Trash Taste Podcast - We Spent a Day with ANTHONY PADILLA | Trash Taste #110

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

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Good evening. It's me, The Monk. Have you ever listened to Trash Tate and Thoughts? That doesn't seem too hard. I can do that. Well, you're in luck, because today I want to talk about Anchor, the easiest way to make podcasts, and it's completely free. Anchor will distribute your podcasts for you so it can be heard on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and many, many more. I mean, it's literally what we're using now. They have creation tools that allow you to record and edit a podcast for your phone or computer. And you can add any songs from Spotify directly to your episodes.

The possibilities are literally endless. endless. You can make anything, music analysis, talk shows, or even an anime podcast that talks about anime. It's everything you need to make a podcast in one place. So, if you want to give podcasting a go, download the free Anchor app or go to anchor.m to get started. Anyway, back to the episode. Hello and welcome to another very special episode of Trash Taste. We are joined by another guest today. I'm sorry, I completely forgot. It's been a while since I've hosted. I'm your host for today, Gantt and with me are as usual the boys. What up?

And today we have a very special guest. Now, in case there is one person in YouTube who doesn't know who you are, do you want to introduce yourself and what you do? Oh my God. That's a lot of pressure. My name is Anthony Padilla. Some people say Padilla. I'm totally fine with that. But I do like to say Padilla like tortilla.

That's how I get people to memorize it. Let's see. So, God, how deep do we want to go into this history here? You're a YouTube player. Just admit it. We have two plus hours. We have two plus hours. Are we doing two plus hours?

Okay, let's get deep, guys. So I started with my friend Ian. I started a YouTube channel called Smosh in 2005. 17 years. Half of my age ago. Oh, my God. Half of my age ago. Half your life has been on YouTube.

Half of my life. Yes. Oh, shit. I'm having to rethink so many. I'm going to need that. two and a half hours. Yeah. And then in 2017, I kind of split off to do my own thing,

been doing an independent channel, which has slowly evolved into me, kind of doing deep dive interviews with either groups of people or one person that has, you know, some kind of popularity surrounding them. Right. And we drill in deep into the psychology behind blowing up or, you know, if it's a group of people, I like to kind of get in there and understand them. Yeah.

I feel like so many people have preconceived ideas about what a group or what a label or identity means. So I like to kind of show that there is variation and nuance from individual to individual. Yeah, they're really good. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, this is like pretty intimidating because not only are you like the OG of YouTube.

I can say that you're like, you are like, it's not even like a subjective thing. Yeah, yeah. You're objectively you are the OG of YouTube. but also you are like now the interviewer of like YouTubers and now we're interviewing you. You're a reverse engineer this is. Yeah, yeah.

My stuff is so different. When I came here, I was like, so what are we talking about today? You're like, I don't know. When I go into mind, I'm like, okay, I've got like this 45 bullet points. I know we're gonna get through these. I overplan so much.

This is show. The shows though. It's good. Yeah, yeah. Reflects in the quality. My favorite stuff is always a stuff that comes out of stuff that happens in the moment

that was never planned. And that is your whole show. That's your whole show. Yeah, yeah. On YouTube it'll say top moment, all of it. Yeah, yeah. All of it. Cause it's gonna hit me when you came in,

you were like, so what are we talking about today, guys? And we just look at each other and we were just like, what do you mean? Oh, shit, we're talking to Anthony today. Fuck, he's the interviewer. And we don't have any interview questions. I was like, do they have some kind of secret thing

that they're not telling me, some kind of prank that they're gonna do. They're like, should we tell him? No. We're gonna hit you with a low blow at about 30 minutes. Just grill me. So actually, I've always wanted, how much, how much prep do you do for your interviews?

Because as we've just established, we do zero. Zero prep here. The only prepping we do is, who are we getting on today? Yeah, let's see, so the show starts, I call it, I spent a day with whatever the topic or whatever the person's name is. And at first, it was like four people that I would sit down with and it would amount to like eight hours.

Now it's a little bit shorter, like two to three hours, if it's just one guest, a little bit longer. But I do a pre-interview call, which is like an hour, hour and a half or two. And then I work backwards to try to figure out what we're going to talk, what questions I'm going to come up with based on the things that we talked about. So, yeah, God, I cannot even quantify it. It's a lot of prep. Yeah.

What made you start doing pre-interviews? Is it because you maybe had some guests somewhere? You're like, fuck, I could have done a way better job. A little bit of that. It was also bringing on guests that have really big stories. And I felt like I couldn't just go in there and be like, so tell me about your childhood. And then just like, they just go and I'm like, I think they probably got everything. Like I also, I realized that in the interviews, I was cutting out a lot of stuff.

Right. You know, I was like, it's a lot of me trying to figure out where this is going. I kind of want to have an idea of where we're going first. Yeah. And I realized that I was like every night before the, the next day was an interview, I would be like up until 4 a.m. Like 12 hours straight. Like, like, I don't know what I'm talking about. I got to learn every single thing about this person's life.

Like drill down. You know, I interviewed Vitubers. That's actually how I found out about this. podcast, I saw you had interviewed some, a V-Tuber as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I like, I watched that episode and I was like learning everything about V-tubers. And I was like, wait, I could just talk to them, have them tell me the important things. And then I could reverse engineer the questions based on the conversations that they want to have. Yeah. So basically you, you take out some of the research time where you don't even know if you're going down like

the wrong rabbit holes. Yes. Yes. And instead you just come straight from the source, I guess. Yes. And then I'm able to use the extra time that I now have during the interviews to kind of drill in deeper to like, um, like the psychology behind the feelings that they were having and what things affected them from those moments and how they affect them now. Yeah. And I guess it just allows me to get a little bit deeper with the conversations. Yeah. So like, yeah, so like the interviews are like 20 to 40 minutes. How much of that is like, how much source like footage do you have? How much of it gets cut out, you reckon? Yeah. So it depends on the purpose.

person, uh, Markiplier, we shot like two hours and 40 minutes and we cut it down to a half hour somehow, miraculously. After it came out, he was like, holy shit,

you did it, you bastard. But, uh, we apparently, like, we're able to get all the, the key components,

the conversations that were, were really meaty, have them in there while cutting out all the fluff. And it's, it's a lot of, there's a big process. So we have, uh,

we have five editors. now. It goes, it goes from person. They all have like a very specific, they're like a specific cog in the machine. Yeah. And it's a lot of just like grinding it down. It goes to the first person. They get the full two and a half hours of footage. They cut it down to 50. And then it's like that person takes it and cuts it down and each person's like really good at refining. We just have a one man machine. Yeah. Yeah. He's like he works like 10 people's work. I'll do it to myself. Yeah. Damn. I do have solutions to that problem. You know, if you, if you're like, coming in with like two and half hours of footage

and having a hard time cutting it down. Oh yeah? Have you ever thought about this thing called a podcast? You mean just releasing it all? Have you ever thought about no cuts? I have thought about that and people have asked. They're like, come on, just release the full thing. I know you got it there somewhere.

But I feel like I'm too much of a stickler for like, I want it to really be polished. I want everything that I come out with to feel polished. I know that I know there's an environment where people want longer conversations that are unedited like this one obviously has a huge audience, even on YouTube where I feel like people are not generally looking for very long, uncut things. You guys found that audience. It clearly does exist.

Yeah. But I just, I really want something that feels a little bit more, a little bit more bite size. But you could like take those like cut parts that you cut out, for example, turn it into like a compilation, release it on like Patreon for like a behind the scenes. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, we definitely have a bunch of like archived conversations that we are noting this didn't really make the cut, but it is still a strong conversation. I mean, with the amount of questions, I guess you're asking,

and the amount of people you're asking, I'm sure there's moments there you're like, that question didn't go down great. Or that was a little awkward. Let's just cut that out. A little bit, but some, well, it depends. Sometimes the awkward questions and answers

have like, yeah, are the best ones because it puts me on the spot to come up with something that was unplanned. And I, I overthrew. think everything that I usually do that it's the unplanned stuff that actually gets the like gets out of my head because I'm actually you know there in the moment yeah but yeah sometimes it's I just move right on yeah you're like oh nice question yeah sometimes it keep me in keep keep it in

me being like uh so anyway uh not knowing where to go with it like when I interviewed dominatrix's and some of the details that they said yeah I didn't I don't think there was any response that would have felt appropriate in that moment about some of the actions that went down behind the scenes. I think I'm a little too vanilla to have been prepared for it. Is there a lot you have to cut out to, let's say, keep within YouTube guidelines? I mean, to a certain degree, yes.

Sometimes we just censor it and that's enough because we don't want the video to be age-gated. And it's like, no one sees this video. Right. I mean, certain episodes, yeah, I spend a day with strippers. I spend a day with dominatrixes. I mean, I'm going to have an upcoming episode. I spent today with pony players.

Look it up to actual. Or maybe not. Maybe with a private browser. Incognito window. What is a pony player? So they are people that, it's basically role play. It's a little bit of DOM and sub-dynamic. And they dress up as a pony, kind of in a leather.

Like my little pony or like. Like, oh, just like an actual pony. Think about a human. Oh, here we go. We got some visuals for you here. Can you click on that black and white one there? I think that one's a pretty good dynamic. Yeah, let's zoom in on Twitter.

Oh, let's take a look. Oh, wow. Yeah. We don't put these off. It's like a leather furry a little bit. Except it's BDSM, so it's not a furry because those are not always associated with anything sexual.

Who's scouting this stuff for you? Yeah, yeah. Like, do you have a dude? Do you have a dude? Anthony, you won't believe what I just found. I mean, a little bit. Yeah, it's my producer, Elise. She's like, so we got this really interesting person.

She has an arena, you know, where horses usually reside in, but it's for the pony players. Do you want to add on a little segment where you go on location? I was like, yeah, let's do it. I didn't know how to react to that, but the obvious answer is yes. Right. You have to do. It's the context. You have to.

I mean, yeah, when I do a lot of episodes, I spend it a do with Dominatrix's. I'm like, you have to do it. have to dominate me. Like that's part, that's part. I'm not into this, but you have to. You have to. You have to. You have to. For journalistic integrity. So many comments are like, clearly Anthony just wanted to know what this was like or like, clearly Anthony's a pro with this because he didn't really have that big of a reaction. I was like, I mean, you know, transparently. I just wanted it. I wanted to learn about dominatrix's in the scene. I have to put myself in it to really understand. Of course. Yeah. Dynamic of why people would do this. What do they take out of it? What do they like about it? Yeah. How do you, how do you battle the thing? an embarrassment with that. You know, it's the weirdest thing when it's, when it's on camera and it feels like it's for research purposes, literally.

To the point where, and part of the humor and entertainment comes from me being embarrassed, which makes me less embarrassed. Yeah, I get that. I do videos in Japan, similar thing. Yeah,

I walked in a strip club recently. Yeah, yeah. I did not see that one specifically. Yeah. Are the strip clubs there different? Yeah, a little bit, I guess. I mean, I haven't been to any here. Oh, oh. Let me just tell me for research. Research purposes.

You can keep taking for research purposes. Now you have to be able to answer my question, you must go to a ship point. Yeah, I mean, that, I feel like, yeah, when you're on camera, it kind of gives you like a free pass to just be an embarrassment. Yeah. Not good. I realized that the other day I went to this, this bar.

And I never, there's, there's, There's this social anxiety that's just like, uh-uh, immediately like cut off any opportunity to feel like out of my element. Yeah, right. So I went to this thing and I was like, I'm just gonna push myself to do it. And I was like, what I was thinking? I was like, I could totally do this if cameras were on me. And if it was like, I'm like talking to the camera, I'm gonna be going this thing.

I'm gonna be uncomfortable. Let's see what happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would be able to totally do it. And I was trying to reframe my mind to be like, can I trick myself into there is a camera following me and I'm doing this for research purposes because I would be a pro. I would be a pro at anything. There's an invisible camera.

It's my invincibility. I'm like, I could do anything if a camera is on me. I don't know, it's weird. Tell me your YouTube. You're just like content created like through and through it. It empowers you.

It feels like you have like a past to just do it. Yeah. Like, oh no, don't worry. There's a camera on him. Oh, okay. Like if these cameras were not rolling and we were all just sat down up there,

I feel like it might have taken us an extra 10 minutes to warm up. You know? It's weird, right? There's like this invigoration you can almost feel from being on camera. Yeah, because like normally like most of my content is not on camera and the only time I started

going on camera was like for this podcast. And like at first I was like really, really awkward and it was just really, really weird being there. But then you kind of get used to it and it kind of becomes your friend. Right? Yeah. Parassocial relationships.

