Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Are Jubilee videos healing or polarizing?

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

This week Taylor Lorenz dives into the charged content world of Jubilee Media with its founder Jason Y Lee. Jubilee is quickly becoming a YouTube behemoth. It’s amassed 9.2 million subscribers on its main channel alone by producing social experiments and debates over polarizing questions such as ‘is being fat is a choice?’, or ‘can someone stop being gay?’ and other hot-button topics. The company's stated goal is to spark conversations that matter and help us all come together more around our shared humanity. Is their model working? And how is Jubilee expanding its empire outside of YouTube? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you racist? No, but y'all is. No, no, you said you hate cops. Are you racist? I hate them. All them. If you've spent any time on the internet recently, you've probably come across content from Jubilee Media. Jubilee is a YouTube behemoth that's amassed 9.2 million subscribers by producing social experiments

and debates on things like whether being fat is a choice, whether you can stop being gay, whether minors deserve gender-affirming care, whether men are superior. to women in a conversation framed alphas versus betas. Man has to lead a woman. He has to guide a woman because what happens is that when it's the opposite, when a woman is leading that man, she usually loses respect for him. Videos like one cop versus 20 criminals or one woke teen versus 20 Trump supporters have found a second life on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram

where clips have amassed tens of millions of views. The formats are so absurd. They've inspired endless parodies. But Jubilee is also so successful. It's birthed an entire genre of copycats. The company's stated goal is to spark conversations that matter and come together around our shared humanity. But is there model working and how is Jubilee Media expanding its empire outside of YouTube? Here to break it all down is Jason Wye Lee, the founder of Jubilee Media.

Jason, welcome to Power User. Thanks for having me, Taylor. Okay, so can you start off by telling me how you founded Jubilee Media? How did the idea come to you? I think the company originally started as a nonprofit. Can you tell me how this YouTube behemoth got started? Yeah, Jubilee began rather accidentally. My 22nd birthday happened to coincide with a Haiti earthquake,

and I just started my job in New York City, and because of the recession, there was very little work to be done. So I decided to do this crazy thing. I decided to go to a New York subway stop, to busk and sing to raise $100 for Haiti, which is a crazy idea because I'm a terrible singer. But that day, we raised about $80, and I made my very first video put onto YouTube. and within a week we had tens of thousands of views and raised tens of thousands of dollars for Haiti.

What year was this? This was 2010. So this was really an aha moment for me that we can really use media, YouTube, to raise awareness and grow a lot of attention for various causes. So soon thereafter, I started something called Jubilee Project, which was a 501C3. And the purpose of Jubilee Project was to create videos similar to the Haiti video that would raise money and awareness for various causes. Everything from like clean water to education to liberty in North Korea. And that was something I did for about four or five years, actually, with my brother and one of my best friends. And it wasn't until the 2016 presidential election that I actually decided to start Jubilee Media.

So tell me a little bit about that pivot and what made you decide to lean into media and start Jubilee Media. Yeah, to date, we had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for various causes. And we were getting a lot of traction with Jubilee Project. But in the aftermath of the presidential election, I just felt like the country was more divided than ever. And I felt like there was just this huge white space in the center for young people, which was about empathy, about dialogue, about nuance, which unfortunately at that time, and unfortunately now, it felt like we weren't seeing.

So I had this kind of, again, crazy idea at the time where, like, could we create a media company that is not about featuring just the left side or just the right side, but featuring true human voices and finding some kind of middle ground there. And I decided to raise a small round of capital and launched Jubilee Media. In another interview a while ago, you said you wanted to create the Disney of Empathy. Can you talk to me a little bit about how that's played out? For people that aren't familiar with your work, what happened after 2016? And what did you could start to make your, I guess, name known for online? Yeah, we said that we wanted to be the Disney of Empathy. And what we meant by that was we wanted to be the brand or the hub for all things

empathy. And our mission at Jubilee is to provoke understanding and create human connections. So now we produce some of the most popular shows, but back in the day, we're really stumbling our way through finding content that really resonated with people while fulfilling our mission. But one of our first big shows that we created was a show called Middle Ground. And what it would do is it would bring together two quote-unquote opposing sides, but rather than just squaring off for a, you know, like a Fox or CNN-style debate or kind of everyone yelling at each other, we said, is there a way for us to find middle grounds between conservatives and liberals or between Christians and atheists or even between flat-earthers and round-earthers, right? So a very radical question.

