The Vergecast - SXSW Films, Fasten, and Pandora Premium

Episode Date: March 14, 2017

On Sunday, Nilay and Dieter brought The Vergecast to Austin, TX for South by Southwest 2017 and streamed it live on Facebook. Today we did it again! This time, we welcome culture reporter Megan Farokhmanesh and senior editor Chris Plante on to talk about what happened so far in the culture world at SXSW, most notably the film festival. Also, with addition to more tech news that’s happened since Sunday, we open the floor for questions from the audience. 01:58 - Atomic Blonde is a good movie improved by an exceptional soundtrack 04:54 - The new Pennywise terrified the young cast of Stephen King’s IT reboot 14:54 - A short film gets to the heart of being targeted by an internet mob 25:14 - Paul’s weekly segment “Stronger Together” 28:07 - Sure, slap an Android touchscreen on some headphones. Why not? 29:33 - Fasten / Ride Austin 35:10 - Tag Heuer and Intel are making another $1,600 Android Wear smartwatch 39:36 - Pandora Premium 45:47 - audience Q&A Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast to Theverge.com. I'm Nealai Patel. I am Dieter Bohn. Megan Furkmanesh is here. Megan Furkmanesh, that's me. That's you. Who are you? Hi, I'm Christopher Thomas Planned.

Who's this interloper? The fourth guest and the best guest. Oh, God. This is going to be a disaster. If you're listening to this, you know, we've done one live show at Southwest Southwest, Southwest, at National Geographic's Further. Base Camp, base brand. Yeah.

This is our second show. Megan and Chris are here to tell us about South West Southwest. We've got an audience. Audience, tell the people in the cars what you sound like. like, that's good. They're really loud. A lot of car accidents just happened. Turn left.

That's great. It's just a really angry navigation system. What if we did a podcast where we actually hired somebody who does voice navigation and just had them randomly shout commands? That's actually a great, like you download a podcast and it just tells you where to go. And then like there's a prize. Well, there's a thing where there's like a city tour podcasting you can do. Hey, everybody.

Deeter knows about the nerdiest podcast in the world. It's from the guy who used to run Groupon and you like around from whatever. Oh, yeah, the guy I run Groupon. Everything's a success. Anyway, Megan and Chris, how are you guys doing? So Chris actually lives in Austin. How are you doing? Talk to us. Just kidding. No, I just, I want you.

These are our culture reporters. You actually live here. I'm an editor. Chris is also fired. No, but you live in Austin. I do. South by must be a weird experience for you. You've been running around seeing movies and panels.

How are things going? Pretty good. This is actually my first time in Austin and at South by Southwest. I'm used to covering gaming conventions. I got to say this is way better. Chris, what are you? Yeah, I have not done pretty much

any of the South by Southwest because I live in North Austin. I was like, what if I don't deal with traffic? I had an allergy attack. That was pretty good. Yeah. That lasted for two days. Oh, man.

Oh, yeah, the Groupon bit was not A-plus. But, Bang, let's start with you. You went and saw Atomic Wond, the new Shirley's Theron movie. Tell us it all about it. Okay, so Atomic Blonde is, it's by the same people that did John Wick. So it's kind of like John Wick was Charlie Steren, which is the best pitch I can get for it. It's sort of like a spy, punch people, shoot people kind of movie.

It's a good description. Yeah. Yeah, so it's said right before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in Germany. And Charlize Theron makes out with ladies and punches people, and it's a great movie. Yeah. What was the vibe like around? I feel like the action movie world, all that stuff has been comic books. movies for so long, but now we're seeing other things.

This is actually based on a comic book. Of course it's technically a comic book. Really? It's inspired by a comic book. I will say when I saw the trailer for this, I wasn't, I hadn't been tracking the movie and so the trailer came as like, oh my God, this movie exists. And I watch it and the one fight scene on the stairs looked amazing. But

like somewhere deep in my heart, I didn't trust that it would be good, that I was worried it would feel super derivative of John Wick or it would you know, like when there's a really good action movie two years later, there's like, well, that movie was good. What if I try to do that? And it utterly fails. Is this that? Okay.

Wow. It sounds to get really serious. It's about to get serious. No, the movie itself is really fun. The story makes no fucking sense. Like, happy through, I'm just like, who's doing what? Okay, whatever. Charlie Serran is punching another person. This is cool. I say if you see it, it's more for the action. It's more for like the vibe of the film, which is very like 80s synth pop. The soundtrack is fucking awesome. It's just like Bowie and Depeche, Mode and all of your favorite 80s hits just like jammed into one movie. Which Depeche Mode song. This is important.

It's probably more than one. The good one. Okay. That guy agrees with you. The good one. I mean, we were talking about how great it is that Charlie's Theron finally gets to make this movie because she's been attached to this project longer than the John Wick people. Oh, wow.

And like, if you go back and look at Charlie's Theron's career, she, like, did all the, like, great performances early and were, like, other actresses were kind of shoehorned into rom-coms. She was just quietly doing action roles, but they were all bad ones. They're like, you want to do an action movie? Well, there's another slot in reindeer games. How about reindeer games? And she's like, I don't know, I'll make it work. And then she did I Influx.

And Flux. And Flux. And like killed her career for, I don't know, five years. And has, like, worked her way back up to finally being an action star. Like a legit one, not having to share the role with Mad Max Fury Road. Yeah. Right. It's like, it's good.

That's like a great. I'm just really worried that 80s music has now become like the nostalgic classic rock of our time. 80s music is that a problem? What you thought classic rock was when you were a teenager is now the 80s. Like that, look at the years and that's where you live now. Hello, fellow kids. Let's talk about Snapchat for a while. That's going to be great.

So you also saw It, or Parts of It. Not the full movie. I saw a couple clips, two clips. Yeah, so the clip they played the first one was that famous scene where, Georgie loses his boat and you see him go to the sewer and then it kind of briefly pops up. We don't see anything happen, but I would guess it's going to be pretty brutal more so than the original.

Because you've seen the original, like, the miniseries? Yeah, and it kind of just like, you get that close up on Tim Curry's teeth and then that's it. You're like, go to the dentist and, like, it ends. How much does it look like an original scary movie and how much is like, I don't know, there's like this aesthetic of like modern scary movies now with Annabelle and, like, the conjuring that's just like...

I also saw some clips from that. Let me tell you about that. Oh, yeah? Was it great? No. You like scary dolls? Okay, to be fair, I think it's really hard to make dolls scary. What?

Hard disagree. It's hard to make dolls anything but scary. They're inherently terrifying. I don't, I don't know, you guys. Any doll that's bigger than, like, a G.I. Joe or a Barbie is freaky as hell. Are you also afraid of the hatchimal that lives on my desk? Yes. I'm just going to start leaving.

Yes, please don't talk about the hatchmble anymore. No, I don't think dolls are that creep. Just take. Okay, I grew up with dolls and y'all are like babies. Oh my God. Maybe it's that. That's true. Maybe it's that.

Take any video of a doll, slow it down by half, and you have a guaranteed horror movie. Please make those videos and tweet them at Backlon. Just go home and film your dolls and put creepy music over them and tweet them directly either. Okay. Back to the creepy doll movie. We saw two clips from it, and it's little girls specifically, which I do think are really creepy with a creepy doll. But at one point during the clip, the, like, doll turns... No, no, no, there's like a little girl that pops up.

