No Jumper - The Tay Zonday Interview

Episode Date: November 21, 2019

Youtube icon Tay Zonday, sat down with Adam for an in depth conversation that retraces his endeavors since the iconic "Chocolate Rain". From the snowball effect of the viral moment, to quitting his teaching job, Tay explains what really happened behind the scenes. ---- FOLLOW OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST! https://spoti.fi/2vi9lsD CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! http://www.nojumper.com/ SUBSCRIBE for new interviews (and more) weekly: http://bit.ly/nastymondayz Follow us on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nojumper and iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/no-jumper/id1001659715?mt=2 and follow us on Social Media: http://www.twitter.com/nojumper http://www.instagram.com/nojumper http://www.reddit.com/r/nojumper JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Q3XPfBm follow Adam22 as well: http://www.twitter.com/adam22 http://www.instagram.com/adam22 and follow adam22hoe on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A, B, C, D, F-G. We're gonna be shouting in here. We're not gonna be peaking. We're not peaking the levels in here because we're all just like this and having a podcast right now. Wow. Holy shit.

No Jumber, coolest podcast in the world that I'm in here with... Taze on Day. The one and only. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to have you in here, man. You're like switching into like auctioneer mode real quick, I feel like.

Oh, well, I'm excited to be here. You know, I was this in some of the other episodes. You have a lot of range. You do authors, you do pop culture, just like everybody's in here. This is the place to be right here. That's what I keep saying. It'll be like the next Joe Rogan, next Oprah. Somebody has to carry on the Joe Rogan torch.

There you go. At some point, he's going to, you know, have just smoke too much weed and it's too much blunt trauma to his head. He'll call me in to take over. No jump over will cease to exist. I will take over the Joe Rogan experience. That's a great idea. Will it be carried on through the lineages? There you go.

You plan it ahead. We met or we started communicating online in a very odd. way because I actually was out an Andrew Yang rally. It was totally random. It was like the most random thing that led to me being here. And me and my friends, and I mean, that was the first time I ever been to a political rally and I just sucked. I mean, maybe we were a little high.

I don't know. But I fucking started telling them, hey, that's him. That's a chocolate ring guy. He's over there. He's right there. And I don't know. I mean, maybe. And then my Twitter starts blowing up.

Right. And people are like, because of course. Were you an Andrew Yang around? I'd be like, uh, you always think that you're going to be able to. to talk about somebody online without like realizing like oh of course people are just going to tag them immediately and they're going to see it and like immediately

like hey John DeWere you at Andrew Yang's rally I'm like uh no but not really your style I better make a video to like verify this is me not really your style I just haven't been to political rallies right I don't blame you that was my first one

I might be down to do it well let me tell you Andrew Yang's how was it great dude uh it was amazing it was I thought that the vibe was going to be something else because I guess like the only political rallies that you usually see are like Trump rallies really

where there's like violence and people yelling and screaming and it's a very like contentious atmosphere. You know what people just nodding their heads is very odd things. That was like the most like great vibe because and part of it too is one thing I realized that maybe I didn't assume was that Andrew Yang has insane levels of support from the Asian community and that event was like right around

the corner from Korea town. So it was just like huge. It was like at least 50% Asian, everybody's super good vibes relaxed. Well, you know what I love about Andrew Yegg, though? He's very like, well, very personable. They say that the person who wins the president to is always the one who's better to have a beer with, who can envision that. And that rule has never been broken by entire life.

Trump doesn't drink beer. Yeah. Well, I mean, but you, but you would have to say, I mean, and I mean, I was not a huge fan of his, but in terms of like, I think it was a great entertainer. I don't think that means he's a great, you know, president necessarily. But in terms of like who's going to entertain you at a party more, Hillary or Trump, eh. That's true.

Well, I mean, and even beyond having a beer with every day, it's kind of like, well, who would you rather read on Twitter every day? And in that sense, you know, I would rather, I mean, I don't want to be in here saying anything positive about Hillary. But I mean, you know, Hillary seems like she's got her head on her shoulders, maybe a little bit more. But Donald Trump is just nonstop entertainment. Absolutely. entertain and that tends to be the litmus i mean i'm not saying that's how it should be that that's how it is uh but so how do you end up like do were you invited my friends were you um i just sort of gone

into it from just watching him on jo rogan just watching a couple different little things and i was just like you know i like this guy just like wanted to sort of get behind him i don't know where all this leads because it's like over time people just are going to have to keep dropping out there's so many people in the democratic primary there's still a bunch yeah i can't keep track of and even though it It really seems like it's Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and fucking Bernie Sanders. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. Like, those are the only ones who have like a real shot.

The Andrew Yang thing is a little bit idealistic. Well, yeah, he's very much in sort of a media blackout in terms of like he has trouble getting headlines. He has trouble getting equal treatment to, you know, the other candidates. And I mean, Joe Biden is still technically in the lead. But I feel like once like the Bernie voters and the Warren voters are clearly just going to vote for each other once one of those candidates. Like it seems like Bernie is probably going to be.

the one who gets eliminated. All those burning voters become Warren voters. So to me right now, unless there's something outrageously weird that happens, this election is going to be Trump versus Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. I mean, this is why I like ranked choice voting, which they have in other countries, where you don't have to just have your favorite person. You can say, hey, I like Bernie the most. Maybe I like Andrew Yang second, maybe I like Elizabeth Warren third. That's interesting. It accommodates that in the election process. You know, what you don't want to end up being is like the people voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 in Florida, or it's like 4,000 people whatever voted for Ralph Nader and then

you know, Al Gore would have been president had those people not done. So that's kind of like the calculus in everybody's head and be like, if I support this person, then does that mean Trump is going to win? But do you think of yourself as like an inherently political public figure? Because a lot of people, I think it goes undermentioned

that Chalka Rain was very much racial commentary. Yeah, you know, and I ran away from that for so many years. When it came out, because I think it went viral, partly because it was like, hey, here's a dude who has a deep voice. He has a voice body mismatch. He's kind of feminine facial features and he's a small guy. He doesn't look like he sounds like that. So there is sort of that circus aspect to me and