And even as you hear some of the topics, you kind of think, wait, what does that even mean? But since then, we've now created a lot of the most popular shows on YouTube, everything from middle ground to odd one out, where we'll gather some. seven or eight people and we'll say one of these people is not like the other. One of our most popular kind of early episodes of Ono One Out was that we'd gather seven people who are vegan and we said one of these people is not vegan. Can you figure out who that person is? So it's a really fun kind of like a guess who, but it really relies on us unearthing our stereotypes that we might feel or think that a vegan may look or feel like and then can they actually figure out who that

person is? Another really popular show we have is called Versus One. The pilot for that episode was one woman swiping 20 men in real life. and it really just took what we were seeing online and what people were doing in their day-to-day lives and saying, is this a really good way to evaluate individuals? This is a really good way to find love. Obviously, the answer initially is no,

but can we really turn on its head and find some empathy and human connection in the midst of that? So largely a lot of these shows, I think, have kind of broken way for an entire genre of content that not just your belief produces that a lot of folks you'll see mimicking our content to create,

but we're really proud that we've kind of led the way for that. Yeah, I feel like you've spawned so many copycats. How do you choose the topics and formats for your videos? You know, as far as the formats, we actually employ very much like a Silicon Valley approach. So if you just think about how Silicon Valley startups really MVP products, that's the way we think about our content. So I might or one of our brilliant creatives might have an idea for a show, but rather than just going and saying, hey, we're going to spend this money and doing it, what we'll do is we'll do a little. like a series of incremental tests or what we call MVP's where we'll actually test the format with our own team. So for example, with the show surrounded where we said, here, we're going to put one

person in the center, we're going to have them debate now 20 different people. We did that ourselves first. And we're kind of like trying to figure out what are the mechanisms that make the show really interesting. Why does this show work? Why does it not? And then as it relates to actual episodes, you know, we have a lot of data, which is really helpful, where we're looking at trends, topics that are the zeitgeist, but also able to kind of predict where we think the conversation is going. Because obviously with production, there's still like a bit of a cycle of time that we have to be a couple months in advance of the content coming out. So those are all things that inform like the way that we do programming. But I think a lot of it's just our team is like incredibly

intuitive and like close to the ground, probably similar to you. I guess I want to dive deeper into some of the stuff that you just brought up earlier about sort of like middle ground and this idea of helping people find this middle ground. You mentioned the flat earthers versus rounderthers. I don't know, people that rightfully understand the earth is round. What is the benefit to sort of finding the middle ground between those two views when one is sort of objectively correct and one is a sort of deeply problematic conspiracy theory? Yeah, it's a really good question and something that we always make sure we check ourselves too. Are we making sure that we are doing more good than harm, right, in this space? And what we realize is that for every single topic

that will actually get some criticism as to why are you featuring X person? For example, like, if we do a video that features hardcore conservatives, a lot of liberals will come out and say, why would you platform a conservative? But on the same, on the flip side, if we feature someone who is very, very liberal, we'll actually hear from a lot of conservative fans and say, why would you feature X person? And we'll actually hear from a lot of conservative fans and say, why would you feature X person? And when we were kind of evaluating that, we said, is there a way for us to find empathy in the midst of all of these conversations? Even with something as far stretching as a conversation between a flat earther and around Earther, no matter what we might believe to be true. And I believe that the Earth is round.

I think it's scientifically proven. But it's not really a belief, right? That is just like objective reality. Yeah. And the question is, can we still see empathy and understand why someone might feel a certain way despite the fact that there are. facts to prove otherwise. Right. But I guess, I mean, how do you sort of focus on building empathy with that person while still ensuring that it's very clear to the viewers that their belief system is fundamentally incorrect? Yeah, something that we had to start to introduce just to kind of combat

this idea of like spreading misinformation was we actually have incorporated now like fact checks within our content. You'll see it kind of pop up in middle ground where and we're seeing this on every which way, right, that individuals on whatever side of whatever issue will kind of like share some information. We don't want to like spread that. And that's one of the reasons we also rely a lot on anecdotal experiences too. Yeah. I mean, there's one thing that you said in your, in another recent interview where you said, if we get equal amounts of canceling from both sides, that's great. It means we've done it in a way that doesn't seem biased. This is something I hear all the time in traditional journalism as well, where it's this idea, well, if we're getting hate from

