Pod Save America - Offline: Hank Green on Inspiring Curiosity

Episode Date: February 13, 2022

This week, Jon is joined by the internet’s dad, Hank Green. For many people, Hank is a staple of the internet, whether on TikTok, YouTube, or in the classroom. He sat down with Jon to discuss how he attempts to inspire curiosity online, the communities he’s built, and how the internet has changed since he posted his first video in 2007.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.  

Do you look back at 2007 as like the good old days of the internet and wonder what changed? Like, do you think it's gotten worse or is that just what people are? Is that just, are people now paying attention to what's better? No, John, I don't think anything's gotten worse. Does it feel like things have gotten worse? That's a ludicrous idea. Where did you get that idea? I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. My guest this week is YouTuber Hank Green. For people of a certain age, and by that I mean young people, Hank Green is the internet.

His first YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers, that he started with his brother John, has about 900 million views. His educational video series, called SciShow and Crash Course Course have been seen in probably every high school in America. And today, Hank is on TikTok, where he's become sort of a father figure to the app's teenage user base, answering their science questions and dispensing bits of parental advice. But one of the most interesting parts of Hank's career has been his longevity. On the internet, people tend to burn bright and then burn out hank posted his first video back in 2007 15 years ago and now at the ripe age of 41 he's become one of the internet's elder statesmen and somehow his stuff is still wildly popular and he's still very well liked hank's content

inspires curiosity today viewers turn to him to learn everything and and I mean everything. Hydrogen bonding, giraffe sex, the galaxy size, frosted glass, the helium shortage, what happens to candle wax when it burns. With curious why questions and a gentle way of making sense of the world, Hank has cemented himself as a major pillar of the way people learn online. So I wanted to have Hank on so he could teach me, mostly about the internet, but I was also pretty curious about the whole candle wax thing. I asked him about building community online, the byproducts of social media, and the way platforms compensate and make demands of their content creators. We got deep into the weeds about lessons Hank has learned after more than a decade on the internet.

Both how it's changed and what hope he has, if any, for its future. As always, if you have questions, comments, or complaints about the show, feel free to email us at offline at crooked.com. Here's Hank Green. Hank Green, welcome to Offline. Thank you so much. You have a lot of fans here at Crooked Media. Your name came up when we were talking about guests for this show, which is all about the ways that the internet is shaping the way we live.

And I think someone on our staff called you the godfather of the internet. How do you feel about that title? Just me and Al Gore. We built it together, the two of us. He had a shovel, I had a pickaxe, and we just made modems together. You did it. You did it. I mean, just for people who aren't familiar with your work, your first big project was a video blog with your brother John, aptly named Vlogbrothers, that you started on YouTube all the way back in ancient times, 2007. Can you talk about how that came to be and what you guys were initially hoping to achieve with it?

It was a very optimistic time of the internet, which didn't end that long ago. And we'd seen a couple of great, interesting, creative, thoughtful video projects and online video. And this was sort of pre-YouTube in some ways. Like Zay Frank, of course, who went on to run BuzzFeed Video for a while, has done a lot of really interesting things. He had a thing that was just on his website where he hosted his own.mov files and you could go and be a part of this bizarre experiment in content creation where there wasn't someone who was deciding what was getting made, Like there wasn't a gatekeeper.

And that, you know, it seemed, I was 27, John was 30, and we were figuring out how to, and it just seemed very exciting to us that there was this new way that media was going to happen. And it felt at the time, like we could be the big, like at sort of the beginning of what TV was. And wouldn't that be cool to be able to have a hand more powerful than than um recent media evolutions and and uh has has sort of uh more significant analogs i think more powerful and uh and a lot messier

uh very messy very messy because it wasn't about centralizing power it was about distributing it which we like but also we don't what just for people who haven't, haven't seen your videos. Yeah. Like what's an example of an early video that, that really broke through for you guys? You know, we did a couple on giraffe sex that did well because you don't really, how does that work?

