Pod Insights The Vergecast Tales of a shopping influencer About this episode Today on the flagship podcast of the economic theory of Dave and Busters:
02:50 - The Verge’s Mia Sato shares her experience on a new shopping app called Flip, which is filled with only videos that earn affiliate revenue.
Where everyone’s an influencer and everything’s for sale
35:34 - The Verge’s Vjeran Pavic and Becca Farsace chat with David Piece about the new Fuji X100VI, and why this line of cameras was a sensation on social media.
Fujifilm announces the X100VI, its follow-up to a TikTok sensation
The internet's NEW favorite camera? (Fuji X100VI)
Fujifilm X100T review
57:44 - Verge producer Will Poor answers a follow-up question about the right to repair legislation in this week’s Vergecast Hotline.
The Vergecast and Decoder are live at SXSW this weekend, March 8th and 9th. SXSW attendees can see both shows live on the official Vox Media Podcast Stage at the JW Marriott, presented by Atlassian. Learn more at voxmedia.com/live.
Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 12,912 words · 21 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 David Pierce? Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the economic theory of Dave and Buster's. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am currently on my way to a new bagel shop, which in my life, at this point in my life, counts as a huge life event. See, when I move somewhere new, I immediately go on a grand quest for three things: a really great cup of coffee, a really great deli sandwich, and a really great bagel. In New York, I found all three of those things. New York's good like that. In San Francisco, I found the first two, but never really found a bagel that I loved. And now that I'm in the DC area, coffee was easy to find, found a good deli sandwich, but it's been like four years, and I still haven't found the bagel. But this new place just opened like a week ago in my neighborhood.
0:47 David Pierce? Everybody says it's great. I've been burned before, but I'm gonna go try it, because that is my job. This is my quest. I will find a great bagel. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. We're gonna do two things. First, we're gonna talk about this app, Flip, which is like if you took the TikTok shop and the shopping stuff in Instagram and the shopping stuff in Pinterest, and just sort of smushed it all together into a social media app that is nothing but shopping, and it's kind of working. We're gonna get to the bottom of what's going on and why this thing is so successful. Then, we're gonna talk about the Fujifilm X106, which is the successor to the camera that the internet has spent the last like three years totally obsessed with.
1:30 David Pierce? It's beautiful, it's cool, it takes neat photos, people are very excited about it. We're gonna figure out if this is really worth the upgrade. All that's coming up in just a sec, but first, I have to go spend what I can only assume is going to be an alarming amount of money on a bacon, egg, and cheese. This is The Vergecast. We'll see you in a sec.
1:49 Speaker 01 Company spending is complex. Managing it should be simple. This is AMEX Corporate, a single platform connecting cards, expenses, and payments to streamline the way you work. Flexible controls for when priorities shift, support around the clock, all backed by American Express, so you can stay focused on what matters most. Built to simplify, designed to scale, this is AMEX Corporate. Get started at go.amex/ammexcorporate. Terms apply.
2:22 Speaker 02 Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline? That's bull spend, and marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard Confessions.
2:32 Speaker 03 My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.
2:39 Speaker 02 Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
2:55 David Pierce? Welcome back. All right, I'm home, I'm in the studio, I have eaten the bacon, egg, and cheese. It was good, but I think the hunt for the really great one still continues. This one did have a little honey on it, though, which I liked a lot. That was a good tip. Anyway, let's get to the show. Over the last few weeks, The Verge's Mia Sato has been moonlighting as a shopping influencer on an app called Flip. She hasn't told me much about how it's going, or what she's been up to in her time as a shopping influencer, but this app is weird and strange, and she's going to tell us about all of her adventures. Mia Sato, welcome to The Vergecast.
3:30 Speaker 04 Thank you.
3:31 David Pierce? So, I'm told the first thing you want to do is share with me a video that you made that the people need to hear.
3:38 Speaker 04 Yes, the people need to hear this. It's very important.
3:40 David Pierce? Let's just play this, and then we'll see where we go.
3:43 Speaker 04 Wow, I absolutely love this Pure Sonic facial steamer because it feels so good on my face. As you can see, it's really steaming my face.
3:55 David Pierce? What is happening here? I need you to explain yourself.
3:58 Speaker 04 Okay, so David, what if I told you that I had a TikTok for you where it was only ads? Would you be interested?
4:05 David Pierce? I mean, I would make the slight argument that that might just be called TikTok, but yes?
4:11 Speaker 04 And you would use my referral code to sign up so that we could both get like $30 to $50?
4:17 David Pierce? Listen, if there is one thing I believe, it's that the internet is made for scamming your way into $50 to $100 worth of free stuff on the internet, most of which will be garbage, but some of which will be great.
4:28 Speaker 04 Okay, that's, I love that we're on the same page because that's exactly what I did, but more like $400 worth of stuff and I used my friends to do it.
4:35 David Pierce? Oh, wow.
4:36 Speaker 04 And I'm here to tell my story and maybe get you on so I can get more stuff.
4:40 David Pierce? What, what is this app? It's not TikTok. It sure sounds like TikTok. What app are we talking about here?