I wasn't paying that much attention. I'll be enough attention. You were over Annabelle before it again. A little bit. Well, okay, all I'm saying is at one point there's this creepy little girl that shows up. The other little girl who's like got like a messed up leg and busted leg. She's like, oh, like, are you okay? Do you need anything?

The little girl's like, yeah, I need help. And she's like, what do you need? And the girl turns around and her face goes crazy. And she's like, you're a soul. And I'm like, dude, are you serious? Yeah. Like, she could have done it. She could have just turned around and been creepy-faced and been so much better.

Yeah. But I want to keep talking about It, though. Because It, to me, is like... You don't want to hear about Animal TV? No. I want to hear about It. It doesn't turn into a, like, a... By the way, the fact that Annabelle is, like, a legit cinematic universe that exists is very wrong. Because all those movies end in, like, farce.

Like, they all start really creepy and mystic, and they are, like, the hunters go in. And at the end, it's, like, they're just shooting silly string at each other and being like, I'm dying! And it's, like, very confusing. And I don't know what they can be in those movies. But It, to me, is a defining movie. Like it's set a whole tone There's a whole comeback revival With Stranger Things around that vibe

Is the new It the same I think so In fact one of the little kids from Stranger Things is in it Of course, yeah It's making good money I'm sure Yeah so we had that replay that classic scene And I have to say like knowing what's coming And knowing that this is rated our movie in 2017

You're like this is going to be brutal So it's like just so tense the entire time And of course like how do I for anything You know like seriously scary happens plays Pennywise in the new hit? Bill Scarsgard. That's right. He's like the younger Scarskard.

A million feet tall. Yeah. The scariest Scars guard. He's like, yeah. So the director's there and he's saying, he was like, oh, Bill and his costume is terrifying because he's like seven feet tall and is like muttering to himself in Swedish all the time. So he actually talked about how during filming, like they tried to keep Bill away from the kids for as long as possible. So, you know, obviously they have to have the encounter at some point.

So they finally bring in pill in his whole Pennywise get up. And he's like, oh, the kids freak the fuck out. Because he's apparently just like creepy. like muttering and drooling at all times. Yeah, so the second clip is them investigating this, like, sewer. They're looking for this girl, I guess, who's gone missing. They find her shoe.

And it's just, like, a lot of tension and buildup and, like, two dorky little kids that don't want to go in. I don't know, it looks... I mean, so I know that, like, sequel, I-ness, and, like, making cinematic universes is a thing. But I'm a little bummed at, like,

there's already rumors about part two. It's supposedly, like, going into production now. So someone actually asked about that, and the guy was like, no, that's just, they're misunderstanding. That's not happening. But I think that's probably about it. Everything will be a cinematic universe.

I will tell you at breakfast today, we discussed the creation of the Red Dawn cinematic universe. If there's any agents out there, Dieter is a film. Looking to ruin their careers. Everything is a universe now. That's a thing. I think because everyone really just wants to make a six-part Netflix documentary and not a movie.

Right. To do that to it, I think, is really, that seems dangerous. I don't know. I think that if you really want to get into, I mean, the original was a mini-series, right? I was going to do. There's a lot to dig into. I think that having a two-part thing

is not the worst idea. Yeah. It's funny. I never think about it as a miniseries. I think about it as one long, bad thing that happened to me when I was a kid, and now I'm scared of clowns.

Now it can be two bad things that are going to happen to you as an adult. Of course. Chris, I know you've been editing a lot of stuff. Brian saw a bunch of really neat movies, and then I want to talk about the social media bullying short film that you saw. Oh, yes.

The indie film is. Because the tech side of South By is very quiet this year. I've legitimately had more conversations of people about what up with Apple than anything they're doing to not be pitched on new things to South By. We can get done with Tech at South By in like one sentence which is the app economy is dead and so everybody

just wants to talk about putting implants in your brain. Nobody knows what's launching next year so they only want to talk about what's launching in the next 25 years. That's Tech at South By as far as I can tell. I mean, do you think tech feels like slow here because that time of I'll go with my app and like my three buddies and like maybe we'll make a splash just kind of come and go and now it's like, hey, I'll see you at the Georgia O'R.

Money booth. Yeah. Like, that's where the real party's at. I think that's part of it. I think it's also just like the ability for somebody to make it big with an app is much rarer than it used to be. Yeah. You are better off actually trying to land the Netflix documentary series than you

are trying to fight through the app store. Yeah. Right? And it's much harder to fight through the apps. Like, the technical skill required to code an app is still like higher than like, I wrote a pitch. Like, they've been. become equivalently hard. And I think so here you're just seeing a lot of hard work in

terms of what kind of media can be distributed on all these platforms as opposed to what kind of app can I distribute through one platform that Apple controls and takes 30% cut. Yeah. And it's weird. Like you just see sort of as the money goes, the energy and effort goes with it. I haven't seen a single app here. Like the apps, we're going to talk about them soon. The apps that most people have talked about here have been fastened in right Austin. And not because they're like new big ideas, it's because everyone has to use that. Yeah.

But let's take on culture for a minute. Like, what else have you seen here? Well, I mean, I think kind of the thing that would connect all the stuff that we've seen down here together is kind of based off the idea that you said of like it feels like movies have done really well down here. And I think that's because a point you had made earlier, it's like a marketing festival. Maybe this is Dieter and not a film festival. Like they call it the South by Southwest film festival, which is a very fun charade.

But like, you only can go to one screening per show. There's no PRs or publicity screenings. There aren't like three or four showings. There's one. And like you either get in or you don't. And then like some buyers are there and it builds a lot of hype. And then they like release a the first trailer alongside it. So it's kind of a smart, safe way to promote a lot of movies that companies aren't sure how they're going to promote down the line.

So what we saw was it, a horror movie that they know is vaguely like stranger things. But clearly do not know how to promote yet. because it turns out that it's about a shape-shifting spider demon that's like the size of the world. Sorry. It was like the most pathetic sorry I've ever given anybody.

I'm sorry. You actually rolled your eyes. Oh, sorry. But there's that. There is a baby driver, which is an Edgar Wright movie. And Edgar Wright is notorious for making things that are good slash nobody sees.

But they do like buy the posters and put them in their dorm rooms. There are, I know, a lot of neurons are going to be really mad that I said Edgar Wright movies. So low hissing sound. I know. I'm sorry. There's a reason he didn't get making it, man.

A lot of poster buyers are real pissed at you. I like them anyway. There was also, what was the other one? The disaster artist. Yeah. Which the rumor is that like, that's made by Warner Brothers. And Warner Brothers is like, I don't know, we hope somebody likes it. If you want to buy it, maybe it's for sale.

Which is like a weird thing to do at a film festival. Like a company straight up made a movie, brought it to a film festival, knows it's good, but kind of wants to unload it. Yeah. is like the rumor. Like, I think that's what's so interesting about South Bay as a film festival is it's not. It's become this, like, public showcase for kind of good genre films that companies need to at least see how they perform in front of their fans so they can get a general idea of how to sell them three or four months from now.

Right. Which I just can't think of anything quite like that. Yeah. I mean, I think that that aspect of it, because it's weird, it's like a smaller show this year. But we have always found out if we put the letters SX, SW in a headline on the verge, like people will actively avoid it.

