Panic World - Why are we addicted to disgusting food videos

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Why are food videos so popular online? And why are the most viral ones also the grossest? Today we’re looking back at the history of food videos, from Food Wishes to the hands-only top-down video style pioneered by Tasty to making cereal in a toilet bowl pioneered by TikTok. Petey USA, a creator and musician who’s had a lot of really weird bad stuff to eat while on tour, joins us to about food video culture online — and why we don’t care if it’s good, bad, or absolutely horrifying — we’re gonna gobble that slop right up. Our guest is musician Petey USA, whose work you can find at https://www.peteyswebsite.com/, anywhere you listen to music, or check out his TikTok @peteyusa. You can also catch him live Nov 27 + 28 @ The Empty Bottle in Chicago and December 18 at The Independent in San Francisco.He released oooo, a new 8-song project, back in August. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonuses & exclusives, and access to our members-only Discord? Sign up for a membership for just $6.66 a month at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why are food videos always so popular? And why does each new iteration of food videos come with a gross version that's somehow even harder to look away from than the food you actually want to eat? And why has it all gotten so stale? Today, we dig into the internet's love with food content and try to figure out why we can't toss this current trend we're stuck in a way and just let something new grow instead. This is probably the first time one of my most listened to artists on Spotify is on our show. So thank you for being here.

Oh, no way. Thanks for listening. I'm a huge fan. Yeah, no. And when we were setting all this up, we wanted to sort of figure out what you were into, what you're excited about. And you said food videos. So I wanted to start with, what's the most awful thing you've eaten on tour? Mixed with time change and like lack of sleep and lack of like any fiber at all.

And just like the quality of fast food items over there is fucking disgusting. Like, honestly, like, everything I ate on my European tour was abhorrent. And I, like, still have nightmares of it. They've got the best shit over there, but it's not built for on the go, you know? And if you go to, like, Burger King in the middle of Germany, it's like, it's the grossest thing ever. No. Just like, I didn't, I wasn't sleeping. We get to the UK.

My circadian rhythms all off. Noon is whatever the fuck time. And it's lunchtime. And then at the venue, I'll just be like, would you like? a pie, would you like a meat pie? Oh yeah, a savory, a savory pasty perhaps? Yeah, like, hell no. Like, I'm, that's the last thing I want to put in my body right now. Um, the thought of it makes me gag, honestly. Um, like I said, context matters. Like, I'm sure those meat pies are amazing. You know, just not, not when you're like jet lagged in this raining and cold and sleepless. Like,

you just want to like eat a carrot or something or what, you know. I, I just came back from London and I, I went to KFC at one in the morning, one of the nights. Yeah. Got a Tower Zinger burger. Are you familiar with this concept? No. So it's a chicken. So a chicken burger is what they call a fried chicken sandwich, right?

And it's a KFC and a Tower burger is when it's on top of a hash brown. And then the Zinger is when it's spicy. So it's a spicy chicken sandwich sitting on top of a hash brown. How was it? I paid for it the next day. But it was good in the moment, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure London's got to dial. That was like kind of like more talking about like countryside, middle, nowhere.

Oh, 100%. So the end of the supply chain type Scandinavian shit. The reason I ask is because like I said, you know, we had reached out to you to see like what you're into online and you came back with food videos. And we realized that we actually haven't done an episode about food content. But before we get into it, when we set it up, my name is Ryan Broderick with me as always. It is my personal chef, Graham Irving, and producer of the show. This is Panicroll to show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture. and eventually reality.

And joining us today is one of my favorite musicians, truly. PD USA, welcome to the show. So how are you doing? Life is amazing. Could not be better. It's really hot. But yeah, move down the street, which I've never done before. It's awesome.

I really recommend. How far down the street? Like how many houses? Like 500 yards. Oh, that's great. Yeah, 500 yards. Maybe like six houses or something. Like new views, more space, more.

We were living in a real. tree house before, which was like really fun, but I don't know, life's great. At a certain point, I think when you get to a certain age, practicality is fun. You're like, oh, this is so, this is so nice. Yeah. The easier you make life, the more room you have to think like really, like really psychedelically about stuff I've found. Well, that's like the David Lynch thing where he only wore the same outfit and ate the same thing every day so he could focus on art. Exactly. That makes total, total sense to me. Um, so, okay, uh, let's swing, let's swing, let's swing, let's swing, back to the topic at hand. So when you say like, you know, you're into watching food videos,

like, what are we talking about? What are you, what do you actually looking at all day? I just got into cooking, like, a couple years ago. I'm actually, like, looking for, like, practical experience and, and, and tutorials and stuff like that. And I, like, I have an earnest interest in getting better at this thing because I found, I find myself enjoying it so much. So I just think, like, naturally, like, how, like, algorithms work. I mean, that's just, like, where my interests are at, right now and that's what's coming up for me and i think it's just like one of the few bright spots and like the worst thing ever you know which is just instagram in general food stuff seems it's hard to have a negative spin on it you know well i'm glad you said that because we're gonna show you

some stuff today but uh but first uh about two years ago i finally bought a rice cooker and i fell down a rabbit hole of like rice cooker hack videos like how to make crazy stuff in rice cookers. And I have to say, it was like a genuine joy for me for about a year, just like doing weird stuff with my rice cooker. Yeah. A rice cooker, that is a life altering. Unreal. No single item has changed my life more than a rice cooker. And I'm dead serious. Like, I like am more of a person than I've ever been because I have a rice cooker. Have you ever cooked meat in a rice cooker? No, but I've seen videos of that, like doing the chicken rice and It works, dude.

Yeah. Yeah. I did like a whole like, basically like a lazy guys like Katsu, curry, like one pot thing. And it worked totally perfectly. It was, it blew my mind. That's awesome. Hell yeah. Yeah, I'm going to try that.

So we're going to, we're going to go through sort of the history of how like food content started to become primarily, you know, done via video on the internet and, you know, how that evolution happened. But, you know, we wanted to start with something really enraging to show you. you. And so, Grant, you have a stronger connection. Can you pull up what you've put down in the outline as rage bait peanut butter chicken? Because I actually don't know what this is and I'm excited to find out as well. Is everyone saying this? Oh, that, okay, so that's just a chicken that's been dipped in peanut butter? Yeah. Oh, Jesus. It's going to get worse. Oh, it gets worse. Okay, cool. So she's cutting bread. She's dipped chicken, raw chicken, I guess, in peanut butter. Now she's wrapping it in bread.