4:47 Speaker 04 It's this app called Flip. If you are on TikTok and you use Flip, you'll know exactly what to do because the user experience is very similar. It's a vertical video feed where you swipe up and you get new stuff. Except on Flip, there is like a dislike button and a like button. And every video is about a product that you can buy directly from that video. And there's also like a shopping page, similar to TikTok Shop, where it's just loaded with a bunch of stuff.
5:15 David Pierce? So it's shopping all the way down? Like it's, it's videos about products. You buy the products, you make a video about the product, you bought, other people buy the product, and it's, it's just this endless cycle of content about products that you can buy to make content about.
5:29 Speaker 04 Exactly. It is completely circular, which is actually brilliant. Like you can only make videos about stuff you've purchased there. It's like, kind of like TikTok and social media gamified to the extreme. So as you're scrolling this feed, there is a little counter in the top right-hand corner with a dollar amount. And every time you watch a video, you earn a couple pennies. You just keep going and then you have sort of a fake amount of money that you can then use as like basically a 30% off coupon for anything you buy inside. The money can be, can cover up to 30% of your purchases. So it encourages you to keep watching videos. You comment on them, you like them. Sometimes you buy stuff. You're racking up little, little points as you go along.
6:12 David Pierce? Where did this app come from?
6:14 Speaker 04 So I heard about it through friends who had also been doing what I did. Invite a bunch of friends so that you have kind of like an endless stream of, of fake money to buy stuff with. And it's a startup. It raised, I think, maybe around $100 million in the last round. And it has been kind of bubbling under the surface for a bit. There have been a few articles about its launch. Last year, but mainly it seems like a place where people jump on it with like a lucrative referral program that they're doing right now. Buy one thing, make a weird video and then maybe never come back. But then there are people like me who spend ungodly amounts of time on it because it's like,
6:57 Speaker 04 it feels like an upside down, wacky world of like, things we already know and are very familiar with.
7:03 David Pierce? Yeah, I do think there, there is a fascinating sort of statement about the world inside of this app that I'm not sure this app wants to be making. But tell me about like these videos. I'm imagining, I would say like Mia, I love you, but your video is not particularly enticing. I don't feel like I got to the end of that. And I'm like, you know what I need now is a facial steamer. Are you like worse than average on Flip among the influencers? Are you better than average? Like, what kind of stuff do you see is growing in this feed?
7:32 Speaker 04 The feed is so chaotic. It is truly like, I was hooked from like the first five minutes because you get on the feed and it is like, nothing you've seen before. It's like the collection of the worst videos you've ever seen. And then some really like, kind of cringey, like really tough watches, one after another. And I'm obsessed with that. So there's several buckets of people on Flip. There are people who, like I said, buy one thing, are told that, hey, if someone buys stuff off of your video that you made, you can make money too. It's like an affiliate marketing scheme. They make one video and then that's all that's on their profile.
8:09 Speaker 05 So this is the clips, the clip, a very nice clip.
8:15 Speaker 04 There are the people who maybe have like something of a following on other platforms and they've just jumped to this platform to see if this can become a revenue stream for them. So they're making slightly more polished videos.
8:26 Speaker 06 This is the men's sponge gel super buffer and smells so, so good. I'm not going to open this because I got this as part of a birthday gift for my boyfriend, but I've got this.
8:36 Speaker 04 There are children, like literal children in school, making videos about phone cases. Those are extremely hilarious.
8:43 Speaker 03 Oh God, my phone died. Oh yo, I got it. Put it in charge. Oh my God, thank you.
8:51 Speaker 04 There are people doing like mimicking the videos of legitimate and established influencers.
8:59 Speaker 07 What's up, Flip fam? First time reviewer here. Just got my first purchase. Mommy and Sons polar fleece, olive green, super comfy.
9:10 Speaker 04 There are the honest reviewers, just, you know, your friend saying like, oh, I don't really know if I liked this product.
9:18 Speaker 08 Extremely disappointed. This corset, it's over a hundred dollars. I got it because I saw this outfit from Sofia Brigada and I was like, ooh, let me try that. Look at this. This is the center, one cup. It's higher than the other one.
9:35 Speaker 04 Which is kind of like, I think, the ideal that Flip wants. It's all about this like authenticity, honest reviews. They very much lean into like, it's good that these people are not practiced influencers.
9:47 David Pierce? Does that make sense to you as an approach when the whole point of every single video is to sell you a product?
9:54 Speaker 04 No, I mean, obviously there's a tension there that nobody wants to acknowledge, which is that you can make honest videos and you still make money when people watch those videos, right? You still make money even if nobody buys it. Also, there is tremendous financial incentive to get people to buy it from your video. Like, that is kind of the whole point. And I think that, you know, the company can push this sort of, this is authentic, this is real line as much as they want, but that does not remove the central tension, which is you are paying people really, really bad influencer rates to make content for stuff that you otherwise would be outsourcing to people who are charging like thousands of dollars a post.
10:35 David Pierce? Okay, so part of this makes sense to me and part of it doesn't. We've seen this with a lot of shopping apps, whether it was Wish a bunch of years ago, or Shein and Timu, and what the TikTok shop is doing where they pour a bunch of money into subsidizing this for everybody. So you get cheap stuff, you get referral codes. That part of this makes sense to me. There's a bunch of money coming in. It's not sustainable, but somebody can afford to pump this up for a while. For you as a user, it sounds like, if I'm understanding correctly, you make money just by watching videos.