It turns out it's interesting. I had a song about Harry Potter when the last Harry Potter book was coming out and, and, and sort of how that was making me feel. And that resonated with a lot of dorks and a lot of the foundation of our audience was, you know, nerdy people, uh, who were at the time, mostly teenagers and are now, you know, old, um, uh, and a lot of people have, have been with it through the whole, the whole time. And,

you know, we also have people who come in. And over the years, we've used that sort of the activation energy and the values of that community to do a bunch of other stuff. Like we started a crowdfunding platform. We started an online video conference. We started Complexly, which is our educational media company that makes Crash Course and SciShow and Eons and a bunch of other shows. media company that makes Crash Course and SciShow and Eons and a bunch of other shows. And then through the whole thing, I mean, I'm really fascinated by and really enthusiastic about trying to figure out how to make the internet work for creators and to have it be a place where people can make a living and that that economy continues to grow and more people

get the opportunities to have this great job that I have. Why do you think that Vlogbrothers became so popular initially? Like what core did it strike for people? It didn't become that popular ever is one thing. Like we never had like a big viral video. We never had a big viral jump. It was most popular when John was most popular with The Fault in Our Stars. My brother John wrote The Fault in Our Stars for people listening, which is a book that was turned into a popular movie. And that was the peak moment. And at that point, we were maybe getting 300,000

views a video, which is by the standards of today, a successful youtube channel um but like certainly at no point were we ever in the top like hundred most popular youtube channels it's just that we are long-lived that is the thing that like is actually weird about uh what what we have done well you're so modest i mean like you were just talking about how you've gone on from vlog brothers over the years um to just do so many more projects and i'm struck by you you know saying how you've gone on from vlog brothers over the years um to just do so many more projects and i'm struck by you you know saying how you're trying to build community like most of the conversations i've had here on offline have been about how this technology that was supposed to connect us and bring us closer together has in many ways driven us apart it's fueled alienation

and division you've bucked that trend and built a real community, you know, whether it's Vlogbrothers, VidCon, the educational videos you were talking about, your successful charity projects. How did you guys figure out how to harness the power of the internet for good? I think that it remains to be seen, like we're not going to know for a long time whether the internet is net good or net negative. Like, I think that, you know, like, and I'm happy to be

an example of it, but there are, I think, lots of examples of it, of real community happening. I think that there are, as an example, I think that, like, it is a really vital function or a really amazing function of the internet that it creates a space for people who otherwise wouldn't have a community that they identify with, that they share values with, that they share experiences with because their town is too small for that. Their high school is too small for that. Their experience is too small for that. And so they have to sort of like limit themselves into sort of the way of living that is common in the place where they live. And the internet creates an opportunity to find those social structures among people

who do share your values that you maybe don't have geographic proximity to you. And that is fantastic. It is also great for white nationalists. Like this is the thing. It is this exact same function that is the good and the bad so there isn't like a way like it's very difficult to separate the good from the bad in that way and and i think that john and i were that in a way we were just like there were certainly a hundred thousand people in america who were really bookie and really uh maybe enthusiastic in ways that was

uncool um in their world and in their peer group. And as it always is like enthusiasm is for whatever reason, one of the worst things you can be, um, when you are a teenager, um, and, uh, and, and providing a space for that. And also just, um, you know, just writing videos that make people feel a little bit good about being a person, make people feel like they have a little bit of guidance if they don't have people providing that for them. And like a lot of the structures that we would normally get that from just aren't around as much anymore. Like church used to be one, a really big one. And I don't think that we have adequately explored the extent to which the internet has taken on some of the functions that church once took on for people.

And that is a part of the sort of that current shift that we are experiencing. Yeah. Or so many social structures and community structures and associations and all the bowling alone stuff, you know, from way back. I mean, well, a big difference between the internet being good and bad has to do with the content that you put out, the content that you create. You know, it seems like a lot of what drives engagement today is content that makes people angry or afraid. That's your stuff at all like how do you think about what it takes to get people engaged in what you're creating um like i think that there are lots of of normal human tendencies and and you can lean into whichever ones you feel or um I think that we sort of lean into curiosity is a big one. And I think that like, there's actually evidence that shows that one of the only things that pulls away from

division and partisanship is curiosity. Like if you're like, well, why would a person think that? It's very strange to me that a person would think that because it seems so deeply antithetical to everything I understand about the universe. Instead of feeling like they must be a monster, if you can think that's a peculiar outcome. So curiosity is a big one for me that I think about a lot. And I try and actually try to cultivate it in myself because I think that it it hooks people in a a authentic way that does not make them less happy yeah no it's interesting you talk about curiosity uh i talked to abby richards who's a tiktoker does research on disinformation and extremism and i was talking about like how you get people to stop believing in conspiracy theories.