I think I saw an ice cream version of this the other day that was upsetting. This is really insane. I think I know this woman. She's not one of the magicians that we're going to talk about in a second, but she is clearly, I think I saw her videos during COVID. Yeah, I want to see the finished product here. I'm kind of curious. Because, like, some of this, I bet would be good.

I just want to throw, there was cinnamon toast crunch. There was, yeah. There's also, like, a jam sauce. She did not eat that. That was not a real bite. And there's absolutely no way that that is cooked through. That is true. The airfriars, what's changed my life.

She didn't. There's no way she ate. Yeah, no. That's nasty. No, I think what you said, though, is important. It's an important thing to hit here, which is like, there is sort of a mental difference between good food videos and bad food videos, right? Right.

Say more about it. Yeah, I would say that that's like purely rage bait. When I'm talking about food videos, I'm talking about, like, you know, like classic, you know, this is a dish that you can make. It's a practice. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sustit. Yeah.

And except the person is a chef, you know. Well, let's figure out how we got here. So our story starts in 2007. Were you, you and I are roughly the same age. So, like, what were you up to you on the internet in 2007? What was your sort of, like, digital diet like back then? 2007 I was a sophomore in high school so we were done with MySpace right it was on the way out for sure I was a big music fan but like I was never I've never been very like internet literate or like really given a shit about it at all I had friends that did though so I like I've always defined myself as never someone who's going out and getting the information finding the new thing on the internet I've always had friends do that for me So I would have friends read pitchfork, tell me about the shit, tell me about the bands, tell me about all the stuff going on.

I'd be, I'd hear the news stories and the gossip and whatever and like the new albums I should be listening to. But I was never going out to the websites and seeking that at myself. It was always a friend of mine telling me what's good. And I just like digest that's how I, how I consumed stuff. So I guess I was like privy to like the pitchforks and the, the, the, the, the, the, the, all that stuff, but I was hearing it secondhand. But I suppose like by that ended up being my internet culture just like by proxy. 2007 is such a question mark.

I don't, like, do you guys even believe that that year happened? I'm mentally stuck there personally. Really? And I was beginning to use YouTube. And that's the reason I bring it up because one of the earliest, we wanted to start with like one of the earliest food videos, which is kind of a crazy thing to think about, like, one of the earliest people to just upload a recipe to YouTube. And we, have you ever heard you, I have never heard of this.

So I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't. Food wishes. Grant, you want to pull up this piece of prehistoric internet content. So this is, oh, dude, the intro, the movie maker intro is so good. So this is just someone making prosciutto wrapped prawns. And it's just like a normal video, which I think is like kind of, kind of beautiful in a way. He's talking, but it is just hands. is in some ways deeply modern and also like so of a time.

That's such a good point. Yeah. This is the first ever food video on the internet? It's one of the earliest on YouTube. Here, I'll read you a story about it as we watch it. So this is from SF Gate, the news outlet who wrote at the time, Chef John lived in relative obscurity. Why he thought taping a $50 video camera to his spice rack and making a couple cooking videos

in his kitchen to post on YouTube was a good idea no one will ever know. But 500 videos later, chef John has hobnob with executive producers of the Food Network, has more YouTube subscribers than superstar chef Jamie Oliver, boo! Jamie Oliver, boo! And has two

cookbook contracts as well as a five-figure deal with the video sharing website, which is crazy. Gosh, that's just one of those things where it's just like you wish you were the first person to do something not even well. Yeah, that's exactly. right. I'm never going to be that. I'm not online enough to ever, like, be that guy.

Well, do you think you're that guy for TikTok? So, like, let me back up. So, like, one of the reasons we wanted to bring you on for this episode, PD is because, like, we're talking about food videos, but we're talking about videos. And, you know, for people who might not be aware, you are not only a musician, but you are kind of a prolific poster on TikTok. So, like, do you see yourself as kind of like a, maybe not of the first wave of TikTok, but at least the COVID wave of TikTok. Like, how do you, how do you think about that? Well, I think that that was less of a result of me knowing what was going. It was more directly a result of me not knowing what was going on and not knowing about

it, not knowing about the internet and sort of just being like having someone describe what TikTok was to me. And the only thing that I heard was just like, it's a minute long video and you can crazy viral to this and I had I had like I had the sketch that I always wanted to do that I like had written in my notes app just randomly and there's that wallet video with my friend alban we like oh sure first time we did and I think what people have always told me is like back on those early TikTok days is that at least when I saw comments it was just like oh this is such a nice corner of like TikTok or like this is like not TikToky this is like something different or whatever

And that's why I think it was really popular. And the only reason I was probably able to do that is just because I didn't think about what TikTok was or what it was. The only information I really knew is just like, yeah, you make minute-long videos. I don't know. I think if I knew more about how to use it strategically, it wouldn't have worked out like it did. When I was making like viral video content in the 2000s for like digital media sites, I used to call it the Wiley-Coyote effect. If you want to go viral, the best way to do it is to run off the cliff.

never think of you know how you can run if he doesn't think and if he looks down he like falls and like you know for me it was always like okay if i don't have any introspection at all about what i'm putting on the internet and i'm just like moving on pure vibes and instinct if i can keep that going for long enough i'll just keep going viral but then the minute i go why did this work it all just falls apart yeah my shit didn't fall apart but i definitely don't post on tictock anymore and i barely post Instagram Reels anymore. Maybe because of that, but mostly because of like good things,

just like getting older and being like more, whatever, getting money from other ways and just like being more comfortable, being married. I don't know what it is, but I just like, I paused and then I just like stopped. It seems like you're mentally healthier. So you're posting less on the internet.

Perhaps, yeah. I mean, COVID was funny because that's when the shit started blown up and we were doing videos every single day. and it was because like, yeah, I was like running and looking and not stopping. We made a rule for ourselves just like, yeah, we got to do this every day because there's nothing else to do. Like mentally I was pretty, yeah, I was in great shape during COVID. Just because like whatever my brain chemistry works when COVID happened, I was just like, this is fucking awesome.