11:04 Speaker 04 Yes.
11:04 David Pierce? And you also make money when people buy products after they click on videos that you make.
11:11 Speaker 04 Yes, it's like money on both sides, money being sort of like in precise term, because some of these are just like points, basically, just with the dollar assigned in front of it, yeah.
11:21 David Pierce? It all sounds a little like Dave and Buster's, where you just like spend a bunch of money to buy your way into this sort of teeny tiny fake economy that has no bearing on anything, and no one actually understands how any of it works, but they get money and you don't at the end.
11:34 Speaker 04 1,000%. I am making videos for Chuck E. Cheese tokens, like, that's what's happening.
11:38 David Pierce? And yet, you decided to let this completely take over your life?
11:42 Speaker 04 Because it's kind of fun. It's kind of, it's kind of fun. And it's, that is like the weird part of this. I think I have like $80 right now in watch points, I'll call them.
11:54 David Pierce? Okay.
11:54 Speaker 04 That's how much I've scrolled this feed. And mind you, I'm making like 2 to 6 cents of you, something like that. So I've been watching a lot of videos.
12:03 David Pierce? Yeah, so take me through kind of the Mia economy on Flip. You've been in this for a while, you referred a bunch of people. What has your voyage through this app been like over the last month or so?
12:13 Speaker 04 So first, I invited a bunch of friends, and I think by the end, I had like almost $400 worth of credit. And this is also kind of a little sneaky, but the credit can be used to cover up to 95% of the price of an item. So if I had like a $100 jacket or something, I would pay 95 bucks and I would pull it out of my Flip referral money. So I invite a bunch of friends, I rack up all this money, and then I just started buying random stuff.
12:45 Speaker 04 I think this is a hat. And this is interesting. There is a packing slip in the package, and it's shipped to me, but it's billed to the Flip Shop, and it's like their address. I'm pretty confident that this is all being drop shipped, and they're just fronting the money for the purchase, and then you're paying them, you know, 5 bucks or however, whatever the difference is after your 95% off coupon. I bought clothes. I bought eye masks, like skincare eye masks. I bought the facial steamer, of course, that I absolutely love how it steams my face. I bought mushroom chocolates. I bought like a 35 millimeters film scanner.
13:29 Speaker 04 I bought the protein powder, of course. I tried to buy a variety of stuff just to see what would show up to my house. These two are from a clothing brand that was sort of suspiciously cheap. I bought two shirts and they were each 12 to 15 dollars, so I'm not expecting much. And the other, I think, are socks.
13:52 David Pierce? So I did this one time with Wish for a story I actually never ended up writing. I bought like a few hundred dollars worth of obvious knockoffs of gadgets. There was like a thing that was clearly a GoPro but wasn't a GoPro. I was kind of amazed at the spectrum of quality. It was kind of a total grab bag of whether any of this stuff was going to be any good or even what it looked like on the listing page. Was that your Flip experience too?
14:19 Speaker 04 I think it's, yeah, a hit or miss thing because there are some brands on Flip. I should also also mention that brands have to like apply to be on it. And for every purchase that is made on Flip, Flip takes a cut. So it's like affiliate marketing on affiliate marketing. It's really, there's a lot of layers here. So there are legit brands, several makeup brands that people always post normal TikToks of, right? Like they're very popular brands. The film scanner was, I think, maybe a Kodak one. It really runs a gamut.
14:48 David Pierce? Okay, but then again, if I'm understanding the the Flip economy correctly, buying and receiving the products is only the first part of the process. You then are immediately supposed to turn around and make content. And this is where I think you you hit your true star turn, at least as far as I can tell, which is Mia Sato, weird product reviewer on the internet. Tell me about protein powder hawking Mia. What's her deal?
15:15 Speaker 04 Okay, so that was the first video I made. My first instinct was to be kind of an asshole about it. I haven't opened this and I haven't eaten it, but I think I recommend it. In fact, I do recommend it. Okay, that video has 860 views.
15:33 David Pierce? Okay.
15:34 Speaker 04 And I've made a dollar and 92 cents, which actually is really good for views. Nobody has bought it from my video, but it's pretty good.
15:42 David Pierce? Yeah.
15:42 Speaker 04 It's a pretty good conversion. And then the next day, I decided to actually use the protein powder in a protein shake. And I made another video, of course. Okay, another update. I made a protein shake with the protein powder, and it is absolutely horrendous. It is horrifyingly bad. It is so fucking bad. Do not buy this.
16:03 David Pierce? So, A, I appreciate the journalistic integrity here. This is good. But also, this is the thing that people are watching and deciding, maybe I'll buy this product? Like, you're making money off of telling people how terrible these protein shakes are?
16:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's hysterical. Also, multiple people put it in their cart from my video.
16:21 David Pierce? Good lord.
16:22 Speaker 04 So I have to say that, like, if I tried a little bit harder, imagine what I could do. Imagine how much flip money I would have.
