The Vergecast - Pain is Available at 6

Episode Date: January 22, 2016

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn are joined by Jake Kastrenakes and Racked style editor Nicola Fumo to talk about T-Pain, T-Pain's house, and Apple's new set of music making apps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello. What a surprise. We're all back again. Welcome to the Vergecast. Someone got an email. Things are off to a great start. Things are, as always off to a rollicking, exciting start. But this is the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com.

That's what I've started to call it. We have so many now. Deer's our admiral. He's wearing a fucking eyepatch for some reason. Doesn't fit. But anyway, this is the Vergecast where we talk about. Technology, culture. There's going to be a lot of T-Pain conversation from Jake today.

Jake's just knocking into things. Well, I am already getting rambunctious, just thinking about the time I have with T-Pain. Anyway, I'm Neil I Patel. I'm the guy in the Vergecast. I'm sitting with Dieterbone. Also a guy. Jake is here.

Jake has a manx is here. Fumo. Hi. What up, girl? Doing great. Having a banner week. Yeah? Yeah.

Why is it banner week? I don't know. I'm just in a good mood. Yeah. We had an extra day off. We did. Rapp did. Oh, yeah.

No, the Verge sort of did. Kind of. I don't know. Look, gadget news doesn't sleep, baby. That's one thing I've learned. That's the only one thing I've learned here. There's always new gadget news? Yeah. Yeah, there is. They're fundamentally, that's what we do. Anyhow. Deeter. This is like baller. It's like suede.

No, it's leather, but it's like a nice leather. Because it was meant for the right eye. But I have a contact that's the wrong contact in my right eye. Yeah. Wait. So I have a prescription on different prescriptions for both eyes. I put the wrong one in my right eye so it's not strong enough. Do you put the left in the right?

Yeah. Yeah. Is it weaker or stronger? It's weaker. Ooh. That's weird. That's bad. Yeah.

purpling headache instead. I think I'm not going to keep this eye patch on. I mean, do you, man. First of all, it's a radio show, so no one will know. Second of all, just feel powerful in whatever way you need to. Anyway, a lot of stuff happened this week, but we have to just start with Jake's adventure. So let me, can I set the, who's beeping? Is that you?

Yeah, I'm turning it off. Okay. I'll turn it off to you. So let me set the stage. So we get a call. What's 8-D-A email? Is it Saturday? Yeah.

Saturday. So, you know, I'm... Well, it started, I think your first thing on me was Friday night. Friday night. Like, late Friday night. So we're back from CES. Yep. Everyone's very tired.

Literally people from the verge are going to hospital after CES. Right. I had been out of town. I wasn't on the show last week because you may have noticed. I had been out of town. I come back. I'm like, weekends here.

We're going to let the team rest, relax, recover. We're not going to check our ears. and I get a call, and basically a call is like, do you want to go meet T-Pain? To which, I believe, as anybody, would reply. I said yes. I can't believe you didn't send me. I mean, it was, I should have sent you.

You should have sent me. Not that Jake didn't do a fabulous job. Yeah, wow, burn. Yeah, you're commending me. The intersection of T-Pain and Nicola, the verge. That's where we live. I'm sure, I'm sure there's, we'll have a, Additional.

You have to pay. Teane loves the Verge. Project. That's amazing. Project, what's it called? Operation Figurehead. God damn. You have to pace it.

You can't just jump right into the end, the end goal of it. Piece by piece. I know. No, when it's like, when you're like, okay, Nicola, I need you and Kanye to take the Virgin Galactic flight. That's when it'll be done. Yeah, that's when it'll be done. And no other staffers of the verge will murder you for that opportunity. Anyhow, so, you know, I was like, yes, we will hang out with T-Pain.

why? Which I realize now is like the follow-up question that I should have asked first. Like, why would you like me? Anyway, it turns out there's a new version of garage band. T-Pain, a vowed garage band user, wrote and produced, I'm in love with a stripper on garage band.

It's true fact. Yeah, I mean, I think like most, if not all of his first album, apparently assembled with garage band. Crazy, crazy information. So, yes, we're going to go to T-Pan. Okay, you got it. Garage Man's coming on,

Wednesday, you're interviewing T-Pain at Monday. So like a thousand emails are sent in the space of two hours. Who's going? Is anybody alive? Like, is the Verge video team alive? Was a reasonable question last Friday. Yeah. Everyone's, people are excited. We send Jake down. Jake, this is where I'm going to kick to you. Jake walks into T-Pain's house to demo the new garage band. We don't even realize this is T-Pain's house. We, me and two our video team members, we get down to Atlanta. We're on no sleep. We're in an I-HOP. And we're like, we don't know where we're going. We just know that we have a meeting with T-Pain. We were just like, get to Atlanta and we'll figure it out. Yeah. So finally, we get the location and we look it up on Google Maps. I'm like, this is

residential. And yeah, it turns out to be T-Pain's mansion. So we drive up in our like busted rental car. And what time of day is it? It is like five, 30 at this point. PM. Yes. Okay. And then what I believe is a Rolls-Royce pulls up while we're waiting outside his gate. And we're like, well, that must be Deep Paint.

Yeah. That's what I say every time I see at Rose Royce. Yeah, obviously. So he's like, oh, hey, just headed and I'm going to buzz you through the gate. I got to run some errands. I'll be right back. We're like, okay, cool. So yeah, we just make our way into Teapain's house.

Did you make yourself at all? Was there a staff? There was someone there. So that's, that's the thing. There is like, I'm very confused by the setup of T-Pan's house

because there will be many people like living slash working there. Yeah, it's everything that you dreamed, isn't it? I'm like, I'm shaking. So I believe it was his brother-in-law who led us into the house.

Keep it in the family, okay. Who may also live there. He was also psyched. He's a huge Vorge fan. Yeah. T-Pain's a verge nerd. It's the best information I've ever got. Is he a listener?

of the Vergecast. I don't know. We don't make it in garage band. Yeah. Hey, T. Pan. Yeah. Oh, everyone calls him pain. Oh.

Yeah. I got to a point on the email chains on Friday and Saturday where his public system manager orders like, Payne will be available at 6 p.m. And I was like, that sentence can be read in many ways. But I'm going to read it in the way that suggests that we're all friends with T. Payne.

And we're just calling him pain. I don't think T. Payne would not be friends with somebody. He is exceptionally friendly. human. Yeah. Very, very talkative. Bounces around from the subject. It's great. Wait, wait. Okay. So you get there. The brother-in-law lets you in. Now what?

So he kind of brings us into the lower level, the basement. And, you know, here's the, let me just interrupt for once again. The goal was we're going to interview T-Pain about apps and music and then we're going to go in the studio and T-Pan's going to like make a track for us using the new garage man. He's going to like, T-Bain's going to do the hands-on. Yeah. So that's where we're, that was the idea. So for everyone who's going to complain, like, all they do is talk about nothing.