both sides were doing something right. Do you think that that's really true? I mean, very often, for instance, specific marginalized communities are rightfully outraged, right, at bad coverage, whereas the right, as we know, especially the far right, really is able to launder a lot of extremism through manufactured outrage campaigns. So how do you kind of navigate between those two? Because we know that, like, that idea has been used to justify really bad news coverage, right? So, like, how do you kind of navigate that? It's a question that we've, been asked about is it dangerous to platform or have certain voices or points of view on? And the way I would respond to that is I feel like we live in a more dangerous world

if two individuals are not able to sit in the same room together and have a conversation. It doesn't necessarily mean that conversation is going to be productive or that anyone is going to necessarily change your point of view, but I think that that is sorely missing. And it's kind of like a ludicrous idea if you think about the opposite, which is just because you and I both have, let's say, a red shirt on or a blue shirt on that we will agree on a thousand of the same issues. Or if we have opposite colored shirts on, that we would disagree on a thousand different issues. And I think it's like a more scary thought that we can coexist in the same room. And that's one of the reasons why we are really careful about the different people that we portray in the various spaces as well as the different topics. and all we can really speak to is the anecdotal experiences that we have.

Where we'll hear from a lot of our viewers who will say, you know what, Jason, like this was the first time that I really met, quote unquote, met a trans person, for example. I never knew what kind of experience that they went through. And I understand much better why, you know, these issues are really important. Or, hey, this is the first time I've heard of someone who was like a little worried or hesitant about taking the vaccine, for example. And again, we're not trying to say, hey, now,

everyone should be anti-vaxed or everyone should be vaccinated for X and Y reason. But I think this exercise of empathy is one that is our primary platform, not a left agenda, not a right agenda, et cetera. Yeah, because I feel like, I mean, especially with this conversation around platforming, I don't think most people have a problem with quote unquote, platforming, if those views are being critiqued or challenged or properly contextualized, right? And so I guess I'm wondering, how do you, when you're structuring these debates, ensure that harmful views are properly contextualized?

just sort of relying on, I guess, the opposing view person to make their case effectively enough? I think that's a little bit of it, where you'll never see us say, okay, now let's list out the seven points of ex parte. If you see any video within Jubilee, usually there's a dynamic of there's one side and there's another side, and let's like properly go through that conversation. And by the way, a lot of these conversations are really nuanced and can be very heated, right? but we actually feel like difficult conversation is important in this day and age. But all we can say is at the end of the day, what we're hoping to do and what we're seeing as a response from our audience is that a lot of folks are far more interested in the middle ground than we might be led to believe or that we might see in traditional media. And it's something that we're really excited about.

But isn't like this idea of this neutral middle ground between, I guess, hyper-progressivism, and fascism kind of terrifying. I mean, I'm with you, right? I think we can all agree on a lot more than probably our political media ecosystem gives us credit for. And of course, there's debates that you can reasonably debate policy issues on many sides, right? We all have like maybe more conservative views on some issues, more progressive views on others. But for instance, something like trans rights, right? That's a good example. Trans people deserve rights, right? So how do you kind of navigate those? Like, it seems like a lot of issues, there's not a, a moral middle ground.

Yeah, maybe we can go back to what I would call our theory of change. You know, I kind of talked about why I started Jubilee initially as a nonprofit. And what we were finding that we were doing is we were saying things like, yes, transroids are really important, or minorities are important, or X, Y, and Z is very important. And what we found is that we found an audience that was very, very willing to listen to that, but it was the same people who already agreed with X, Y, and Z point. And we said, okay, is it really helpful for us to be speaking in these echo chambers or like talking to the choir about these issues? It seems like that's what happening anyways.

We're just kind of like rah-rah circling the wagon separately. And we said, okay, clearly this is not making the world better necessarily. What can we do to actually find empathy with the other side? And what we have found is that the more that individuals are face-to-face and hearing experiences and seeing individuals, and seeing individuals where like, wow, I've never met a trans person, but this is the first time I'm hearing from Taylor, this trans individual. It's really shedding a lot of humanity and light to me. And we're seeing a lot of evolution, actually.