frankly everything else that went viral on YouTube at that time. It seemed like people really liked it for the silliness. They weren't trying to read into it. I feel like nowadays that racial element might have been the thing that would be like the whole story. Absolutely. And I listen to this powerful pro-black song. Now that would be how it would be framed. But when it came out, like I was very reluctant to step into it being a Malcolm X type moment or an activist-type moment because ultimately I knew that people who disagreed with the message of the song were singing it, having fun with it. A big part of it was parodying it. There were thousands of people would parody it on YouTube and sing like, menstrual pain or whatever the joke lyrics they could come up

with. And that was such like a huge part. part of the momentum. And also what YouTube liked is that I was the family friendly viral star. Because you had people going viral, like Soldier Boy had to have the huge like, uh, uh, crank that. But he's soldier boy. He's soldier boy. Um, bless him, but you know, it's not necessarily family friendly friendly. Chris Procker leave Britney alone where it's like, I mean, the video starts with, and I'll fucking hear anybody. It's not very family friendly friendly. So like, I was the family friendly viral example that YouTube was like, oh wow. Right. We can actually do a PR tour with this. And they did that. They did a front page takeover of YouTube with me singing Chocolate Grain and I think 15 other people who had done versions, parodies of it.

And like the whole thing was just this random, the stars aligning. Like it just happened to be that I put a free MP3 for download because at the time YouTube would only do mono audio. And I was frustrated. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to put it down to download in stereo. And then that ended up being a huge part. The fact that it loops so that people would just take the beginning and re-sing the song. very easily in an editor was just like all of these stars alighting to to create this moment.

That would have happened like the whole process of that happening in the modern day and age would be so the process would be so much better lubricated. Because nowadays, if that song just sort of came out on the internet, guaranteed the TikTok kids would get it, that fucking mean kids would get it. They would blow it up fucking fast. At that time, that happening seemed like this freak accident that. everybody was so shocked by because we didn't really have much of a frame of reference for how this was to occur. Yeah. Well, and YouTube did not have a frame of reference for what would be successful on their platforms.

If you remember 2007, MySpace was still the biggest thing in music. And everyone was talking about their top aid and it was like it was the behemoth in social media. Facebook was still this kind of up and comer where they had just like opened up their network to not just be colleges, not be just friends as you knew. So YouTube was trying to find like what is the content type that could only happen on here that wouldn't happen on our competitors Right they still wanted stars and like they they were trying to figure out who were going to be the next The YouTube stars yeah Yeah so interesting But I always say because YouTube has changed tremendously and I would say there was kind of a viral video era of YouTube

From I'd say about 2006 we had stuff going viral like Diet Coke and Mentos and And you know I'd say through about gongam style which was what 2011 2012 right where individual videos were allowed to be super viral. You had hundreds of millions, billions of views on them. Now YouTube is very different. Around 2012, they change it. So there's an algorithm that pays attention to what your audience does, to audience behavior. So they could see, hey, are you creating the behavior of people clicking on videos, staying a long time?

New people showing up every time you upload a video. They call that session start time on YouTube. And so they made the algorithm that pays attention to all these things and to make sure that you are maximizing those things. So they promote videos that create those results. Charlie Rain would not have been smiled upon quite like it was if it had come out in that era, right? Or in this era. Because ultimately it's a song that alienated a lot of people as it went popular. Like it went popular, but at the same time, I think it's a song that some people would look at for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, be like, oh, that's intense.

Like, you know, this dude, you know, he looks like Bruno Mars, sounds like Barry White and moves like Mr. Bean. Like, I wasn't ready for that. Right. I need to take a break and maybe come back and watch it later. Now YouTube sees that behavior like, oh, they're leaving after 45 seconds. Right. We're going to kill this. This is not going to be successful.

Now YouTube wants you to be a Jake Paul. They want you to have an army of people watching you for 10 minutes a day. Yeah, for 20 minutes. Yeah. They want you to be consistent over and over. Yeah. That's how you fucking finesse the, but that same exactly. content we were talking about that algorithm I feel like that same as that stuff would probably be

much more suited for TikTok or Instagram or whatever now yeah and I think that I mean I mean honestly I feel like kind of the old man on the internet with like oh my gosh TikTok IGTV I'm just starting like because I figured how to upload longer videos to Twitter which at least allows me to put the video in a context of a conversation like hey I'm gonna okay it's shock Lorraine I reply it to a conversation that might be about race right um you used to be able to do that on YouTube YouTube YouTube used to have replies. Remember that? It used to have more user control over how you syndicated your content, how you could get it seen by other people.

Ultimately, they found humans unreliable, so they took away that human control and put it in the hands of computer. Let's talk about who you were before all this madness started happening. Well, chocolate rain happened when I was in graduate school. At the University of Minnesota, I thought I would be a university professor. Not because I was great at it. You know, I finished college. I went to Evergreen State College. It was an Olympia, Washington, that hour south of Seattle.

Uh-huh. Finished there. It's, you know, kind of a, it's known as a liberal college. You know, it was in the news a couple of years ago for... Oh, Evergreen. Yeah. Yeah, exactly what you're talking about now. For that whole story.

Madness. You can Google it if you haven't seen that story. But, so it's kind of known as liberal and, you know, there aren't grades. There are written evaluations and whatnot. And it was a good school. I had an advisor. there who, because I knew that I wanted to get a doctorate in somebody since I was a kid. I wanted to get a PhD.

I think I was a fan of Star Trek, Next Generation and this sense of being doctor somebody, when everyone was in a room and someone went up to a podium and said, hey, doctor, so-and-so is he. I was like, man, that's power. That is power to be able to walk in a room with a PhD. I just want to be called doctor. So I didn't want to get a job after undergrad. I wanted to apply to grad school and figure I, I almost pursued a PhD like most people pursue high school assumed that it was going to happen and so my advisor told me hey i got my he this is

him speaking he got his degree uh in american studies at bowling green which american studies is kind of broad it integrates it's heavily informed by history so a lot of times that people just say i studied history but i applied to american studies programs university of minnesota accepted me with four years of funding which is a big deal wow uh in grad school because then you can do without debt um And so three of those years ended up being a TA, which, you know, I was a terrible teacher's assistant. I apologize to anybody who was in my undergrad sections. I just, you know, but, you know, I kind of lost my heart for being a graduate student while I was in grad school. This was 2004 that I started at UMN.