They'll run away from that story. And we have like in a headline tester tool. We can A-B-Test test our headlines. And we put the South by Southwest Southline and then any other headline, like garbage words. People are like, yeah, that seems more interesting than the South-Buy headline. And so I wonder if that's even effective.

Like we built hype at South by Southwest versus we're going to start marketing this. I mean, it's also like what I think South by Southwest means so many different things to so many different people this time, which makes it, I think, like, kind of a dynamic place to be, but a hard place to express. When it's like, well, there's digital, is there still sports? No. There's education. Yeah.

There's video games. There's film. There's VR. There's Giorgio Armani. Yeah. Who's just living that high life that Georgia does. Like, there's so many things. I think it's kind of hard to condense it.

Yeah. And yet we try. We desperately try. So Megan, you saw a movie that I really want to talk about. Because I'm fascinated with the idea of how we experience, like, social media. And it's, like, really lonely.

It's like, a lot of people are talking to me, and there's no way for me to communicate those emotions out. But you saw a movie that tried to do it. Well, a short film. I saw two films that I want to talk about because I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm, well, you guys know it, audience. I write about internet culture.

Internet culture, which is, I think, one of the most underrepresented things in TV and movies today. Like we have Black Mirror, but Black Mirror is so, it's satirical, right? And it takes everything to like nine all the time. But we don't have anything that accurately depicts how we all use online media, which is crazy considering how big it is in everyone's lives. So this week I saw a 15-minute short called I Know You From Somewhere that was honestly fantastic. It's very funny.

It's very dark. And it's about this girl who is internet shamed. Like this video goes viral of her getting into a fight with her boyfriend and her friend. And what she's saying is misheard as being racist, and it's not actually what she says. People think she dropped like an N-bomb, and it's like, nope, that's not what she said at all. And so her life spirals, right? Like, people are tearing her part online. It's making her, like, wary of being out in public.

Anytime anybody kind of, like, gives her, like, a weird side look, she thinks that it's, like, someone who's recognized her. And it's, like, at one point, she's entering her job, and she has to, like, explain, like, oh, you used a fake name because if you Google my name, like, all these things come up, but, like, I'm not racist, and that didn't happen. Like, let me tell you this story. And it's really good. and it's a fascinating examination of how easy it is to, like, lose your life to something

that didn't actually happen or to be picked apart by people who have never even met you. Yeah. Chris, you were really skeptical of this movie, right? I am. Yeah, I mean, no, I think that sounds good. I didn't see this movie. Like, my opinion does that matter?

Basically, what my strategy is right now is, like, Megan, provides, like, good, condensed information. Megan, who actually saw the movie? And then Chris does something insane. All I'm saying is... And tries to wreck Georgie Armani again. I'm surprised that, make it.

I just love his brain. And he's done such a good job with that parking lot. Would you believe it? That's an activation. There's like a dome, right? I don't know. I looked at it for two seconds and I was like, oh, I'm going to save that. That's going to be a good bit.

It's really paid off. No, I was surprised because I was, we were talking about this while I was editing it. And I was shocked because both of us have harassed. Yeah, I think all four of us. Yeah. There's a reason that I'm like, I'm just. so interested in this. Like these are experiences that happen to people all the time now. But they're

really isolating experiences. Exactly. And so it's interesting because the guy who made the film doesn't actually use social media. And I was like how in the world, because I'm like this is very authentic to, you know, the reporting I've done because I've been doing this for years, like before I was in games where this happened really commonly and is still happening. Yeah,

he's just like it happens so often. It's like all you have to do is read a news story. It's really easy to like kind of understand what's going on. So there was like five years where movies and TV shows didn't know what to do with phones. The idea that people had phones was very confusing narratively. And now they're just like, fuck it, shoot the iPhone. They don't make up the fake interfaces anymore, right?

They just put the text bubbles on the screen. They just show you the iPhone, right? But like there was a long process of figuring out how to display the technology or much more hilariously, like figure out the narrative leap that meant the person lost their phone. Right. And like that's still a solve that's used. But there's like, oh, no service, darn. Yeah.

Oh, no, the next murder is coming. Oh, no, I have an iPhone and the battery died because I updated the software. Now the plot can continue. My phone was at 30% It died for some reason. That's actually a great plot point. Like someone accidentally updates iOS and there's badly suddenly dies.

Their alarms all get fucked up. If anyone's here an agent, I have a number of ideas for a horror movie. That is legitimately the only actual progress bar that is real and not just there for the plot. We should make a movie that's just a progress bar of iOS updating. Yeah. You have 15 minutes to survive. But no, like, it's just interesting that the art community

had to figure out how to communicate those experiences. Because it's young people. Like, young people are the ones on social media, and we're the ones that are experienced. Like, you and I are old now, but we do this for our job. I don't know if you've seen Chris's impression of a grumpy old man, but he's been doing it for about 20 minutes now. Called my life.

No, I was surprised that you dug this movie, and the only reason was because, so it's about a woman who, she's misunderstood as being racist, and then it becomes a victim, or is attacked by online harassers. And I can't think of a time where that's happened, I think like usually two things happen. Well, I would say one is somebody does something that is like bad or really bad, and then they get mobbed.

Like when the woman... You're talking about Justin Seiko. Yeah, Justin Seiko. Yeah, the thing is, so I have read a lot about her because I find that whole thing interesting. Like, it was a very poor, bad joke, but she's still meant it as a joke, but taken out of context without knowing who she is and that she's fucking up a real bad joke. Like, you're like, what a monster, which is essentially what happened to her. And think about how that wrecked her life.

Oh, yeah. No, I know. But I would have been more impressed if the movie had actually had it be a somewhat bad thing because that's what's so like terrifying about Justin's story is like she did a kind of bad thing but the reaction was just like not at the measure. But even look at the gaming community and what's happened there.

Oh dear. The verge cast takes a dark time. Sorry. The gaming. You guys are just going to fling yourself off the stage. It's fine. No, the women who have been harassed very publicly and for a long time, like, haven't actually done anything to deserve it.

People just don't like what they have to say. Oh, yeah, but that's what I was going to say is the other side is they didn't do anything at all. Exactly. And that's just like raw targeting. I think it's more, and, you know, the character I think is more sympathetic because she didn't do anything. And so you need to kind of empathize. You have 15 minutes to like a character and to feel bad for what's happening to her. And so she needs to kind of be innocent.

It just shows, like, how this all goes down, like how quickly it spirals and how quickly you lose control of your life over this weird thing. Yeah, exactly. Never tweet, as always, as though. lesson here. You said you had two movies. What was the other one? The other one is a movie called Like Me and it is more about YouTube culture. So this one, it's a little bit longer. I think that it doesn't quite nail what it was trying to do as well because it's just so weird. I mean, it's visually beautiful. It's just gorgeous colors, like weird shit happening. But it's essentially about this teenage girl who's a YouTuber who is going around and recording stuff

that's just really outlandish to get people to like pay attention to her kind of. Yeah. So the beginning of the film, she holds up a store clerk and pretends to like, I'm going to shoot you and watches him, like, have a breakdown and then posts it online. And, of course, like, the YouTube community goes crazy. There are people being, like, you're a terrible person. There are people that think it's hilarious. People who are, like, remixing it.

