Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #752: April King

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

In this podcast, I talk with April King about the challenges of keeping a Magic database and about the community of Magic Twitter.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so this week I have a very good interview with April King. Some of you might know her as CubeApril online. So say hello, April. Hi, everybody. Thank you for having me on your podcast, Mark. It's great to be here. Okay, so the question I've been asking everybody to start with is, how did you start playing Magic? How did I start playing Magic? Well, I've been playing magic for a very long time because I am very old so I started playing magic back in early 1994 uh just a little bit too like just in time to

like go to my game stores and see all these amazing boxes of legends and Arabian nights and antiquities on the top shelves where I could not afford them as a teenager. But plenty of like revised and fallen empires and fourth edition and stuff. So that's when I, that's when I, I got started. I was introduced to it by some friends of mine who were like, April, you have to see this game. It's so cool. And then they pulled out their, their revised, I think it was a revised like starter deck back when they had little starter decks and uh i was like this is awesome i gotta play this game okay so you um did you play

continuously did you stop a little bit like what how long like how how was your early magic life how did that happen yeah so like i played lot, like a lot as a teenager. I played a ton with my friends. I played at school. I played, so at the time I was like in junior high and high school. And most people I assume listening to the podcast are too young to know about what magic was like these days when you wanted to play magic at schools. about what magic was like these days when you wanted to play magic at schools uh but there were a lot of schools uh that were like oh magic is look at all this imagery we can't have this in our school um same with dungeons and dragons at the time um and so uh it was kind of clandestine

magic at my school and then eventually because i was a super nerd and my teachers really liked me we got special dispensation to have a special secret room where we could all play magic which was really fun that's cool okay so and i played i played continuously up through uh urza's block okay i played through a lot of urza's block and then i was like i i don't know what magic is anymore uh it was a very weird time for magic uh and i was going off to college and so i kind of put it down uh then i picked it back up uh around this big pretty big gap i picked it back up around innistrad so okay which a great time to come back it was amazing yeah innistradott's a fun side i enjoyed indestrott um okay so what so you get back into magic so your early life was more face to face but as you got back you started becoming a part of a larger magic community right when how did you start getting

an internet presence how did that happen yeah it's really weird because like i i was never i'd always pooh-poohed social media i was like oh, oh, I don't like Facebook. This is just not for me. I just, it's just bad for your mental health. Maybe it is. I don't know. But I was doing a lot of cube stuff because I'd gotten introduced to cube from some of the early magic online cubes by Tom LePillet. And I saw videos by LSV I think on YouTube so I was like, ah, I have to have a cube so I started building my own cube and inviting my friends

and one of the friends that I invited was Megan and Maria from at the time it was Magic the Amateur and they're like, April, you have to come on and do videos and talk about Cube because nobody knows anything about Cube. And this will be so interesting to people. So I was like, sure, I'll do that.

And I made up a little bunch of episodes and they had me on and it was super fun. And they're like, you just join Twitter and talk about it. And I was like, OK. you just join Twitter and talk about it. And I was like, okay. So I joined Twitter and I started following you. Cause I had known about you for a long time, like all the way back from like Usenet posts.

When you used to post on Usenet, it'd be like, Hey, anybody want any of these boxes of legends that are like 80 bucks or whatever, come and just, just send me a, just give me a call and I'll get them to you.

So I'd known about you for a long time. I started following you on Twitter and I was like, oh, oh man, this is a great guy to dunk on. This will be great. I'll just be Evil Amaro. That sounds like a lot of fun. Okay, so the thing that I'm most fascinated... I mean, you do a lot online, and you have a whole persona,

which is very cool. The thing that you do that I find the most fascinating is sort of Scryfall. Can we talk a little bit about Scryfall? Absolutely. So, you know, it's really weird because I've been active with Scryfall since more or less the very beginning because I'm close friends from my work with people who have, you know, people who built Scryfall at the very beginning. Oh, real quick.

with people who have, you know, people who built Scriball at the very beginning. Oh, real quick, let me, when I introduce things, I should make sure the audience knows, because you and I are talking, we know what Scriball is. Oh, yes, sorry. Scriball is a database for magic cards.

