Sad Boyz - The Truth About Moving To Japan (w/ CDawgVA)

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

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Welcome to sad boys a podcast about feelings and other things also I'm Jarvis I'm Jordan and today we're joined by a very special guest. Thank you. He's he's a voice actor He's a youtuber a streamer a podcaster a dog See dog VA. Welcome Connor. Yes. Yeah, you just call me Connor. See dog VA is an unfortunate choice for name, but hey What's the how long you been rocking that? How long have you regretted it? So I had a different name before. It was the only CMC.

Yeah, okay. I know not many woes. That was my initials. CMC are my initials. I know why. It was my Xbox gamer tag. Yeah, of course. And then I was like, well, I'll choose this for everything.

Right. Like, why? This is a sick name. Yeah. And then obviously I regretted that. Cause I found out that if you just searched my name at the time, I thought all my cods or whatever stats would come up.

But my voice acting stuff came up and this was in high school or secondary school. Sorry, I'm too fucking Americanized. I feel offended when I sit, when I'm around another British person and I use the American word, I'm like, I fucked up. No, no, no. I think you're belly pilled up. I'm with you. I'm with you.

So then I was like, I got to change this. And in my head as a 16 year old, I thought, what sounds cool? Cool, what is the pinnacle of cool? A white 16 year old British kid with the name C-Doc. The best time to set a brand is when the target audience of gaming PC parts called the Dragon Sniper, the Death Brigade, C-3090. It used to be the only CMC with the lowercase B case X on each side.

I got that. Oh, no. We've both got flavors of that my first internet handle which is still out there was magic jarvis which um i don't think that's bad i think it works but it's like uh it's it was i was playing runescape okay the mmo me too and yeah and i didn't it was the first mMO I'd ever played I didn't know that my I thought of it as like a small little chat room where there might be strangers there so my friends from middle school would need to know that I was the Jarvis that they played Magic the Gathering

with and not to be confused with some other magic or some other Jarvis tell me something only Magic Jarvis yeah exactly so that's how it that's okay and which is your favorite planeswalker it worked i mean i didn't i didn't hate it but then when i kind of went into my uh hibernation of being an adult uh i had the the great fortune of starting youtube again later in life and i was able to like wish i had just go by my name brother there's still time you want to reset now yeah i know ethan just did it yeah ethan just got rid of a crank yeah ethan just reranted rewriting is like i've always i don't know well also my second name is not easy it's long and scottish and right doesn't pronunciate the uh the enunciate sorry the way that it's spelt yeah it's it's it's kahoon but it's spelt C-O-L-Q-U.

And you don't say the L, the Q, or the U, obviously. So it's just like, it doesn't make sense. And also, I don't know, Seadog's just kind of stuck. And it's easy. Yeah. It's easy, Seadog. I mean, it's not, I wouldn't say the name is indicative of what I look like.

Like, if you think of Seadog, I don't think anyone would think, oh, that's. Right, in a vacuum, in a vacuum, I get it. I totally know what you mean, but at this point- It's great, it's fine, I like it. The VA I might drop at some point, because I just haven't done enough to want to keep it around.

Well, you mentioned voice acting stuff coming up with the CMC name. So how long have you been doing voice acting stuff for? Oh man, I started when I was, I kind of got into it because I was always doing voices on card. I was always that annoying little kid. I'd always just like mess around with these weird voices.

Racist accents. And I was like, I should be an actor. I'm just so good at this. I should do stand-up. I'm crushing it. I love this. How old, was it sixth form or what? I think it was before sixth form. So I was, this was the year before you? I was like, I was like, I was,

I think it was before sixth form. So I was, this was the year before, so it was year 11. So it was like, what is it? 16, 15,

I think 16. Yeah. So 15 I was, because you, I'm July. So I guess at the end of the school year, I'd be 16, right?

Turn 18 in sixth form. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I started when I was 15. It was also coincidentally when i got into anime anime was a huge thing that pushed me into getting into voice acting oh yeah well yeah it's like a fantasy thing because you know yeah i think that's why a lot of voice actors that are you know the the generation that came up with me and now the voice actors that are working today

a lot a lot of them came from being fans of anime yeah i think on new grounds um you know like like pro cd and um oh yeah people and like kira buckland who's pro cd a legend yeah new grounds from being fans of anime. Watching on Newgrounds, like ProCD and other people, and like Kira Buckland, who's amazing. ProCD a legend, yeah. And Newgrounds was like a sick place for, the only stuff I ever did as a kid was dubbing Smash characters for fan animations. It's because the forums were like effectively just

money free, like booking agencies. I want free labor, but I want the worst labor it's like nobody was good at anything they did but it was like a great kind of space to allow people who are very just passionate but were talentless at the time right they didn't have anything why is me captain falcon yeah yeah oh what's going on the crunchiest right like it was a it was a great time i think when the internet was still kind of like like kind of i don't know it was like a very great time creatively because it was still very small people who sought out to do those types of stuff were genuinely extremely passionate about it because it was like you could just go and play fucking a mini clip for like eight hours right

what kind of kid would go on a forum looking for voice acting or making a game yeah rather than just play video like little flash games right you would have to be so passionate about the idea of this thing to do this well you'd be on interactive buddy yeah yeah to expressing basically the internet version of tearing the wings off a moth just basically practice being a psychopath wait what is that interactive buddy it was like uh it was a physics based little like uh action script damage to this like slam it you'd like drop a bomb you'd shoot it that's like i guess the thing that comes to mind for that for me is roller coaster tyaster Tycoon. Oh, that was great. Like creating a scenario where someone's going to, you know, drown.

There's no exit to the park. Everyone's running around. Just seeing you play it and just pick them up, put them in the water. No. And they're just like, why can't I play this? I think it's more the money aspect. At that time, I didn't know how to pirate. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Real quick, I just wanted to say we just released a jarvis johnson gold inspired your premium collection over on jarvis.store it's a merch drop we've got a new merch partner we've been working on it for a very long time and i'm finally excited for you to see it we've got sweatshirts sweatpants we got shirts long suit shirts rugby shirts lots of cool stuff to check out i can't wait to see people posting photos in it so head on over to jarvis.store to check that out but in the uk like when i so the uk is very like um very prominent kind of i don't know how to say this like you get bullied like immediately like not in the way that you would in like i was my understanding of like american american bullying right it's very different from british bullying um i think british bullying is like if you are not 100 normal that

you're immediately going to be like ostracized we built an empire with it we did yeah i suppose we did so the thought of like i was i remember i got shit for playing video games oh wow but i again i grew up in like i grew up in north wales uh not much going on there kind of countryside football was everything i'm sure this is the same and where you grew up and so if you didn't like football there was you're immediately like not qualified for the cool kids group right so it doesn't matter how how well you got on with everyone you would never ever get in that like upper echelon bear in mind i say upper echelon but like they're now all not having the best time right right it's like the whole peaked in high school yeah yeah like literally that kind of

character so the thought of telling people i liked anime and then i then i was voice acting when i was never even in the acting kind of thing was always like absolutely not no fucking way so yeah i totally know what you mean like generationally because i i remember the day that i you needed like a fancy cable box to get any sort of anime and i remember coming home and as a gift my mom had gotten and you would pay for the channel packages that you would get and so my mom bought one channel for me and it was cartoon network i mean that's the best one yeah and it was like goku on snake way you know uh and i was immediately hooked i was like this will be my personality now and i would write um little essentially fanfics like

we would like larp in the streets basically like without any of those words but yeah we would it was just so like dragon ball especially it's just so it's such a great entryway yeah i mean it's like a very funny franchise and it's just immediate wish fulfillment yeah it's like wow he liked me for real and he's jacked and everyone likes him yeah it's sick yeah and i i think now of like the voice, I like know all of the voice actors of the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball. You know, and like I was at like a screening for the One Piece movie Red. Nice. And Sonny Straight was there who I knew as like Krillin in Dragon Ball Z. And so I didn't,

I didn't like say that to him, but I was like, um, Sonny, big fan of your work. And then I was like, Oh, that was so cool.

No, but I, uh, but yeah, I, I used to get like, I have like my 20, like 10 years of shown and jump that I got the,

the American, the North American shown to jump was like released in 2003 and i used to get it it was monthly here versus like weekly in japan and um we have talked about it on the show before but we should 30 seconds summarize what's your one piece experience oh that's funny uh here i'll give a visual gag because now i actually have a reference okay because connor's the perfect guest. Yeah, this is great. Oh, wow. You got an OG.

I didn't know they actually published Show and Jump in America. I don't think we had it in the UK. I couldn't get it in the UK. They published it. I had like a little trade one time. So this is like January 2003. Wow. They published it, I think, until like 2014-ish.

I went to college in 2010, so I basically had it. Nice. Until I went to college. That's so sick, though. But this is the first issue and um the uh it's 2003 so like i'm familiar with yugioh i'm familiar with dragonball z yu yu hawk shows like around okay you know sand land like this like like a curatorium written yeah not a lot of people know about and then like one piece

did not have a anime on tv oh so because it would later come out like it would come out a few years later on four kids um yeah definitely did and it's got it's got a famously bad dub and a great theme song um i mean they changed it yeah the show yeah it wasn't just a bad they changed they changed it they like changed the race of some characters yeah it was weird but anyway uh if you look here and we can show this on the we'll show a visual aid if you i used to pretend that i knew things that i didn't know okay i don't know if when you're a kid yeah like someone asked you to know about something you're like oh i'm an expert oh especially when you don't you when you don't know anything about conventional stuff like yeah in our case i guess football yeah no one knew about

one piece so i could be cool right they're like oh have you i've never heard of this and i said oh nepik now i'm a huge fan of nepik because those are the only normal letters in the one piece like word mark that's because the O has the skull and crossbones and the I is Luffy silhouette and so I just ignored those things design I don't see it yeah I can only see the real letters and it's epic to me and I said that with my full chest and those kids believe me because they didn't have shown a jump. This is, I mean, this is like- One person came out while I was in school.

Yeah, it was, I don't actually know. I remember because they had the rap and I have this horrible- Got gold, got gold, got gold. They made me rap it because I said I knew it. And then they were like, do it. And I didn't realize they just wanted to laugh at me. What, NEPIC? Yeah, NEPIC. I was like, do you. And I didn't realize they just wanted to laugh at me. What, NEPIC?

Yeah, NEPIC. Do you know NEPIC? That's so funny. When you have authority or like you feel like you have authority on something and you're a kid and all of a sudden when people want to make fun of you and encourage you to do it. Oh, it's so bad. The adrenaline kicks in like people care about the thing.

Oh, you hate me also as well? You're just making fun of me for liking something now instead of not liking something before yeah yeah the one piece dub came out the next year oh okay you were saying that when you were growing up north wales the yellow anime as an outlet voice acting etc yeah so i mean i i was like fuck i don't want to tell anyone about this because i can't even tell people i play video games right which is weird to me because everyone's playing FIFA and COD anyway. Right.