That kind of stuff actually happens. Like, I think when it starts off, it's really good at representing how all these reactions you're seeing. I'm like, I believe all this, because there are all of these kinds of people online. Like, nothing is so outlandish that you can't find it online anymore. And I think the film itself kind of gets a little bit off the path.

Everything just sorts of... She, like, kidnapped somebody at one point, and has this guy essentially on a road trip, She later shoots him on camera for like clicks. The culmination of the film. The culmination of YouTube culture is just not films. It's actually, so there's this other YouTuber who is antagonizing her being like, oh, you're such an attention horror, like, this is stupid, nobody actually cares about you.

And so at the end she goes to see him. And it's like she chases this guy down and like, I'm not going to say what she does to him, but it's just like, oh, this, wow, that escalated very quickly, I guess. This is saying after she, like, shot a guy. After she shot a guy, it escalates from there. Yeah. Great. But the film itself is interesting because, like, what movies, what TV shows have actually

tackled YouTube culture, which is such a mess. Like, I, as a reporter even, like, I have trouble waiting into that territory because there's so much going on at any time. So do you think that it's, that because, like, take YouTube culture in particular, because it evolves so quickly by the time you can get something through production, you're commenting on a, you're basically commenting on a historical artifact, not on what it's like now. It changes and evolves so fast that by the time you can get a movie made. Right.

The best documentarians of YouTube culture are YouTubers. Right. Yeah. No, I think that's a fair point. I think that something like TV, which happens a little bit faster, is probably the best way. Like I said,

like we have Black Mirror. It just really, it's fine. It's a fine show. I also agree with Black Mirror's overridden. That's like an unpopular opinion that I mumbled. And then a couple of years like, I just always imagine like the end,

like Charlie Brooker. It's just like a slow zoom on his face. And he's like, technology, am I right? And that's how it's not ends in my head. The YouTuber culture thing, like YouTube, like real life YouTuber culture,

talk to a bunch of people hear about it is like hitting a wall. Like they have kind of decided that YouTube doesn't care about them anymore, that YouTube's priorities are YouTube read, their new TV service. I would actually expect like Facebook of all companies because I don't think if Facebook is having like these strong personal authors on it, right? Like Facebook to me is like a quagmire of like hey, what your friends turned out to be racist, let's find out. But like what Facebook has done with Instagram and Snapchat where they've pulled the influencers away from Snapchat, they've paid them a ton of money to be more Instagram. I think they're going to do that with YouTubers on a Facebook video.

And the YouTubers, I think, are more than ready to go. Because the economy has generated, like, the natural story about YouTubers, which is maybe you'll just shoot someone for views. And you'll be seeing that soon on my YouTube channel. Think about how many, like, you can find videos of, like, beheadings and stuff online. Like, you can literally find any kind of, like, horrible thing you want online, which I think is kind of the line that this was trying to walk. Yeah.

The Internet's a messed up, dark place. So our friend Paul Miller is not here. I'm going to just hard segue out of the heading videos. But he's actually made us a video. I haven't seen it. There's no headings. We don't know. Is he going to shoot someone?

He just wants the clicks. But Paul does a segment every week. It has the same name. It's about the same thing. It never changes. Or watch it. Take it away, Paul. Hi.

Hi, Nilai and Deeter. It's your friend Paul. It's really cold out here. I'm in New York. as you can tell, we're having a blizzard right now. I'd say there's about four to 12 feet of snow so far,

but we're supposed to get way more throughout the night. So just keep we'll keep you posted. You probably can just look it up on Instagram and you'll see just plenty of snow. It's going to be great. So this week,

for the thing that I do every week, called what was it called? It's called Stronger Together. Wow, Paul. And it's this phone that goes on your phone, and it's called Ease. And so it's an Android phone that is a case for your iPhone, and it has literally everything. It sounds like a dumb idea, I know, but it's got everything you could want.

It's got a headphone chat. It's got extra battery, so it charges your phone. It's got wireless charging. And then one of the coolest things they do is you can use, because it's literally an Android phone on the back of your iPhone. So one of the coolest things that they do is that it's a selfie cam. So you can use your rear iPhone camera and see what you're snapping with the screen that is this Android phone that's on the back of your iPhone.

So you get best of both work. It's pretty cool. It's kind of ridiculous. It's like $100 on Kickstarter. There's also like a 4G version for like 150. Who knows if they could actually ship this or make this, but hey, good on them, you know. They're trying something new, something weird, stronger together. That's my new thing.

And sure miss you guys. It's really cold. I think I already mentioned this, but there's a literal blizzard in New York right now. So I hope you're having a great time. And yeah, I guess I'll see you soon. Have fun. Your friend. Paul.

Why didn't he roll down his jeans? Oh, my God. It looks so cold. His ankles are going to freeze off. Paul trolling us from my phone. By the thing he's talking about does look legitimately completely insane. And I'm 100% buying ones. It's a phone for your phone.

Yeah. You looked at a phone that was in headphones. Putting Android phones and things is like the end state of gadget culture We don't have another idea We've just put an actual Android phone in this device Yeah It's a pair of headphones

It's called the Vinci And it just has a touchscreen On the right ear It's called Da Vinci? Just Vinci He made like a million things And the one thing he didn't make was headphones Why would you name it that?

Like you could literally any other object You'd like Da Vinci and you'd like yeah Probably good a name Yeah I don't know it's like a little iPod but it's run by Android. And you have to take the headphones off and choose a song. No, you can talk to the assistant.

You can like, you hold your finger down on the screen, and then the assistant says, what do you want, and then you tell it what you want, and then you tell it what you want, and then it fails to give you the thing, and then you take the headphones off. Also, how stupid when you look with, like, big headphones, and you're like, um, call mom. I mean, everybody ducks like that.

So I've seen more Snapchat spectacles here than I have AirPods. Is that true of everybody out there? What have you seen more of, spectacles or AirPods? I see no... One guy just yelled AirPods. Okay. Spectacles people make noise. Okay.

AirPods people make noise. I just said one dude. Wait, wait. The entire group of people over here who wounded spectacles. And clearly, I think we're like, we just want to play along. It seems like a nice thing to do. I just heard one guy... When I said, AirPods, just one person whistled?

It's just deeply disturbing. So let's talk about some actual text type of its affidavai. Yeah. I do want to talk about Fasten and write Austin. So, Chris, you... You live here, as we've said numerous times. Yes. Because we won't let you live in the state of New York.

As you docks me. Yeah. Chris's address. Why are Uber and Lyft not here? Can you just give us the four second version of that? Okay. The four second thing is, so we were like, hey, Uber Lyft, you have to get

thumbprints for your drivers. And the Uber and Lyft were like, but what if we don't? And then they're like, okay, we're going to put it to a ballot for the city and everybody can vote, and the ballot will be the most confusing ballot ever. If you said yes, you think you said no, if you said no, you think you said yes.