So it is a very, very different tactic. And it's something that I think is not a straight line, frankly. I don't think that you will necessarily watch one video from Jubilee and say, I've completely kind of reversed my point of view on whether it's empathy or about this XYZ topic. But what we are seeing is our audience is primarily young individuals who are constantly thinking about and chewing over kind of more nuanced questions in a way that we are building this ability to hear nuanced perspective and say, hey, I agree with this, but I kind of slightly disagree with you here. And that's okay. And how many different places are we seeing that happen?

I don't disagree with any of the questions that you kind of are getting at. I just feel like there is not a better alternative right now. And we're just trying our best to have good, empathetic conversations in a place where we feel there is a tremendous lack of that. Yeah, there's definitely a lack of them online. I guess are you worried about getting played by the far right? I mean, one thing I've written so much about the far right and the internet and their ability to sort of weaponize the attention economy and also sort of move the Overton window further and further to the right. Do women deserve rights? Like, just that question is inherently sort of, I guess, skewed, right? In a certain way, I would argue, of course, like, of course,

right? Yeah. What is the benefit to hearing those other sides that are sort of quite bigoted, I guess, and sort of putting that on the same, like, giving them equal weight? Like, what is the benefit to hearing those sort of regressive ideologies? Yeah, I think that it's something that we have to be really careful with and we have to know where the line is for when is it bigoted or hate speech or a position that purports against violence or kind of like against other individuals and something that we kind of, we kind of. constantly talk about. So it's something that we're really aware of and we think about quite a bit. I think a lot of times what I find that folks are surprised by is, you know what, maybe I can back up. And one way I can talk about it is, you know, if you and I, Taylor, were to be the ones who were to decide on every issue who deserves or is allowed to have a voice, I think that the content would look a very specific way. I think we would be pleased with it because it would kind of like, it would kind of echo back everything that we believe in our lives, right? Not me. I mean, I love talking to people I disagree with,

but I'm also, as a journalist, very aware of the dynamics of online attention. And so, you know, I think it's really important to challenge and contextualize specific hateful ideologies, because I know how they use the internet to launder that stuff, right? Yeah. And it's something that we do, I think our casting team does a very good job. of like we are constantly, it's not like, hey, someone's raised their hand. They say, hey, I've got whatever, I'm an XYZ person. We say, come on in. We'll actually do rounds of interviews with them. We'll talk to them about their ideology, their points of view and the perspectives. And also, we do edit our videos, right? And on one hand, we don't want to favor one

side or the other, but we are very careful into trying to make sure that we're not spreaders of information or ideologies that might be hateful or. bad or kind of reductive. I guess like you were talking earlier, just something you said about sort of this like political team ideology, right, where you're like team red or team blue. And I'm totally with you. I think there's way too much like fandom on either side and not enough like self-criticism from either political party. I guess so like when I think about the format of Jubilee videos, they're structured very like one side versus the other. It is always sort of framed as like two opposing things. So how.

do you feel that that is helping break out of that like double-sidedness if it's sort of still presenting the information as like a double-sided, I guess. It's a great question because if you look at the thumbnail for one of our videos where it's Republicans versus Democrat middle ground, right? Initially, I think that you were expecting a very, very similar type of conversation where it's one side yelling at the other. But when you actually watch the video, as you've probably done, you can see that actually the mechanics of it are very, very different.

What we're doing is we're not saying, hey, who's better on the economy? will say, let us create prompts where we can see either side come forward. For example, a good prompt for a middle ground with Republicans versus Democrats would be, I believe America is the best country in the world. That is not a liberal or Republican perspective. All these folks are U.S. citizens. And it's interesting to see a mixed bag of individuals step forward and for different reasons. But I think even that, I know it's a very, very tenuous thing,

but even that alone for a couple of Republican individuals and Democratic individuals to come forward and say, I love this country. I think it's the best country in the world. We have found to show a lot of, there's a lot of progress that's made via that. So, yeah, I think that when you just kind of look at Jubilee at the outset, you might be like, oh, is this actually helpful? But when you actually watch the content,

I think you'll see that the mechanics of it actually are built to create this empathetic conversation and dialogue. And I think that what we're trying to figure out is, can we unpack and peel back the onion, not to create a point of view that's like nothing is true. It's more, if we can find nuance, can we actually find points of agreement? And that's a strong thesis that we have, a belief that I think we hold dear. That's so interesting the way you put that. And I'm kind of curious, actually, how you think about your belief system. The way you're describing it of like finding

this like mythical middle ground that we can all sort of points of agreement, a lot of times that doesn't mean moving things forward. It means sort of agreeing like sort of everyone compromises to agree on some sort of like, I guess, yeah, theoretical middle ground. What is your ultimate ideology? What values ultimately does Jubilee stand for? And sort of like, what is the ultimate goal with this project politically or not? Like what, you know, you said that you started it in reaction to Donald Trump, right? So I feel like.