Those aren't games. Those are cool activities. Yeah, for some reason, if I played Halo, that was kind of weird. That's how weird it was in the UK. Yeah. I don't know if you had this in your school, but at least my school, it was like, again, it's very, I feel like Wales is like at least a few years behind. No, but Halo, I remember it was PC first.

Yeah, it was. Yeah, Combat Evolved was not first. Yeah, it was. Combat Evolve was not cool. Yeah. Well, I was because I was, yeah, I played Halo 3 and Reach mainly. Those are the ones I played, but they didn't play that.

It was always COD and FIFA. You didn't play, oh, I didn't play Halo 2. Halo 3 was the gateway into like Xbox Live for me. Yeah, that's how I got into everything. My friends, even the cool friends were like,

yeah, dude, let's fucking play some mods, bro. Let's see the N word. This is the place. Oh God. What does that mean? Uh-oh. Halo was fun though.

That aside, that was why. That was the best part actually. Actually, I love that. The way I got into voice acting, I was doing red versus blue fanfic where they are saying the N word. I never cared about red versus blue. Yeah, I somehow missed that too.

Like it was a big, that was the big machinima thing, right? When I saw it, because obviously I was really into YouTube as well growing up, I did see that and I just thought it was weird. I was like, this is not funny. It's funny because it's just another vector of the Newgrounds thing we're describing, right?

Yeah, it is. It's totally the same, but I guess, yeah. I mean, mean for me that was uh that was yugioh abridged wow yeah that was and i was like whoa you can like do your own parody voices i mean team four star were i mean at one point they were huge online well and then team four star so so little curry bow little curry bow did yugioh bridge but then team but that was when i really got in was team four star with dragon ball bridge because they you know they were pretty early to the game too yeah i voiced in uh i think one of the episodes and a house thing i voiced in one of them oh nice yeah were you uh did you voice i was like a i was like a rapist in the house. Oh, no.

Which is not great on the credits. Oh, did you request it there? You were like, I don't, you can take me out of the credits. Yeah. I was like, I'm good. Luckily, it was an abridged one. Yeah.

Let's call me, just call me C-Dog. Yeah. I don't want my name. Let's go with the only CMC. Yeah, I was like, maybe not. Maybe not this name. Yeah, that was, I mean, that was huge though. I mean, they had, like, crazy amount of subs

before subs had really gotten to, like, the super inflated, like, everyone is a million plus. Right. I mean, my God, Dragon Ball Bridge was crazy. Yeah, if you look back at some of those, you know, because they did the movies, they did the show, but, like, some of those movies have tens of millions of old school YouTube views. And it's crazy to look back.

Some of the voice actors did not like, the official voice actors did not like the dub. Oh yeah. Which I get. But I- There's a lot of in-jokes in the community, right? Yeah, there's a lot of in-jokes in the community. And then there's also a lot of,

you know, they paid a lot of homage or homage to homage to the uh japanese version of the show and some of the liberties that the dub took and would make fun of that and i thought that was cool because i was also just like a little dragon ball nerd if you're into it it's like yeah there's multiple layers of enjoyment but yeah i think they didn't appreciate that very much i think what are you chewing on right now what are you reading what am i watching i'm still reading one piece it's taken a millennia to get through. Right here.

Have a go. Sorry, Nepic. There you go. Oh, you don't know Nepic? Yeah, sorry. It's a little underground. Wow. I'm like 60 volumes in,

which is crazy because most manga are like 10 volumes. Watching all the stuff that's seasonal that's doing well, Hell's Paradise, Demon Slayer, but it's so boring. What else is stuff that's seasonal that's doing well hell's paradise demon slayer but so boring um what else is there that's right now that's popping off i'm out of the game with the with the currently airing stuff i just gone giga he's the anime guy for like we have the anime man joey who doesn't do anime anymore but gone has been like the anime youtuber for like yeah oh yeah

15 years yeah i definitely like saw some of his early stuff back in the anime YouTuber for like 15 years. I definitely like saw some of his early stuff back in the day. Yeah, he's like, it's crazy how he's the guy. And great friend of mine. And I'm like, Garnt, what should I watch this season? He just tells me, you won't like this, you'll like this, you'll like this, you'll like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of how I get over it. That's nice.

It's great to have him be like, yeah. Custom selected. Oshinoko as well is out right now. It's kind of, I get that's nice. It's great to have him be like yeah. Yeah Custom custom selected ocean or Co as well as that right now. It's kind of That's kind of it I'm watching right now it's crazy how we've Gotten to a point where you can watch like simul simulcast dubs dubs or dubs and then like Or just getting the sub the same day or the day after yeah like because i remember when i was in high school uh it was all extremely illegal but you know you would be waiting for the fan subbing groups or yet to like upload like to sub episodes of stuff like i

remember like bacchanal and stuff like when that was like coming out back and there's a banger yeah yeah actually you know my my youtube avatar the one with the suit yeah it's based Bacchanal and stuff like when that was like coming out back. I was a banger. Yeah Actually, you know my my youtube avatar the one with the suit. Yeah based off back in her Oh, I really liked the lad Russo from back. Yeah. Yeah, I love that suit that he won I was like, I want some to draw the stupid anime version of me, right? Yeah, that's funny Love bacchanal that's always a source of like creativity more often than not. I like in the early internet era is you just take you take and the the publishers are like the utility for getting these things we care about was just fucking impossible yeah like same shit happens now with any kind of first party nintendo mod they have to be really inventive because nintendo is super litigious they never put shit on sale yeah just getting your hands on half the Zelda series.

Oh my God. Tell me about it. Literally, I just bought a Wii U because I wanted to play Wind Waker HD. Yeah. And they'd never put it out on Switch, which is such a no-brainer. And they got all fucking-

It came out 10 years ago. They're all judicious about playing Melee in competitive settings. And we're like, if you release that, unremastered, just a functional emulator for 200 everyone in the community would pay for it they are the source yeah the melee community is like hey we fixed some bugs in melee and they're like we will kill you it's yeah i don't know i think that's like a the the super like in a weird way from like being in japan super long and

working with a lot of Japanese brands and a lot of Japanese companies there's just like the way they do things and the way they just see everything is so different yeah

they just like it's very famously like some Japanese game devs like the companies they would just try to delete the source code after the game came out they were like

we need the space and they just never thought about preserving it it's like old films yeah they were just like oh we need to reuse the tape like BBC right with Doctor Who yeah right exactly where they like and they just never thought about preserving it. They were like- It's like old films. You know, they were just like, fuck it. Oh, we need to reuse the tape. Like BBC, right?

With Doctor Who. Right, exactly. Where they like find lost episodes in like, oh, it just so happened to be in a warehouse in Kenya. Like a news station happened to have it. Yeah, cause they just, oh, luckily it was somewhere else that didn't throw it away. They find shit in salt mines all the fucking time.

Cause they're moisture free. So people just store old film stock and then they're like well we got like a bunch of videos of somebody like shitting and then there's one here oh it's the original star wars print just sat in a corner covered in mud okay oh who needs that crap yeah josh lucas frisbeeing it into the corner how was that so So when did you move to Japan? I moved in 2019, about six months before the pandemic. Okay, wow. Is that why? Yeah, I actually was like,

I'm getting ahead of the game. The plan was complete. And that was weird, because it was like, I'd been to Japan only twice before. Oh, wow. Like two vacations. And I was like, this is sick. Yeah, this is cool.

Because I was always a huge, I like, I've said this a lot. Like, I feel like a lot of people don't realize how much, when you're, especially when you're a kid, you don't realize how much, especially when we grew up as well, cause they didn't tell us it was from Japan. A lot of the time the stuff was just dubbed in English

and there was no real like way of knowing it was from Japan unless, especially when you didn't have the internet widely, like you couldn't just go on your pc and start searching about it yeah um you just didn't know yeah you had to be reading the interviews yeah you i i like i only knew because of like shonen jump and of the other magazines that i would buy i found out because i wanted to watch pokemon online and i found the episode i was like whoa there's more there's this new series out and i haven't seen this on tv and there's more there's this new series out i haven't seen this on tv and they start speaking japanese like what the fuck is this yeah i was like found out oh shit it's it's in japanese first why his mouth sounds so fucked up what the fuck why do

you smoke fitty that was uh when you become cool i used to and you know what's funny is somewhere I I still have this binder I used to go on my aunt's computer who had like a I had dial up at home so this wasn't really a possibility but my aunt had like slightly faster internet growing up and when I would go visit her place I would go to Dragon Ball fan sites and print out images and I would sleeve the images and I would put them in a binder. And I would just look at them. And I would just look at them. But then I would end up with like promotional, like images from the movie posters.

Like an archive. Or from GT and stuff that hadn't aired in America. And it kept being like this weird, like, oh, what is it? Something, it's the future over there in Japan. It's like Dark Souls lore. Yeah. It's just like you read an item description

and you can't really understand half the words. Oh my God, yeah. You see a picture of Broly and you're like, how did, who is that? Yeah, and it's like you kind of consume a lot of this media, even like, again, you play video games, right? You're playing these Japanese games.

You're like, there's just something different about these type of games that I'm playing that feel so vastly different to this other media I'm consuming. And I'm like, man, I just really have this weird affinity with this. And then I would learn, you'd watch movies,

Fast and Furious Tokyo fucking Drift. Oh, yeah. Which unironically, I think, did kind of get me into Japan a little bit more because I just thought it was so cool. Yeah. I remember seeing it and being like, I thought japan i thought it was like cartoons and shit wait wait what the heck there's like cool there's like there's neon here yeah it looks so awesome

and you know that movie is so funny by the way they send the most southern hick guy ever he's so giving the worst haircut in history oh so so bad Damn you guys got cars around these spirits as well Donkey Kong It's insane that it gets through the whole movie Without him saying a slur If that was real There's no world And they put him in that fucking

Delinquent style high school costume He's got like the open front Why are you sharing this iPod that's broken He's like what the fuck is this i'll see one in the hills with this it's so bad it's such a bad film but it really like kind of weirdly got me into it and yeah it was certainly a cool film yeah i mean yeah i just explodes it's like a movie about driving cars so funny. I know.

I just weirdly had this always kind of like really enjoyed it. But, you know, I saw this tweet and I, oh my God, you got to, it made me laugh. It was like, Japan is Wakanda for white people. Whoa. Do you think there is some truth to that? Why? I think, you know, because it's always white dudes, which I i admit i feel like i'm part of the problem it's white dudes i uh they we do absolutely idolize japan well the thing is like i grew up

in like a predominantly black community of like fucking weaves like okay but i think that that's a weird like i don't know if it's super obvious like there is a stereotype. The black nerd is like very into anime. But I know what you mean because there is that, you know. There's a very bad rap around. There's a bad rap about the white guy who like is like, excuse me. I took three years of Japanese. It's like when I first took a picture and someone took a picture of me wearing a kimono. And I was like, I just like, this looks like every dude that I would not want to interact with on Facebook.

