Sad Boyz - Becoming Unraveled (w/ Brian David Gilbert)

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

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Welcome to Sad Boys, a podcast about feelings and other things also. I'm Jarvis and I'm Jordan and today we're joined by a very special guest. You know him, you love him. They're your favorite three letters in a row. Brian David Gilbert, BDG. How's it going? In that order. In that order. The three favorite letters are BRI of Brian David Gilbert and the rest of us throw them away. You know, it's cool that BDG is in alphabetical order. It is nice. I am always saying saying that that's why i've rechanged my name to be this weird amalgamation of three brian david dilbert yeah it was weird i don't know why my parents went for that but i appreciate it what was the catalyst to that officially becoming your brand no no no more words yeah the so the thing about it was that when i first started making like silly youtube videos after college and i didn't have a job or anything i was like well i it could just be brian gilbert which there are millions of also i believe there is a british director named brian gilbert

who made some like i don't know i haven't watched any of his films on principle i refuse to do it i don't want to see anything by another on his behalf that's so sorry there's a Texas there's a Texas state representative house representative named Jarvis Johnson and I refuse to read

any of his bills yes you have to make sure you have to keep that very separate as soon as you start combining it it doesn't work

it just doesn't work there's actually a basketball player called Michael Jordan oh yeah that really kind of messed with my personal brain that destroys your whole brain

made at Jordan really hard to get very challenging very challenging but yeah you were saying yes uh but I was just uh when I was making it I was like well I guess I could just use my full name and I kind of thought it was funny I was like wouldn't it be funny if I insisted on going by Brian David Gilbert like the most formal way right like the videos I was making were 10 seconds long and just atrocious. Right, right. But then after a while, I realized I was like, oh, I've locked myself into this. Yeah.

Now this has become the brand identity of me, I guess. Because when you go on the internet, you stop being a person and you start being a commodity. It does give like Tiger Beat teen heartthrob. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that because the other one people always bring up is that it's like, oh, just like all of the serial killers that have three first names.

And I'm like, oh, well, stop. Like I've been trying to keep that secret for as long as possible. That is the thing about serial killers. Yeah. They're really shy about it. They're trying to keep it to themselves. Are you taking the wings off a moth no it's a butterfly i'm not insane come on be real uh that is a really good point i guess

that is hard to account for a double-barreled last well it's middle name last name right middle name last name first so yeah just brian david Gilbert. The thing is that I've, what's weird is that I would say more than I would expect people come up to me and are like, hey, David, it's great to see you. And I'm like, I don't know why, no one has ever called me David. I had one situation where I was known as Brian, no last name, no middle name.

That was just me. I was like working in a situation where my name was Brian and then it came up that I made videos. And then the next day somebody came in and was like, oh, and like, in a situation where my name was Brian and then it came up that I made videos and then the next day somebody came in and was like, oh, and like, you know, David's doing whatever on this. And I was like, you wouldn't know that

unless you stalked me and then also somehow forgot all of the interactions we had prior to this moment. Maybe like you're giving people Brian vibes sometimes, other times you're giving them David vibes. Yeah, I think, what would you consider a David vibe versus a Brian vibe? Well, to be quite frank, you're giving them david vibes yeah i think what would you consider a david vibe versus a brian vibe well to be quite frank you're giving off kind of a david vibe by even asking that question yeah that is a very david thing don't even get me started on the gilbert that's when i'm like getting wild that's when i go into my gilbert era yeah when your mom

when your mom is uh mad at you for something g. Gilbert? Yep. That's your Sasha Fias. Gilbert. Gilbert, when I need to go to my... Not fierce at all. It is weird because I don't think I ever... I was a real goody two-shoes growing up, so my mom never got angry at me. But I don't think I ever had a situation

where they were like, Brian, David, Gilbert, you come down here. But now on the street, it is more likely for you to call me by my full name if you don't know who I am personally. And if you do know who I am personally, you'll just call me Brian. And like, that's fine.

It is strangely like, I feel naked when somebody calls me by my full name, even though that is like my, I guess my stage name. Yeah. Like, cause people will go, are you Jarvis Johnson? And I'm like, I don't know why you had to say people will go, are you Jarvis Johnson? And I'm like, I don't know why you had to say it like that.

First of all, yeah, literally. Why, what do you know? Have you ever been called your first and last name or at least the stage name that people know you by? Yeah, I've talked about it publicly recently. So I think I'm fine kind of generally saying this. So my last name, last name is Cope, C-O-P-E. Hilarious, by the way, now in retrospect.

Cope and C, dude. Thank God I stopped using it when I did. My middle name is Adika. Okay. But yeah, if I hear Jordan Cope now, I'm in trouble. Or it is one of the, I don't know, 10 people at Patreon that knew me as Jordan Cope. Right. because eventually that just that became my public name because yes i did recently uh accidentally call you by your

normal last name in a video and then people were like did travis accidentally reveal jordan's secret name yeah and i was like oh no because i just had you know all this muscle memory of a different name because we were um at my old apartment like um brainstorming new identities for joy when we were like trying to figure out what his like internet handle would be like online because you want to figure out what like you want to get something where you can get it on all socials nowadays you know and then now through process of elimination i have also revealed my entire legal name when i rebrand i'm going to use my mother's maiden name in my sort code it's important i always am talking about my elementary school and my first pet's name

those are the things that i love to discuss most importantly yeah so what's everybody's childhood best friend yeah just do it off the top of your head yeah okay last four digits of social let's do it all together ice breaker you do it one two three what's uh i really struggle with some of those like the street i mean i moved around as a kid to the street i grew up on but i have like the one i referenced so that's fine yes best friend as a child oh impossible it feels like i'm betraying so many possible people i feel like the ones that i can never i've i truly when i go through that list i and they're like first concert you went to and like these other things and i'm like oh shit i've had a boring childhood i guess like i

don't i don't tell us about all the cool shit you did as a kid god i think the first uh concert i did go to and that is why i've never used this as one of my questions so i feel comfortable talking about this on the air but uh it was an art garfunkel solo concert with my friend because we were just like hanging out and he's like oh yeah art garfunkel's coming to my local like concert hall and i went there and we sat in like the second row and i was like i know some of your music that you did with simon i apologize that i'm not a full garfunkel head it's weird that we use his full name now yeah right garfunkel art garfunkel what sorry did i do something wrong yeah uh this is too loud is he british he gives off a very british energy i believe he's american but that name

should not be sorry yeah arthur garfunkel i think he's like eighth in line for the throne yeah it's unclear he's like a designated survivor if all goes to shit we bring in we bring in in. Yeah. Wait, that's a good question. Well, no, sorry. About the Art Garfunkel show. While we're on the hot topic. This is now the topic of the podcast. No. Does he do songs that he did with Simon, but just his like.

Yeah, I believe he sang at least Bridge Over Troubled Water. Okay. That was the one that I can remember he sang. I'm pretty sure but also he was also in his era of um uh doing a lot of spoken word poetry which was a very interesting thing um and i also what's funny is that i uh i had a friend of a friend who was also his tour manager for at a different point in time who ended up like your life is coming full circle yeah like this that was a weird connection after like long after it i was like oh weird that was my first concert i guess was art garfunkel how old are you how old are you for the first concert

i feel like maybe like 18 i was very i was i should have had a concert before then but it was like it was normalized not going to concert i don't think i went to my first concert until i was 18 okay i'm glad we're we're peacing the pod there but uh it was it was that weird thing where it was funny because the tour manager had i believe had him uh come to his wedding because he was like friends with our uncle and um i'm sure i could tell this story i'm sure it's fine i don't care it's fine the important thing is that he was like i might sing a song at your wedding and they're like you you might sing a song and he's like yeah i will think about it and they're like it's this is a wedding like we have a lot of things planned and so my sister was like

involved with the wedding and she was like yeah they told us they're like and then maybe art garfunkel's gonna sing a song we don't know at this point in the program he might do it and so like they get to that part of the program and everyone just kind of stops and then art cockle stands up and they're like okay i guess he's singing a song i guess he's doing something all right and so he came up and he sang and he walks to the bathroom he's singing from inside the borderline yeah and there's just like oh all right well we're all doing this now all right it sounds good but i think it was good enough for like all of the rest of the audience members who are not you know directly associated with our right oh my god it's art car that's yeah that was pretty cool i guess being a

musical artist that's that famous and going to a wedding is like going there open carry at any point it's gonna happen if art garfunkel stops like literally right in the middle of the vows it's like we have to let him we have to let him come up here i'm sorry sorry i'm not this isn't me saying that they should not be wet or whatever i just i want to sing i won't object not object but i shall see it is me what do they sound like that's it right uh yeah speaking of um artists who collaborate uh i went to a little john concert oh which is a weird concept i don't know if you know this because little john is not someone you think of as being a solo artist in any regard yeah no he's kind of famous for just saying like things over songs and maybe producing or djing unclear unclear what he does or ever did