To be clear, actually, I started in a reaction to that election, not Donald Trump. It was actually that I saw huge polarization on both sides. So I think it's really important just to clarify, even though there's, you know, a lot of young people are very liberal and feel a certain sort of way towards Donald Trump. We were also seeing at the time a tremendous sentiment against Hillary Clinton that was, it was very jarring for me. And I'll give you a little bit about my background. I'm from Kansas. So I grew up in the Midwest. I now live in L.A.

I'm a child of immigrants. And I've now lived in two very, very different political spheres. and in the aftermath of that election, I saw two different sides of my world feel completely at odds with the other where they said, I cannot understand one iota of the reason why someone would have voted for ex-person.

X-person was Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. And no matter my own personal beliefs, I felt really uneasy about that, actually, to be honest, because I think that that world was really scary to me. this world that, wait, 50% of the country voted one way, 50% voted the other. And despite that, there is this like tremendous toxicity or feeling of F this group. And it's like, oh, well, this is actually a large group. Just to back up even further, my background was actually worked on the Obama campaign in 2007.

So I was part of the New Hampshire primary when he was running as Senator Obama at the time against Hillary Clinton, right? And I very much believed to my core that he was a candidate that really brought people together. We saw him grow from audiences of like 20 people to 200 people to 2,000 people. And it was something that we went door to door. We were sleeping on couches. We were really purporting this idea of like, yes, we can, right? Change. We ended up losing the New Hampshire primary, if you remember.

But we were in the room for that. Everyone is crying because we've lost. But that was when he gave like the yes we can speech. if he went on to go win and of course. So I had this tremendous belief in government and in politics and in this message. But what I saw in the aftermath of the subsequent elections was that we're actually seeing far less unity, hope from these kind of two political parties. And when you ask me about like, what do I believe, I do have a lot of strong personal beliefs, but frankly, those are Trump at this point for me by the this platform of like we need more empathy, we need more dialogue. We need to have difficult conversations

because of the future, it's getting further and further polarized and it's a very dangerous place for us to be. In terms of bringing people together, too, so many of the clips, though, I notice from Jubilee, especially recently, I feel like you've been so viral on Twitter recently. Yeah. They do, though, like, circulate in those echo chambers, right? Like, I don't know how much they're crossing over because you see these clips of like, oh my God. you know, like this feminist being owned by like a men's rights guy or like the young woke Democrat owning, you know, the conservative. So like how much do you think your content is breaking out of people's bubbles when it filters through these algorithmic feeds? Yeah, I think something that we know

to be true is like, for example, some of those videos are about an hour and a half long, right? And what we're really proud of is that actually the average view duration for those videos are quite long. People are sitting for half an hour, at least an hour through these viewing, so they're watching this a lot more in context. What is funny and not surprising with the internet, as you know, is that people will clip different portions of it and will claim it and say, hey, we've won therefore. And I think that we know that's the nature of the internet. It's like trying to like, you can't really stop that. It's like trying to swim upstream, so to speak. But I think when you watch the entirety of the video, you kind of understand that that's not necessarily true and what the point of the video is.

So one thing that we take a lot of solace in is that a lot of people will watch those clips and be interested to see how their party owned the other party and they'll find something actually somewhat different played out. And that's okay and that they're actually getting exposed to kind of different points of view when they're watching that larger video. So definitely a recommendation is to please go watch the YouTube video as well. Are there any videos that you've wanted to do and haven't been able to do, any topics that you really wanted to cover, but ultimately decided not to cover, haven't been able to. You know, we actually at one point, we're talking with some of the political campaigns about

featuring candidates in our content. And it's something that we are very, very interested in doing. And the reason is because I think when we watch things like the presidential election debate, for example, a lot of young people in particular are tuning out because they feel like it's so wrote, it's very scripted, it's all very, very kind of practice lines and people are even questioning the moderation of it, right? The fact-checking of it. It's biased. And both sides, by the way, are kind of complaining about this format. And a lot of young people are not tuning in. And I think that there's a huge problem with that. And the reason why we are hopeful then the future like a Jubilee can host something like this is because if you look at any of our content,