Yeah. Because they're wearing like the kimono. Yeah of grainy not deodorant there's like an old i don't know if mayuka talked about this on the podcast but uh one of our uh old co-workers at patreon our friend mayuko she is japanese american like she's japanese national like nationality wise she like is japanese but she Grew up in America her parents Though moved back they're like teachers at university There and She was talking about how like There are so many random white dudes Who will like try to speak Japanese to her

And like Or like if she's like she was like working A job and they'd be like oh you're Japanese Arigato gozaimasu That's so bad yeah it's very bad but it's always a white it's always a white dude in that stereotype i absolutely believe that entirely i mean there is a lot of i will say it's very fair to um say that there are a lot of dudes there who i think um just kind of wanted to have a reset and it's normally not to be mean it is

normally white dudes. Yeah. Now there's a perception or like a fetishization of the Japan, right? Oh, there absolutely is as well. For, and this is being very generalizing, but I've just heard the sentiment a lot of submissive women in Japan. Like a lot of the alpha men going their own way bullshit.

It's like you moved to Japan because then the women there are traditional, which is the wrong. Yeah, we're gonna go to Golden Guy and we're gonna get drunk and it's gonna be like lost in translation. They love us. Oh God.

Oh Jesus. How much of the time in Japan are you speaking Japanese versus English? Oh dude, it's so bad. With the exception of like the show. Yeah, so I mean, my Japanese is at a level which should be better as my YouTube comments always love to tell me.

Cause you know, most of the time I speak in English cause most people I work with speak English and most of the people I'm around all speak English, which I know is like, God, you should integrate more and yada yada yada. But my Japanese is at like conversational level. I can go around, I can do everything I need to do every single day.

I can talk to everyone. I sound like a little toddler, but I can communicate everything. And I, which is, I'm happy with considering I moved there knowing literally nothing. Yeah, that's amazing. How did that... Not that long ago.

Yeah, I was going to say not that long ago. Were you taking classes or were you... No, not at all. You're just picking it up. So I... Man, there's this weird assumption and I don't want to blame Americans but I think some Americans online have this idea

that if you move to a foreign country, you just pick it up. And it's such a, it's so wrong. Not as an adult. No, absolutely not. It's so tough because I got there and I was doing classes for about, up until about a year ago.

I was only going once a week, two hours, which is not a lot, I know, but it was pretty much all I could fit into my schedule because do the podcast do the streamings

do the YouTubing and the pandemic maybe was not a great time pandemic was rough because then all the classes closed and they wanted me to do Zoom and I hated Zoom classes I think I

dude it's bad because I hate agreeing with like weird people online I know yeah but I was like yeah just for me just this Zoom thing it just it does not work i have three monitors there's it's way too easy for me to start clicking stuff uh and i just i just was not good at it no

i i was in a i was in a class i was in an acting class that that sounds terrible when it's such a physical thing right no you know the first couple of like meetings were in person and then they were like the pandemic was happening and then it was a lot of radio silence it was like okay we're gonna try to do this through zoom and i was in my mind i was like i work on screens all day i did this to get outside of my house like do something in the real world so i'm not really interested in doing this like remotely um and that's okay you know i think it's okay to just you can agree with what crazy people say sometimes like one very minute yeah yeah just like little in this particular instant yeah so i i but like the main way i picked it up and the way that i always tell everyone i'm

like you gotta do this no matter what if like even if you're learning and you're going to classes because i know a lot of people who have their degree in japanese and stuff i did not do that because i thought that learning japanese because again I was in the anime community so I thought the people who were learning Japanese were super cringe for a while because the way they would express it was kind of cringe but I really regret

and I'm jealous of the people that push themselves to learn Japanese because I think that me thinking that that was cringe was from a place of like jealousy that I was not or even like I i become them like i i'm not cringe i like japan for like the cool reasons that as well i'm not a loser as you see i was trying to escape that in school i didn't want to feel that way and i felt like i want i

don't know why and ultimately i think it was stupid of me because those people were like fuck it i'm gonna try and learn something i'm gonna try and apply myself to something and that's i mean that's like the most valuable thing you can give to yourself yeah does it resonate with you at all like when i hear that i kind of tied in a little bit with the uk absolutely welsh dude bury your interest oh my god yeah mitigate your like passion and also i i don't know if it's always envy. I just always felt this in the UK of like- There's definitely jealousy, I think, of people who have that freedom to express that.

If somebody wants to do something or aspires to something, it's like, well, if they're doing it, why aren't I? No, they are the problem. Yeah, they're the problem for pushing themselves. Don't move to another- Do you ever get that thing about- Oh yeah, fuck yeah, fuck yeah.

Wow, you're being really American or something. Like, prom, they're doing prom now in the UK? Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll chip in on that in just one sec. I'll just finish the thought that I had. Definitely when you're trying to learn Japanese or any language,

honestly, I just went out and got drunk and like going, going having beers because like, even like Golden Guy, which is a super tourist spot, but you go and having beers because like even like golden guy Which is super tourist spot, but yeah, and they hate tourists

But like occasionally so many signs that are just like Japanese. Yeah, it's only yeah Japanese people only The moment you start knowing just a little bit and you start applying it. They really appreciate it people Appreciate that you're putting in the effort to speak the language in a place like people are very kind about that um that no one expects you to be fluent you are you when you look foreign they expect you to speak nothing so they're very happy when you speak anything yeah and a lot of dudes who drink are super fun to hang out with and they'll want to learn english a little bit and you speak japanese a little bit you know you kind of trade and you don't have as much of the shame because you're absolutely not yeah you're drinking you know and drinking culture is like a little bit more like socially integrated, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Drinking on a weekday is like, yeah, I'm with the fucking boys. You drink every day in Japan, basically, for most people. So that was really easy to then, like a lot of the Japanese I did know was just like that kind of muscle memory language. Not so much like. Grammatically, you're not thinking about the conjugation or how to like change the form of a verb. I would hear the thing and I would know what to say back yeah i would i would just kind of get these things locked in it's like a baby yeah yeah exactly so you would just i would just know how to talk and then suddenly they would say something and i'd be like whoa uh i was like could you say

that in an easier way please that's what i say that in normal please i literally can you say it as if i was a child and they will say it i'm like oh yeah so that's always some more so that's how I was a drunk baby literally no you check into some fancy ryokans like onsen right and they always start speaking keigo to me and I'm like oh could you say that easy please I say that Japanese they're like oh and they don't want to because they want to be professional yeah I'm like yeah yeah google gaga version yeah because that's like a whole nother dial anyway no no no point being that helped me so much more and that made me again more confident and that's a huge thing with learning language is uh just being confident and just don't be embarrassed because people do not expect you to be fluent and they can immediately tell you're not fluent so just just

talk say what you know yeah i appreciate that you can find a middle ground they generally patient they're very patient yeah too patient I think I think it becomes some of politeness and I don't think they

sometimes I don't think they like it but most people again if you're drinking they're very happy with it just buy buy everyone a drink right life hack right

away they'll love you yeah get a bunch of tattoos they love that right get a bunch of tattoos go to a temple covered in tattoos I'm sure they'll enjoy me going to bunch of tattoos go to a temple covered in tattoos I'm sure they'll enjoy me

doing that go in the bath yeah go in the bath with shorts on the hearts on and be really loud my replica devil may cry katana

that I just put by the side take off my Virgil put it on the side of the bath unsheathe it nobody comes in sorry guys I'm here to defend you oh god

in case Virgil turns up yeah definitely with the British we have this and i'm so envious of americans for this this is the one thing that i always i think i i really liked when i was watching like disney and shit is that they were like everyone just follow your dreams and do what you want right and it's obviously it's a little played up and it's too much of it definitely but being from the uk kind of seeing that and this is why i was kind of i really gelled with the disney channel as a kid in a weird kind of way i was like whoa it's so refreshing to see this kind of atmosphere

where everyone is kind of encouraging each other to do what they want whereas it's like go to the pub with gary the fucking geezer go now go watch the game and it's like that's it that's all you get to do that is your life you don't get to have any fun activity even if i was like hey i'm gonna start woodworking they just make fun of me oh you're talking about yeah well. You don't get to have any fun activity. Even if I was like, hey, I'm gonna start woodworking. They just make fun of me. Or talking about. Yeah, well you fucking don't pretend like you do fucking woodworking.

Fucking Woody Connor over here. It's like you just get grilled and it's like, okay. After a while I learned to be like, I don't give a fuck. Like I'll just, I'll do what I want. Cause it makes me happy. I don't like Gary. I don't wanna hang out with Gary. I just don't like him. I'm realizing I don't mind if he out with Gary. I just don't like him.

I'm realizing I don't mind if he doesn't invite me to see him. I would just learn to be like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Did you kind of at any point just try desperately to get into football or something? I tried so long. I guess maybe rugby? My dad, so my dad's from Liverpool. So football, huge football culture. my dad is very ride or die

football the vatican of football basically in the uk it's like it's everything in liverpool um so they've tried so desperately they had season passes for everton and they would always take me and dude my dad hates it when i talk about this on the podcast he's always like you're dramatic you're dramatizing it too much but like he would just take me to the pub, right? And pubs in the UK, especially in the 90s, early 2000s,

sorry, were not nice things. They cleaned up a lot. It was, smoking was still legal inside. And like, even when it wasn't legal, people were still like,

you know, still doing it. And so, and everyone would be like, proper rough Liverpoolpool people they're like oh don't you want some pork scratchings what do you do and then they would like give me a sip of beer and they're like oh it's a chocolate bar have fun and i wouldn't be allowed to bring my game boy or anything and i have to watch it i'm like 90 minutes is an eternal length when you're

a child yeah you've only lived a few of those like Like, it's so long. This is a 1% of my whole life. And I make it sound so bad, but I was, you know, I'm very glad that, I'm very thankful that my parents would take me out and do things. I appreciate that. No, for sure. I just, there's no point at any, it is no part of my life when I was a kid

where I thought I would like football. But they tried so desperately to get me into it as a family. And I was definitely the weird one who did not like it. Cause my older brother loved it uh and he's great he's great he was like the perfect son as well he's great i love him so much not a weeb not a weeb loved football great it's right in yeah he was like the perfect british kid he's great i get on with him so well though that's great i'm glad that Gaza. What's your brother's name? Callum. Callum.