16:29 David Pierce? So the, like, the neg as a product review strategy is kind of amazing. This is a thing we need to explore. Like, The Verge just negging products is maybe a thing we should start doing more of. I love this. Did you do the mushroom chocolates? This is the other one I'm fascinated by, because I feel like the facial steamer is like, look, it's steaming my face. Like, I get that. Trying to explain to people whether they should buy mushroom chocolates based on a recommendation from a stranger on the internet seems like an interesting content challenge.
16:56 Speaker 04 Well, it's actually really easy because the mushroom chocolates look kind of cute.
17:00 David Pierce? Hmm.
17:01 Speaker 04 One thing about a lot of the reviews that I saw was that the people will say stuff about the products that has nothing to do with the product, right? They will say, here it is. I just got this. Check it out, right? Like, they don't use it.
17:16 Speaker 09 Yo, what up, flippers? Just got this bucket hat from Dumb Club on Flip. It's got sick, um, sick, I can't even explain the word for it, characters. It's got all the characters from their website on here. Sick quality, sick hat.
17:32 Speaker 04 So I was like, let me try that where I'm not doing anything with the item. So I made a mushroom chocolate video. We don't love that these mushroom chocolates came, the tin came open.
17:46 Speaker 10 But yeah, they also, be warned, they will not get you high, not fun mushrooms, just focus and energy mushrooms.
17:56 Speaker 04 That has gotten me $3.45.
17:58 David Pierce? Killing it. Did anybody buy it?
18:00 Speaker 04 No, of cour- no, no, but nobody has purchased anything from me.
18:04 David Pierce? So you've sold nothing?
18:05 Speaker 04 Nothing.
18:06 David Pierce? To anyone?
18:06 Speaker 04 Nothing.
18:07 David Pierce? But you're still making money?
18:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:09 David Pierce? That's the future right there.
18:10 Speaker 04 I think that means I'm doing well.
18:12 David Pierce? But also perfectly low stakes because nobody actually bought anything. So nobody can blame you for anything.
18:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, totally. Another thing is like, there's no way to add music. So all of these are like silent. It's very unsettling, kind of.
18:24 David Pierce? Oh, that's true.
18:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's really weird. Some people sometimes sneak music in, like maybe they recorded it in TikTok and then re-uploaded it. But for the most part, these are like very, like you can hear people breathing.
18:36 David Pierce? Well, yeah. So this is one of the things I keep wondering as you're talking about this, which is I think about these kinds of videos as compared to product placement stuff you see on Instagram or TikTok. And so for me, like if I'm a brand, if I'm Kodak trying to sell a printer, why on earth would I want to be on Flip?
18:52 Speaker 04 That is such a good question because the brands get no control over these videos. There's no review process that happens like with other influencer content where brands are looking at it, editing it, sending it back, accepting it. Like I am just some rando making videos about your product. And that is where it kind of gets into stickier, weirder places. There's videos on Flip that if I were the brand, I probably would not want to exist.
19:20 David Pierce? Like, give me an example.
19:21 Speaker 04 The funniest one that kind of came up really soon after I indicated that I wanted to see men's fashion content. There was a video with a man in shorts and he and his friends are laughing and cackling about the video that he is making. And I think we should just roll the clip because I'm not going to try to repeat it.
19:43 Speaker 11 Reveal these shorts, all around comfort, incredible, especially on the ball sack. Great flexibility. I really like the way you can see just the outline of my thin balls, just, just right there.
19:58 David Pierce? Somewhere, everyone who works in brand safety is just sobbing into their phone right now.
20:04 Speaker 04 That's not even the worst one.
20:07 Speaker 04 There is another one where the review is for socks and the guy's feet are up on a coffee table.
20:14 Speaker 12 Yo, what is up you guys? It's me with my first Flip review. I'm reviewing these socks that I just got. First impressions, pretty comfortable, nice soft touch to them.
20:29 Speaker 04 If you listen to it, it's fine, but what you do not see, unless you're watching the video, is that around, first of all, in front of his socks, his feet is a bong that is like two feet tall. And then surrounding the bong and on the coffee table are dozens of Whippet canisters. Which, yeah, if I'm the company that makes the socks, a company which I did reach out to and they didn't get back to me, I would be like, please don't do this. I'm paying money. I'm paying money every time someone makes a purchase off this video. The brand safety is non-existent.
21:00 David Pierce? Well, and that brings up, I would say even like the slightly higher stakes version of like content moderation stuff, right? Because if you're trying to sell me something, there's going to be an element of like life recommendation that you have to do. But if you're doing it surrounded by cans of Whippets, you have a real, like genuine content moderation problem that is more than just making the advertisers happy. Like, obviously TikTok has been through this, Instagram has been through this. Everybody at any scale doing social stuff, shopping or otherwise, goes through content moderation stuff. Is Flip doing content moderation? Or are they as blasé about everything as they seem to be about these videos?
21:37 Speaker 04 So I asked the Flip CEO about this and his response was, they have a team of seven or eight content moderators are working at least on that side. And their main thing that they're looking for is like abusive content, hateful stuff.
21:54 Speaker 13 When something is escalated, when a report is escalating, is checked by a human being. But 70% of it is managed with machine learning.
22:02 Speaker 04 But other than that, they like the unvarnished sort of average people doing stuff vibe. They don't seem too concerned with like this idea of brand safety. They also, you know, like kind of like the trolly videos.