And Uber and Lyft combined spent crazy, crazy, crazy money. Like you were getting phone calls and papered nonstop, which it turns out a city that is like, hey, keep Austin weird, not a big fan of a big company telling them what to do. So I think there was a lot of like, hey, I love Uber and Lyft,

but I hate it when you talk to me like this. Boom. And then they were like, yeah, you have to get thumbprints. And Uber and Lyft were like, well, if we have to do it here, we have to do it everywhere. so peace and then they went and we're like we're just going to talk to the state government and get them to take care of it for us yeah in the meantime all these like smaller companies have kind of flooded the market here so you have uh right austin which is a non-profit yeah um which

you sign up you like have to you sign up and like here 20 austin charities pick one yeah and it's like i think it's a really interesting idea in terms of like what's the future of taxis especially like ones that work with the city yeah of yeah like every city in theory sure you're should have something like this. And then there's Fasson, which is like our very like traditional Uber and Lyft replacement. Yeah. And it works almost identical. It was briefly down one night.

And people freaked out. People on, on the eastern west coast, lost their mind. It was the end of all technology. Uber and Lyft were going to take over the world. Shut Austin down. Nobody loves Austin now. Yeah. We had to walk two whole blocks.

It was kind of raining. It was kind of raining. Think about those poor people. It was 50 degrees. But using fasten is really fascinating. Oh, God. Wow. That's the Vergecast, everybody.

Because you're right. The tech is like 10% worse than Uber and Lyft. Yeah. But that's fine. Whatever moat people think that Uber has, it's not that they have an amazing app. Like, this app is almost as good and it's fine. The moat is like getting into all the cities and drivers.

Drivers. Drivers. A bunch of drivers. Every single time I get in an Uber or a Lyft or whatever, like sit down, talk to the driver, got nothing to talk about, and they just talk about the 15 apps that they're using for ride sharing, and they try and get you to use something other than using. Like in New York, there's always a new one.

Yeah. And it's always like that app will fail, but it's cheaper right now, because that's how they're trying to do marketing. Like the only moat that they have is like you get to a new city and then you know Uber's there so you're fine. But if there's like a million just sort of like local apps, like that's not great, but it's actually, I don't, know, it's fine.

Yeah. I mean, I've been like, I'm in general disappointed with coverage of the Midwest from the coast and the rest of it. But I think, like, the takeaways that I've seen have been so disappointing because things that are more interesting to me than, hey, the app went down for two hours during South by Southwest, the busiest test of this app ever. And Uber and Lyft have gone down here, too. Yeah.

Yeah. I think the bigger and more interesting thing is what does it mean for local versions of these apps to exist because that is like the clear takeaway, right? Uber and Lyft, the software is not like what you're going for. You're going for these things. And if every city had a app that was just for people in the city, you could feel good using it because I think right now people don't feel super great. And the drivers, the drivers I've had here when I'm like, how do you like Fasson? Their universal answer is, I like it way better than Uber. Yeah, because they get paid better. Yeah. It's like a very simple model for them to come in and take it away. That's what I find interesting.

I find that interesting, and again with the software thing, the fact that my takeaway would be Ford could one day wake up and be like, straight up doesn't cost a lot for us to make cars, we're going to give them out across the country, and we have our own app, and suddenly we're a huge threat because now drivers have free or insanely discounted cars, and there's suddenly a dominant player literally overnight. So, like, I think those are the interesting takeaways versus I was at South by Southwest and my app didn't work. which, gag, sorry. I get very grumpy. Like, abstinent working in South, by Southwest is, like, has been the story of this place for so long.

South by Southwest. Yeah, it's like Twitter launched here. Our main interface is a whale that's drowning. We'll figure it out eventually. But every driver I've talked to here has given me a long, long lecture about how much they hate Uber.

But I think what's really interesting, I was actually talking to Nick Denton last night about this. Yeah. He says Uber's being over-vilified because it's an easy narrative And what they've actually accomplished is all of these drivers and I feel like they should have a voice

as opposed to working for some taxi cartel that is usually patriarchal or hierarchical in some way that they'll never be able to break through. And so now the drivers in Austin have started their own taxi company. Like straight up. That's interesting to me because the technology has enabled them to do it. Yeah.

But I'll say fast went down. I walked two blocks in the rain. My hair got messed up. Oh, maybe. Yeah. I had to walk on Forestry. There were donuts everywhere. Why did I let you on this show?

Color commentary. And then the other, there's actually a little bit of techniques that has happened in the two days since we've done this show. Pandora Premium came out. Yeah. And Dieter, you covered the launch of a $1,600 Android Wear Smart Watch. So which failed product do you want to talk about first? Well, we can get the watch out of the way really quickly. Yeah.

It's fine that there are $1,600 Androidware smart watches. That's fine. Because you buy the thing, the watch never really dies. You can go back to tag and say, this thing is bad now. And they're like, okay, here's a real watch. And they'll give you a mechanical watch. It's like a trade-in. It's fine because Google also wants to like have, like, the luxury brands.

If they want to make Android, that's fine. And if like the regular fossils want to make Android watches, that's fine. And if, you know, LG and Huawei want to make watches, that's fine. So like, no angst at all. about any of these things existing. The angst that I have is that Android Wear 2.0, the watches we've seen so far, we've seen three, two from LG and one from Huawei,

and they're bad. They're just not good. There's one that's really small, and the battery lasts about seven hours. And it doesn't have anything. And there's one that's really huge, and the battery lasts about nine hours. It's like, what are you doing?

So this tag is the only current generation of Android wear watches that actually, like, gets the basics right. and it's $1,600. Like, Google really, really, really fucked up the launch, the relaunch of its smartwatch platform because it didn't launch with a watch that just anybody could go and be like, yeah, this is a fine compromise.

I'm happy with this. What are you wearing right now? I'm wearing a second-generation Moto 360. Yeah. Because I don't have the new software. It's fine. Like, I would much rather have a watch that isn't a piece of garbage that dies at, you know, 830 at night

than have, you know, Androidware 2.0. software. I have a question. $1,600, right? Are you paying for it to do anything? Or is it a status symbol thing like watches have been for like ever? It is a status symbol thing. I got told a very long story about how it was custom crafted just like mechanical watches and all the things are milled to, you know, nanometers and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, but also then there's like a big chunk of electronics inside it. There are some cool electronics to it. So, The face is sapphire, and it's got an ambient light sensor. But what they did, it's really obvious.

They built the antennas in a ring around the face so that they could have NFC, even though it's a metal titanium body. So that's smart. And then they built a light pipe from the face of the sapphire down to the ambient light sensor, which is just sitting on the board smack in the middle of the watch. Really obvious, simple solution, but they just made sure the sapphire was cut in such a way

that it could channel light inside the watch so that you can have an ambient light sensor without having a flat tire on the display. Whoa. Yeah, smart. It's what happens when you get a real watch company making stuff. Right, yeah, right? So I don't know, and you can like custom,

you can like pick your lugs and pick your colors. But I think that question is really tough, right? It's like, what does a regular tag get you over, like, Acacia? Right, it's like branding and specialness and, like, materials. Wait, wait, wait, wait, are you talking about, like, a watch? What is, like, a $500 watch and, like, a $3,000 watch? Yeah. No, that's crazy.