I mean, how do you describe Scriball? That is exactly what it is. It's like a very, very incredibly complicated database with a thin veneer of queries on top of it. Luckily for us, we have one of the smartest database people I've ever met in my entire life who manages to tie it all together because I sure as heck could not do it myself. So how did Scryfall start?

Do you know the origins of Scryfall? Yeah, I mean, it was started back four or five years ago, I want to say. Back when there was the previous site, which was, it's slipping my mind right now. There was another magic search engine that everybody used. And it hadn't been, why can't I think of the name? Anyways, I'll think of it later. Everybody used it and it just didn't get updated, right?

Like, people used it because it had good query syntax and stuff, and you could do... It was easy to find cards, but, like, there were points where it would get two or three sets out of date. And it's really hard to use the Magic Search Engine if you don't know, for example, what cards are in Standard. So a bunch of my friends decided that they could do better and the magic community really needed this because you know uh at the time i think magic had like 12 000 cards 11 000 cards and now it's getting close to 20 000 unique cards i think it's over 20 it passed 20 a little while is it it might be over 20 000 cards it's certainly over 20,000 unique printings of cards. It's well, well over that.

Yeah, well over that. We're like, we got to make it better. We got to make it easy for people to find stuff. We kind of did. We structured ourself based on the existing website and kind of have grown from there. Go ahead. What do you do? What's your job?

Yeah. So I actually, like we, we have a Slack where we would talk about the future of Scribe All and things that we should work on. So I have a lot of impact and feedback there. Uh, but I actually don't code on it very much i do so much programming and stuff in my real life job that at the end of the day i'm like i wait it's not like you mark where you're like oh i play magic all day and then i get done with the day and i want to do podcasts and i want to i want to go on tumblr and talk more about magic like i want to just be done with this stuff um so uh i actually don't code that much on Scryfall. I like to think of my...

They kind of think of me as a pain in their butt and like their chief evangelist. So whenever there's like a new Scryfall feature, I like to talk about it and help people out. I do a lot. I answer a lot of questions on Twitter. People send messages on Twitter to Scryfall. We all get to see them and we get to respond.

I want to talk a little bit just because one of the things I'm fascinated by and one of the fun reasons to have guests on people send messages on Twitter to Scryfall. We all get to see them and we get to respond. I'll talk a little bit, just because one of the things I'm fascinated by and one of the fun reasons to have guests on is get experts in other areas. I'm going to talk a little bit about a database because we have our own database that we do that has cards you guys haven't seen because we're working on the cards.

Right. So we have our own database, but databases, I want to talk a little bit about magic databases, because let's talk, what is the challenge of a magic database? Why is a magic database so hard? The Oracle text, at the very least, has a very strong templating language, which is really nice. Wizards has done a very good job of making sure that every card ever made follows the correct templating for how it should be. And that's great. But everything else on the card is kind of like, we're going to keep experimenting, we're going to keep pushing in new directions.

And as a player, that's great. However, as somebody who maintains a database, it gets really, really, really hard. So, for example, we have a lot of things that you just know to be true, right? Okay, so a magic card has one name, right? It has one name and it has one side until someday it comes along and that's not true anymore. And all of a sudden magic cards have faces, right? It can have two sides. Or, for example, a magic card with a certain name has just one oracle text, right?

There's a direct mapping of card name to oracle text all the way up until the point where that's not true anymore like in unstable um and so you build these databases around these rules these laws of how wizards creates cards uh and then every so often wizards just comes out and just drops a bomb on us. And we're like, oh, no, this is really terrible. And like, I think Wizards has their own database. Yeah. And Gatherer, for people who don't know, and Gatherer, you know, it's been around for a long time. So it has some shortcomings that are just, that's just inherently.

I was not talking about Gatherer, by the way. We do have Gatherer. We, in our, behind the scenes, we have a database. You have your own database. Because we have to have a database of cards that aren't out yet. And so we have our own database. That's what I was talking about, behind the scenes. Got it.

Well, the public, the public database is Gatherer. Yes, yes, the public database is Gatherer. And Gatherer, you know, what it's trying to do is a lot more focused. It's just like, here is every card in a set, but it's not trying to organize, like, here are all the different, necessarily, like, here are all the different arts for it. Here are all the different, there's lots and lots of things that cards do. Yeah. That if you're, if you are just trying to have a way to, like, find all the cards that exist by, like, their name. Yeah.