22:17 Speaker 13 I generally believe the influencer ecosystem of selling you stuff is not something that's going on the way up. I think there is a real ache for any realness online, like anything that is real and not scripted and not like filtered a thousand times.
22:35 Speaker 04 They say that most people, if they're going to troll, do it in their first video and then don't go on to like make that their entire account. I would like disagree. I've definitely seen people who their entire thing is sort of wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Like this is so stupid that we're doing this, but we're going to do it anyway. It's something of the wild, wild west where people are just making money, you know, producing the stuff that is like so low effort and, and very unserious.
23:00 David Pierce? Do you buy the idea that that authenticity can scale in this way? I mean, I think we've seen over and over that once you introduce not, you know, pennies and nickels and dollars, but like real make a living kind of money to any kind of platform like this, it changes. You and I have both covered a million apps that come out and are like, we're the one that's real. And then they get popular and they stop being real. And then another one comes out and it's like, well, we're the one that's real. And I wonder if it's possible. Do you think Flip can grow the way it wants to and still feel like this?
23:34 Speaker 04 I think right now it's in this sort of era of gold rush where it has all this investor money just funding people joining. But Flip does not exist unless people are actually making purchases. So let's say like everything is trash and nobody buys anything on Flip. Eventually that will collapse because the company is not bringing anything in. Why would people make videos for stuff if they're not buying anything, right? Like you can't. So I think that this idea of authenticity is, it's a pretty limited view of what that looks like. I don't really need to go on an app to see what my friends think about products, right? Just text them. I can just ask them if they like something. Even if I saw them make a video about a product, who's to say that I would buy it from them?
24:19 Speaker 04 I might just like go to the site and see if there's a discount or buy it somewhere else. So I think this idea that they can corral all of your shopping habits and sort of review culture into one place is, I would say it's a pipe dream.
24:33 David Pierce? I agree with all of that in theory, and yet there is part of me that says maybe what Flip is doing, and this is, this is kind of where my like galaxy brain feelingsy take on all of this goes, is that maybe what Flip is doing is just short cutting and end running this process that Instagram and TikTok and all the other platforms are already on. I mean, we've talked about on this show and you've been, you've been writing about the overwhelming influx of the TikTok shop onto TikTok. And now, if you want to be popular on TikTok, the single quickest way to get there is to be selling something. And now it feels like everything you see on TikTok, somebody is selling you something. And that's where the business is going. That's where a lot of the stuff is going. And it's also just becoming sort of accepted.
25:14 David Pierce? Uh, I think like years ago, it would have felt gross for people to be nakedly selling you stuff like this online. And now it's just kind of what it is. So maybe Flip is just skipping to the last step and it's going to be right because shopping is the end stage of all of this anyway. Like, is there a version of this where Flip is just gonna like win because it threw out all the other pretend stuff and just did the thing that actually makes the money?
25:39 Speaker 04 Well, I think one of the reasons I find Flip very compelling and why I've spent, again, hours on the app is that it does feel like sort of the evolution of short form video, that we are already seeing hints of like that this is the direction even apps like TikTok are going, where I don't know that Flip will be the one that wins in the end, but it is capturing and sort of trying to monetize what TikTok also is trying to do. If you have maybe been, you know, on TikTok in the recent and last like week or so, you've probably seen like at the end of videos, there will be a pop up that says shop more shoes or shop more men's coats on TikTok.
26:21 Speaker 04 Shop and it takes you to TikTok shop and gives you a list of products that in my experience, I wrote about this as well. In my experience, have nothing to do with the product that it says it wants you to shop for, but the goal is to get you on to shop on the shop platform. And the videos that these prompts are being added to are not even nakedly promotional. They are talking about something and TikTok picks up what is in that video and tries to convert that into a purchase. And so the flip platform is like that if it drops a pretext.
26:55 David Pierce? Right. It's almost more honest in a way.
26:58 Speaker 04 It is completely. And we already know that this is really the direction that TikTok wants to go in and that it is seriously trying to ramp up its shopping business in the United States this year. So it was giving all these crazy promotional deals to merchants to try to get them on to TikTok shop. It was doing sort of the AliExpress, Shein, Timu thing of, you know, 99% off or free item, just pay shipping, like whatever, these kind of crazy good, too good to be true deals to get people to buy things on TikTok shop. The parallels with Flip are very obvious. It feels like Flip is just that, but more focused where they just stop pretending that it's about anything other than actually making, making sales and getting
27:41 Speaker 04 that affiliate money, getting merchants on, onto the platform. I've observed this. I don't know, David, if you've seen this too with like your favorite creators who start out educational, you know, start up making educational content, start out vlogging or not monetizing their content in any way in particular, but then very quickly, when the opportunity presents itself, they jump to doing the sponsored content or the, the ads. And that bridge is like a stone's throw, you know, it is so easy to switch into that mode if you want. And there are a lot of people who hold down normal jobs and then also are making, you know, getting brand deals and making TikToks and making sponsored content. So this idea of like influencer being a separate
28:24 Speaker 04 category is, I think, increasingly becoming less true. And the whole thing about Flip is that you see non-influencer. Influencers make this content and potentially benefit and profit from it. And they want you to do that. They want you to create this new side hustle that maybe might amount to, you know, 20 bucks in a, in a couple of weeks, which is, I haven't even hit that point. And I've been trying so hard on Flip and I still have only made like $14 and I can't even cash it out. I cannot even cash out my money because I need to get to 20. So yeah, it's very sad and feels like stolen labor on my part. But this vision that it presents is that all of your activities online, all of your purchases, maybe you can monetize them. What if, what if you could?