And she said that one strategy or one tactic is continually asking them questions, right? So why do you believe that? What do you think is going to happen if you take the vaccine? Why would there be a microchip in it? What would happen? And if you continue to ask those questions and sort of pique someone's curiosity, you might start unraveling the conspiracy. Which is why it is so frustrating when you see powerful people intentionally grabbing an answer to one of those questions and being like, hey, remember this. Elon Musk recently

tweeted something about how this is all about getting people used to government control, which is like such a, it fits for everything, right? It's like, well, why would the government want to give a bunch of people a vaccine that obviously isn't killing a bunch of people? Like, what's their ulterior motives here for wanting to make you wear a mask? And it's like, they're just trying to get you used to them controlling you. And I'm like, wow, okay. All right. And like, it's frustrating to see people like having these stock answers that don't hold up to much scrutiny, but it And like, it's frustrating to see people like having these stock answers that don't hold up to much scrutiny, but it's like, I don't really know how to confront that. But yeah, I think that like, I think that being curious about where people's, you know, so there's like

the level of like, and I hear this a lot. It's like, well, this comes down to loneliness. It comes down to economic disenfranchisement and and it comes down to like loss of status among certain groups. And like, yes, but that isn't like that might be a root, but that is not like the present thing that is actually the story that leads people in. So to understand, to ask people to explain to you the story can be valuable because they might be able to see some inconsistencies in the story. I mean, what about when you're creating educational videos about biology or chemistry, the environment? I think your videos have been seen in nearly every high school in America. Are you trying to think about what will grab kids' attention or what you can offer that supplements what their teacher is offering? How do you think about the educational offerings? I mean, it's the same. Like, it is a difficulty that I, you know,

there are these things that you have to know by like law, like standardized test-wise. Right. And that can be really limiting. And I think it can be difficult for teachers because what you want to do is like, you want to do is like, you want to get kids asking questions and like follow the line of inquiry that they inspire. Um, and like

maybe you get everywhere with that and maybe you don't, but like you do get to the place where people are, are trying to figure out, um, how inquiry works and how questions have been answered. I'm very frustrated by the idea of teaching people, um, that things exist and not like why they exist and how we found out that they exist. It's like, well, there's, there's eight planets and it's like, well, there were nine and now there's eight. And like, just remember that and know the names of the planets. And it's like, so interesting when you ask like, okay, how did we decide what a planet is? Why did that get to be a confusing thing? Like and also when you if you start to blur the lines a little bit, then what does count? Like at what point do you start have to count like Ceres, which is, you know, a spherical large object in the asteroid belt?

At what point do you have to count Titan, which is bigger than some planets, but it's a moon. And so like, and if there were a gas giant that was big enough that it was doing some fusion, would that be a planet or would it be just a star,

even though it's acting like a planet and fulfills all of the IAU's like rules for what a planet is. So like you ask those questions and like then the context around it like starts to actually make some sense and you have a fun conversation i have this like long standing joke with my tiktok audience because people constantly ask where does the candle wax go i was i have that question one of our producers uh who's a big fan of yours he wrote down he's

like the last question he wrote he's like I would ask him where the candle wax goes. And I was like, all right, I'm going to, and I, of course, watch some of your videos about that. But where does the candle wax go, Hank? Well, and this is like such a, interestingly, if you want to absolutely be a true dork, you can watch some recreations of Michael Faraday's lectures on candles, which is something that he did. And it was a popular science lecture series that he would give to talk about what you can learn about the universe through a candle. And he shows you, sort of walks you through the process of understanding that gases exist,

what they are, what they are made of, that things can exist in different states, that you can have a candle and part of the off-gassing, part of the like reactants from the combustion is water. And you can capture that water. And you can be like, this was a candle that had no water in it. And then it had a gas coming off of it. And that gas turned out to be the thing that you drink to live, which is so cool. Right. And then, you know, the other, and then like, you can divide it up and like have the water and the carbon dioxide. And then he goes into talking about how the process that's going on in the candle is the process that's going on in you right now. Like you are basically a candle and instead of a flame you're you have thoughts and it's like wow that's deep i mean i

love i love that so when the candle wax burns and disappears it is going where into the atmosphere it is it is gases it is carbon dioxide and water vapor i mean i think what's important about all this is you know what you're doing is teaching people how to think as opposed to just sort of memorizing that is the goal yeah i mean's, I always hated standardized tests because I was like, I can try to memorize all these, all these facts and statistics, but they're just going to sort of go out of my head after I'm done with the test. If I actually think about things and I figure out how to think and how to have these discussions, that's probably more valuable for the long term, even if it's beyond science or beyond whatever subject that you're studying.

