government right we're just doing our flag referendum here but if say you are in charge of a government and you don't have a method to randomize the appearance of the candidate names being at the top of the list has a surprisingly big advantage yeah like if you're if your local municipal government is running an election and they're just putting the names on the end of the list in alphabetical order

it is intrinsically a biased election obviously that's not going to happen with us because we haven't got printed out ballot papers they will be appearing on the website in an order but people still need to write stuff down so I'm hoping that our random selection plus people writing things down changes it a little bit okay grey I have selected the first marble what's the first marble.

Okay, what's the first flag that we're going to talk about? The first flag we're going to talk about is... Wait, wait, before we discuss the candidates in the Hello Internet flag referendum, I want to give special thanks to Harrys.com for making the flag referendum possible. Seriously, Hello Internet listeners, let's show Harrys.com some love. If you've been hearing us do these ads for a while and you're on the edge about whether or not you're going to give Harrys a try, this is the episode to do it. Go to Harrys.com, use the offer code HI and try them out today. And if not for yourself, think about Harry's as a gift. Those holidays are coming

up around the corner. I'm on the website right now and I'm looking at the various products that they have and I like the look of the Winston set. There's almost certainly a man in your life who'd be very happy to receive the Winston set as a fancy looking gift this Christmas. You get a metallic looking weighty razor blade handle. You get their foaming shave gel or shave cream, whichever you prefer. I love the little logo that they have on their razor box. And you know the story about Harry's. They're making their own blades in their German razor factory that they bought. They control the process from start to finish so that they can make high quality products for you at a reasonable cost.

What more could you want? So once again, if you've been thinking about Harry's, now is the time to act. For yourself, for someone you care about, go to harrys.com and use the promo code HI so they know that you came from our show, from our flag referendum, if enough people sign up in the next few days, and get $5 off your first purchase. The Winston set that I mentioned before is $25, so that gets down to $20. And they have a Truman set where you can select multiple colors if there's somebody fancy in your life who would love a razor blade with an orange handle. That one's just $15, so you get it it down to 10. It's really quite the deal. And when you're happy with Harry's, you'll never have to worry about shaving ever again. Just get the razors shipped to your door automatically. Never worry about it. Go to harrys.com, promo code HI. The first flag we're going to talk about is Club and Claws.

Club and Claws is a design, a bit of a collaborative design on the Reddit. A couple of these flags were modifications of other people's versions, but we have from the Reddit, it was Chris Wright Music and Lasward Kermist did this design together. The club and claws I would describe as a light gray background. There is a darker gray central image, which is a circle behind it going in one direction, like crossing each other, there is a caveman club. Going in the other direction, there are two little robot arms. And in the very center of this gray circle, there is a white podcast microphone. Of course, there will be a picture in the show notes as well, because it is almost impossible to describe something like this out loud.

But this is the club and claw design. What are your thoughts on it, Brady? I like all of them. I really like it, of course. I would say it is the most, or is one of the most sort of logo-like. It's not a traditional flag. It's not something you would have seen flying in the 1700s, that's for sure. It has a modern look. But there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, we're a modern podcast. We are.

So there's nothing wrong with expressing that modernity. I mean, I'm assuming the club, the caveman club, is supposed to represent me for some reason. I think that's fair assessment, yeah. the caveman club is supposed to represent me for some reason. I think that's fair assessment. Yeah. And the robotic arms are supposed to represent you. I mean, I think a theme through many, many submitted designs was the perceived difference in our personalities. Right. Perceived.

You say it as though it's not real. People are perceiving a difference in our personalities. But really, we're almost exactly the same. Yeah. So, it reflects that really nicely. And the way they're crossed has got that nice old-fashioned feel. And the modern, you know, having the microphone, I think, is a nice touch. It's perhaps better than any other candidate.

It represents that we are a podcast. Certainly, the other other flags to my mind don't do that as strongly as this microphone image uh gray i mean i think people are going to pretty quickly expect gray to be in a lot of these designs because well because your name's gray but also it's the it's the color of all our branding and our website and our logo and everything so it's the official color of hello Internet. It is the official color. It really is the official color of Hello Internet. Yeah, yeah. Even I can't.