Like that, okay, that's the point. Yeah, no. No, in about two minutes, we're going to make Nicola used garage man, too. It's great. And then you will have joined the elite company of T-Pain on the edge. Hot tracks coming. We're basically just like scoping out T-Pain's house for cool stuff to, like, do a video shoot. And so, like, we check out his studio.

His studio engineer is just, like, working in there. It looks extremely expensive. We leave. We go to, like, we check out, T-Pan's, has like an arcade where he has like you know sit down racing machines uh might have been some pinball i don't remember um yeah there's like a hallway filled with blown up um magazine covers that have his face on it there's like he his dog is just like chilling out yeah dog what kind of dog what kind of dog big dog little dog it was i i want to say it was just like it maybe was a pug or something yeah

little like um yeah it was not not the friendliest of dogs but also there was you know There are a lot of us. Maybe we're excited. Yeah. So then we go into T-Pain's, like, bar-slash-party area where there are multiple stripper poles? I actually am having a hard time inhaling. I'm like, I'm so excited. Multiple stripper balls.

Well, if you're going to have a party. Yeah. One stripper is not a party. I think we can all agree. One stripper is just, like, you know. some budget shit. That's just a sad Tuesday. Sad Tuesday.

You have very different Tuesdays that I do. Yeah, they're not sad. That's not a good thing. Carry on. Yeah, but, you know, it's, space is set up for, for a nice evening. He has karaoke.

There was a pool table. Yeah. Many, many, uh, hooka, what are the, what is the thing called? Is it,

is it just hookah? There's no, it's not hookah like, pot. Huca. Huca. Huca. It's just several hookahs.

Yeah. Okay. Well. Someone's going to crack me any second, but don't remember. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So we're setting out. We're setting up.

Finally, T-Pain comes down, introduced himself, and he's like, well, I'll be right back. So, like, we finished setting up. We kind of just wait around a little bit. Teapen comes back. He's like, oh, I was just playing video games. We're like, okay. Did you tell you which one? He just took a game break?

I, he said, I think he said he was trying out something called league. I wasn't sure what that. Like League? Like League of Blood. Like, God. Wait, T-Pain's like a legal law addict? Yeah, is League of Legends the big one? Yeah.

Yeah, he said he was trying it out. He wasn't sure he felt about it, though. I think the way he felt about it was that when any, he had any scrap of time, he needed to go grind out some. Okay, well, that's what you've been doing. I don't know if that's a phrase, by the way. He was definitely, like, grind out some game.

I accept it. Do you, League of Legends is so big they sell out stadiums so that people can watch other people play it. It's one of those games. Okay. Like, people are deeply addicted to it. Anyway. Yeah, so then we sat down, we chatted for a while.

Yeah, it was hung out. Yeah, I know, I mean, but that's what it's like. Did he offer you like any beverages, refreshments? Yeah, so we sat down and first thing, he offers us a beer. I think the video team did want to have beers with T-Pain. I was a little nervous about interviewing him while drinking a beer, so I did not accept the beer. No one else accepted the beer. What kind of beer?

This is the weird thing. very well-stocked fridge of alcohol. Very fine liquors beside it. Tepin pulls out a bud light, which, you know, I guess he's just hanging out with us in his basement. He's not going to get a donked. He's got to go back to his game. So anyway, T-Pain starts drinking a bud light,

starts messing around with the chair situation. He had these chairs that they were extremely squeaky. He was unhappy about that. And, yeah, then we started talking for a while. and we start out talking about garage band, which is cool because he is, like, I do think he's legitimately very psyched about garage band in general.

Yeah, yeah. But some of the most interesting stuff we talked about was just, like, the music industry and how you get music out there in 2016. I like to his line where he's like, when leaks happen, they happen to everyone, I just pretend that they were on purpose. That's pretty good.

He's like, yeah, so much stuff that, you know, I feel like so many musicians would not be forthcoming about he was just happily like um i think he's very interesting that he's like you know i'm not going to make money on streaming services it doesn't matter because that's going to help me sell out shows and like sell merchandise right like that is where my money comes from the studio makes or the label makes their money from spotify like they can complain right but it's you know i i'm there's no circumstance under which i'm going to make money from seeing music so i'm not going to worry about it yeah um so yeah it was it was very interesting he's also

like a deep nerd. He's a huge nerd. Yeah, he said that he had been building computers for people back in Tallahassee. And apparently one person couldn't pay him, gave him a CD of audio plug-ins. Cracked, stolen, pirated audio plugins. And that... As payment for a home-built PC. So, like, T-Pain's like screwing together PC towers. He still built his own computers, by the way. Yes, and on that CD that he received in payment for building a computer was Autotune. Yeah. And he was like, that's my sound. Yeah, and somehow, I mean, that fortuitous...

Pain. Yeah. Yeah. God, I wish you had a soundboard here so I can make the shorty sound. We need to... Does anybody have the IMT pain app downloaded? Probably. Duh.

All right, so let's talk about the news. So you didn't go down just to roll with pain. Yeah, so, you know, after we're chatting for a while... Maybe, maybe mostly. Well, yeah, mostly. But we did have to get some work there. IMT Payne not updated for the iPhone 6. I should have grilled him on that.

Yeah. Yeah. He insists that he records his vocals through IMT pain. That is what he said, yeah. What kind of phone did he have? He had a 6S. He had Rose Gold. He also had an Apple Watch.

He does not love the battery life on it. Okay, I noticed in the video, did he have, like, what is the bedazzlement he had on his Apple Watch? I don't want to assume, but some... I think it was custom. Oh, it was definitely, like, I mean, I think it was probably, like, circled with diamonds. Who, what jewelers are doing custom?

I didn't ask. He did recommend a steak place to us. He said the steak was like 20 bucks. He said they were great. That's the best. Yeah. But unfortunately, I forgot the name, and so we ended up eating at Cheesecake Factory. Oh.

The least. Go to T-Benz's $20 steak place? Nope. God, that is sad. and lost a lost opportunity. Yeah. Wait, I found a T-Pain soundboard. This is a terrible soundboard.

So garage band. Yeah. Yeah, so the reason that we were actually down there is because there's an update to garage band on the iPad. And there's basically a brand new interface. It looks sort of like a MIDI controller where there's just like a grid of squares. Each square is assigned to a loop.

So basically you just tap around different squares, loops fire. And it sounds good together. And yeah. So it's basically Apple wants this to be this like super, super easy way to start creating music. And like it really is because you can know absolutely nothing. And, you know, you'll be able to put together something that sounds pretty good. I mean, I know absolutely nothing.

Nicola, how much do you know? Oh, nothing. Well, you should try it. Yeah, Michael's got an iPad Pro over there. All right. I'll close this guy. Yeah. Close your computer from the past.

Pick up the computer of the future. The computer of the future. this big I've had. Okay, so I'm looking at it. First I picked hip hop because, obviously. And it's like a black grid with yellow, blue, and green things that I can press. And they all look, they look like different kinds of tie-dye, basically. Wait.