Yes. Because you will always be solving problems every day of your life forever. Do you look back at 2007 as like the good old days of the internet and wonder what changed? Like, what do you think? How do you think it's evolved over the years um i think that they of course it's gotten worse or is that just what people are is that just uh are just people are people now no attention no i don't think anything's gotten worse yeah does it feel like things have gotten worse that's a that's a ludicrous idea how where did you get that idea no you know what's funny is i i have talked to alex damos who was the um the the former chief security officer at facebook yeah and he's like look i think

facebook has done a lot of bad shit i i take responsibility for a lot of that but i think a lot of what we don't like about the internet now is merely a reflection of human nature and us and not necessarily the internet itself and i don't know about that yeah okay well let me hear what you think about that so about that specifically i this is kind of this is like a weird name drop but i was talking uh it was it was an interview i was interviewing bill gates and he and he said basically the same thing and and and it was like there's not like these platforms are trying to get people to do anything. I mean, they're not trying to get people

to believe one thing or another. They're not trying to get people to be like angry. And I'm like, yeah, they are trying to get people to do something, Bill. They're trying to get people to do whatever makes them the most money. And he was like, oh yeah, aside from the profit motive. And I was like, ah.

So like in our society, it is perfectly okay for a social media platform to do whatever they can to make the most money because like that's what they're supposed to do. It would not be okay for them to say, what can we do to make people happy or sad or vote one way or another? That we would not be okay with. Like That's very, very creepy to think that this social media platform is designed to mollify me or to enrage me or to get me to vote for Joe Biden. But it is perfectly fine for them to do whatever it takes to get me to be the best consumer, to get me to be on the platform for the longest amount of time possible. And I think that we have to accept that part of the side effect of that may very well be that it does result in me being enraged. The side effect of the profit motive, the side effect of

trying to keep people on the website might be that the best way to do that is to have people be unhappy and lonely and angry. And in the long term, that might actually be bad for the company. But if they were trying to get people to stay on the website for longer, that did seem to be the thing that was doing it. And like maybe Facebook is paying some price for that now. And also, maybe we all pay some price for that in the long term because it's an awful, awful hard to run a company in a society that's falling apart. And I am legitimately worried about that. I mean, one thing I've wondered about is, can you have a profitable media company or platform that engages people by, you know, connecting them with content like you do that makes them feel informed, inspired. Maybe they laugh, right? Like there's other ways to engage people, right? Like, is this about tweaking the algorithms or is it just like,

once you have these platforms that are seeking profit, all hope is lost? Right. I mean, so I have to have some hope. And so I think a fair amount about how to have hope in the face of all of this. I think it's even deeper than that. I think that it may not be about the companies. It may not be about the platforms. It may be about human communication, which is the thing that we are best at. It's the thing that makes us special. It's what made any of this possible. Like the house that I'm living in, the headphones I'm wearing, the drugs I take,

like all, I have a chronic illness, not like the recreational, also the recreational drugs, all of the drugs. All of the drugs. It's the thing that makes all this stuff possible. And like,

so revolutions to communications technologies, like communications technology revolutions are always really disruptive. Like the, the, the biggest one we have ever had was the printing press. And Martin Luther was able to take down the Catholic church by himself. Take on, I shouldn't say take down.

Obviously they're still around. Still kicking. And the parallels are like really remarkable if you start to look at them. Like the, one of my favorite bits of this is that the Catholic church kept trying to respond to Martin Luther, but they would only do it in Latin because that was the language of the church. You couldn't do it in the native languages that people actually spoke. And so Martin Luther would, he was translating these documents into all the different languages and the church would respond only in Latin, which no one spoke. And that feels a little bit

similar to some podcasters being like, I'm just want to think and talk and be loud and ask questions and be curious and talk to different people. And the government being like, we have to speak in a way that no one can misunderstand and that will make no one angry and so we can say nothing and we're paralyzed and we get everything wrong yeah and then people get mad at us for getting everything wrong and then we're like you need to be more authoritative and so they try that and it's like whoa that turns out you were wrong like a little bit wrong about one thing so you need to be more vague and so they try that and it's like you need to be you can't win so you go back and forth and you have this situation where there's this like asymmetry of like what one group is allowed to do

and what the other group is allowed to do. And like the result is that like the really like strong, powerful things that have existed for a long, long time are losing that power. And that, you know, you see it in the disregarding of expertise and the denigrating of elites. And it feels very reminiscent of a kind of reformation vibe, which did not turn out well short term. It did not. I mean, part of what I think you're talking about is it's trust, right? It's trust in institutions. And people have less trust in institutions like the government, like businesses, like these platforms for a variety of reasons.