he does it really well whatever he's doing he does super super well like we know dj collin doesn't he's like a producer he's like he brings everybody together yeah and it's like that's it's a known quantity little john couldn't tell you what he does but he did perform at georgia tech in like 2011 and he was in a class he just stood up yeah it's time it was during my final exam what okay they were like pencils down and he was like what uh so his performance consisted of him like at a dj booth playing songs that he is involved with and then doing his ad libs over them that's which was so funny that's so good it was awesome also if you truly if you sat me down and were like brian imagine a little john concert right now that would be the first thing i thought of was okay i guess he just says the yes on the side and that's it also the first thing he

thought of but if we're all agreeing that that's what we came here for then that's yeah I think everybody was I think when you're at that age it's just really exciting to see a famous person yeah yeah and and they're kind of moving around and it's like they're

they're real that's kind of the whole person premise of like I don't know what to call it but influencer boys tiktok housing type boy live show right or it's like uh hey what's up we're going live across the country make sure to get your tickets now it's only seventeen thousand dollars if you want to see me for a second before i run away i'm so high and then you you'll see these videos from the shows and it's just a bunch of guys that come out they're like what's up yeah it's like crowd work yeah there are definitely times when i'm like oh i think i'd like to try to do a live show but like i don't know what i want i don't like i have to i want to make sure it's good and it's interesting and there's like content like the the stuff that you're going to is like oh you've you've managed to make something that

is worth seeing specifically in a live setting. And then I watch those videos and I'm like, oh, I could just go on a live tour right now. The bar is way lower than you think. I think that that's weirdly freeing. You know, as a creator or as a creative type, like knowing that the bar is much lower than you've put it in your head gives you a little bit more space to like fail you know or to to try things out well i mean yeah it's also it won't ding the algorithm if you go to a and do a live show or it won't be this point in your creative archive where it's like oh yeah an l yeah that's fine as long as you uh film it and then destroy the footage after your cut

doesn't have to have existed count the laughs yeah um This is something that I want to get out of the way very early. Okay. Have you seen the cop slide incident? I have seen the cop slide incident. Yes. Okay. So we talked about this. You've done your Bible study.

Yeah. I've done my research beforehand. So this is one of science's newest mysteries. Okay. For those who haven't seen, we talked about on the previous episode, but there was a new slide in city, Boston. Uh,

thank you. There's a news. There's a, it's already great. Just looking at the slide is a beautiful. Yeah. The slide of this life. So the,

uh, there's a new slide. of Playground in Boston. And there's a video and a whole news story about an officer who went down the slide, but he came out of the slide. In short, wrong. Yes, that seems... he came out too fast he came out upside down than how you would normally ride on a slide and seemingly not making con he doesn't seem to touch the slide he looks like a uh like his hit box is like balancing on top of this line it's like one

of those like mag rails where it's just like floating in the center and no friction. He was shooting right at it. He is the Shinkansen. Oh, wow. And five to 12 year olds only. But that's not stopping grown-ups from trying it out.

In fact, they're flocking to it. Grown-ups? It was just a clip in the cover again. They're trying to reproduce it. Yeah. How does a child go down that?

Check out the bump on this woman's head. It was really scary. I honestly, not to sound dramatic, but I waited a few days to post the video because I wasn't sure that I was going to be okay. Come on, man. As you can see, when kids go down the slide, it seems pretty placid.

Yeah, because they weigh a lot less. It's for children. Here's my conspiracy theory about this. What happened was all of the adults watched the Tide Pod challenge and every other TikTok challenge that has hurt children

and they're like, well, we need to figure out the thing that doesn't hurt children at all. Never hurts a child, but will specifically destroy you if you are over the age of 18. Never hurts a child, but will specifically destroy you if you are over the age of 18. It is a beautiful thing. It finally equalizes the playing field. I think this is great.

I think, honestly, it's all good now. Everything is okay. It's all been solved. We figured it out. This could be like a fancy engineering solution to prevent adults from taking up a child's spot on the side

oh it's like when they play the frequency that only children can hear outside 7-eleven exactly i i came downstairs this morning and anastasia and jacob were watching a video of a physicist explaining how it could possibly have happened that's great and so i want to see i think we have that oh i have a little fake slide set up here and this would be like a child with a felt clothing or could be cotton doesn't really matter so this adult has twice the mass it's actually two blocks but it's the same thing so doubling the mass doesn't change it right because the frictional force depends on how hard these two surfaces are pushed together. This is a block with a Teflon base. What?

Got it? And so the type of surface you have interacting with the slide really does matter. Is a cop uniform nylon? I guess so. Or Teflon or whatever. They're like cops uniforms are engineered for a maximum slide the friction coefficient is very low this this physicist is a genius this teacher whatever i think this is the best thing ever if you are a physics teacher you just need to go look at the

dumbest videos online and then be like okay let's talk about how dumb this was literally like so great can meet people where they are yeah like let's make it i i think that's yeah kudos to this fit can we shout out his name i don't know ret alain that sounds like copyright yeah i swear to like yeah i heard yeah this is their like when the dbz yeah that becomes this it's like a weird there's no combination doesn't make sense but it is just become this physics it makes them not be from the south they get so much uh you said the my um sleeper agent code phrase which is dbz yes uh i have been i've been collecting i started a collection of dragon ball dvds because i used to collect them when i was a kid and so i've started

building this collection over here. Can you leave the couch and bring some over? Oh, absolutely. I can. Is that break the kayfabe of this? We're all locked into our chairs and it's not allowed. Where'd he go? We're like, we have no object permitted.

What? My dad shaved his beard. I've been dying to talk about this. Oops, sorry. Fantastic. Oh, yeah. Okay, so first let's do a little history lesson. So in the beginning, when Funimation first got the license to broadcast Dragon Ball in the States,

Funimation, which is now a huge company, their biggest anime, biggest harbinger of anime in the United States. The omen bringer of anime. But when they started, they were just a small company in like Fort Worth, Texas. And so they didn't have their own voice cast. So they contracted this Canadian voice cast called the Ocean Group. And that for the first like two seasons,

like sort of Saiyan Saga, namic saga uh in dbz uh uh they was a different voice cast um so you know it's over 9 000 that was a voice actor named brian drummond who was the original voice of vegeta for the ocean group uh and then when they came back around when funimation brought all their people in house I think there was some union stuff too or something. But when they brought their people in-house, all the voices changed. And then that's where we got the iconic Sean Schimmel as Goku versus some dude named something Clements. I don't know. But anyway, and Christopher Sabat, voice of Vegeta.

So these Pioneer DVDs, these are the first home release of dragon ball with the ocean group on them which is fun uh they have since been redubbed because funimation has like gone back and re-released the whole series and they want the voice consistency okay that makes sense but then they also did this thing oh gosh okay so so uh, you know, the Funimation voice actors, they picked up in the middle of Namek and they started doing voice impressions of the Ocean Group. Because for consistency's sake, you know, there's people watching this on Cartoon Network. Yeah. So they wanted to make their voice sound, you know, close-ish to the people. But then as the actors, sort of as time went on and the actors came into their own, they had their own style, their own more creative take on the characters. And so then they went back again and re-recorded some of those early episodes.

The impressions. Yeah, because they were doing impressions. And fun fact, in Dragon Ball Super, Vegeta fights a clone of himself. And the clone, they got Brian Drummond, the Ocean Group voice actor, to come back and play Vegeta's clone. Oh, I didn't know that. That's fun. And for Canadian, sorry, once you pop, you just can't stop. For Canadian viewers, though, the Ocean Group did dub most of Dragon Ball in Canada. And so there is a separate full dub with the ocean group but they're all french that's amazing that's great i will say that the

you know like you live in new york or la you're gonna see some celebs and whatever i don't think i get starstruck very often but uh the closest i got to it was i just like went to a random mall one day when we first moved here uh and at the i believe the funko store the funko pop store there was a huge line and i was like oh this can't be important and then it was vegeta's voice actor there and i was like am i gonna buy a funko pop like i was like this is the first time i've actively thought about ever buying like on of my own volition purchasing a Funko Pop just so I can go see the guy who voices Vegeta. Being like, ah, another for my collection. Yes, I must collect these.