And I wasn't passionate about teaching, was not passionate about research. And if you're not passionate about either, you know, getting in front of people and instructing them or doing the research. So you were kind of having that problem where, and I always think about this as being like a super difficult decision to make is that for a young kid, it's like you got to choose what you want to do with yourself when you're like 18, 20, et cetera. Yeah. And maybe something seems like it makes sense or maybe like, you know, something as simple as you

just like the idea of having the title of doctor, but then you start to get more and more familiar about what this process really entails. There's so much politics in the academy of like, I mean, it's like anything else in life. It's like, who's, what professors are you appealing to? Who likes you? Who's going to give you first and second authorship on their papers, invite you to conferences? There are philosophical debates, academic debates, inside the department.

So are you on this side or that side? And, you know, it's kind of hard to get through without being a sycophant and navigating the politics of your field or whoever is prominent in that field. And I think I just kind of got to a point. It sounds cocky and it's weird, but I didn't want to say, study history. I want it to be historic. I wanted to make history. Studying history and talking to people about, you know, theories and Marx and Chomsky and all these things. You know, that's a very narrow conversation. There aren't a lot of people who can follow up on that conversation, whereas

if you do something that's popular that reaches a lot of people, then, uh, you can have more impact. But so you just explicitly want to get into entertainment? Well, it's weird. You know, I made up the name Tayzon Day. My government name's Adam Bonner. I as well being an Adam. I would just like to say a great name. So I started to think, hey, you know, maybe I want to do this. YouTube was coming along in 2006. And what it was is I was singing at open mics in Minneapolis. I'd take my keyboard. I'd always done music as a hobby since I was a kid. Never seriously. But I always had a keyboard and played around. My mom was a pianist and opera singer and whatnot. So it was always kind of like in the

environment. So I'd done it as a hobby and I got sick of dragging my keyboard and amp and other equipment out to open mics in the winter in Minneapolis. And I remember one specific time, but I brought like a 40 pound amp and a 30 pound keyboard and had it like with an alligator cable in one of those airport things that you will. And I wheeled it into this mom and pop cafe and it took me 10 minutes to set up. I sang two songs and like there were three people there. Two of them we're reading the newspaper and the other one was Minnesota. Minnesotans are very nice. They're like, yeah, that was great. Keep doing that. And I was like, there has to be a better way to get my music out there. So YouTube came along and I'm like looking, hey, who was big on YouTube in 2006? I think

Ryan Leslie was the most subscribed YouTube musician, but I was like, hey, people are just making videos in their living room. Why don't I try to set that up? And then came the question of, well, if I do that, at this point of my life, I think I'm still going to be a university. university professor under my name, Adam Bonner, why don't I create this other character, this other name to do it under? And hopefully it'll just kind of be a secret thing on the download and what happens with it happens. That didn't end up happening. I created Teizonday in January of 2007. And it didn't blow up initially. It was your third upload, right? Chocolate Rain was probably about my 12th upload. And even then, because it was.

I started the channel in January. It was April 2007 that I uploaded Chocolate Rain. Even then, it didn't go super viral. I finished Chocolate Rain as an afterthought. It was never supposed to be the finished version. I had another video that I done in a collab with an Australian dude

called Love. I think it's still my YouTube channel. They announced they were going to feature on the front page of YouTube. And when you got that announcement in 2007, it was like winning the lottery. You got an email telling you they were going to feature it? Yes. Well, asking, hey, do you mind if we feature this on the front page?

And they're like, hey, that would be great. That's so crazy. Yeah, I guess maybe was it that you were selected in some way? Or if things were different then, because nowadays, the algorithm will just shine upon you and you have no idea. They don't have any human curation on YouTube anymore. But at the time, all the different sections on YouTube actually had an editor who handpicked videos to be in them. Well, the trending page is like that still, right? Because the trending page is all kinds of human manipulation.

Yeah. Yeah. But so I think, you know, I saw that that was going to be featured at a certain time. Like, okay, I have this other song, Chocolate Rain that I've been working on. You know, I've had the loop in my head for maybe five or six years. I spent six weeks writing lyrics to it. I had it all, like the pieces together. That's a process. Why don't I just rush this finished over weekend? And I did it. I just put out a got out of L. Studio and looped it. It's a very simple song. I didn't really know how to use the software that I was using to do it. And I put it up as an afterthought so that I could double dip, knowing that people would see the other video, then they could go to my page on YouTube and you see this other new video, Chocolate Rain. It didn't really blow up until someone posted it on dig.com, which, for those of your kids, it's kind of like what Reddit is now. It's a social bookmarking site that was big before Reddit.

Yeah. And it was on the front page of Dig for a couple weeks because that's how Dig works. Someone saw it there, posted it on 4chan, which I had heard nothing about. I, like, knew nothing about 4chan, beatards, absolutely nothing. But it became sort of a joke on 4chan. And the first sense I had that chocolate rain was blowing up at all or becoming, like, bigger than usual, was 4chan conspired to prank called Tom Green during his show that he was doing it out of his living room. and halfway through the college just bused house singing

and then Tom Green is like Chocolate Rain and I saw the video of this I'm like oh cool you know the dude who did Freddy got fingered just sang my song like he's kind of a celebrity I don't really know him but like that's a unknown person and then after that you know the views just started

piling up and it was featured on Carson Daley was doing a traditional format on NBC at that time and he featured on his show and I remember the very first radio interview I ever did about chocolate rain. And please don't. These are all on YouTube and I'm terrible in them.

But it was on Playboy radio. No, no, no. It was Opie and Anthony. Playboy was after it was Opie and Anthony. And I followed a conversation about how much of the ocean was made up of whale seaman.

And so, and you know, you like, you do the radio interview and you're like, in your ear, you hear what's happening before you in the show. And so it's like, well, it seems like 40% of the ocean might be made up of whale junk.