The thing of like the make and build of it being special for a smart watch is so, I mean, I don't know a lot about watches, but seems pretty stupid because the entire joy of the watch is like the mechanisms. Like they're not like bragging like, oh, this master craft went into like the area around the watch. They're talking about the actual internal bits of the watch. Yeah. So like that's, I mean, you're paying for the branding too. Don't keep me wrong. But you're also paying for like master artisanship that has been passed down from all like sorts of things. Yeah, so let me, I was talking to a guy about this watch a couple nights ago and is it worth spending this much money on a watch and he's like, yeah, because you pass it down to your kids. And I was like, that's a lie. Everybody who says they pass down to their kids, they're just making an excuse so that they can just be, go be that guy that owns a really expensive watch. And he's like, yeah, no, I get that, I get that. You know, my dad just died and passed down a watch to my brother. Oh, no, you got burnt down. That's rough. It was hard. That's a rough. And you're like, I'm going to pass down my, I'm going to pass down my, I'm going to pass down my, I'm. You're like, I'm going to pass down my, I'm.

Androidware? Wow, brave. Getting past an Androidware smart watchdown, that's really depressing. Thanks, Dad. Yeah, you were always great. It's going to be the retro sheet. Okay, let's talk about Pandora for a couple minutes, then we'll do some questions. So, it's basically, they took RDO, they updated the interface a little bit.

They, for some reason, didn't get it on desktop. They didn't get it on... That's not where the people are. Yeah, right. So it's Pandora with a Spotify model, but instead of getting algorithmic playlists automatically, and instead of human-created playlist like Apple Music, they use the Pandora algorithm, and if you like a song

in a station, they'll make songs you liked from the station. And then when you open up that new playlist that you made yourself, it's got like three songs in there, you're like, well, this is stupid, and then it will, you hit, give me more, and then it will finish out the custom playlist based on like the two or three seed songs

that you gave it. You're just shaking your head. It sounds complicated. Spotify, right? Yeah, but so the core concept of Pandora is like you pick a song that you like and then it plays you a station based on that song, right? It's radio. And so their playlist schick is they give you that vibe of we're really good at taking a seed song

and then knowing the beats per minute and the instruments and not just like other songs that people buy, but the actual structure of the song and giving you other songs we are sure you'll like based on like what we know about that song. So that's Spotify's move too. Like a very serious way. Right. I'm not saying that it's right. I'm just saying that's their pitch.

what it is. Here it is. Funny story, though. Jim Dalrymple, who runs Apple blog The Loop, fully switching to Pandora. Really? What's that? This looks way better than Apple Music. Screw this. It's funny because I've started using Apple Music. It's way better now, yeah. I'm sorry. I'm leaving behind Apple Music because something looks better.

Yeah, it's called Spotify. Get on Spotify. It's just right there. Stop being such a nerd. Yeah. Spotify's not great. It's not great. It's pretty good. Spotify is, it's in three. entire interface, do people here work at Spotify? Is that like light booing is? Also, you're wrong.

So, like, they don't need to worry about it. If you work at Spotify, I have a list of instructions for you. Find me after the show. I will deliver it. It's four points long. It's called fix your fucking interface. Point two, it's called look at it again, fix it some more. But don't look at Apple Music,

because we like it that we can actually find where our stuff is. No, here's the thing. Spotify's entire interface is driven by their business model and their marketing plan, which is, hey, Ed Shearin, it doesn't matter how bad this album is. We're going to put it at the top of the top of the, charts by inserting that shit in every single playlist. That woman definitely works for Spotify. 100% she works for Spotify.

She looks so mad at me right now. Or she works for Ed Shearan. It's one or the other. We don't know Spotify. That's okay. And it doesn't matter that love will be rewarded by endless amounts of Ed Shearin's songs. That's it. That's all you get in exchange your love.

It's an abusive relationship. They just keep hurting you with Ed Shearin and you keep taking it. It's not a good record. We get it. You're being pitch for it. You're very cool. I do like his looping pedal, though. I want to do this story.

I've been trying to figure it out. Oh, bro. It's a cool pedal. It's got a big... Anyway. I have nothing to say here. Move on. All I'm saying is their interface is...

Their business is driven by promising labels and artists that they can drive album-equivalent streams and chart positions, right? So that your tour will do well because you're like, I've got the number one song in the country. Yeah.

It's not driven by, hey, this is the music you like and we'll just show it to you. You can see in their interface always their business model. Interesting. I disagree. Well, so the reason I use Apple Music is because it's like there's a store and you're like, I just want this stuff, and then it just shows you what you have. And it's not constantly trying to foist new things on you.

When you don't like is Spotify is too good. I like it when it doesn't teach me new things. I prefer when it's real bad. The big question with Pandora is, is there still an opportunity for them? What Pandora has is they claim like 80 million users. You think yes? I only use Spotify to make my own playlist. I actually don't find new music through Spotify ever.

Right. I just know everything that's on there. Pandora is how I find new stuff. For the podcast listeners, we've created some sort of war zone of Spotify people over there. Blood that. It's like screaming at it right now. I think the way Pandora could survive is, like, I feel like every cafe still uses Pandora.

It's like as long as like between every like 15 minutes, it was like, this is Pandora. We're cool again. You're like, yeah, I'm at a cafe, and I think I'm going to try Pandora again. I've never been a cafe where it wasn't Pandora, I think. I think they all have the same catalog basically, right? Yeah. Except Apple and Title will pay for exclusives.

Pandora's thing is we've cleaned up the garbage from our catalog. So when you search for, like, the Beatles, you don't get a Beatles tribute band. That's actually part of their pitch. Like, we went through and eliminated, I think there's a Pantera cover artist that just covers Pantera songs with fart sounds. Sure. That sounds like something I want my life. Yeah, it's great. So that's why you have Spotify. And it's going to just endlessly discover that at you, whether you want it to or not. But so the Pandora space is like we cleaned up the interface, we cleaned up the library. But what they don't have is like the huge ecosystem of Spotify things. Like Spotify speakers and Spotify car integrations. Like the fact that Apple and Google both have music services, but in their automotive interfaces they had to just buckle down and give Spotify the space. Like they don't have to do that for Pandora. They don't have to allow Pandora to exist.

And then Pandora doesn't have the money to get exclusives like Apple. So their wedge is basically like, did you like RDO? Maybe you'll like it again. And I think that's going to be really tough. They're a little bit, it's $10 a lot. I think their wedge is also, like, they think their wedges, there are a ton of people that had, like, installed Pandora on their phone before streaming music started and they just are old and that's what they use. Right? It worked with their sonos.

It's on their smart TV. It's in the car. And that they can leverage that group of people to, like, pick up users. That's their starting point. But the big question is, like, those people are like, oh, do I want to pay for this thing? Sure. Well, maybe what else is out there? Like, I don't think that their core base of users are that deeply devoted.

And, like, you know, they're, like, you're not tech savvy, so you use Pandora. Well, we're better now. It's like, well, maybe I'll just become tech savvy now. That seems like a good solution. Or Spotify will take over the world. Yeah. All right. So that light is blinking at me.

Okay. Which means it's time for questions. Right. The fact that we've incited this audience into, like, just total chaos. And now we're going to let them give them microphones. So if you have a question, raise your hand. We'll take questions on anything, especially the Packers and how they lost that playoff game. That's really bad.

This show on the right here. Hey, guys. I got an easy one and a hard one. You want to go easy first? Yeah. Maybe I missed it, but did you stop videotaping and posting the Vergecast? Ooh. That's the easy one?

We did stop doing video of the Vergecast, although we're doing it now. So look at that camera. There they are. Hello, everybody. We decided that the Vergecast was a podcast, and then we should focus on that, and having video cameras was really distracting and made us play to the cameras.

