Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Is Skibidi Toilet the Next Hollywood Blockbuster?

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

The internet lost its mind last week when Taylor broke the news that Michael Bay might be turning Skibidi Toilet -- the bizarre animated YouTube short of a singing head in a toilet -- into a theatrical movie. Taylor talks to Adam Goodman, a Hollywood veteran who founded Invisible Narratives, the behind-the-scenes company responsible for much of Skibidi Toilet's ongoing success. Plus, in headlines: Kamala Harris supporters are hopping on Zoom, Google Docs is the hot new dating app, and a new AI wearable wants to be your new best friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, white dudes for Harris goes viral, online dating goes DIY, and our main topic, how Skibbitty Toilet became one of the most valuable franchises in Hollywood. The internet lost its mind last week after we broke the story that Michael Bay might be turning this into a theatrical movie. That, of course, is the massively popular Skibbitty Tiberty Toll. toilet, which has become among the most watched content on YouTube. It's a bizarre series of animated YouTube shorts about men with cameras for heads fighting toilets with human heads. It was created by Alexei Gerasov, also known as Boom.

It's taken over the Roblox universe, spiraled out into merchandise, and now potentially a full-length movie. That's all thanks to invisible narratives, a behind-the-scenes company that you might not have heard of. It was founded by my guest Adam Goodman, who previously worked on huge franchises, like like the Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He's here to talk about building businesses around online creators and what Skibbitty Toilet says about the future of Hollywood. Adam, welcome to Power User.

Thanks for having me. Okay, so the first thing I want to ask you about is what's on the tip of everyone's tongues, which is a potential Skivety Toilet movie. I feel like this went super viral last week after people got wind that something might be in the work. So can you give us a little status update? Like, what is going on?

Is there going to be a Skivitie Toilet movie? in theaters next year. No, definitely not a movie in theaters next year. I can guarantee that 100% movies, unfortunately, the difference between YouTube and filmmaking is everything in Hollywood takes a lot longer. It takes a long time to find a screenwriter. It takes a long time to make a movie, to find a home for it. We're at the earliest stages of contemplating it right now, just kind of stress testing it to see if there's actually the foundations, if there's the storytelling, and if this can be evolved to the place, that it could hold a big screen for two hours.

So I think it's highly likely that there will be a film in theaters next year. A hundred percent, no. That would be the fastest movie in the history of the world, and that can't happen. It's true. So you guys were on Skibody Toilet really early. Obviously, this is the biggest phenomenon in the online video world for the past year. And I know you started working with Boom, the creator,

on building out the IP around Skibbitty Toilet kind of a long time ago. Can you tell me a little bit about how this collaboration came together and how it works? So we were aware of Boom, because Boom, prior to posting his Skibbitty Toilet Franchise

was making homages to Transformers. He was making what we consider to be pre-visualizations. It's a tool that we use in filmmaking, but almost short animations doing Transformers videos. And they were awesome. And the quality of the animation was great, but more significantly than that, the shots that he was building, the scale, the destruction, the fun, he was a real filmmaker.

So when he started to post something that finally was something original, something that we could work with him on, we got very excited to engage with him on that, because at that point, it was a whole new universe for us. And how did Michael Bay come on to this project? I know that you are working with Boom through Invisible Narratives. Your studio is Michael part of this? Or was he always a fan of Boom? Yeah. Michael is a part of Invisible Narratives. He's our chief creative advisor.