Like I've been waiting for this my whole life, like really sad, obviously, but just for my own like. I know you mean. Yeah, yeah. So I was one of those guys who like loved it. um you were the uh the twilight zone guy who's like there's time now to read right before his glasses break you were like exactly yeah yeah exactly and like i was like all right no rules no no societal norms everyone's inside blah blah blah so we can just like run with this thing and like

keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going lo and behold like launched a career out of it and then like had to take i had to take music really seriously because i signed a major label deal that was just like paying all my shit and like lo and behold the world opens back up i become a professional musician have other things to worry about and all of a sudden the videos go away it's not an accident you know what i mean it's just like i'm yeah we'll see man i loved making them maybe i'll make i'll mix them more soon but it's just kind of like there's not that feeling of like running the wily coyote thing that you're described which i think it's super accurate yeah oh the reason i wanted to pull over you know for a second and talk about your own kind of

experience with videos because what we found was so interesting doing research for this episode was that this chef john guy whose video you just saw it's like it's a really ugly like not really complicated video like yeah yeah well three years after he posted that video he's interviewed by the by youtube for their blog he is in like full on wily e coyote look down mode and you can tell that he's just overthought this to the nth degree so i want to read you this quote because it's really funny And so they're like, what are the keys to a really great cooking video? So this is 2010. And Chef John, who made a video that, to me, looked like the inside of someone's body, basically.

He told them, to me, a great cooking video is one that makes the viewer feel like they're making the video with you. Not just watching someone make a recipe. I want to bring the viewer right into the scene. Close, interesting shots of the food with an engaging, affable narration. And then someone at YouTube says, how important is a mouth-watering thumbnail? And he says, a great-looking thumbnail that is clear, bright, and close-up is second in importance only to the recipe title itself. And it's like, what are you talking about, man? You just like, you were just, as you said, you were just first and not very good at it.

I got to a really sort of like disillusioned place with like press during that first year, I think. Like, I don't know. It was like a very concentrated moment in like COVID where there was like just like a lot of eyes on what I was doing in the TikTok thing. and I got profiled by like the New Yorker and shit. Like no matter how prestigious the publication or how in some random dude's basement it was, like all I was doing basically was just like lying about my process. And like, I don't mean like lying, like not on purpose, but I was just like there's a guy in front of me with a recorder.

I don't know how the fuck to answer this question. So I'm just going to make something up. And I felt like I did that for like a year straight where I'll read, I'll look back and I'll read back things that I said about like why I do and the things that I do and how I do them. And I'll just be like, that's just fucking gibberish. Like, I don't even know what I was saying. I was just like nervous that a guy was in front of me asking me about like my craft. And I don't know.

The answer to everything is just like, I have no fucking idea, man. I just write the shit and it's funny. My favorite question was always, and I got this straight, was just like, your songs are sad, but your videos are funny. How can you like, what is that? What can you speak more to that? I'm just like, I don't know. Like, in my mind, a funny short form video is going to get a lot more popular than a sad one. And a sad song is going to be better than a funny.

Like, I'm not like weird Al Yankovic, you know what I mean? Right. But like, no matter who is, and it was just so funny. That was like the question every single time for like so long. And I just was saying the same thing over and over again. I, like, didn't even fully believe them. So when you talk about that guy, it's talking about the thumbnails, like, he's not thinking. That's just, like, absolute, you know, like, whatever.

hilarious. So, yeah, if you make internet content for too long, you absolutely get the kind of, like, baseball player, like, if I don't shave, I'll, like, win the world series kind of, like, superstition stuff. And you start overthinking it. But, you know, I do think there are ways to sort of process, you know, what is, what's working and why. And I think dissonance on the internet is very powerful, especially in an algorithm.

You know, like something that looks ugly and unsettling and strange or has a tone that doesn't fit with everything else, you know, stands out. And like, you know, we know, we know this works. And so we're going to go to a break real quick. And when we come back from the break, we're going to swing back into the world of food videos. And we're going to talk about what happens during the rise of the internet celebrity chef or basically this moment where a bunch of people do think, okay, we can like systematize this.

We can become, you know, the media of the future. And we're going to talk about that right after a word from our sponsors. Rice Cookers. It's the most earnest one when we've ever done. Yeah, I will never. I will never be flipped. Yeah, so we have an ongoing bit where I come up with fake sponsors that, you know, go before the real ones. But I will never be flippant about rice cookers or air friars.

Both of them have been considerable, you know, good in my life. All right. Do you ever feel so anxious that, like, you don't go through with your plans or, like, you run late because you're doing, you have to do a bunch of things around the house to re-center? If you're part of my extended network in life, that might accurately be describing you. Hello, all my anxious people. But it might not just be anxiety. It might be OCD for millions of people. that's OCD and most of them have no idea.

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no CD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at nocd.com. Okay, so once again, I want to sort of check in with where you were at during this time period. So we're now about four years later. This is the rise of, do you remember drunk kitchen? Oh, I remember drunk history. I loved that show. But I don't remember drunk kitchen.

So drunk kitchen, I think you should absolutely pull this up, Grant, because I pulled it up on my side. And her outfit actually just gave me like heart palpitations. It's the most 2010 video, this is the most 2011 video I've ever seen. Wow. I think that this is something we should experience a little bit with volume. Yeah, yeah, dude. Yeah. Welcome to my drug kitchen.

What is it filming? Babe. Wow. All right. Turn the sound off on that. So that's Hannah Hart. How many views is that video? 4.5 million views 15 years ago.