Yeah, yeah. It kind of becomes like your excuse. Oh no, the camera, the camera. The camera. It becomes like the get out jail free car to do shit you wouldn't normally do. That's true. That's true because part of the entertainment factor comes from whatever happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're forced to lean into that. Yeah. And people around you as well, as soon as they see you being being filmed, they're like,

okay, they can be a bit of a monkey or whatever. You absolutely get a free pass. I'll tell you what is like the real free pass though. So you sometimes in Japan, we have like, we bring like the camera crew. But for some reason, every time we've brung like a boo mic, that is, that is when like People around us know that shit's going down. They're like, yeah, yeah, because they, you know, they see like a shotgun mic, right? And they're like, oh, well, you know, this is just like a hobby for someone,

you know, just filming for their friends or whatever. But when they bring to see a massive boom mic, they're like, oh, this is real shit right here. Like, this is like, yeah, they got a crew. Yeah, excuse me gentlemen, do you want some coffee? Do you want to what you need on set? Thank you very much. They immediately think we're like more important

than we actually are, but when they see the boom mic. Yeah, for sure. And we don't even use it. Mostly we just use lapel mic. Yeah, yeah. It's just like a statement, man. No free card. But I was thinking back to, I was like, there were, there have definitely been moments of things that I've shot that I would be so embarrassed if the cameras weren't rolling. And I, uh, I did this video. I spent a day with anime cafe maids. I, uh, yeah, I said if this video gets over 100,000 likes, I will become a maid and I will, uh, make a documentary about me doing a show. And I actually put it on, put the show on with the girls that I had interviewed. Yeah. And I looked,

back at that and I had the most confidence in the world like zero bit of embarrassment about literally stepping on people and having my full on ass cheeks out. I was like if the cameras were not rolling, I would have been like, I don't want this attention. It was something about the, uh, knowing the cameras are there and I'm trying to, you know, almost like I'm working like I'm fucking working here guys. Like something about that. I was just like it's okay. Yeah. It's like a little devil that's sitting on your show and being like, don't worry. It's for context. I don't know if that's a good thing. I don't know if that's a good thing. Just like a professional through and through,

you know, it's like, you know, when you're an actor and the director says, you know, fucking, what did they say again? Fucking action. Action. Yeah. You're in LA, gone. You need to know this.

I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry, it's only been five days in LA, okay? I feel like, when I go into a lot of the videos, I'm like, I will never get a chance to do this again. Like, you can't make a true. You can't make a, like, you could do the video again, but you can't really. No, no, no, it'll never be the same reaction.

No one's going to click it again. Oh, they will. But, you know, it's not the same. It's not the same. I was having a conversation with someone recently. And I was trying to figure out why I feel like I'm in such a different headspace when I'm conducting an interview. I mean, part of it is that I've done a pre-call.

Part of it is that I know where the conversation is going to go to a certain degree. But also, in many ways, I feel like it might be. It's like the last conversation I'll ever have with this person. Not to say that, like, I'll never talk to them or, or, whatever again, but for some reason there is like, this is this one moment. Yeah. In a way, it feels like there's all this pressure. Like make it count.

Yeah. Yeah. And even though there's a lot of pressure, it, for some reason, the fact that it feels so dire, it almost alleviates the pressure in a weird way. Right. Yeah. Knowing that you can kind of go for the deep questions and. Yeah.

Yeah. Like this is your one shot. Yeah. Kind of like what you were saying. Right. Right. Yeah. That's awesome.

When you started, did you ever feel like, I guess, nervous being too intrusive or, you know, kind of like diving down a bit too deep? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I would tell people beforehand, like if there's any question that you don't want to answer, like don't ever feel like I'm trying to pry further than you're comfortable. Yeah. Like, I would tell them like, tell me to not if going down in direction that you're not comfortable with. But now that I do the pre calls, again, that that removes most of that.

Sometimes I'll drill down a little bit further. But for the most part, I see if they're comfortable. And I try to word the questions in a way where they can tell me as much as they want or go in as much as they want. Sometimes they'll tell me something. If I want to get in deeper, I'll be like, Oh, and I'll kind of rephrase what they just said to me. Yeah. Which sounds really stupid if you, like, if we just leave it in,

it's me saying the exact same thing that they said. Right. But for some reason, hearing it back, I feel like they know that I understood. And then it gives them the opportunity to, to refine or dig in deeper if they want. So usually it's like I kind of throw out little invitations to go deeper without feeling like I'm prying in.

Oh, right. Right. Right. So it's like their choice if they would like to go down if they want to. Yes. Right. Exactly. That's pretty smart to do it. Yeah.

It sounded like you're describing a different thing. I didn't mean for it to come out with us. Took what he said and explained it sexually. It's their choice. It's their choice. It's their choice. So like, obviously, like you, it's like a massive interview series on YouTube now. But you came off of this, like, off the back of Smosh.

What made you want to? start doing this series. Was it, did you want to explore a bunch of ideas and then this was the one that like kind of stuck or was it always this that you wanted to do? Well, I mean, you know, Smosh was definitely a comedic, like silly thing. So I never thought that I was going to get into any deeper conversations like connecting with people in the way that the series is now. And the whole series kind of started off as a joke, of course, the very first video when I left, I was like, Okay, part of the joke was that I'm an independent YouTuber now. I have no idea what's a going.

I'm a strong independent YouTuber. I was feeling, feeling myself. And it was actually very true. I had not uploaded my own video in years because the company had taken it over. So part of the joke was like, hey, what is a YouTuber independent YouTuber do now? And I was asking for advice. And I interviewed a bunch of popular YouTubers. and there was something about that dynamic of having a conversation where I didn't know where it was going.

And the funniest moments were the ones that were improvised rather than 100% scripted. And I really enjoyed that. And then later on, it was like, let's revisit. And I was like struggling for a long time, just floundering. Like, what do I do with this channel? And every single week, it was like, I don't know what to do. Okay, I figured it out. Okay, I shot it.

So now I'm going to figure something else out. Okay, I find it. Now I'm releasing this thing that I don't really like, but I ran out of time. Yeah. And eventually I was like, what were the things that I liked doing most on the channel so far? Let's, you know, I'll dial in deeper with those ideas. Right. And I started expanding on it from there.

Yeah. Yeah. Man, Japan needs to start, like, listening to how you do your interviews, because you would hate how interviews are done in Japan. I don't think I've ever heard a Japanese interview. Tell me about it. Oh, God. Do you guys get interviewed, like, on Japanese? No, so when you do interviews anyone, you have to give them the exact script.

Oh. Yes. There's no room for. Yeah. And they will sometimes have scripted answers about what they will say to you back. So everything is pre-planned. There is, you are not allowed to go out of like off-script at all.

And it's just the most rigid interview you could like ever imagine. Is it like that in different places of Asia as well? Because I have, I've also interviewed someone from South Korea. And it was a similar thing. Right. But while they were speaking English to me and it was obviously not their first language. like, of course, they want to know what they're saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They wanted the questions beforehand, and I figured, yeah, they want to know what I'm saying to them just in case a word slips by that they don't know. Yeah. But I didn't realize what they were doing was scripting their responses to such a degree that afterwards they sent me their script. Yeah. And whenever, I thought it was a little bit weird in the moment.

Whenever I asked a question, they would repeat the answer that they had already said. And I was like, hmm, okay, well, they were a lot more loose in the preempt. pre-interview, just talk about all these things. And then here, I was like, maybe they're just nervous or something. Okay, I get it. People get nervous. But then they sent me the script and was verbatim, every single word that was said. Wow. I think they had a teleprompter. Yeah, I think, like, because I've done quite a bit of interviews with like industry people in Japan. And like, a lot of them are like, okay, send me a list of questions beforehand. We will approve all the questions. We will write up like a very basic thing. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. But I've done enough now where I'm just like,

okay, we'll follow you a script, but I'm gonna add extra questions. Yeah, yeah. And you won't be prepared for them. And so I can really catch you out of what you actually feel. And for the most part, they're okay with it when it actually happens. But I think if you tell them beforehand, hey, by the way, I'm going to throw in some extra questions, they'll just freak out. Yeah.

Because they'll be like, we're not prepared for that. Their teams will say like, yeah, their teams will be like, no, you can't do that. But when I do it on the day of the recording and I get a good answer and a good conversation for it going, then they're like, oh, maybe it's okay. Yeah. Maybe it's actually, maybe it actually makes for an interesting interview. Right. They're not out to fuck me over.

Yeah, exactly. Maybe they actually are just like genuinely interested in me and want a good interview. I wonder how many people have to be screwed over, like in order for that to become the standard. Yeah. It's like how many bad interviews must have you done? Yeah. Yeah. But it does take a while to kind of build up that rapport.

That rapport and that level of respect or trust. Yeah. With people, you know, and I've seen that too. I have people that are a lot more comfortable with doing my interviews now than I think that they probably would have been a couple years ago before I'd really, you know, I don't know if I want to call it proven myself, but like I guess proven that I'm not going to purposely

and maliciously try to like defame someone and ruin their career. You never really showcase even like, you know, what most people would consider strange things. You never really show it as like, whoa, look at this weird thing. You're just like, these are real people. Let's just see why real people do what they do. Yeah, yeah.

If it is a strange thing, I like to talk with them about how it's a... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And the thing is most people are absolutely willing to talk about how something that they do is strange. It's not like they are so, like, in a different world that they think everyone should do this. And if they think it's weird, then fuck you. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

But you've probably, you've had people like that, though, right, in the past? In which way? In the sense of, like, them trying to prove a point and being like, no, you're weird for thinking that this is weird kind of thing. A little bit, but it still seems a little playful. They're like, Normies don't get this. So they still, I think, recognize that. But definitely people are a little bit defensive. But I think it's because they've been shown enough times that they, like they feel

like they have to be defensive because that means that someone doesn't respect them. And I think it's just a lot of like vying for respect of people. Yeah. Yeah. Do you often find, like, do you ever find people that it's, it's a different field where you're just talking to someone casually, but when you're in like in an interview setting with cameras, you really have to like make them feel comfortable, like being themselves and talking. Like, do you, did you find that a challenge with your interviews at all?

Just getting people to be comfortable on camera as quick as possible. A little, I mean, yeah, and you bring up a good point. I do obviously have a limited time and I can't just spend the first like hour of the interview warming up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I go out of my way to really connect with people. You know, we, we have the pre-interview call. So there's a little bit of that dynamic where we're already laughing.

together and we already are on the same page. So there's that when they show up. But of course, they're a little bit more tense, but I, you know, I'll meet the guests on the street. I'll walk them in.

I'll bring them out to the back. We do our COVID tests and we like hang out, you know, like on this park bench that I have on my balcony and we just chit chat. And I, I get to know them and I, you know, tell them a lot about myself.

So, right. I think that there's, there's like a method to kind of warming people up to, so that they can see, like that you're genuine and that you're not secretly going to be trying to get a one up on them. Yeah.

We should have done. I should take him out back. So he's what we were about it. Damn, Anthony just turned up. We were like, all right, cameras on. Right, let's go. Come on. Touch off.

Now, we used to do something similar. We called it like, I don't know. I don't know if it was a strap, but the Denny strats. So there was a Denny's outside of our office. Yeah. Often out, like, invite them to like lunch beforehand. Yeah.

Like get to know them, have a casual conversation. But one issue. we always found ourselves having was we'd get into a conversation and it would just be like, shit, this is, this is good material. This is good. I mean, it literally happened like the five minutes since we sat down and we're like, shit. Let's just like not ask any questions. This is like good material that we can go. Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of the challenge also. I mean, that's the closer you get to someone, the more you start connecting with them, the more you start talking about things that are then difficult to bring back up and have it feel like the first time you talked about it. But that's what helps having my, my question. already. Yeah. Because we actually go away from those conversations for a little while

and then if we have a good conversation you know, I'll write it down in my notes and I'll be like, this is a good, we need to bring this back up again. Right. Yeah.

Smart. We should take notes. We should definitely take notes. This isn't a podcast. We're literally just asking for advice now. It's like, how do it? You guys didn't have to get,

I could have just sent you a message. It's like where were the questions, bro? Yeah, no, this is great. So we're talking about before like, how many people you have to like run the show now. So like how many people are there behind the scenes and how many did you start off with?

Yes. So I started off with just two camera operators and it was just myself trying to figure out what the fuck I was doing. And then I slowly but surely had new people come on to help me and now I have 10 employees on the show. Jesus. And you know it doesn't sound like that big of a number until you think about how much everyone needs to be paid. Yeah.

That's a law. That's a lot. And it's, there's a lot of moving parts. So, um, you know, from when I started, I took two years of community,

community college and I started to take business administration classes. Right. I, I, smosh started happening 2005 and I was like, uh, fuck college.

But, um, I realized that I've actually always been interested in kind of managing a team and a business and yeah i think i think it's a lot of fun you know teaching so and especially once you could teach like i have a head of post the main editor and i get to teach him all the things and we get on the same page and then there's four people that work um i guess below him is how people would say it but that work with him and so i get to communicate with one person he communicates with four so uh i just really enjoy the dynamic of a whole team working together and

having it feel like uh yeah yeah well-wheeled machine because because because Because I was going to ask, like, how many people did you have at most when you were at Smosh? Like, working. Oh, my God. How many employees did you have then? It's kind of hard to say because Defy owned Smosh. Right. And they, I think, had 30 people working with Smosh and all the side channels and the live events and the live, yeah, all the, there's so many elements there that I guess 30 was the magic number.

I, I don't even think. I think I met some of the people there. They're there somewhere. It was a weird team situation where we all never really got to know each other fully. Obviously, you know, we're YouTubers, you see that lovely one out of 10 system, which is the most depressing system on earth.