That's one thing. all the cards that exist by their name. Yeah. That's one thing. But if you're trying to have a comprehensive database of every printing of every magic card ever made, and you want it to be something, you want it to be easily searchable, then you have a lot more problems when Wizards keeps

innovating. I'm living in dread for the first triple-sided card. I don't even know what's going to happen next. Well, I mean, in that corner, for example, we just introduced the idea of a card that has two names that was a brand new one yeah yeah no it's it's very it's very very tricky um because it's just that one card yeah and it has yeah that that was also thank you thank you for doing that that was yeah luckily for me i i just get to watch the people

who work on that stuff suffer. So I get to enjoy the pain that they go through. But it can definitely be a challenge at times. The other thing is that there's two different things, I think, in a database. One is just having the information and the other is making it

such that people can find what they want. Because the way I explain it is that people can find what they want. Because the way I explain it is, let's say I have a pile of shoes, and let's say I have 20,000 shoes, and I just put them in a giant pile on the floor. That doesn't mean you can find what you... Just because the database

has it doesn't mean that you can easily find it. And another thing that you guys do really well is I want to build a deck. So I'm looking for a particular thing. Like, I want to, not only do I just want to find stuff, but I want to find stuff for my deck. So I want to search for something I care about.

But I might care about something that nobody else cares about or few people care about. And the flexibility of the way this graphite works is very fascinating to me because no matter what you want, and in fact, you guys have been doing, I don't know what to call it, but where you look for something and people code it, and then I can look for people looking left or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. So there's actually, so Scryfall has actually two databases. And someday we hope to get them integrated into one database. So we have the main Scryfall search engine, which is what most people are familiar with when they think of Scryfall. We also have Tagger. What Tagger is, is it's a database

of the arts that appear on magic cards. So like, with a magic card, everything on it is easily categorizable, right? Like, outside of the art, right? You have a name, you have a manicot, you have a it's all text, right? Like, outside of the art, right? You have a name. Yeah. A manicot. It's all text. It's all text.

Yeah, it's all text, right? Yeah. Arts, however, there's nothing, like, I can't see, like, our database can't look at a piece of card and be like, okay, there's a sword, there's a woman looking left, there's a tree, and, like, so it can't know that. But people, especially people who play commander, really, really, really care about that sort of stuff.

Like they want to have their deck of women in hats. They want to have their database of dogs who are white dogs or whatever. They want to have their database of specific, very specific visual things. And that's great. But that's very hard to do in a database right tagger we enlist the entire community who like new set comes out look at all of these cards tag all of the attributes in them so that people can search for cards with those attributes in the art yeah um now that is pretty complete when it comes to newer cards right but when you get to get to, like, you know, there's been 20,000 cards or whatever, but there's way more arts than that. Right, right, right.

Many cards have many, many arts. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, because it is entirely people-powered. Yeah. It's not powered by an algorithm. Right. Some of those older cards are slower to get tagged completely.

But someday, the hope is to be able to have the two databases integrated. So for example, you could search for women looking left who have first strike. And I think that would be super cool. That's the future someday, but we're still working on that one.

Okay, so something that I think you do, at least you sometimes do, so there's always cards on the front of it, and it takes a while to realize that the cards are themed. Do you always do the themes, or different people do the themes? Different people do the themes. So we have a little group. We have the Scryfall core team,

and we usually will discuss what the themes are going to be. How often is the theme up? It varies a lot. We've had themes that are up for just, like, one day, because they're, like, little... Because we actually have people who check the Scryfall themes every single day, right? Whenever we change the theme,

we will get notices on Twitter, like, well, I love your theme, that's so cool, and stuff. And the themes are sometimes complex. The themes, like, sometimes they're easy, but sometimes they're like, what is your theme. That's so cool. And stuff. And the themes are sometimes complex. The themes, like, sometimes they're easy, but sometimes they're like, what is this theme?

You have to figure out the theme. Right, yeah, exactly. And some of them are really obscure, too. So, like, we could put, like, a Mark Rosewater birthday theme up on the homepage, right? And the very small subset of people who follow you and know your birthday

get the theme, but most people will be like, I don't get these cards at all. This year, I know, I sent you a little thank you. This year is my birthday, May 25th for those that are on my birthday, and on the site for the day they just did themes I like.