Oh, and we have this dude who's blowing up in this viral video. We have the actual chocolate rain dude. Unrelated to whale seaman. And, like, I had no sense of being a public face or what to do in interviews. Like, all of my early interviews are super, super awkward. Because I was just literally this nerd plucked out of my living room put on a national stage. You're just toiling away trying to scrounge up some little bit of fame at this point. And then all of a sudden, because of the internet, you're just absolutely bombarded with it so fast in a way that never could have happened before.

And there were no breadcrumbs to follow. Like, I couldn't see had this happened to Rebecca Black, have this happened to Antoine Dots. And there was no one I could see. What did they do? So I kind of had to take that inundation of being, quote, unquote, three of the former actual labels at the time were interested in signing me. Everyone wanted me to perform at their kids' birthday party, their kids bar mitzvah. And this is way before William hung, too, as well. This was actually, no, I think this was around.

Okay. I think William Hung was either happening or had already happened to some extent of that time. Because, I mean, people, not necessarily kindly, were comparing me to William Hung. Like, eh, it's the next William Hong. This is the world of the internet now, just no talent. Did you have the instinct to just be like, I need, because now anyone who gets in that position, my advice to them,

and maybe you can tell me if you agree, my advice would be, take this moment. moment, be willing to be on tour, on call, do everything you can possibly do, get every dollar that you can because this is your moment to create a platform, to get people to pay attention, you just seize everything right now because this isn't going to last for that long and you need to make what you can out of it. That is what my advice would be. Now, was that your attitude at the time?

No, I was stupid and I lost millions of dollars because I was stupid. Wow. One thing that was very stupid is I had chocolate rightness of free MP3 download. in the video. Okay. That was stupid in retrospect? No, no, no, no. That wasn't stupid. What stupid is that because I had the free MP3 download, I was like, why bother putting it on iTunes? Why about it? Why bother putting it, you know, for sale for download? Meanwhile, people who had viral videos that were very viral, but maybe a little bit less, like Liam Caldellivan's shoe, his shoes song, made $1.3 million in iTunes the first year it was out

because it was tied to an album and it went viral and, you know, he had been doing music for 10 years, so he had made a smarter choice in that regard. But I think I was also, I was also, very, like I created the YouTube channel and created Tezan Day basically to find who I was. And when all of that heat hit, I was still very early in that journey of figuring out what I wanted to do and who I was. And like YouTube was an experimental thing for me. And I think rather than seizing it as a business, like you look at someone who seized it like a business, a brilliant businesswoman Miranda Sings, aka Colling Ballinger. who, you know, she graduated as a trained cooler to a soprano,

fantastic real life, technically trained singer. She's like, man, there are thousands of talented girls. I'm going to make this character who is over the top and gaudy and designed to be viral sensations. It was calculated. Yours was not calculated. Mine was not calculated. Mine was just kind of being me and then accidentally became successful.

And then I spent years being conflicted about, who I wanted to be. Because there was part of me that wanted to be taken seriously. There was part of me that wanted to prove that, hey, you know, I can sing well. I can, you know, sing Frank Sinatra

or sing, you know, like Josh Grobin or Mike Bouble. And, you know, I can't sing like I can't perform like them. But I think part of my ego was like, okay, this Tayxan day thing is being popular in this way. But that way is kind of making me feel a little bit safe and uncomfortable

and it's a meme and it's sort of out of control and it's not really established. I want to move my popularity to become more popular in a way that I'm comfortable with, which is more traditional. And I spent years kind of in that conflict in my YouTube channel where you'll see some of the covers I was posting at the time. And it's like, and it's not that I'm bad at, you know, singing Disney covers or Frank Sinatra or whatever. But it's not what I initially became popular for. And I think 12 years on, now I see, they say hindsight is 2020.

I can see, man, you know what I needed to do right then. is lean into the meme just yes and it be like hey choked lewd rain yes i sing with a deep voice and i'm happy and you know just like the trollo lo lo go chalk lud rain trolo la la la la la la and just like milk that because ultimately people the most magnetic part of my business was just people seeing me be happy as i sang and you know that kind of connected them and then they wanted to be happy and that's really all it was about and you're like a family friendly corporate friendly face voice everybody wants to support a young person of color these days. That's like a big part of it.

Nowadays it would be such a more established pipeline for you. You'd be like going to the Google office and doing a little talk. I did actually go to the Google office. Okay, there you go. They invited me to their Zykeyes conference in 2007, which is their like super. I don't think they have it every year. I don't know if I'm still under NDA 12 years later, but it was fun. It was like the freakiest moment that happened there is I was in a coffee room.

like the backstage because they were doing a little corporate meeting at Google's headquarters. Right. And Al Gore walks in the room and he's like, is this where the coffee is? And I'm just like in my laptop. I'm like, shit. Did he come in alone or did he come in with a little mob? No, he was alone. He was totally by himself.

And he's like, is this where the coffee machine is? I'm like, yes. I was just totally just like freaked out. And then, you know, I mean, you're around those crowds of CEOs. Like, I mean, I'm 5'8, but like CEOs tend to be tall. They're like six for one, six for two. So it's like, I was like, okay, I'm the YouTube talent. I'm happening on this new YouTube platform thing.

But, man, Google knows how to party. Google spends money on parties. Like, when they party, they... It's almost like they've got a lot of money to spend from stealing and monetizing all of our identity and personal information for the past 10 years. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is for a while they thought Facebook was beating them at that. And that's why they had that whole Google plus debacle is around 2011, 2012, they're like,

oh gosh, Facebook is collecting more social data about people and their relationships and how they talk to each other. So we need to come up with our own social network, which is what the concept of Google Plus was ultimately to be a machine to generate social data for Google and allow them to cook with Facebook. As that fell on its face and they had the forced YouTube integration, all sorts of things, I think Google realized that they could spy on us other ways through our Gmail. We don't got to tell them. Yeah, through our Gmail, through our advertising cookies. And right now, YouTube is a platform looks at more than a thousand different pieces of data to try and predict what videos you are most likely to watch and keep watching on the platform. So they know where you're located. They see the advertising cookies from other sites that you've visited, how fast you scroll down the page, all of these factors to try and figure out how will we make this as addictive as crack to this particular individual.