But part of building trust is the way you communicate to people. And if you are communicating in an overly officious, sort of careful, cautious way, you're going to raise some red flags in people's minds and think, maybe I shouldn't trust you when other people like those podcasters you mentioned, if they're communicating in a quote unquote, much more authentic way. And people are like, oh, that person sounds like me.

That person sounds like has questions that I have. And maybe I'll connect with that person a little bit more. Yeah, but it's, of course, you also can't be authentic as the government because people will find reasons to hate that too. It is a very difficult spot to be in, especially once you have lost some trust because you make some bad calls and you also lose trust because there's a large infrastructure of people who benefit from helping you lose trust, from enabling the loss of your trust. And the question in my mind becomes, is there a path? What is the path out? And I think that there is a certain amount of inoculation that we get where we get better at things, but things change so quickly. There's a very clear pandemic analogy where it's like, okay, so you build up the inoculation, but then the thing changes. like the evolution of the Buzzfeed headline,

where it's like, they don't use those same headlines that they used to. It was like, at first it was like 10 things. And then it was like, you won't believe the sixth. And so like these headlines work for a little while and then they stop working on people because they get used to the format. You're not gonna trick me this time. I'm not clicking on that.

Yeah, exactly. And then another format comes up. And so like misinformation also can function in that way where people, it gets people at first, and then they get a little bit inoculated against it, and then it has to sort of take another form. And the hope is that maybe younger people who are raised inside of this information ecosystem that has no expert curation will get better at that. I haven't seen any clear evidence of that as a person who communicates with

young people fairly frequently. I haven't seen that there's a big movement of like young people who are just really good at discerning misinformation from information. I mean, you're, you're, you're a father. What do you think about like your own your own your own kid and like how how are you trying to inoculate uh them against information and how do you and just how to navigate this world it's something i mean i have a one and a half year old but i think about this all the time like how is he going to interact with

all these platforms in a way that's as healthy as possible. I have concerns about information, but they are maybe a little bit less than concerns about social interaction. I have a lot of concerns about that too, yeah. Which I think, you know, TikTok grew so much in the last couple of years. And you think like, where did that time come from? Did it come from TV? Did it come from Instagram? Or did it come from socialization?

Did it come from like the time that kids would normally be spending in a room with each other that they haven't been doing because of the pandemic? And also because that's a long-term trend. Like that's not new. Like kids have been spending less time with each other, which I think it's scary.

I don't know how big of a deal it is. I don't know the science on it, but like, it seems like a big deal to me. I think that kids should spend time with each other. I think that they, you know, I think that that is an important part of being a person. And then as far as like what I, how I feel about how to talk to my kid about what is true and not true, I think that there are, if you could invite some interrogation of reality, because kids are curious, we're all curious, but kids are like, I haven't had a beaten out of them yet. And so inviting those questions and using them to allow for models for how to engage with information and how to seek out information, how to interrogate information. And then like as my son's five, so it's not really time for this yet, but I think that as he is older, it's like take on examples of previous times where people have been duped.

And like look at those, look at phrenology. Why did we believe phrenology? How much of that was racism? How much of it was pop science? What were the bits of it? How much of it was just that we wanted something to find here? How much of it was that it felt cutting edge because we were just starting to understand the brain? And so it was like, well, maybe the head shape has something to do with it too. And it felt modern in a way that obviously doesn't now, you know, our conception of the universe is changing, but that doesn't mean that, um, that like nothing means anything or nothing matters. It's all inside of a context. You mentioned, um, TikTok, uh, we're almost the same age. I joined TikTok last year. Couldn't post a video if my life depended on it. Have no doubt that I would absolutely embarrass myself, especially my

wife, if I ever tried. You're already a successful TikToker who's built a huge following on the platform. How did you manage to not come across like an old dad? Well, I did. That's very intentional. I think the only reason I could do it is that I have taught many of these children biology and chemistry. And so they're like, they're like, that's the biology and chemistry guy. And, and so I joked about that for a long time. And, and the, you know, the, the expectation is that I, I try, and I fail sometimes because it's too much fun, but I try to like use TikTok the way that a teacher would that like, I don't want to do anything on this platform that a teacher wouldn't do. For example, recently there was a TikTok that was about how hot Jamie Lee Curtis is. And I commented on that TikTok and I said, they really said for you, Paige, huh? Meaning, yes, they have located an interest of mine. And then I went back to that comment and I was like, should I have done that? And I looked at it and I was like, if I saw my chemistry teacher posting