Which, I mean, mostly were cards I also made, but that's because I make cards that I like. Which, I mean, mostly were cards I also made, but that's because I make cards that I like. But anyway, it was the kind of thing that I saw, and I go, oh, I don't know how many people, I mean, some of my fans might know, obviously. But it was very touching to me. They're like, oh, they made my birthday.

Yeah, and like Scryfall, the people who work on Scryfall are pretty progressive people. We've got a very diverse group of people who work on Scryfall. And so progressive people we've got a very diverse group of people who work on scryfall um and so a lot of our themes are based around you know things like black lives matter or or like you know uh whatever um you know we feel like is important to send a message to the magic community that like we care and we support about these issues that people also care about

and it's hard because you know it's it's just six cards on the bottom of the page. Right, right. It's only six cards? I think it's just... Is it seven? I always forget if it's six or seven. I think six is right. No, it's seven.

It's seven, okay. It's four on the top and three on the bottom. So, I mean, sometimes you have to get themes that there's at least seven cards, right? Yes, that's also true. How often do you get themes like, oh, there's six cards? Like, it's Yes, that's also tricky. How often do you get thieves like, oh, there's six cards? Like, it's funny.

Yeah, we want you to complete seven card cycles. We don't care about five card cycles. Right. Don't care about it. We don't care about vertical cycles,

horizontal cycles. We want seven card cycles. You should text me, go. We need one more dog looking left. You need another dog looking left, please. All right, I'll make sure

I do that for you. Okay, so the let's move on a little bit another thing that I have a lot of fun like one of the things that I find very interesting is watching the magic community so like magic twitter for example

is it's own entity like one of the things I found is that communities congregate around where they can communicate. So, for example, I have a blog on Tumblr, so there's a Tumblr community. There's a Reddit community. There is...

Name your thing of choice. Facebook. Name however you... Whatever social media you do. Snapchat. I'm on TikTok. There's a magic TikTok group. I just have to say that personally, that just blows my mind.

Mark Rosewater, who is a touch typist, also is on TikTok. These things are just so hard for me to hold. Here's why I'm on TikTok. Not that I post a lot on TikTok. Like, these things, I was like, these things are just so hard for me to hold. Here's why I went on TikTok. Here's why I went on TikTok. I mean, not that I post a lot on TikTok. Is I have three kids.

One of my daughters, Sarah, is 16, and she's on TikTok all the time. And one of the things I try to do is I try to be on a bunch of different platforms because I want to reach different audiences.

And I've been on Twitter forever. I've been on Tumblr forever. I've been on Instagram for quite a while. I was on Google Plus for a while before that went away. And so I was looking for what to do. And I looked at Snapchat, but the nature of Snapchat is not super conducive because everything goes away right away. I want to post things that people can go, like, I want to post things that people can talk about and go back and look at. You want to build a little community. I want to build a little that people can talk about, and go back and look at, and you want to build, a little community, I want to build a little community,

and so my daughter, encouraged me to do TikTok, and I'm like, okay, I need your help, she's my advisor, and so TikTok's been, a combination of things,

she suggested, and things I suggested, you probably can tell them apart, everything she suggested, if you don't know TikTok, is like, what is going on, because I post my TikTok,

in other places, and some of the stuff, is mine, like I've done some puzzles and things i did a little a little mini uh comedy video um but when i'm like dancing or something for like 30 seconds that's my daughter but i do i do try to mix it up so uh i had a hunch that was the case so it's good to hear some confirmation yeah the one in the car where we're doing a little dance moves that was we were waiting for pizza and she's like can we do a little thing? So she taught me the dance moves. If you want to see me do dance moves with my daughter, you can go to TikTok.

But anyway, you, Magic Twitter is sort of your realm. It is my realm, yeah. I have a Tumblr. It is just an evil version of Marco Rosewater's Tumblr. But I'm not on there that often. I mostly, like, I have, I actually have no idea how you do what you do. You must have way more, you obviously have way more energy than I do,

but I have, like, two little kids, and it's just really, really hard to find the time to, like, do more than just Twitter for me. Like, I would love to be active on other places. I want to stream. I want to stream a lot on Twitch, but it's just like... My kids get to bed at 10 o'clock,

and I'm like, it's already an hour past my bedtime. I can't stream. Yeah, it is... I don't know. I like doing it, so I have a lot of energy. Who knows where it comes from?