Show me what you're looking at. Okay. They look like little different tie-dyes. Can I describe what you're looking at to you? Yeah, you can explain. So a really incredibly bad Windows 10 start menu. Metro is finally found a home. So if you are at all familiar with Garageband,

they've changed very little to the underneath of Garageband. So Garageband has always had tons and tons and tons of samples in it that are intelligent samples. They've just been hard to use. Like you have to drag the samples into the grid and you start and stop by dragging the ends of it. You're looking at the waveforms and that's like, I don't know what that means. So now they've basically made it a sampler, right? And the sampler has tons of presets. So, Nicholas looking at it is basically the sample, like the sampler board.

And so if you, if you press one, it'll start, right? Should we start? Do it, man. Make that. I'm going to press a green one. They're all going to sync up together. So you don't have to like, you literally cannot screw up. This is like so on training wheels.

Yeah. And this is the future of music. Get it. That's a very, some very operation figurehead jam right here. It's Nicola walking on the street to snap into herself. Oh, that's bad. That's awful. That's not good at all.

Oh, yeah. There you go. Now start rapping. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. That's good.

Get it. She's so happy. If you could, if you were here with us. Watch the YouTube. Watch the YouTube. The joy on Nicola's face is like out of control. She's very happy. She actually was practicing with earlier and I made her stop so that we could recapture this innocent joy of making a looped hip-hop beat.

No, but that's thing. Like, you know how to create music. I have no idea. I can't make a single sound that goes with another sound. And so, like, the fact that I can hit, like, three buttons and, like, I feel like I'm doing something. Whoa. Very fun. Wow.

I just highlighted, like, a whole row. You just turn everything on? Yeah. I mean, so here's my question on this. Man, I'm going to use this. It's fun. I'm bad of music. We have a blizzard this weekend.

I'm going to play with this. I'm going to make, like, some, like, you know, writing music. Yeah. So what you need for that is the other app, music memos. No. Where you just like, they strum some chords in the phone. Yeah, that's the problem with music memos. You have to strum chords.

So let's talk about that other app. Yeah, so music memos, music memos, I think it's for a different audience. Like that is, I think, mostly for total beginners. Music Memos is you're like a singer-songwriter and you have an idea. The music memos PR. So you got Ryan. No, Ryan Adams is in it. Oh, boy.

And he was like, I mean, I got to find it. It's so good. And like, you just think of the Apple PR person, be like, we need the perfect singer-songwriter for this quote. But, like, you strum your chords. It records. Yeah, yeah. I guess I should say, so music memos,

it's like voice memos, but it's, like, beefed up with music features. So there's just a record button, and you're supposed to use it to record yourself playing music. But it's not necessarily for, like, finished final products. It's more like, I have an idea. It'll identify the chords for you.

Yeah. So that's cool. It'll break down the chords, the beat structure. You can add notes like if you're using a capo or if you have an irregular tuning. And the really neat thing is there's also buttons where you can automatically have it add in drums and bass on top of that.

So you can sort of hear what it would sound like as a final song. Yeah. They got Ryan Adams there. Sometimes ideas, right, this is Ryan Adams. And I would point out, one of the most insanely prolific songwriters ever. Sometimes ideas come faster

than I can get them in my notebook. so I used voice memos and notes to quickly capture songs before they're lost. Music Memos, says Ryan Adams, is like if those two apps came together to form some kind of superpower for songs, said Ryan Adams, critically acclaimed singer-songwriter and producer. It quite literally blew my mind how music memos could transform a single guitar idea into a whole composition with a virtual drummer, loose enough that felt you're having your mind read by some AI musician. Ryan Adams, who I would just, I'm Ryan Adams fan, really like him. Ryan Adams does not need any help

producing more and more music over time. It's crazy. I don't know, man. It's funny that they were like, who's the ultimate singer-songwriter? I like legitimately believe this use case, though. Like, as soon as Apple got done telling me about the existence of this app,

I went back and Stereogum had a post about one of the members of Vampire Weekend had like a new song out. And like, there's a quote from him. And he's like, yeah, I was like, you just found some old thing in voice memos. where else, and it's like, this is, like, actually what musicians are doing to record their ideas. And so, like, I don't think it's a super original idea, but it definitely seems like a really cool

setup. Well, I think GarageBand is free with the iPad, right? Yeah, I mean, both of these apps are free. And apparently, I didn't realize this garage band is even preloaded on them if you have more than 16 gigabytes of storage. Really? So, like... Yeah.

Wait, so if you have more than 16 gigas of storage on an iPad, they preload it with loops from a garage band? I think so, yeah. It's kind of dope. I mean, it's awful in one way because it's like... No, but like, I think probably like a lot of kids are going to be picking this up and just be able to make some more. What? Pick a lot.

Our generation's next beatmaker. Yes. Did you ever do you guys read the song machine? I'm like addicted to this book. Oh, yeah, I need to get this book. Everybody should read the song machine. Is that the one that's a about the light? John Seabrook.

Yeah, so it's about how pop songs are made now. Yeah. And so it's excellent. $7. and $16. It's excellent. It's worth. every penny. I read it. It was

like, I read it at CES, which was silly. How did you find time? It was like, you know, because you come home at the end of the day at CS, it's like, been 20 hours. You literally fall on the floor. You can't even reach your bed. You're too fucking tired. Are you ever too tired to fall asleep? This is like my thing. I'm always too tired of sleep. So I was like wired at the end of her night. Like, I'm going to bed.

And I would sit there and like this would be the thing I page through. But I liked it so much during that time that I read it again when I came home. I love, Nilai literally can't talk about reading without holding his left hand out flat in front of and then swiping invisible pages. I've seen him talk about books probably a hundred times in the past five years,

and every time he does it. He's like, what are the things that you mime? There are three things that I consistently mime. You mime iPads too. You just instead of like going left, right, you go up down. You know, I got an iPad. I didn't know that's a new one.

So apparently consistently mind four things. That's an Instagram. That's what this is. That's a gram? You mime and Graham? Yeah. Graham is like, is one hand and thumb. Well, okay.

Okay. So I mime. apparently mine books. Yes. I didn't know I mimed iPads. You do my iPads. I mime getting a check. Whenever I ask for a check, I always do that.

Whenever I ask for Diet Coke, I go like that. Yeah, why do you do that? And at the end of the meal, my wife thinks this is the funniest. By the way, that is like holding up an invisible cup and shaking it. Can I get a Diet Coke? Yeah, yeah. And at the end of the meal, I didn't know how I did this. I often enjoy a glass of poured at the end of fine meal.

And I put up a little cup. I shake that. I love that. I really love that. I'm like, a little, and Becky's always like, you want a little, it's awful. Anyhow. So this book, inside the song machine, I think Emily talked to John Seabrook, the author, on her podcast. I think she did something else with him.