Oh, fuck yeah. He's great. Callum and then Connor. And then Owen as well is your favorite. I was going to say the lesson of like, this is kind of jumping back to the language thing, like forcing yourself through it and not being afraid to fail. It's like such a good lesson for life as well for sure because there's so much like you get so

in your head about things yeah really you learn so much more by just like trying and failing they're like that every success you know there's like a ton of fear it was one of the most empowering feelings learning another language because I pretty much sworn off learning another language because I was forced to look for so bad I learned I'm fluent in welsh and english and i went to a school where it was welsh predominantly if you didn't speak welsh in school you would get like uh detention or whatever all the road signs are welsh or everything's welsh every subject was in welsh so i did all of my schooling in welsh until uh until i went to university oh wow so um yes it

was all very intense welsh and it sucked because like i think if in a normal school you would you would have like an english clash class sorry clash apparently let's go back and then you would do like an english class i was fucking awful they okay this is bad. I was so bad, I hated reading as a kid. And they put me in the special ed class, it was English. And I was like, I don't belong here. I just didn't read enough. And I was like, I was a fucking traumatic event. And I was like, can I get out of this now? I will read to get out of this class.

I'll do it, I'll prove I can do it. I just don't, I don't wanna be snapping pencils for an hour. Like I just don't vibe with this. Would you accept congee? And so I had, I don't want to be snapping pencils for an hour. Like I just don't vibe with this. Would you accept kanji? And so I don't know. I just, and then, you know, we're learning English, which I was terrible at

and Welsh, which I was terrible at. And then, you know, they make you learn like, they don't make you learn it. You just do like German or French. And they're like, say un or something. You're like, this is fucking stupid. Like I feel like this is just,

it's such a really I mean it's hard I don't think there is a good way of introducing language to like 12 or 13 year old kids in a way with one hour a week

that they can really engage with it but I guess it's better than nothing just to get kids to be like hey there are other languages

like you should take note of them but I think the utility isn't really emphasized i remember learning french and like not realizing that french is what they spoke in france it was just french is what we learn in the class get by with english which is the bad part and we're spoiled with english we're spoiled with english and then going to japan and then when you start like when the the dots start connecting of language learning where you start like, when the dots start connecting of language learning, where you start, when you reply like to three sentences in a row, you're like, this is so empowering. Yeah.

And it feels like a video game where you're like unlocking another like, because it's crazy watching. I'm sure you have a friend who's like fluent in a language that's so bizarre that you're fluent in this. And you watch them use it. You're like, that's so cool. Because they just like this entire skill set, which is so different from any other skill we have as like humans. It's like so cool to watch people use. Right, I agree.

I know a lot of bilingual, like second generation friends of mine that dream in, like my friend Sarah dreams in Cantonese. She doesn't dream. And she's always lived in the UK. Yeah, that's crazy. As a first language.

Yeah. Until she was five. it was not that long. There's just something foundational. That's so cool. Are there things you literally just can't express in English? Not just in Japan, but there's like sentiments. Yeah, there's some Welsh kind of ideas that are very tough to get across.

And I guess it made me, again, when I was learning Japanese, it's the same kind of concept with like there's only certain things that can be expressed in the language. And and culturally it makes sense when you take the language into account because i guess culture is language um but yeah it's it's very odd because i think the growing up i just had such a narrow-minded view of culture and language and i think i'm very grateful that i was able to like kind of youtube has helped a lot as well i mean fuck me you have to yeah you have to learn quick um and it's like you got some really constructive feedback which is nice yeah

hey i just want to let you know you're a fucking idiot yeah you just don't know like how the fuck am i supposed to learn this stuff when i come from a my school was 80 people and i remember there was when i left my high school was the first time i think a non-white person joined the entire high school wow it was super it's we're in wales like deep yeah like very kind of almost like almost homogenous but it's not really now anymore yeah but like uh yeah it's super now it's great but But when I was growing up, I remember the school, especially a Welsh speaking school, very, very, very wide. Growing up, like I just didn't see other cultures like ever. Right.

So it was very foreign to me. It was weird to think. And then you're like, and then I was growing up on, and then basically grew up online. You get thrown into this world, you're like, whoa, this is cool. It's just like on the internet. There's like more than just, yeah. But it's cool. I think it's sad that I think people dismiss that kind of stuff and they're like no i don't even know anything

it's like oh yeah that's such a yeah that's a bummer when people are like i only need to know my own stuff around me or they're not open to because i think for me the world opened up when i like left my hometown for college and i didn't even go that far, but I feel like that was like the first step to being able to travel outside of the country or to move across the country. No, I don't feel less English now. No, no, no. I can still keep in touch with that.

Yeah. Which is fine because I like being able to distance it sometimes. I like being the token British guy sometimes, but yeah. It's good for getting jobs. Yeah, it is absolutely amazing for getting jobs. And Americans love it.

Oh, yeah. But I've become more American, I'm sure. It's happened as well. You become more American. Lock me up. Throw away the key, brother. Yeah. Yeah, I think cultures,

I just love learning about more stuff. And in Japan, even though it kind of seems like you're kind of a especially like a white guy talking about Japanese culture but like learning about it

is fascinating oh for sure yeah if you talk about it affection as opposed to fetishization yeah and plus you're like I'm real

there's some stuff that needs a lot of changing I'm coming in to change some things around here I was going to ask about if there was any culture shock that you experienced. Oh, dude, yeah.

Yeah, in Japan. Because, I mean, I've just heard things through friends or through, you know, even I have friends who are, like, Japanese but grew up in the States. And then even they have some difficulty acclimating to Japanese culture. Oh, yeah. They, like like move there for a year or two just to like i don't know try it out yeah my friends my friends tell me my japanese can tell me that there's um yeah there's definitely like they they had a word i can't

remember the word was for japanese people who live abroad and then come back and they're different because they're they've they've been exposed to foreign ideas because it is japan japan is very uh very homogenous right extremely so yeah um and which has caused this really weird kind of environment online of people who like you know like people are like yeah they're not woke they haven't been ruined by it and it's like it's like okay okay pure so fucking stupid um the purity thing is like i've heard because my like mayuko said that like when she talks to people in japan like she gets oh you're so californian like even though she's like her you know parents like teach at like university in japan to this day it's like just by virtue of like not being yeah yeah because you i guess if you they

people just think if you haven't been raised in it and also you're not miserable and a horrible work environment you're not really japanese but yeah i mean culture shock wise um i mean if you watch our podcast like the trash taste podcast i think people get people just think that we hate japan oh no because there's just so much to complain about like yeah when you live there day by day there's just a lot of little things that Japan does. And people can be like, yada, yada, culture, culture. There's just something they do that is just flat out just bad. Just like the way they refuse to adapt with online

and adapt with like doing anything online. It's crazy. Everything is still paper. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of- To the detriment of like themselves. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. They want more paper and more work.

Right. I haven't been to Japan a couple of times. I've not been. I'm always hesitant to make any kind of like, you know, cultural statements about a place I haven't been. And anything I say might just be, you know, propaganda, you know, a little bit. You tell me what you think and i'll tell you from my experience that yeah like what i feel like one of the cliches at least that i hear

is that that homogenization i don't even want to say like racial homogenization is cultural as well it's just you know insular yeah it's a lot more like by design it's in a way that like you know people north of england i'm from newcastle a lot of people up there a lot more like by design it's in a way that like you know people north of england i'm from newcastle a lot of people up there a lot of the family is just like doesn't hurt that it's kind of white not going to stop anybody from coming up i don't mind it it sounds like in japan it's a little more yeah they must integrate or yeah they um it's weird because obviously growing up in Wales, you would obviously hear a lot of rhetoric about,

they just don't integrate enough, right? And then I'm in Japan. I'm like, am I integrating? I'm like, no. You kind of hear this kind of rhetoric that I would hear towards people who are coming to where I lived. And then you're like thinking about it. You're like, what does that even mean to integrate?

Like what is the definition of integrating? Is literally just hanging out my friend group or is it like being helpful to society in the community around you right it's like that's such a weird kind of idea um because i'm like i i'm good i pay my taxes i i'm not a burden i'm you know i did i'd like to think i'm not a burden i like i contribute to society and I'm paying an ungodly amount of taxes there and I wasn't raised there. Do you have a particular type, maybe your career also is kind of considered outside of the collective or whatever?

Definitely. I mean, but like, I think as a foreign individual, there's not an expectation of me to be in that same. Fit into that. Absolutely. No matter how hard I would try to fit in that same... Fit into that. Absolutely. No matter how hard I would try to fit in. Because I went to... I did a thing with YouTube in Japan

back in 2019. Yeah. Right before the pandemic. So maybe we were there. Maybe it was right as you were moving. Maybe, yeah. 2019. Yeah, yeah.

This was like... Let's see. It was trash taste. I want to say it was August 2019. Okay. Yeah. That was right before I moved there yeah so um and it was uh through like youtube's like research like um leg and there were a bunch of creators

from different countries and we were all meeting that's awesome meeting in at the like tokyo google office but one of the creators was from Japan and his name is wakiyo but he has like a channel called wakiyo you know like makes fun of Japanese culture he's like from Berkeley or whatever but he like he like went to he like moved to Japan to go to like Kyoto University yeah and he like he he talks about it like he speaks really academic Japanese well oh wow we're like native yeah like or people who grew up in Japan are like impressed that he's not from there so that's how that's how he beats the whole like

oh you're a Californian thing but uh and then what Kyoto University is like the Harvard of uh oh yeah it's pretty big one yeah but anyway the um but he was talking about how there's these three essentially MCNs that that oh they run it where where yeah where basically you any he i'm i'm really just like um paraphrasing someone else's experience because i again i don't know this firsthand but the way he described it was like um culturally because japan is more of a collectivist culture there there is this weird outsider thing of like oh it's not cool to do your own thing and be independent. Oh, no, absolutely not.

Yeah, absolutely not. So there are these companies that are essentially big MCNs that it's like choose your starter Pokemon that you then become a part of so that you can be, almost legitimizes the YouTube career because now you're a part of a company.

Are you guys, any of you independently part of one? We are part of an agency in Japan that is under Kadokawa, which you might know Yeah, they own Pretty much every single like isekai anime. Yeah. Yeah Like ocean Oh co right now. I think they run that Yeah, so we're part of I woke up as a podcaster in another world

So which we had asked to do a lot of anime promotional stuff on the Japanese end for that. Right, right. But this is like, so that's a giant conglomeration in Japan. And conglomerations run the show in Japan. Yeah. There are a few giant, I mean giant. Right.

Like a company might own, like half the stuff in your house might be owned by one conglomeration. Right. And like you might work for them too. So it's like you very much get like into it. Obviously, I just want to preface that, obviously because i've lived there for a while but i'm absolutely not an authority on it and sure like some of the very deep aspects of the culture i wouldn't be able to give you an accurate kind of uh explanation of but there's some things that i'm pretty

confident in talking about right um and yeah like that's dude yeah this damn yeah the the culture of like the company culture is wild yeah yeah um i mean i like i've i've only had these like small little windows into it like my old roommate nick used to work at the silicon valley tech company and uh and one time he before he quit and he like went to go become a game dev he he, he, but it was like an ads company. It was like ad retargeting or whatever. And he was like an engineer there, but they had a Japan office. They had a Tokyo office.