and you know it's crazy to think about at that time when you were blown up that your instinct was i'm becoming famous for a version of me that's not the real me and that that to some extent struck you as oh this is a bad thing and that now the the commonplace mentality is it doesn't matter if it's the real you monetize this thing and just do this thing as long as you can and that in itself sort of is is very strange to me that our understanding of the internet has changed so much that it's almost like you know and i think about that because Kanye was fucking ranting the other day saying you know uh you know rappers will say i got yo bitch that instagram's got yo bitch like he says it in this goofy as way it becomes a meme but i mean

it is true and if you think about it is that because instagram has incentivized it so much is very very common now in our society for women to be much more comfortable showing their bodies on instagram and i mean i would argue that probably for the most part that's a good thing but i mean there's such an extent to which we are incentivized by money and fame, et cetera, to just be what the algorithm tells us to be. Absolutely. And, you know, it's weird because, like, on one, there's two ways to think about it. Another way to think about it is, hey, if I'm just wherever I am, then, and I guess I tag

and label that correctly, that can build an audience of people who are into that. It might not convert everybody, but if it converts 5% of people, then eventually that 5% will come pound and you'll have an audience that is based on that minority but it's weird like I mean you would look because there's this period on YouTube where you know 2011, 2012 were Justin Bieber Lady Gaga like they were all having these billion to view videos and you would look and what was it Justin Bieber's baby was at one time the most disliked video on

YouTube and you're like and then they're kind of like well if he has the most dislike video on YouTube as successful as he is then how much do I really need to pay attention to my metrics. Right. Like, is it important to have an audience to cultivate? Like, there was this period of time, I guess what I'm getting it, where success on YouTube and viral success on YouTube happened because content was just kind of forced on people,

whether they wanted to see it or not. I think Chocolate Rain was in this category. And once YouTube started paying more attention to, hey, does the person watching this actually like this? And, you know, they tried to milk more views and more watch time out of them. And then, you know, that whole vile video era just kind of ended. And you see it now with a lot of the political stuff where before it was just kind of like understood that the algorithm was going to end up promoting Ben Shapiro videos because Ben Shapiro videos are inflammatory. And they heat people up and people keep watching because they start to get angry.

And then now it's starting to get to the point where you hear all these political commentators saying that they're being downranked and they're not, they're not having a contest spread so much. And I mean, it makes sense. Because just because the algorithm sort of works that way by default doesn't mean that the algorithm can't be adjusted to perhaps, you know, there's so many things that you could base the algorithm on aside from just do people just watch this content and keep watching? And are there ways for us to somehow teach the algorithm about if a person is having a meaningful experience with that content? And really, at the end of the day, though, the scary part is that that all is just going to involve more and more spying. If I watch a YouTube video and I email it to my mom, the algorithm, if it knew that, would probably be able to surmise that this is an extremely important piece of content. The question is, is like, are we going to just completely let them in so they can really know our innermost thoughts about this content? What if they could fucking have a wire going into your brain?

Or the phone could sense your heart rate and it could tell when you really love the piece of content. Yeah. I mean, well, the whole thing with YouTube, Facebook is guilty of this, etc. is like they don't want to show anybody content that they just that that person disagrees with. So, you know, I think the complaint of a lot of political commentators, whether it's been Shapiro or whatever, is that their videos are not reaching audiences that are not already in their choir in their course. Their content is not being shown, you know, the young Turks, their content is not being shown to people who are swing voters or conservatives. And, you know, YouTube is in

this weird position because like on one hand, they're kind of in this mode of saying, hey, yeah, we support free speech and whatnot. You know, I was on Twitter the other day just because they have this thing called YouTube Black, which is to amplify the voices of Black creators. So I think it's a great idea. You know, I mean, I've seen them talk behind closed doors. They're like, hey, though you do have some prominent Black creators like MKBHD or KSI, overall, if you look at all the data, successful Black creators are underrepresented on YouTube

versus their proportion of the population. And so it's kind of an effort to fix that. And, but at the same time, it's really this sort of vague thing of, hey, we're going to throw parties for black creators and invite them together and help them network. But like there isn't a critique of, hey, we're going to advance a critique of racism and whatnot. And, you know, it would be odd if they did that because then, of course, they have people like, you know, Stephen Crowder and Stefan Malinue and Ben Shapiro on their platform who would absolutely tear that idea apart and then be very against affirmative action or promoting that. And I keep wishing that YouTube would be a little bit less hands off and say, hey, we're actually going to put our foot down and advance critique here. But, you know, Facebook just got in hot water over that, over, you know, not wanting to take size and what is a political truth or allow political content to be uncensored, whether it's truthful or not. Because the argument that I've heard, which I find pretty compelling, is like, you can definitely say that Stephen Crowder has said plenty of offensive shit over the years.

but has it reached the threshold in which it's so clearly different from what like a late night talk show host is saying in the other direction. And I understand that like on the surface of watching his content, you might be able to say, yes, of course, it's far more offensive. It's far more. There's much more like different things going on here and stuff. But I mean, YouTube has to justify these decisions in particular if you're going to take somebody who has millions of followers off the platform. It's like they have to hold people to such a standard. But that's kind of the whole thing is it's much easier for them to sort of

make it so you're never going to see a Stephen Carter video unless you go very much out of your way to see it. Yeah, and then they'll show you all the time. Like I mean, God, it's scary. Like I start watching like, you know, animal birth videos or whatever, like lions or tigers or whatever. And, you know, there's not a curiosity. I'm just, you know, bored and you're like, oh, what does that look like?

And then two days later, it's like, hey, you want to see a llama being born? You want to see a llama being born? Like, it really pays attention. Yeah. You know, it's, I think what scared the bejibers out of YouTube was really the Jake Paul thing, where, you know, the, or the Logan Paul, pardon me, the Logan Paul thing, you know, with, when that video, you know, had all of its effects, they were kind of like, oh gosh, we really need to buckle down on making sure there's an algorithm to keep the content brand safe. And now creators will say, if they have the wrong keyword, even appearing in a video, like I had a friend who did a video that was at a community pool. family vlogger, great guy. And the pool had a sign that says warning, death, danger,

da, da, da, da, nah, if you jump in, just like every pool has. But he put it up on YouTube, and it got demonetized. A word death? And yeah, and then he realized, wait, they are OCRing. They're doing optical character recognition on the text content inside the video. And the word death is triggering. They're afraid, you know, it triggers their brand safety algorithm now, which they're not really transparent about. But, you know, they're in a tough pickle. It is a tough pickle to be a platform now and to not seem like you are taking sides. Speaking of late night, late night is totally different now than it was like in the 90s when I was growing up because, you know, you have Stephen Colbert.