that he thought that Jamie Lee Curtis was hot on TikTok, how would I feel about that? And I deleted that comment. So like the, you know, and like there's nothing like harmful about thinking Jamie Lee Curtis is hot, but the- But you're trying to fit with what your identity is. I'm trying to match the expectation of the audience. I'm trying to not, like you don't want to feel like you're at like,

you're like at the wrong party, you know? And I want to be at the right party so i lean into that and like i'm i am a dork but you know i you know i try to match the expectation as someone who's spent a lot of time creating content on youtube and now tiktok like what makes tiktok unique compared to youtube or other platforms aside from the most obvious which which is the length of the videos? Oh, God, that's nothing. That has nothing to do with it. The difference is that on YouTube, the user makes decisions about what they want to watch. And on TikTok, you do not make a decision. TikTok decides what you want to watch, which is a huge shift.

It is a very big deal. And it means a couple of, so it means that it's much easier for new talent to get discovered, which is great. It means that it's much harder for existing people to hold onto their audiences, monetize their audiences, build businesses, build community, because you have no guarantee that a video will be watched by your audience if it is not enthusiastically received by them, which is going to be less the case if it is about getting people to follow you on Instagram or getting people to buy a t-shirt or something like that. So it changes the dynamics hugely and it changes it and it gives the platform a lot more power over both the users and the creators. So like creators really have to do everything they can always to

continue to get attention and audience. And it literally makes the decision about what video it's going to show a person next. Whereas on YouTube, I might make a decision that like my choice might not actually be what I want. And like TikTok might be giving me more what I want than what I would choose. Oftentimes I would choose something familiar and something that feels like me. Whereas on TikTok, they might know that i actually

they're gonna see maybe i want something that isn't familiar something that something new something that and i think i see this like directly reflected and i'm very curious about this i have no idea what's at the bottom of it but my audience on uh tiktok is majority female and my science videos on on like i will post the exact same science video on tiktok it'll be like 70 women will watch it i'll post these that video on and like youtube's tiktok like version which is called shorts and it'll be 80 male wow and i'm like is this because YouTube is a platform where people choose things that they think is for them and women kind of don't feel like science content is for them?

Or is it because YouTube is just more male and TikTok is just more female? Or is it because the vibe is different? I don't know. It's so interesting to me. You talk about from a user perspective, from a creator perspective, like as you're making content for TikTok, how does knowing how the algorithm works sort of affect what kind of content you create? Are you thinking about like, I got to create something that the algorithm is

going to put in front of more people? Like how does that affect what you decide to post? Well, the thing to always remember about algorithms is they only have human inputs so what they do with those human inputs is decided by by the algorithm in a very upsetting way where are these things like to what extent do they make their own decisions and also by the engineers who build them so so but so like when i'm making content i have to know if I want a video to do well, especially if I want a video to do well, that, um, is promoting something, which would normally not do well, but I need to have a really good hook. I need to have really good jokes. I need to like, I need it to be like, to go hard the whole time. And, um, you know,

that, uh, is stuff that I've gotten good at over the years, but it's hard. And it's especially hard. Like, I've become friends with some TikTokers who, like, it's their job, but it's a grind. It is very hard. You really have to have every, you don't have to have every video be good, but you have to have enough really good videos that um that you keep your audience uh engaged and and uh you keep keep reaching there for your page i imagine the length makes that even more difficult to the shorter length like i always i mean i yes and no like it depends on what you're doing you can tell a joke really fast well i mean in a you know in a past life I wrote speeches and I always thought

that writing a short speech was harder than writing a long speech because the shorter the content you really just have like you said you have to pack it all in

it has to be entertaining and keep people's attention from the get go and you just have to you have to do more with less space yeah but TikTok's gonna be

up to three minutes now so that's forever no longer that's up to three minutes now. So that's forever. That's so long. Three minutes is forever now. You recently posted a video on your YouTube channel titled, So TikTok Sucks. That's about how TikTok pays creators. Can you talk about that a little?