And so the people who listened to it, which is the overwhelmingly huge number of people who listen to it, we're getting a worse experience because the second we put a camera in the room with us, we started making it a video. So we wanted to focus on the audience where it was, which is an audio show.

Also, I can swear and say wrong things and then cut them out in a way that we can't do the video. Yeah, basically we were making pretty bad video and a not very good podcast, and if we picked one, then we could make that good. Yeah, and so we just picked the one where

the overwhelming audience was. So we get it, and we like doing stuff like this. I think we'll probably do a lot more live shows over time because it's fun to do, except for the Spotify people who are going to murder me. But, yeah, I think our goal is to make the products focused and be what they are. Great. Thank you.

What's the hard one going to be? You're going to have to be a proxy for the Verge Cars guys, Jordan and Vlad, because they're not here. But I know you like cars. So last week on Control Walt Delete, you talked about the gang of 4 Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and their monopolization of consumer and enterprise tech services and infrastructure. Yeah. With the announcement of Intel buying MobileE, do you think that's enough to move them into the gang

with self-driving technology companies like Google, Uber, and Tesla? So there's like two ways to think about that. Here's one way to answer that question. And it is to be inherently biased and depressed by Intel and its cavalcade of failures over the past five to ten years. And so when you look at the kind of stuff that Intel does now outside of desktop and laptop processors and like server processors, it's a whole lot of, look at us, we're technology too. We've got Kuri and Gaga can swing her arm around and do stuff. We make drones. Sure.

Why not? We do drones. We do, you know, real sense stuff so we can see 3D objects. Just a whole lot of technology demos that don't actually, if they make it into real products, it's so far down the line that it's clear that what Intel's really doing is like a bunch of technology, quote unquote, products, not designed to be sold to consumers, but designed to build and like rehabilitate Intel's brand. And a perfect example of this is Intel is making its own. intelligent assistant that's going to be put into this tag Hoyer watch that we were just making

fun of. It won't be there at launch. It doesn't have a name. It does, as far as I can tell, because they haven't actually launched it yet, I think it's going to do the same stuff, but Intel's making it because Intel's a technology company. Look at us. And so when they buy into Mobilize, the core question is, are you doing this because you actually are going to make the stuff? Or are you doing it because you want everybody to believe that you make the stuff because that believe thing is what's happening is what they're doing in, you know, in mobile and drones in like VR. They've got mixed reality stuff. Like all that stuff, it's like, I can't tell if you are doing it to show that you can do it or if you're doing it

because you actually want to like be at the core of all that tech. So I can provide like the bullish response to that. Mobile ice seems more real than that other stuff just because they're already making the stuff, right? Yeah. Well, so the CEO of Intel, you was speaking here and this is like both exactly the right frame and 100% the wrong frame. He goes, you can think of a car as a server on wheels, right? And so we're going to build... It's too hot. It crashes all the time.

Yeah, it crashes all the time. Leak. That's terrible. The worst data center in the world, it's 60 miles an hour. No, but that's his thought is you're going to need high-end processing in the car. You're going to need to collect a lot of data. You're going to need to manage that data. There's inputs and outputs. You need to connect to the cloud.

Yeah. Basically, they're desperate for cars to be giant rolling computers because they are very good at putting chips in computers. What they missed was mobile. So all these experiments that Deere's talking about are like, hopefully this hits. Like, hopefully drones are the biggest thing in the world, and we had this huge investment in the drone stack top to bottom,

and we bought a drone company, and we'll just be the winners there in the way that we didn't see mobile coming. We didn't make that set. Intel sold their arm company. Yeah. Like they made arm chips. And they're like, yeah, that seems like a bad idea, and they sold it.

They're going back to making them again, though, I think. Right. Yeah. So I think this, they have really hard competition. But I think they get to be in the game. Like, they already partner with BMW. They're already partnered with these other companies. I don't think, like, Ford and GM are particularly good at making software and hardware,

like computer software. Like, a Mustang is a great piece of hardware. Is it? It's not a great computer. Is it? Is it? So anyway, I think they're in the game. I just don't know that there's going to be, that shakeout is really hard.

Right now in self-driving, what is happening is so much more intense than what happened in mobile. All of the companies are suing each other. People are leaving with laptops full of trade secrets. If you read that Waymo key case, the guy downloaded 9.7 gigs of files to his hard drive. And then Google, like, they figured it out. He's like, a USB key was inserted into the computer overnight. Then the USB key was removed, and the computer is reformatted with our custom version of Ubuntu to, like, wipe the tracks. Like there's like legit espionage happening in this world.

Intel buying Mobile Eye, like there's, it's just more of the heat. And I think until the cars start shipping, we're not going to know if it's a success. Yeah, I think it's hard to judge because like right now it's basically Nvidia, Intel. Qualcomm. Qualcomm all trying to like make the case to, you know, not us. Like they want us as consumers, we're like, that seems great. And then they want to sell the stuff to the car makers. And like then we're used to judging metrics of success on like how many things actually.

ship to consumers. Well, that's going to be a while. Yeah. So what we have to look at now are like deals and tech demos. And as boring as their shit is when you see them on stage, Nvidia knows how to give a good tech demo. Do they? Right? Yeah, they kind of do.

I don't know. So I see it as Intel's like they're legit in the game, but it's way too early to judge and they don't get the benefit of the doubt from me anymore outside of laptops. And even in laptops, they don't. It doesn't seem like super strategic in any moves. Yeah. Okay. That was a very long answer. Sorry. The answer is maybe. We rate this product

is 7 out of 10. More questions. What we got? Anyone? Sean, over here. Yeah, you got a question. So if you had a scrappy tech startup, uh-oh. Oh, boy. Then how, how, what's the best way to try to get coverage? What is it, does it make sense to hire a PR firm? Or as long as you have like a compelling, authentic story and traction, like what kind of pitches do you hear that you think you would want to, I mean, does it make sense to hire a PR firm? We're like five seconds away from you pitching us. Yeah.

What is your scrappy tech startup? It's a fintech startup. It's an alternative to a checking account. Okay. That's cool. So what I always say, which is not the right answer, is like make a great product. Because we get pitched by PR companies all the time and what's behind it is usually not very good. Yeah.

Right? So it's like really hard to break through the wall. But like the reason that you want coverage is to get users, it's like, that's a real chicken egg problem. I will say, like, I can give you a lot of advice for what, not to do. The first thing you should do is figure out what your target audience is and figure out the publication that is actually is interested in the thing that you're making. Like for the version in particular, like, FinTech, like, that's a hard thing for us to find an angle for. It's not something we generally, it's like not in like our website's moody, like, vibe conversation

all the time. But there are plenty of sites that do talk about it and you should definitely talk to those sites. What you should not do is anything super gimmicky. If you hire a PR firm, do not allow them to send an email and then send a follow up to the email and then say, hey, did you get my email? Do not think that... That doesn't work on you? Oh, God. That explains why you never answer my emails.