You have the shows are much more political. Stephen Colbert is very much on the left. I think Fallon still kind of tries to stay sort of in the center of political, but Kimmel is very much on the left. So that's very different than it was in the 90s where like in the 90s There was a sense that they had to like tell an equal number of jokes about Democrats and Republicans now It's just nonstop Trump jokes if you turn it on Stephen Cabrero so it's like you know even that that whole shift has informed TV

Yeah, it is crazy too because like I know in the back of my head We don't want to talk about terrorism you know as YouTubers that's the number one thing that I've found I've done two our podcast with fucking somebody where we're having an intelligent, high-minded conversation about that and the white supremacy aspect of it, stuff like that. And I've just found that those keywords are the number one thing by far that triggers that shit, because that's like the number one thing that they're scared of propagating. Yeah. And I mean, and it would be, I wish there was a little bit more transparency about demonetization or if they, or if they at least like able to score being like, hey, your video scored a D plus on monetizability,

then you could at least upload it as a private video and kind of see like, oh, I need this to score higher in order to monetize it. But it's tough because the more they disclose about how it works, then the more people are going to try and find ways to circumvent it. So, but, you know, it's, it goes back to like, what are the up-and-coming platforms? because each platform kind of has a prime time where it's uncensored,

where they don't pay as much attention to the content. And then as time goes on and they monetize it, they are very strict about it. So you look at a platform like TikTok now, which is up and coming. And it's kind of like the new kid on the block. It's like it's more freeform. It's a little bit less censored. And I think that's sort of the natural life cycle of platforms. And that's the crazy thing that I've been noticing is like,

when you think about what like functionally what all the different platforms do like my space was really replaced by facebook but that now when you sort of look at the major sites you know you have instagram facebook twitter it's easy to sort of map out what niche they're filling like twitter is short thoughts links that sort of thing does really good for that sort of thing facebook is very much like a a real archive of everybody that you know instagram is really you know more this pictorial beauty based thing But now you see more platforms coming out like the Visco thing, the TikTok thing, where the technology is not the thing that's different so much. It's really a different culture being created on these platforms and in a lot of ways sort of being incentivized by the technology and the platform itself. But like TikTok is not fundamentally different than like everything you do on TikTok and you're doing on Twitter and Instagram.

Yeah. But it's a different world. Well, and I think the other factor, which is the elephant in the room in many cases is, is the, that the tastemakers on the internet are so tremendously young. It is, social media has always been an environment of basically pediatric tastemaking, where the people who are most active who have the most time to spend time on their phones are 9, 10, 11, 12, even like teenagers have a little bit less time and then you keep getting a little bit less time, the older you get.

And so I think that's reflected in the content that's most popular on the platform in some ways. You know, historically you have creators like Smosh, PewDiePie, These are creators who grew the biggest because they were popular with very young fans. And YouTube is still very much in this case we're telling advertisers, hey, yeah, maybe most of the eyeball time is, it's disproportionately young. But there are still enough people at all ages that you can advertise to seniors and 40-year-olds. And, you know, that classic 18 to 49 demographic that advertisers will pay the most money to advertise on. But even that, like, I mean, being in L.A., you kind of see this shift. from the old Hollywood and old industry to, I guess, digital media, what YouTube is now,

YouTubers are still tremendously underpaid for advertisements compared to television. If you look at the numbers on television, and YouTube kind of did this thing a couple years ago where they started giving the late night shows or the daytime shows like Ellen, tremendous promotion, almost as sort of like a hootspot thing to say, hey, we dare you to not be on YouTube because we are going to give you so much traffic, you need to be successful on our platform in order to be culturally relevant. But ultimately, the advertising dollars,

they're on YouTube, but TV still, for the number of views, commands a much higher rate. And that's just, I think that's just old money. I think that's people in their 50s and 60s making the decisions. And once the people who are in their 30s and 40s now get into those management decisions,

you're going to see this exodus in favor of digital media. Even something like the brand deal thing, which is a huge percentage of a lot of bigger YouTubers and even smaller YouTubers. I mean, it's so much easier to get brand deals now. It's so much easier for people to sort that shit out. Whereas in 2007, 2008, 2009,

that shit was like fucking, you just had to know people. You just had to be networking on a different level. Think about that time period. Everybody was getting fucked by their MCN. Oh, yeah. It was a wild west scenario. And then like the news came out about Machinima and Defy

and all. in some places and be like, oh, gosh, that's a terrible story. But I will say a lot of the brand deals on YouTube now are affiliate marketing deals where, you know, they give you a link and then you get paid, you know, $5 per account gain or $10 per account gain. Is that what people are doing? That's what I mean, I get a sense that that is more available than the type of brand deal where, you know, they say, hey, here's 10 or 15 or 20 or 30,000 bucks.

And, you know, I've never liked affiliate marketing deals myself. No, no, no, no. Yeah. It's very tough to take responsibility for the conversion. You're creating a huge amount of brand awareness, and then you're only getting paid for the tiny percentage to actually engage at that moment and remember to use your code. I would never fuck with that shit.

Hell no. Do you... Are you still able to monetize your notoriety still at this point, or is that, like, and in what ways? Do you still get offers based on your fame? You know, it's weird. I mean, I don't get huge numbers on YouTube anymore, partly because I've just never been a good YouTuber.

I've always been a, you know, upload a couple times a year and, you know, see if people, you know, if it reaches an audience type YouTuber in my entire career. I'm on Cameo now, which is a huge platform. Oh, you do good on there? Yeah. Nice. Which is basically hallmark cards for, you can,

for different levels of celebrities. So I think Cameo is a fantastic place to be for a C or D-Less celebrity. because, like, people who know you for a particular thing, but, you know, you're not like, you know, Will Smith or, you know, Tom Hanks. Maybe I just try it out again. I did it for a little while. It's good to just be on it because you never know who is searching for you. It's gotten to be a pretty big platform. Now, I think they just had like a $300 million valuation in the last round of venture capital. What's your rate?