So Demon Slayer. started as like a lowly voice actor and then he like became like like a producer like in the booth like doing I don't know what the job is called but when you're behind the booth with the voice actors doing direction yeah I think director voice direction or something like that director and then now he's like super high up in Funimation because he's been there for like

20 years and then I'll wrap this up by saying a lot of these you can find for like kind of cheap but it's hard to collect the whole set so but the later these are the later dvds these are like things i grew up with um and i used to collect them as a child or as a teenager i would go on ebay and i'd find these for like five dollars and i'm old for the slide 13 and up 13 and i'm not allowed yes great uh so some of these are still sealed which is kind of cool yeah it's not it's incredible i think i i fell off somewhere in the boo saga hey that's okay but i um i was there for for all of cell and frieza and i'd say

enough that i can talk about dbz for hours if need be did. It's like a peculiar point in time where it's not so much lost media, but it felt so ephemeral because you would tune in and like, hopefully you didn't miss an episode, especially in the UK that was never a consistent time. It was one of the loop shows. So, Oh, Thursday's playing a cell episode,

but Wednesday was playing a saint. Oh my God. And I also, my child brain was like, I guess they just wrapped it up off camera. Yeah, it must be. I'm glad they won. It even gets crazier with the DVD releases

because Cell was the last thing to come out on DVD. And so when I was a kid, I got one of those Kid Boo like one of the last episodes of the series on dvd with like a dvd player as like a christmas or birthday gift or something and i wasn't sure when i would see that on tv but you were yeah you were putting together the pieces and as a kid

that kind of added to it yeah i think there was a fun little mystique about it because also you had like that was still the era um where my older brother's friends would be like well i heard they went to super saiyan eight last and i was like no but they haven't even gone to super saiyan three what are you talking about that's not he's like well i saw it because my uncle works whatever and like my uncle is margin boo yeah my uncle piccolo yeah sure that i could uh watch the new thing so far as i was like young enough at one point where they were just saying that you know kayo ken was real and i was just like i guess yeah you're older you're a year and a half older you would know

thousands of videos of children trying to go super saiyan and it's one of the most wholesome things you'll ever see i found i I've like, there's a video. I have a collection of videos that are all like below 10,000 views that I really appreciate and care a lot about. And one of them is of a kid explaining his power level and how he's calculated it. And it's the best thing I've ever seen. Cause he's like, well, what you have to do is you have to like multiply your pushups by this.

And I was like, that's the exact thing I would do if I was that kid like that's 100% what I was doing was like trying to figure out being like yeah well if I'm talking about power level I definitely need to make sure that I'm like seeing how many swings I can do on a swing set and like it's so important but I just love to see any sort of like

random weird small video where it's just like you can tell how passionate whatever this person is. Passion driven but also deadly sincere yes yeah no passion no like pseudo irony about it so such a beautiful thing we i don't even want to like push people to it because i you know i'm just cautious of sending like whoever and we have to look at the channels we don't remember but while we're at vidcon was it you that stumbled across it or was it danny and drew and then we watched it later stumbled across a power rangers mighty morphin power rangers cosplayer yeah who uh i think um i found it but then it was 40 minutes long and i was the one who was like hold let's keep watching so we were we got a um we got an airbnb because at vidcon there's like a lot of

hustle and bustle and we're all in the hotels which is nice but there's nowhere you can chill and so we just got an airbnb like in the neighborhood and could just like sit on the couch and like watch tv chill out decompress and there were two things from uh we were logged into someone else's youtube and that is like a treasure trove of like, what is this person like? Yes, yes. And the first thing we watched was Ninja Kids, which is a,

it's like a family channel type thing where the kids are all gymnasts and they're incredibly skilled at doing backflips and things. Amazing. And like ninjas, so to speak. And they do these act outs of like stories. They did a Power Rangers inspired story where they were wearing the costumes.

They were completely infringing on all of the copyright. Yeah. Inspired is pretty charitable. All the characters were the same name. Okay. Vulcan Skull is just in it. Vulcan Skull are in it same name okay even vulcan scholar in it and so then from that because the youtube algorithm is a beautiful glorious beast uh recommended a guy trying on a two thousand dollar etsy recreation mighty warhead power rangers costume which from bespoke order took it took like five years five

whoa because of the pandemic this like uh uh builder the person who created the costume thought i was killed by yeah they they got super behind and so they were like reviewing it after five years of waiting and so you watch them unbox it and they're it looks like the quality is incredible like it looks like it was on the tv show and that like there's still a part of my brain that's like i need that yeah you know what i mean yeah me in five years needs what happens is that he puts on the mask and or the helmet and he and he's like um it's a little hard to see it's a little hard to see in here and it's a little hard to breathe so the rest of the video is him like clearly disappointed but he's but he can't let it show. Yeah.

And so. This is like minute six. And so a large portion of the video. A large portion of the video is him doing poses and fighting. Yeah. Fighting stances in his hallway. Yes. dances in his hallway yes and then every time he resets he he clearly goes like uh it's like the um i think you should leave sketch where i got too much shit on me yeah he like he like goes i don't even want to be around anymore okay okay i think for the bonus we i do not know if we'll show it on screen because again

i would be heartbroken if this person got any sort of like harassment of course uh but i will show it to you okay that's good i will show it to you i will i will get to watch it it'll be a reaction video but with nothing in the corner i it in the reflection of your glasses yeah people are just like zooming enhanced just so they can figure out the title computer activate david not brian so brian uh one of the things that i don't know if i've ever gotten a chance to talk to you about it but i was a huge fan of unraveled thank you yeah i i so like and that was where i think you first entered my radar uh i was literally pitching it to my partner last night and i was like no it's he read all of halo yeah he read all the halo not like does he like

i want to say i'm now out of uh out of date for that i think there have been two or three more since then so i'm i'm i'm no longer the the true like locked in lore understander they've got to add uh yes we don't like them man they've got to add patches to youtube yeah you get the dlc yeah old reply style videos from all the youtube yeah reply me that should be allowed because uh you're never going to want to update something for just the tiny update but there's no there's no place to put it because you're never going to want to update something for just the tiny update, but there's no, there's no place to put it. Cause you also don't want to destroy the algorithm or whatever by putting out

a weird partial thing. Super fans, super fans, big fans of that stuff. Are you proud of that work? Yeah, definitely. I think that's,

I think I had a lot of people when I left polygon being like, Oh, he must've hated unraveled. Like, Oh, that must've been the thing that that's why he's i had a lot of people when i left polygon being like oh he must have hated unraveled like oh that must have been the thing that that's why he's left and it's like that's not why i don't think like were there times that i got frustrated yeah that's work because that's the thing is that every job has things that you're frustrated by but like specifically unraveled like i am still very proud of the things that i made and like you know i it's always that weird thing where i think most people know me from unraveled most people do and so a lot

of people think that i am that brian right uh which is very much a different character as a person right and so i i do sometimes feel like i'm disappointing when i'm like talking to people and they're like oh and so you do you want to talk about halo and it's like i haven't read those books i haven't talked about them i haven't played a halo game still like i i cared about it and i like put a lot of effort into it but it's also like i that was the thing that i was doing for work and then i went home and didn't want to do that right it's a natural course of of things too but that's with anything it's like you spend so much time with something you know even if it was a labor of love there is like when you pollute your work with something that you're passionate about you can sometimes need space to not like hate the thing it's a labor yeah yeah you are exactly yeah when you're like at polygon i realized like maybe a year and a half in i was like why

am i continuously being drawn to games that look really bad that was like somewhere in the midtime of me working at polygon i was like when i go home i play video games that are bad to look at or you know like nice to look at but don't make good videos right and that was the thing is that i was like oh i'm protecting myself so i can have this game that can be the thing that i enjoy because like when i first went and i uh had my interview like my final interview with polygon um uh chris grant who uh was at the time the editor-in-chief was like oh cool and so like we had a good interview and then he was like oh and um so like you know outside of making videos and playing music and playing video games what are your hobbies and i was like i have to have more than those things and i was like oh yeah well you know i used to rock climb a lot and i haven't been able

to since i just moved to new york but i'm thinking about getting back into it and so that's gonna be my hobby but that moment where they're like yeah that's those three things that you love doing that you now do for work. It's like, so what else do you have? And it's like, I don't have anything. Do you have a way to fill your time while you don't have to analyze things critically? Something to not think about while your eyes are wide open trying to go to sleep? I get that question.

While there's clowns on your wall. I get that question also. And I never have a good answer for it because the stuff I do outside of work is like trying to relax. And then also just like spend time with people who I care about. Because it's easy to spend so much time working. And I love the work that I do. But also I try to, you know, it's like the draggable Z collection. There's never something that's going to be in a video.