It's very black mirror-ass. Or it's the best system in the world. It's one out of ten. Of you have heard us complain about it like a million times, but I imagine when you have 10 employees that suddenly if you're getting a 10 out of 10 or then maybe you get a nine out of 10, it starts to get a lot scarier, right?

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot more weight. Yeah. I mean, how do you deal with that? It's like a, is you deal with it as a team or are you like, gosh, leave me alone? I'm going to cry my. I, there's still a part of me that is affected by it. I can't say that there's not.

Yeah. And it's not even like an outward thing of like, oh, shit, dude, what am I going to do? But even if I just carry on with my day, there is like a part of me where like my energy feels a little bit like something was pulled out from me a little bit. Even if I'm not thinking about it, it must be some suppression. And then when there is like a one out of ten, I'm a little, my posture's a little better. But I've been really working on reminding myself that like a bad video now was actually a good video for me. Like in terms of performance. Yeah.

When I first started, you know, what I would now consider like probably a lower performing video was a was a good performance. And we still have sponsors. And I still, I try to look at what my actual progress. has been for the show. It's not just views. That is, it's so easy to think views are a measure of progress because they are,

it's the biggest number when you go on YouTube. It's attached to every single thumbnail. In fact, many people decide if they're going to click on something based on how high that number is. Yeah, you see one video and it has, um,

you know, 10,000 views. Someone is much less likely than to click that same video with 10 million views because there's that curiosity aspect of, wait, why was this watched? So many people are watching this. It's got to be.

something. Right. If there is a YouTube video under 30 seconds that has over a million views, you know, you know you're going to click it. You know it's always a fucking bang. And that shit's going to be delivered to you with so quickly 30 seconds. That's it.

30 seconds have a banger. I'm fine with that. But, you know, that is not my only measure of where I'm going with this. Part of it is also like the, the, I want to grow respect and have people,

trust that I will treat them with respect on the show. So I'm having people have with huge name people have started to reach out to me and say like, oh, I'd love to be on the show sometime. And that's something that I never had before. So regardless of where my, my numbers go, I have people that I really respect reaching out to me and wanting to talk with me and like have that experience of being on the show. And that is something that is so cool. I could clearly see kind of that's my metric pack. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, was that so the whole YouTube system and giving a shit about analytics. Was that something that I suppose at Smosh

under Defy Media that you never concerned itself with? I didn't really because we were just on a salary. Right, right. So I was like, these numbers don't affect me. Yeah, I came in there like, Anthony, man, it's not doing too hot. Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, oh, man, well, it looks like I have two more years.

So it must have been like you were under Smosh and under Defy Media and then now you're separate. So there's probably that big gap where you didn't really take notice of what was really happening on YouTube, much. Wow, that's interesting. So now I had to start learning all these. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When did you kind of tune out of like giving a fuck about

what was happening on YouTube or like kind of not paying as much attention and just doing it? You mean like when I was defied? I'd say it was probably around 2014 or 2015, probably to 2017 when I eventually left and decided to do my own thing. Yeah, right.

I think it was the two years that I was unhappy with where things were going and the way that the company was being ran and the decisions that were being made and how I was being left in the dark about a lot of decisions that were really important that were being made. And it was around then that I started to just kind of tune out from YouTube in general. You know, I would still put a lot of my heart into making the things that I was making at that time. But there was still this part of me that was just getting detached from it.

And that's when I kind of stopped caring about browsing YouTube and being part of the community as much. Just when you thought you were out, you got drag, right. Yeah, I almost made it out of the rat race. So do you think,

like, not caring about it, gave you more or less freedom than you do now? Because now you have to really, you do have to care about the algorithm. Every YouTuber has to care about the algorithm, unfortunately.

I think it's kind of about caring about the right things. And by the right things, you know, it's not to say there's a wrong thing to care about, but like the, figuring out what is meaningful for you and then caring about those things.

Right, right. It's so easy to start caring about the things that seem like they matter most, like, you know, just straight up view count. Yeah. You know, but then you could drill in. You could read the comments and see how much of an impact, a certain thing made.

Yeah. And, you know, you could realize that that is more important. So you have to define the things that matter most to you before you just start caring about everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, you mentioned something earlier, just off the cuff,

but you were just like, yeah, so I quit college in 2005 because Smosch was a thing. Yeah. What? Yeah. So, so you quit college in 2005 to do, YouTube. Yeah. Wow. Super. Well, okay.

Yeah. That's really really good. You like four sword. Yeah. I made one Pokemon down. I'm quitting. Basically. I said it a little wrong. So I went, I went to two full semester. So I think it was

technically 2006. And I was signing up for classes. And I was thinking about the amount of time because the classes obviously get harder. The further along you get with your, um, with your degree. Yeah. Because they start dialing out to the actual difficult things.

And I was like, okay, I could be doing all these extremely difficult things for this. Yeah. Or, you know, which is now taking my time away

from this other thing that is now starting to build. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Yeah. To, um, I felt like I was almost like the master of my own fate with this world. Well,

I felt like, uh, getting a college degree while obviously super helpful for most people. I, I felt like, this is something I can always come back to. And also this kind of puts me in a position where I'm kind of like following a system

that other people have put in place for me. I felt like I was making up my own rules. So did you like foresee the fucking ecosystem YouTube would become or you're just like, no, no. Yeah, I'm like, ah, I see it all. When you were confident, like, by college, you know.

No. Did you just have this like, because obviously how many videos, or like how, where were you at that point when you decided to quit college? Yeah. What kind of stage was that at? I think we had...

How many? I think we had six videos out. What the fuck? God, oh my God. Yeah. Would you ever recommend to a YouTuber with six videos? No.

Never do what I did. Never do what I do. Unless your parents are very well off and they're totally fine with you not doing golf. They want to help you. How many subs did you have when you quit? The sub. were not a thing.

They were called followers. They were not a thing. But the reason that I felt confident is because it's outside company that was competing with YouTube called it does not exist anymore. They reached out to us and they were like, they gave us this contract that was in hindsight very shitty. But we were college kids who were still living under our parents' roof. And we were like, you know what?

This makes sense. We could fund these things. that we love doing. Like, we just had the best time hanging out and just laughing our ass off, creating things. And like, yeah, a college kid,

that's what the college kids really want to do most of the time. Not homework. Man, you get one paycheck. You're like, I am set for life. Mother, I have a career now.

So, so we signed a two year contract with this outside company. Yeah. They, they offered us $3, $3,600 bucks to split between us. For two years? For two years.

Each, no, no, each month. Okay. Oh, okay. I know. Okay.

I know, I know, I know. It sounded worse. It's still not great, though. So we each got $1,800. And we each also invested our own money from that into the videos themselves. And they also give us a little bonus at the beginning. So I got to like, I had this piece of shit car. So I couldn't do anything because every time I got my car, it was like not where.

Anyway. So I bought a new car. And I was like, you know what? This, like we have a two year contract here. We're pretty safe. I could come back to do these classes if I, if I, if I, That makes way more sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know. It was like one of the, one of the first deals where a company was like trying to compete with YouTube. That's a good audience. And part of the contract was, uh, you, this video has to be exclusive to us for two weeks. And after the two week period, uh, you can release it to YouTube, but it has to have a brought to you tag on the front and at the end and a watermark on it. So, so we like generous to they even let you do that. It was, but their whole strategy for marketing was that they were trying to steal the audience from YouTube. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the only way for them to get an audience on their platform was to let people know. But unfortunately, they didn't have anything to offer. That was out, that was bigger than the scope of what YouTube had to offer. I don't need to get into the legality behind it. But eventually we were able to get out of that contract because they promised us a certain, wow, I don't know if I should have said that company name. You want to believe it out? You want to bleep it? We can bleep it out.

Okay. Thank you. Bleep out the company name. So now I feel comfortable saying everything. So they promised a certain amount of marketing value. And they translated that to a certain amount of views. It was like some odd millions of views. They were promising to bring to our videos on our channel on their platform.

They did not live up to that. And when we started getting on them about that, We found out, I'm wondering how much I should say. This is how many years ago now? Jesus, 16 years ago. Maybe it's okay. I think that everyone there is probably in a different, I don't know, buried underground.

So they, they, what I realize they started doing to fulfill their end of the bargain. Right. Was, well, first I noticed that we, oh, we had a million new views on our video on this channel this day. Okay, so this website where videos usually get 5,000 views are now getting a million 5,000 views. There's something up here. So I go into the comments and I get, fuck smosh, what is this bullshit? I'm trying to look at my MP3s and this is, why is this plant? I find out that they also own this other website and they have a little hidden eye frame.

that's like auto playing our videos in the background of this other website. Oh, so they'd go to this website and then they'd hear the audio of our videos while they're trying to fucking browse this other website and it would count as a view. Oh my God. So eventually we were able to get out of the context. We were like,

this is not very cool. It's actually giving us a bad reputation because people think that we are doing this. And then eventually we were able to get out of that. And it was at that time that both, oh my God, MySpace was trying to launch a video platform. I'm not sure if kids today know what a MySpace is. No, no, it's it's your space. So they were trying to launch a video platform and they came to us with an offer.

And then YouTube was like, hey, we're going to, there's this program where you can make money on your videos on our platform that never had any ads before. Would you like to be one of the first 10 channels to ever make any money on here? We'll give you a guarantee. And even though their guarantee was lower than MySpace, thank everything in the world. We said, yeah, we'll stick with YouTube. And that's kind of where everything started. That was early 2007.

That's when we- Was that just like, were you just guessing? Or did you genuinely feel like, I think YouTube's gonna be the king? There was this feeling. Also, we had a video on there, our Pokemon theme song, Lip sync video. Classic.

It's like the godfather. You know, you go on like the IMDP, the IMDB page of like YouTube videos. That's like at the top 100. It would be. It wouldn't be. It wasn't I. In our brains. In our brains.

Yeah. So that video, I think, had something like 25 million views. Jesus Christ. And it was easy to see that the market, the, the viewership was on YouTube. And they had just been purchased by Google for, you know, way too cheap. Yeah. And, which is still billions of dollars.

Yeah. And I felt really good about Google. I felt good about where they're going. Even though I met Tom from MySpace, you know, myself, I was like, Google.

You've been the creator of MySpace? Yeah, yeah, briefly. What was he like? He was just a dude. I mean, I don't know.

Dude wearing a nice jacket. Did he do that? He did not. I feel like everything within him was like, I can't do that. I can't even give a thumbs up or smile. No, no,

he was a good guy. Did he add you on my space? Was he, we were already friends, bro. Yeah, but was he in your top eight friends? That's the real question. He became part of my top eight after I thought I might have a deal with him.

Oh, shit. My top eight business is going to be going to go to my page. He's going to know. Oh, shit. I think he's photography now and he's good photographer. But anyway.

So I went with YouTube. We went with YouTube. And I made the decision to go with YouTube there. And obviously, was the right choice. Yeah. It just felt right. Yeah.

Yeah. So you were getting paid even before there was even like an economy on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. And you know the funny part is that all they were was the lower third ad, the little tiny thing that pops up at like 15, 20 seconds. And even then, you know, we were afraid of the backlash that we might get for that. That's so funny.

So we enabled it on our older videos. And then the newest video, we'd wait until like our audience, bigger audience came in and left so that we wouldn't get flack for it. And even on our older videos, people were like, whoa,

you fucking so long. It's an ad where you got your mouse, everyone's, no one's on mobile. You're on your computer. All you have to do is move your mouse and click the X. And people like,

fuck this. That's one extra step. Now people watch videos and there's a minute and a half one's stippable ad six times in a video. And like whenever YouTube gets sponsored, they're like, yes,

King, make that money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but no. Did you get like, like backlash when you had your first sponsor. Because I feel like every YouTube ad's a one thing. Yeah. Oh,

you mean smoothie king? Is that what? Was that your first sponsor? It's called smoothie king. It was this like, I don't know if they're independent or if they're like a chain, but they're a smoothie place in like Austin, Texas.

Or I forget. Somewhere in Texas. I don't know. And yeah, we just had to make a little video there and put it on. We didn't even put it on our main channels our second channel.

Yeah. It paid us like a couple thousand or something. And it was like, you know, what was the reception to that, What the fuck is Is this? YouTube seems so wild There was

There were absolutely No rules And I remember when I first started I would actually Go out of my way To break rules To show YouTube That this rule could be broken

I'm just a bad boy Like what? And one thing that I realized Is that there was this channel That I can't remember what the name it was in fact, it's probably better that I don't say that. They had videos that would just pop off,

but they'd have like 12 comments. And I was like, this math doesn't add up. And of course, as an 18-year-old kid, I was like, I must get down to the bottom of this. It's my duty. Incident detective mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I did a test on our Myspace.

And it was kind of what I learned from that other company doing the hidden. eye frame thing. So I realize on my space, you can hide an eye frame as well. Right. Which is ridiculous. I think that anyone could have any page

load in the background. Yeah. So I hit it on our page and I realized that that worked. So I said YouTube, fix this. I don't know. I don't know if it was even me saying it.

