The Vergecast - Tales of a shopping influencer

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Today on the flagship podcast of the economic theory of Dave and Busters: 02:50 - The Verge’s Mia Sato shares her experience on a new shopping app called Flip, which is filled with only videos that earn affiliate revenue.  Where everyone’s an influencer and everything’s for sale 35:34 - The Verge’s Vjeran Pavic and Becca Farsace chat with David Piece about the new Fuji X100VI, and why this line of cameras was a sensation on social media.  Fujifilm announces the X100VI, its follow-up to a TikTok sensation The internet's NEW favorite camera? (Fuji X100VI) Fujifilm X100T review 57:44 - Verge producer Will Poor answers a follow-up question about the right to repair legislation in this week’s Vergecast Hotline. The Vergecast and Decoder are live at SXSW this weekend, March 8th and 9th. SXSW attendees can see both shows live on the official Vox Media Podcast Stage at the JW Marriott, presented by Atlassian. Learn more at voxmedia.com/live. Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the economic theory of David Busters. I'm a friend David Pierce, and I am currently on my way to a new bagel shop, which in my life, at this point in my life, counts as a huge life event. See, when I move somewhere new, I immediately go on a grand quest for three things. A really great cup of coffee, a really great deli sandwich, and a really great bagel. In New York, I found all three of those things. New York's good like that. In San Francisco, I found the first two. but never really found a bagel that I loved. And now that I'm in the D.C. area, coffee was easy to find, found a good deli sandwich,

but it's been like four years, and I still haven't found the bagel. But this new place just opened like a week ago in my neighborhood. Everybody says it's great. I've been burned before, but I'm going to go try it because that is my job. This is my quest. I will find a great bagel. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. We're going to do two things.

First, we're going to talk about this app Flip, which is like if you took the TikTok shop and the shopping stuff in Instagram and the shopping stuff in Pinterest and just sort of smushed it all together into a social media app that is nothing but shopping, and it's kind of working. We're going to get to the bottom of what's going on and why this thing is so successful. Then we're going to talk about the Fuji Film X-106, which is the successor to the camera that the internet has spent the last like three years totally obsessed with. It's beautiful, it's cool, it takes neat photos. People are very excited about it. We're going to figure out if this is really worth the upgrade. All that's coming up in just a sec, but first, I have to go spend what I can only assume is going to be an alarming amount of money on a bacon egg and cheese.

This is the Vergecast. We'll see in a sec. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need.

Proms something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th.

Tap in with us. Welcome back. All right. I'm home. I'm in the studio. I have eaten the bacon, egg, and cheese. It was good. But I think the hundred. for the really great one still continues. This one did have a little honey on it, though, which I liked a lot. That was a good tip. Anyway, let's get to the show. Over the last few weeks, the Verges Miyasato has been moonlighting as a shopping influencer on an app called Flip. She hasn't told me much about how it's going or what she's been up to in her time as a shopping influencer. But this app is weird and strange, and she's going to tell us about all of her adventures. Mia Sato, welcome to the Vergecast.

Thank you. So I'm told the first thing you want to do is share with me a video that you made that the people need to hear. Yes, the people need to hear this. It's very important. Let's just play this and then we'll see where we go. Wow. I absolutely love this pure sonic facial steamer because it feels so good on my face. As you can see, it's really steaming my face. What is happening here? I need you to explain yourself. Okay. So, David, what if I told you that I'm...

I had a TikTok for you where it was only ads. Would you be interested? I mean, I would make the slight argument that that might just be called TikTok, but yes. And you would use my referral code to sign up so that we could both get like $30 to $50? Listen, if there is one thing I believe, it's that the internet is made for scamming your way into $50 to $100 worth of free stuff on the internet, most of which will be garbage, but some of which will be great. Okay, that's, I love that we're on the same page because that's exactly what I did, but more like $400 worth of stuff, and I used my friends to do it. Oh, wow. And I'm here to tell my story and maybe get you on so I can get more stuff. What, what is this app? It's not TikTok. It sure sounds like TikTok. What app are we talking about here?

It's this app called Flip. If you are on TikTok and you use Flip, you'll know exactly what to do because the user experience is very similar. It's a vertical video feed where you swipe up and you get new stuff, Except on Flip, there is like a dislike button and a like button. And every video is about a product that you can buy directly from that video. And there's also like a shopping page similar to TikTok shop where it's just loaded with a bunch of stuff. So it's shopping all the way down. Like it's videos about products. You buy the products.

You make a video about the product. You bought other people buy the product. And it's just this endless cycle of content about products that you can buy to make content about. Exactly. It is completely circular, which is actually brilliant. Like you can only make videos about stuff you've purchased there. It's like kind of like TikTok and social media gamified to the extreme. So as you're scrolling this feed, there is a little counter in the top right hand corner with a dollar amount. And every time you watch a video, you earn a couple pennies. You just keep going. And then you have sort of a fake amount of money that you can then use as like basically a 30% off

coupon for anything you buy inside. The money can cover up to 30% of your purchases. So it encourages you to keep watching videos. You comment on them. You like them. Sometimes you buy stuff. You're racking up little points as you go along. Where did this app come from? So I heard about it through friends who had also been doing what I did, invite a bunch of friends so that you have kind of like an endless stream of fake money to buy stuff with. And it's a startup. It raised, I think, maybe around $100 million in the last round, and it has been kind of bubbling under the surface for a bit. There have been a few articles about its launch last year, but mainly it seems like a place where people jump on it with like a lucrative referral program that they're doing

right now, buy one thing, make a weird video, and then maybe never come back. But then there are people like me who spend ungodly amounts of time on it because it feels like an upside down wacky world of like things we already know and are very familiar with. Yeah, I do think there is a fascinating sort of statement about the world inside of this app that I'm not sure this app wants to be making. But tell me about like these videos. I'm imagining, I would say like Mia, I love you, but your video is not particularly enticing. I don't feel like I got to the end of that. And I'm like, You know what I need now as a facial steamer? Are you like worse than average on flip among the influencers?

Are you better than average? Like what kind of stuff do you see scrolling in this feed? The feed is so chaotic. It is truly like I was hooked from like the first five minutes because you get on the feed and it is like nothing you've seen before. It's like the collection of the worst videos you've ever seen. And then some really like kind of cringy like really tough watches one after another. and I'm obsessed with that. So there's several buckets of people on Flip.