It's really just like reconnecting. except for right now in this specific podcast greatest thing right i'm it can forget the cameras are here and i just like i just need to talk about yeah i mean when yeah sad boys is specifically the outlet for i just love me and jervis are better friends for doing sad boys i think like we grow closer by doing the show yeah because it's also what we talk about and i think sad boys labor of love and work certainly but it does have that uh uh hybrid effect of being pretty rejuvenating as well yeah like you know it's still a couple hours recording i go i'm a little burned i'll take some time maybe do some more work but that like i if i stream or i'm reviewing an edit recording another video getting an ad ready something like that there's a uh net tiredness yes there's a net drain yeah and i think when you set your own metrics of success which we have to do there is no third

party doing that yeah um. Which ultimately is great. It's nice to be, not to get to be your own bosses. You're also the meanest, least compromising boss that you possibly have. For sure. And I, yeah,

I don't think it's any kind of grand secret that. Yeah. Creative stuff burns. Definitely. That, I think like I, I finally have a hobby. Oh. That is unmonetizable and it's great and i just i uh i'm like i go and i throw pottery and like i'm bad at it which is the best thing in

the world it's the first thing that i've ever been like actively bad at at the very beginning and been like i still want to keep doing this and like that was i think so much in my life has always been like if i try something and i'm not immediately great at it i'm never gonna touch it again right and like it's so easy to there's so many things you can be doing that it's just like well i'll if i'm stuck at this i'll just quit it immediately who cares i'm not i'm done but like that was the first thing that i ever did and i was like i'm so bad at this this is actively hard but like when i go in maybe it's the fact that like i did and i was like i'm so bad at this this is actively hard but like when i go in maybe it's the fact that like i'm hands covered in clay i can't think about anything else

i can't touch my phone also i'm so focused on trying to be better that i'm like i can't do anything else with my brain and it's like the best thing ever and i'm so happy i've now it feels like i am now like monetizing it because i've talked about it and like this thing where I've talked about it on separate places where I'm, but I also like, it's just nice to have that other thing that I know I'm like, never going to open an Etsy shop and sell my pots. Like I'm never going to do that. Maybe if you're a friend of mine,

I'll give you one or that's it. But that's the extent of it. It's so nice. How did that get in your ecosystem? It was something that I like had thought about for a while when I was growing up. And like, I,

I, after college, when I was truly just like out of a job, had nothing else. The first time I did get a job, I was like, you know what? I'm going to spend this money.

I'm going to go do a different class of something. So that I was in Baltimore when I first started throwing. And, uh, I was again, just trash at it, but it was still like the thing where I had to force myself to leave the house and go to this other place and do it.

And then, uh, when I was in New York, I like, there was a little gap and then I got back into it. And then the pandemic happened right. As I felt like I was starting to get good at it. And I was like,

well, I can't do this anymore. Cause I live in an apartment in New York and it's, this is the messiest possible hobby you could ever have. Uh then when i finally when we moved out here i found another place and i was like oh you know what i'm going to this is the thing i'm going to spend my money on is like going to classes and doing these things and it's also really great because like most of the people in my in the like clay studio tend to be like older people who are retired and just want to like throw and then there's like some people who are retired and just want to like throw and then there's like some

people who are just incredible incredible artists that's annoying isn't it it's very it's both like really cool to like walk by them and be like i could never do that and i but like try to learn a little bit of something as you're watching someone else do it um but it's it's very just like i get to go here and it's i'm just like a random dude and there's nothing and no one no one's like coming over and being like a shoddy worksmanship i don't think that will sell very well it's like no i just get to throw my shitty little mug and then no that's maybe use it later and it's great and you can go by brian and no one's gonna be exactly yeah it's fantastic making bad pottery how dare you

but uh it's been it's been great it It's throwing explicitly the pump and the little spinner. The wheel, yeah. So, I mean, I don't have to, it's not the old timey pumping. It's just a little, you know, pedal that you press down, but it's the spinny one. Oh, that's cool. That's cheating. It's great. It's a very good, it's a great hobby to learn patience because you can screw up your stuff at every single step of it.

And everyone's like oh and this is the hardest part and this is the part where people tend to screw it all up and it's like oh you've said that about every step of the process so far interesting i think the part about the phone is probably but not to be like a black mirror what if your phone was your dad but there is a i don't know like i used to uh swimming was like the the athletic thing that i did in like school and college and i was insane you know because i was unmedicated and myself and as a result i was like i would be very hypermanic for extended periods of time on and off and have you know just make a whole roast chicken eat that play dark souls not do my essay sleep at 11 a.m wake up at 8 p.m go swimming and swimming was the

only thing i seem to keep doing and for a long time i'm like oh i must just like really really really like swimming and i do but not i don't think for the same kind of serotonin rush dopamine dump that a lot of people enjoy out of uh working out in the light because the gym gives me that yeah swimming is so isolating you cannot you can't even engage with ambient noise you can't sit there and like even the splashing or or is all you can have yeah it's like shower, but you don't have time to dwell on the negative ones. Yes. And then I would have said this because instead it's like,

and then I, all right, I got to stop. I'm like running out of breath. Yeah, I got to take another breath, go back under. Yeah, that's definitely, I think that the, it's at some point it feels sad the amount of times that I'm like, I got to find hobbies that mean that I can't look at other shit. Like I have to, I got to make sure

that I am looking at just whatever I'm doing. But it also, I think that there's a lot of times that I'm like, I gotta find hobbies that mean that I can't look at other shit. Like I have to, I gotta make sure that I am looking at just whatever I'm doing. But it also, I think that there's a lot of times that you do need to force yourself to do that. That otherwise, because there have been other hobbies I like, I also love to like sew and stuff, and those are great, but it also is like, I'm at home. And there's always that feeling of like, well, I guess I could be doing something else.

I could be editing something,. I could be editing something or I could be trying to make this other thing and having to go to a separate place and get your hands super dirty. Going to a separate place is huge. None of the stimuli reminding you of work and the like. I mean, we were just in Canada for a few days. Yeah.

We had like a chill time just hanging out in the hotel. So chill. So many Kit Kats. A chill. So many Kit Kats. Ate a lot of Kit Kats. Oh, Brian. Brian. Good Kit Kats? Different Kit Kats.

Different. It's different. I don't know if it's the supply chain thing. Because I know, I obviously know like Japanese Kit Kats. Yeah. Or way above American Kit Kats. These are just standard ass Kit Kats. But it's, I think it's a chocolate thing.

No. Like the supply chain. I think it's, chocolate thing like the supply chain I think it's previously Jordan identified them as being closer to European I know I had when I I was studying in Edinburgh for a year and I had a bunch of friends who would always be like I tried Hershey chocolate and it was like chalk

and I was like you're right but also I don't like the kind of tea also I don't know who you are please leave who are you you just heard I have an American accent so I don't like the connotation. Also, I don't know who you are. Let go of me. Please leave. I don't know. Who are you? You just heard I have an American accent. What is Unraveled?

Why do you know about that? I've been here in the past. But yeah, no, I've heard better chocolates. But yeah, we were just chilling, and it was just nice to get a... I think jumping back a little bit to you know you were working at this large company or extension of an even larger company you know uh where i'm sure there's a lot of red tape but it's like the cons of like a large organization is there's a lot of red tape it's hard to get

it's hard to move quickly yeah but the pros are there's a lot of infrastructure, there's a lot of support, there's health insurance. You know what I mean? And also there's someone you're accountable to that is like, it almost feels like you're in school where you want to get a good grade, you know, because you're getting, I don't know if this is for your case, but for our case, it's like you're getting performance reviews and things like that and transitioning uh you know for us and i'll speak for myself for me from working where i felt like i was a good little worker bee to being my own boss was very difficult yeah uh what was that transition like for you it was it was very difficult i think that like the thing that i it's not a joke whenever i say i'm like i'm like it's like a half a joke when i'm like the thing that I, it's not a joke. Whenever I say I'm like, I'm like,

it's like a half a joke when I'm like the two best things that I got a polygon were one meeting my fiance, Karen. And then two watching a union get formed. Cause that was so it's so pivotal to like, I can't imagine what I would be like if I didn't, if I wasn't there as the union was getting made, because like the,

that was the thing that I think I was saddest to leave when I did leave polygon was because like, it's, it's very funny to talk about any corporation, especially in these times of multiple strikes in Hollywood and like how unions in general, I would say that they are a very big bonus for the company that has been so actively trying to not have the union form because whenever people are like oh would it be cool to work at vox

media in general i'm like yeah they have a great union and that's why you should go work there right that's specifically the thing that makes it good and so like the health insurance the like parental there's protection there's a bunch of great stuff that they have now um and i think that that was like the you know i guess i'm getting a little off topic in terms of like becoming my own boss but like i think something that really drained me toward the end of my work at polygon was that i had a a boss not specifically from polygon but like in the vox media umbrella talking to us about like somebody in our group had a question about like promotions

and like how you rise up through this like weird media landscape. And point blank, they were like, well, the two main ways that you can get a raise or become a higher tier is by either becoming a manager or becoming internet famous. and those are the two things and i think that was like we are not here for you yeah it was like such a i like i knew it obviously beforehand but hearing it point blank said that way i was just like you are first off

a lot of people shouldn't be managers a lot of people don't have that skill set and if you are an incredible writer, you might not be a good manager. I know personally, I'd be a terrible manager. I think I make okay stuff. But if I were to be like, okay, well, I need to move up the ranks. I guess I have to become head of video or whatever.