But also a big thing was that that channel was also having hundreds of thousands of new subscribers. I think it was right when they announced. it's subscribing. Right. And I was like, how was this channel that gets so little comments having so many views and

subscribers? So I also hid an eye frame on our channel that are on our MySpace that auto subscribed people to our channel. And after like a day, I was like, yeh, yeah, this is gross. I'm not going to have this on here. So I removed it. We got like 100, 200 new subscribers. I felt gross about it.

And I think in, you know, in order to repent for my sins, I went to YouTube. and I was like, this is a way that people are cheating the system. So then YouTube, like within the next couple days, added on the subscribe page they had a little button that said,

are you sure you want to subscribe? Was that back when you could actually talk to YouTube? Yes. And especially if you had a big audience on YouTube, you had, it was like concierge service. Really? Yeah.

Just kind of get shit done? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We went and hung out in, I don't know, I don't remember San, I don't know, San Brino, San Jose.

Some, some San, San Juan. Near San Francisco. Yeah. And, you know, hung out with people there that worked there. And then Chad Hurley, Steve Chen,

the creators of YouTube. Damn, dude. You don't have enough subscribers. The good old days, right? It was so rare, though, for people to have an audience because most people that uploaded videos to you were one off viral clips and stuff.

We're one off viral clips. So it was very rare for people to have audiences and have recurring, you know, videos of a specific channel. So I think that they really treated everyone back then as like their gems that were like keeping the channel or like making you yeah yeah yeah because i remember back in the day it was just like you would go on like the most viewed you go on like the most viewed you go on like the most viewed of all time and like obviously

the Pokemon lip sync was there you have like evolution of dance fucking charlie bit my finger you know the classics yeah because i always forget at one point you were the most subscribed channel yeah yeah two separate times two separate times yeah it's like a three month period and a eight month period or something, I forget. How was that? Like, how is it at that one point you were at the top? It was, it was really cool. Was there pressure though, I bit? There was all, there was definitely pressure. And it, it, um, it filtered the way that I looked at everything that I did. Yeah. Um, for better or worse. There was, there was the good of like, ooh, everything that I make has some kind of value. I should put a lot of my time and energy in this because I know a lot of people are going to see it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Really pushed me to constantly be pushing myself outside my boundary or out of my comfort zone. Right. Because I knew that it would, you know, not. literally pay off, but it would pay off in the sense that a lot of people would see it and potentially be able to enjoy it. But then on the opposite side of that, there was a lot of getting in my own head about the pressure and how I have to live up to this. And then you're also always seeing comments of people saying like, how is this, whatever? And it's a lot of filtering it out to be like, it doesn't matter that some people don't like this. It's not for them. But it would get in my head of like, oh, I need to be better. And it was a lot of like this, this pressure.

You were mentioning earlier about how obviously when you started you got a deal from a company. Yeah. I imagine when it was starting to ramp up and get to like number one most subscribed, you're probably getting offered all sorts of weird and predatory stuff and just, probably just the most stressful company meetings ever. Dude, we had someone show up to my house. I was living with my mom, obviously, like in just like our small little tiny house outside of Sacramento, California. There was this predatory.

I don't want to call him predatory, but this guy came up in a business suit, and he's like, knocked on the door. My mom was like, there's someone outside this. Oh, no. So Ian and I walk out and we're like, uh, what is up? And he's like, oh, um, I got your address because I saw that you just registered for a business and it was marked under this address.

So I figured I would just show up and tell you a few things about like what you could be doing, how you could be monetizing this. And I was like, uh, I was 18, so I didn't know. And it was my first time with like any kind of fame or right. I didn't know that this was a fucked up thing to do. So I entertained it. Would you like some tea?

I drew the line there. There was no invitations inside. But luckily he was a vampire and he could not enter without me. No, so he was like, okay, so your Pokemon. theme song music video like it's this epic cinema piece of cinematic work and he was like

it has three million views so think about it this way I could get you sponsored by Coca-Cola and if if you get a thousand dollars per million gets $3,000 in your pocket like that and I was like first of all do you actually know

do you have any contacts with Coca-Cola? And he just started listing all and I realized immediately that he was full of shit and he was trying to make some kind of a connection and he was like, but like then McDonald's and I was like, dude. So he clearly didn't know what he was talking about. Luckily, he only one other time after that.

Only one other time. Just one other time. I was like, Mom, when that guy shows up again, you just ignore that man. The bad man in the suit, leave him. Oh my God. But luckily, we were, I mean, we were not very,

smart, but we were smart enough to know that that did not feel right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because we were talking to like Sean, Jack Septica like a few weeks ago and how back in like the early days of YouTube, there was just no boundaries between fans and like the creator. So fans would literally show up at his house.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Did that happen to you a lot? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So Ian and I ended up renting this place together. He and I and we had another roommate with us too. And we lived there for, I think, four years. And that's when our videos were really, really, really,

starting to become popular like 2009 to 2011 and there's so many ridiculous stories of like mobs of people like I'm trying to edit in my editing room and there's like I just hear like people running around the house and like laughing and like looking through our trash it was people did not know boundaries how do you live because we were really stupid so like all blame is on us but right we would just shoot outside of our house

Yeah, that was about our address to be in it, our cross streets, like they knew exactly how to find us and we, uh, because this was also during the time where you were doing the mail unboxings on the scene. Yeah, yeah. So I bet like that also came into it as well, right?

Yeah. I remember like, you know, back, uh, back way back when I used to watch this mail inbox. Oh yeah? Those are my favorites, yes. I love it for so, uh, I think at that time, it was something so unique because obviously, you know, you know, big, massive celebrities would be getting

getting this kind of stuff, but I think it was the first time that like a normal person could just watch somebody receive all sorts of weird shit. Yeah, yeah, it's just like, this is so weird. Yeah, it really did show you the scope of like how strange the common person can be

with the items that they choose to send you. Yeah, and the drawings that they choose to draw. That must have been weird. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, some like the weirdest stuff you ever got said. I have some very good go-tos for that. Don't you worry. We got, we got zip,

block bag of dead bees. I want to know how did they collect those. They might not have been bees. Maybe they look like bees. I did not examine enough to know for sure. We have a slightly smaller, we have a slightly smaller, thinner bag of nail clippings.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't you receive shit as well at one point? We received stuff that smelled like shit that we never ventured into. You didn't play with it? Yeah.

Yeah. I felt the texture. It's like, this is definitely... Gave a little smell. Elephant shit. It's definitely human shit. We definitely had boxes, and we received so many boxes that we would sometimes just throw in our garage and they would sit in the humidity and the heat.

And it would be months before we'd get to it. And people thought it was so funny that they would send us sandwiches. And these sandwiches would just rot and mold. and oh because I would like the food fight stuff I don't I don't know why but it became a thing and the bags the Ziploc bags would you know inflate with the gases from these things and then the scent would just permeate throughout our entire house oh god yeah you'd throw away the boxes once they were kind of you could see like patches kind of sopping wet or oily or greasy but that quickly was like it's probably about time to stop receiving the mail like it was fun it was a great time period So how long did you guys do that full? I think we did it for like three or four years. Oh, my God. Yeah.

And by the end, it was years of stuff just built on towers and towers of mail. Oh, my God. Yeah. Like every now and then, you probably get something really fucking cool. You're like, yeah, this is sick. We would receive some really cool shit. Oh, man. Lots of, lots of used video games.

And then I would just take them all the game stop and I'd be like, use video games. And then they'd be like $100 credit. I was like, two games I actually want. That's so big. Not like the eight copies of the Nintendo's rip-offs of like puppies and like all these weird like ponies and cats with a zee. So many weird games that I would never be interested in playing. I was like,

I can convert these in a game that I want to play. Is people just giving junk? Is this trying to get rid of it? Well, we were given a lot of stuff that we were given were just like people are looking for things to send. Yeah, I want to send you something. And they didn't want to spend money on just sending it.

Because they didn't even know if we would see it. There was no guarantee. We didn't even know if we would see it. In fact, some of the things I hope, you know, it's probably better off. We didn't see half the things that we did see. But people would send us just old stuff that they wanted to throw away.

Yeah, because it's sort of the garage sale or something, right? It was like old shirts that had not been washed in years and had holes. Yeah, because to them, it was probably just like, yo, that's my shirt in the video. Yeah. So then we had to start being really selective about the things that we showed. We had to stop showing the shit stuff, the dead stuff, the body, human body.

The human body. Anything that came from a human body was no longer making it in the video at a certain point. Yeah. We realized that we were encouraging it. And then we also accidentally encourage people to send us money because we had one video where someone, a few people sent us like $1 bills. So he's like, oh, we got $10. And like, it was kind of a joke.

And then we had to make a, oh, we got $100. And then it was like, we need to stop showing money all together. And we realized that anything that we showed was a direct call for people to send us more of it. So eventually we had to stop showing the weird stuff or the really grandiose stuff because we didn't feel comfortable with either. Yeah, someone might feel bad if you show off

like something really amazing. And they're like, oh, and I guess show up from like Mexico sent me this like, shooke. And a lot of people were sending really sentimental handwritten things that we could never actual, like if I wanted to read every one of those and I really wish I could because they were so heartfelt. Like, it would have been a full-time job to do that instead of everything else.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is a great problem to have. Yeah. I'm interrupting this episode of Trash Taste to give you an important announcement. This Trashy episode is sponsored by Boxu. Anyone who watches Trash Taste will know that we are big fans of Boxu. If you haven't heard of it yet,

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Back to the episode. So you mentioned like, you were one like, pretty much one of the first creators to get paid for doing what you do on YouTube. When did you start to realize, oh, this is like serious now. This is like going to get big. I mean, it depends.

Like there are so many different, levels of big. Like at that point, I already felt like it was a big thing. Right, right. When we, because I was like, we're one of the first people to get paid on this platform that I foresee is having longevity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in terms of like, I don't, I don't know. It was a little bit dicey though.

So that was 2007. And then four years later, I didn't really know what the fate of YouTube was going to be. Yeah. And we had an offer from a company, which ultimately, you know, their name ended up being. defy. And they offered us then to buy our company for stock. It's totally great idea. Well, you've talked about this a lot in your video. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously didn't end up being worth anything. So how did they pitch it to you in a way that you both were like, yeah, this is a fucking great idea. Let's do it. Like, how did that like happen? Yeah, you know,

and it is a complicated process too because, you know, that, The state of YouTube in 2011, it felt really like we didn't know where it was going. Is there before or after the Google Plus thing they tried to shove in? No, that was 20, that was when I first started, so that was like 2014. Yeah, yeah, that was ages.

Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, that was fair. That was, yeah, yeah. Google Plus is when Google tried to do Facebook. And- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just a shit show. Yeah, I think it lasted like a year. And they cut it.

And then they were like, no, we're getting rid of it. I get it to the YouTube has been constantly at, especially in its earlier days, it did seem like it was like, what the fuck is it? It felt very fragile for a while. Okay. Right. Yeah. So they presented it to us as, you know, we're going to take all the website, Smosh.com stuff off your plate because I was doing all of that.

Yeah. Because, you know, I was actually, I actually made money before we started getting paid on YouTube by designing websites for people. Right. Right. And that's how I was able to fund a lot of things. and, you know, side tangent, the,

our videos actually started getting, we made like two lip sync videos before the Pokemon theme. It works, maybe. Keep your coming. Don't get a little test run. Before,

before we found out about YouTube, and I hosted it on my own website. Yeah. And there was, because there was no website like YouTube to host it on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I created a little thing. It was a,

again, it was an eye frame. You copy paste there. And when you paste that's your page, it had instructions and everything. When you copy paste, it's your MySpace page. It put the video there. And then it also had instructions

to copy and paste for someone else. Like that was how I designed this like, like a copy paste viral kind of thing. And I didn't know how well that was doing with the two lip sync videos. It's so weird to say that that we did beforehand. But I did get the bill. I did see the bill.

And it was a couple hundred, bucks, you know? And I didn't know how to convert that into how many views is this getting, but I knew it was getting a lot of views or else I wouldn't have to pay a couple hundred dollars for bandwidth on videos. Right. Right. So you actually used to have to pay. Yeah, bandwidth before YouTube offered the service. So we found out about YouTube by me doing a search for one of the videos. I found that someone else had uploaded it to YouTube and I sent him a message. I was like, hey, this video, thank you so much for uploading it here. We want to upload it ourselves. Do you mind removing it? And they said, yeah, absolutely. So,

We create our channel. Smosh was still five letters still available. Yeah. And that was the beginning of that. Damn. Shoot, I forgot who we were going. We were going with why to Defy.

Like, how did that all come around? How did they pitch it to you? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I got off on that side tangent because I was talking about how I designed the website.

Trash states is all about tangent. Don't worry. We already write in. Write in. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Seamless.

So they came to us and they were like, we will take care of the website. So you no longer have that stress to deal with because every week the website was crashing and I was figuring out how to, you know, keep it up. And they had this huge plan of all the things that they were capable of and how they had the infrastructure to allow us to do all of our dreams. So they asked us, what do you want to do with this company? If you could make this company anything, what would it be? And we had these huge lofty goals. They said, we got all of that on lock.

We have the infrastructure. We have the investors. We can make this happen. And they offered us a certain amount of money in stock. Yeah. sounded really good. More money than I thought that, you know, I would ever see in my life before that. So I was like, that sounds great.