Yeah. Oh, my God. So that's Hannah Hart. She's obviously gone on to be a very big deal, very big YouTuber. And this is the very first drunk kitchen. And at the time, the outlet Autostraddle interviewed her. about it. And they wrote, she films it on a MacBook by herself. She created My Drunk Kitchen's first episode as a long-distance internet missive to her best friend. After gaining traction online,

thanks to an appearance on Reddit's front page, suddenly My Drunk Kitchen had millions of YouTube views, not to mention a fiercely adoring fan base who have been known to call themselves hard-o-sexuals. Wow. This is also really interesting for longtime listeners of the show. we have come across like multiple instances of like early internet viral like viral content actually just being something that someone was making to send her their friend and they put it on YouTube because that's how you could like send a video um which I think is like really interesting that like that that is like a thing that has continued to happen um yeah it destroyed lives but it's so beautiful I think it is I think it is kind of cool I mean it kind of reminds me of what

you were saying, PD, about sort of like the internet for you was distilled through your friends in the 2000s. Like, there is something nice about that that I feel like is not true anymore. Well, there's just too much. There's just too much. Or maybe we're older where, like, if my friend told me something cool on the internet, I probably just wouldn't listen. I wouldn't listen. I mean, like, I, like, a lot of stuff, like my friends tell me about that's, like, new and cool. These days, I think I just, it's, like, either you show me a song while we're driving, in a car or like that's it i have a bunch of like close friends who live in different places and they're all married and like whenever we all meet up like their wives inevitably ask like you know like what

have you guys been talking about and i'm like it's literally just me sending them songs and them listening but not telling me they've listened or answering the text until they six months later do the same thing back at me and i don't i forget to answer but i probably listened to it and i liked it yeah yeah yeah that's the real not telling the boys that's that's Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Looking back at this period is it is a lot of people who are slowly kind of, they're moving from like the gibberish stuff that you were talking about where you're like, I think this

worked. I don't know why here's, you know, and they're trying to like actually systematize the creation of food content and why it works. And so the auto straddle interview has this piece that I thought was interesting from Hannah at the time. She says, I edit it in I movie. The editing takes like six hours, which like, yeah, in I movie, that would absolutely take like six hours. It's panic inducing. I shoot for an hour or an hour and a half and then I edit that

hour and a half down to 20 minutes and then I edit that 20 minutes down to 10 and then I send eight to 10 minute draft to my sister Naomi and then she rips it up saying this is shit. No, basically she picks the best of the best jokes. Then I cut it down from there to five. She's such a big part of it, which is crazy because like I guess, you know, I hadn't thought about this, but 15 years ago on YouTube, five minutes is probably, was the normal thing. Even though on YouTube now it's like 30, an hour, two hours. And TikTok is where you're putting the two to three minute videos, basically. Right.

It's sort of, it's moved, you know, on. But you can see that, like, they're spending a lot of time thinking about this stuff. And it's also beginning to go, like, go viral now in ways that, like, it didn't used to. And we're now getting sort of weirder stuff. Grant, you want to pull up two ter bacon epic Thanksgiving? I guess I do. I didn't realize this was epic meal time. I've heard of this.

So the Turb Bacon Epic from Epic Mealtime is a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig. Wow. Do you want to scan forward to show sort of the end result of this horrible thing? Yeah, I'll do the play-by-play. So there's a lot of gravy making. They're stuffing different birds into each other. They debone everything. It's awful

This isn't even food It's wrapped in bacon They don't season anything Which also really offends me Well they're white They're wrapping a pig in bacon Which is like honestly fucked up And there's tons of butter

And now they're serving it He has a cigarette in his mouth This isn't food at this point I just got a notification It says my browser's not allowing a recording anymore Okay, so this is not an ad break. There's some technical difficulties, and we're about to get right back to the episode. But there's some gentle razzing of you, our listeners, watchers, in this next bit.

And I just want to say, it is only because you're so wonderful and cool, genuinely, that we felt comfortable with this gentle teasing that I'm sure everyone is going to take in good spirit, and it's not going to get weird, and we love you. please keep watching. Okay. Everything's fine. For our audience, just a quick clarification here. We had to take a week break in between recordings of this episode. So I am now wearing a different shirt. PD's on a different device.

I blame the wildfires and Wi-Fi problems, but we're back. And so, PD, when we last left you, we were showing you this. This disgusting epic meal time bacon video. Did you ever go through like a bacon phase? Um, yeah, I guess I've been in a bacon phase my whole life until like, like two weeks ago. What happened to each? Well, I got on great health insurance because my wife is very successful. So, um, I went to, I got a physical for the first time in like 10 years.

Um, through, uh, one medical. It's Amazon's health doctor company. And, like, you know, depending on the day, I guess, but there are certain days where I'm just, like, staunchly anti-capitalist. But I got to say, like, having my health shit hooked up to the Amazon world, it's incredible, man. Like, the U.S. is amazing. And that's the type of shit where it's, like, if that's not dialed, then,

like, I'm just, like, not going to go to the doctor and die probably. Wow. So, but anyway, I got high cholesterol, so I have to step. I want to cut out red meat. I do want to cut out red meat of my diet because it's environmental impact. Like, I use AI as a search engine and stuff. And so, you know, the meat industry takes so much more water than that. So I'm trying to, like, balance my shit out, you know what I mean?

So lower my cholesterol and then lower my water usage. Wait, I want to circle back to that one second. You're using AI as a search engine? Oh, yeah. What made you decide to go with AI as a search engine? I'm curious. Because Google's already using AI for that stuff. Anyway, I want to consolidate my searches into just like, you know, pulling from things.

So I don't have to do 18 different searches. It just works way easier for my brain. As long as you're not like, you know, using it as like a therapist or a girlfriend or something, I feel like that's probably fine. Hell no. Hell no. Like if there's just something that you want to pull up, like show times for a movie or something, Do you use it for everything, or do you just use it for, like, what do I do about high cholesterol? I probably use it for everything.

Wow. But we can't talk too much about AI on this show because our users get violently angry. Really? Yeah. That's so, I mean, I might have to comment. Really? Yeah, dude. No, you guys got to.

We've had more. You should tell people to relax, not relax, but like, just like be a real human being. We talk about it with your friends. Well, hold on. I don't know. AI with your fingerprints. How, well, so, okay, wait. So, you know, the point of today's episode is to kind of talk about the evolution of content on the internet and, you know, how it has changed over the years.