And that was like, I mean, I haven't said it $100 right now. That's what I would do about that. Because I've seen really famous people with like $1,000 and shit. And I'm like, well, you know, because everybody has their price. You have to be like where it's an impulse purchase. Yeah. But it's also, I mean, it's really fun. I actually enjoy just when people say, hey, I want you to wish my, you know, my husband

a happy birthday or, you know, my coworker just bought a new house and or they're getting married or they're having a baby. And I'd like to see your congratulations on that. This sense that I made a big enough dent in the universe. Um, that's a, something Steve Jobs talked about is like, do something that makes a dent in the universe and that I made a big enough dent that people just randomly remember 12 years later. Hey, that's the guy who did that video that, you know, when I was when I was in junior high in the computer lab or whatever, when I was in college, we were laughing about that. People have the specific memory of when they first saw chocolate rain or when they first experienced chocolate rain. Um, and, and it's a little bit odd. It's like my parents generation, you know, there's going to be things they always remember. Like, you know, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, landing on the moon or JFK, I mean, not to get too dark, but like historical things. And Chocolate Rain ended up being one of those things where it's just like, hey, a lot of people remember where they were, what they were doing.

Shared consciousness of just one thing that everybody sort of remembers that time period. Even, you know, like even the most out of touch people that don't really spend much time on social media or whatever, you could still, you remember that, right? And they're like, yeah, I do remember that. It's so weird to think that there's so much shit like that now. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, Camryo is also just fun to like search from it, just like see some of the stuff like. I'm like, oh, whoa, Tony Little. He's the dude from like, I think he's on. I mean, and, you know, it's, it's fun. I think, uh, in terms of pursuing entertainment, because I've also done, you know, singing, acting, voice work.

I've, I've had a good theatrical agent and, and I do voice work. And, you know, I've voiced promos for MLB network for nine years and I've done stuff for Cartoon Network and some other clients. It's great to, and that came largely from my YouTube. Like people saw me on YouTube and they're like, hey, what if he voiced this? And then that has fortunately turned into some great gigs. I think right now there's a lot of downward pressure on both acting and voice work because you can go to Fiverr and have someone do a voiceover for, you know, a couple bucks. Really? So that it's much harder to make a book in the industry now. It's harder if people are budget conscious. And so, you know, the way around that is.

to try to have other factors. Like, hey, I have a social media following or I'm known or this or that. But a lot of times in voiceover, they're not going for someone who is known because they don't want to upstage the product. Like they don't, like, if they're trying to like sell shoes. They don't want you to think about who the voice is.

They just want a nice sounding voice. They just want a nice sounding voice. It's a little bit like sweeping the floor. It's kind of like, okay, we can bring in someone else to do that if you don't want to do it. And that sort of keeps the price down. Like the days of the celebrity VO are, you know, sort of drifting in the past. There was that whole thing with Gilbert, was it Gilbert Godfried who was the Affleck duck?

Like the voice of Affleck. And, you know, he tweeted something. That it was, I just remember it was something that could offend Japanese people. It was like it was a joke. And they do a lot of business in Japan. So they were like, oh, my gosh, it's a disaster. We've got to replace the Affleck duck. And so I think companies are very reluctant.

And so that puts me in a situation where it's like, if I'm pursuing acting gigs and voice acting gigs, is being known on social media an asset, or is it a liability? Is, would it be better to just have my voice and just kind of be Adam off the street who never had any attention on YouTube? I think about that all the time when I'm looking at actors who are at the point in their career where they're able to like be just a guy who's in commercials for all state. And it's like, wow, that's so crazy that your image is that clean because there's probably, you know, It's just so easy the littlest things could happen that would be I always think about subway Subway put the fate of their brand in just a random fat guy and he ended up being a kitty such a one of the biggest food corporations in the world that was that was ugly to see

Isn't that crazy? That right there if I was the CEO of Subway that would be like no more influencers endorsements ever again, at least not that intertwined with your brand. Man, they got unlucky with that one. Or I mean, even in a more casual sense, the Verizon, can you hear me now guy, did an ad for Sprint. He was in a Sprint commercial being like, hey, can't hear me now. I'm a Sprint.

So there is that, like there's that real sense of being liabilities. Also, kind of brands themselves leaning into trying to be salty, cocky voices themselves. If you look at like Wendy's on Twitter or Arby's on Twitter or all of these brands, it's kind of this chick thing to try to seem edgy and and post sort of borderline content. They're all dissing each other on Twitter and shit. No matter how funny it is when I see Taco Bell taking shots at KFC, I'm like, just try to tune my brain out because I'm like, I know what they're doing to me. I'm not going to sit here and be like, oh, ha ha, ha, the Burger King tweet. Fuck that, man. Yeah, they're trying hard. So I mean, I think they're trying to be their own

celebrity influencers and build, you know, sort of their own social media and build their own brand voice, sort of as if it, as though it were a person. So you smoke weed now. Okay. No, okay. So here's the thing. I went, I'm 37. I went 36 years without ever consuming THC until it was legal recreationally.

And then I'm like, hey, you know, hey, I mean, I got issues. Everybody got issues. Maybe I'm going to try this. You know, I did maybe. You're that concern with the legality? Whatever. that was just sort of an entry point. That was my entry point.

Yeah, I was that straight edge. I was that boring in my life that I had to wait until the state was like, yes, recreational is legal. Right. Wow, that's cool. Good for you. I love a law abiding citizen. Well, I mean, as a tangent, I mean, the war on drugs and of course, you know,

weed in particular has devastated a lot of lives and there's a terrible history behind it. Very sure. Which, you know, it'll be interesting to see where, you know, candidates talk about, legalizing weed, but like there isn't really a conversation about reparations and how the sense, like if you were alive in the 1990s, this destroyed your life, like to be found with weed, to be incarcerated and whatnot. And so as I'm consuming it now at the age of 37, I'm kind of like, wow, that was so wrong. Like all of the propaganda that I was indoctrinated with at a child, you know, whether it was dare or, you know, the portrayal of being high.

on THC is just kind of being this terrible experience that would be it would be a gateway drug. That has not been true for me. And it's just kind of like, hey, now it's just, I just have fun getting high now. Yeah. And that's all it is. It's not an addiction. It's not whatever. It's just, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even say it's therapeutic for me.