And he and I have made probably 11 or 12 movies together through the years. Hollywood had gotten really kind of, they stopped kind of following the story of what IP actually was. IP doesn't mean that there's pre-awareness for something. IP where it really works means that there's. is a distinct audience who has a sense of ownership and discovery for it. And our company has been really looking at like where not just trends, but where there's great content that's being developed off of YouTube right now. And what I always say to Michael is I'm like, Michael, it's really early in the creator economy. I guess it's probably like 15 years old now,

maybe if you look at when YouTube started to monetize their ad since maybe 16 years old. But if we're in the movie business, a industry that's 125 years old, the first 15 years, we don't even have sound yet. We're so early that like talkies haven't even come in to filmmaking yet. So it took filmmakers like Cecil B. DeMille to really start to understand how to make movies into cinema. And I think that what we're starting to find in what we're putting a lot of energy and effort into is we believe that the audience for entertainment is 100% still there. It's just shifted eyeballs. And now it's a question of giving content creators the resources, the same kind of like traditional programming strategy and screenwriters and art departments and all those things, not to make Hollywood

content for YouTube, but to help to professionalize it so it can, they can really kind of take off and go to the next level. And so that's really like what we've been doing with Alexi and it's been really exciting so far. I mean, one way I feel like that you've made Skippity Toilett, just this massive phenomenon, is through this unique marketing strategy. I feel like a lot of Hollywood IP owners, they really chase down anybody using their material without permission. You guys have this unique situation, I guess, where you encourage usage across YouTube channels and encourage kind of fans to make skibbitty toilet episodes and their own fan-driven content. Can you talk about how you think about that and how do you work with these third-party channels that you don't necessarily directly control?

Yeah. When you have something like this that goes so viral, so fast, it becomes almost impossible to try to reach your arms around it. And it's a fine line because you want to celebrate the fandom and you want to encourage young content creators who are clearly fans and loving the storytelling to continue to do what they're doing. And at the same time, we're trying to run a business and trying to make sure that, you know, it's all kind of done in the right way. So what we look at is, there's an individual content creator and he or she is going to make a fan video and they're going to post something here and there, that's great. We're not going to bother with that.

We're not necessarily going to give them resources to support it, but we're definitely not going to stand in the way of it. But when there are channels that are taking the content in every day or every week, they're making content, they're putting forth their own storytelling. They may be taking our characters and doing things that aren't necessarily to our liking. That's where we will enforce our protections. But in the process of that, what we discovered was that there were a handful of wonderful animators that were making content that really followed the canon that we were creating and work really well with Boom in terms of understanding what he's looking for and where he's

going with the story and making sure that the fuck Boom's channel is the one that kind of leads the charge each week and that these other channels are the ones that are supporting it. and we've created business terms with those channels to make sure that it's kind of reciprocal, that they can win off of it and that we can win off of it. And honestly, it's been one of the greatest discoveries of this whole process so far, because it gives us an enormous marketing reach. It keeps us kind of at front and center of the algorithm. And it allows us to meet all these really talented people across the globe who have enormous capacity.

And will allow us to build this franchise out for many years to come. Another way that you guys are building it out, I think, in a really interesting way, is through gaming and Roblox. I can remember roots, you or somebody else telling me that, you know, more people come, or just as many, rather, people come to Skibody Toilet through gaming platforms as potentially the YouTube channel. What are you guys doing with Roblox and Minecraft

and these other games to kind of increase the franchise's reach there? So, I mean, Roblox has just been awesome. I think it's almost safe to say that Skivety is probably the most successful piece of licensed IP that has ever worked across Roblox, ever. And that's against like marble properties and all the biggest of the big things. So we've been amazed at, number one, the management team at Roblox and just how awesome they are at being able to support a small company like ours and be able to help us make it something that's obviously a very lucrative business for us, but also to allow us to extend our storytelling. We have about 20 million monthly users across our Skibbity kind of worlds. And a lot of these kids aren't necessarily watching.