And he was like, do you want to come with me? And so I like, I was like, sure. These are like all the trips I've had to Japan are just randomly people. But a lot of that trip involved like going out socially with his co-workers and they were they were talking about how um they were kind of it was almost like they were cheating the system because this they were working for like a silicon valley type company right japan so yeah the management like it didn't have the same traditionalist culture but then there was um there was also like them roasting americans like one of the things that they roasted about like silicon

valley culture i remember this we were just like at an izakaya like after work which is like a pretty common yeah very very common yeah yeah and uh what is that uh like a kind of that version of a pub yeah it's like a restaurant pub but you just kind of sit down a bunch of japanese gary yeah they have geezers yeah the boss is the geezer geezer yeah so then they were like um oh yeah the thing they made fun of about like our corporate culture which i think you'll find funny silicon valley corporate culture tread lightly yeah it's like they'd be like americans are always like at all hands meetings like uh someone will ask a question and then they'll say great question and it wasn't a great question there is a there is a participation trophy element to it

wow really insightful dude i've been in a few japanese meetings they go on long oh yeah they go over everything yeah everything in in detail like when because you know we do a lot of filming stuff in japan and uh this man is tough to film in japan there's a lot of like red tape yeah lots of red tape like uh just did a stream with iron mouse and disney and that was great it was just like money just solved everything they were like like, how much you drop it? And they were like, this much. They're like, come on in.

We'll do whatever you want. Skip every line. Be as loud as you want. I was like, obviously. But Disney Japan, no filming allowed, no matter what. You have to have like really crazy strict permission. And if you do, you will have like, whenever we've done filming like this,

there will be a guy or two guys who just follow you the entire time to make sure you're not saying anything bad, even if they't understand but they're just there to follow you and um like this happens a lot and then also happening anywhere or like just in urban environments so it's just like uh this this happens mainly in like cities or big attractions or anything that's kind of a big company because they'll want a pr guy or two pr guys right there with you the entire time they own half the stuff in your house and maybe you. It's crazy.

And then you've got to send everything for a review. But just to get permission, there'll be multiple meetings of just going over everything. And I've done live streams where they've wanted a script for the live stream. And I've told them that's not possible. So we send them in like... Now I'll just send them in like a skeleton script of like, I'll say, I'm going to intro with this and then I'm going to do this and do this.

And they just want that because they just want to know the flow. The Japanese culture in terms of work culture is extremely risk averse. Everything is to avoid risk. So they want to know everything. Everything has to be like quadruple checked. Like everything has to be perfect.

To a fault, I think as well. Are they good at it like they're good but they're good at what they do but like i'll turn up to a set to film something and they'll have at least like double the amount of people they need but it's because like they just it's just this idea of like everything needs to go perfect so we need right just have you'll notice this when you go to japan if you pay attention to it they'll have too much staff for a lot of things right way too much i remember i mean these are just random random experiences but one time we were like uh in shibuya uh and like roadworks or something yeah or we just went up to hooters because we were like it's funny like like this is an odd thing to exist here. Yeah, there's Hooters in Japan.

It's salary, man. They love it. Just for we trust. And it was like empty and we were greeted by like six people. You know what I mean? And it was like, this is all too, it was uncomfortable because we were like,

all eyes were on us at all times. And we like literally like walked in and walked out. Yeah, that's just intense. And then like walked in, we're all eyes were on us at all times and we like like literally like walked in and walked out yeah and then like walked in we're like nope like we kind of got our got our fill of this we're not i don't think we've ever been to hooters in the states i don't know why we went to hooters in japan and then like we like it was a you know one of those buildings like an elevator so like the uh the entrance was right at the elevator door and we got back in the elevator all six people uh got in front of the door again they waved us goodbye like I was like a 60 second like trip what do you

do the first time in the weekend oh yeah the friend of the I'm so friends with a June who's a porn actress in Japan she's great and she introduced me to fireu's who's the voice of power And Jolene and Jojo Oh, nice And she loves Hooters And she's like, I just love their energy It's cool We went to Hooters

And she loves it Is it American? Yeah, yeah They're doing American cosplay kind of thing Yeah, I don't get it There's this kind of There's a fascination with like Americana Sure

Yeah In certain aspects of Japan Some of the more like aesthetic elements like a diner that kind of uh yeah yeah there's some places they i mean obviously because at one point uh japan was occupied by america right so there's a lot of stayovers i think of a little bit of american culture and like okinawa is like all americans because the military base is huge really i didn't know yeah mass uh yeah not i didn't know about the military base i just didn't assume that it was sort of yeah yeah i mean like there's a lot of a lot of a lot of aspects

of like i mean like even like the way it's designed like a lot of like roads and a lot of everything is from like the way the americans did it yeah um and then yeah when they do british things it's pretty weird british stuff they just i feel like they just don't get it right i i i mean i feel that way about American stuff. So I think that there's a lot of very interesting cultural fusions. I mean, in Tokyo, there's just so much. But I went to a... It was supposed to be like a beer garden.

It was like a Japanese take on a German beer garden. And it was like... was like a little bit off and then they also had like the the weight the weight staff like who were all women so all these waitresses in the back of the menu and all of their stats and their blood type and stuff yeah oh like um cigarette cards is that what i'm thinking of? One of the Yakuz collectibles that I'm remembering. Oh, telephone cards. Oh, gosh. Like a 90s...

Wasn't that like a thing? I don't know this. I only know this from Like a Dragon, I think. It might be. It's a... I assume like a relic of the 90s or early 2000s or something. Yeah. Where it's...

You're essentially like at some venue or maybe in a pack of cigarettes getting this card and a phone number you can call. I don't know if it's like a sex line or just a flirtation. I've heard of this but I can't remember. But yeah, there was nothing like, there was nothing flirty about the thing. It just like was a weird.

Well, if you want that, you can get that. There is like, you can get every single level of whatever you want. If you want someone to just flirt with you, you can you can do that you want someone to maybe do a little bit more you can do that which is kind of you know it's technically illegal but very widely advertised i want to pivot off of japan because i have some other questions yeah go for it go for it um because i think there's more to you than just being a welsh guy that's true that's one thing one thing we briefly talked about with the uh the avatar is that you

know you in the suit you're a stylish guy oh you'd like to i like to dress up in the suit where does that come best no i just kind of got a i got i bought these jojo suits and i guess it became like a weird thing that people got like people really liked when i wore them and i really loved wearing them yeah i feel very confident i love in this suit. I love wearing a suit. Yeah. So I kind of took an excuse to wear a suit. It is the exact opposite of the British suppression culture we're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. It is, I mean, fashion in general, but making a conscious choice to say like, put a little bit of a spotlight on yourself, clearly have put effort in. Yeah, yeah. Kind of the- I loved it in there.

It just feels like, almost like taking the power back a little bit yeah it's great dude i like whenever i go out to a fancy dinner sometimes i'm like i ask my friends i'm like can we can we wear it like can we dress up oh that's fun because i'm like it'd be fun it's nice it's like you feel great um and i is yeah like you said it's like very empowering and i think being able to kind of unlearn that britishness of like just don't don't do that h&m now else yeah primark top man top man shut down but it is i think it has yeah i still wear this one shirt that i really like i still have actually it was from top man ripping pieces i've been

primark is like just the cheapest thing you could ever i feel like i got shoes for like three dollars it's insane it's like morally wrong how it is like but but like you know and it kind of deteriorated i feel like the at least the stuff i've gotten there like deteriorated it's paper yeah dude you could buy a 10 pack of t-shirts for five pounds yeah it was what is uh i've i can't remember which one's the posh way of saying it the mark oh fuck there was a posh i think i think it's pre-mark and primer but i don't know yeah yeah we would say like pre-mark because i always say primark and i don't i say primark as well i think that's scones as well um which one is scones i used to say scones and then when i started doing lots of voice acting they started they're making me speak rp uh english yeah they were like

no no no connor you have to say grass you can't say grass so a lot of the stuff i really unlearned which is weird because i didn't know you could do that too yeah parents and family were like what the fuck yeah i i get mocked relentlessly like i was gonna say i i feel like you've probably experienced this where you like kind of you unlearn your accent pretty quick yeah it's i mean especially with like you know the the job i had in tech was all riz right it was just it was partnerships it was speaking yeah one of the it's not that i like i go back home pretty frequently i go visit the house checking everything and when i go back all right yeah exactly but part of that is that in here people like if I do a little bit of art yeah which is how my mum talks and but she's from Newcastle my aunt doesn't

thick Geordie my mum always it's really weird but the my mum was always very like uh proactive about me not rolling my eyes and stuff. But I went to college. I went to early high school. Just not being at home. So it was a bit more like that. I talk like that sometimes, especially around my mate. And then it starts to blend.

I go to uni. It blends even more. It becomes an amalgamation of things, yeah. And then now coming here, it's not that I ever want to lose it it's nicer to speak in a more natural or what feels more natural

but I it never stops stinging when you say something and someone goes what yeah no

yeah exactly it was just it was an enunciation thing yeah YouTube YouTube beat that out of me I had to really enunciate words

because I realized you just, you're like, some people just won't watch you if they just can't understand you all the time, right? It's an ease of, because you want to be understood all the time, right?

Because that's how you keep people engaged. You didn't do old episodes, like really old episodes to that boys. I'm a different person. I sound totally different on the very first video I uploaded. Oh, that's so funny.

Yeah, we have, like. Yeah. We have like, I, we did this recently. Like there is a video of mine from 2017 or something where, uh, just as a bit, it was like when we just became friends, we didn't even have the podcast yet.

That's right. There was, there was a bit where, uh, I was, it was about imposter syndrome and I like swapped Jordan out for myself because we even used to have a similar haircut back then. And I used to be from Florida.

And it's like, I listened to it. The way that you, the way that Jordan sounded was like not even recognizable. Yeah. It's weird how quickly it changes so fast. Let's get started. I literally said, well, there was no, like there was that weird study where it was oh not weird study they they'd

noted that like when these researchers would go to antarctica and there'd be like 12 of them there would be one dominant like accent that they would all pick up from i think it was like german or something this guy they would pick up this dude's accent and it's weird because i do this in japan as well when i sometimes when i speak to people who don't speak english very well i will default to this kind of a weird kind of way of uh enunciating and being simple with my language just to help them understand right and i wonder if it's something like that where when you're around a lot of people who are from different places and everyone's speaking especially when it's so many different because

they have researchers from all over the world yeah yeah you all kind of you all kind of like uh what's the word converge on this very weird kind of, you all kind of like, what's the word? Converge on this very weird kind of accent. It's really strange. Do you speak Welsh more if you're in Wales? Welsh? I never speak Welsh.