Right? If you have a thing that fundamentally, the site that you're hoping is going to write about you isn't interested in, don't think that you can put some sort of whipped cream and cherry and, like, joke stunt on top that will make us cover it. What it'll do is make us hate you more. Yeah, the real answer there is, like,

and we have covered some, like, consumer financial stuff, right? Like level, I think we covered Mint once upon a time. There's a bunch of those, like, this will help you manage your money better. And like, those resonate with people because they solve people's problems. I think the best pitches we get are here's why my product is good

and like, here's the problem we identified and how we try to solve it. It's very rarely like we hired Buster Rhymes to be our creative director. I would take a pitch from Buster Rimes. I know that you would. I didn't want to make fun of the companies that actually have hired rappers as creative directors.

I'm looking at you, Intel. Yeah. Any other questions? Was that a good answer? Again, the answer is maybe. Yeah, especially at the beginning if you're small. I think you don't need that much help. Yeah.

Hi, guys. Hello. As a producer and consumer of 360 video, two of my all-time favorite so far have been the NBA 360 video film and your interview with Michelle Obama. Oh, cool. However, since then,

there's been a bit of a lax, not much happening, not just with The Verge, but any producers. What do you think is the missing ingredient? What's the secret source in truly interesting 360 video content? Yeah, I know Chris has a lot of ideas here.

Old man plant has some feelings. Only look in one direction. The direction that I have chosen for you. I think there are a lot of problems. I think one of them is visual fidelity and ease of use. When I say visual fidelity, there was the, if you were actually watching in VR,

the screen door effect, and that disappeared, quote unquote, for people who like knew to look for it, but it still looks blurry. And most people's, I mean, that's with like vibe. That's with good stuff. And if you're not looking at that, it looks really, really rough, right?

Then there's, I think, the UI issue of like, with the Michelle Obama piece, I was really impressed by that, but so much had to be learned just about how to, one, film it, and then two, like, well, what's the visual language? Like, I, both of us work in video games, and video games have taken 30, 40 years to really figure out a visual language of like how to communicate,

how to get people across the world. And I think 360 video has to figure that out. And there has to be a shared knowledge. And I think that will take a while. And then I guess the third thing is there has to be a way to make it easier and more dynamic for people who don't have headsets. So I was really excited. Yeah. When I saw Facebook was working to like have it kind of in your stream, I think that was interesting.

I think as it works faster and is more natural, and especially as everybody moves to mobile, I think it works well with touch interface. I think it works terribly with a mouse. So I think it's about to happen. I just think kind of with VR, which I know is kind of a separate thing, but VR also has this issue of they want it to be like, now.

They're like, the technology is here. Why is it not a huge success right away? And I think it needs to be more of a, oh, this is going to be very much a process. But I mean, if you said you're working in it, I think it's a really exciting time. And I think the people who are working in it now, the ones who are really good, are going to figure out that visual language. And I think that's really exciting. I just think it would be, I imagine, a very stressful time because you're right.

They're just starting a lot of peers and money burns fast. And that it's hard to say wait when it's your budget. But I mean, do you have any thoughts, Megan? I'm curious with... I mean, I have like ADD pretty bad, so I like being able. so I like being able to not pay attention of what I should be paying attention to and just kind of be like,

what was going on over here? But that's not a good thing. Yeah. Well, no, but like that's the thing. Like five years ago, there were these huge debates in video about like lean back versus lean forward experiences

and how are we going to figure this out? How is tech going to get the lean back on TV and vice versa? 360 video and VR is like one step beyond the lean-in. Like it can be isolating, but like you cannot interact with that content unless you're interacting with that content. You need to look around. You need to do it.

And so the thing that you're watching has to justify that level of directed attention at the thing over time. And it has to be delivered in such a way that it's easy to do that. Because right now, the distribution, the creation tools are getting better. The distribution tools are getting better, but they're still, in both cases,

pretty garbage, right? At a platform level and at a device level. And so all those problems are getting solved. But in addition to learning the visual language, I think that weeds don't yet know what sort of content is native to that platform that justifies and calls for that very heavy, direct, immersive interaction. There's like go under the ocean and look at sharks. There's draw really cool infographics around an interview.

There's a bunch of different examples, but there's not like the breakout like, oh yeah, this is the format that works for this and we can repeat. this thing. There's a bunch of really cool experiments that work as one-offs, but I don't see or haven't seen, and maybe it's because I'm ignorant, haven't seen like, oh, this is the thing, we can do this over and over again, it's consistently interesting, and it is

worth all the pain of not checking my Twitter while I'm watching TV. My answer in all things is usually related to distribution. There's only a handful of gatekeepers that can really distribute VR. There's YouTube and Facebook, or 360, I should say, not VR.

There's YouTube and Facebook, they can do it. everyone else is trying to get you to download an app and I don't think there's a harder distribution method in the world than trying to get someone to download your app. So you're just fighting these forces that are just really difficult and so you can't see

what everyone's doing. We're being waived at to wrap it up. But if someone has one more quick question. No. Yeah. Okay. This gentleman over here. Huh? Maybe. At 64 I'm probably the oldest guy here. So I'm closer to death than I am to you guys age. Man.

Super dark. One of the things I think for both VR and the 360 is you need to have something that people think they actually need. Yeah. And I haven't seen that happen yet. I know I've done a fair amount of VR stuff, and for me it's still not good enough. Yeah. You take from two years to now, I think in another two years it will probably be good enough. But, I mean, I see all the lines, I see all the juggies.

You know, and it's gotten a lot better. Yeah. What do you think is going to be the big application that's going to be pushing these things? I do not know I think video games no wrong super quick answer yeah super quick answer

Chris and Neil I start screaming at each other I think 100 I think augmented reality in the blend Microsoft likes to call it mixed reality is if there's the spectrum of VR and AR the answer I always like dab it Nilai about is hard VR like putting the headset on

is like having to sit in your home and have a really expensive movie set up and you can only do it this like one time in this one place, you have to really make effort for it, and it costs a lot of money. And then, like, good AR is like having your smartphone, right? Like, and a lot of people want smartphones, not everybody needs, like, a good home media setup. So I think when we'll start to see really good VR applications weirdly, as AR becomes more common, because it'll get it in more people's hands. And as, that's when really the interesting things start happening. When more people

can try things, more people are cueing it, and then we get the really, exciting stuff. So I think AR is going to happen sooner. It seems like we'll start seeing people's... You should go do the demo up here, actually. There's a cool AR demo up there. And I think in the next two to three years, that'll start happening. And then whatever the VR experience

is, we'll start to see then. But it just, it has to get in people's hands before we have even a clue of what the interesting thing is. Okay. Sadly, we have to wrap up. Yeah. With a lecture from Chris Klan. But there are other things to listen to. There's another episode of the Vergecast that we did

here. Megan, Addie, Ashley, Nat, Caitlin, all did a great episode of the Vergecast. So go on iTunes by that. Walt and I host Control Out Delete, which is a great show you can listen to. Lauren Good, who did the show with us a couple days ago, host Two Embarrassed to Ask on the Recode side. Very good. Peter Kafka did a live episode of Recode Media with Glenn Beck on this stage. Kara Swisher did a live episode of Recode Decode with the cast of Veep on the stage.

All the stuff is in iTunes to go find it. Most of those shows, I will say, much better organized and pleasant to listen to than this mess, but thank you all for coming. What's your Twitter handle? At plant, with the E, it's French. Megan underscore Nicolette. Very good. Very good. Very easy to spell. I am Backlon. And I'm reckless. So tweet at us.

We love that stuff. And we'll see you around. Thank you guys for coming. Thank you everybody.