Fantastic book, but the reason I bring it up, it basically tracks how pop songs are written over time. Right. So you used to be like the Brill Building and collections of songwriters, then Motown, and now it's a system called Track and Hook, where producers just sit around making beats, making tracks, and they just send them out to what's called topliners. And the topliners just sing nonsense over these tracks. And they send them back to the producers. And the producers decide which nonsense singing they like the best.

Wait, so the producers actually get to choose who gets their song? No, they don't say. The top liners are like melody people. Oh, oh. So they just sing hooks. They just sing like watermelon. The producers like, do they actually sing lyrics or do they just sing like random words? So there's like a big argument.

Lorum, Ipsum, Doloresic. They sing Latin type setting for. phrases. Come on. Come on. You need to say that. That was a funny joke. It was good.

The singing was bad. I mean, they combined it's something, it was like beautifully painful, though. By the way, someone please make a Laura Mipsom hit pop song for me. Start a beat and I'll auto tune some Laura Mipson for it. Now, actually, somebody should do that. Anyway, no, they send out to top. So, like, if you go on YouTube, you can search for Esther Dean and she just wrote all Rihanna songs.

just walked into a booth and, like, recorded some demos over the existing beats, and then they decided that Rihanna would sing them. And, like, that to me is, like, just listening to how all these songs were made in that fashion is, like, crazy. Like, the producers were, um, but she was in Barbados. They were in Barbados that, like, met her. They're like, come to New York, we're making you a star. And they're like, here are these songs to sing, like, somebody else wrote them for you, which is crazy. But it's funny because you look at that kind of garage band, and it's just designed to have producers make beats. Like, it's optimized.

Just, like, assemble loops into beats. And so, well, the other thing that got me is umbrella, that symbol sound of the beginning of umbrella, is a built-in logic loop. Really? It's just there in logic. Like, the dream was just, like, screwing around with the built-in samples in logic,

and he just made umbrella. I mean, that was the thing that I was asking T-Pain about, like, are you really going to use a built-in garage band loop? Like, you can bring in your own loops, and you can make your own loops. but like he really, I mean, he says like, I, you know, obviously he's working with Apple to, like, talk about GarageBand, but like, you know, so, to take this with a grain of salt. But, like, he's like, I mean, yeah, you can still just mess around with the actual sound of a loop enough that, like, nobody's really going to get the same exact sound as you. So, like, what does it matter?

No, but it's funny because the umbrella sample is, like, straight up raw. That's wild. It's in Garage Man, too. Like, it's just one of Apple's various royalty-free samples is, like, Like the dream was like, this is my song. That's ridiculous. We all have the same tools, but we can't all arrive on the same conclusions that the dream can arrive on. It's true.

All of us type on the same keyboards. That's what talent is. What you're saying is we all actually my keyboard to become rea. If you don't come back from this weekend with umbrella, you're done for for them. I'm going to see the dream next month. I love the dream. Like, he's actually one of my favorite artists. Yeah, he's playing on Valentine's Day.

That is like actually perfect for the dream. It's so perfect. it makes a lot of sense. Anyway, going on. I'm just really excited. What's your favorite dream song? Now, I'm going to have to listen. All right, well, that's...

Come back to me. I have to think about it. Also one of my favorite dreams songs. Probably equestrian. Ooh. Oh, man. The dream understands the female gays in a way that... This is a whole other tangent.

We can't talk about this, really, but the dream understands the female gays in the way that no one, no one else on the planet does. I'm with you on that. I'm looking for my favorite dream song. Oh, it's... I love your girl.

Oh, yeah. That's on my daily playlist. You was up, girl. Okay, go on. Anyway. And sure these shit's good to you. Today's episode of Vergecast is brought to you by the dream. On BlackBlaze as well.

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I got it. Hit it. I'm trying to spice it. It's been a while. It's a good slogan. Hit it. Hit it. Backblazed motherfuckers.

It's not actually their slogan, so I hope they like it. All right, we got a bunch of stuff here in round two. Hermes. Yeah. So Nicola opened the week with me by pointing out that we were slow to some Apple news. Yeah. What a beautiful way to start the week. Nicholas, she literally sent me note and it just said slip, slip in.

No, Apple slip in. I thought you meant that we were slow. Oh, maybe, I don't know. No, no, no, no. It was not to you. Nicola has also been forwarding the random things with just like garbage things, with just the word renaissance about them. They're all related to the analog renaissance.

It's all young people using record players and such. No. It's, if you read it the other way, which is the way I read it, which is we're in a time of extreme cultural decor. decline and you're using it in Renaissance to note that. It also makes sense because it's like sweaters listening to sweater music, like random brands activating. Of cultural decline.

Right. It's a joke. Okay. Irony is that that would not be a renaissance is that. Like that's stash. Coffee brand activations where they're handing you film cameras to take pictures of coffee beans while you grow a beard. Right.

Is not. That sounds great. I don't know what you're talking about. All right. Anyhow. So you want to, Nicola, I don't know how to say this out loud.

The Hermes Apple Watch collection is now online. Yes. And you and I had a fairly interesting conversation where you talked about Apple is a luxury retailer. And like why do you think it was important that it was available online? Okay, so the thing is that they did this like $1,500 double leather strap. Yeah. That you could only buy in stores,

including some Apple stores, Hermes stores, I think like a couple super high-end fashion retailers. So the fact that they put it online, like you like luxury brands, fashion luxury brands are really slow to sell it stuff online. Like you cannot buy a fucking burkin band online.

No, absolutely not. Join the waiting list like everyone else. Like you can't. So the fact that they're selling it online like to me that says like well, oh good, didn't go that well in the stores. I guess we should make this available. on the internet.

And it's also weird for Hermes because it's like, you guys don't sell stuff online. Why are you, why are you doing this? And what we were talking about is just like the idea of having a $1,500, I mean,

it's a leather, it's pieces of leather. Yeah, right. It's $1,500 pieces of leather. About like a couple band-aids worth. Yeah. In the same room as like, cords,

And how, yeah, it is weird. It's hard to create a store atmosphere where you feel okay buying like a $9 thing and also a $1,500 thing. Or like buying $15 an iTunes gift card. What I gave you was like USB cables. Yes. Right?

Like in Apple stores are deeply nerdy, utilitarian things. Yeah. And I think you go, I think the reason people like them is like they often offer you a piece of the future, right? But then you can like pick up some stuff. And like people buy lots of cases there. buy lots of cables there. And like, it's great that it's opening.

Like, I need a DVI adapter. I'll go to the Apple store. But it's really weird to think of it as like, I'm going there to buy a super fancy watch. Yeah. And I think that, I mean, that's why they hired Angela Arrence, right? Like, I mean, she was Burberry, right? Like, what was, you've been to a Burberry store?