Because you know, I mean, it's relaxing. Yeah, it's just relaxing. It's just fun. I'm at the point, too. I know that I'm real comfortable doing interviews now because I never used to, uh, smoke before interviews. And then today I had to come in and do three interviews. And that's exactly what I did is I faced a fucking spliff in the car on the way here coming

from Starbucks. And I just feel totally like chill, normal. I feel like if anything, I'm less nervous. I'm maybe more able to sort of really engage in the conversation and let my brain go down random paths in the conversation. I don't know. There you go. Yeah.

Although I will say I've never actually, because I only vape and I do edible. So I haven't actually ever like lit up a blunt. Man, see. And inhaled the smoke. Like, I've literally never done that in my entire life. And you want to do that? You want to do that today? You know.

When we're done? Sure. I'm down. We're going to get the footage later, yeah. We would do it in here, but we were not allowed to smoke in here. Man, I tripped out because Norie was smoking in here the other day. We had to lie and say that it was somebody in his crew did it and we couldn't stop them. Oh, my gosh.

Man, that was actually something I really look forward to. Man, those edibles, though, those things will fucking go out. Oh, my God. Holy. Because, like, I don't really. get a debilitating high from just, you know, vaping. Right. But man, you get three or four edibles.

Like 30, 40 grams. I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, I can't move. Yeah. This is like, this is, if there's a too high, this is too high. I haven't done a lot of the legal ones, but like back in the day, you would buy like a candy bar for like 20 bucks at the dispensary and it would have like a thousand milligrams. Oh, wow.

Holy. Holy on your ass. Like, not just like, oh, I'm hot. But no, it's like, I feel. like I'm on a psychedelic, like I feel like I can't move. I feel like I'm never going to be able to get out of this chair. I mean, I meant milligrams. Like 40 grams are like kill you.

People can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that like back in the day it was like way easier to just get way higher dosage edibles because it was just sort of the wild wild west and the shit wasn't regulated as much. Yeah. Now it's especially in California. It's pretty regulated. If you want to get completely fucked off eating a huge amount of edible, it's fine, but you should probably have to like like eat a reasonable amount. Yeah, it's hard to predict to because, like, I don't know when it hits me.

Like, I think I'll be fine. And then like three hours later, I'm like, I am not fine. I need to go lay down. Yeah. It's so crazy to think about the fact that you are such like a thoughtful, smart, fucking well-mannered guy. And even that song is actually very interesting social criticism, but that it went viral in such a way that really none of that seemed to matter at all.

Yeah, I would say about 20% of people when it went viral kind of sense that it was a deeper message or had a deeper meaning to it. I think it's more now because when you Google it, it's very easy to land on articles that sort of inform you that that's about. Because I was going to just straight up ask you, was that racial in any way? Then I go online and read. And I'm like, oh, he's already spoken. It's a bunch of times. Yeah. Did a BET interview.

Right. But, yeah, I mean, and the thing is, it's, I always say that I sing about what I can't say about. Like that's a little bit of my frustration as a musician is I make better music when I am in a state of mind that is totally anti-social and just so awkward that I can barely put a sentence together in an interaction like this that it's almost kind of like being in L.A. Because in L.A. you're always on a little bit. Like there's always a sense that especially now in this year, wherever it has a social media and a camera in their pocket that like you can never really just. like be off the grid and be in a city or be around people. And so, you know, when I'm making music, the best music comes from a place where it's like, it's almost like I'm flustered and I'm stuttering and I can't even speak and I can't even

really like I can't put the words out, but I can sing it and I can express it in music and it can have meaning and purpose there. And finding ways to get to that place, it's tough. It's tough now in the hustle bus of LA and social media being what it is now We're supposed to make 10 15 pieces of content every day just to Stay current on platforms It's insane that they convinced us all to update our Instagram stories this much Oh my God I mean we're like we're like hamster wheels we're we're like hamsters on you know just like running running on that wheel

Because we all know that if you update your Instagram story once twice three times a day that you're only gonna get so many views if you up Updated 10 plus times a day you're gonna get many more views. And I mean, that's enough to keep almost everybody on the fucking hamster wheel. Like, even if you were, like, everybody sort of knows that even if you were to get to the point where you were super busy and rich, that you would just be hiring someone to do that for you. That's what George, George, uh, George, Cicato's. I mean, bless his heart.

I love George Cicat, a big fan. But, yeah, I always see his Facebook post. I'm like, did you really? You're like 80 years old. Did you really sit and type all this out? And I mean, when you get, when you're him and you've got that big audience, It's like, well, why wouldn't you? It's like this many people relying on what you're going to throw out there on social media.

And it's something like him. It's like, yeah, it's supporting you financially, but it's also you're really making a difference. Yeah. Damn. I really appreciate you coming on the show. This ended up being a far more interesting conversation than I necessarily thought it would. Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I appreciate, man.

That was a very interesting conversation. Indeed. Anything in particular that you're pushing? Anything that you want the world to know? Hey, you know, it's funny. I've been putting music on Twitter. It's an old. their song, I'm going to put it up. MAMA Economy. Talks about the economy. Explains me curious about

how the economy works. Google or search for MAML Economy on Spotify. It's Twitter. It's videos on YouTube. But yeah, you know, I'm still making music. Still, my cameos are there. Go to camio.com forward slash tazonday and I'll say, happy birthday to you. I'll give you congratulations. That's crazy. There's actually a bunch of people out there thinking right now, you know what? That is the thoughtful thing. Oh, and if you want to hire me for voice, worker to act all those reels are at tazonday.com i still have like the old school website be like hey this is the old school entertainment stuff i do so there it is tazonde no jumper

coolest podcast in world check us on youtube soundcloud iTunes like comment and subscribe nojumper dot com if you want to support and the cushions in stores ask your local dispensary stock no jumper cannabis we're gonna hook you up too oh there you got there you go you can just eat some of the nugs i Yes. Awesome. Appreciate you, man.