It's also a skill. It's a separate skill set. You have to have a desire to learn. Yeah, you have to be internet famous. We'll get really good at pottery. Yes, it's a completely different thing exactly like i was a manager uh i was an engineering manager at patreon my last year there and i fortunately had like a lot of good mentorship and a lot of uh kind of guardrails and people in my corner with support and then i also took a lot of uh uh

seminars and i read management books and i you know i had the like vp of engineering that i was like checking in with and had people that i could ask questions about because at the end of the day i was responsible for people's careers and that's like a huge weight yeah um it feels nice too to be the almost the it's not a direct comparison but in the same way that we're saying like it's satisfying at school to have clear boundaries and goals set so that when you hit those goals and they're achievable, you feel satisfied. Being the goal setter can be nice. And being the person responsible for someone feeling fulfilled is nice. Also, being if you're Internet famous, you don't need the corporation.

That's the other thing. Now they're extracting all of this excess value that you're producing yeah independently well yeah yeah like the thing that i think i mean it's you see it again and again with like the buzz feeds and the vox medias and the stuff is like as soon as you become a certain level the company doesn't do a thing for you anymore and the but the on the opposite end of that spectrum like i you know i can i won't say her name but a good friend of mine in polygon worked on guides at polygon and um her at least when i left um her guide uh for animal crossing paintings was the number one most viewed uh of all time across all of the Vox media platforms, across Eater, across Vox, across like Verge. It was the number one viewed thing.

And like her single job there bankrolled all of us, basically. That, like all of the guides that she did, all of the rest of the guides. And like, I also know, then the reason I'm not like trying to speak about any specific person is that I knew a lot of guides writers who didn't want to be known on the Internet, because especially in a video game space, you are very much a lightning rod, especially if you're a woman, especially if you are a person of color. Like so many things. If you are working in the video game space and you are doing this stuff, you don't want your face to be out there.

You don't want that. Like we understand that and so i mean there's a lot of even people in development who are very like despite the fact that they are artists are like proactively decentralizing themselves as a we're just we are sony santa monica we are not people that work there we are we are a monolith because we don't want to get yelled at yeah or feeling well yeah like you still see stuff like with like cd project red and stuff like where like something will go wrong or people won't like at the end of the day people will not be satisfied with their entertainment product and they will

harass human beings that were just doing their job you know it's like never any individual's fault the the the uh a team is working in concert to like build something but then there's a narrative that kind of catches some sort of viral fire that like some person or something is like the fault yes and then it's a disaster yeah and so like in those situations i you know not only fully understood those guide writers who didn't want their faces and names to be known but I also like in that same vein it was actively hurting their career because the way that you move up in the business is by being internet famous or being a manager and that's neither of those things even though they're you know like my the entire guides group like truly not the people

that you might think of if you know of polygon or anything but the backbone of the whole system right and like they shouldn't necessarily be managers because they're so good at writing guides right like that's the thing that they're great at and they are earning all of this money for and they want to do and they want to do that and it's like that's their skill set they're very good it. Why can't you give them a raise? Like, why can't you see that that is enough of it? Like that being good at one thing should be enough, is my opinion.

It's been so unsupported that I'm only right now realizing what a cash cow that service is. I've always been involved in and loved games media, and I'm only right now going like, oh, wait, shit, that's so much money. Guides is the biggest thing. Yeah. Yeah.

This problem exists in a number of industries. And it definitely exists in tech, which is distinct from a manager. Right. And so like the I think that there's this kind of old hat view, which is what you're describing, where there's this like ceiling of like how high you can reach as an ic and one of my really good friends i was talking about him before the show like uh one of my childhood friends one of the smartest people i know i would trust him with to solve any problem you know what i mean he's a person i'd want my corner really just wants to like uh do his job and be really good at it and does and wants to like he's had one-on-ones with his manager where they're like, what are your career goals?

And he's like, I just wanna do, I don't want to, I don't wanna grow the way you want me to grow. I don't wanna be these other things. I wanna just do my thing. Mastery, right? Yeah, and that should be enough. And it's so, I think it requires like a bit of a shift in thinking that it's going to take time, like industries, for industries to like on the whole like recognize this. I think in the, you know, if I'm going to blow it out to all labor in general, I think that there are two extremes that most executives want to push people.

And they are either to basically you work at the Ford factory and all you do is screw in this screw. And that's all you do. And it's like you never learn to build the car. The Apple model. Yeah. So it's like very like isolated. Exactly. You never learn a skill.

You just are doing the one thing that you do really well. And that's all it is. Okay. And then I think on the opposite end, we have a lot of media and like even just existing as an internet creator which is like you have to be good at every aspect of it this is and i think that was a thing especially in a lot of new york media was like oh well why would we hire a lighting person and a camera person when we could hire one person who is kind of good at lighting and has turned on a camera before and also can host it because then we just have to pay one salary the rate of any of those individuals

exactly just the one thing and as a result like i think i've said this before but there was a time uh at polygon you can watch the videos change because uh there was a moment when an actual lighting person who worked at vox Media came and gave us all a workshop on how to use the lights. And then the videos look way better after that point. And it was just like, this is such a simple thing that like, you know, it feels very much that in the current economic world we live in,

you have to be a jack of all trades, not because that's what you should be but because it's easier to pay one person one salary as opposed to being like well we could get three four five people and make this something really good it's just like people don't appreciate i think the further you are from the craft the less you appreciate craft i remember there was like an understandably very protagonist-y energy at film school where every, well, 90% of people that joined were like, I'm writer-director. As the thing, obviously, that's the main guy. Yeah, protagonist energy. realize that like all of the most effective roles are the craft people they quote below the line sick it's always the most sickening time because they have to master something that you don't

intuitively know how to do maybe if you have riz you can do executive producing or directing but there is nothing like a product will be dog shit if the audio is bad. That's it. There is no like audio bothers, really bad audio bothers people. Bad visuals don't bother people as much. Bad lighting confuses people because there's a cinematic language to like the visuals. It can even look, I like can't watch Ted Lasso because the lensing is so fucked up. I have not watched,

but I've seen at least clips of it. It gives me vertigo. Like it's just so, aperture's so wonky. Everything's got the most bokeh ever. And I, I can understand an executive looking at it and saying, well,

this is so high fidelity. Look how much cinematography is there. There's so much lensing. Yeah. I, um, if you are ever interested in a, a real wild documentary that Disney put out,

I think to make them look good, but definitely makes them look the opposite. You should watch the frozen to making of documentary. Uh, this was suggested to me by a friend and um i was like i'm not gonna watch like a six-part mini-series about frozen two and then i watched the first episode and was like i guess i'm watching it because like the way that they run it is so business that it it like doesn't i understand why frozen two is the way that it is

which is you know fine it's okay it's great and there's a lot of incredible artists who worked on it right really really fantastic people who worked on it um but also there is this like one scene that i can't stop thinking about which is like midway through like a couple years before it's supposed to come out they invite basically every director who's ever directed a disney movie to come in and watch the animatic of it that they have uh and then they do a big like four hour long workshop with all of the directors giving notes on this thing okay and so like even assuming like these are great directors these are people who've produced a lot of good stuff but it's like this is just a hodgepodge of people it's like you're bringing in 80 people to talk about a single thing that doesn't even have a direction at that point yeah okay it's like the definition

of design by committee exactly it's truly just like and every other aspect of it there's some even wilder stuff that happens but like watching that was such a an eye-opening experience in terms of like oh i see that what these some of these executives are asking the animators to be like, oh, could you fully animate that for me before I sign off on it? And then they'd watch the fully animated thing and be like, actually, I don't like it like that. And then it's gone.