There are people who, like I said, buy one thing, are told that, hey, if someone buys stuff off of your video that you made, you can make money to. It's like an affiliate marketing scheme. They make one video, and then that's all that's on their profile. So this is the clips, the clip, a very nice clip. There are the people who maybe have, like, something of a following on other platforms,

and they've just jumped to this platform to see if this can become a revenue stream for them. So they're making slightly more polished videos. This is the men's sponge gel super buffer and smells so, so good. I'm not going to open this because I got this as part of a birthday gift for my boyfriend. But I've got this. There are children, like literal children in school making videos about phone cases. Those are extremely hilarious. Oh, God.

My phone guy. I hate it. Oh, yo. I got it. Put it with charges. Oh my God, thank you. There are people doing, like, mimicking the videos of legitimate and established influencers. What's up, FlipFam? First time reviewer here.

He's got my first purchase. Maui and Sons, Polar Fleece, Olive Green, Super Coffee. There are the honest reviewers, just, you know, your friend saying, like, oh, I don't really know if I liked this product. extremely disappointed. This corset, it's over $100. I got it because I saw this outfit from Sophia Brigada and I was like, oh, let me try that. Look at this. This is the center. One cup. It's higher than the other one. Which is kind of like, I think, the ideal that Flip wants. It's all about this like authenticity, honest reviews. They very much lean into like, it's good that these people are not practiced influencers. Does that make sense to you as an approach when the whole point of every single video is to sell you a product? No. I mean, obviously there's a tension there that nobody wants to acknowledge, which is that you can make honest videos and you still make money when people watch those videos, right?

You still make money even if nobody buys it. Also, there is tremendous financial incentive to get people to buy it from your video. Like, that is kind of the whole point. And I think that, you know, the company can push this sort of, this is authentic, this is real line as much as they want, but that does not remove the central tension, which is you are paying people really, really bad influencer rates to make content for stuff that you otherwise would be outsourcing to people who are charging like thousands of dollars a post. Okay. So part of this makes sense to me and part of it doesn't. We've seen this with a lot of shopping apps, whether it was Wish a bunch of years ago or. She and Timu and what the TikTok shop is doing where they pour a bunch of money into subsidizing this for everybody. So you get cheap stuff, you get referral codes. That part of this makes sense to me. There's a bunch of money coming in. It's not sustainable, but somebody can afford to pump this up for a while.

For you as a user, it sounds like if I'm understanding correctly, you make money just by watching videos. Yes. And you also make money when people buy products after they click on videos that you make. Yes, it's like money on both sides, money being sort of like in precise term, because some of these are just like points basically just with the dollar a sign in front of it. Yeah. It all sounds a little like Dave and Busters where you just like spend a bunch of money to buy your way into this sort of teeny tiny fake economy that has no bearing on anything. And no one actually understands how any of it works, but they get money and you don't at the end. 1,000%. I am making videos for Chuck E. Cheese tokens. Like that's what's happening. And yet you decided to let this completely take over your life. Because it's kind of fun.

It's kind of fun. And that is like the weird part of this. I think I have like $80 right now in watchpoints, I'll call them. That's how much I've scrolled this feed. And mind you, I'm making like two to six cents of you, something like that. So I've been watching a lot of videos. Yeah. So take me through kind of the Mia economy on Flip.

You've been in this for a while. you refer to a bunch of people. What has your voyage through this app been like over the last month or so? So first, I invited a bunch of friends, and I think by the end, I had like almost $400 worth of credit. And this is also kind of a little sneaky, but the credit can be used to cover up to 95% of the price of an item. So if I had like a $100 jacket or something, I would pay $95 and I would pull it out of my flip referral money. So I invite a bunch friends, I rack up all this money, and then I just start buying random stuff. I think this is a hat, and this is interesting. There is a packing slip in the package, and it's shipped to me, but it's billed to the flip shop, and it's like their address.

I'm pretty confident that this is all being drop shipped, and they're just fronting the money for the purchase, and then you're paying them, you know, five bucks or however whatever the difference is after your 95% off coupon. I bought clothes. I bought eye masks like skincare eye masks. I bought the facial steamer, of course, that I absolutely love how it steams my face. I bought mushroom chocolates. I bought like a 35mm film scanner. I bought the protein powder, of course. I tried to buy a variety of stuff just to see what would show up to my house. These two are from a clothing brand that was sort of suspiciously cheap. I bought two shirts, and they were each $12 to $15. So I'm not expecting much. And the other, I think, are socks. So I did this one time with Wish for a story I actually never ended up writing. I bought like a few hundred

dollars worth of obvious knockoffs of gadgets. There was like a thing that was clearly a GoPro, but wasn't a GoPro. I was kind of amazed at the spectrum of quality. It was kind of a total grab bag of of whether any of this stuff was going to be any good or even what it looked like on the listing page. Was that your flip experience, too? I think it's, yeah, a hit or miss thing because there are some brands on flip. I should also mention that brands have to like apply to be on it. And for every purchase that is made on flip, flip takes a cut. So it's like affiliate marketing on affiliate marketing. It's really, there's a lot of layers here. So there are legit brands, several makeup brands that people always post normal TikToks of, right? Like they're very

popular brands. The film scanner was, I think, maybe a Kodak one. It really runs a gamut. Okay. But then again, if I'm understanding the flip economy correctly, buying and receiving the products is only the first part of the process. You then are immediately supposed to turn around and make content. And this is where I think. think you hit your true star turn, at least as far as I can tell, which is Mia Sato, weird product reviewer on the internet. Tell me about protein powder hawking Mia. What's her deal? Okay, so that was the first video I made. My first instinct was to be kind of an asshole about it. I haven't opened this and I haven't eaten it, but I think I recommend it. In fact, I do recommend it.

Okay, that video has 860 views. Okay. And I've made a dollar in 92 cents, which actually is really good for views. Nobody has bought it from my video, but it's pretty good. Yeah. It's a pretty good conversion. And then the next day I decided to actually use the protein powder in a protein shake, and I made another video, of course.