The only time I want to speak Welsh is if I go back, hang out with some people from school who are super Welsh. Because there was, in Welsh school,

medically Welsh. In Welsh school, there was this weird thing of like, families that spoke Welsh at home were like kind of favored to be more Welsh. They were more ingrained with Welsh culture and they were more favoured in a lot of things.

Because a lot of the Welsh teachers were also very ingrained with Welsh culture and would often speak Welsh all the time. Whereas it was very apparent which kids didn't speak Welsh at home. And we didn't speak Welsh at home because my dad didn't speak Welsh. My mum does. But at that time, she didn't spoke it a lot. And my dad just didn't speak any Welsh.. And we didn't speak Welsh at home because my dad didn't speak Welsh. My mom does. But at that time, she didn't spoke it a lot. And my dad just didn't speak any Welsh. So it was very weird. So yeah, I didn't speak Welsh outside of school.

I'm surprised there's some people that like listening in Welsh is a full spoken signposted language. Yeah, there's some people who use Welsh as like their dominant language and they all their social circles, they all speak Welsh and they prefer to be around people who speak Welsh because it it's just like a nice real it is a very nice the

one thing i do kind of miss after going like to youtube and traveling and like getting this global setting is like dude it's kind of it was kind of awesome like how like they all knew each other right they're all very supportive everyone would help each other and not in like this weird kind of close town where you have to you have to be it's like i felt like there was a genuine kind of joy that they got from being in that community yeah and they really like they all took care of each other and i really really thought that was something special now looking back and leaving that but the time i thought this get me out of here get me out of here yeah well you have to know what you don't have to appreciate it yeah yeah absolutely i wouldn't trade it no i like

being here but if you do something embarrassing everyone in town oh I heard Doc Conner shut himself in so that was a Terrell Walsh accent the thing about assimilating or kind of picking up vocal qualities

from other people one thing I did that I still have a little bit of me in is that i took a couple of japanese classes in college i like took spanish for like all of uh high school and then i studied abroad in spain and so and so then come college i wanted to get some humanities credit and i was like you know what i don't want to be such a bizarre idea to me yeah if you get credits you have a lot of right you have to learn there's general education and i was like you know what i don't want to be such a bizarre idea to me if you get credits right you have to learn there's general education and i'm paying yeah exactly like let me choose i

shouldn't even have to do the test give me the i know i know the argument is that it's supposed to be more holistic right but that's such bullshit i don't know the sentiment i i like being so elective and like specializing but at the same time then it's just like but wait this system's now incentivizing me to do something. I have no interest. Yeah. Yeah. And on the flip side,

I think now just to that point, I do want more holistic education, but like, I think that it shouldn't, it's done poorly. I think it's the execution is not great because in tech, I want a lot more people in tech to take more communication classes and have more-

Absolutely. I think that communication was never emphasized ever. Right. And I think that that's, and now there's this trope of a hyper-technical person who's bad at communicating. And I'm like, you know what I mean? And I'm like, oh-

And the more skilled you are at tech, the worse your communication should be. And the higher rank you are in like a lot of these places. So, or ethics, right? Like I had to take a computing ethics class and like we're talking about like self-driving cars, killing people as it was a hypothetical when I was in college and it is no longer a hypothetical.

Yeah. Yeah, the hypothesis got tested. Yeah, exactly. But anyway, so I took a couple of Japanese classes. And then whenever I'm going on a trip to Japan, I'll use that as an opportunity to study a little bit. Yeah, why not? And I remember when me and Mayuko were watching a bunch of Terrace House,

this Japanese reality show. Very famous. I would pick up a lot of like the in-between, like literally what you just did. It would be like a lot of, I do it all. Everyone, some people get annoyed with me

when I do it here. But I'm always like, well, so I even mean something else, right? In that context. It's like this weird thing that everyone does and we've agreed on it in Japan

is that you're listening. I always do in Japan. I'm like, I saw this thing. Yeah. Watch it on, it on he's like he's like my family is my house is burning down sick or the thinking words you have to do you have to hit him with netto is that a um it's that and it's a natural way of like kind of being like because cause dude, the reason why you will want to do that, especially if you are someone who's learning Japanese or you're not like fluent is that people often get,

Japanese people often get quite uncomfortable with awkward silence with foreign people cause they just don't know what to do. They're like, I don't, this is a situation I'm not comfortable with. And you're literally saying loading, please wait. And it's my way of like communicating, like I am thinking, don't i this is a situation i'm not right and you're literally saying loading please wait like and it's my way of like communicating like i am thinking yeah don't don't say something i'm gonna say it like yeah um because you know i can understand you know you don't interact with

foreign people much this dude starts for some reason this dude talking to you maybe like you're like waiters or waitresses right and it doesn't happen anymore but when it used to you know you're thinking a little bit they you know they might get a little bit comfortable which i understand right because it's like you are not being paid enough to have to deal with a guy who doesn't speak your language like yeah this is not what you're paid to do there's so much like i'm very bad at japanese but because i was watching so much terrace house and stuff there's so much rhythm yes rhythm is important that i would i would be good at like the rhythm like if i was like listen if i was like ordering at a restaurant or something like that,

you know, you're like, you're like this. I want, you know, Mizuto. Yeah. You gotta hit the beats.

You're like listening. Yeah. It's like, there's so much intonation. That's like saying it's very much the same in English, you know, but it's just like a different way. And that was like,

that's another thing you pick up when you're just like, yeah. When you're, you're talking, you're engaging with it. I think it's very like a different way. And that was like, that's another thing you pick up when you're just like in- Yeah, when you're talking and you're engaging with it. I think it's very important to do that. And that's, language is tough. Language is very tough. How often are you coming back? LA?

Or UK? In general. How often do you leave, I suppose? Pandemic was kind of rough because it was two years and I literally just didn't leave at all. Yeah. And then it kind of went crazy last year.

It kind of went crazy a year i kind of went crazy a little bit the first half of this year uh i've been traveling at least like once a month lately that's crazy which is a lot yeah too much um because jet lag i imagine is not doesn't go away yeah yeah it's pretty bad um but i think luckily i'm slowing it down now but it was pretty much pan after pandemic kind of like i was dying to travel and just go. And I went overboard and I really regret it. No, I didn't regret it, but I was really overwhelmed. I think with how much traveling I was doing.

I think like even in like this year, I think May and March, I think I would fly, come back for one week, smash out a bunch of work and then fly again. Or even like I came back, I had one day at one point and flew again and i was like this is fucked um yeah last time i went back to see my mom i was went for her birthday yeah to surprise her and i just there was i had to get

back here again i just moved it was like three days when you're like and it's like i just i'm i want to be more present but i'm hung over from this flight travel. If I don't get back now, I'm going to be hung over again adapting. And there's not time. I don't spend a lot of money on myself. But the one thing that I've kind of been a blank check on is just business flights.

Yeah. Because it's been invaluable with rocking up to a place and being able to just go. Your comfort is so important when you're yeah literally it's such a like the way you're describing it it is a huge part of your job is 100% that like so it's not being asleep yeah it's just not being fucked and like i don't want to rock up and i've made plans with someone and it's like i'm just not there because i know sometimes how it is when people come to japan and you know that they really want to be there and i you know i can i'm not sure how much to plan because i'm like are you going to be tired

are you right so it's like being able to be like yeah i'll be ready i'll be i'm ready yeah yeah i like because the flight as well it's great for america to japan it i always get the late night flights it's like fast traveling yeah i get on the plane i fall asleep i wake up it's like uh i the flight leaves at 10 in japan lands at three yeah which is i mean it's not like a perfect but i sleep and i'm a little kind of groggy but more than enough to go to like 1 a.m yeah sleep and i'm good i'm great that flight was um when i went with uh youtube they got us business flights it was like it was like the nicest experience i've ever had on a flight that long this is what

13 hours or something yeah and i've i've dude i've been racking up crazy miles yeah i bet my greatest regret in my life is i did not have i didn't for the longest time. I would say around over 100 hours of plane time with no points. Yeah, I'm an idiot too. But you made those mistakes. You learn. You learn now. You're still young. It's not like you learned when you were 40, right?

Which a lot of people, business execs, start doing it then. Thank you, dude. We're doing it. We're figuring it out. We're doing it. We're all figuring it out. When was the class in school about getting the right credit card? Yeah, literally. Flying with picking the miles.

But yeah. Do you really think I'm young? Yeah, of course you are. What are you getting at? Do you think I'm cool? Yeah. That would actually mean a lot for you to say. What did I do?

Please say it again actually. Would you be willing to say it on your show? Welcome back to trash days. I'll go live. First thing I say is Jordan's cool. All right, yeah. Shit. Okay, so we don't really have time to get into this. welcome back to trash days alright yeah shit I okay so we don't really have time to get into this we can get

into it if you want to make this a long one I'll go long like I am so impressed by your the amount of high concept streams it's fucked really yeah I feel like you're young oh thanks man I appreciate that yeah like I'm always like so impressed like the thanks man i appreciate that yeah i like i i'm always like

so impressed like the cycling one the yeah yeah it's fun you know and i or you're just like oh even the arcade i was like the one is the other day yeah it's crazy right i'm just like you're always up to something i mean you came here after the mcdonald's stream no yeah i just did a mcdonald's stream real quick well that okay to be fair that was that's the kind of timing that i would normally wouldn't do but mother like, we can squeeze it in. And I was like... Because the thing I hate doing is that if I'm doing a stream with someone else,

I'll never try and squeeze a time slot in that can't work. Because it can kind of go wrong and it never starts the time you want it to. Because it's always set up. And I hate doing that to people. And I also didn't want to be late. I hate being late to things. I want to always,

you know, arrive on time. That's very considerate. Yeah. Lud Rizdewi. Connor, we're going to go live. Lud is the opposite of me

in that sense because I get on really well with Ludwig and I think we have a very similar philosophy with streaming and YouTube but he is the complete opposite with me in that sense.

Like I am, I think the reason I can do so much stuff is that I, I am a slave to my calendar. If it's not in the calendar, I get anxiety about it. And I don't do it. Like if it's, and this is why I,

and Ludwig is like, dude, he's like, let's just do this thing tomorrow. I'm like, no. In my head I'm like, I didn't plan room for this. I don't play jazz. But like, you know, he convinces me to do it. And it's so bad. And I really need to get more flexible with it.

And it's also kind of like social life-wise. It's kind of tough sometimes. Because I will pack my calendar. Because I do not like a free slot. Even with like, if there's a free slot where I don't want to work, I do want to hang out with someone. I will figure out who I'm going to hang out with. Which is tough for me when I come to LA. Because it's kind of tough to do want to hang out with someone. I will figure out who I'm going to hang out with. Which is tough for me when I come to LA

because it's kind of tough to arrange people to hang out with here. Like I have people like to do it like one or two days notice. It's like being like, hey, do you want to hang out in two weeks? It's like, people just don't do that. And that's tough for me.