What was the Burberry store? I mean, a lot of these stores, you enter them as environments, you don't really enter them as a, there's kind of two ways to be in a luxury. fashion store. You have the area where it is a person coming in to buy a handbag or perfume or jewelry or whatever it is that was like the thing that floats the business. Clothing does not float the business for high-end fashion brands, like for no one. If you are that customer, you probably work with the sales associate because they know you and you are a client. You are not a customer. You are someone that might even get invited to the fashion shows because that's how

much money you spend with this company. They only have one, maybe two, sizes of everything out. So it's not the kind of store where you can't like walk in and be like, oh, I'm just going to flip through the rack, grab a handful of berber clothes and just try them on. It's like, no, you need a human being that's going to be like as soon as you start looking at clothes.

There's going to be a human being next to you. Oh, I've never understood this, by the way. This is fascinating. Yeah. I've never understood the stores that have like four things. Yeah. I mean, because they don't want,

like, they don't want you to go in and try it on their $3,200 dress. They don't want you to, they don't want you to. I mean, they don't. They don't. They don't.

To be perfectly want, they do not want me to try on the 30s. They do not want you. They're trying on the, like, runway shearling motorcycle jacket, you know? So, but they do want you there buying the $995 trench coat. Right. Because that's a lot of money, but there's a lot of people with a lot of money. Right. And they buy these things.

So, like, could you put the Apple Watch in that store? Yeah. Because that's the flip side of it, right? Like, would you buy a tech gadget in that store? Like, I think this is really fascinating. You'd buy the gold packs. but that's not like it's not a computer like the gold packs is like not a computer like the whole point it's a computer it's a weed computer it's a weed computer i understand i understand what kind of computer it is

but it's it's literally a verbal matter it's perverbal matter anyway but like an apple watch is a different kind of computing commitment right like you can buy a pax on a whim and then never use it again that's i think how most people bought the apple watch rough burn anyway keep going okay so yeah so you have that area where it's like, that's usually like, it might be like in the back or it's like on a second level or a lower level and that's like, you're a real person with real fucking money and you're going to spend a lot of it. And they care a lot about that and you. Then there's the area where it's like the stuff that floats the bottom line. So those are like handbags usually for most brands. So to me, this Apple Watch for Hermes is kind of like falls into that ladder

where it's like here's a high like profit margin item. It's an impulse purchase. It's a thing like next to the cash register. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a $1,500 way to enter into a brand identity that you can also enter into at $4,000. Not that you can't spend $4,000 at Apple on something. Right. But, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a tiptoe into a world that you might want to be a part of, but it's a $15,500 tiptoe, which is crazy.

Right. I mean, I just think it's like, I, Walt and my, his whole podcast yesterday was just, we had just talked about to watch, and he's like, I don't really use mine. And like, he's like, there's two things I do with it. I checked the notifications and it counts my steps and I like it when the ring's closed. When I saw that piece that he wrote, I was so, I was like, yay, I independently wrote, like, arrived on the same conclusions as this expert. Like, very, very pleased. Yeah, I mean, you know, we talked about it at length.

And I think that this fashion piece of the Apple Watch, the comparison that we, that is in my mind constantly, is the iPod, which actually reached like an enormous amount of, cultural capital and was like so cool. And it's funny because we make this Carl Lagerfeld joke about the Apple Watch constantly. But like Lagerfeld was so obsessed with the iPod that he had 14 of them custom laser engraved with his like personal music tastes with like a special coding system. This is crazy. That's incredible. Crazy, crazy, crazy. And it's funny because that product like everybody used it. It had only the one function, but it became cool because it was just cool. Like there wasn't this like fashion world around it. The fashion world just like took the iPod and Apple had nothing to do with it. And that Apple's like useful new thing. What I just think it's I think the I mean obviously the iPod never

sold as much as any of these products will sell because Apple is a much small company there. But it's just funny to think about technology becoming cool. The iPod was the I think legitimately the first piece of technology that became cool all by itself. Maybe another one. Walkman. No. I just totally disagree. It wasn't cool. Like everybody had one. It was like it. Everybody had one. It was like like an 80s status symbol, but like the thing of the Walkman, like close your mind, what did the Walkman when it was cool look like? Was that yellow sport one? No, that's a cool one.

No, it's like everybody had a little portable tape deck, but there wasn't a Walkman that was cool. Boomboxes? Like the whole, like, we're asking the president what's on his boombox? Do you see what I mean? Like the iPod would achieve this level of like cultural significance that I think is like fascinating. And I think the goal is sort of watch to achieve that level of cultural scenarios. If you think something was genuinely, sincerely cool before the iPod,

some piece of technology that, like, achieved real cool. Yeah, you can't wait at Reckless. Let me know. I've been dying to know, but I was thinking about it all weekend, basically. And it just seems like Apple's trying to skip that line and get to cool before accomplishing the thing that the iPod did, which was literally like a game-changing music device. Well, the iPod was...

Someone's going to yell at me that the Zoom was out. I mean, it was like defining your personality, right? Which is so interesting because that's what they want the watch to do. They want it to be an extension of who you are, right? You can customize the band. You customize the look. But like, you can't really change that much. There are all these superficial things.

And they're just like, look, we partner with a high fashion brand. And, I mean, Nicola knows better how that works. But, like, I don't know. Is that really that exciting for people? Like, it's still, it doesn't do that much. And I say that as a person who's, wearing one right now. What are you

use yours for? I was trying to figure that out. What kind of band is that? Is that apples? No, it is not apples. It is from monoware. It's their leather band. It's like it is, I mean, it's good.

I like it. But yeah, I've been trying to figure out what I use it for, because I'm using an Android phone right now. So that's a whole other subject. You're using an Apple watch? Well, okay. I do have, and I have my iPhone 5S up in my bag upstairs. I'm actually still getting notifications.

Right, because it's on the Wi-Fi. Oh, yeah, maybe it is. No, it could be the Bluetooth. Like, my Bluetooth keyboard upstairs works. If someone to go to my desk and start typing my computer would flip out. Someone upstairs. No. Get to work.

It's happening. Like, that's the thing. I mean, it's good for notifications, but I just realized that, like, I've been checking weather on my phone more than I have been on my watch now because I have it right in the Android home screen. Also, it takes five minutes for the watch to show you. Oh, well, I've got, like, a weather which. Like, I do, I mean, yeah, that's it.

I use it for the time and for the weather. And, like, notifications come in on this faster than they come in on Android for whatever reason. So that's kind of nice. Yeah. No, it's, it's time, date, notifications, weather steps. Yep. That's the stuff that smart watches are good at, and it's terrible at everything else. Look, I'm buying, I'm buying a $500.

I do not. I already have two in an Apple Watch. Coolest styling of the, Apple Watch I've seen so far. In the Young Thug Best Friends video, he's wearing two of them. Stacked.

Which is only seconded by seeing T-Pain having his own custom bedazzled version. And this is someone who was last week was like, don't put jewels on smartwatches for women. It's so offensive. And now I'm like, I love T-Pain's though.