Obviously, this company is eventually going to go public. That's how they work, right? I did not know. My lawyer did not tell me that that's not always the case. The people that we had surrounding us that were authority figures in some way to us on the situation did not break down the details of how that doesn't always happen and how it's, that's actually a huge risk. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so they bought full ownership and they paid us, um, in a yearly, you know, annual salaries.

Right. And they had this structure set up where it was like this year, man, it's pretty shitty salary. But next year, it's a, it's an okay salary. But by year four, you're going to love your salary. So it did that happen. It did eventually play out that way. And I was, I was, uh, pretty comfortable with it. I was like, we are making a good, uh, salary here. Like we, what do we really have to complain about? And I guess they're doing a lot of the stuff that you used to have to do and they're looking for things and managing it. But then also I imagine as a YouTuber, it's probably quite difficult to give that control. It was too, because I did give that control away and everything was not how I would have done it. So I ended up working double time to teach them how to do the things, but then they were rehiring.

And the way that bigger companies work is it's like, you're never just building a one-on-one relationship with someone who are like, you teach them once and they know and they keep going with that thing. And it's just a thing that happens now. It's like, no, you're reteaching and reteaching and reteaching until it's like, okay, let's abandon the website. And then it was like me abandoning a lot of the things that I had a dream of growing because I was not able to keep that up and also do the videos. I had to figure out where to put my time. Yeah.

Was there a specific point when you kind of realized, damn, this is not what I envisioned at all when I kind of want out. Like was, was there a specific moment or was it just like a buildup of like a lot of things? It was primarily a buildup over a long period. of time. It was about four years in when I realized that things just weren't looking right and I still had two years on the contract left. Right. And I think one particular thing was like they hired someone that I did not know that they were going to hire and then all of a sudden I found out that they were now a full-time employee in this like really important position. That meant something to me.

And I was like, wait, I didn't realize that was what was going to happen. And also there were times, and I don't know how much I could say, but I'll see what I can do. They don't exist anymore. True, technically. There was a fundraiser that they put on. It was for a game. And they had just seen the success of other people who had done fundraisers for games,

Indie GoFundMe type things. And they raised like $250,000 for like these games, which were like mobile games, but you could play it on the computer. And it was like this really cool thing with all these inside jokes from the community. right and they said oh that's cool guys you do that and then we were like we don't have a concept for a game they're like ah we'll figure it out later you just just just raise some money they just

made the fundraiser and then they were afterwards they were like make the game and we said we need to have something to pitch to people yeah and then they're like cool we'll just tell them the idea then and then they're like you come up with the idea so i came up with the idea and of course also we both came up with the idea and uh they were like uh cool you got the idea let's let's do it I was like, we need to have concept art. We need to, like, show a build of the game. We need to be able to show what we want to do with this thing. And they're like, ah, we don't have time.

Okay, we'll get concept art. So all we were able to do was launch with this concept art. Wow. And launching a campaign asking people, incentivizing your fans to give you money. Well, that did not feel right to me, but I felt backed up into a corner. Yeah.

And, you know, I think that's probably one of the things that I regret from my time there. is allowing myself to feel backed up into a corner to accept money from people that were excited about this thing being built. Of course, you know, we did accept money for that. And I did put all of my heart and soul in the making it as good as it possibly could be. Still didn't live up to my expectations. And I feel like if it was done the right way, it would have. But the moment that really stood out to me was there was some, there was some shadiness about, you know, obviously the way that they pushed to earn money for something because they saw dollar signs. Right. Not because it was a good projects.

Rather than it being like those types of things, if you're going to have your audience fund them, it should really be a passion project. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I could have made it a passion project because I really was excited about it, but it was so forced and, you know, rushed. And then there was some shady stuff about like the way that they contributed to certain donations to inflate certain, the way that certain things looked. And that's really all I'll say about that, but it made me feel so weird.

about it. I was like, I need out as soon as possible. Yeah. Right. I imagine when they were doing stuff like that, the confidence you had in the company was probably a bit like, okay, if they're willing to do this, stuff must not be going so great. And I realized that the way that they treated that was the same way that they were treating me and all the other people. Because a lot of people lost a lot of money, right? I mean, it was like crazy. What was it? A lot of people lost a lot of money. Oh, yeah, yeah. Eventually, luckily, I, I wouldn't say I foresaw anything, but it didn't. didn't feel right and I got out a year before they ended up closing down.

Right. And another thing that that really was a turning point was, I had made a Facebook page and it was, I don't know, I had like 500, 600,000 followers or what I would call it on Facebook. That's just like, and subscribe. Friends. Friends. Friends. Friends.

Yeah. And yeah, it was just, it was Smosh Anthony and they were like, oh, this has Smosh and the name. So this is, um, we're, we're going to. to run this for you. Okay. I was like, okay. Yeah, yeah, sure.

And then I was like, hey, you know, I was kind of trying to start to silently transition out. I think they kind of picked up on the gist because we still were contractually obligated. But I was like, can I, can I get my, my Facebook back? They're like, no, it's ours. I was like, oh. But I made that thing and you said that you just wanted to run it because you were going to help me post content on there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it has smosh in the name. This is ours. That's fucked up. I was like, um, jeez. Okay. And then I easily settled on that. I was like, oh, okay, okay, it's fine. It's just Facebook. Who cares for Facebook? And then they were like, um, they're like, okay, hey, can we get, uh, access to your, to your Twitter and Instagram? I was like, no, no. And then I immediately, I immediately changed the name from Smosh Anthony to Anthony Padilla. After they, after they asked me for access to that. In a way, it's kind of cool that they, uh, kind of, forced you into being like, you know what, fuck this.

I'm just going to go on my own. Yeah. I'm going to fucking brand myself. It really, it really got me thinking like, could I do something on my own, like outside of this brand that I had created? Yeah. Yeah. And it was really sad because I had made that brand.

When I was 14 years old, I made that as like a little shitty website as like a forum for me and my, my group of friends at school to go on and hang out with each other. It was really before social media. It was like we were either talking on AIM or we were going. on this website. And, yeah, it was sad to kind of let that part of me, this, like, this baby that I had brought into this world.

Yeah, kind of go. Yeah. God, it must be nerve-wracking trying to do something yourself, though, right? Because, like, as a YouTuber, like, starting, like, ditching your channel, which has, like, millions and millions of subscribers to start from the ground up again. Yeah. Like, I think, like, you are one of the first people I know, like,

first big creators to really, like, branch off and try to do something themselves with a new channel, right? And it's succeeding. And like there wasn't a president set before that, really, that you could really succeed by doing something new, right? Right. I mean, Fred did it. Oh, yeah.

Fred had a other channel and then he did his thing. Well, you did a few movies? You did a few movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did a movie. I was doing a movie. I was doing a movie. That was also another weird experience.

A part of me, because obviously, I mean, do you, it's not a good movie. I know. I was just gonna fuck it I should have to say it it's not a good movie but it's not a good movie no no I put my heart

and soul into that movie it's the best movie oh my god I feel like this is fucked up it's a part of you invite him on to the show you invite me on here to talk shit about my pride and joy

listen I'm gonna I want to talk to you did you actually watch that yeah I loved it I love it in a way of life you loved it yeah it's a terrible it's so fucking It's so bad that it's good.

It's so fucking bad. It's that amazing part of YouTube history where like everyone had to have a movie. Yeah. YouTube for some reason was like, make them fucking movie. Yeah. Pump them out.

Fred had fucking John Cena and his movie. Yeah. Yeah. I completely forgot about that. It was just a fucking cool, weird time. Yeah. Where people were making movies whereas like, I mean, did you even wanna make a movie?

Was it like, what was that, like, what was going on with that? Like, because I feel like there must have been so many people trying to put their fingers. Yeah. Trying to be like, no, no, no, no, it should be this. It should be this.

No, no, no, fuck it. We should get John Sina in it. Yeah. Oh, we got Stone Cold Steve Austin. Oh, yeah. Could have got some from the WWA. Well, I was like, John Sina's not happy.

It's gonna be Stone Cold Steve Austin. Yeah, I want to know about the movie. Like, what was all that? Yeah. So we, I mean, yeah, a lot of people had movies going on. A lot of people were breathing down our neck saying, so when are you going to make a movie? Yeah.

And we, we did. kind of have this dream of eventually making the movie version of a smarsh sketch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we had a lot of, nothing concrete, but like, ooh, what would the movie version of this look like? Do we get, if we get a million dollars,

do we, we had some of the dumbest ideas of like, where the movie was all a smosh sketch budget, and then we had millions of dollars worth of money pumped into the final scene. That was our initial idea. No, because I remember on the Smosh channel,

this was way before the actual movie came out, you guys released an April Fool's video called Smosh the movie. Yeah, we did. Have you seen this video? I think I've watched this. This was like the last ever like April Fool's YouTube video that I saw.

But it was like the first five minutes was like the most insane quality like, oh my God, this looks like a movie. And then the remaining hour and a half was you and Ian walking back home. You had no cuts. And I thought this is the greatest thing So then when I heard that you guys were actually making a movie,

I was like, say, say, say psych. Yeah. Say side. Just another April. I will say, for YouTuber movies, it was the, what was the name of the one with the ghost? Ghostmates. Ghostmates? Ghostmates?

That was one of the better, better YouTuber movie. I will say. That one was, that one was good. That one we had a little bit more freedom with. And in a weird way, though, we, we almost stripped out a lot of like what made Smosh, smosh. Yeah. Right.

With that movie. So it felt weird because it like wasn't quite, you know, a good movie and then it wasn't quite, you know, bad YouTube movie, which is also entertaining for its own reasons. Because you and Ian are, I think, naturally very good on camera. Like compared to like how some other people

transition to the movies kind of thing. I think you and Ian did that a lot better. Well, I think it definitely helped that you guys were already acting in your sketches. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of that going on. Acting. Acting in your sketches.

I heard a lot about how I should improve my acting in the comments. But really? Oh, yeah. They're going to go into it. They're going to be like, you're a YouTuber, you can't act.

Yeah. Even if you did an amazing job. Like staling. Yeah. There's that expectation. Yeah. Yeah. With the movies,

you know, with the first one, it was a lot of, you know, we did have this dream to do it, but then other people, you know, it was at Defi.

They, they were like, we need to make this happen and we need to make it happen in four months. Four months. Okay, I'm just throwing a random number.

Okay, but it was something, it was something, it was something, Yeah, yeah, yeah, not enough time. It could have been six. It could have been eight, but I think it was somewhere probably around six months.

Jesus. And we were like, um, actually no, I remember it was after we got to a point in the script writing process that they said this needs to happen in this very short amount of time. We're like, we're not ready.

Well, we were, we're still like fleshing this thing out. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, it was a thing where we still wanted to make our videos on YouTube. We didn't want to give that up because we felt like we would have had to drop to that in

order to put all of our effort into making a, a movie. And they were like, don't worry, we could hire this person. And they gave us a few options. They hired a person. The script was not anything like I would have wanted it. It was a lot of like. She's that one on Fiverr.

We found a guy. Yeah. That was this guy? It was a lot of like, here's what someone who isn't in the YouTube space thinks our videos and thinks YouTube is. Was there someone who worked in like, you know, Hollywood? Hollywood movie? It was like a Hollywood script writer who did like TV series.

and I think some movies as well. Right. And he did do some funny stuff, but it was very much like an out of touch perspective. And it was like, I mean, a lot of Smosh stuff was cringing in its own right, but like I was cringing at how out of touch these things.

Whereas I could not do these things. There was this like area where like memes go to die that he, that was written where it was like a space. Was that in the, no, no, fuck, there was it? Fuck, there was it.

So familiar. You know, I think that Ian might have talked about it on a separate thing. Okay, that's pretty long. This sounds so familiar. Or maybe we, he and I both talked about at some point, but there was this part written where it was like,

where memes go to die and it was, he was like, he was like, Hey, Zundas in there. And I was like, okay, first of all, you're trying to make us say that these people are dead.

Oh, this sounds so familiar. That's kind of fucked up. And then also you are saying, here's all these things that are not in the now. Like, it's just this weird period. piece that just feels too soon to be a period piece.

You know what I mean? So it might age poorly. Yeah. It also just sounds like a hello fellow children moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know memes. Yeah, yeah. These are dead, right?

It was exactly like. Shittery Clinton, am I right? Yeah, yes. It felt a lot like that. And then we did a lot of rewrites, and it was still a very bad movie. Thank you for a very bad. How was a little too harsh?

How self-aware were you, like, on set, to be like, guys, are we making, like, Are we making like... I think I was half self-aware. Right, right. I wasn't fully self-aware. Part of me thought, like, after a certain scene happened, I was like, oh, that might actually be good.

Part of me did think it might actually be a good movie, depending on the way it was cut, depending on the way the special effects look. Yeah. But the way that it came together was very much. I was like, after I was, we were seeing like final cuts of it, I was like, okay. That's, um, that's the,

movie. Well, I mean, at least it's not as bad as Shane Dawson's movie. That was, yeah. I mean, it depends who you ask. No, that one was really, really bad. Was it? I did, but I saw it like on the premiere night where there was so much hype in the room from all the friends and family that it was hard to tell. Yeah. Yeah. Is this a funny joke or am I just not in a good headspace right now? You should go rewatch it sometimes. Maybe I will. Yeah. It's interesting. Okay. Okay. I know. I know. I never even tried that. No, no, no. Okay, okay.