Yeah. TikTok sucks. That's about how TikTok pays creators. Can you talk about that a little? Yeah. Basically, platforms, video platforms specifically tend to share revenue somehow. Facebook shares revenue with video creators. YouTube is the one that pioneered this back in 2008. 55% of the money from advertisements that run on my videos, I get. YouTube sells the ads. I just get the money. There are other ways I monetize. They're all big deals. But like for my company, which is, you know, we have 50 employees. It's pretty big. Like YouTube, just YouTube selling ads and sharing the revenue with us is a huge part of how we do our business. It's like a third of our revenue. On TikTok, instead of sharing a percentage of revenue, there is a static pool of money.

It's like 200, I'm not sure. It's hundreds of millions of dollars. It was 200 million when they launched it. I don't know if they've changed it since then. They haven't changed it a lot. And so like everybody who gets something, I think it's based on watch time and engagement, some mix of stuff, that money gets distributed among all of the creators who are inside of the program.

And so if only one person got a TikTok view that day, they would get that day's worth of that pool of money, which means that as- It's a fixed pool though. It's a fixed amount, which means that as the number of views on the platform goes up, creators make less money per view because the amount of money is the same. It's also a very small amount of money. It is a small amount of money is the same. It's also a very small amount of money. It is a small amount of money certainly compared... YouTube probably sent about $16 billion to creators last year, TikTok's like 200 million. And of course, YouTube makes more money than TikTok also. But I think as a percentage, I've tried to do some back of the envelope calculations. I think it's probably about 10 times less than YouTube as a percentage

of the revenue that they make. Wow. That's terrible. Something you said in the video that really stuck with me was that the YouTube Partner Program was the one decision in online media that has changed more than anything else. Why is yeah i mean because how much do you make for your tweets the tweets are free unfortunately the tweets are free so like and that's that was the case you know it's instagram posts are free facebook posts are free but youtube was you know a little bit pressured into this like there were there were companies that were offering creators a share of revenue. But YouTube created a place that was not just about fun. There was something to get that wasn't just attention. And I think that this is important because I think if you just want attention, you don't get

the best content and you don't get the best people. And it's very difficult to run a company that like works hard and is trying to put out good information and like fact checking and creating good content. If you're basing it all on mug sales, you know, if you're basing it all or like some like subscription conversion or something. something so you know you end up in this situation where like the the crap is free and the good stuff costs money which is like where we like nobody's ever get like dan bongino is perfectly happy to have you come to the website and not have you pay a fee for it um right and the new york times does not feel that way uh because the business model wouldn't work so So they at least gave a way to build businesses. And now there are many people on YouTube who have large companies. And there are lots of different ways that people make money as online creators, but that is often the first money that they make is the YouTube share. And that money continues to be a big part of people's revenue throughout their careers.

So you've been a big deal internet person on so many platforms for so many years. And I feel like you rarely, if ever, get in fights or generate much controversy. You seem like a hopeful, happy guy. What's your secret? Glad it seems that way. guy. What's your secret? Glad it seems that way. I was just talking about this with my wife last night. It is really hard. It's really hard not to overreact when people are mad at you. We are humans and we feel our own stings more than we feel the stings that we send other people's way. And that is especially the

case when we see that person as somebody who has a lot of status, they've got a lot of Twitter followers, they got a lot of money. When people come up at me, it doesn't feel like they're punching up. It feels like I'm getting punched. So being able to react in the way where I am not imagining how I feel, but I'm imagining how they think they're making me feel, which is mostly they have no idea they're making me feel any way at all. So that's an important part of it. And it took a long time to learn. And like, I think I was better at it because we had a really slow growth rather than like suddenly having a lot of power after the day before not having any power. I watch this with younger creators all the time where they don't realize

that the amount of power that they have has changed dramatically in the course of a couple of months. And how could they? Like, why would they think that? So that's part of it. There's a piece of it that's like, you got to stay in your lane. You got to know when you don't know what you're talking about. Not every opinion has to be uttered. That is very true. I have so many that I don't say. Nor do you have to comment on every development that happens in the world. Twitter is like this more than any other platform.