the content from week to week, or at least they don't when they first come into Roblox. Then they meet Roblox. They meet our characters through Roblox. They play the games. The friends are talking about it. They hear the slang words. They, you know, they become a fan of it, and then they discover it on YouTube. It typically has always gone the other way around where you discover something in a movie or a TV show and then you look for it on Roblox. Roblox has been this amazing ecosystem for us that allows our fans a place that they can go and hang out with their friends. They can talk about the latest episode. We monitor chat so we can see if they're talking about things that they like from an episode or they didn't like. And it's just been this,

you know, again, what I always say is we're doing this. Like, it seems like there's a great design behind the Skiviti Toilet franchise. We're holding on for Dear Life. Like, we're trying to apply a little bit of what we know from coming from our background in film and TV and a little bit of what these kids are teaching us every single day. And it's a lot more fun learning what they're teaching us than trying to hold on to some kind of legacy theories about things. When you were at Paramount in a previous role, you oversaw all of these incredible franchises from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mission Impossible, SpongeBob SquarePants. What similarities do you see when you look at these sort of major franchises of the past

and something like Skibbitty Toilet? When I worked on SpongeBob and Turtles, both were properties that I didn't grow up with and both were things that I had to start to, you know, start to kind of get. And I remember we were talking to various people about it and the word random kept coming up. Random for me was always something that I never thought of it as a compliment. I didn't think it was necessarily a way to describe content in a way to advocate for it. And then I started to understand that like the randomness of teenagers that were turtles who were mutants and also that were ninjas, That's what kids loved about it.

The randomness of a sponge named Bob. The randomness of the alliance versus the toilets. I've been reading kind of comments about like how doomed Hollywood is because we're even contemplating moving forward with a, you know, kind of a longer story when it relates to this. And at the same time, I'm like,

if all the people in the peanut gallery knew, then we would only be making more reboots and sequels for things. And none of the random stuff that have been big, you know, 100 million, sometimes billion dollar properties would ever get made. So we celebrate random in our company. We look for it. What has been a reaction like over the past few days? I mean, have you been getting tons of phone calls? I feel like since all of this news broke last week, there's just been so much discussion online, at least of all the meme pages that I follow of, you know, this Givety franchise. How has it been on your end? You know, most of the people

that I kind of still talk to and hang out with are still in traditional. And they're curious. and they're aggravated at the same time. They're curious because it doesn't necessarily make sense to them. So they have lots of questions and they won't understand it. They want to understand how we got involved with it. They want to understand how we're monetizing it. They have lots of questions about just the business of it. And they're frustrated because they think it means it's the end of civilization as they understand it.

And it's neither. It's really exciting. And there's a huge opportunity for traditional producers, directors, writers, filmmakers to come into the digital space. The digital space is something that it's democratized. There's no gatekeepers. If you have a great idea, you can make it. You can see it through to fruition. You can get immediate feedback if audience is watching it and liking it. And so the kinds of calls we've been getting are our friends that are really like, okay, explain this to me. Or, all right, where do I find the next one or whatever it is? And it's not that easy, but it's not that

difficult either. As we talked about earlier, we're only in a business that's 15, 16 years old at this point. So there aren't really any experts in the creator economy, certainly not us. And there's really smart people that are crushing it. And I always consider these people to be pioneers. They're really the people that are setting the ground. But this is, in my opinion, 100% where the audience is going to be five years, 10 years from now, 15 years from now. And so it's really for filmmakers and people like us to come into this space and to say, all right, let's take the best of what worked in traditional and the best of what digital has to offer. And let's create this traditional technique, which allows all of the programming and windowing and licensing and copywriting and

trademarking and all the greatest things that Hollywood has really done great at. And then the nimbleness of UGC so that things aren't overproduced and they don't look like they were designed by committee. And let's mush those two things together. and create content that kids now can watch that don't have the same artifice that possibly a Nickelodeon show may have that looks like it's perfectly lit and there's a food stylist putting every single sesame seed on a bun before it goes in front of something because on YouTube you just get a real hamburger. It's not an artificial lawn on a set in Burbank where they're filming a backyard at someone's house. It's really someone's backyard. And when kids see real versus

is something that's produced trying to look real, they always go to real. So we really believe in like the traditional kind of elements of prepping something and then the digital kind of nimbleness of what comes from that. Yeah. I mean, I know you called invisible narratives a traditional studio. How did you come up with the idea for invisible narratives? It seems like this really unique business model, like you said, that's this really the only company that I'm aware of really bridging these two industries. How did you get into this space coming from? you know, such a traditional background. I'll give you two stories. One is when I was at DreamWorks and we bought the rights to Transformers, as I said before, like everyone thought it was a really