29:08 David Pierce? Right. And it makes me wonder if Flip looks more like the future of Amazon or the future of social networking? Cause I think to me, the idea that TikTok and Instagram and sort of the places we used to go to like, connect and find stuff we liked online are just rapidly becoming shopping malls is true. And also like deeply bleak and kind of dystopian in a way. But the idea that the way I shop on Amazon is essentially going to be sort of overrun by middlemen who are like real people, quote unquote, real people, who are talking about the products. That doesn't strike me as like more or less bad in the world. It just seems like kind of a future of shopping that is already really real in places like China,
29:53 David Pierce? where like live streaming shopping has been a huge business for a really long time. And so I wonder like, as you talk to folks that flip and use the platform, like, does it feel more like social or more like shopping over time?
30:04 Speaker 04 That's a good question because so much of short form video like TikTok was already about finding things to buy.
30:10 David Pierce? Yeah, totally.
30:11 Speaker 04 I have been like beating this drum for a long time, especially with people in my age group, women, Gen Z, right? Like they go to TikTok for recommendations. They do. And they jump off the app, then buy the thing. Often it sells out. Sometimes it's like in the New York Times style section or whatever, gets all these write ups about this viral product. And TikTok is making no money from that. So obviously they want in on this. And Flip is sort of just like systematizing this and automating that in a way that TikTok, I think is really trying to. Flip's footprint is obviously way smaller than TikTok, but you know, the point stands. And in terms of like, I don't know, does it feel better or worse? I think it's interesting that we are in an era of hyper recommendations
30:56 Speaker 04 and we still need someone to tell us what to do, that we still need someone to tell us what is good and what is bad and what we should buy. I saw like the explosion of gift guides on TikTok this year more than other years, which I find fascinating when presumably our for you algorithm should be like an endless stream of gifts or things that we might be interested in, things that you know, the data shows that we might, we might purchase or we might watch or we might like or save. And so this idea that like, we still want newsletters with recommendations. We still want friends telling us things. It tells me that there's, there's something that is not quite there with like the algorithmic recommendations. And is it good that all of us become salespeople?
31:42 Speaker 04 Like, no, is that brave of me to say? I don't know. That feels bad. That feels bad. And, but I also get the other point of like, if you are posting something on TikTok and it's going to be catapulting the viewer to TikTok shop anyway, why not try to get a cut of it? Because right now, as it stands, the people who have that TikTok shop, you know, shop more shoes button, as far as I know, they're not getting a cut of that. So it makes me think like, why would I make any content? If it's just going to be a sort of portal for TikTok to make more money?
32:14 David Pierce? Totally. No, I think that's right. And I think in a funny way, you just sort of encapsulated like a central tension of the internet right now, that we are going to have to spend a lot more time talking about. But for now, before I let you go, give me the, the state of the Mia Flip business. You said you've made like 14 bucks. Tell me, I want, I want to know the money. I want to know the views. I want to know how quickly you are becoming a mogul on Flip.
32:36 Speaker 04 I have to say that it's, it's not going as successfully as I would have hoped. Also, the videos that I spent the most time on have done the worst, which is fascinating.
32:46 David Pierce? There's a life lesson there.
32:47 Speaker 04 It's a life lesson. It's sad too, because a lot of the products that I bought, like I probably won't end up doing much with. I tried to buy some perishable things. So like I bought coffee beans, which I will drink coffee eventually. I bought candles that I actually am obsessed with, that I purchased before I was on Flip. And I was like, oh, they're on Flip too. So I bought like four of those candles. So I'm stocked, but I will not quit my job at theverge.com anytime soon. Unless something crazy happens to my flip content, then I'm out.
33:19 David Pierce? Once you hit 20 bucks and you can cash out, it's all over.
33:22 Speaker 04 I'm taking my money and running, exactly.
33:24 David Pierce? Love it. Mia, thank you. Appreciate it as always.
33:26 Speaker 04 Thanks, David. This was so fun.
33:28 David Pierce? All right, we gotta take a break and then we're gonna talk cameras. We'll be right back.
33:36 Speaker 02 Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard Confessions.
33:46 Speaker 03 My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions.
33:53 Speaker 02 Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
34:07 Speaker 14 This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies. 18+.
34:33 Speaker 15 College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Wanna make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake-up call at 5:55 in 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.
35:05 David Pierce? All right, we're back. Last week, Fujifilm announced the X106, which is its newest camera. Normally, in 2024, a new camera doesn't qualify as a culture-shaking event, but this one kind of did. The X105, the last model of this camera, became kind of a viral sensation over the last few years, to the point where you basically couldn't get your hands on one, even if you wanted to, even if you wanted to spend the well over $1,000 that it would cost you. This new model is apparently going to be easier to get your hands on and also comes with some upgrades, but fundamentally, it's still an X100. Oh, and it's a little more expensive. To help me figure out why this camera matters so much and whether the new one is a worthy upgrade to the internet's favorite camera, I grabbed two members of The Verge's video team
35:50 David Pierce? and two of our most dedicated camera nerds, Veeran Pavich and Becca Farsaci. Veeran, welcome to the show.