Okay, another update. I made a protein shake with the protein powder, and it is absolutely horrendous. It is horrifyingly bad. It is so fucking bad. Do not buy this. So, A, I appreciate the journalistic integrity here. This is good. But also, this is the thing that people are watching and deciding, maybe I'll buy this product. Like, you're making money off of telling people how terrible these protein shakes are. Yeah, it's hysterical. Also, multiple people put it in their cart from my video. Good Lord. So I have to say that, like, if I tried a little bit harder, imagine what I could do. Imagine how much flip money I would have. So the neg as a product review strategy is kind of amazing.

This is a thing we need to explore. Like the verge, just negging products is maybe a thing we should start doing more of. I love this. Did you do the mushroom chocolates? This is the other one I'm fascinated by because I feel like the facial steamer is like, look, it's steaming my face. Like, I get that. Trying to explain to people whether they should buy mushroom chocolates based on a recommendation from a stranger on the internet. Seems like an interesting content challenge.

Well, it's actually really easy because the mushroom chocolates. chocolate's look kind of cute. One thing about a lot of the reviews that I saw was that the people will say stuff about the product that has nothing to do with the product, right? They will say, here it is, I just got this, check it out, right? Like, they don't use it. Yo, what up, flippers? Just got this bucket hat from Dumb Club on Flip.

It's got sick. Sick, I can't even explain the word for it. characters. It's got all the characters from their website on here. Sick quality, sick hat. So I was like, let me try that where I'm not doing anything with the item. So a made-a-mushroom chocolate video. We don't love that these mushroom chocolates came, the tin came open. But yeah, they also, be warned, they will not get you high, not fun mushrooms, just focus on energy mushrooms. That has gotten me $3.45.

Killing it. Did anybody buy it? No. Of course. No. Nobody has purchased anything from me. So you've sold nothing? Nothing. To anyone. Nothing. But you're still making money. Yeah. That's the future right there. I think that means I'm doing well. But also, perfectly low stakes, because nobody

actually bought anything, so nobody can blame you for anything. Yeah, totally. Another thing is, like, there's no way to add music, so all of these are, like, silent. It's very, like, unsettling, Oh, that's true. Yeah, it's really weird. Some people sometimes sneak music in, like, maybe they recorded it in TikTok and then re-uploaded it. But for the most part, these are like very, like you can hear people breathing. Well, yeah. So this is one of the things I keep wondering as you're talking about this, which is I think about these kinds of videos as compared to product placement stuff you see on Instagram or TikTok. And so for me, like if I'm a brand, if I'm Kodak trying to sell a printer, why on earth would I want to be on flip? That is such a good question because the brands get no control over these videos.

There's no review process that happens like with other influencer content where brands are looking at it, editing it, sending it back, accepting it. Like I am just some rando making videos about your product. And that is where it kind of gets into stickier, weirder places. There's videos on Flip that if I were the brand, I probably would not want to exist. Like give me an example. The funniest one that kind of came up really soon after I indicated that I wanted to see men's fashion content. There was a video with a man in shorts, and he and his friends are laughing and cackling about the video that he is making.

And I think we should just roll the clip because I'm not going to try to repeat it. Revene these shorts, all around comfort, incredible, especially on the ball sack. great flexibility. I really like the way you can see just the outline of my fiend balls. Just right there. Somewhere, everyone who works in brand safety

is just sobbing into their phone right now. That's not even the worst one. There's another one where the review is for socks and the guy's feet are up on a coffee table. Yo, what is up, you guys? It's me with my first

flip review. I'm reviewing these socks that I just got. First impressions, pretty comfortable. Nice soft touch to him. If you listen to it, it's fine. But what you do not see, unless you're watching the video, is that around, first of all, in front of his socks, his feet is a bong that is like two feet tall. And then surrounding the bong and on the coffee table are dozens of whip it canisters, which, yeah, if I'm the company that makes a socks, a company which I, did reach out to and they didn't get back to me, I would be like, please don't do this. I'm paying money. I'm paying money every time someone makes a purchase off this video. The brand safety is non-existent. Well, and that brings up, I would say even like the slightly higher stakes version of

like content moderation stuff, right? Because if you're trying to sell me something, there's going to be an element of like life recommendation that you have to do. But if you're doing it surrounded by cans of whippets, you have a real like genuine content moderation problem. that is more than just making the advertisers happy. Like, obviously, TikTok has been through this, Instagram has been through this. Everybody at any scale doing social stuff, shopping or otherwise goes through content moderation stuff. Is Flip doing content moderation, or are they as blasé about everything as they seem to be

about these videos? So I asked the Flip CEO about this, and his response was they have a team of seven or eight content moderators or working at least on that side. and their main thing that they're looking for is, like, abusive content, hateful stuff. When something is escalated, when a report is escalating, is checked by a human being. But 70% of it is managed with machine learning. But other than that, they like the unvarnished sort of average people doing stuff vibe. They don't seem too concerned with, like, this idea of brand safety.

They also, you know, like kind of like the trolley videos. I generally believe the influencer ecosystem of selling you stuff is not something that's going on the way up. I think there is a real ache for any realness online, like anything that is real and not stripped and not filtered a thousand times. They say that most people, if they're going to troll, do it in their first video and then don't go on to make that their entire account. I would disagree. I've definitely seen people who their entire thing is sort of wink, wink, nudge. nudge, like, this is so stupid that we're doing this, but we're going to do it anyway. It's something of the Wild Wild West, where people are just making money, you know, producing the stuff that is, like, so low effort and very insurious. Do you buy the idea that that authenticity can scale

in this way? I mean, I think we've seen over and over that once you introduce not, you know, pennies and nickels and dollars, but like real make a living kind of money to any kind of platform like this, it changes. You and I have both covered a million apps that come out and are like, we're the one that's real. And then they get popular and they stop being real. And then another one comes out and it's like, well, we're the one that's real. And I wonder if it's possible. Do you think Flip can grow the way it wants to and still feel like this? I think right now it's in this sort of era of Gold Rush where it has all this investor money, just funding people joining. But Flip does not exist unless people are actually making purchases. So let's say like,

everything is trash and nobody buys anything on flip, eventually that will collapse because the company is not bringing anything in. Why would people make videos for stuff if they're not buying anything? Right? Like, you can't. So I think that this idea of authenticity is, it's a pretty limited view of what that looks like. I don't really need to go on an app to see what my friends think about products, right? I can just text them. I can just ask them if they like something. Even if I saw them make a video about a product, who's to say that I would buy it from them? I might just like go to the site and see if there's a discount or buy it somewhere else. So I think this idea that they can corral all of your shopping habits and sort of review culture into