And it's like a person with imagination should be able to look at the animatic and not ask someone to do 20 hours of work and be able to say hey you know what i think this this feels a little wrong here like you should you should have that base knowledge in that point so that way you're as as someone who it's like not to boil it down too much but also to boil it down too much it's like you put something in front of someone with no imagination and they're gonna see it exactly as it is and as opposed to and they're like well why is the

lighting wrong it's like we didn't put in the lighting yeah we were just showing you the character animation that's all the movie's so short yeah this doesn't have any color in it what's going on why is it not colored where's olof and i think uh if we're going to talk about animation and also that kind of thing if we want to talk about i was talking about doing all of the jobs that you can do yeah yeah specifically uh so right now writers guild is on strike yes sag after is on strike yes okay um something that isn't on strike is the animation guild which is part of iatsy which is a very overarching union takes care of all of the crew and everything else right um but the what's what's fun about them is that they uh the animation guilds like they don't count as writers so they can still keep producing their own stuff right now right um

and it's not scabbing and it's fine it's a totally different union um but like the way that so many storyboard written shows or storyboard driven shows for animation work is that it's like the the writers are the ones who are also drawing the pictures for the storyboards. And then they are usually involved in other parts of the process too. Right. Which means that these storyboarders are writers and they're also artists and they're also directors because they are figuring out the framing of all the shots. And they're also lighting designers because they're figuring out where the lighting is going to be in all of those shots. And they're also like comedians usually. And there's a bunch of other stuff, but it's like that doesn't count as writing that's not writing and

also they never get like writing credit or like i could be speaking wrong but i'm fairly certain there's not the same sort of residuals process for animation and so it's just a lot of like that can come down to the fact that a lot of execs are like well oh animation that's not that's not real art like that's not oh you're not a real writer if you you'll take your little cartoon boys and you make them kiss it's not real like you're only a real writer if you work on ncis memphis or whatever right like we actually have a little game that we've been playing where we try to guess which isn't a real show uh you should pull up the one we did last week for Brian, just because it's a hoot.

But I think you raise a really good point. I mean, even when, like in the 90s, when like the Simpsons, and then like late 90s, when Family Guy started to come around, or in South Park and stuff, it's like, no, no no no no it's animation but get this for adults

what the hell and I think there are some animated shows I think Family Guy is a WGA show which I think is usually just a result of like whoever's the head being like this is a WGA show and I'm not going to budge on that well okay you're the guy so I guess I gotta do it and you kind of need it's almost like

where we're like please Bill Gates solve the world's problems where it's like please seth mcfarlane be a good guy you know like be a homie dude solidarity probably also depends how much you are in traditional media before you pivot like something following very explicitly an actor writer and director prior to making yeah sick and twisted it's like the joker made a show yeah what the heck i know we've got a pretty dark and twisted sense of humor here on sad boys so uh not everybody gets it yeah you watch top 15 darkest story moments um top 15 jumping back one real quick thing before we jump to the uh our little game now we're to put on you. Yes, can't wait. Is the jack of all trades, like master of none approach is like if you're an individual, if you're like a young, you know, you're in high school going into college or maybe you're not going to college, you want to go into a trade.

There is value in having like those skills and if you can work at a company to hone those skills you should always be looking at like what can a company do for you uh for your own selfish goals because the company is never going to value like like they just don't care at all they just aren't gonna like they're not gonna give a shit about you you have to glean as much value as you can because you're already being extracted for your value yeah i mean they not to be overly cynical about it but that is just a material reality of anyone in an executive position because 99% of the time it's through nepotism or being enough of a sociopath to screw over anybody that would have changed right because the other thing you were saying about like oh yeah i become internet famous or become a manager it's a little bit like the um

just be president like the like you have to be like uh you have to have a certain thing wrong with your brain to like want to gather and yeah like have as much power as possible yes and in people who aren't wired that way are like at a disadvantage in these organizations because there's a strong bias in meetings for people who are loud and can take up all the space. And, you know, like there's not a good, well-rounded balance for people who communicate differently. There's just so many situations and flaws. Yeah. I think. Oh, sorry.

Oh, yeah. No, I was just going to just gonna say like you're right there's like such value to being able to know as much as you can about as much as you can especially if you want to do like film stuff or anything related to it it's good to like have a even if you are never going to touch lighting it's good to be able to speak the language so that way you can like talk about it to whoever you're working with or to ask questions of someone that does know better than exactly right and but i also think that like the in the same vein extracting as much as you can from that like do that and also figure out what it is of of the process that you actually like because like for me working at polygon what really like led me to it was i was like oh the thing that

i love is writing the thing that i love doing is getting to write was I was like, oh, the thing that I love is writing. The thing that I love doing is getting to write these scripts. And since moving out here and my partner and I write and stuff, and it's both very confirming. When we've gotten to write on stuff, I've left and I've been like, oh, I'm so excited. This is the best and I can't stop thinking about it. I'm just so pumped. And then in the gaps between jobs, I'm like, everything sucks.

I'm going to go go die i guess now but like that feeling of realizing like at a certain point it was not the being on camera it was not the like watching views go up the thing that i really loved was writing and like making it and like that was so helpful to me and it's still something that i'm grappling with as i go but it's just like once i figured that out and i was like oh this i don't need the outside validation as much i still need enough of it because we're all broken inside but we uh but i i i gained so much joy from the process of making it that it's like that's the thing that i know i can always come back to yeah and actually enjoy yeah and one of the best things you can get out of a job or a workspace is the if you it's

almost like a um sponsored learning like like in the best case scenario in the worst case scenario you're being extracted for your labor and you don't have any like agency or any time to do the things you love and in the best case scenario in the best case scenario you found yourself fortunately in a position where you can hone skills that you want to to hone or learn what you like and be sort of funded in doing that uh and have like a bit of a safety net um do you explicitly yeah for that identify as a writer right now is that i don't know it's that weird sort of transitional period where also right now there's a writer strike so you know it's that weird sort of transitional period where also right now there's a writer strike so you know it's kind of hard to be like yes i'm a writer for like i i am so

grateful that i have pottery yeah i'm really more of a potter these days so that's the i'm doing the seth rogan route of uh getting through to writing just so i can start selling my pottery online um but no i think that like in in the best times i truly i i now don't feel as weird when i say i'm a writer which i think is a very hard thing to get through when i like getting to that point is next to impossible right um but i i also am so grateful that i have like the other videos that i get to make and the patreon i have and stuff where I'm able to in a strike still pay rent right like those I also fully like I want to say I'm a writer and at some point maybe I will not make as many videos and I'll be able to just do that as like my full time job and that'd be great but I also like I'm so grateful that I am still a weird internet

content creator yeah I mean I think that is a one of the great privileges that we have i think at this point in our careers is some of that agency to kind of follow your curiosity uh and still have like look this all burns down i still can be a software engineer i still got that computer science degree gathering dust but i mean it's nice to have like space for fucking up like to explicitly miss the goals that you set for yourself or even that i don't know the very reasonable expectations you have for what you should be putting out especially like under contracted work right because there is that safety net and i i know, without naming names, none of them are like close friends of ours,

but we, through doing partnership stuff at Patreon, especially a lot of the creators that I knew, not as peers, but as clients or as partners, or more often creators that were like three steps away from the agent that introduced us or something like that i think there's a little bit just a just a pad of indulgence in the struggling artist aesthetic and maybe some deliberate obscurity about their income and success and until maybe you go more inside baseball you may not account for the fact that

like yeah they're like a video game let's play they make a video every day nothing gets striked and they get 900 000 views per day and it is it's it's a little distracting and i think it's very healthy to you know uh disassociate from being a traditional quote writer because you may not be struggling with some of the things that come with that yeah but ideally we just live in a world where the trials and tribulations currently associated with being a writer just don't exist anymore and once they're gone all the other writers get to stay writers as well it's not only hardship it's not only working with netflix that gives you like validation yeah definitely uh let's do the game i wonder i mean okay well i will say

it's javas you had a uh with one i think you get a mulligan right you slip one up you get to do it again yeah you had a perfect game you did guess i'm bill different though oh yeah you're not you're you're a soy cuck beta yes i uh yeah i'll be failing this thing i just think it's fun because it feels like they all shouldn't exist yeah okay so can i ask like is there a percentage of a true to fake yes he'll give you so there are three chunks okay some would call them segments i would call them chunks let's say rounds okay let's say chunks this is a new world i will burn this show to the ground it's already happening these are some of the most popular network tv shows okay which is a odd thought because i i think it's like especially as maybe content creators or you know we're all

young as fuck really you know like young creators i just learned to drive i was born in 1990 you know whatever you know what i'm saying no i was born in the late 70s i was born in the 2000s 9-11 what's that i wasn't born you wouldn't hear about it what does something yeah wow yeah we should probably not be doing this. We have to discuss with Jarvis the terrible tragedy. What? Yeah. To be honest, I want to pull up a few more for the next time we play this game.