35:57 Speaker 16 Oh, my God. Hello.
35:58 David Pierce? Becca, hello. Hello. My camera people, this is very exciting. I'm glad to have you here. We never get to talk about dedicated cameras on The Vergecast, because who cares? But now we get to, because people care. This is very exciting. Boy, do they care. They super care, right? So I want to get it. That's like mostly what I want to talk about is like the cultural phenomenon of this camera. But I feel like we should educate people on a little bit of Fujifilm history here to start. So Veeran, maybe let's start with you, because I think you've been using the X100 line of cameras for a very long time. So like, take me back to the beginning of the X100. What is this camera? Like, what's its deal, even from the very beginning?
36:40 Speaker 16 So I, someone actually asked me yesterday, they use Fuji. And I went back to like, see when they started. And it was exactly 10 years ago.
36:47 David Pierce? Oh, nice.
36:47 Speaker 16 When I bought the X100T, which is the third one. Now it's six, and people are opinionated. It is a point-and-shoot, fixed lens, 23mm, f/2, on, which is an equivalent to 35mm camera that just does a lot of things right. What people love it is the fact that it has like film simulations that make your JPEGs look amazing. For a lot of people, and myself included, it's been like the perfect beat camera. Like, I want a digital camera that is a small footprint that I can bring everywhere and get good results with. And that's kind of it. And it was my entry into Fuji. And at that point, like, I saw this camera, I played around with it. And I was like, oh, wow.
37:28 Speaker 16 This is what a modern camera looks like in a retro body. I got really excited about like the, the viewfinder and the built in NDs and all these little things that make it like very useful.
37:39 Speaker 17 But I don't think it's just that it produces good results. I think what's actually more important is that you look cool doing it. Because there's many point and shoot cameras like this, like Ricoh makes one. And I mean, if you have a lot of money, Leica, but like, the whole idea is that like, this looks really cool. It's a, it's a price point that some people can digest easily without knowing too much about cameras. And then you also have the added bonus of sometimes it can produce good results if you know what you're doing.
38:05 David Pierce? Balance those two sides of it for me, because I think there is something to the fact that this is just a great looking camera and has been for a long time. And it started to be everywhere, you know, people are doing like, street photography and like, the blogging era and everybody was excited about those cameras for that. But there is also something to what you're saying, Veron. Somebody described it to me at one point as like, it is the perfect middle between a DSLR and a smartphone, where it's, you get some controls, but fundamentally, you can just turn the thing on, point it at something, shoot, and trust that it will do something spectacular for you. So like, for you guys, as people who do this, like professionally, do you buy this because it's cool over another sort of equivalently specced, equivalently priced camera?
38:47 David Pierce? Or is there something about the X100 that is special as a camera?
38:52 Speaker 17 I can't wait to hear Veron's answer.
38:54 Speaker 16 I will say, there is something very special about this camera.
38:57 Speaker 17 There it is.
38:58 Speaker 16 I will say that much. There it is. You won the bet if that was your bet.
39:01 Speaker 17 Bingo. But I would buy this camera as a hobby camera. Like, this is what I take with me because it's fun to use. It has like, I have it right here. It has like, all of these dials and it feels good in your hand, although this front grip could be hella thicker, which is why a lot of people buy a thumb grip for the back. It's just fun to use and you get results that are better than a smartphone. But I wouldn't do professional work on this because on a professional camera, I want more control over my lenses. And I do want a full frame sensor.
39:34 Speaker 16 Yeah, it is not like the camera that can do a lot. It has that perfect focal length for a lot of people. It has very good video capabilities, but does it really need? I mean, like, yeah, it's nice to have. And I guess in world of like TikTok and Instagram, like reels, like, yeah, it's good to have like good videos as well. But even like video capabilities, I always like, never really cared about those on this camera. So it is like, it is very limiting in what it can do actually as a camera. But it really exploded in popularity in the last couple of years.
40:07 David Pierce? Yeah, no, Veron, hold on. I'm not letting you off the hook for this, though. You love this thing.
40:11 Speaker 17 Thank you.
40:11 David Pierce? This thing has like mythical properties for you, and I want you to explain why.
40:15 Speaker 16 I do love this camera. I do have a confession that I actually like sold mine.
40:20 David Pierce? What?
40:20 Speaker 16 Yes, I did because I just knew that maybe I will get whatever is coming. And the pricing for it was still like, oh, yeah, you know what? I can, I can sell it for a decent amount of money.
40:30 Speaker 17 Not only does Veron want to get what's coming, but he saw the limited edition. It was like, I, I don't really want this camera. I want the one that's only 1,936 of them are made. I want that one.
40:42 David Pierce? Love it.