one place is, I would say it's a pipe dream. I agree with all of that in theory. And yet there is part of me that says maybe what Flip is doing. And this is kind of where my like galaxy brain feelings he take on all of this goes, is that maybe what Flip is doing is just shortcutting and end running this process that Instagram and TikTok and all the other platforms are already on. I mean, we've talked about on this show and you've been writing about the overwhelming influx of the TikTok shop onto TikTok. And now, if you want to be popular on TikTok, the single quickest way to get there is to be selling something. And now it feels like everything you see on TikTok, somebody is selling you something. And that's where the business is

going. That's where a lot of the stuff is going. it's also just becoming sort of accepted. I think, like, years ago, it would have felt gross for people to be nakedly selling you stuff like this online. And now it's just kind of what it is. So maybe Flip is just skipping to the last step and it's going to be right because shopping is the end stage of all of this anyway. Like, is there a version of this where Flip is just going to, like, win because it threw out all

the other pretend stuff and just did the thing that actually makes the money? Well, I think one of the reasons I find Flip very compelling. why I've spent, again, hours on the app is that it does feel like sort of the evolution of short form video that we are already seeing hints of like that this is the direction, even apps like TikTok are going, where I don't know that Flip will be the one that wins in the end, but it is capturing and sort of trying to monetize what TikTok also is trying to do. If you have maybe been, you know, on TikTok in the recent and the last like week or so, you've probably seen, like at the end of videos, there will be a pop-up that says, shop more shoes or shop more

men's coats on TikTok shop. And it takes you to TikTok shop and gives you a list of products that in my experience, I wrote about this as well. In my experience, I have nothing to do with the product that it says it wants you to shop for. But the goal is to get you on to shop on the shop platform. And the videos that these prompts are being added to are not even nakedly promotional. They are talking about something. And TikTok picks up what is in that video and tries to convert that into a purchase. And so the flip platform is like that if it drops a pretext. Right.

It's almost more honest in a way. It is completely. And we already know that this is really the direction that TikTok wants to go in and that it is seriously trying to ramp up its shopping business in the United States this year. So it was giving all these crazy promotional deals to merchants to try to get them on to TikTok shop. It was doing sort of the Ali Express, Shee and Timu thing of, you know, 99% off or free item, just pay shipping, like whatever, these kind of crazy good, too good to be true deals to get people to buy things on TikTok shop. The parallels with Flip are very obvious. It feels like Flip is just that, but more focused where they just stop pretending that it's, about anything other than actually making, making sales and getting that affiliate money,

getting merchants on onto the platform. I've observed this. I don't know, David, if you've seen this too with like your favorite creators who start out educational, you know, start out making educational content, start out vlogging or not monetizing their content in any way in particular, but then very quickly when the opportunity presents itself, they jump to doing the sponsored content or the ads. And that bridge is like a stone. throw. You know, it is so easy to switch into that mode if you want. And there are a lot of people who hold down normal jobs and then also are making, you know, getting brand deals and making TikToks and making sponsor content. So this idea of like, influencer being a separate category is, I think,

increasingly becoming less true. And the whole thing about Flip is that you see non-influencers make this content and potentially benefit and profit from it. And they want you to do that. They want you to create this new side hustle that maybe might amount to, you know, 20 bucks in a couple weeks, which is I haven't even hit that point. And I've been trying so hard on flip. And I still have only made like $14. And I can't even cash it out. I cannot even cash out my money because I need to get to 20. So yeah, it's very sad and feels like stolen labor on my part. But this vision that it presents is that all of your activities online, all of your purchases, maybe you can monetize them. What if what if you could? Right. And it makes me wonder if Flip looks more like the future of Amazon or the

future of social networking. Because I think to me, the idea that TikTok and Instagram and sort of the places we used to go to like connect and find stuff we liked online are just rapidly becoming shopping malls is true and also like deeply bleak and kind of dystopian in a way. But the idea that the way I shop on Amazon is essentially going to be sort of overrun by middlemen who are like real people, quote unquote, real people who are talking about the products. That doesn't strike me as like more or less bad in the world. It just seems like kind of a future of shopping that is already really real in places like China where like live streaming shopping has been a huge business for a really long time. And so I wonder like as you talk to folks that flip and use the platform, like does it

feel more like social or more like shopping over time. That's a good question because so much of short form video like TikTok was already about finding things to buy. Yeah, totally. I have been like beating this drum for a long time, especially with people in my age group, women, Gen Z, right? Like they go to TikTok for recommendations. They do.

And they jump off the app, then buy the thing. Often it sells out. Sometimes it's like in the New York Times style section or whatever, gets all these write-ups of this viral product. And TikTok is making no money from that. So obviously they want in on this. And Flip is sort of just like systematizing this and automating that in a way that TikTok, I think, is really trying to. Flips footprint is obviously way smaller than TikTok, but, you know, the point stands. And in terms of like, I don't know, does it feel better or worse? I think it's interesting that we are in an era of hyper recommendations and we still need someone to tell us what to do, that we still need someone to tell us what is good and what is

bad and what we should buy. I saw like the explosion of gift guides on TikTok this year more than other years, which I find fascinating when presumably our for you algorithm should be like an endless stream of gifts or things that we might be interested in, things that, you know, the data shows that we might, we might purchase or we might watch or we might like or save. And so this idea that like we still want newsletters with recommendations. We still want friends telling us things. It tells me that there's something that is not quite there with, like, the algorithmic recommendations. And is it good that all of us become salespeople?