Yeah. So that I would say go, I would say by two of them. Sport band is the best part about it. it. Like one is orange and one is green or something. Yeah. And he just, it's like key effect. No, it's definitely the IKEA effect. Do you know, do I said this on this show before? Probably a thousand times. Um, things in IKEA look good because you walk in and you see a hundred of them at once in every possible color. It's like, you're like, yes, I will buy. This coffee table is great.

Yeah. Because there's like, there's like 90 of them in every color of the rainbow like stretching the sky. And then you come home, you've got like one sad blue coffee table. And you're like, oh, this wasn't cool because I don't have 10 of them. Bed Bath and Beyond does that too Are they stack merchandise Repeating all the way to the ceiling? Yeah But no, but that's like

I mean it's different It's different merchandise The Triple B is like not as cool You know like IKEA's like I went for it I don't know what the point What do you want for me Try to liven it up

I want you to not call Who doesn't call it the Triple B Triple B only refers to the Better Business Bureau Okay I'm just saying No but I think in a bed bath and beyond also colloquially known as the triple B.

What about the trip B? Tri-B, yeah. Trip B-3. Try B3. B-3. B-cubed? No, B-3. That took it too far.

You know that there's like a shittier version of Bed Bath and Beyond in a prototype store somewhere called B-3. Like there has to be. It's like the crappier one with like a lower quality cell. No, no, no. It's a crate and barrel. CB2.

CB2. Right. And that's the day CB2 launched, the people at Bed Bath and Beyond, we're like, Larry, come in here. B-2. It's like a. Yeah, it's like, they're all riding on the whiteboard, and he's like, I got it. There's that B3.

The person is a charge of strategy at Bedbeth and Beyond is definitely named Larry. Totally Larry. Larry, get in here. Larry, you see these crate and barrel fuckers are doing? I don't know. They're not even competitors. They're just constantly worried about. It's just like, oh, man.

We sell storage bins too. Damn it. Anyway. Container soar in the men. I mean, okay, anyway, back to the IKEA effect, which then if we step one more back where we're at the watch. Oh, the new version of the watch software lets you, it's going to support two watches at once. Multiple watches. It's going to be a thing.

Wait. Wow. Yeah. Why? So, presumably because they're going to put out a new watch next year, and then you can buy two of them and they'll both work. Or you can buy a support one and a fashion one. So you can have, like, you'll be able to have more than one watch. so you could buy that Hermes one but then you would wear like your sport one to the gym

but you're just changing the band ideally no i think that there's no there's like a finish like you've got the black or you have like you could have that one and then you could have the rose gold for like other occasions yeah right and you're still just tracking your steps you're doing your thing i don't know if i don't know if that's going to unlock it for them but it's something they needed to solve yeah for some people i don't know if that was the highest priority thing maybe that means they'll make a circle they put out a second one they got to get everybody to buy a second one That is true. That's true.

I mean... I should sell my first one now before they put out the second one. Is it clear, by the way, that I'm completely fascinated by the Apple Watch? Like, we talk about it on the show a lot. And I just think it's the thing that Apple made. It's the first thing they made completely without jobs. It's the first expression of a strategy to be a more fashionable, high-end premium company. It is...

I mean, I was saying this to Walt on his show yesterday. They announced it by saying that the digital crown will be as important as the mouse multi-touch and the click wheel, which is a high bar. It's the first, it's a pretty high bar for it. It's the first platform that they had launched in a while that didn't, wasn't good. Right. And it's just like it's, it's such a bet, like they have to get it right. Right. And they can't, they can't cut bait on it for a long time.

Right? They just can't. And I'm, and I'm a huge nerd. I think the idea of like a gadget watch is like great idea. And so like everything about it just like draws my attention to it. Like far away like the TV is like if you've been listening to show. I've talked about TV on every episode of a show for like a thousand years, right? Like we can talk about Apple TV all day, but like they're just going to get it.

It's just going to, it's just going to sort itself out. They have the best TV platform of anybody. They just need to cut deals, right? Right. Is that what they need though? Because I feel like other people are doing the exact same thing and other people do have deals. Like what are they going to do that? Nobody has a streaming TV deal.

And nobody else is. That's true. Sling does. I mean, okay. But like, the Sling doesn't have a box. Is it really that exciting to use a box? Sony has a box and a deal. The PlayStation TV thing? Yeah.

Right, like, why is Apple's going to be any different? Other than the fact that individual. No, but they've got the PS4 and they've got a view. Right. Just saying. Yeah. Their box is more expensive, but, you know. The view, how much of the view?

The PlayStation View service. Right. It's in the PS4. Right. That's what I'm saying. So, but that's not. not quite, that's not quite, right? They have the deal because they have a limited market share.

The same way Apple got the music deal for iTunes because they had limited market share and they put on a Mac first. Right. Sling is on... Xbox and... Right, it's like, it's on these little piddly devices limited market share. Yeah.

Apple has the mass market opportunity. Their platform is the best one. Like, it's actually a computer unlike the Roku. Like, you can see the Roku like rebooting into whatever crappy mode. I have a lot of hopes for Apple TV. But it is like basically the same. thing as the Roku.

No, no, no, no, the user experience, like the thing that happens at the end. It's all, they're all the same. My Apple TV is buggy's hell, by the way. The apps are way worse than they were on the last version of the Apple TV. The new Netflix app on the new Apple TV is a garbage fire. It's great. Totally wrong. I am.

I think the remote's... I had to unplug the thing and plug it back in because it wouldn't pause. I guess what I'm saying is... Also, the remote's garbage. I hate the Apple TV. Everybody kind of hates the remote. But it's what we use. I have a Roku.

I have a... Firestick. I have Chromecast and we still use the Apple TV even though I'm like frustrated with it. I love the new Chromecast. It's great. But it's really, anyway, my point is that they will just do the Apple thing and slowly iterate on the Apple TV and it will get better because it's obvious what it should do and it's obvious what they need it to do. It needs to let you watch live TV. Yeah. There's no there's no confusion about that path. Right. Yeah. So like great. We can complain about it. We can say you like it and I don't like who whatever. It's just the watch is like. It needs a path. And the thing is that I find super interesting is like Apple has these crazy ideas

that it's going to be this communication device, right? There are two buttons on this thing. One of them is dedicated to a messaging feature that zero people will use. Zero people. And one of the reports right now is that like the next one's going to have a camera on it which I assume will be for like sending little videos

to other people. Or FaceTime. In what circumstance would I face it on launch? That's the most Dick Tracy shit though, right? I mean, that's something that if Samsung did, we would, like, laugh at them. I think they might have done it. I don't know.

Almost certainly. Samsung was like, this watch is great for creep shots, and it was like, yeah. That was the first gear, remember? Right, right. Yeah, it was on the band for, for spy shots or something. Like, I don't know.