Well, it was a lot of fun, though. And I think that some elements from the, you know, from the smosh sketches retained their smoshiness. Yeah, it's much easier for me to sit here. We're like, you made a fucking movie. Like I could do anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like my movie would be good.

Oh, you've got to make it in six, what? I couldn't even spell. It was a weird process because, you know, we had trailers. and we, you know, we had an acting coach and we had the pressure of like, this is the movie. It was something like a million dollar budget. So it was like,

you know, like the full Hollywood experience. It was the full Hollywood experience. And, you know, we had like a writer there on set to like do rewrites in the moment if we needed to rewrite something for time. And like there were a lot of scenes that we had to cut for time. And like they were rewritten on them.

It was such a different experience where it was not, like I could still go to the, director who was Alex Winter and he's amazing, you know. Yeah. Is he the bill? I forget if he's the bill or Ted from Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. The knock he owner, you know. Oh, he's the, Ted, I think. No, Bill. I don't know. Bill. Bill. The one that's not Keanu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Alex Winter's amazing and, and you know, his kids were huge fans of Smosh. So he really did want to give it that genuine Smosh. Do not feel bad. I feel

bad. I was holding it bad. Oh, his heart and passion. I just said it was bad. No matter how much heart and passion you put into something, if there are a few elements that are slightly off, it's going to all fuel. It's going to kind of all get brought down to that level. I feel like that's what happened. There were a lot of great things that could have been, but then it was like there were certain elements that just kind of brought it all down.

I'm hearing, oh, we're going to cut the scene because of time. That doesn't make you probably feel very confident. You're like, that's not good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, a lot of times we're like, we're going to cut this scene for time and we end up having this other scene that totally actually worked fine without it.

It was like the rewrites were okay. Yeah. Were your like sketches before scripted? So you already had, were used to like memorizing lines or were you like mostly improvised before? Yeah, yeah. They were definitely scripted. But usually we would like get a take that we like and then we'd be like go off book for

the final. Right. Half the time we'd go with the off book version. Right. But it was a little bit different. So Smosh videos, we would shoot, you know, 10 second clips of like this thing. Okay. You say this thing.

Okay. You say this thing. And, you know, when we do a movie, they really want you to get like the full scene with this angle, then the full scene with the next angle. No jump cuts. No fucking jump cuts. So continuity. Yeah.

So a lot of the acting in it was actually me trying to remember my lines. And if I watch it, I'm just like, I'm just trying to remember my lines right now for most of these lines. Like, it didn't really get past that. And also, I got in my head a lot about like, I don't think this is going to be the that I wish that could be. Yeah. It would be so hard to like really turn up and give it your all when it just doesn't feel like it's going right.

It was hard. It was like after the first day, even though there were so many people that had a lot of passion and good intentions and a lot of people that did put their heart and soul into it, after the first day I was like, this doesn't feel like it's going to be what I thought it would be. And then it was hard to get out of my head and you get out of that headspace. And I guess you couldn't exactly go to Define be like, hey.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like not like a YouTube video. Hey, we just shot the first day. Yeah. It's like the sketch kind of isn't working. Let's scrap it and go to a new YouTube. Yeah.

Let's do a new video, you know. Yeah, yeah. Well, even down to the sketches, it was hard to say this video didn't work. Oh, really? Because there was a lot of money that was invested in. And we were given a certain budget each month. Right. And if we scrapped it, it would be like this is cutting into our overall budget.

Let's just try to make this work. So when that pressure, starts building up and you have all these other eyes and voices and budgets and restrictions, that's when I think things start to kind of go south in those situations. And that's when I started to feel like things weren't really right. Even though, like, I can totally see why you can't reshoot a sketch after you shoot it. Obviously, it makes sense. Yeah, yeah.

But I think if I was fully independent, there were a lot of things that I might have considered reshooting. but when we have this level where we want the production value to be there and we kind of reached that point, it felt weird to go back. I now know that you could go back and it's fine. Back then you're like, holy shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you ever want to make another movie with the correct amount of time and creative

freedom? Oh, man. Anthony Padilla, the movie. It's just me. This is you. It's just him interviewed. Oh, man. I don't know.

I don't have any drive for that. I have been pushing myself more with the intros of my videos on my channel that I do now. It is scripted. And I realize that none of the passion that goes into me writing the words makes it on the camera when I'm recording his intro. Yeah, of course. So now I'm trying to, in a sense, maybe I'm like reverse engineering a way for me to learn how to acting is by just actually giving the emotions that I, when I write these things from you to actually give the emotions. I'm like, oh, when you're, when you say a line, you're supposed to visualize it. You're not, you don't just saying it.

You don't just say the word? Yeah. Oh, that's what acting is. So in a weird backwards sense, I feel like I am pushing myself to learn how to act a little bit. Right. And maybe, you know, it depends.

It depends, but right now, no. Yeah, because you've kind of done so much in the time that you've been on YouTube. Like, is there anything you haven't done that you want to do eventually down the line? Because I feel like, when you just think about, like, even just smosh stuff, it's like you guys have literally,

been at the top, you've done everything, you've done all the big stuff. And you know, like you've done the top twice. And, you know, like you've done the movies, you've done, you know, did you release a book? We released a graphic novel, like, okay, like, yeah, yeah, I had a lot of fun making it. Most people don't even know that existed

because they did not market it, but I put my heart and soul into a graphic novel, but no, no actual book. Right, right. So that's something I never had. Is that something you'd want to try? Or is there like something else where you just like, eventually, I'd like to do it? Maybe.

Maybe. I thought about, putting together some kind of like coffee table book that goes through the different interviews I've done and talks about the different things that I learned from each interview, the things that I've taken from that and been able to apply to my own life and the moments that stood out to me as key things that I now go back to and think about. Yeah. So an autobiography. A little bit.

Hopefully it could be also a way for people to learn through me learning. Like that's part of why I do the interview series now. I mean, to be fair, if there's anyone who has enough material to write a cohesive autobiography. I don't know, I feel like putting it in the term of autobiography, I'm like, I know, no. No, no.

It's not. It's so much important. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know so much more. Yeah, yeah. It's because we've seen the YouTubers who have written autobiographies. Yeah, and you know, and they're just like,

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Smash that link. Back to the episode. I have to ask, because I'm curious, because you've been on YouTube for so long. Sorry, do you hate it when people say? No, no, no, no, no. Such a fucking dinosaur, dude. I just think about my age.

It's fine. You're a YouTube boober, dude. Do you, because, you know, YouTube has gone through a lot of distinct eras, I'd say. Yeah. Do you have a favorite YouTube era where you felt like this is when it was P. The golden time of YouTube. Yeah, yeah. I think it was probably around like 2011 to 2013-ish.

Yeah, yeah. Where there was money to be made. So you, and sponsors, like, people would take it seriously enough to fund everything. Yeah. But yet there wasn't this idea that like mainstream media had. Yeah. of like anyone can do this and become a millionaire. You know what I mean?

I feel like it was still very independent. And it just felt like creativity was what thrived most. Yeah, because I feel like that era of YouTube, all of the biggest creators at that time, they all started YouTube not to make money, but just because they enjoyed the creativeness of it. They enjoyed making videos. And then I feel like after that,

kind of progressed into people realizing that you could make this a job. Absolutely. And you can, like, people did it for the money, which is, Yeah, which is it's a legitimate business, which is nothing wrong with that. But I feel like part of the magic was lost, I feel.

You know, because it kind of transitioned into something else, you know. Yeah, a different mindset going into creating things. And around that time or soon after is when I think the algorithm was introduced. Ah, yes. The hallucinor. The algorithm.

The one god of YouTube. I'm learning more now that the algorithm really does reward the things that people enjoy consuming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the algorithm's goal, while no one individual knows everything in and out because it's made by so many people

and it's taught to learn. That's not scary, don't worry. It's interesting. The algorithm does reward the things that do have the highest retention, that have people, you know, watching for the longest time, replaying the moments most, the highest click-through rate of what looks most exciting.

So I am learning that you can work with the new way that it's set up. But it was definitely jarring when it first happened. and no one knew or was told what was happened. Just like flip to let's plays overnight. Yeah, yeah. Because that was the fastest way to make repeating long form content that people would feel the need to watch entirely.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because did you guys start the gaming channel around that time? Yeah, yeah. Is that why because of the change? We didn't know what the reason was that these videos were popping up, but we saw, oh, wait, gaming videos that's becoming really popular. People want to see this and a lot of people are asking us to play.

A game? Yeah. Yeah. I'm a gamer. Did you have a hard time when the algorithm did shift and you were still on like, you know, scripted, you know, scripts, sorry, scripted sketches and everything like that? Yeah, yeah, it was definitely a hard period.

I mean, it didn't really affect us as much as. Yeah, she probably put it up. Yeah, yeah. We still fine. We still, I looked recently, we still have, like, a lot of videos from that time that have like tens of millions of views. So, like, it was okay.

It was okay. but it definitely did impact the way that the videos were pushed out initially. Yeah. So like after the first weekend, I remember having a higher up, breathing down my neck saying, you guys usually get a million views in the first three days. What's going on? Why are that? You know, it was a lot of like the stress of like what is going.

And we're like, I don't know. No, we don't have been told. You don't have a fucking boss telling you that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like their entire company and all the X amount of employees, like their livelihoods are built on the performance of these videos. Yeah, right. So at that time, we were really pushed to break off

and create other side channels and experiment with longer form content, things that required less editing. I feel so lucky being like just like a almost like an like a one two man team with my own, my personal channel because that's just the pressure's just gone. It's a lot less pressure. Yeah.

Okay, so because like I got to ask, because I rarely meet someone who's been on YouTube for longer than me. For longer than most of your viewers' lives. Yeah. I just interviewed Niachu, who's like this really popular Twitch streamer, and she's 19. I was like, so I made my on YouTube when you were two? And it freaked me out.

That's scary. It freaked me the fuck out. Because I found out today, actually, that today, out of complete coincidence, is my 15th year anniversary on YouTube. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Congratulations. So I rarely get to ask of this.

So what? is the secret to stay relevant for a long period of time on YouTube? You're asking that? You're on for 15 years? Because you've been on for longer than me, so you're the only one I can ask for like actual perspective. Okay, okay. Well, we can share perspectives here.

Okay. I think that you might have something to contribute. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'll be Mr. 17 years. Thoughts my senior. My senior now. My YouTube career can watch an R-rated movie, but it can't quite vote or smoke.

Mine's in high school. You know, yours is going to be legal next year, you know. You're getting your first zits and trying to be very uncomfortable about it. Your balls are dropping. You're very uncomfortable about puberty. You're starting to get the hang of it. No point of it. But let's see.

So the secret is to never feel like you have it figured out. Right. Yeah. The secret, I think, is to always feel like there is something new to learn. Yeah. I am constantly looking at the people that are growing up. audiences and I'm kind of filtering out, okay, this person, they have a recipe and it pleases the algorithm. I think maybe that's why they have views. Okay, what can I learn from that?

Okay, this person has a really dedicated fan base. They don't necessarily appeal to the algorithm, but they appeal to an audience and what can I learn from them. Yeah. So for me, it's really about constantly learning. Yeah. And when I do interviews with bigger names tomorrow, I'm interviewing Tommy in it. Oh, nice. And, you know, he's, he's like, is he 18? He's in his school, right? He says graduate. Yeah. Yeah, but like I love picking his brain and, you know, people that are new and coming up

on YouTube right now and learning what they see in the platform now because it's something completely different. And I feel like there was never a point where you as a creator on the internet where things are so rapidly changing. There was never a point where you will be like, got the figured it out. Yeah. And I used to think there would be a point that I would be like, I've got to grind and grind and grind and

eventually I'll have it figured out and then I'll just be able to sit back and let the thing just live on its own. And I think that's kind of what got me into or convinced me that like selling to a company in 2011 was a right idea. I had it in my head. The goal is to figure this out. It'll go on autopilot.

I can relax and maybe do other things in my life. Yeah. But what I quickly realized is that I really love doing this and this is part of my life that I want to retain. And there will never be a point where I feel satisfied, just relaxing, but also if you sit back and relax, then, you know, and it's been about like, yeah, you get comfortable and you lose track of what's, you know, why things are

moving in the direction they're going and what is relevant to the platform today. Yeah, because that's really interesting to hear because, like, for your perspective, you've really, like, been one of the top creators basically since the birth of YouTube, whereas I've been on YouTube for a long time, but it's been, like, on a very, very niche, like, topic, which is, you know, anime. So I've always been able to learn from what the bigger creators are doing and try to apply what, you know, to try to apply what everyone else is doing and seeing if I can take that into my own, my own niche, my own channel and seeing, seeing if it can grow out of there. And how was that paid off? Like, were you able to take those, those lessons and things that you learn from the bigger

YouTubers and apply it to yourself and have it pay off? Yeah, I mean, it kind of felt like a cheat sheet, you know, if I kind of felt like cheating, because I'm just like, you know, I'm in such a niche topic that I could just take what, I can just take what other people are doing. Yeah. Just put it to put it with my own content. But with you, since you're one of the people setting the standards, you know, one of the people that, you know, I watched and I was like, oh, okay, let's see what Smosh are doing. Let's see what some of the other bigger creators are doing.