Like, no? Is that brave of me to say? I don't know. That feels bad. That feels bad. But I also get the other point of, like, if you are posting something on TikTok and it's going to be catapulting the viewer to TikTok shop anyway, why not? try to get a cut of it. Because right now as it stands, the people who have that TikTok shop,

you know, shop more shoes button, as far as I know, they're not getting a cut of that. So it makes me think, like, why would I make any content if it's just going to be a sort of portal for TikTok to make more money? Totally. No, I think that's right. And I think in a funny way, you just sort of encapsulated like a central tension of the internet right now that we are going to have to spend a lot more time talking about. But for now, before I let you go, give me the state of the Mia flip business. You said you've made like 14 bucks. Tell me, I want to know the money. I want to know the views. I want to know how quickly you are becoming a mogul on Flip. I have to say that it's

it's not going as successfully as I would have hoped. Also, the videos that I spent the most time on have done the worst, which is fascinating. There's a life lesson there. It's a life lesson. It's sad too because a lot of the products that I bought, like I probably won't end up doing much with. I tried to buy some perishable things. So, like, I bought coffee beans, which I will drink coffee eventually. I bought candles that I actually am obsessed with that I purchased before I was on flip. And I was like, oh, they're on flip too.

So I bought like four of those candles. Nice. So I'm stocked. But I will not quit my job at theverge.com anytime soon. Unless something crazy happens to my flip content, then I'm out. Once you hit 20 bucks and you can cash out, it's all over. I'm taking my money and running. Exactly.

Love it. Mia, thank you. Appreciate it as always. Thanks, David. This is so fun. All right, we got to take a break, and then we're going to talk cameras. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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You can go to shopify.com slash vergecast. That's shopify.com slash vergecast. Support for the show comes from Grammarly. You don't need reminding that the world moves fast. But work today requires clear communication and when every message counts, sounding rushed or generic, can be getting lost in the shuffle.

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Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job.

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you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Last week, Fujifilm announced the X-106, which is its newest camera.

Normally in 2024, a new camera doesn't qualify as a culture-shaking event, but this one kind of did. The X-105, the last model of this camera, became kind of a viral sensation over the last few years, to the point where you basically couldn't get your hands on one, even if you wanted to, even if you wanted to spend the well over $1,000 that it would cost you.

This new model is apparently going to be easier to get your hands on and also comes with some upgrades, but fundamentally, it's still an X100. Oh, and it's a little more expensive. To help me figure out why this camera matters so much and whether the new one is a worthy upgrades to the internet's favorite camera, I grabbed two members of the Virgil's video team and two of our most dedicated camera nerds,

Viren Pavich and Becca Farsachi. Viren, welcome to the show. Oh, my God. Hello. Becca, hello. Hello. My camera people, this is very exciting. I'm glad to have you here. We never get to talk about dedicated cameras on the Vergecast because who cares?

But now we get to because people care. This is very exciting. Boy, do they care. They super care, right? So I want to get it, that's like mostly what I want to talk about is like the cultural phenomenon of this camera. But I feel like we should educate people on a little bit of Fuji film history here to start. So, Viren, maybe let's start with you. because I think you've been using the X100 line of cameras for a very long time.

So, like, take me back to the beginning of the X100. What is this camera? Like, what's its deal even from the very beginning? So I, someone actually asked me yesterday, I used Fuji, and I went back to, like, see when I started. And it was exactly a 10 years ago. Oh, nice. When I bought the X100 T, which is the third one, now it's six, and people are opinionated.

It is a point-and-shoot, fixed lens, 23mm F2 on, which is an equivalent to 35 millimeter camera that just does a lot of things right. What people love it is the fact that it has like film simulations that make your JPEX look amazing. For a lot of people and myself included, it's been like the perfect B camera. Like I want a digital camera that is a small footprint that I can bring everywhere and get good results with. And that's kind of it. And it was my entry into Fuji. And at that point, like, I saw this camera, I played around with it.

I was like, oh, wow, this is what a modern camera looks like in a retro body. I got really excited by like the viewfinder and the built-in NDs and all these little things that make it like very useful. But I don't think it's just that it produces good results. I think what's actually more important is that you look cool doing it. Because there's many point and shoot cameras like this, like Rico makes one. And I mean, if you have a lot of money, Laika, but like the whole idea is that like this looks really cool. It's a price point that some people can digest easily without knowing too much about cameras. And then you also have the added bonus of sometimes it can produce good results if you know what you're doing.

Balance those two sides of it for me because I think there is something to the fact that this is just a great looking camera and has been for a long time. And it started to be everywhere. You know, people are doing like street photography and like the blogging era and everybody was excited about those cameras for that. But there is also something to what you're saying, Vera. And somebody described it to me at one point as like it is the perfect middle between a DSLR and a smartphone where it's you get some controls. But fundamentally you can just turn the thing on, pointed at something, shoot and trust that it will do something spectacular for you. So like for you guys as people who do this like professionally, do you buy this because it's cool over another sort of equivalently spec, equivalently priced camera? Or is there something about the X100 that is special as a camera?

I can't wait to hear Viren's. I will say there is something very special about this camera. There it is. I will say that much. There it is. You won the bed if that was your bed. Bingo. But I would buy this camera as a hobby camera.

Like, this is what I take with me because it's fun to use. It has like, all, I have it right here. It has like all of these dials and it feels good in your hand, although this front grip could be hella thicker, which is why a lot of people buy a thumb grip for the back. It's just fun to use and you get results that are better than a smartphone. smartphone. But I wouldn't do professional work on this because on a professional camera, I want more control over my lenses. And I do want a full frame sensor. Yeah, it is not like a camera that

can do a lot. It has that perfect focal length for a lot of people. It has very good video capabilities, but does it really need, I mean, like, yeah, it's nice to have. And I guess in world of like TikTok and Instagram, like, in real, it's like, yeah, it's good to have like good video as well. Even like video capabilities, I always like never really cared about those on this camera. So it is like, it is very limiting in what it can do actually as a camera. But it really exploded in popularity in the last couple of years. Yeah, no, Viren, hold on. I'm not letting you off the hook for this though.

You love this thing. Thank you. This thing has like mythical properties for you and I want you to explain why. I do love this camera. I do have a confession that I actually like sold mine. What? Yes, I did because I just knew. then maybe I will get whatever is coming.

And the pricing for it was still like, oh, yeah, you know what? I can sell it for a decent amount of money. Not only does Viren want to get what's coming, but he saw the limited edition. It was like, I don't really want this camera. I want the one that's only 1,900 and, I don't know, 36 of them were made. I want that one. Love it. Yes.