It's not secretly chartreuse or anything. No, no, no. So, yeah, it's really cool. It's really cool. Like All5, I'd be really happy if it won. It's got a lot of, it'd be really useful, really useful design. What are your thoughts on it? Yeah, it's an interesting flag.

To me, something about it captures the feeling of Hello Internet. There's something about the way that it is drawn that is friendly, is the way I would describe it. But you are also right in that it is almost logo-like, almost crest-like. And of the options that I am looking at before me right now, because I have all five on my screen at this moment, it is probably one of the two least flag-looking-like flags at a glance, might be the way that I would think about it. So I think it is an interesting choice. As it goes without saying, all of these flags we like, and all of these flags we would be happy to have as our Hello Internet flag. We're just discussing the things that make the flags unique or that capture our attention about these flags. Ready for another one?

Ready for another one? Ready for another one. There you go. I'm randomly choosing a marble. The next one we are going to speak about is White Cross. White Cross. This was when we had quite a bit of debate about what to name as well, but we seem to have settled on White Cross because I just said it. I'm not sure we actually had 100% settled on what the name should be, but I see you just ran with it. Yeah. And there's no fixing that in editing now. No. And White Cross was my choice. So, I've abused my position as the marble puller there. Fair enough. With great power comes great responsibility that you're happy to abuse and that's fine. All right. What is white cross? Well, do you want to describe it? Because we even have a disagreement about how it should be described.

White cross is a black flag. It's very simple, just plain black. And then it has a white design in the middle. And that white design could be best described as a cross, obviously, but both sticks of the cross, for lack of a better term, have sort of serifs on the end. They look like two capital I's crossed over each other. But of course, a capital I turned on its side does bear a striking similarity to the letter H. So, I think one could easily see an H-I if that was the way they were choosing to look at the flag, but it's not obvious. It's not an obvious H-I. It would only say H-I to someone, I think, who was looking for it. Otherwise, you'd just think it was sort of an old-fashioned type cross. It's definitely the most old-fashioned of the designs we have. Oh yeah, without a doubt. It's easy to miss the

HI. It does look like a much more old-fashioned-y symbol. And the creator of this design, Muffled Pancakes, explicitly said that it is designed to be heraldractically informed. Heraldically? Heraldically. From the field of heraldry. Yes, thank you, Brady. From the field of heraldry. Yep.

I would go with my usual, just be confident and don't apologize. But my mouth was not even able to make sounds that could approximate what this word would be. So I was stumbled upon it. But from the field of heraldry is exactly right. That's what it looks like. I almost think like you could see this design on a knight's shield who is about to do some jousting. It would not look out of place. Definitely, definitely. Yeah. It's sort of a bit Game of Thrones. Yeah, yeah, maybe. What's the rest of what Muffled Pancakes said there?

They wrote some more. Muffled Pancakes likes their big words, don't they? It obeys the laws of tincture and may be blazoned, for any English heraldry nerds out there, sable, a cross-potent, elongated, festwise argent. Well done there, Brady. Well done. Thank you. I'm sure the nerds in the field of heraldry will know exactly what this means. And we won't even have to look at the show notes. They will just immediately have the image appear in their mind. So, I mean,

this obviously is a little bit New Zealand-y too, because it's black with a white image. So, in keeping with the times. It is in keeping with the times. But as always, you can't think of current events when selecting a flag that may last far, far into the future, far beyond either of us, Brady. But I think that this is a flag design that can definitely stand the test of time. And I think it's also an interesting choice because in some ways it is one of the least hello internet looking flags just at a glance because of the black color and because of the cross in the center. But I like the subtlety of the HI. And I think in a flag referendum like this, it is definitely good to have a choice that is more different from the other flags. Yeah. It's interesting in that it

doesn't use grey as well. I wonder if that will help or hinder it. Yeah, that's what makes it stand out is that it does not have a grey background. I mean, I can imagine the New Zealand committee would have given people two options with this, a black one have a grey background. I mean, I can imagine the New Zealand committee would have given people two options with this, a black one and a grey one. Definitely a black one, definitely a grey one. Without a doubt, that would be in there. By the way, if you send in your vote and say, I vote for White Cross, but I want it to have a grey background, that is a null vote. Your vote will not be counted. Yes, you have spoiled your ballot is what you have done.