I'm like, okay, well, I see what's successful to them. But like, I feel like being at the top of the pyramid and trying to balance yourself is a lot easier than climbing up from the bottom of the pyramid and trying to, like, stay relevant. For sure. Yeah. I think that some people see that, see, have a goal of, like, get to the top of this pyramid. Just stay afloat up here.

Yeah. And of course, like, it is much more comfortable because you have the freedom to, to kind of apply more of these things that you learn on a bigger scale. Yeah. But at the same time, there's so much more pressure. And I think that that's unforeseen to smaller creators. You know, I had my period. I left Samashwin. I think we had 22 or 23 million subscribers, huge amount of subscribers, huge amount of pressure. I go off and do my own thing.

Channel starts with a couple million. And they're like people that don't really know what to expect. don't know what to give them. And there was still that pressure there from me of how am I going to entertain these people who expect me to be giving the quality of content of a 22 million subscriber channel. But now it's just me. It's literally just me on my own.

I'm really curious about, obviously a lot of the viewers when you said, oh, I'm leaving Smosh. I think a lot of people would see that and think, oh, it's just like, he's just leaving a channel. But I imagine there was a lot of probably behind the scenes. or like friendships that was strained by that.

Was that like a, like, outside of just a business perspective, do that put like a lot of strain on like your personal life, like leaving that and putting, I mean, to kind of be like, all right, I'm leaving this big thing. Like, because, you know, obviously Ian is there and a bunch of your friends who worked there. Well, surprisingly, me leaving didn't put a strain in and of itself, like the idea of me leaving and then me leaving.

Yeah. That didn't exactly put a strain. I think maybe afterwards it did a little bit because there were, really, I think it was because audiences or viewers and commenters really were having all these different things that they were saying about like, oh, this person's better or this person's better or you were better when you were here or they're better now that they're here. And I think that that added a little bit of, it was unavoidable to see those, especially. I feel like you can't turn off your brain from

wanting to keep up with the comments, not even if you're not even trying to look for that. I'm trying to see what people are thinking about. This new thing that I'm just like trying to figure out and then I'm getting inundated with all these opinions from people. And I think that that does seep in when you're not ready for it. Yeah. I do wish that I was more ready for the types of comments. How fucking you're ready for that. Yeah. The only way to be ready for it, I think, is to live in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I also realized that there is a bit of freedom in having a smaller audience. Yeah. So it was, it was a huge struggle. And my videos when I first left, I think got a million views each for like a couple months. And I was like, oh, this is, I need to retain this. And then very quickly, once I think

people realized I didn't know what I was doing. I had no goal for the channel. I was like, each week we'll figure out something new and I hope you watch it. And I quickly lost this audience that I had and realized that they were not there just for me. And it was a little bit disappointing at first because I thought, oh, I guess I have the freedom to do whatever. And I thought that I had that with me.

And then it was a wake up call to realize, oh, but you have to make good content. You can't just expect them to be there because it's, you, egotistical maniac. And I, you know, the views I think got to about like 30,000 to 60,000 views a video. On the Anthony Padilla channel. Really? In the first year after.

Wow. And at that time, you know, if videos weren't getting 100,000 views or even more people in the comments are just like irrelevant, irrelevant, wow, fell off. El plus ratio, you fell off. Yeah, yeah, a lot of that. You basically had abandoned an audience for a different style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, people don't see it like that. They're like, oh, your name is, what do you mean you're not doing sketches anymore?

I thought you were just going to. I thought you were going to do your own sketches now, right? And I thought that I had to. I thought I was beholden. And I think that the reason that it got to that point is I felt like I was trapped in this idea of, yeah, I need to create sketches. I need to be funny. I need to deliver something that appeases that audience that I've learned how to appease.

Yeah, yeah. And I think getting down to, you know, I call them lower numbers 30 to 60K. I know a lot of people are up and coming and that is a great number. I don't want to discount that. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, I was like kind of floundering around at that number. And first of all, I had to get out of my head from looking at the numbers.

Right. It wasn't about that anymore. I realized that I had an opportunity now to experiment without the pressure of an audience. Yeah. So that's when I started experimenting with all these different types of videos and all these different types of things. And that's when I fell into doing, I spent a day with videos. And it was without that pressure. And the first few did have that pressure on me to be funny.

So I was kind of, you know, I spent a day with flat earthers. And it was kind of like, look how ridiculous. These people are weird. But slowly, slowly but surely over the next couple months or half year, I, I started realizing that I actually was really curious about different types of people. And I did this video. I spent today with furries. And I had a company help me reach out to these people.

And I thought they were all local. When they showed up, I found out that one flew in themselves on their own dime. And then this person like drove three hours to be there. And I was like, okay, this is. And I wasn't, I already wasn't planning to like,

to say like, these people are weird. But a part of me was like, I don't understand. this is kind of a weird thing. But, you know, they get there and they're saying, I used to watch Smosh all the time. I love your stuff.

You're fucking weird. So, anyway, why are you weird? So I very quickly changed my perspective with the way that I went into that. It was like, there was no way. And it felt, it felt weird to me doing that, the Flat Earther episode. It felt weird to me like I was going out. side of my element to give the snarky commentary channel perspective that was really popular on YouTube at the time. I realized I was kind of falling into those tropes that were so popular.

Yeah, yeah. And I was like, I just feel like I need to just be me and have a conversation with someone, be curious about them, try to learn about their life. And in doing so afterward, I had, you know, them reach out to me. They were really, they were really excited about the way it turned out. But also a lot of commenters were like, whoa, this is the first time I've ever seen furries represent in a way where they were treated with respect. And that is so weird. I've never seen that before. I'm going to send this to my friends who don't understand me. And it was really then that I realized like, oh, this is what actually feels right.

This doesn't feel like I'm not appeasing an audience. I think I should be appeasing because it's the trendiness of YouTube at the time or like this sense of humor that I felt like I needed to always like be this. that I was on Smosh. Right. I felt like I was able to actually just be myself. And my editor then helped me throw in jokes, but it wasn't up to me anymore. I was just making a connection with that person.

Yeah, right? Right. Let's go, let's go. You talked about, you know, constantly learning, constantly seeing what's out there. There must have been a point when you're just like, I am so out of touch right now. Oh, for, sure.

Because I constantly feel that. Sometimes I'm like, I get YouTube. I get the algorithm. I get all the content, but I get what people want to watch. Sometimes you just see you. He's something and you're like, okay, I am a boomer. You see that one popular video and you're like, why?

Yeah. Why is this? There is this one channel called Ouija PG. Have you heard of that? No. No. Okay. So I don't know how they do it.

They got, they like, they have a 3D CG rig of Luigi. And they animate him in his face to react to things. Or at least this is what the channel was a few years ago. I don't know what they're doing now. Okay. So he was react. to things with Luigi sound effects. I'm like, wow,

and it was just like a reaction channel by Luigi. And I was like, and some of them had millions of views. And I was like, this is so bizarre. But I loved it. That sounds incredible. I reached out.

I followed him on Twitter. I was like, this shit, keep it up. This shit's sick. But it was so weird. And that's, I was like, there was always something to learn about YouTube. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always some weird corn.

Yeah. I mean, now you're exploring that. Yeah, now you're exploring. Yeah, yeah. And those are the types of people that I really, really enjoy talking to where it's like this community that's doing this thing that's many people would just think is bizarre. Like, you know, yeah. There's actually something to it.

And why does it catch on? And we could talk about the emotional aspects of like the connection that people make and why do you think this is popular? I think it's just really refreshing, you know, I mean, obviously lately on the internet, you know, and even when you started it, it was very combative. And everyone was always at each other's throat. I think it just came out of the time and kind of hit the right note of just like,

let's just talk. Let's just learn about each other. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's, yeah, I mean, the success, I mean, it shows that the audiences wanted that kind of content. Like, yeah, yeah.

People are curious about all the types of different things, be it pony, pony players. Pony players. In saying that, I wanna know that, you wanna know why. In saying that, though, there have been a couple of videos I've seen from your,

where you do kind of bring back that like old school, like a little bit cynical type of interviewer type thing. Like, you know, the one about like you interviewing time travelers, for instance, like that one was like a little like, I saw like the little bit of the cynical side of it, which is just as entertaining. You have to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was right after the Flat Earthers episode. So I didn't quite detach from that side of it. But I feel like now if I were to approach that again, the topic that I'm like a little bit like, yeah, I think I would just outright say, this seems completely unbelievable. Right. Yeah.

Do you have people telling you that and how do you feel about that? Right. Right. I feel like there's so many more interesting conversations to have about that. And I think a lot of people are either afraid to tell someone that their shit's whack. Or they, all they want to do is tell them that they're shit's whack and they don't want to hear why they do what they do. Right. Right. Right.

I think that there's like, if you could just be transparent with anyone, really, like, if you can just have a conversation with anyone about why they do what they do, you can make some. kind of a connection regardless of who the person is, except Hitler or not Hitler. Yeah, they grow up so far. He's maturing. How do you feel about TikTok? Because if there's one thing that does make me feel like a boomer and out of touch, it is just TikTok itself.

Yeah. Have you thought about venturing into that? Oh, we, I have a TikTok. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does really well with just clips from my interview series, down and yeah we did that as well yeah yeah it doesn't work for you guys yeah yeah yeah yeah I think that the thing about TikTok is that there is an audience for everything oh yeah

yeah so you might log on and think this is fucking weird shit but then there is a corner of the internet that is for you on TikTok and their algorithm is really good at feeding you content eventually if you get even if you sift through enough garbage for enough time and eventually yeah will find the thing that that sits my favorite category of tic top videos is somebody complaining about something really specific and then I was like, hi, I'm the expert on that actually why it works. And he's like, who's the toenail expert? Why does you come from?

It's just the IRL Reddit, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's literally like, the, the strangest experts all come out and they're all good looking. Like, that's the other thing. Everyone who is like an expert on something is just amazing looking. Yeah.

There is always an expert about everything. And they look amazing. And they're always, they always look amazing. It's like you, why did you have to be so good and charming? Did they become good looking? because they're an expert? Or which one came birth?

They became an expert, then they had the time to go and walk out and take care of themselves. Or is it that most people that look good or mound to be experts? I used to be a model now I'm a toenail. It is really crazy. Yeah, but it's such a cool platform,

but it makes me feel really old. And it's weird because I thought it was gonna die. I think everyone when it was bought, when it was musically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was gonna go down the vine route. Yeah, yeah. Musically was the thing

and everyone was doing the musically like cringe compilations. I just thought, oh, this is for kids. And then, wow, everyone was wrong. I think everyone thought it was gonna die. Yeah, yeah. When everyone was just like that lip syncing or doing dances and he's like,

oh, look at this funny thing the kids are doing. The replies, man. Anthony was like, I did that. It's already years ago. I got my career that way. They took my shit. I think it's the replies. The replies and the ability

to share the music so easily. Yeah, yeah. Game changer, I think. Yeah. And it made editing kind of, you know, accessible to the, I mean, editing, very excited.

to beginners and like people who don't know it. It's like, yeah, just slide this thing across, chop the video, chuck it in, put this music over it. And you want a funny filter? We've got that too. So it kind of made it more like less scary. I mean you open up like DaVinci Resolve and you just have a panic attack.

You're like, what the fuck is this? Like this makes no sense. Adobe Premiere, it makes zero sense if you don't watch five hours of YouTube tutorial. Yeah, yeah. So I feel like it kind of made it like very accessible in a way that kind of just worked. And TikTok is always,

changing their shit. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at TikTok now versus a year ago, it looks very different. Yeah. For that and the features that they add, they are doing the upkeep.

Yeah. Vine, like they, I mean, I think it was clear why Vine died for many reasons, one being that you couldn't make money on it, but also they were not like keeping it up. They were not updating it.

And unfortunately or not, things on the internet platforms are, need to constantly be updated to go to go where people are wanting it to go. Yeah. Because it is ultimately, for people, right? Yeah, yeah. Instead, Vine opted to be like,

what if we made a sequel to Vine? Let's make a Vine 2. Did they ever do that? No, no, no. Were those rumors or were those legit? They were legit. Yeah, Vine was like, we're coming back with Vine 2 and people were like.

And then TikTok was like, nah. Yeah, Tick was like, no, we got this. We got it. Yeah. Well, I find it really weird because, like, I feel like now TikTok is what YouTube was, like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, right? Where, you know, you're like,

remember when back in the day where YouTubers were try to get on TV, which was like the old media, in order to legitimize themselves. And now it's like TikTokers trying to become YouTubers to legitimize themselves. And it's been so weird, just seeing that transition. That's so true.