Well, I did spend my entire morning trying to get Elbin Ring collector's edition. And that failed. So, you know, I have to, like, redeem myself with the Fuji X 100, 6. Limited edition. No, I mean, I do love what Fuji is doing with like the film simulations and everything. I make a lot of my own. I go through the websites that like give you recipes that you can use for the camera. I just love bringing it around. Like I am the person who like wants to bring a camera everywhere I go. For the longest time that it used to be like a 5D for me, which is massive and really not like a thing that you would want to like carry around. So this was always like, oh, I can bring this. It's a digital camera.

I mainly film, still shoot in digital. So there was a lot about it that just like, it does very well. But once I got my first one, like the idea of like all the modern specs that it actually had in it made me realize about like, oh, these cameras are just like super fun to just like use and have a bunch in it that I like wasn't expecting. Yeah. So it's like the joining of this is fun to use and I can also get pretty good results with it. And there is something, too, having a camera this size that is not scary to bring to parties.

Like, I have been places where Viren has busted out big giant cameras with, you know, 18 to 200 lenses and they freak people out. Whereas the X100 is like that perfect size where it sort of blends in in a way that other better cameras don't. And it is like it's a middle point that I think it's very powerful. I saw on threads somebody who's saying like this is the greatest camera to bring to concerts because I know it won't get confiscated. It doesn't look professional enough for that. but I can get great results. And like, genius, yep. Perfect explanation.

I love that. So, but for like a decade, this thing just trundles along. It's a good camera. People like it, but it then in 2020 becomes like a cultural phenomenon. And I missed the origins of this. Like, all of a sudden, I feel like I turned around and everyone was talking about it. But this is a TikTok thing, right? Like, Becca, how did this become such a thing on the internet?

TikTok is a visual platform. And folks saw this camera. They saw the results that saw. folks were getting, and they're like, I want that too. And like I was saying before, it has a price that is friendly to some folks, not all. This is not a cheap camera by any means, but it's much cheaper than most mirrorless cameras or most cameras that produce similar results that are in, you know, into the 2000s. And that's just for the body alone. This, you get the camera and the lens. And at the time, I think it was going for like, well, before it blew up on TikTok, it was

going for like $1,400. And then it blew up and so did the prices. Honestly, it took me by surprise how many people would come to me asking me about this camera, and I had no idea that it was blowing up on TikTok. Like, I truly had no idea that it was, like, becoming so popular. And soon after that, like, my algorithm changed entirely. And the only thing I can see is just, like, X100V photos and samples. And not even, like, samples. Like, my algorithms are, like, very much, like, photo, video creators. Like, I see a lot of samples with everything.

But the X100 V was kind of like just chilling there. It was like part of the set as well. And it was not only about what it can do, but it was also very cool to have this camera. Like I do think that a lot of people now like do love the film look in general, but some people don't want to make film photos. And this was kind of like, oh, I can have the best of both worlds. Yeah. If you'll allow me to talk about that for a second, the whole idea of having film photos without having to shoot film.

Like I think a lot of folks. swung to film because you can naturally get a really great baked in look. But there's a lot of friction there with having to drop it off at a lab and like kind of having to know what aperture is. Plus then you have it on film. And what the hell are you going to do with film? You're going to put it in a binder and you're never going to look at it again. You just scan it? How are you going to scan it? Are you taking photos or a scanner? Like there's a whole culture of like, you know, subculture people like doing it. It's fantastic. And I think in like, especially when we're like in the AI role of just like generative images and now videos, like there is something about the tangibility

of film that people are like really going after again. Oh yeah, I love it. But it is filled with friction. I'll say film is a pain in the ass. And that's what I love about it. But this can give you film like, it's the closest digital camera that can naturally give you film like results without having to do anything with film. Becca, dig into that a little bit for me because people do talk a lot about the film simulation stuff. And I think I have been conditioned over the years to not trust any built-in setting inside of a camera because they'll just screw up your photos and everybody's like, just do it in post, fix it on your computer. You can make it look like anything you want. There's tons of good software. You should shoot the rawest, cleanest thing out of the camera that you should. But on the X100, people buy into these film simulation things, right? Like, what is, what is Fuji doing here that is different? So David M.L made an incredible video for the studio about why and how Fuji film is perfectly poised to make this camera. And the guts of that video is that they have been creating film for, I mean, most of their history. And so they have a lot of great color scientists who know how to make great colors.

And they just baked that into this camera. And that's something that, I mean, if Kodak was still around, maybe they could do it. but nobody else has that background knowledge on color science. And so there's a level of trust that folks have in this camera and the colors that it produces that they don't have in other companies' cameras. And again, go watch David's video. It is excellent. And he also speaks about shooting raw versus JPEG and makes a great analogy to Clay.

And you got to go watch that video. But the long short of it is that the colors that this camera produces are actually really good. And more importantly, they're unique to this system. Whereas in most manufacturers are just creating color profiles that are pleasing to the most amount of people. Got it. Okay. So let's talk about the X-101 itself. This thing has been, I would say, more hotly awaited than just about any camera I can think of.

I admittedly am not in, like, the professional camera world. So I don't know if they're like weird Sony lenses that are getting just as much press. But like people have been talking about are waiting for this camera for a very long time. Like there were leaks about every piece of it, which I don't remember happening for a camera in a really long time. What is different from a hardware perspective about the camera this time? Becca, you have one. What are kind of the big upgrades for this generation?

You do have 40 megapixels as opposed to 26 megapixels on the V. The LCD allows 15 degrees more tilt, but otherwise it's pretty much the same camera. There's one more thing that's very important. You now have in-body image stabilization. So you can basically shoot at lower shutter speeds and still get crisp photos. That feels fine. Were people clamoring for anything new and huge in the hardware? It doesn't sound like they were. I think what's a bigger deal about this camera, though, is there's a lot of scarcity in the V. And now they're producing this camera in China, as opposed to Japan, which some folks aren't stoked about.