silly idea. And then DreamWorks got bought by Paramount. I ended up staying on board and overseeing the motion picture business at Paramount Pictures. And we inherited the first three Marvel movies. We had SpongeBob and Star Trek and Mission Impossible and all this, you know, all this IP. And people started writing articles about our IP strategy. And I would look at friends of mine and I'd say, what is IP? I didn't even really know what that was. It wasn't a word. In Hollywood prior to IP, we only cared about franchises. You were lucky if you made Meet the Parents that you got to make a sequel to meet the parents. Like that was the epitome of success. But my kids started watching only YouTube. It was all that they cared about. And my son was particularly obsessed with Jake

Paul at this point. And this was when Jake was posting every single day. A Team 10 era. Oh my God, the everyday bro era. Yes. Everyday bro, the whole thing. And Jake bought himself a Lamborghini. And I guess, having never bought a Lamborghini, it takes a few months for it to be built and shipped overseas from Italy. So every day, he would come on his channel. And in some portion of the channel, he would talk about this car.

He would reference, hey, guys, Lambo is, you know, three months out. Or, hey, guys, we get to choose the interior of the Lambo, whatever was. It was the biggest deal in my house. when the video finally dropped where the car was arriving back at, I know, it was like probably October of that, whatever year that was. It was like sweep's week's television. My son asked if he could come home early from school that day to watch the video in real time. We bought him the merch celebrating the arrival of the car.

And the very next day, there was no talk about this car ever again on his channel. And I called Jake and I said, Jake, what you don't realize is that you just created IP that was as valuable to my then nine-year-old as the DeLorean was from back to the future for me. That car could have been its own channel. That car could have been its own animation. It could have been its own toy. And I was struck by that he had this channel that he could create these invisible narratives where he could start to invisibly embed. In his case, it was real storytelling. It wasn't manufactured. But it created this rooting interest so that my son, who was watching the channel every single day was looking forward to this moment. And so Invisible Narratives, we deploy that

strategy. We use these channels that have audience. We believe it's a lot easier when making entertainment, not to have to find the audience, but to engage the audience. So in Hollywood, all you're doing is, it's really difficult to get a movie made. It's really difficult to make a good movie. But the hardest thing is getting an audience to see it and to know about it. In YouTube, it's just the opposite. It's easy to get an audience. Sometimes it's really difficult to make good out. Yeah. Oh my God. I can't believe it started with Jake Paul. What an era. Everything does with Jake Paul. Really. It seems like there's been this big golf between traditional entertainment and digital entertainment for so long. I do feel like platforms like TikTok and YouTube

have helped breach it. I mean, really TikTok especially too in recent years. Why do you think more people in traditional Hollywood have had such a wall up around the digital ecosystem? There's always been this sort of tension between these two worlds. What do you think that stems from? I think they think it's not cool. I think they think it's not lucrative. I think, you know, these are most of the people who are gainfully employed are working at companies that have a very set business model and it's very difficult to kind of move their ship into a new direction. And it also comes from kids. It takes a gray-haired guy like me to really understand what's happening on YouTube and TikTok, not because I'm native to it, but because I have kids who are native to it, and so I'm watching it. Most development

executives in Hollywood tend to be in their late 20s or their 30s or maybe even early 40s, but they don't really have kids yet that they can identify what their trends are because their kids may not be old enough. And the thing I always try to explain to people is if you look at the traditional entertainment business is worth about $2.7 trillion a year. And the creator economy, I think the last Goldman's stat I saw was like $450 billion. And the difference is just storytelling because you have Harry Potter and Spider-Man and Transformers and the minions on the traditional side. And when those types of formats and that type of IP and we see more skibbity toilets

coming into the digital side of things, that $450 million, billion number will go up and we'll get closer. We'll get to the trillion number for some time. but it's going to happen at some point for real. Yeah, especially when you think of the potential, I mean, I know that there's been a bunch of efforts to kind of take these digital stars and put them in more traditional formats.