Cause in Japan, I'm sure my friends hate it. I'm like, ooh, a week away from now, I've kind of filled it up. Can we do two weeks from now? I'm really my friends hate it. I'm like, Ooh, a week away from now. I've kind of filled it up. Can we do two weeks from now? Yeah. Um, I'm really bad at that.

And it's something that I need to get better at. But the reason why I think I've been able to do all these, these streams and stuff is cause, uh, one I've, I've figured out a thing that I really like doing, which is I have a problem. I will make a stream around solving that problem in my personal life.

Right. So for me, I really want to do more exercise. How do I make streams about exercise? More right better quality yeah so the cyclothon was kind of a great kind of idea that worked out um the only you know because exercise is kind of boring yeah to watch how do you make exercise fun it was a big thing that we kind of figured out and well not figured out but we spent a lot of time trying to figure out right so we made the the little who are you brainstorming these ideas with so i have two two full-time programmers that i work with i've hired um that are great um that i actually just met coincidentally because when

you're doing twitch you get a lot of people who want to join in yeah people see what you're doing and they're like how do i help right and i think when when you when you're doing really well and successful one of the massive things that you can do and like benefit. And I think it's so fucking cool is being able to just hire people. They'd be like, Hey, you made this one little cool thing for me. Can I just start throwing money at you to,

to quit your job that you don't like and come and work this job, which is, I think, I don't think I asked very much. I'm like, occasionally I'm like, Hey, you got two days to make this crazy thing.

But then the rest of the time, like, just chill out. No, I mean, mean yeah we totally get that i feel like some of the best relationships we have i love being able to like come from like the right you know place like i mean i feel like we've been so blessed to have jacob working on the show and like is one of the situations where getting a good crew is great yeah he was working on a different show and it was like or you want to work on this also you know and like i don't know it's so far so good yeah it's the weirdest that's dropping hell yeah that's good i like that like when it's the weirdest that's really sweet

and so i disagree take it back yeah it's so like because i just again i'd seen what ladug was doing and i kind of when i streaming, I looked at it the same way, I guess, Ladug was doing it, but I didn't know of Ladug this time because I came from the YouTuber background. So I realized there was this huge opportunity that streamers were missing, that if you utilize YouTube really well in the streaming space,

you can really like get both of them to grow really well. Because I noticed how many of these streamers, their clips were popping off from other people. And I was like, but none of them to go really well yeah because i noticed how many of these streamers their clips were popping off from other people and i was like but none of them had like channels for the content they were making where you could find it right this is so dumb like this is such a huge missed opportunity so i went into all this free advertising yeah i went into it the mindset of like i am going to make my streams around the youtube videos like i need a narrative like i need to start middle and finish for every stream. And Doug, I mean, Doug's crazy for that as well.

And Doug, yeah, Doug is crazy. And I didn't know until Doug until like a few years ago and Doug's great at this. And I think a lot of streamers have started realizing that now. Yeah, it's become like a bit of the meta. Everyone's trying to get a highlight channel going and they realize, shit, working with editors is hard.

Very fortunate that I've been working with the editor for like, fuck knows, five, four, six years now. Yeah, but even when I stream, it's like, I haven't streamed in a while, but like I could benefit off of just the fact that I already have so much like face ID on YouTube. If we just put a nice thumbnail with my face on it, and it's like, I don't even think it's that interesting,

but you make it discoverable for the algorithm. And then you never know what'll like pop off. Yeah. And so you're kind of leveraging that and then kind of putting that all together. Anyway, I saw Ludwig had a programmer that was doing really cool stuff for him.

And then I kind of went to these programs, like, is this possible? And they were like, yeah, of course it is. But it was just about like, no one ever thought to do that.

No one ever thought to get programmers to make weird tech for streams yeah management is just a completely different dialect it is just yeah that's tough skill same way that we have friends we know people that are some of our favorite people wonderfully creative and they very explicitly said i will never ever they'll guest on the show but they would never have their own podcast yeah because that's tough the the the cadence of it is just against what they they think of intuitively and it is a learned skill yeah we were bad before we were good yeah everybody is there's a few parts of my job that i feel like i benefited so much from like working in a traditional industry

you'll always have that with whatever you've done right you'll always be able to call back on things that you've done that really helped you i feel like i would be very very very self-conscious if i hadn't i would worry that i was doing absolutely there are things i just don't get imposter syndrome about because i remember being bad at it yeah so now i know you're good like you are there's some things that i just know i do well and i think it's healthy to to be able to pat yourself on the back and be like i'm good at this one thing like this is the one thing that I'm good at, but also being open to learn a lot of things is important. I used to have tons of, and this is something that I think I can learn

from you and Ludwig is that a lot of the, I used to do like programming type content. And there are some concepts that I always held in the back of my head, oh, I don't wanna build this myself. And I. Oh, I don't want to build this myself. And I'm like, I could just hire someone to build it. And I literally used to be, I used to manage software engineers.

Like the last job I had was an engineer manager. So it's like, I'm pretty good at the inputs and outputs and like doing the technical things. So it's like, it's about time I like sort of crossed that bridge. You know, and say you lose a bit of money, you hired someone who wasn't, it wasn't worth the time and you waste the time.

So what, like you learned and you waste the time. So what? Like you learned and you can go on with it. And so it's about having that kind of mentality. And then, yeah, like they've been great. They made like for the cyclathon, which if you didn't know, I just basically just cycled for eight days or nine days across Japan,

raising money for charity. And the main idea I had, I was like, this is boring. There's a lot of information that is not given to the viewer intuitively. So let's figure out how every question a viewer might have of watching someone cycle on a bike for all all day what would be the first questions you'd pop up in your head where is he how far into it is he um how much money is he raised uh i don't know like how fast is he going or like you know give me some visual indications yeah so we just built like a an app that was

connect to my phone that would show you where i am in real time which obviously is in america would have something would be kind of scary but in japan and like a remote island was great um they would connect and it would show you where i've been the the progress of the day the distance remaining the speed i was going um how many how much money we'd raised and then the second time we added in a live heart rate monitor and calories burned just to give more fun stuff to keep track of. Right, right. Just about giving people like context to make boring things more fun.

Yeah, definitely. A garnish, right? Yeah, exactly, right? No, but you're so right. It's a HUD. It's a HUD. It's like when you watch stuff, you need to think. I think a lot of people just don't think about how it is from a viewer's experience.

It's like when I used to edit videos. It was like, I obviously have so much knowledge and context of what I'm presenting. I need to cover every single pitfall that someone might not know. So the first 20 episodes of our podcast on Tresh Taste, every time we spoke about something, we'd be like, stop. Let's explain what it is. But now we don't do that because we're like 150 episodes. And podcast on Tresh Taste, every time we spoke about something, we'd be like, stop, let's explain what it is. Yeah. And, but now we don't do that. So like 150 episodes.

And it gets so tedious to do that. But, you know, it's just kind of making sure that. Everybody's brought up to speed. Everyone knows where we're at and what's happening. And, you know, and it's what you got to do. And so you kind of think about that logic that you applied to storytelling or making a video and applying that to other things.

Yeah. Having a little bit of faith in the audience as well. You can have faith in the audience as well. applied to storytelling or making a video and applying that to other things yeah um having a little bit of faith in the audience as well that you can have faith in the providing the resources so that they can entertain themselves in a way that you might not even anticipate as opposed to just being like you need to meet me only on my terms yeah don't worry about the other stuff i'm telling you it's interesting yeah i guess it's finding that that balance right between trusting the audience but also explaining the things they need to know. And so, yeah, doing that.

Yeah, and I guess I also am a huge camera and everything because like I was saying earlier, like on the Trash Taste podcast and all that stuff I've set up, all that cameras and stuff and just learning all of that. And so I got really into the production side of it because in Japan there just isn't any.

It's like a lot of the live streams, we did 4K live streaming. I kind of figured out this 4K rig you could do. It sounds and looks great for live streaming. And just one guy can have it. You don't need a crew. Just one guy who looks like the Terminator. He's carrying all the shit.

But it looks great. It's like my RV trip. I'll show you it later. It's really cool. I'm super pumped about it because it looks crazy good. Yeah, that's awesome. So I want to do more stuff like that

and just push live streaming and the quality that we're getting forward. I don't know. I just want to keep doing crazy stuff. Yeah, that's awesome. I just really like doing weird things and solving the problems that I have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm doing this charity auction in like two days. Yeah, I know. The only reason we ever brought it up is because like, by the time this comes out, it'll probably have done. But the first auction came around that I did in my room was I just had all this shit that people wanted. And I was like,

well, how do I end up in a way that's kind of like democratically give it away. I was like money, right? If you give money to charity, you get the auction. So I did this really fun, just discord auction and people loved auction. And people loved it.

And I loved it so much. I love being in that host position, interacting with the people there. And so that's how this all came around. I don't know. I just love thinking of these unique ways to solve problems they have. I'm super excited for that.

Thank you. Thank you. That'd be fun. Your item as well? Your weird ass item? Yeah, my weird item. Yeah. It's like I'm going to...

I want to do some posts. We've been to... Like just uh announced like a merch like fuck yeah launched this week so there's like you know how you're always like i don't want to self-promo too much dude it's it's tough i'm announcing too much sometimes i'm doing like too many things i'm like this sucks my entire twitter's announcements yeah and i don't like i because i i want to be providing con i want there to be tweets that are just dumb fun you know yeah but uh i want to i want to post some of the context for those things because some people will remember um there's some stuff that's so tough to fully explain oh yeah uh so before we wrap i wanted to ask this is the the million dollar question you know you're so productive you're doing so much

how does he do it do you ever get sad um i always feel bad when i answer this question because like i feel like i should know that's sick it genuinely like i know not really and if i do it's like a day tops right like and i don't think i've ever really had any um maybe it's because i just don't give enough time to myself to stop and like they like there are some times i'm like i really don't like that i have kind of focused so much on work and i haven't given my social life the the amount of room i think it does like i should uh and i do do kind of get really upset sometimes that i'm sometimes i feel like i'm kind of growing distant from some of my friends um but also at the same time it's like man but i'm just i really love what i'm doing yeah i'm so passionate about everything i'll talk for hours about all the

little fun things that i'm trying to trying to do and i really really genuinely love content creation and i think i've changed my content a lot over the years and i finally feel like now i've found the type of content that i really feel like is like my calling yeah like the stuff that I really engage with the most yeah and so it's been a really good experience and I feel that Japan I finally fully fully fully settled down with got a really good group of friends that I'm really happy with um and I've got what I think is a pretty good work-life balance like I try not to work much on weekends good maybe there is a day or day or two. Happens. I know some people are like, no, I don't fucking take any weekend breaks.