Twitter is my realm. I really, really enjoy the Twitter platform. There's a few things I don't like about it. Namely, that I can't have polls of five options that really hurt so much. Here's my two things about polls. You and I can share

our, because you and I do a lot of polls. Between us, we might do the vast majority of magic polls. I think so. Probably 95% between the two of us. Yeah. So my two pet peeves, and that's one of them, is sometimes I just want more than four options. And the second thing is it doesn't give me my results. Like, just tell me what the percentages are.

Just tell me. Like, I have to have people look in the code to tell me. I mean, you can probably look at it yourself. But it's like, can you just tell me my percentages, please? I posted it. Tell me how many people said this and that. Like, actual numbers. If you vote in the poll, I think it gives you a notification, I think.

I mean, what I want is the, I can see the final percentages, I guess. What I want is how many people voted for this. I want actual numbers. The numbers, yeah. Right. Like, how hard would it be for them to have, like, a little thing you just hover your mouse over the percentage. And it shows the numbers. And it gives you the actual number, yeah. Like, I find it very frustrating when them to have, like, a little thing you just hover your mouse over the percentage and it gives you the actual number?

Yeah. Like, I find it very frustrating when I'm like, I don't know. Like, it gets 3,000 votes. In the end, it doesn't matter. But, like, I really want to know if it was separated by one vote or by, like, 30 votes. When it's 50-50, it'll go 50-50, this person wins. And I go, but by how much? I want to know.

Was it one vote? Was it 12 votes? I mean, the other thing that's funny for me is, I believe we can talk a little bit about doing polls. So I started doing head-to-head. I originally wanted to do it on the website, and for years I tried to get them to do it on the website, and they just wouldn't do it for whatever.

They couldn't do it or whatever. They didn't have the software or something. And then the second I realized that Twitter started doing the polling options, I'm like, oh, I'm just going to do it myself. And I started doing my head-to-heads. And then you really... Let's talk about your polls. You love going off...

I mean, you seem to love... I'll do a poll and then you'll do your warped version of my poll. Yeah, I... So, you know, it's interesting. I first you'll do like your warped version of my poll yeah i so you know it's interesting um i i first started really doing polls on twitter when you i mean like i was like oh mark mark is doing head-to-head polls on twitter so i should also do evil i should do evil head-to-head polls on twitter and like i've done things like uh i'm kind of looking at my stack here because i've got

i got a bunch of them here, but like head-to-head fun things, wizards, what you have, which I think we've now gotten like 75% of them by now. Including things like Squirrels and Standard, Great Designer Search 3, Giant Ballard. Like, they were all on this list at one point. I'm going to claim

all the credit for them appearing. The reason we did all those things was your poll. It was my poll, I know. Like, greatest villains of all time, which is not, like, based on magic villains, but things on, like, the, like, like, Game Store bathrooms or the Shuffler. Things like classic, classic tropes of,

or, like, Dryad Arbor, where it looks like a forest. Like, funny things like that. So I started doing these polls and um what's fat what i found is that people really really interact with polls like you can make a post you make a comment yeah and you know you'll get some responses and stuff and that's great but like if you do a poll people have to pick something they love to talk about why they made their decision and why their decision is the right one and that to me is is what i really really enjoy like i don't go to twitter to you know just post into the void i think that's actually the least interesting part of of twitter i i like going to twitter because i want to talk to people yeah like it's my it's my

you know i'm a stay-at-home mom you know uh, works from home. Now there's COVID-19. Twitter is my social interaction with people and like I want to talk to people. So that's why I love polls so much. I don't know if you found the same thing with your polls where like people really

get invested on them. I think I, so one of the things Twitter will do, also, I don't know if Twitter does this for everybody, but I got my little blue check,

my little verified thing. They'll give you data on sort of how you're doing so you can see impressions and everything. So my impressions tripled when I started doing head-to-head. It was insane. Yeah, it's really crazy. It's just so much better for getting people to open up. And they're really fun. Like, I remember, I think my favorite poll you ever did was, it was

like, people you want to return. I forget what it was, but at one point it was like, Urza versus, was it Jaya? I think Urza-Jaya was the finals. Urza versus Jaya was the finals. And I'm like, this cannot stand. I find Urza to be a detestable,

like, he's a hero, sort of. He's a kind of an... I don't even know how to describe him. Yeah, he's morally gray. Morally gray character. And, like, I love Jaya. She's my favorite. And I went to bat, and I was like...