Like Lily Singh's Late Night Show on NBC, but it sounds like you're trying to really build these native grassroots opportunities from the ground up and not just shove people into more traditional formats. Yeah, I think for us, you know, again, our background obviously is the movie business. We love movies. We love everything about it and we love the experience of going to a movie theater. So there's nothing that we're allergic to in that process. But the fact is, is like we can't keep our heads in, you know, kind of in a box and pretend like

there's not an actual shift in attention spans. And we can't sit here and think that the be all end all is getting a movie or a TV show made. There should be a lot more people like me in this space right now because the dollars are very real and the creatives are just as creative. The problem is these creative content creators, they don't have the background. They don't have the resources. So they don't necessarily always know how to professionalize their content. And they get stuck in a hamster wheel and they get in this burden. I didn't believe when I first came into the space, the creator burnout was real. I used to think, oh, man. I would be like, how hard is this?

I would tell you. That's what everyone thinks. It's so hard. I'd be like, oh, how hard is it to post a video every single day? You're just going out with your friends and you're screwing around. Then you start to understand what he's actually doing and how much work goes into prepping these things and finding the clickbait and figuring out what the hook is for the video and posting it. And then having to recreate your success every single week because people watch your views and see what's happening.

It's harder than anything in the entire world is. But when you give the creators, the tools and say, hey, why don't we give you some writer's rooms? Let's give you an art department. Let's help give you just a producer to speak with every single day and get them to focus not on kind of burn and shorn content, which are things that are just following trends and say, okay, today I built a swimming pool with little plastic balls in my backyard or whatever it is, but instead to help them find a format and to say, okay, what would happen if Mr. Beast actually had who wants to be a millionaire? What would happen if we start treating these creators and say,

okay, they are the new buyers now that brands can get behind and product placement can get behind and that audience is showing up for, but give them a little bit more kind of structure to their content that can be repeatable? That's not overproduced. That's not trying to bring TV to at YouTube, but finding that perfect mix, so it still feels like it's coming from the creator that they love, but with a format that they can kind of rely on every single week. Where do you see the future of invisible narratives going? You know, when you look to the future and you look at sort of the shifts happening in media and this move towards this content creator-driven industry, where do you see yourself fitting

into the future? I will tell you, like, you know, after your article ran last week, the amount of calls that we got from studio executives who really like, who really get it. Like they were calling and they're like, I saw this, I'm leaning in, I'm all ears, like, what is this? I think the openness to people now is something that's really exciting. And I think that what you'll find, I hope, is that as jobs are contracting in Hollywood and as creative people are, you know, kind of worried about, you know, what their next gig is going to be, that they'll understand that what is happening on the digital side of things isn't a whole,

new universe. It's just a different venue. And I'm hoping that more producers and filmmakers and agents and executives and people start leaning in and understanding that the water's warm. And there's tons and tons of success to go around. Our company will only be more successful when there's more companies like our companies. It doesn't help us to be one of the few companies that are doing things like this because then we're always having to explain what we're doing. So I hope that we get to a place where there's lots of people that get this. And I hope that maybe years from now, people look back and they say, hey, we were early and we were fans. But I do believe that there's lots of opportunity for Hollywood to come this way and for us to go back towards traditional as

well. Yeah, I definitely destroyed my YouTube algorithm writing that story because it is all skippity toilet right now. Adam, well, thanks so much for joining me. This was a great Convo. Thank you for having me. We'll be back after the break with headlines for this week. All right. I'm here with Zach and we are going to talk about some of the big stories this week. All right. Let's do it. So I published a story this week in the Washington Post about a bunch of work that the Senate is doing working with online influencers. Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer and a bunch of other lawmakers have been hosting influencer only briefings for content creators. They just had one about a month and a half ago. Yeah. Today, Haley Page, the first, full-time influencer content creator is actually testifying at a Senate hearing on non-compete agreements.