And, you know, you're someone who's so tied to content. I mean, how do you feel, I mean, how do you feel about, like, AI music? Oh, dumb. Okay. All right. Yeah. It's not affecting, like, the music that I listen to, you know what I mean. I do think that that is happening, like, with everything in culture right now, which is, like, AI is just sort of sucking up all the bad stuff that nobody cares about and all the human.

human-made stuff is just like it's it's fine you know yeah yeah we got we got a swerve well we'll swerve will you use like an AI mixing plugin though like do has it changed your like recording process at all no I mean I use it as a search ended to figure out how to do recording stuff you know I mean instead of like sifting through logic forums I could just be like uh how do I do the like how do I do this like fucking compressor I think but nothing for music creation just because I like making music I mean that's the thing that I like to do so I think I can pull this off here. So the reason we showed you that disgusted in terb bacon epic Thanksgiving thing,

which for our audience, let me just define what this thing is, which is a quail, a cornish hen, a duck, and a chicken stuffed into a turkey, which is stuffed into a pig, which is then wrapped in bacon and then smoked and had 80,000 calories. Feels like a really good metaphor for all of content in the like first half of the 2010s. Just like, let's jam everything together. Yeah. What was your, like, you know, we talked about sort of your origin story on TikTok. Were you making stuff elsewhere on the internet, like SoundCloud, bank, like,

were you putting stuff online in the 2010s anywhere? No, no. I think I had like a music project in college that I put stuff on SoundCloud, but not seriously. You know, I was never, like, never super serious about anything. And the TikTok stuff, I just started, and I would put the videos on my friend's account. who films them. Like I didn't have access to

the TikTok until I had like 80,000 followers on it and then I started taking it seriously. Wait, so you were putting your videos on someone else's account? Well, my manager and best friend Will, we were in his backyard and he was just like,

hey, let's try like making some TikToks or whatever. And he had an account, I didn't have an account. So he switched his account over to mine, PDUSA. It's like, we'll make this your music account or whatever. But instead of making music-related content we started making sketches and the sketches started blowing up but i would just never log in i would just see it as like uh i didn't ask him for the login until i had like 80 100 000 followers on it

that's so that's so premium man i wish that i didn't have to think about the internet that way i got it sounds nice i never thought about it at all and then of course like my success was like tied to it and then i got into it you know what i mean and then um I'm trying to get back there, you know what I mean? I'm trying to get like back to that mental place of just like pretending like it doesn't exist. Say more about that. What kind of mental place? The idea of just like fucking, I think we were talking about it last week of just like creating stuff without any intention behind who sees it or what it is.

And just like completely like not have to go on Instagram or not have to go on TikTok. It sounds so nice. But still be able to make stuff for people who want to enjoy my stuff on it. You know what I mean? I do know what you mean. And I think that is actually a shockingly good transition into the next part of the story that we're talking about, which is the period after like peak bacon YouTube, which is the sort of corporate food video. Do you remember BuzzFeed Tasty?

Was this something that ever came across your feed? The top down videos? I saw that. It's like, it's just like hands and a recipe and like a pot. usually on Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. They created like a formula for stuff that still really exist today.

Oh yeah. So I was working at BuzzFeed when Tasty popped off. It surprised everybody. Like nobody at BuzzFeed knew it was going to be a thing. It was sort of made as a fluke and then like heavily professionalized. And I remember like there were all kinds of conversations about like predicting the traffic of a video based on the ingredients that we're going into. the video, which would sort of, uh, kind of like link to what you're saying about, you know, becoming super self-conscious about what you're doing. Like, I'm sure you have had, you know,

moments. I think we all do when we use the internet and we think, oh, okay, so I did this last time. And I bet you if I do it this time, you know, it'll make that much views or that much shares. And so you start to like get really, have you had moments like that where you're like, okay, like I kind of know the secret sauce here. Oh, yeah, of course, of course. I mean, we got it down to such a funny science where it's just like we started using a nice camera, but then we're like the metadata from the camera is like blocking the fucking algorithm or whatever.

And then we do this video at 5 o'clock at night when the sun's setting, and that does really well. And the videos where the sun's really bright doesn't work. And so let's try and do it at nighttime. And I mean, we had these thoughts in our head about like the length of videos, like how long they need to be. like the normal ones that you go to. But it was really fun getting so conspiratorial about it.

And at the end of the day, it didn't really guide the process that much. Because we did one every day and we just did it with like what we had available to us in the time we had available to us. The only thing we really held ourselves to was like, we're going to shoot it, edit it and release it all in one day. And we did that for like, you know, 200 days in a row. That was the reason why it was successful because you do something so many times. You're bound to hit the sweet spots on whatever. 20 different boxes need to be checked for a video to go fucking viral. It's funny you say the sunset thing because I did notice like a lot of your videos are shot at Magic Hour.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it was kind of just like, let's do that when we can. If we can't, screw it and let's do it anyway, you know. Right. It's funny you say that it doesn't matter. And the metadata thing is funny because I know a creator who's convinced that, that YouTube in particular, but also TikTok,

is nicer to certain videos based on the file name that you put when you upload it. Interesting. Interesting. Wait, like, give an example. That's crazy. So I know someone who, like, puts certain words in, so it would be like, you know, YouTube video name underscore a bunch of words. Dot MOV and uploads it.

and she's convinced that like it would like the the the platform would be kinder to it based on what's in the file name so if it was like my cat video i love youtube youtube so good dot movie versus if it was like cat video version six fuck let this be the last one dot movie the first one would do better no not i love youtube it'd be like my cat video underscore cats underscore cute animals underscore like tabby cats underscore pet owners.m.O.V would do better. That's what, that's what she's like. This is really, really bringing me back. It's so silly. It's so silly. And like, I think that like you can get in the weeds just with so many of the of this thing. And it's kind of like talking, I mean, talking about this is like kind of like talking about getting in the weeds with talking about like free will versus determinism and shit like that. It's just like, you know, I mean, there are so many invisible forces that we don't know about that we don't

even, that we're not even like conscious of determining our experience. But at the end of the day, anything that we can speculate on probably doesn't really matter. So you might as well just like do your best over and over and over again. And hope that, you know, showing up in your best way gets you where you need to go because you're not going to get to the bottom of it. I think that's right. I do like I, you know, as a reporter, I've spoken to a lot of these platforms, you know, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok over the years. And I will say like one thing that they really don't like is when you suggest that they are influencing what people are making. But I think they absolutely do. And I think the explosion of food content is really visible there where like,