Yeah, I guess it's because the platform is so easily accessible. You were saying that anyone could jump on there, and you can build an audience on there. People can find you, the algorithm is very good. So it's basically like, if early YouTube had an algorithm that fed people content that was directly relevant to them. Yeah, and I think it's also like the barrier for entry for YouTube now, I feel like,

even though, you know, YouTuber is like, you know, you can make anything on YouTube and it will be successful, you know. Still like the quality of content on YouTube now is so much higher than it was 10, 15 years ago. We're in like the Mr. Beast era where everything has to be $100,000. I did think, I fucking stayed up for one week straight.

It's like, all right, okay, I can't compete with that because I just don't wanna do that. Have you seen any of Ryan, Trahans. I have. I have. So he, I feel like he's been reinventing.

Yeah. Yeah. What YouTubers can now expect to do on the platform because he's taking some elements of the Mr. B style with thumbnails that look very nice and clean. Yeah. And he has an elevated concept. Yeah.

Right. For this whole thing. And it feels like a video game. It feels like you're watching this person's journey. Yeah. In front of you and you feel like you can't click away because you never know what's going to have any turn. But yet it is still a vlog.

And he feels like, can still, you know, because it is a vlog where the whole idea is that it's low produced, he's able to make one a day. It's quite nice. Just watching it and you're like, this is like nice. I just feel like it's not too crazy. Yeah. Like, you know, obviously, it's nostalgia. I love watching a Mr. Beast video, but my God, I feel like I'm a cog in a machine. Yes, yes, yes. Like, it's just so much. And there's so much streaming and texting. It feels like a refined, modernized vlog that has, Yeah, yeah. Kind of like an elevated game plan.

The thumbnails are just, the thumbnails kill it. And I never would have thought that a vlog thumbnail, which is not, you know, clickbait. Because it's not clickbait. Couldn't look so good. Yeah, right? It's, I don't know who does.

Yeah, like I remember when, you know, back when, you know, YouTube of vlogs were just, you know, you put on any digital camera, you know, handheld camera. And then Casey Nystack came along and just used a DSLR and made like, basically like mini short films every day. People are like, what?

You can do that. That's possible. And then everyone tried to be Casey Nysed out for a while. And then he burnt out. And then he burnt out. I mean, he was every day. I mean, when he used to talk about his schedule, he was like, yeah, I'd wake up at 4 a.m.

and I'm editing it on the plane. I'm like, yeah, what the fuck? But I think what we can learn from that experience is that, you know, if you have something good, you don't need to overdo it. If you wanted to have any longevity, you know, part of the game plan is to figure out a way for it not to take up your entire life. You know, I interviewed market player

and he was like, burnout is when people aren't refilling their bucket. They're constantly scooping out of their bucket for their content and they're not refilling it because they're not living a life outside of that. You need to have that balance. Yeah. Have you ever been burnt out?

Yes, absolutely. I would have been shocked if you said no. Never. Always a creative. I was trying to be polite. The question should be. So when did you? did you burn out?

Honestly, you should have just said it like that. Many different times and every single time is when I felt overworked and then once it became like part of a company overworked,

underappreciated. Yeah. I felt like I wasn't being like my opinions didn't quite contribute to the creative. Right. But then also outside of that,

I was burnt out on my own outside of Smosh after I left and decided to do my own thing. Right. For a lot of that time, when the views were dropping, I was also burnt out. So it makes sense that people were not wanting to watch

the content of someone who's burnt the fuck out by their own content. That's like, that's not fun to watch. There's a feeling you can feel when someone is burnt out by their content. Yeah, and then when you go to the actual video and the top comment is like, he's run out of ideas. Yeah, yeah.

I'm like, fuck you, dude. I got so many ideas. And I just sit there and I'm like, I have no idea. They were right. Shit. Call me out. But, you know, I think I, I really started to reframe what was important to me and then I started not taking it as seriously,

not putting as much of my time into it and I was able to live a life outside of it and have thoughts that were separate from my work. And I think that's really, it kind of helped reinvigorate to a certain thing. Yeah, one thing I was gonna ask is like, because you know, compared to your YouTube boomers right here, we are like, we are very much children.

Oh yeah, nine years, seven years right there? Yeah, well, like, I just discovered what boogers take. So it's like, what I want to ask you specifically is like, how much of longevity do you see as a YouTuber being a career, right? Because it's like, we don't really have any like, you know, because like, say of like, you know, Hollywood or like the acting industry or music industry, right?

Yeah, yeah. We already have examples of people who have had careers for like 30, 40, 50 years, plus, right? But because YouTube is such a new thing, whereas like I think the longest is probably someone like you, right? It's like, do you see yourself doing this for the next 10, 15 years again? I mean, it's already been half my life. Yeah.

So it feels like I can give my confidence to the idea that YouTube will be around for a long time. Right. They haven't made any glaring mistakes that are still glaring mistakes. Like, it feels like they've made a ton of mistakes. Absolutely, I'm not going to write them off completely. Right, right. But it seems like over time they are remedying a lot of those. It feels like they actually are.

caring about the community. I'm not, you know, there's plenty of issues, but it seems like enough people care to make changes to keep the platform relevant. Right. Because like, it's, oh, come, come.

I completely lost me. Because obviously people are going to be like, what do you mean? They did this, and it's like, I think, as you're saying, as a whole platform, I think they,

they meant, considering the amount of shit that goes on the platform. Yeah. Yeah. They do a pretty good job at keeping it, relevant, pushing it forward and making it the place.

Yeah. Yeah, obviously there's places. Yeah, because I think definitely like the one moment that YouTube like did a fucky-waki and everyone was like, this is the end of YouTube was when demonetization became a thing, right? And the adpocalypse came out. Everyone unanimous was like, this is it. This is where it dies. Yeah. But it somehow managed to stick around for what, five extra years?

That needed to happen though. Looking back at it, it was an inevitability that it was gonna come to something like, A system like that was going to have to be put in. They implemented a lot of things that help with that, though. Like on the back end, you can upload a video now and it'll say, I'm not sure if it's for everyone. I think it's for everyone.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't want to be like, YouTube privilege. I'm like, YouTube's great. Bro, we do not have any of those features. Well, let's find out. The 1%. So what I will say is when I upload a video, it says checking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then after a half hour, 45 minutes, an hour. or whatever, it eventually does like the initial check and then you can have some confidence that it probably caught it if it's going to catch something that you shouldn't have in the video. Yeah. So that has given me a lot of confidence in the direction of that because monetization was a huge issue. Every time I would upload for a while, I was like, I don't know. Let's see. This thing I put tens of thousands of dollars into. It might be worth nothing. I might just be in the red for this. Right. They did fix some things I feel and they're slowly but surely, I think, fixing a lot of

the glaring issues. Was there like a point where like this changed from, you know, because as with the way being a content creator is, this changed from being a job to a career. Because like, for the longest time, I treated YouTube as a job because you wake up and you're like, maybe I'll be irrelevant to tomorrow, a week from now, a year.

And like, I didn't really feel like this was a career, literally until this podcast when I'm just like, oh, okay, this is like a business, a sustainable business that I can see myself, you know, five, ten years in the future. Was there a point for that for you? I think the moment that that changes with somebody in general is probably when you have a format that you know you can come back to and feel confident in. And that's probably why this podcast was like, we know the format. Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's kind of all figured out so that it feels like this is a repeating thing. Yeah. For me, it was, I think it probably felt like career when, I mean, when we were purchased by Defy because it was like we had salary and salary. I mean, that kind of, I feel like is. unique to me though. Yeah. But then after that, you know, going off independently, the moment that it felt like a career for me now was when I had a series I spent a day with to go back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a repeating thing. Like a safety net, like something, something comfort, you know? I think that's the difference. Yeah. When it, when you know that you have something, you're not starting from square one every single video. Yeah.

You know, a lot of people are still trying to figure out what they're doing. So every single video is back to the drawing board. Yeah. And that just feels like a job. And trust me, it's tough. Yeah. Because like I feel like when you're starting off at YouTube, you want to make like every video like a 10 out 10 banger. You want to be motivated. You want to do something new every time. Then you realize that after a year or two of doing it, you're like, this is not sustainable. So I need I need some kind of formula that I can fall back on because I can't always be, you know, at my peak of creativity every time. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys are like 90% probably going into each episode, 90% sure where things are going to go. You know? And that that, no. Yeah. Well, going back to the beginning. of this episode, right?

We know roughly. We know roughly. You know a little bit about what the dynamic is going to be like at least. I know if I say this thing, how maybe he'll react. Your face is not so true. I'm like, all I know is that we're going to have someone on the show

and we're going to be talking about their stuff. Well, you have a name and you have sponsors. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I guess like, sorry. No, I was just saying like I feel like in a weird way, we're still trying to figure out that formula

for trash taste in a sense. It's like, we've kind of figured it out. You know, it's obviously like a lot. 100 episodes deep. Yeah, 100 episodes deep, right? But it's like, I'm personally always like, yeah, you know, scared of like that moment where it starts to get repetitive

or starts to feel like a job. And like, luckily, it's how, I don't feel that way right now about it. But it's like, I am scared to like fall into that. So what are you doing to prevent it from feeling like it's a repetitive job? Oh, I mean, and we're bringing it on tour now.

Yeah, that's what I mean, we're filming overseas. We're getting, you know, all sorts of interesting guests and stuff like that. And I think the specials definitely help. Yeah. Where that's like, that's the moment where we can just like kind of really explode without creativity.

Yeah. But also, I feel like those specials probably are what excite the audience as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope so. Right guys? Right. Every now that someone would be like,

where's our four hour conversation? I wanted to go to work and listen to four hours, not watch one hour of content. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess like my final question is, what do you want to do in the future? I mean, you've been on the platform 17 years. Yeah. Is there something for your 20th anniversary?

Got nothing planned, man. But 21st, you don't know. I think, I mean, I just want to continue refining what I do. That's what I've been enjoying doing most. This I spent a day with series has been so fun for me because every single, every single episode, I see at least one element that I want to refine, whether it's, it's the lighting on the set or something that's like really technical like that or it's like my performance on the intro feels like I'm just reading words I'm going to revamp that

and try to learn it or like I just went all out I did these tests where I reshot some of my intros where I have a jib like right which is like a fucking little crane to a camera and I was like what if I because I was watching a bunch of really big YouTubers like AREC for for example. And I was like, he has these intros where he's like choreographed this scene. There's one that he did like about like, what would you do if you had one day left to live?

Right. So he starts off and it's like the doctor saying, you have one day left to live and he's like in these bandages. And then he's like, he just gets up and he gets out and the doctor's like, where are you going? And he's like ripping off his bandages up. He's like talking to the camera.

And he's like, what would you do if you had one day left to live? And he's like to the audience. And he's bringing us through the, the camera is like following him and it's like this choreograph scene that just immediately right off the bat you know there was this effort that went into this this this is a good setup for this video because I know that if the rest of this video is like anything like these first 30 seconds is going be so much fun yeah so I was like how could I apply some of these things that I'm seeing

modern YouTubers do right and apply it to an interview format I was like I could kind of choreograph the way that I say these things so I'm still learning with that and so it's hard to say like where I want to go next, but I think more importantly, I know where I want to go now. And that's to constantly refine and not allow myself to get bored because I want to always creatively see where what is like right out of my comfort. It's pretty cool that you've been on YouTube for that long. Yeah. I still want to get inspiration.

I was about to say, that's very humbling. Yeah, like it's inspiring to hear that like you are still on your journey. Right. Yeah. After seven, yeah, after 17 years, you're still on your journey. journey and you're still figuring stuff out. Yeah, because in my head, I was like, damn, I've been doing this shit for nine years. I don't know what the fuck I'm going. I'm glad to know someone who's been doing it for almost double that also doesn't know. Yeah, I'm just having fun,

man. It's yeah. If I'm, if I enjoy what I'm doing, like, I feel like that is the best career that you could have. Yeah. That's where you enjoy it. Not, not the career that, you know, unfolds in this timeline that I pre-built in my head for where it goes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You hear that guys, it's not about the money. It's about the love for it. But yeah, thank you so much for coming on. This is awesome. This is so cool. Hey, but look at all these patrons, though.

Yeah. You see all the screen? Oh, my God. Look at my patron immediately. The show is dope. Don't forget it. Who's your favorite patron? I look that one.

That one right there in the middle. It's already gone, but I did enjoy it. Hey, if you like to support the show, go to our Patreon. Patreon.com slash Trash Days. Also, follow us on Twitter. Send us some memes on the subreddit. And if you hate our face, listen to us on Spotify. And, yeah, go check out to anything stuff.

I don't need to tell you that. Everyone should know. Yeah. I hope we did an okay job interviewing you for once. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I've never done a three on one before. It's always been a one on three.

Thank you for putting me in the reverse position. Hopefully, we're gonna hear about our skills later on. You're right it all down as a score. I'll talk about this experience on another episode of my show. Oh, shit. You won't know when it's coming? You're just gonna throw it and be like, oh yeah, but yeah, so about the pony thing.

By the way, trash is a shit. So I came in there, they didn't know anything. They didn't know anything. They didn't know anything. They weren't even prepared. You just thought you better guests than trashdates? And they weren't even guests. They were hosts.

Yeah, yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you guys. And thanks for watching, guys. See you next one. Bye. Bye.