But, like, that is this crazy vision to me. I feel like that's not what the watch is, like, obviously for. I mean, it's really interesting that they have these, like, broader ideas and they're trying to do something that most people aren't with smart watches. But like, it would be cool if they nailed, like,

one thing first. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the big question. So, like, our perfect notification's going to sell more, more watches than, like, adding another feature that someone might want to FaceTime for them.

It's like, I don't know. I honestly don't, like, that's, this comes back to the point. Like, we as a group have seen a lot of things and the path for many products is, usually clear, but smartwatches is a whole path not clear. It's like, here's what they should do and they can get better at this, but that's not going to open the billion unit market. I know.

Anyway, we need a lightning round. You ready? By the way, if you know what the Apple Watch would do, tweet at us. Has anybody tweeted you a cool object? Cool technology. Let me look. I copied you on the photos of Young Thug. Somebody pointed out that I've now explained the IKEA effect on the wordchast for like

100 times. Thus, my first time here. Just, just, effectively IKEA affecting the IKEA effect. Yeah, yeah, there you go.

Damn it. Yeah, no one's screaming anything. There's nothing, I'm telling you the iPod was the first mass market cool piece of technology. Other than like,

the color TV or something. You know, it's like, but that doesn't count. There's got to be a picture of like James Dean doing something cool with some gadget somewhere. Yeah, it was called a cigarette.

It was a startling innovation. He rolled it up into his t-shirt sleeve and everyone was like, that mess. is a master of cool. Packed cigarettes? Yeah, a pack, not a single cigarette.

I was envisioning him rolling a single cigarette. You don't he tried that one time, right? He's like, ah, he's like, I don't know, this one's not working. All right. Oh, two important ones, lightning around we can open up with some deep, deep cuts, not deep cuts, deep issues. Netflix keeps defending binj on, which is crazy to me. It's insane. Benjohn is T-Mobile's data throttling service, and Netflix was one of the biggest proponents

of net neutrality. and then Verizon launch sponsored data which lets companies buy data so it doesn't your data plan. So TC and Russell are upstairs and they're like we need a new name for this like we won net neutrality but now there's like a new kind of fuckery

afoot where everyone's dodging around it by making anti-net neutrality things free and I just I don't know what we would call it but it's very strange like binjohn is like you can make an argument for bin John it's free so like if you are T-Mobile customer and you want to watch videos,

we made them free. So, like, devious about, like, sponsored data in the first place. Like, if you're telling me I can stream Spotify for free, like, that is awesome. So, like, of course I want that. Yeah. I've been thinking about this. Like, yeah, that sounds fine. Here's the thing that I would rather they do.

Just up my data cap. Like, the idea that T-Mobile is going to stream all this massive amount of video and this massive amount of music for free. and like just give away all this data, maybe just up your, they're like, let's it go back to the limit. But they're throttling it.

The video, they're not straight, they're cutting it because they're throttling it. Right. So any video. So they're actually saving data on the video. Right. And I think this is the real issue the TCU is pointing out to me. It's beyond just knowing, like working with Netflix to cut down on their data rate.

Yeah. Because that's like one thing. Right. Netflix and T-Mobile have made a deal. If you're a Netflix customer or your T-Mobile customer, you can flip the switch. Netflix will intelligently cut your video quality. You want to hit your cap.

And I'm the most rabid net neutrality proponent out there. But fine. Right. Like, fine. If you can opt into that as a customer of both companies, you are expressing a market preference. That is cool. Right.

You want higher quality video, put the switch, whatever. Fine. I'm not like in love with it, but fine. But they're also doing like deep packet incentives. inspection so that if you are downloading videos, they will identify your video packets and throttle just those across the board. That shit's dirty. Yep. And like that, like, well, the other thing that's dirty to me is like when I buy internet service from somebody, I buy a certain speed and I'm like, if I want more, I'll pay for more. And the idea that the quality of my service is

being affected by backroom deals. Right. Even though they're like telling me about them after they happen, even though like there's not costing me more money. Like it is a, it is like this weird corruption of net neutrality. It isn't quite a corruption of net neutrality. Right. It's just like it's, I feel the same way about it that I feel about like searching inside

apps from like Google. Like Google and Siri can search inside an app now, right? Like I can search for a restaurant information and I can dig right. into the OpenTable app. That's great. But you know how that works? A deal. Backroom deal between OpenTable and Google and Apple.

Not just like, here's how to read our app. Anybody can do it. And now that's happening with like access to everything on the internet. So yeah, we need a new name. Net fuckery. I don't think that's going to take off. Well, paid neutrality. That's awful.

Paid neutrality. That's awful. People are tweeting. Keep bring them in. Bring them in. Anyway, Uber takes on seamless. Uber's now delivering food in 10 U.S. cities. Yeah.

They've been doing that for a while. TeamRacked regularly does the Uber Eats. Yeah, what's Uber Eats like? Like every day there's one or two different food things to choose from, and they're like, pretty, like, 10 bucks or so for lunch. So why would you do that over Seameless? Well, because they'll do restaurants, so they'll do chefs that are like, cool, you know? So you don't Uber Rush?

Yes. So why can't I use Uber Rush myself? I wanted to Uber Rush my glasses back from my apartment down to me here. You can't schedule a pickup? You can only Uber Rush from businesses, I thought. Anyway. Well, this edition of the lining around is coming to close. Minecraft Education Edition is announced.

I'm like a little pumped about this. It's like for $5 per student, schools can like put Minecraft, like, give Minecraft to all their students. They can use it at school. They can use it at home. they're building a web Microsoft's building a website where teachers can go to share like Minecraft worlds and lesson

plans like I think this could actually be really cool it's a lot of work to do they haven't actually done that much what do you learn on it you got to play Minecraft yeah well that's the thing you don't necessarily learn on it you're literally just playing Minecraft but like you're inside a human eyeball yeah they've made it so you can share the

Minecraft world with a single file which is new and so like someone built an eyeball and you can go wander around it like you can go tour the Parthenon and Minecraft. Yeah. We had a speed typing game that was basketball related. Yeah. I was number two and look at me now.

I, um, my niece and I'm favorite addicted to Minecraft. And they were like, we play it in our computer class. And I was like, hmm, do you know, like my computer class? Like, I actually learned to type on gigantic green typewriters. And they were like, tell me. They like literally looked at me. They like, tell me about them. We had the Macs that were the colors.

They were like kind of circular in the back. They were like, I think they were like fruit colors. IMAX? You had IMAX? You didn't have high school in grade school? You're not that much younger than me. Are you really?

1988, birth. Oh, God. We had, yeah, the ones that had the color. I think they were called, they had fruit names. I had tangerine, strawberry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I had Apple 2ies. I want to kill myself right now. I mean, it doesn't matter because my body is dying all on its own. I played logo. Because of old age. Mine is too. But yeah, but you've, I hate you.