I do this project years ago. where I interviewed food bloggers and you know I basically asked them like you know people complain about food recipes online because you have to scroll and scroll and scroll and all the bloggers were like I don't want to do that I don't want it to be like that but Google makes me do that because Google has requirements that I have to

I have to meet to be seen on Google and it's the same for any video creator on any platform and so you know yeah there are there are six month periods where everything's an animal video everything's a food video everything's a news video a politics video a comedy video i think you're right that thinking about it too much does sort of make you go crazy and doesn't actually help in a way what just sucks what kind of life is that that fucking sucks i can't it was fun to think about like you know because i went from like working in a mailroom being fucking broke as hell to actually

having a career because of it so it actually like it was interesting at the time to talk about it But at the end of the day, the only thing that mattered is that we just did it every day. That's it. You know, like, that, like, if you, like, take a snapshot of my life, it's just, like, in this period of time, I did videos every day. And that's when I got a career. That's why I didn't have a career. That's why I got a career.

And, like, all the weeds that we got into were just really fun, bro-y, conspiratorial conversations that, like, we never got to the bottom of everything. And I'm super happy I don't have to talk like that or think like that anymore. But it was fun while it lasted. Did that create like a weird relationship with like your music? Like the reason I ask is because like, you know, the people I knew working in like, let's say food content become alienated from what they were doing. Yeah. Do you feel like you have a strange relationship to your music career because it's off the back of this like, you know, hellish 200 days of thinking about TikTok all the time?

I just want to rephrase that because that wasn't hellish. It would be hellish if I was still thinking about it now, but it was quite fun. It was fun of the time. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was new. But I don't know, man. Like I said, my life is so fucking good that I just don't think about it too much.

That's good. My team gets frustrated when I'm only seen as a comedian and that the music seems like a secondary thing. And I feel like I've sort of been assigned that frustration as something that should be important to me. But the God's honest truth is I don't care at all. I'm just happy to be doing what I'm doing. I mean, if it helps, I didn't know about your comedy videos until after I heard your music. That's badass. I came across the video for Don't Tell the Boys, and then I was like, who the hell is this guy?

And then I found out of TikTok stuff. That's cool. That's rare. That's like you're an enlightened minority. You know, I will never describe myself like that, but thank you. Yes. After the break, we're going to talk about the TikTok explosion during COVID, which I think is kind of, you know, it has changed. everything. It's changed your life. It's changed everyone's sort of sense of culture. And it's made things confusing for sure. But first, a word from our sponsors. What's the diarrhea lettuce company called? Travis Farms. Travis Farms. Taylor Farms. And now a word from our sponsors, Taylor Farms Lettuce bags. TikTok arrives 2018. We got a couple of pre-COVID

years where it's like an app for teenagers and sort of people who just left vine or whatever. But very quickly, it starts to become like a place where a whole new generation of people are just discovering the internet. Obviously, this impacts like food videos. It impacts animal videos. It impacts everything. It impacts your stuff. When you started to finally actually use TikTok, because I didn't know about this when we

put this episode together, the fact that you were not actually running the account. When you started to run the account or sort of engage with it, you know, know, what were your first impressions of this app that was now sort of like giving you a ton of attention? It was like refreshingly separate from everything that I could identify with as like a living person, which was really nice. What does that mean? Say more about that. It seemed not real because, I mean, like nothing seemed real because I was in COVID. It seemed inconsequential. It felt like I was like engaging with like bots, like everything was bots or like everything was like, I don't know. Maybe it was because I was also like doing a lot of VR stuff and just like there were like a lot of fires going on in LA and like I hadn't seen a person for like three weeks or whatever but I was just like everything is it just didn't seem like really like I could not. It wasn't a human experience at all which made it a lot easier to like sort of like recklessly engage with it as something that like was very like egoless and not I wasn't like whoa I'm famous on this thing. I was like well,

whoa, this is like a fake app and like this is crazy, you know? Yeah, it makes total sense. And it made it a lot easier. Like, I've never dealt with any mental anguish about my place as a successful TikTok person or like what, or what that means for my identity. Like, I've never had any highs and I've never had any lows. Like I have been maybe something like putting out a tour on sale and having it so well or so, you know, something like something. or so, you know, something like that. Emotionally disconnected in a way that just, like, made it fun,

careless and reckless and, like, it was really fun to, like, play with it. Do you feel, do you still feel, like, disconnected from it that way? Yeah, totally. I don't even go on it anymore. I haven't logged. I've lost the log information to my TikTok. What? Yeah.

So are you off the internet entirely? Where are you spending your time online now? No. Well, unfortunately, I go to Instagram because, like, this is my job, you know? and I'm a professional musician and I gotta play the game somehow. And I still follow close friends and family on Instagram. So I go through the stories, I scrolls.

I mean, honestly, I hate it so much. It's so weird to like open Instagram and not even be conscious of the fact that you opened it. And you just like arrived there. Oh, sure. And you're just like 30 minutes ago, I was enjoying like literally like the miracle of being out alive. and now by complete accident and not by choice,

I'm just like scrolling through an Instagram feed, which for me now is just like musicians complaining about fucking the music industry, which is the worst television show I've ever fucking seen in my entire life. And I'm just like, what am I doing? And then I have this like snat, like this realization. And then I delete the app immediately. And then I re-download it just to post my shit. I think, and then I watch food videos.

Well, that bit you said sort of about, you know, having this weird, recursive, negative experience, I think is something, it definitely predated COVID, but I do think a lot of people sort of discovered that relationship or started to have that relationship post-COVID. And I wanted to, I wanted to sort of like, you know, kind of wrap a bow on the food video discussion by showing you something that I've been desperate to show you. because I think in a lot of ways, these people are the dark inverse of you. Okay. Are you familiar with... Such an intense way of previewing. I love it.

There's a dark wizard version of you, and you're about to be see it. Yeah, I think this is, I think this is the, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, is, this is, is, are you familiar with the magicians on Facebook who make bad food videos on purpose? No. I did this story, like, right after COVID, where I kept noticing these people who were making really gross food content. So this is a woman who is making ice cream in a toilet bowl.