And they're working with these non-traditional publishers like Betches Media to get the word out about their legislative initiatives. I feel like every week I do a new story of like so-and-so is working with online content creators in the government. But obviously this follows NATO and the State Department and the Department of Defense working with content creators. The White House is doing tons with content creators. So I think now the Senate is finally in line. a bunch of people on the house side have done stuff with the content creators too. You're on the front lines of this. Like, you are, you're going to be our intermediary as we move further and further away from,

like, journalism and, like, more media establishment. Like, we're just going to have you. And, like, the rest of us are going to be getting our news from, like, the Hoc to a girl. You know, like, it's really, it's just, you're, we need you, Taylor. I did get, I was at a conference recently. I have the badge upstairs in my room. and I can't remember which conference it was, but they credentialed me as a content creator

instead of a journalist. How did you feel about that? I just was like, oh, my God, there's no distinction anymore. Do you remember when I got canceled on Twitter for saying journalists had to have brands four years ago, like three or four years ago? Was Maggie Haberman involved in this? I think I do remember this.

Yes. Who has a bigger brand than any other journalists out there, I would argue. Yeah, people were really mad being like, how dare you say journalists must have brands as if like Anderson Cooper and Barbara Walters never had brands? I don't understand. It's crucial for survival at this state in media. It is absolutely crucial. I think some of the best reporters don't have very public-facing personal brands. And sometimes if you do a lot of investigations and things like police violence or whatever, right? Like, you don't want to have a brand out there. But then you rely on the company that you work for to do

the marketing for you. Like if I don't promote my own work, I'm basically relying on the Washington Post to promote my work. And all of these companies are sort of increasingly depleted in their capacity to promote any journalist works. I'm not faulting people that don't want to have a brand. Trust me, I wish that I didn't have to a lot of days. But I do feel like the way that the lawmakers are moving and the political system is moving is just increasingly important for journalists to build direct audiences with their readers or viewers or whatever. And it's not just journalists, right? It's athletes, it's politicians. It's sort of anyone that's at all public facing.

It is sort of increasingly important to build a brand. That's just how it goes. Exactly. I think it'll be really interesting to see what types of content creators the senators start to work with more and more. I think we're past the days of just like, let's get, you know, Jake Paul to post about something. They seem to have a really tailored approach.

For this first briefing, it was related to economic issues. And so they brought a bunch of personal finance influencers in to talk about things like non-conferralia. competes, the wage gap, like all of these issues facing, you know, people's, people's wallets, basically. I think it's an interesting approach. And I do think that going narrow rather than going wide will allow them to reach the target audiences that they want. Yes, completely agree. Another super viral moment this week was this massive Zoom call called White Dudes for Harris. There was also a separate women for Harris Zoom call. There's been a bunch of these online events.

The White Dudes for Harris thing just made me laugh so much. much because people were tweeting these really funny screenshots of all of the celebrities on the call. So many celebrities. I watched this whole thing with Joseph Gordon Levitt talking about Trump. Mark Hamill was there. Jeff Bridges was there. It was crazy. I feel like it could have been called, you know, just like, yeah, rich, rich dudes for Harris. Hollywood for Harris. Weirdly hanging out in their garage. Like, everyone seemed to be clearly in their garage. Multiple celebrities zoomed in from their garage. To me, it had a very 2020 energy.

Obviously, I mean, I'm a remote worker. I use Zoom all day. But like, just gathering everyone together on a Zoom call is not something I think would have happened before 2020. Like, it seems very much a product of this time. I think it's also interesting to watch how Harris is leveraging these digital spaces and using these types of things like Zoom calls and online events for organizing and fundraising. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy how quickly things have taken off and how quickly they've seemingly got organized online specifically. Yeah. Politico reported that there was a black woman for Harris online event recently too. So I feel like we'll probably keep seeing, you know, more and more of these crop up and niche identities. And they seem like a fun excuse also to just get a bunch of people together. I mean, if you have a massive Zoom call, you've got a few funny celebrities, invite a bunch of other, you know, well-connected people, people that want to donate. Like I think it's, I think it seems like a good fundraising tool. Yeah, it looked like a good time.