this is featuring normal individuals, normal perspective, normal questions that I think we don't want to get through these talking points and get to what do you really believe? What do we actually talking about here? So that's a dream for us in the future is to be able to do topics like that. As far as right now, other topics we haven't hit, you know, a lot of it's actually a casting issue. Any given day, we're looking for, for example, cops and felons or former gang members or current gang members. And you can understand why, like, that's a bit of a difficult task. sometimes. But that's something that we're always trying to kind of push the needle on and seeing who can we create a space where people are trust us and are willing to share their story here

because they know that we're not going, we don't have an agenda to have one side win. Talk to me a little bit more about your casting and production process. I mean, how many people do you have working for Jubilee? What does the structure look like? It seems like a lot of these videos would take a lot of back-end production work to put on. Yeah, I'm really proud because we're, We feel like we're still a pretty rag-tag team. We're a team of about 30 individuals here in L.A. And our casting team is about four full-time people and some freelancers. And that work is incredibly difficult.

But what's awesome is, like, we've actually built now a casting network of hundreds of thousands of people who have kind of submitted and say, hey, I would love to be in a video. And when you submit, for example, you might be like, hi, I'm Jason. I'm Korean-American. I'm a cisgender male, I'm straight, all these different things. And there's all these different criteria by which we might ask someone to come in, right? Because one day we might be looking for virgins versus sex addicts. Another day we might be looking for Christians versus atheists. So you can imagine like any day is, every day is not like the other, at least from a casting perspective.

But one thing that we love is that young people in particular really want to participate, that they really want to participate and they don't want to just watch. And that's a huge thesis that we have, is that they want to come and participate and that they actually want to feel that human connection. And you'd be surprised by the number of times we have a, quote, unquote, debate with two opposing sides. But at the end, everyone is going to grab beers together. That happens alarmingly frequently. I feel like that's the criticism of Washington, D.C., though, is that they all grab beers together after fighting at the end. I mean, it's an important question of, like, is our things better now than they were in the past?

Because I think that something that I lament the fact is that there's not bipartisan bills coming through, right? Like, we saw that in the decades prior. And it's not something that we see right now. It's like, what has brought us to this place? What is the way forward? And how would we find more bipartisanship? And I would argue more beer might be better. You guys have gotten incredibly popular.

I think you're sitting at, let's see, 9.1, 9.2 million subscribers of, I think billions of views. How are you expanding the Jubilee Empire? I think you've launched a spinoff called Nectar. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, nectar came about because some of our most popular shows were dating shows. And we just found that when it was one person dating 20 or all these different formats, that was something that a lot of our viewers really wanted, but also kind of can be stark. different as far as tone or voice versus like a middle ground episode or something like Spectrum or odd one out even. So we decided to launch Nectar as its own standalone channel last year. And it's amazing because I think that that channel is growing even faster now than Jubilee's content. You know, when we kind of talk about our mission being to provoke understanding, create human connection, we don't want to do it solely through the lens of, let's say,

politics or solely through the lens of identity. We want to be able to do it and meet people where they are. And something we found really maybe unsurprising is that there's a huge epidemic of loneliness, especially among young people, right? And I think it's because we spend so much of our time online and we are connected, quote, unquote, but like how much are we finding real human connection? And that our dating content as a result, I think, is pretty popular because I think a lot of folks, like we're seeing in the data that like dating is down, sex is down, people are not necessarily wanting to get married. And, you know, those are all personal decisions. But And that there is still kind of an interest of what should dating look like or who do I want in a partner.