Have you seen this video? Oh, no. Okay, so she's filling up the toilet bowl with all kinds of garbage and bullshit. And then she, like, eats out of the toilet bowl. Ew, you, ew. Yeah. And obviously people are really mad about this. This video was watched 15 million times.

And then I was like, you know, digging around looking for other stuff. And I came across another video where this woman makes SpaghettiOs in a pie crust. And it's fucking gross. And it was viewed 42 million times. And all the videos are the same where it's like this woman just like doing gross food stuff and everyone's mad at her. you know, because it's disgusting. And I started poking around and what I discovered

they were all working for the same guy who was an out-of-work magician that decided to pivot to being a content creator during COVID because Las Vegas had shut down. And so him and all of his Vegas stage performers

started making viral content to piss off old people on Facebook. And they're still doing it. I discovered in another viral video that everyone's mad about this week or last week, and it was connected to the same network of out-of-work magicians who are now content creators. Whoa. And this is like specifically a Facebook thing.

They've jumped to TikTok and now they're on, you know, what used to be Twitter now X. I see them on Instagram. They're sort of operating on every platform making the same bullshit, disgusting, like food and like lifestyle content that's like bad on purpose. Interesting. That's really, that's crazy. I mean, I had a really similar conversation that's with one of my friends who's in the vertical drama space.

Whoa. These are making these vertical dramas. Yeah. Obviously, you know? Yeah. I've heard about them, but I would love to hear more about what it's actually like to work in one of those. Like, that's crazy. We couldn't even really get into it because I wasn't aware of this whole world before.

So he was just sort of explaining to me what it is. And we didn't even get into what it's like to work there. But I was just sort of astonished to figure out how much activity was still going on on Facebook and about how it's just like people in their 50s watching this insane shit on Facebook. And the numbers are like staggering, like a large number of people on Facebook watching crazy disturbing things all the time. And I think it's like to play into that feeling you talked about where like you don't even know you're looking at the app and it's not making you happy. but there's like a, it's like infinite jest. It's like this videotape that you can't turn off that you just die watching. Like it's, it's really bizarre.

I cannot, we've made it over a hundred episodes before the words infinite jest were said on the show. Is that true? It has been not spoken about and spoken about so many times. I've never directly. Pete, I'm so sorry. This just like needs a moment. Yeah, sure. This is wild.

Really? I've never said infinite jest on the show ever? I've restrained myself. from saying it a billion times. This is a monumental. Joe Rogan was mentioned on almost every episode, but the words infinite jest. You think those are equivalent?

I will say I read a third of infinite jest and I was like, all right, like I got it. I don't really want to do this anymore. It's like not a pleasant read, but... It's an embarrassing book to admit that you really love, right? Because it's like performative guy stuff, but then like most things, there's a bit of a horseshoe effect where you're kind of just like, well, I'm,

I'm reading and it is good. I just, I'm not a footnote guy. I don't like footnotes. I don't like the experience of reading footnotes. I don't find them interesting or cool. Anyways, Infinite Just has like a sci-fi conceit at the heart of it where it's like this, like, this thing that when you watch it, you waste away watching it because it's, it's a media that's so addicting that you like can't take your eyes off it. I'm simplifying it.

And my understanding is Infinite Just involves some sort of like tennis match to decide the fate of the world or something at the end. I don't fucking know. But, yes, I feel like meta platforms in particular, Instagram and Facebook are very good in sort of capturing this negative attention loop that you're discussing where, we're like, I get served a whole feed of stuff that like I don't care about, but I also like kind of just can't stop looking at. And then I don't want to, I don't feel good. Yeah. Yeah. Just like endless stuff. I mean, that's how I feel on on Instagram.

I'm not seeing anything that I really like. You know what I mean? But yet I find myself on it. And yeah, the reason I sort of said that these magicians were like the dark version of you is that because like they kind of went the opposite way where they were stage performers that it like leaned fully into being content creators and now like that's all they do. Yeah. And I think it's like, you know, it's very seductive.

You know, like I, today's episode has been extremely bipolar both because we recorded it over two weeks and also because we're sort of talking about two everything simultaneously. but I think at the heart of it, it's like, the internet wants you to keep posting and is happy to provide you with so much information to sort of optimize yourself. And I do think it takes like a certain amount of restraint to not do that. And to like to do sort of what you did and use it as a launch pad, sure. You said you have to play the game. Yeah. But like to know like, okay, like I'm going to go focus on like my art or what I care about and not have to make slop, you know.

These are the platforms available to us to, like, promote our art. I've definitely, like, I've probably sacrificed a good amount of success with my slowing down just so that I could just have a more holistic life outside. And I'm cool with that. I'm really cool with that. Was that, like, an active decision? Yeah, yeah. Did you choose to do that actively?

No, I think just, like, kind of like life just happened. and I got married and my wife is fucking, she's a machine, you know, she like owns her own business. She's so successful. Like we have a ton of fun. We go hiking all the time. And I put out music. People still like it. I can put tours on sale people go.

I'm just like, how much do I need to, how much do I need to fucking, how much bad shit do I need to do to make myself more successful? To me, the answer is like, not so much. Well, it's funny. like I've been thinking about this dynamic with people like, and I think people in our age group feel it acutely right now, which is like you have two options, which is you chase like an internet thing that's like quickly digestible, disposable,

might make a lot of attention, but that attention doesn't really mean anything a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. Or you unplug from that system and you make something that could, So, like, you know, your album, the Yips, like, will probably sound as good five years from now as it does right now, 10 years from now. I mean, that's the one you worked on with Chris Walla from Death Cab, right? Yeah. So, like, Chris Walla has made records that are 20 years old that I listen to and they sound just as good as they did.

But if I go and watch a TikTok video that was popular three years ago, it might not make any sense at all. Like, it's like speaking to a world that doesn't exist anymore. The drunk cooking video. Like that would never happen. All the videos that you showed in this thing that existed 10 years ago would be, or nothing. It would just be nothing. Yeah, no, they're meaningless nothing.