I only have, like... I mean, at the time, I only had, like, 15,000 followers or whatever. And I'm like... I just need to... It was so close. I was like, I just need to move the needle just 1% to score the moral victory. And, like, when I won by, like, a tenth of a percent, it just felt so close. I just needed to move the needle just 1% to score the moral victory. When I won by a tenth of a percent, it just felt so good.

Yeah, it is fun. One thing about the Twitter, for those that don't know, those that aren't on Twitter, give me a take on what Matcha Twitter is. How does Matcha Twitter function, you think? Oh, golly.

Oh, my. uh geez that's a that's a deep question maro i asked you to send me questions to prepare if they were going to be hard ones uh you know magic twitter uh is you know it's there's people like to think of it as this like monolithic thing but i've definitely found that there are definite subgroups of people that folks tend to follow like there, there are the wizards, like you, like WeSharp, like the various people

who are, like, very visible on Twitter. Yeah. Like Ethan, Gavin, and so on. They're the pros. Except people just follow pros. Like, they just follow

people who are... Right, who are very good at magic and play the NPL. Very good at magic, right? Like, then there are people who just follow, like, the commander people, like Shavam and whatnot, people who, like, are on the commander committee. And then right like then there are people who just fall like the commander people like shivam and whatnot people like on the commander committee and then there's

like people who just like follow comedians right like people who just like at least i think they think i'm funny as much as my uh children don't agree um but like uh people who just do like weird stuff who just post about funny things on magic who who are just very interactive. So that's kind of the little circle that I like to fall into. But it's definitely not like... Except for you. I think you and maybe the professor are followed by maybe the Magic Twitter community at large, but

most people tend to follow certain subgroups, I think. But one of the fun things about Twitter, for those who've never been on Twitter, is you pick and choose what you want to see. So you find the people that you find interesting and then you follow those people and then you can interact with them. And for example,

one of the fun things about Twitter is someone can say something and I can I'll respond to every Twitter just because I'm busy, but I mean, if someone asks a quick question I know the answer. I'll just answer on Twitter or something comes up. I use Twitter a lot to just communicate with people because it's very instant and very fast. And if I'll just answer on Twitter or something comes up. You know, I use Twitter a lot to just communicate with people

because it's very instant and very fast. And if you've never been on Twitter and you're a Magic player, there isn't, there are so many people, I mean,

it's such a choice of people, you know, whether it's people who work on Magic, people who, you know, do Magic as a, you know,

the press or people that sort of, I don't know what to call them, the contributors that sort of talk about magic. There's people like you that are sort of just making commentary and stuff. Terrible people, yeah. But anyway, that's one of the things that I enjoy about it

is you pick and choose what you want and you get to follow people and you'll get into heated discussions about all sorts of things. In fact, one of the things I find funny is, at Wizards, in the pit, we will go off on random tangents. Like, I do comics about it, where we're just arguing about how good a basketball team the Lord of the Rings would be.

I love Tales from the Pit. They're great. And anyway, so, it's interesting how I enjoy that. And Twitter has the same kind of quality where, like, for example, I'll make a comic about something, and then just people will go off or whatever, you know, you know, and it's just funny to watch people, uh, like, I had a comic yesterday, uh, where I was talking about if, uh, Magic Spells had Yelp reviews, and then people were like, what are Yelp reviews for Magic Spells, and going off, you know, and, uh, I think there

was a whole thread. It was fun, so. You know, one thing I've always wondered is that, like, I have never... I've never gotten a chance to ask you this question because it's so weird, but it's related to Twitter. I don't think I've ever seen you like a Twitter post. Have you... Do you ever like Twitter posts?