Yeah. So, it's the black background or nothing. That's what you're getting, people. Okay. All right. Do you want to pick another flag for us, Brady? I do. I'm loving this.

I'm loving this. Pulling these marbles out is my favorite thing in the whole podcast. I think you're just, you're reveling in the power next is this is one that gray and i have decided to call flaggy flag i'm not gonna lie flaggy flag as far as names go is my favorite name i just think it's funny to call something a flaggy flag. Yeah. As the listener might be imagining, flaggy flag is the flag that most looks like a flag. No one would ever look at this and think,

oh, what is that thing? Everyone would know that it is a flag. Now, it is a bit of a variant on a traditional tricolour flag. But here is what the designer has done. Tricolour, if you want to sound all posh. Tricolour? Is that the name? Some people say tricolour, yeah. Oh, wait a minute.

You're just saying tricolour in a fancy way? No, I don't accept that. Well, sorry. No, I don't accept that. I'm posh, man. I'm hard as nails and posh. You're hard as nails and you're very posh? What can you be posh as? I'm posh, man. I'm hard as nails and posh. You're hard as nails and you're very posh. What can you be posh as?

I'm posh as a nice cushion. I like that. Hard as nails and posh as cushions. Anyway, go on. Sorry. I hope that one follows you around. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not posh all right so the tricolor flag designed by thp44 moment if we're thinking of dividing the flag vertically in half the right half of that flag

is the traditional hello internet gray color now the left half has been vertically divided into again so that there is a black vertical stripe and a white vertical stripe that are taking up the other 50% of the flag. So I have to say right away, I find most tricolor flags just deathly boring, but I think the little bit of asymmetry here with the vertical tricolorness helps this design quite a lot. Whereas if it was a regular tricolor, I would just fall asleep simply looking at it.

So I think this little design element really helps. And where this flag comes from is that the designer is basing this off of the line from hello internet episode 38 where you finish the show by saying that i speaking as you brady am a black and white kind of guy and you my friend are gray so that is the design for this flag so the left-hand side, the black and white side is me and the right-hand side, which is all grey, is grey. Another way to have described this would be just to say, as we go from left to right, the first 25% is black, the second 25% is white and the final 50% is grey. That is not the way I would have described it. No, it's not. I know it's not.

You chose a very convoluted way to describe it. You went from right to left and then you started splitting things in two and you were doing all sorts of rubbish. I was just doing a series of two bisections. That's all it was. All right. But I like this flag simply because it's sort of the two of us, but also I think almost everything that we discuss in the show, sometimes one of us is wishy-washy and isn't going with something. And sometimes the other person has a very harsh opinion that they will not be budged on.

So I think there is definitely something Hello Internet-y about this flag and this design, even if it is the most flaggy of the flags. Also, the white vertical stripe, which is sort of going down the middle, but obviously is a bit off center, does look like the eye in Hello Internet. So it also, it sort of looks a little bit like our logo and our branding as well. Like, so it has quite a lot going for it, actually. Yeah, it definitely does. Next one.

Let's pick the fourth of the five. Sound effects, sound effects. Here it goes. Next, we are talking about... This one is called HI Logo. In many ways, this is the existing New Zealand flag of our referendum. It's the one you would have expected. It's the established look. It's kind of what we are already.

It's the incumbent if we did have a flag. Here's how you can best imagine this flag. Take a look at your podcast player right now and look at our logo and then imagine that logo just on a slightly larger field of grey that turns it into a rectangle. Yeah. The established logo flag. And you're right, it is the contender that everybody already knows. is our logo on a gray background yeah so the so the square of our logo is made a bit smaller so it nestles a bit more nicely inside the gray of a rectangular flag thoughts gray i mean obviously you like it because you're the designer of this

i you know i never i never want to i never want to bias an election, but yes, I am the designer of the Hello Internet logo. And I spent a number of hours that I never want to describe trying to get all the little dots to match up in a way that I found aesthetically pleasing that also matches up with the H and the I in a way that nobody ever notices or comments on, but I know is there. And so I appreciate that. But yes, without a doubt, I would say that this is the New Zealand flag of our referendum. It was interesting, an early draft of this, when we were going to flagize it to put it into this