But Fujifilom is promising that they will have more available to folks. And that's just good news for a lot of people who couldn't get their hands. on an X100 V. Yeah, how scarce was it? Everything got kind of weird during the pandemic trying to buy stuff, but like how rare did the X100 V actually become? Yeah, I think like after the pandemic, it was just like extremely hard to get

and like I wanted to get one. And it just like never made sense. Like the prices were just like insane. And I think this was like one of the last few Fuji cameras before they switched their factories. So I think like it was the X-Pi cameras. 100 v and then like x pro 3 i think the x birthday was like the last one made in japan and then they switched to china probably did not help with just like trying to get those orders out and at one point

Fuji was just like we're not accepting any more orders so there's the other side of the argument that just like a lot of people are like maybe not entirely happy with like the the improvements between the two models and are just kind of saying they're like oh Fuji is capitalizing on the popularity of this camera, they're going to do an iterative update for it and also raise the price for it as well. Instead of making more of the X100 Vs, they're just going to make more of the X-1016 now. Got it. Okay. Which, I don't know, I think that's fair. I don't think there's anything wrong with having small updates to systems. It's funny, I was sent a review of the X100T done nine years ago, change some names around and that review could be used for the X-106.

But I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's a good system. It has a good like what we would, you know, quote-unquote call a retro feel. And that's a good thing. Don't fix it if it ain't broke. Yeah. So I do wonder, though, if part of the appeal of the X100V was that it became so rare and hard to get and was such a cool kind of status symbol to be able to shoot with and have in the background of your shot.

and whatever. Is this thing, if it floods the market and everybody who wants one can get one, is it going to be as cool and viral as the view was? No. Yeah. The answer is like, no. It's been a very polarizing camera since, I don't know, like for like last week, all I can see on threads and everywhere else is just like, people have a lot of opinions about this camera. And I think like it's popularity making some quote unquote like real photographers kind of mad because they feel like the other ones that like they don't know what to do with this camera, what they have it. The whole idea behind the X-100 is that it's like a very much like a proper photographer's camera. It's the poor mans like us, so to speak.

It's the one that's like, you know, you're kind of limited to these like form factor of it. I think the general kind of consensus and conversation around it is kind of switching a little bit to like a negative in a way. Yeah, V sent me this this great thread. And it just says, you're going to take the same shitty photos with the X-106 that you were taking before you spent that $1,500 stay-broke king. Oof. That's perfect. I know. It was pretty funny.

But yeah, I feel like a lot of people have like a lot of opinions about it, about like how to properly use this camera. It's weird. It used to be like kind of like a little bit of a secret. Like it was never as popular. And it was just like, oh, you can get a lot of great stuff with this tiny camera. And now it feels like it's like switches like the pendulum. and just kind of like swung in the other direction. And some people are kind of getting mad about it

or trying to justify their own purchases. And I don't know. It's weird. It's like, it's like console wars, but cameras. And if I've learned one thing about the photography community over the year, it's that everybody is super chill about new ideas and new things.

And everybody, nobody has like really strong entrenched opinions about the right ways to do things. And everybody's just very relaxed. Yeah. It is fundamentally like a very objective art form. But okay, there's like so many other products that are sold with like the promise of greatness, right? Like I, my mind goes to the Apple Watch Ultra. It's like people are going to buy this and then they're going to go hike mountains and get lost and get saved.

And it's like, no. So it's kind of, you know, similar to that, which there's nothing wrong with that. We all have ideas of who we want to be and think that buying something to make us that thing will, you know, make us feel better. Are you calling it an aspirational product? For some. Yeah, I am. So, Becca, you've been shooting with it a little bit. You're going to make a video and do some stuff for us.

But what's the early returns on your time with it so far? Yeah, I mean, it's beautiful to hold. It's very fun to use. I love that about it. I don't think it's as turnkey as everybody claims. The idea that anybody could pick this up and just have great photos is, I mean, simply not the truth. Even knowing, like, what each film stock looks like and, like, kind of,

of honing in the look that you want to get from this camera is not a walk in the park. So I've been thinking about it, like, I don't know if I've just been watching too much HGTV, but I've been like tons of curb appeal in this camera, but it is not turnkey. That's very good. HGTV would be very proud of you. I thought you were going to make a whole like house flipping analogy, but I like that. No. That's very good.

Don't give me, don't give me props for that. I am workshopping it. Viren, are you going to buy one? You sold, did you have a five that you sold? No. I only had the third, the T. Oh, right. Okay.

So you had the T. You sold it hoping for this one. Is it everything you hoped it would be? Honestly, like what Becca said earlier, like, you can look at the old review and it'll, like, a lot of things would just like transfer over. I think it, like, it is very much, like, the form factor of it is fantastic. The fact that it has this, like, new sensor, which I haven't used yet. It's been in the XT5. It's been in the XH2 with Ibus and the 40 megapixel count.

very intrigued by that. I've heard great things about just like how well it maximizes the smaller sensor. Some people wanted it to be a full frame camera and I completely understand that. I do think there's like, you know, Fuji's kind of like putting their eggs in the crop sensor and the medium form and they're skipping full frame entirely. And with a fixed lens, there's like maybe one day they will make this thing a full frame. I can see that happening because, I don't know, I feel like you can only get that much out of a smaller sensor. It looks like they are able to get a lot out of it.

People are raving about how good the sensor is. So I sold the tea. I was like, you know, maybe I'll buy this one. I have a confession. I did pre-order it late last night. Oh. Like all day, I know. I was waiting to tell you, Becca, but here we are.

I'm doing it publicly in front of you and everyone else. No, I was, I had it in my basket for a while. And I was like, can I get it? And then I read a couple of reviews late last night because I was only able to like go through all the X100 coverage yesterday. And I'm like, I just miss having that camera. Like, I just miss having an X100 in my arsenal. Just like a thing that I can bring everywhere and feel good about just like, yeah.

Like, I don't know, not bringing like a massive camera, but have something that's like fundamentally like super fun to use. So the pre-order is in. I've caved. We always knew you're going to, Viren, if it makes you feel like that. There was never a question. I mean, truly, I, I, I, almost pre-ordered one as well, but then I remembered that I can just put a pancake lens on my A7C,

and I know Lightroom well enough. I could pop things into there, so. But hey, if the answer is it looks kick-ass and takes kick-ass pictures, and it will make people follow me on TikTok, and that's the reason people buy cameras, I'll take it. I'll take anything we need. I'm into it. People pay a lot of money for clothing accessories, and this is one of them, for some folks, not for everyone. Exactly. All right. Thank you both so much for being here. Super fun as always. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, we got to take one more break, and then we're going to do a question from the Vergecast hotline. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns.

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And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB, it's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse.

And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary. Third, like that doesn't, that's not a priority.