Okay. Kate Lindsay wrote this great article in Bustle this week. about DIY dating. It's about the phenomenon of people essentially opting out of traditional dating apps and posting personal ads and things like literary journals, using Facebook ads, sending out Google forums to try to meet people. These people are all looking for love in really unconventional spaces. I think it says a lot about how broken the dating apps are and the different just creative ways people meet online. I've always said that like social media in itself is the best dating app. Yeah, I definitely support people looking for love and new and creative ways. And it does seem in this time where we're all so digitally connected,

you can easily DM someone or, you know, message them or just reach out in a variety of ways that are, that's not a dating app. But I like the concept of these date me docs that she talks about of like people putting together their information. Would you make one of these? Yeah, I think it's a good idea. It definitely like, it helps you sort of like whittle down like what it is that you're looking for, certain qualities that you're looking to share, maybe some pictures. I thought it was interesting and more like potentially more comprehensive than a traditional dating app, which is just like flat like you answering a couple of prompts. I worked in advertising, you know, before I worked in media. And I had a friend back in my advertising days who made a pitch

deck for himself. And it was this like deck all about him. And he and it was being shared around like, you know, all the like junior advertising employees at the big agencies that we were all at. And to me, still to this day, I mean, he's married by now. But like it really stands out. I feel like, these little things that you do. You can really show your personality in a way that you can't on like hinge or Tinder or whatever. My biggest regret in dating is that I had in 2016 in my Tinder bio was explained Bitcoin to me, which I thought was hilarious because I thought Bitcoin was a joke. I did match with this guy who offered to explain Bitcoin to me. I laughed it off. We became friends. Anyway, he was a Bitcoin millionaire now and bought a multi-million dollar house with his Bitcoin

earnings. Was it one of the Winklevoss twins? No, absolutely not. Someone I knew matched one of them on Hinge one time, but anyway. You know, in this world where we all have TikTok and Instagram and everybody sort of is being pressured to look like beautiful on Instagram and be so charismatic and high video production quality on TikTok, is it too much pressure to have your own date me doc or your own website pitch deck for your dating? Is it just, are we all just expecting each other to be like too perfect at this stuff? Like too good at this stuff?

I feel like it's about being not perfect and about showing off your personality and doing it in an interesting way. Like running Facebook ads for yourself is hilarious. I just think people want to meet people. It's increasingly hard to connect with people and I think these unconventional things are fun. Yeah, I sort of like, I do appreciate

how creative people are getting and kind of like wonder like, yeah, what would it look like if we lived in a world where all of a sudden dating apps just cease to exist and all the interesting ways and things people would get up to in order to meet people, it's an interesting exercise and it's cool to see different things that people try. Yeah, we'll start polishing your dating doc now. Where theho's at.gov. Check me out.

Oh, God, Zach. I'm going to have to prove for it. Or you could get a new AI. friend to proofread it. Okay, so there's a new AI product that once again wants to be our friend. It's this little medallion thing that you wear around your neck throughout the day and it texts you. It doesn't really provide any sort of useful information. It more just engages with you as a friend. It seems like kind of like an interactive Tamagachi. You don't have to take care of it though. And you wear it throughout your day. It's called friend. I have to tell you when I saw this ad,

I thought it was a parody. And then one of my colleagues offered to connect me with the founder. The ad shows a girl on a hike and this AI necklace is giving her encouragement like you go girl, you did it. And then weirdly there's a guy playing video games with his friends and the AI companion starts kind of like nagging him.