I don't like... I don't like... I mean, I... Well, I enjoy Twitter posts. I don't hit the little heart. I don't tend to... You don't hit the little heart button. Yeah.

I've never seen you... I've never gotten the habit of it. Yeah. So, yes, I've never gotten... I literally have liked... I mean, not that I don't tend to... You don't hit the little heart button. Yeah. I've never seen you... I've never gotten the habit of it. Yeah. So, yes, I've never gotten... I literally have, like, not... I mean, not that I haven't actually enjoyed things, but I've never hit the like

for anything. For whatever it is, I never... I don't know. I just never got into the style of doing that, so... That's totally fair. I was just curious

as to how that happens. Yeah. I also... I was also, like, wondering, like, do blue checkmark people get the option to, like, hide all of their likes or something?

Oh, no, no, no, no. By the way, I was so excited when I got my blue check. I was crazy excited. I went to my family. I'm like, I got a blue check, and they're like, we have no idea what you're talking about. But you seem excited. I work in tech. Literally, I mean,

five blocks away from the Twitter headquarters. I know friends. I have ex-co-workers who work at Twitter. I like come on just give just give me that blue check that's all i just just give it to me i just want to be like no april we're not i think at this point it's almost like half out of spite they're like you're just never you're never the thing is weird is there's people that just decide at some point that you're worthy of a blue check and it's not there's no rules or anything it's just like at some point you get one and i just got one at one point i got i'm so i i just was so excited it's kind of kind of

anyway it was like it used to be that there was a page you could go to and you'd be like please verify my profile here's a bunch of evidence or whatever they're like you have to show that you're a significant person for whatever reason yeah and you could go to this page and submit evidence and then they would give you a ruling. Yeah. And then they're like, oh, we don't want to do this. This is just too much work.

So now it just essentially appears at random. Well, there's a secret cabal or something. There is a secret cabal, yes, of blue checkmarker gibbons, yeah. So the one thing I'm trying to do with a lot of my interviews is I'm trying to encourage people to expand their magic awareness a little bit.

So the two big things from today for you, one is, check out Twitter. Magic Twitter is a lot of fun. There's a lot of people to follow. And you can pick and choose, like, you can customize. Like, do you watch the professional videos? You can follow them. You watch Megan Maria? Both of them are on. Every magic celebrity you can think of probably is

on Twitter, or the vast majority of them is. Including, not just me, but a lot of people that work at Wizard, a lot of people that work at Wizard have Twitters. And so, anyway, A, there's Magic Twitter, so if you've never done Magic Twitter, or the vast majority of them is. Including, not just me, but a lot of people that work at Wizards, a lot of people that work at Wizards have Twitters. And so, anyway, A, there's Magic Twitter, so if you've never done Magic Twitter, that's fun to do. The second thing is Scryfall. It is a really good database. I do use Scryfall

from time to time, and it's, you know, when I want to find, especially when I want to find weird, obscure things, you guys have the best at finding very weird and offbeat things to look for. Yeah, I get a lot of questions from various wizards, like how do I do this one thing on

Black Floyd? Can you please help me out? That's funny. I message you all the time, like I want to find this thing. How do I find this thing? And you'll send me a little code, and you're like, okay, I don't know how I would have found that. I don't know what it means, but I will yes. So, I am learning, by the way, that you could, because there's a't know what it means, but I will, yes. I am learning, by the way, that you could,

because there's a page you can go to, but you can, if you know the code, you can just type it in the bar. So I'm a little bit learning the code of how to type it in the bar. Yeah, the vast majority of people, I think, eventually learn the special syntax because it makes your searching much, much faster. Like, color equals blue,

or CMC greater than three. Yeah, I'm learning. I'm learning it. You're getting better. I'm getting better. I remember when you first started, I was like, you just do. Yeah, I'm learning. I'm learning it. You're getting better. I'm getting better. I remember when you first started, I was like, you just do like,

color equals blue. That's how you do it, Mark. Yeah. Okay, anyway, I am approaching my desk. So I've made it to my workspace. So I need to wrap up. So when I come to Mass,

we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. But I want to thank April for being with us. Thank you, April, so much. Thank you so much, Mark, for having me on. It's been a really fun time. And so it was quite enjoyable. So everyone, thanks

for joining us, and we will see you next time. Bye-bye.