That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembark, asymptomatic. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus.

And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. they are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. Let's get to the Vergecast hotline.

As always, the number is 866 Verge 1-1, or you can email Vergecast at theverge.com. We love all your questions. We try to do at least one on the show every week. This week we have a question about our right-to-repair segment from last week, which Will Paul is here to help me answer. Hi, Will. Hello.

We got a bunch of good feedback on that episode. People liked it. People are super interested in right-to-repair. Love it. Everybody wants to break their own batteries by themselves. I don't want to be responsible for that, but, but. That's great. But we got one question from a bunch of people.

I would say, as people are want to do, some people were very nice about it. Some people were very rude about it. Oh, God. But we got this question over and over. So I'm going to read an email from Mike that I would say is representative of a bunch of the feedback we got. Mike says, one big thing you left out of the parts pairing section of your right to repair discussion was the rise of phone chop shops. Because things like activation lock and stolen device protection, prevent thieves from using or reselling iPhone's whole, there's now a burgeoning market of phone

chop shops where, much like their automotive counterparts, stolen phones are being disassembled and sold on as parts. Serialization and parts pairing deters this since thieves can no longer use or sell parts from stolen phones. I know this is something you also talk to a bunch of people about, so I'm curious what your thoughts on that piece of the parts pairing argument are. Yeah, so that listener mentioned activation locks, which we didn't talk about because it is a completely different system from Apple, but that is sort of the primary way that Apple prevents

stolen working phones from being wiped and resold. So that's the system where your phone is tied to your ICloud account, and if someone steals it, that motherboard is sort of forever locked to your account, and without you, there's nothing they can do to resell that working phone. So that's a very important anti-theft mechanism for Apple. That's different from parts pairing and there's nothing to my knowledge that prevents someone from stealing a phone and chopping it up and selling all of the parts individually. You know, one thing we didn't talk about a ton is that not all of the parts in an iPhone are paired to the motherboard. Lots of them aren't. So any of those parts would be super easy to take a part and sell and activation locking

doesn't prevent that in any way. And even the paired parts are resellable. It's a no one. It's a to reuse the paired parts from a stolen phone just like it's annoying to reuse the paired parts from a non-stolen phone, a broken phone. So that's, you know, that doesn't help or hurt the anti-theft cause one way or the other. Have you heard Apple try to make the security argument at all? You know, you mentioned it's put out statements kind of both in favor of these laws for right to repair, but also making what I would say are relatively consistent arguments that not having parts pairing and allowing right to repair. is a security risk for lots of different reasons. I mean, like we talked about on the show, there's issues with the biometric stuff and all that.

Has Apple made the theft argument at all that you've seen? Not really, no. And they, you know, offered a kind of a rare public testimony in Oregon that we talked about on last week's show. They ran down all of the reasons why they're very attached to part pairing. And like you say, it's safety, it's security around keeping people from hacking your biometric. sensors, they didn't bring up theft one way or the other when it comes to part pairing. Is it possible that Apple sees parts pairing as part of their anti-theft strategy broadly, just because, again, it makes parts more annoying to work with outside of Apple's own repair

ecosystem? Sure. Maybe they see that as a knock-on benefit, but it's not something that they talk about actively around parts pairing. Okay. Yeah, it seems like one of those things where... there might be something to the idea that having these parts be digitally signed might help you sort of trace things as they go wrong. Like it would help in an investigation of stolen parts, maybe more so than it would actually deter people from selling the parts.

Yeah. Again, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't really hamper the existence of chop shops any more so than, again, paired parts are annoying to work with. So, you know, the one thing I will mention is that that activation lock system, is something that repair shop owners are not super wild about. And right to repair advocates are not super wild about. Oh, interesting. Why? Because it means that, you know, abandoned phones or just any kind of phone that is not stolen but, you know, doesn't have an owner anymore, it's sort of lost forever. The activation locking is pretty bulletproof.

So if someone brings a phone into a repair shop and never comes back for it, there's not much that the repair shop owner can do with that, even if they've done. and all of their due diligence to try to return that to the owner, that phone basically has to be scrapped for parts or tossed. That always makes me think of, like, at the verge, obviously we get tons of review units of gadgets. And every once in a while, somebody will, you know, put their data on a phone or a tablet or a laptop or whatever, lock it with a passcode, and then leave the verge.

And so we have this closet full of devices that literally no one can access. We can't access them. We can't send them back to the company to have some way in. Like this stuff is permanently tied to someone's pin code that they set up, you know, in a moment of just sort of randomly setting up a device. And you forget how, especially, do you remember on old Android funds, you had to draw the shape? Yeah, yeah, totally. Of the unlock. If you didn't have one of those that was the one you always did, I guarantee you 50% of the time you would forget what you did because you're constantly setting up new funds.

Right. Which on the one hand, huge security win. On the other hand, total disaster. And so I can imagine that being a problem for basically anyone. Like I have a drawer full of smartphones because of what my life is. And there's probably at least a handful of them that neither I nor anyone else will ever get into ever again. Well, clearly what we need is an a verge chop shop. Like we just need to start selling parts from all of the random gadgets that we've accumulated.

Listen, you just saved the media business right there at Willpour. Always happy to help. All right. If you want to reach Will on all the right to repair stuff, you're covering this basically for the rest of the year, I think. This is like a thing you're going to be interested in and presumably forever, but definitely for the rest of it's here because we both feel like this is a big year. This is why I never wanted to have a beat because I wanted to just do a story and move on with my life. But yes, I'm the right to write to repair guy forever. I love this for you. How can the people reach you if they have other questions? Will.com at the verge.com. P-O-O-O-R. Will, thank you as always.

Yeah. Later. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who is on the show, and thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, the Fuji camera, Mia's Flip story, all this stuff about right to repair, all of it at Theverge.com.

We'll put some links in the show notes, which we're putting into full posts, leave us comments, tell us everything as you want to see, read theverge.com. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or things you want to see in the X-107, you can always email us at Vergecast at theverge.com. or keep calling the hotline.

866, Verge 1-1. Like I said, we try to do at least one hotline question every week, and we're going to probably do a hotline episode coming up in the very near future. So keep all your questions coming. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Por.

The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Nelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about AI, more Google naming weirdness, MWC, and a whole bunch more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.