You're all younger than me. Shut up. Sundance is starting. Righty Sundance. Netflix. bought two movies, Amazon bought a movie already. Yeah, which is interesting. Jameson was saying, like, apparently last year they, like, had a little bit of trouble

like getting deals done to buy movies and, like, the fact that they're already before the show, scooping all the stuff up. Yeah. I mean, maybe that just means that filmmakers have warmed up to them or that they brought more money out. I think they have more money. I think they both want to win way more. Like, they were no Oscars for them, right?

Maybe there was, like, one editing one. I don't even know. But no Oscar and answer. Amazon Netflix. I think they want, that's the next prize for them. They got to make some friends with some old white dudes.

By the way, Netflix shutting down the VPN stuff. Brutal. Brutal. Last one. It's a group, group participation exercise. Are you going to watch Super Bowl?

Yeah, it's a cultural relevant product. I love being part of the now. Are you going to watch Facebook or Twitter while you watch Super Bowl? I don't have Facebook. Wild new information. What?

Longstanding. When did you drop Facebook? 2010. Oh, we're going to talk about this on the next Vergecast. That's the sole topic. No, I only rejoined it

when I was at Ract and I had to post articles and then I went off of again and then I rejoined it for Tinder and then I quit that habit so I don't have it. Huh. So Twitter then is your answer?

Twitter is my answer. Wow. Does Trey have a Facebook? Trey Shallahorn? I don't know. You have to have it to have Tinder. Oh.

You can't have... He doesn't have a Twitter. It's really hard to tweet. Someone made him a Twitter. Yeah. By the way, for all of you this thing, so video producer. You wouldn't know him because he doesn't have a Twitter in this.

He's not a person. Dieter, Facebook or Twitter for the super rule. I mean, traditionally Twitter, but I guess I'm going to try out this new Facebook jam, see what it's like. I'm ready to leave Twitter. Who's going to be on the Super Bowl? Twitter stock is, you know,

there's two games left to play, so I don't know the answer. But I can hazard a guess. Can we hazard a guess? It's the Panthers and the Patriots. The Panthers are going to win. Yeah, that's my guess. That's how it's going to go.

Okay. I only say this because... I went to the NFL headquarters yesterday. I went to the NFL headquarters yesterday. Oh, yeah? Oh, wow. Did you meet Roger Goodell? Did he find you?

Did you see somebody that looked at... Why did you go to NFL headquarters yesterday? Because they did 50 bespoke footballs with the CFDA Council of Fashion Designers of America. So they got fashion designer to do footballs. Matt Alfred and I went and had... Oh, I saw this on Snap. A real blast. Yeah.

Or much more to come from that. I didn't realize that. was at NFL headquarters. Yes. Very nice. Man. All right. I'm dying to see that. Um, but I'm just saying I'm over Twitter. That's my thing. You're over Twitter? I think Twitter. What about Twitter are you?

Twitter's like, Twitter is like, I just watched like. Who should buy them? Who should buy Twitter? I think they should go away. Do you do it's News Corp? That's then. That would be amazing. I just, I don't, I don't see. I don't see. I'm not getting. I'm not getting it. I'm not getting it. I'm not getting it. I, the most value to get out of Twitter is when we're on this show and

I'm like, tweet it me. if you have a thing. People talk to me. The value I get out of the Twitter community is like basically fall into zero. Well, what did you used to get? Like, I got the value of the Twitter. Like, there was like lots of people tweeting

and it wasn't like a competition. And it wasn't like, there weren't like fucking GamerGators. You know, like it wasn't. Too many people. No, it was. It's not that. It's what, like, following people is like whatever. Like, I, that will, I guess always go out.

With like participating in Twitter is a thing. Right. And getting like, feeling good about what happens once you tweet. basically like was really high and then like last month I was just like am I getting anything out of this? I'm having so much fun yeah yeah I'm having great time on Twitter yeah maybe I need a new account and I do really want a private account like a shadow Twitter yeah I want a private account for my personal life shadow reckless that's also the name of my like Japanese all girl band shadow reckless that's great yeah what should it be reckless shadow that's good yeah um

Facebook, Twitter, for the Super Bowl. I mean, I don't care about, like, the sports stuff. So just Twitter. I just want to see what, like, people I know are saying. Yeah. And, like, I don't think people actually post live updates on Facebook. Yeah. I think if Facebook enables that, that's them saying we're done, like, turning the knife on you jack.

Yeah. You're done Twitter. Anyway, that was our show. And this podcast, I have to see what Liz Lepato has to say about the new X-File series right now. It's on the internet. Okay. Look, here's what you can do. You can follow the verge on Twitter.

We're at verge. But who's using it? that anymore. You can like us on Facebook, which is the future. More future is on Snapchat. We're Virge on Snapchat. You can hit us up on iTunes. There are so many other podcasts now.

There's What's Tech with the Plant. He did What's Sundance with Emily Ishita. Walt and I, we've talked about Control Out Delete us several times. It went up today. We talked about the Apple Watch. Verge ESP is back. I know they recorded today. Weekly.

It's back. It's weekly. They recorded today. I think Emily was at Sundance when they recorded in the episodes on Fridays. And then Verge extras are like literally a podcast full of extras has the full Jake and T-Pain interview also hitting on Friday. I literally only found out about this this second. I read the script and I was like, oh, that's great.

Yeah. Because we chatted it for a long time. Yeah, it's going to be good. It's going to be good. It's going to be good. Yeah. Kara Swisher on Recode has Recode decode, which is great if you're into tech and media. Peter Kafka also helps host that.

And then Lauren Good. Yeah. Virgast's favorite, Lauren Good, has her own new podcast. Can't Stop It with Kara. called Too Embarrassed to ask where she answers your deck questions. It's true. All this on iTunes.com

slash The Verge except for the recode ones. We found the record page. Just like whatever. Just like locate them, right? Anyway, you're on YouTube. Search for the Vergecast. Nicola is Nicola underscore Fumo.

On Twitter, if you still use it. Snapchat's my real medium. It's true. Nicola Fumo altogether. Nicola has some like deep Snapchat game. Mm-hmm. It gets real on that. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't hold back. Yeah. My favorite one the other day was when she had one that was like, where's Kwame? And there was a video. Oh yeah. When Spotify party,

when Fabulous played. I mean, this is what happens. Kwame and I are at Fabulous parties. Literally on my Snapchat. It's the best. It's what you should be doing in your free time. It's like,

where's Kwame? And then there's Kwame just like getting down. Yes. It's amazing. Actually, I was like, Quamey, hold on. I had to take a video of you because it's part of the story. It's good.

Dieter's at Backlon. That's right. I'm at Reckless. Jake is at Jake underscore K. We're available to you, 24 or 7 on the tweets. I don't know. Whatever.

It's been so long. Anyway, that was Vergecast. It's wonderful having you here. We'll be back next week where Nicola is going to tell us why she quit Facebook for an hour. One hour. Interrupted by a Backway's ad. That's it. Rock and Roll.

Oh, by the way, thanks to Backways for paying for this. Yeah. That was great. This. Backways. Hit it. Hit it. Hit it.

Rock and roll.