For me, that really helped me. Even if it's not on the weekend, having some balance where you're able to rest. It's a little, to some degree, like exercise, where ultimately you should have more rest days or something should change. But I think it might not be great long-term for your condition,

but if you're noticing some momentum slow down and you don't have something to do, a little serotonin boost does work. Yeah, man. And I'm glad that I still have that feeling of I take a weekend off sometimes, I don't work, and I'm itching to get back to it. But not in a way where I feel beholden to it.

It's a way that I just... You're excited. I can't with some fun ideas. And that's awesome, yeah. And also, it's good that you're making the time even though because some people can just get lost in the sauce and then find themselves burning out you know we were talking to jack septic i about he was doing two videos a day for like five years yeah yeah like what are you doing when we asked him what do they do like nothing i did nothing but videos no literally that's why he was like i I can't.

Yeah. No, he's great. He's awesome. But yeah. Oh, I'm so tired. I can't. I'm doing too many videos. But is that- It's true though, because you just realize like this period of your life is just gone.

Yeah. And you're like, I didn't have any fun memories of my friends at this time. Yeah. And you're like, that's sad. At least, yeah. I mean, that absence, at least it's traded for memories of the work you did as opposed to just work for money.

Yeah, yeah. Which also is not memorable. And I really am trying to, and this is where the calendar came into my life because I didn't use a calendar for a long time. And when I started using it in Japan, because I started getting a little too much stuff and I was missing stuff that I should have gone to.

And I was like, right, I got to sort this out. I have to get a calendar fully integrated into my life. And yeah, having really good time management and just making sure that when I'm doing a day where I'm working, that those eight hours are solid, really helped a lot. Because I used to, I'm sure YouTubers have done this. You kind of fuck around a lot.

YouTubers are like, man, I worked so hard hard and you probably did like literally two hours yeah and hey maybe that then some people they do it and i was like but if that works for you that's great but also i've been there where i wanted to just be more directed about how i'm spending my time and that way it allows me to relax like when the day is over i can i can turn off i can turn off it's a job well done i can kick back do whatever knowing how to set achievable goals is something you only learn by fucking up and i i do know some people that are they are full-time youtubers and have always been full-time youtubers yeah uh so again some of my closest friends they're on the younger side but they

have worked in youtube stuff i mean have you guys ever struggled with that like you know managing the the work-life balance oh yeah for sure i figured every youtuber yeah i mean when i started i fucked myself up like almost like day dot because i you i used to work like this startup job when we were at patreon it's like when we started it wasn't a big company like it was like probably 30 40 people when you joined like maybe a little bit bigger when i maybe less yeah maybe even less and then uh and then that type of environment is way more than a 40 hour a week job you know what i mean oh yeah it's a startup everyone's gonna pull it's a startup everybody's probably too much weight they fetishize the grind they exactly you should be that's why we're all a family so you went into youtubing with that like right

and to be fair when the grind when the grind is self-imposed like the grind is self-imposed but then also i was doing youtube on top of that that's the top one yeah that's dumb yeah and it was but you got it really you you got to start because uh so it was like all my weekends were youtube and it was this fun hobby and then when I switched over to doing content full time, then I was always on. And I just, and even when I was like clearly exhausted, but still worried about stuff. And that's where I realized I need to like go back to basics and sort of nine to five YouTube, not for like phoning it in but for my own mental health and well-being and you know you you did it in a in the correct way because i think there's two sides of this way some youtubers they like don't realize that they are like kind of you know because these

some of these youtubers love to fetishize that they don't take breaks and like it's cool it's cool that they they feel that way and for some people they can definitely do that for a very long time yeah some people can crush doing that but i think like most youtubers who say that don't realize that it's absolutely a detriment to themselves right and the content and the content will get worse you're just you need that break to step back and be like is what i'm doing really that good like just and what you need time to also watch other stuff and just consume other media you get live a life worth commenting on. Right, right.

Be inspired. Be able to have like new experiences. Absolutely. And get excited about the ideas that you're trying to find high concepts. And the other side of the coin where I think YouTubers are like, I'm gonna take a break. And then they just absolutely just torpedo their career. And they do it in a way that is not not like not a break in a way that i think people are understanding of right you know you can take time off but i think that you also when

you're it's your job and you're very fortunate to have this job i think there is an expectation of like all right let's figure it out i do see that happen and it seems to come it's almost it's tough it's like an adversarial relationship absolutely youtube the my job is being mean to me and i'm going to take it almost like you are frustrated with the audience and the platform whereas really it should be more the case of like hey we've had jobs we love we've had jobs we hated but going on vacation is always an emotionally like wise obligation it's not because i hated taking a break it's just not even just maybe some days you're like you know what i'm i'm not going to be lazy until like 1 p.m i'm actually giving myself like a nice little

chill morning to until 1 p.m right because like how you frame that yeah the framing is so big i've realized i i 100 agree with that and i still um will catch myself being like well i haven't been productive enough today and i'm like well no that's not a good way of thinking about it i miss having an office for exactly i i will i will tell myself you know what i'm gonna have a chill morning i'm gonna go and get coffee at the local place have a nice chat with the owners i'm gonna just get it go to the gym maybe and i'm like that is not me procrastinating i'm like sometimes if i don't do anything i'll be i'll get annoyed at myself like you said but right right if I tell myself, like, before I start,

I'm like, I am taking a break till 1, just so I can collect myself. You've primed yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That helps a lot. Just having given yourself a break when you can helps a lot. And also making videos fun to make was a huge thing that I didn't realize.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that, yeah, it is a job at the end of the day. I'm sure there's some sort of push and pull, which, which like not every aspect of the job can be fun all the time. But I think it is, it's a North Star to have that like, I enjoyed my software engineering job. You know what I mean? Like I, there were aspects of it that I didn't like, but ultimately it was like fulfilling. And doing the YouTube thing is just a different, you know, kind of spice things up.

You know, like live a life worth commenting on, you know, take risk where you can. Calculated risk. The audience is intuitive enough to see it as well. I think I took like a 50% view hit earlier this year because I was putting videos out of obligation using a lot of older footage from old streams. It's tough tough and then i finally kind of harnessed a little bit more interest i'm filming here made some stuff that was a little more different i shifted away

from the character i was that i wasn't a huge fan of yeah and view straight back up again it was just like very people can tell people can tell when that when you're passionate about something and also you you know we're taking time for yourself too to figure out, you know, do a little self-assessment. You're funnier when you're also happier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You will be more witty and more on the ball because you're just in the right headspace

to like, you don't have anything else to worry about. You don't turn the camera off and go, fuck. Oh my God. I like it when I turn the camera off and the sighs of like, that was a good one. Yeah. I'm like, I crushed that.

Yeah. As opposed to, God, I remember that whipping. Like, fuck. Yeah, that was a good one yeah i'm like i crushed that yeah as opposed to god i remember that whiffing fuck yeah that was a good yeah when we were um i love a good exhausting day like the last time i felt this was disney because i was just tired from the physical i love it when i do like a fucking long one yeah and then you just like you're like pulling your the covers up and you're like ah i'm exhausted but in a good way and that's not even a productive day you sleep great that was just a day where i hung out with friends and walked around and did disney but it was just so enriching that it's like it was very positive those days man yeah you need those and i think

uh it's tough because we're not taught anything about mental health luckily now i think there's so many resources and i pray that people growing up now have way more way more in tune with it and i think they are and audiences in this career are now a lot more familiar with the concepts you know youtube is you know they're trying to communicate these things i i think that they miss the mark a lot but the intention is there and yeah but also man you gotta you gotta sometimes you gotta be your own worst enemy you just just got to get on your own case. You just got to be like, I need to do something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you just got to ride a bike for eight days.

Sometimes you just got to get on that bike. You do have to get on the bike, yeah. You know, sometimes I legitimately believe sometimes you just have to push yourself in a way that is uncomfortable. And I don't know if this is fucking British. You just got to get on with it, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you do.

I think you just got to, even when it's like a shit day you're not feeling it you just gotta do it like and you you need to have that kind of discipline sometimes especially in creative fields uh where you have so much kind of reliance on motivation to kind of just appear you're like i just gotta right yeah i 100 agree that's like mike rabiglia has a good um like there's a thing Mike Birbiglia is a famous like stand-up comedian uh he talked about like his comedy job he's been in the game for like 30 years at this point but you don't do that without being disciplined right but he's like my job is a job so I'm gonna get an office and I'm gonna go into the office every day and I'm gonna write for eight hours even if only a few words come out i'm sort of creating

the space and making sure that there is a space for these new ideas to come yeah i think that's very important you need to be critical you need to treat it that way you need to tell yourself that like what you're doing is like is is good but also when it's so if you've made obligations or something that you need to be someone who sticks to them i don't know it's tough it's tough because i think yeah it's about taking care of yourself but also there are times where yeah like i said like you're not feeling it but you need to you need to do it yeah yeah i mean that takes care of you tomorrow the footage getting back to you yeah i mean that was creator clash for me was uh i'm like i'm like forcing not forcing myself but like i'm pushing myself through this as a challenge to myself because I I don't it's not

fun really oh no fuck no it's type two fun right when you look back you're like I'm that was such a cool experience exactly and it's cool that that I proved to myself that I could do something but at the time you're miserable right you're like every day I go to trade yeah it's like they tell you yo exercise is good for your mental health to an extent right it's like if you're only just exercising all the time you're just tired. But dude, Connor, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.

This is super, super awesome. Hold on to pee for like 40 minutes. Oh, that's, normally that's Jordan's thing. I tell you what, I was enthralled enough

that the Jordan classic. Hell yeah. Okay. I think we cut it out. Do we cut out when I go to piss? Let's do that. Cool. Whenever you're done with the outro

I'm going to sprint the toilet. There's absolutely no obligation for you to join us for a couple of cringe stories on our bonus show. I'll join us. But we will be heading over to patreon.com slash sadboys. I'll see you guys there. Sadboys nights, the bonus. But that's all for sadboys today. Thank you so much, Connor, for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Connor. Is there anything you want to plug? Check out the streams, twitch.tv slash cdogva and YouTube. We're doing a bunch of stuff. Type in cdogva everywhere. It comes out. Cool.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Oh, of course, dude. We end every episode of Sad Boys with a particular phrase. We love you. And I'm sorry. Boom. A man got really angry with me because I brought his meal out with normal peas,

but he wanted mushy peas. The strength it took to not stick my hand in and squish them in front of him. What level of anger is acceptable for getting this order incorrect? Why did you think they were coming mushy? Gucci girl, how you doing? How you moving, girl? Moving, girl. How you doing looking at future, girl?

Future, girl. Yeah, we on now. Take my money, go away. All you wanted. Girl, you're rich for me.