Another girl is just like eating a sandwich alone and it starts talking to her. I have to tell you, it was the whole thing kind of follows this broader trend we're seeing around wearable AI products. Obviously we had the humane pin come out just a few months go. Apple is integrating more AI stuff, Siri into wearables, like Apple Watch. I want to try this thing.

Apparently, they're not letting journalists try it yet. And until I try it, I'm not ready to hype it because it seems kind of ridiculous. I really agreed with this person Chris Martz on Twitter who posted, if this ad had shown this AI pin, for instance, caring for an elderly person who lives alone, helping someone with a disability navigate daily life, helping someone translate live language, helping a depressed person get out of bed. I would have felt something. I don't understand. The ad, like, ends with this girl on a date,

and the guy's like, is that thing always going to be with you? And she's like, yes. So weird. Basically, they're pitching this necklace as, like, the cure for loneliness. But they're showing young, active people who seemingly have friends, right? You have a guy playing video game surrounded by friends in person. You have a girl on a hike, solo on a hike. But I'm like, okay, she's active.

Like having a nice solo hike is like great. You don't really need people for that unless you're in danger. And then they have this girl on a date. And it's like, you don't need the necklace when the girl's on the date. Like looking out at like the view on the roof. Like that you just don't, those are scenarios in which you do not need this. And I'm just like baffled as to why they aren't showing like, yeah, the old person in need. Or, you know, I was just watching there's a new Apple show with Rashida Jones where she is an

American in Japan, and the opening scene is her talking to this woman. It's set in like a near future. The opening scene is her talking to this woman and the woman speaking in Japanese, and she has like this instant translator because it's like a near future. It's like a little bit of an instant translator. It just seems really useful. Like there's plenty of ways in which this can be useful and none of those ways are on display in this ad. As I said, I want to try it out, but I am interested in what use case it would solve. I don't know what this is going to do. do for you that a Tomogachi wasn't doing for you in the 90s. You know what I'm saying? Tomogachi, also, you care for it. So you feel like an emotional bond with this. I don't know how you

emotionally bond with this thing. It's just like randomly like texting you and negging you and like interfering. It feels like you'd be permanently interrupted by Siri. Like you know when you're talking in your house and like Siri or like Google Home starts interrupting in your conversations and like saying things? It's like, did you want me to search for that or whatever? And you're like, no, shut up. Yeah. It's like, do you want a. Google Home around your neck. Most people don't. No, I'm not a fan.

Although I think like all of those other use cases could be interesting. I am overall pretty bullish on wearables. I think that we are all completely addicted to our screens. Wearable technology is better. I am a huge proponent of wearable AI technology. So this could just be version one of something that could end up being useful. But the ad itself is a little silly and I don't understand the problem that it's solving for. at this moment.

I just want Google Maps on the streets to be able to like see Google Map like overlay it onto the street. Just just give me that. That's what I wanted Google Glass to be. I would have worn Google Glass all day long if it could help me get around. Also, the craziest part of all of this is within hours of this AI wearable launching, a competing AI wearable called Friend also launches. It's also a pendant.

It looks almost identical to the Friend Pendant. that launched earlier in the day. And this second founder starts feuding on Twitter with the first founder, Avi, and basically accuses him of ripping him off. His case seems a little bit dubious because he immediately also dropped a rap disc track. Renamed your tap, jacked my style,

build nothing real, it's been a while. Investor cash, you're very quick. I'm running hard. Tracks in my peak. Don't pay game. What is the proof? So this competing founder drops this absolutely unhinged disc track.

and then tweets a shirtless photo of himself challenging Avi, the first AI founder, to some sort of like physical fight, I guess, to determine who is the king of an AI friend that you wear around your neck. Also a bunch of tech people and VCs got involved. It was really my favorite tech drama of the week. All right, that's the wrap for this week. Thanks, Zach. That's it for today's show. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larcich and Jalani Carter. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. Our executive producers are Zach Mack and Nashat Kerwa. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like the show, give us a rating or review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week for a new episode of Power Users. See you then.