And, you know, it feels like a lot of people get stuck in this trap where they're like, oh, the attention is there, the numbers are going up. You know, the platforms are begging me to post more and they're verifying me and they're giving me data and insights. And it's like, yeah, but I could also just like go make something else. I could paint a painting or drawing or do a song or a movie. Or use the, use the platform to try and launch a career in another thing. I mean, the people who like made it out of the TikTok thing used it to get like other jobs.

You know what I mean? I'm like, you're a great example. Like this is like you got you you have to know that you have to have something else. and there was like kind of a thing in TikTok when like there would be like comedians on the app doing a serious video like forward facing being like the movie industry

the producers they're scared of us and we have all the power it's just like bro no you don't man you're making a one minute you're making a one minute comedy video like that shit is easier than making a fucking feature film and don't go crying

when no one's watching your independently finance feature film because it's bad man like it's way harder to do that than to make people laugh on the internet like i use my tic-tok thing to go out and like launch my music career and get like money from major record labels so i can continue fucking living and making music and all this stuff there was not one part of me that ever thought that like tic-tok is my job and it's going to pay my shit because you're just going to die when you think that i mean it's going to destroy your life to be a slave to this algorithmic like ever-changing thing.

You know what I mean? I do. And I'm so proud to see, like, fucking people show up on, like, SNL, like, Jane Wickline was doing comedy videos same time as me, and we would have comments on each other's shit. And she's on SNL now. That's so fucking cool. But she had the foresight to be like, okay, I'm going to use this to fucking do a thing and

perform live things in front of real people and an audience and on television. and like it's just like that's like god bless it you know what i mean that's so sick i'm so glad you brought this up because i forget the name of the ticotker but there was this girl she was like gen z she was like super popular on ticot during covid and then she announced she's like hey thanks everyone um i'm a real estate agent now and if you want to hire me you can hire me and then she just like went and became a real estate agent because she was like i'm going to just advertise my business because that's why I did this. I did I I I I that's all that matters right.

And I think that is like a very healthy thing. So I you know I I want to I want to wrap up our incredible two-week recording journey on this episode by just. Yeah. And who's to say that the time in the middle of our even happened at all? You know what to the to the listener? It didn't. We've been here the whole time. They are hawkish about Ryan's in my hair.

If there's a hair out of place. That's true. They get really weird about it. fucking caught you. They're like, eh, yeah, that is so weird. Our audience is upset. Not to get you guys in trouble, but based on a couple of things you said, your audience needs to

chill out a little bit. Our audience is really weird about trying to catch pickup. You guys should not be getting in trouble at all. You guys are like so good. Well, thank you. Like, you guys are good. How the fuck do you get in trouble? We're going to put that at the beginning of every episode

that we upload to please. We're going to put it on. I know, it's weird. Our YouTube audience is obsessed with like, like, being like, oh, they did a pickup here. And it's like, yeah, we did a pick up there. Like, I, sure. To wrap this up, I guess, like, do you see yourself going, you said you were trying to, like, relearn how to not care about the internet and have fun with it? You know, do you think that's possible? Do you, are you, are you excited and optimistic about, like, putting more stuff online? Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, like, that's so funny. Like, I'm on the eve of like starting just like a crazy campaign on the internet where I'm

going to just like post a bunch of shit and like go do absurd stuff. You know what I mean? I do feel like and I think like just like a larger conversation on like the entire world separate from the internet. But like obviously I know everyone feels this too. I'm sure you guys feel it too because you're so well researched. But just like in general, I feel like we are absolutely balancing on the tail end of. a moment and it's just so unstable.

You know what I mean? There's just this like something's about to crumble, you know, like globally. We can shrink that down to like just social media to use in general. But like I'm looking at Instagram and I'm looking at TikTok and I'm just like, this is done. We don't even realize that this has been done.

You know what I mean? And I'm so like let's passively engage with it until the finish line. But I'm really looking forward to what? next because right now I think it's crap, you know? And I'm optimistic about what's next. I have, I was literally talking to Grant about this like right before today's episode. I've also been using the term, you shaking your head good, good shake. I'm shaking my head because like, like, like you just summarize like Ryan's like, like if you were to distill everything Ryan's written about for the past three months, it's been like, it's all crumbling. Wait, I'm excited about the crumbling.

I am excited. Wait, savor these last moments. Yeah. You know, something cool might follow. Yeah. Yeah. I, I've been calling it the end of the long 2010s. It's like this moment that started around 2012 has sort of gone on longer than it should have because of political power or corporate power not wanting to let it go. We've all realized that it's going to go. And we're all just waiting for like that first little domino, that first little spark. And I do, I have sort of gotten to a place that I think you're at too, which is like, it is nice to have a second to say,

goodbye to this. I am happy I'm saying goodbye, but I'm enjoying the sort of farewell lap, I think. I'm not, but I, uh, I'm just like, let's go. Let's no, I'm, I'm, I'm antsy. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm ready. Making this outline, like food videos have been, since like the modern internet, food videos have been popular. And you see it, like, since COVID, you're either repeating trends or stuck doing a parody of the trend before. Every iteration of food video killed off the last thing that was popular to your point about getting stuck in that time period. And then you reach like 2023 and there's just reiterations of the same thing that like

we can't even create a new version of the thing that just always does well on the internet because it has a beginning, middle and end with the set and is like, everyone can understand it. So I think that really speaks to like, we're off the precipice. Yeah, I'm trying to lose followers. Okay, Pete, you last question for you,

because I don't think I have asked this in the entire episode. What is the best thing you've cooked recently? Okay, I want to shout out this woman on Instagram that her account's not big, but it's called Lunches at Home. And she cooks Asian lunches in one panes.

in one pan and I made this sort of like caramelized Japanese chicken rice with um miso fresh ginger and soy sauce lunches at home big shouts and it was so easy and delicious and no cleanup and like I felt so good about myself um afterwards that's amazing if people want to follow you on the internet when you decide to post again where should they do that I'm posting, man. On Instagram. On Instagram. What's your Instagram?

P underscore USA. Okay. I guess since I said some weird pro-capitalism stuff, just because being a human being is complicated, I do want to say that. I wish that plastic cups were banned by all coffee shops. I want to ban all plastic cups. Okay. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah.

That's a good take. 100% agree.