There's probably just a whole contingent of 9-11 movies I could frame. Oh, sure. of 9-11 movies i could frame but uh these are network tv shows all but my fake titles okay are ranked amongst the most popular that's how i ended up finding them okay couple spin-offs a lot of these uh you'll you'll start to see a trend of titles things that maybe grab the algo it's definitely got uh the the worst x or y youtube algorithm approach like whatever hit last time yes tiktok's gone weird you know one of those okay uh that was the title of my last video but okay it has gone weird shit so and i'm actually crushing it so relax it's a dollar a video.

A dollar a view, I believe. We have in this first chunk Yeah, Seath. Cope. We have one fake. Second chunk will be two fakes. Third, we'll also have two fakes. Okay.

Round one. Oh, sorry, you should do the theme song oh yeah um there's a bunch of shows that get a lot of views and this is except for this one fake where is it there you go yep's great. Where is the fake? Section one. Special Ops. Rescue Special Ops. Special Ops Mission.

Special Ops Online. Special Ops Lioness. And Special Ops Crime Squad UK. Oh, man. I feel like it has to be... I want it to be Special Ops Online as the fake one, but I don't think it is. Just when you look at all these shows, do you think, man, they've done it again?

What are these, on Fox? I don't even know. Well, I... I will say a lot are these on Fox? I don't even know. Well, I... I will say a lot of these are evenly spread across the networks, which I think maybe just speaks to the generic success of them. Yeah, true. I personally think it would be the funniest if the special ops was the fake one.

If all of the other spinoffs were just a spinoff to a fake show. You know, I'm going to... I think it's special ops mission. I think that's the one that's fake. Would you know i you know i'm gonna i think it's special ops mission i think that's the one that's fake would you like to go orange which is the term they use on uh british who wants to be a millionaire because the little thing turns orange would you say it uh yes that's what i'd like to go orange it's special ops online you stupid asshole you had it you you almost pressed your gut i just i i faked myself out lioness is real real, by the way. Yeah, sure. We got obsessed with looking into Special Ops Lioness.

It has to be, okay, here's my pitch. If someone were to be like, here's the show title that we have, pitch off of it. It's based on one of the female agents from a former thing who had the nickname Lioness, and she's super cool, and it's watching her as she goes and does her Special Ops. I mean, pretty much right on the money it's like a real show with like it stars extremely famous actors like samuel jackson what yeah uh who's who's the lioness it's like uh someone extremely famous is zoe saldana is zoe saldana yeah oh yeah line in. I'm sorry Zoe. Morgan Freeman's in it. Morgan Freeman? What? Nicole Kidman of course.

Of AMC fame. Nicole Kidman is here? That can't be right. Yeah no none of it feels real. At all. We also watched the trailer and it is truly one of the most like you know actually you could be in the CIA because some people just wear Oakleys. Some people wear Oakleys but they're also allowed to shoot minorities.

That's it. That's the rules. it's actually kind of sick and torture works and hey zoe sodana is one of you guys incredible it's basically the trailer too it's all just like we have to stop terrorist groups that's great is this a is this a paramount is that what i'm seeing a paramount plus that makes sense makes sense to to me. That seems right. That's where I would say all of the shows that I have heard are pretty good, but also have always said, huh? Whenever it's been brought up in conversation, me and my partner are very committed to,

we've always loved next generation, which a lot of Star Trek next generation is all. And the foundation of us dating was re-watching it together that's being like oh just a couple people couple friends watching it there's nothing weird we're making out yeah uh there is it's all there you can just watch all of star trek next generation so i am a parasite on her account because it is like truly so i've browsed the rest a little bit it's nothing yeah they look like uh if you watch a show and there's a show in the show what are we doing special ops online we're watching tonight yeah that's what that's what it feels like yeah all right let's do round two yes two

round two two fakes this time okay the chicago code okay chicago knights chicago pd chicago med chicago justice chicago party ant chicago colon a cop story i have to i think chicago party ant is the one that's is one fake I have to but I but that being Said it is the most compelling of the names On there so I wish it weren't Um There's no way Chicago a cop story Is real there can't

There can't be They have a lot of those Yeah they do have a lot of cops Technically all of these are a cop story I'm gonna There's two fakes in this one yeah there's two fakes okay party ants and the chicago code i feel like i could see any of the other ones maybe or am i faking myself out again my brain's been broken all these are real in my mind all right i'm saying i'm going orange on the two

that i just said party ant and chicago code do you recall which one they all right i'm i'm saying i'm going orange on the two that i just said party ant and chicago code do you recall which one they are do i recall i fucking don't well it doesn't matter i know party ants real though you got both and you missed what were you doing what was the other one you said party and code yeah that one's real chicago code real. PD, med, justice, party, and all real. It is nights and a cop story. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I did get these. Nice and sneaky.

I was sneaky with night. Yeah. I think I could imagine that. I just, I had hoped it was like a boogie night sort of vibe. There's nothing less believable about the fake ones than party and justice. So party ant is, I'm assuming, not related to the police? No, we looked it up. It's an animated show, I believe.

Oh, okay. On Netflix. Oh, all right. What's funny is we could watch it and I won't. I'll die not seeing this, for sure. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I've probably seen a screenshot of that at some point. But it does, yeah.

Doesn't this feel like in that kind of dog shit first episode of the new black mirror season let's like we automatically generated a show called chicago party yeah that seems right to me it's like a bojack horseman okay show that would like lead into like his show i'm sure it's a reverend as hell yeah you know what i mean i'm sure it's oh yeah i read this last episode diane aka the Chicago Party Aunt, is always the life of the party as she helps neighbors and stays true to her mantras. That's good. You know, I'm glad she's staying true to her mantras. Yeah. And she helps the neighbors.

You know, that's a real community right there. She's a party, but she's a community. She's a story. What is that? Yeah. That's enough. That's a lot of people. They're just fun and have neighbors. That's good. That's a lot of people. They're just fun and have neighbors.

That's good. That's not much. It's friends, but now. And animated. That's it. That's the rules. Oh, and it stars John and Ike Barinholtz. I learned from this that Ike Barinholtz has a brother.

There you go. The Chicago Party and of sorts. That's great. It's okay, Brian. It's so fucked up that brian i just i don't i just it's so fucked up that you felt so much i know but it's okay i guess sorry i really do need to leave the industry as a writer if i can't even call them out that's terrible anymore it's the worst javas is a writer because he got these yeah that is the, you get the title now. Yeah. I'm the president of the WGA. It was pretty sick.

Uh, final section, two fakes. Plain sight. Criminal mind suspect behavior. Okay. Prime suspect USA.

No time, comma, all crime. The closer. Baywatch nights Prime Suspect USA. No Time, All Crime. The Closer. Baywatch Nights. Baywatch Surf Police. And Baywatch Forbidden Paradise. Oh.

Two? Two fake in here? Two fake in here. Because that's good to know, because whichever two are fake, I'm going gonna be pitching as soon as the right now's the time to go for baywatch the property's never been bigger it's never been hotter um okay yeah baywatch nights surf police was one just called the closer yep

but that's i can't tell you if that's real but it's believable the thing is when i read baywatch surf police if i didn't understand the concept of baywatch i would be imparsible to me uh baywatch surf police yeah the baywatch the sir it's like i have no idea what that means it's like the words were the wrong order yeah in a universe where surfing's illegal yes bay uh okay baywatch you know what i'm gonna say i'm gonna say it's surf police i feel like forbidden paradise and knights are both possible i don't know now i'm screwed now my hope my i'm just gonna have to shoot shoot from the hip i think i just have to shoot you guys all right i'm out of here oh i'll tell you which ones they are yeah it's not that important yeah um all right i think it's um's got to be no time all crime. Please.

Please say that one's a fake one. And also surf police. I think that's those are the two. W. Brian, you're right. Oh, this is a redemption. Forbidden Paradise is real. I was going to say they have to have the spinoff that is just mostly about the hot people making out.

Right. Can you look up Baywatch Forbidden Paradise? We didn't check what it was last night. Also, criminal minds colon suspect behavior has the same energy of when I want to make a video about a topic I've already made a video about, but I need a different title. And I don't know how to, like,

two is not a thing I can say. Oh, this is a movie. Oh, what? Baywatch the movie. Forbidden Paradise. Wow, this doesn't, oh, it's still got Hasselhoff. Oh, what? Baywatch the movie. Forbidden Paradise. Wow. This doesn't. Oh, it's still got.

It's still got Hasselhoff in it. Right? Yes. Oh, yeah. Of course. All right. For them. Baywatch lifeguards.

Mitch, CJ, Stephanie, Caroline, Matt, and Logan. That's a big cast. Travel to. You know, I don't know how to say that. Oahu. There's a title. Yeah, I was going to say Ohio. Ohio.