But it's like, you know, to me, as someone who worked in politics, it's like something happens and everyone feels like they're a politician that has to like release their public statement on it. I mean, it happens in a sort of benign way when someone famous dies and everyone like gives their in memoriams on Twitter, you know, but I'm just oftentimes I don't do it because I'm like, who the fuck cares what I have to say about this? This is I don't have to issue a statement on everything that happens in the world. And probably sometimes it's just going to get you in trouble. Yes. And it's easy. It's easy to not know what's going on and it's also easy to have people say why haven't you said anything about this and then you come out and you're like ah here's my statement on palestine and you're like whoa buddy carefully scripted yeah right don't uh like you i i don't need to know logan paul's thoughts on palestine that's like and he gets that logan pa Paul actually gets that. Some people think

that their lane is everywhere, but I think that it's important to understand that you can have passionate opinions even that are not going to be part of the authenticity that is part of your public thing. And the thing that I was talking to my wife about is that it's a your public thing. And the other, like the thing that I was talking to my wife about is that like, it's a pretty extreme thing to be a public person right now. And it requires a lot of expertise.

And I've had time to develop that expertise. And I also have a better experience of it because I'm a white guy. And I also have a better experience of it because I like a white guy. And I also have a better experience of it because I, like, or, or I am able to sort of like see it in a different context because I have so much security in other portions of my life. Like I, my identity is diversified and I can imagine a world where this goes away and it's bad. And like, I, like it's a, it's a terrible process, but at the end of it, I have a lot of things that I value a lot and I think are about myself and my life. And I think that's really

important for people who have a job like mine to continue to try and diversify their identity and not go all in on this one thing. And if it feels like that's being threatened, you get really, really defensive, really fast. Um, and you know, there, there is also like, to, to be honest, like you have to be engaged with what people are freaking out about lately. You have to like, know what things you might say that might get you in trouble. And like that changes, you know, it's changed dramatically since 2007. I've taken videos down that used words that like, I didn't think that they were bad, that bad of words back in the day, but like have become, you know, understood to be truly like super harmful. And like, I didn't know that.

And I think that there is that it is important to recognize that when you are a person who benefits from your reputation, that when some harm comes to your reputation, that is not the end of your career. That is not someone trying to cancel you or hurt you. It is some harm that has come to your reputation. It's like a professional sports star who has an ankle injury. It's like, this is a thing that maybe you should

have prepared for better, or maybe you should have made a better decision in the moment, but you have suffered an injury and that's not the end of everything. And sometimes there are career-ending injuries and those people go on and they have lives that are outside of that sport and that is okay and like it's not fun it's very sad when that that happened like it's very sad for that person right and like having to have some harm come to your career because you made a misstep it sucks but like it happens and i try and think of it in that way where like reputational harm has come to me will continue to come to me like not everybody's gonna love me and and try and sort of like when my car loses a little bit of grip it's not like don't panic just try and also and take it as an opportunity to learn and grow from that too um

i think what you said about sort of having an identity that's just outside of what you do online is important i thought that was an important point. Like one thing that happens with public people online is like being on the internet is a very public performance that is just, you're on all the time. And this isn't just like prominent people. This is now all of us.

All of us that participate in this are on all the time. Do you ever get tired of being on all the time? And like, how close are the public and private versions of Hank Green? Yeah, it's like everything that is on the internet is me, but not everything that is me is on the internet. Yeah, that's okay. And I think that that's pretty important.

In the early times, that was not something that I maintained. that's pretty important. It's in the early times, that was not something that I maintained. And now, now it is. And I have a kid now and I've got like, you know, there's more of that kind of stuff that I feel like keeping private. And it's also like back when it was just like a,

you know, a few thousand nerds. And there was, I didn't have like a company that I had to try and represent as well as, um, you know, myself. And so, you know, it's, it's all delicate balance, but I think that, you know, and also it's something that I think every, everybody has to decide for themselves. Uh, last question I ask all our guests, What's your favorite way to unplug and how often do you get to do it? Walking with my wife and maybe my son if he's not being a pill about it.

The answer I would like to have is hanging out with groups of friends, but I haven't been doing it very much. And I think it's not just the pandemic. I think it's also that like I'm very online and I've gotten used to feeling weird about hanging out with a bunch of people. And I feel like it might be time for me to start getting used to it again. I think it took the pandemic for me to realize how much I missed hanging out with groups of people as opposed to just being among

people, but all of us being on our phones all the time. And I think I took that for granted. And then when the pandemic hit, I was like, wow, I really missed that. And I really missed the actual in-person social connection. So Hank Green, thank you so much for joining Offline. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for doing this. I've listened to every episode. It's really, really good. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I was like,

holy shit, this exists? More people complaining about the internet. That's my bag. Figured it would be. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Austin Fisher.

Andrew Chadwick is our audio editor. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Michael Martinez, Ari Schwartz, Madison Holman, and Sandy Gerard for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, and Amelia Montooth, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.