referendum, you initially had the HI in the middle of a grey flag and sort of the dots around the edge of the flag. And I sort of said to you, no, it's got to be the square and put it, you know, centralize it. Oh yeah. This is another case of where we had, even in the flag selections, we had very many things that we were messing around with. The other problem that I ran into with flag-izing the Hello Internet logo is, of course, there is an extraordinarily subtle gradient on our actual logo. And gradients are just verboten on a flag. You cannot have a gradient on a flag. If we were, say, ever to print the flags, you cannot possibly try to print something with a gradient. So I had to spend a little while trying to pick the exact right color of gray to be the monotone background for the flag yeah there's there's a lot involved in this referendum people i know it i know it sounds because we're so professional and just

so smooth like this is just this was just you know easy fast work for the two of us everything's going along smooth but there was there was much discussion behind the scenes about this stuff so the final flag i will i will draw the ball for the sake of completeness and sound effects but of course you will it can only be one the final one we're going to talk about has been given the name nail and gear name Nail and Gear. Nail and Gear. This one has an interesting history because it first appeared on the Reddit with one colour scheme and then evolved to another colour scheme, which is the colour scheme it now has in our referendum. It is a grey flag.

Surprise, surprise. It has a white design in the middle surprise surprise but the design in the middle of this is very reminiscent of kind of a sort of communist hammer and sickle in some ways at first glance but what it is in fact is the the cog or gear made famous by CGP Grey's own logo that he uses in his own videos and branding with the flask test tube removed. And in place of the test tube is a stylized nail, presumably representing my hardness. Yeah. Brady, Posh's cushions, Harry. Yes. posh as cushions herring yes the the the couple of times i said hard as nails for reasons that

remain a mystery to me seem to have stuck with me and i come up all the time so yeah it's a total mystery that you keep bringing up all the time to reference yourself whenever you possibly can i don't know why it's lived on the podcast for as long as it has but uh but why but why people have gone with it is beyond me though and And, you know, I'm not actually heartless nails, but anyway, we'll go with it. Anyway, and this gear and nail stylization has sort of been rotated anti-clockwise by about 45 degrees. It's cool looking. This is the one that, as you referenced, by far went through the largest number of people modifying the design on the Reddit. I think the two people most responsible for this design are appearing for the second time in our contest here is Lazward Kermist.

And then this final coloration was done by Wilbob15. But there were definitely a bunch of variations on this particular one. So this flag has gone through a big evolution. And when we were discussing options, we think that this is the best and final evolution of this particular design. I think it's very interesting for the color selection. Like they've, you know, they've done a kind of light gray on dark gray background in a way that still makes it distinct. And I think that the overlay of the nail for you and the gear for me has worked out very well on this one. In some ways, I think of this flag as a bit like the opposite of the one that we started out with, the club and claw flag.

If the club and claw flag is the friendliest of the flags, this one on the spectra might be the angriest of the flags because it has these very sharp design elements. It has the spiky nail in it. But there's no denying that this is a cool looking flag. Yeah. It does have another dubious honour, and this is not to bias the vote because I'm sure over the course of the vote, other things are going to happen to bias it anyway. But this has the dubious honour of being one of the few flags that has been unofficially very unofficially printed out and flown because a fan of ours called Vasiliki actually printed this onto a piece of paper and took it to the Royal Society open day and posed for a bunch of

pictures with it which I have previously posted on my blog, I believe. So, we have seen pictures of this one out in the wild, but it is by no means our official flag. Nothing is our official flag until the vote is done. Right. There is no official flag until you, dear listeners, help us select one. So, there we go. There's the five. Thoughts? Looking at them all next to each other, I have to say, Brady, I'm going to give us a pat on the back for selecting such excellent flags. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at them all together on my computer and I think they look good as a bunch. I think they are good as individual options for the flags.