Ohio. Hawaii. say that uh oahu there's a title yeah i was gonna say ohio ohio hawaii uh also just actually real quick shout out uh there are like devastating wildfires in um i want to say maui right now uh yeah it is okay and so i've donated to um a couple of the funds, but we'll try to link some good ones if we can. And just sending everybody there our love and energy and everyone's in our thoughts. Here's a random question. I feel like a lot of the Unraveled episodes, you were in some form of pain that you were kind of putting yourself through. And that's part of the appeal yeah was there anything that was like a particularly difficult slog there there were some that were sloggy but just in a like things had i i kept hitting roadblocks with it specifically the kirby episode was um the i had originally planned to uh

basically i was i was planning to finish it like way faster than i had um i was not planning for it to be a longitudinal video where i change hairstyles and everything by the end of it um but it was it was one of those things that like and i i don't know i i really love the episode but i also think that like one of the things that I, that episode specifically, I really had to grapple with how explicit do I want my subtext to be? Because I think I got, not a ton of people, but I had some people who were like,

when you're talking about how Kirby is this stupid little orb, it's like, and that therefore can't be powerful right uh i had a lot of people who were like hey that feels a little ableist that feels like there could be some stuff there which i can like understand but i also when i was when i was making it the whole point was that me as unraveled brian was this narcissistic asshole right who believed that the only way you can have power is through intelligence. Right. And like what we were talking about at that time with one of my coworkers was like the way that a lot of people will watch people like Donald Trump do something very stupid.

And there'll be like, he's playing 40 chess. He's really being smart about it. Actually, when you think about it, he peed there and that means something else was going to happen. Right. It's like,

no, he just did something bad. Right. Like he's just an idiot. That's any, somehow the simplest explanation. Because if you take the issues, if you accept that he's an idiot,

then your last five years of advocacy for him, you were wasted. Exactly. Gambler's fallacy. And so I think that was the thing with, with Kirby specifically is that like, we were trying to thread that needle. I don't know if I, I hope we got pretty close to talking about the fact also

the other thing i wanted to talk about was like the um the idea that every story needs to have a dark theory behind it um every like cute fun thing actually has a dark undertone right like that's the go-to and it's like well kirby's a god and all that stuff and you know i love to see those theories they're fun to watch and they're fun to see it's silly because you know it's just like sakurai just like he's doing a thing yeah he's just having fun with it and he's making a cool game and i think it's great and like i think that's what i wanted to land on was like sometimes the thing can just be a thing and like that's a hard that's a hard thing to get to especially when you're trying to like weave these other metaphors around is to be like to make the ending sometimes it just is the thing yeah it's not very um it's not very conclusive in that sort of way inverse of what you're told you should exactly right right and so that one i think we

had some troubles with that especially and also it was just like scheduling issues like i we had plans to do it in one day and then we like ran out of time at a certain point and then we had to like book some other time uh but it was it was i'm still like very happy with a lot of the things that we did in it but i i think that was that's it's a it's a struggle through all of it where i i think that was at the end of unraveled i still felt that way too which was um like the there's a certain point where the thing that i was not like trying to rail against but trying to talk about was this idea of uh fan ownership over the thing that they've invested in right and the ways that that can turn into toxicity where you are like i am so invested in halo novels and i love it and no one else could be as smart as me and like you know i i make a

joke in that video in the halo one about i was like i should be the one that writes the halo right and like that was like you know if i were to write on the show i'm sure i would have had fun and whatever but like i that was not the point that was not me like actually pitching that that was me talking about to the fans who are like no i've invested the time and i deserve it and it's been very tough now seeing after the halo show came out i have not watched it i don't i've heard it's not great but i also have not watched it so i can't really speak about it uh the amount of people who've been like you're right brian you should have been the one to write it you're the one who should it's like that was not the point of the video that i was saying you're the best at halo yeah is like the point

is that the the thing that you invest your time in can feel so important to your identity that occasionally you feel like you need to close it off from other people in order to keep it safe. And I think that that's where a lot of nerd culture, if I could call it that, all of that gatekeeping stuff, all of the toxicity stems from that thing where it's like in high school, I didn't have a lot of friends or like I didn't connect with a lot of people, but I did have this comic book. And now this comic book is super popular, but I did have this comic book. And now this comic book is super popular, but these people don't like me. That must be because they're not real fans. They're the ones who are bastardizing it. They weren't in the trenches reading the comics. They just know these bastardized Marvel movie versions of the story. Exactly.

We all deal with our own self-conscious feelings and everything. And I think that comes down to that feeling of like, I like a thing, you like a thing, but you don't like me. And that means that you don't like the thing as opposed to there's something about me that is a problem. Right. Because it's more comforting that way. It's like you're trying to like resolve this cognitive dissonance or whatever.

And the easiest thing is not I have flaws i'm wrong or someone just doesn't like me yeah but it's uh no it's all of you yeah yeah and so that i think was the those were the the moments when it would like again the the actual work of it reading the halo novels was its own slog in its own right as i was just listening to audiobooks at two times speed uh but like the the but the i think thes at two times speed but like the but I think the bigger stuff was more just like the am I actually in doing Unraveled

am I getting across the point that I'm trying to get across or am I just becoming the thing that I'm trying to talk about which is always a hard thing that's fair yeah it's interesting because there is always this is just a thing I've learned on the internet. You know, it's like don't read the comments, right?

There will always be the most superficial, like missing the point take on something. And that doesn't necessarily mean that it's valid. You know what I mean? But it will exist. You know what i mean but it will exist you know what i mean all the lowest hanging fruit like takes are going to be in the comments and they're going to be the most upvoted because the people who've thought the most about the thing are not the people writing the comments they're you know the people who have done the thing and are now like you know you've you've processed and synthesized and sort of done so over and over again. And you also, anybody providing a take has a take and is willing to write it in a YouTube

comment section. Someone might have legitimate criticism. I mean, charitably criticism as opposed to dislike. Yeah. But leaving a YouTube comment is like writing something in your own shit. As soon as you are doing it at all, you've almost already invalidated the thing that you're trying to say.

And people have take poisoning. Like the first one you find is the most gratifying because you can write it right now. You don't have to think about that position. And then you reply and you're like, what do you mean? It's like, I'm actually a huge fan.

Elon, Elon is now, you know, paying people for impressions on X. And it's on Twitter. Devastating. He just said X. But the funniest thing about that is all it incentivizes is for someone to get as many impressions as possible.

Which is to just have the take that causes this much interaction. Yes. Which is a ridiculous way to like that was already a problem when you were just rewarding it with interactions yeah rage clicks have been monetized for a while and this is time it's like okay explicitly though we want those specific you don't even need to pivot them to something else like a youtube look at like it's fine it's one of those youtube guys that's got like a Greek photo as their profile called the skeptical individual. The thinking man's Chad.

You ever notice how women, it's their fault? Yeah. Have you thought about that? Are you feeling lonely? No. And that's actually science. Incorrect. Don't look that up.

All right. I got calipers. And I checked what it said. I don't know what they mean. Yeah. The skeptical phrenologist. So I think that about wraps us up for this

main episode. So thank you so much, Brian, for joining us. Of course. We will be hopping over to the Patreon at patreon.com slash sadboys

for Sad Boys Nights. Sad Boys Special Ops. It's something like Forbidden Paradise. Forbidden Paradise Ops. It's something about forbidden paradise. It's our forbidden paradise episode where we gallivant on the beach and we all fall in love. I think we're going to show Brian that Power Rangers video.

Yes. And then there's a couple things we didn't get to like Pokemon Worlds this past weekend, which was fun. I think all of us here have learned to drive later in life or have relearned to drive um i think maybe anastasia was telling me like uh you going from new york to la it's like oh now i'm in a driving place yep for sure um and then there's also some subreddit so who knows it's gonna be a grab bag a bit of a potpourri talk

about some emotional stuff even who knows oh yeah we didn't talk about that well we kind of did but we didn't we talked around it we talked about things that elicit emotions that's true yeah and in our emotions about things but never deep diving deep so who knows sad boys nights get into it but brian thank you so much for joining us what's up what you got going on yeah not much uh no i'm making still trying to make videos haven't made a couple in a in in past few months but hopefully we'll have something out at the end of august at least but uh you have a thing that's i got other things that i can't speak about so uh but yeah working on stuff and i'll be around on the internet dark secrets yeah

we end every episode of sad boys with a particular phrase. We love you. And we're sorry. Boo! It's a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers cosplayer. I think it's just like a dad who's a fan of Power Rangers. He bought a cosplay that ended up taking like five years to arrive. And then he tried it on and is clearly disappointed but doesn't let it show.