And we're trying to help people find those tools via our content and now via the technology and the experiences that we're building too. You're also moving into games. I think you raised $80,000 for a game on Kickstarter and movies. Can you tell me a little bit about all these other areas of expansion? You know, one thing that we realize is that a lot of people would watch our content and that they would actually create. create clubs in their high schools and colleges to mimic our formats. So, for example, there was like a Berkeley club that was like just about middle ground. And every week, they would watch a piece of content, but then they would choose sides based on their personal beliefs, and they

would practice middle ground. Or their high schools that were just Jubilee clubs, and every week they would do a spectrum episode. Well, they would say, do all freshmen think the same? Do all girls think the same? Do all teachers think the same? And that was something that I love because it was just kind of we were showing people how to do formats of, you know, content, but that's interesting and entertaining to watch, but also really special to participate in. And that's one of the reasons why we ended up creating the spectrum card set, which we ended up selling out of, is an ability to give people a place to do this in their homes with their friends, with their communities, and ask sometimes, like, uncomfortable, difficult questions or fun questions

or sexy questions even. But now we saw so much success with that, that we now want to go into experiential in-person events. And we also really want to go into technology. So that's something we're spending a lot of time on. Yeah. Speaking of tech, I think you launched our relationships app, right? We did.

Yeah. So I can talk a little bit about that. To this point of people struggling with love, we found that people on one hand are spending billions of dollars in dating apps. But the MPS score, the net promoters, score, like the level of satisfaction with dating apps is the worst in any industry ever, which is maybe unsurprising, right? Everyone is downloading, deleting the apps, not because they've been successful,

but it's because they're frustrated. And we said, okay, maybe the solution is not another dating app. What are the tools that we actually need to build to help people on their love journey? So we actually work with a PhD scientist who helped us to build essentially like a Myers-Briggs for love. So it's called Loveprint. So it's a series of 35 questions. You can go take it online.

It'll give you one of 16 different archetypes of love. And it'll teach you like, am I an I person or a we person, for example, right? Am I more open or am I more guarded? And it kind of gave us to like different tools in vernacular to talk about, hey, why Taylor, are we very similar in some ways or why might be, why might be more incompatible? What might we need to work on in our relationship? So we launched that and we got actually millions of users on that, which was really exciting. And now we've launched an app to allow people to do that and connect with their friends and their partners to see their compatibility percentages. And now, lo and behold, we are working on a dating app that will involve people being more self-aware, taking these self-assessments, and then using some of that information to say, hey, we might actually have a better match for you.

What if you didn't choose your mate or match purely on the basis of looks and like this whatever 30-second? blurb, which is talking about this kind of whatever meme that they found online, rather, what if there was actually something that was like scientific that will slightly nudge you towards better matches? Might that be a better approach? So nectar, the dating app, will be coming sometime soon in 2025. Exciting. What else, I guess, do you have on the horizon and what other ways are you looking to expand outside of sort of the ones that you just mentioned? I mean, I feel like you are so dominant on YouTube. You know, are there other platforms that you're looking at looking to conquer, would you consider a streaming deal? Like, where do you see the business going in

the next few years? You know, we've spoken to a lot of folks on streaming. We've also spoken to a lot of folks on linear and also even production companies who want to produce our shows or versions of our shows or something Jubilee-esque for traditional television. And those conversations are still happening. But I think one thing that's really exciting is just the growth of YouTube and YouTube on TV as well. Like, we're seeing such a large proportion of our audience watching not just on their cell phone or their laptop, but actually watching on traditional television. And I've kind of said in the past, I think we've seen the golden age of movie.

We've seen the golden age of TV, but we still have yet to see the golden age of YouTube and digital video. And I think so much more content, creators, publishers, brands like ourselves are going to take up a lot of the viewership and the mind share for individuals. And they're able to do so in a way that's faster, cheaper, and frankly, more culturally relevant than a lot of traditional media. So we're not saying no to anything else, but I'm also really, really excited of where we're building and where YouTube is going. And then beyond that, you know, we are still working on things like experiential too. I think it's important for us every once in a while to touch grass and, like, meet humans face the face.

So something we are talking about and developing quickly is, what if we could come to your college? What if we can come to your city? And you get to not only watch, but actually come up on stage and participate in the formats that we're talking about. We're seeing a lot of a great response via our MVP is doing that. So hopefully we can be literally the Disney of Empathy. What if Jubilee could be the hub for all things empathy on your screen, in your pocket, on your phone, but also in your backyard. You can watch Jubilee or its sister channel Nectar on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram,

really any social platform. Jason, thanks for joining Power User. Thank you for having me. And thanks for all those good questions. That's all for this week. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larcichick and Jolani Carter. Our executive producer is Zach Mack. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like this show, give us a rating review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Power User. But in the meantime, check out Usermag.com, my brand new tech and online culture newsletter. See you there.