And I'm going to be very curious to see how this referendum goes. Yeah. I mean, I completely agree with you. I think it's a really cool list. Now, I know a lot of people are going to say ones we should have chosen and are going to submit more. Nothing is going to change this list. This is the only one to vote on. If you send anything else on your postcards, you've wasted your ballot. It will wasted your ballot it will be shredded it will be shredded um but that doesn't mean have you fixed your shredder yet to actually shred these things i need to get you a new shredder no i will count the votes at your place so you can do the shredding um but or you can bring your shredder to my place yeah that'd be such a that's so funny the idea of

you getting on the train and coming all the way here with a shredder on your lap no i'll just i'll send you an industrial shredder so just to recap though we have five you are voting on them by their names the details of how to vote including the all-important address is on the website so you have to go to the website and read the instructions this was our clever and devious plan to make sure that we could show people instructions one more time by not reading out the address on the podcast of where to send your vote.

You have to click on the link or you have to go to hellointernet.fm slash flag vote to see the instructions one more time of exactly what we want and exactly what makes a valid ballot and also to find the address to actually send the postcard to. So Brady, those who have made it to the end of our little episode on the flag referendum,

they want to know what does being an official flag of hello internet mean how does this affect the world how does this affect their lives and perhaps you as the person always trying to create official things for hello internet do you have an answer do you have an answer for our listeners well i mean i know what it means for you. You're just going to digitally archive it and record it as the winner. Right. It might go on the Wikipedia page as the official flag of Hello Internet. Oh, I didn't think of that. That's a good idea.

My thoughts are, I mean, you know me, I like a good physical object. And I do, believe it or not, I do have contacts in the flag making world. Oh, really? So I have already made a few inquiries. I've put the wheels in motion. And I think I will endeavour to fly the Hello Internet flag at some point. Perhaps we could fly it over the penguin enclosure at Bristol Zoo one day. I don't know where we would fly it over the penguin enclosure at Bristol Zoo one day. I don't know where we would fly.

I'm sure people will suggest places the Hello Internet flag could be flown. I'm not ruling out the White House at some point. Yeah, you don't want to rule out your options straight away. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm hopeful of that. I mean, what possible reason could there be for flying our flag over the White House? When we visit the White House, the podcast at that point will be so large, it will have so many listeners. Us visiting will be the equivalent of the Pope visiting.

Oh, yeah. We're basically a de facto nation at that point. That's why they fly the flag at the White House. Yeah. So, I believe the winning flag will come into existence it will be officially endorsed um i don't know what else i don't know what happens when a flag is officially appointed like it will be written into the hello internet constitution oh yeah we gotta we gotta get that constitution started somewhere i think they're gonna have to be

like rules of use you know is it allowed to is it allowed to touch the ground at any point uh i don't know oh yeah rules for how to fold it yeah under various circumstances for our military personnel how to handle it when we're a nation exactly yeah if if the podcast ever grows big enough to have its own army, for example, they will need guidelines for its use. So there is much to be done. In fact, there may even be another referendum required. So we can't rule these things out. We'll have a referendum for the flag,

and then we'll have another referendum for the rules of use of the flags. And if you think the flag referendum is convoluted and confusing, wait till you see that one. Yeah, that's going to be great. So that website address, again, Gray, for those who want to vote. And please do vote. Not only do we want your vote, we really want your votes because that's just fun and we want you guys to have helped choose the flag.

But we are also really excited about the other side of the postcard. What would you call it? The obverse side or the face side? We're really keen on where you send your postcards from as well. And we will be looking at that. So, you know, it could be hello from the black stump in Adelaide. Those votes might count double if Grey's not looking. No, they don't count double. They don't count double if they come from Adelaide. You Adelaideans don't count more no matter how much you think you do. Oh, do you know what we're gonna do gray we're gonna get some cracking stamps as well that's yeah yeah we're gonna get some great stamps we're gonna get some great stamps but i definitely definitely want to second brady's enthusiasm here for receiving ballots and

receiving postcards that is one of the reasons why we decided to pull this out as a mini episode of Hello Internet and to do it as a separate thing is because we really do want you to get involved and to help pick a flag for the show and to send in your votes. So we're looking forward to getting as many of those as we can get from everyone who wants to participate

in our flag referendum. Get out the vote. Yeah. HelloInternet.fm slash flag vote.