40:42 Speaker 16 Yes, well, I did spend my entire morning trying to get Eldon Ring Collector's Edition. And that failed, so you know, I have to like redeem myself with the Fuji X106 Limited Edition. No, I mean, I do love what Fuji is doing with like the film simulations and everything. I make a lot of my own. I go through the, the websites that like give you recipes that you can use for the camera. I just love bringing it around like I'm, and the person who like wants to bring a camera everywhere I go. Uh, for the longest time, there used to be like a 5D for me, which is massive. And really not like a thing that you would want to like carry around. So this was always like, oh, I can bring this. It's a digital camera. I mainly film, uh, still shoot in digital.
41:26 Speaker 16 So there was a lot about it that just like, it does very well. But once I got my first one, like the, the idea of like all the modern specs that it actually had in it made me realize about like, oh, these cameras are just like super fun to just like use and have a bunch in it that I like wasn't expecting.
41:46 Speaker 17 Yeah, so it's like the joining of this is fun to use and I can also get pretty good results with it.
41:51 David Pierce? And there is something to having a camera this size that is not scary to bring to parties. Like, I have been places where Viren has busted out big, giant cameras with, you know, 18 to 200 lenses, and they freak people out. Whereas the X100 is like that perfect size where it sort of blends in in a way that other better cameras don't. And it is like, it's a middle point that I think is very powerful.
42:13 Speaker 17 I saw on threads, somebody was saying like, this is the greatest camera to bring to concerts because I know it won't get confiscated. It doesn't look professional enough for that, but I can get great results. And like genius, yep.
42:23 David Pierce? Perfect explanation. I love that. So, but for like a decade, this thing just trundles along. It's a good camera. People like it, but it then in 2020 becomes like a cultural phenomenon. And I missed the origins of this. Like, all of a sudden, I feel like I turned around and everyone was talking about it. But this is a TikTok thing, right? Like, Becca, how did this become such a thing on the internet?
42:45 Speaker 17 TikTok is a visual platform and folks saw this camera. They saw the results that some folks were getting and they're like, I want that too. And like I was saying before, it has a price that is friendly to some folks, not all. This is not a cheap camera by any means, but it's much cheaper than most Viren-less cameras or most cameras that produce similar results that are in, you know, into the 2000s. And that's just for the body alone. This, you get the camera and the lens. And at the time, I think it was going for like, well, before it blew up on TikTok, it was going for like $1,400. And then it blew up and so did the prices.
43:21 Speaker 16 Honestly, it took me by surprise how many people would come to me, ask me about this camera. And I had no idea that it was blowing up on TikTok. Like, I truly had no idea that it was like becoming so popular. And soon after that, like my algorithm changed entirely. And the only thing I can see is just like X100V photos and samples. And not even like samples, like my, my algorithms are like very much like photo video creators. Like, I see a lot of samples with everything, but the X100V was kind of like just chilling there. It was like part of the set as well. And it was not only about what it can do, but it was also very cool to have this camera. Like, I do think that a lot of people now like do love the film look in general, but
44:06 Speaker 16 some people don't want to make film photos. And this was kind of like, oh, I can, I can have the best of both worlds.
44:12 Speaker 17 Yeah, if you'll allow me to talk about that for a second, the whole, the whole idea of having film photos without having to shoot film. Like, I think a lot of folks swung to film because you can naturally get a really great baked in look. But there's a lot of friction there with having to drop it off at a lab and like, kind of having to know what aperture is.
44:30 David Pierce? Plus, then you have it on film, and what the hell are you gonna do with film?
44:34 Speaker 17 You're gonna put it in a binder, and you're never gonna look at it again.
44:37 Speaker 16 You have to scan it. How are you gonna scan it? Are you taking photos or a scanner? Like, there's a whole culture of like, you know, subculture of people like doing it, and it's fantastic. And I think in like, especially when we're like, in the AI world of just like, generative images and now videos. Like, there is something about the tangibility of film that people are like, really going after again.
44:59 Speaker 17 Oh yeah, I love it. But it is filled with friction. I'll say it, film is a pain in the ass, and that's what I love about it. But this can give you film like, it's, it's the closest digital camera that can naturally give you film-like results without having to do anything with film.
45:15 David Pierce? Becca, dig into that a little bit for me, because people do talk a lot about the film simulation stuff. And I think I have been conditioned over the years to not trust any built-in setting inside of a camera because they'll just screw up your photos and everybody's like, just do it in post, fix it on your computer, you can make it look like anything you want, there's tons of good software. You, you should shoot the rawest, cleanest thing out of the camera that you should. But on the X100, people buy into these film simulation things, right? Like, what is, what is Fuji doing here that is different?
45:45 Speaker 17 So David Immel made an incredible video for the studio about why and how Fuji film is perfectly poised to make this camera. And the guts of that video is that they have been creating film for, I mean, most of their history. And so they have a lot of great color scientists who know how to make great colors. And they just baked that into this camera. And that's something that, I mean, if Kodak was still around, maybe they could do it. But nobody else has that background knowledge on color science. And so there's a level of trust that folks have in this camera and the colors that it produces. That they don't have in other companies' cameras. And again, go watch David's video.
46:25 Speaker 17 It is excellent. And he also speaks about shooting raw versus JPEG and makes a great analogy to clay. And you gotta go watch that video. But the long short of it is that the colors that this camera produces are actually really good. And more importantly, they're unique to this system, whereas in most manufacturers are just creating color profiles that are pleasing to the most amount of people.
46:48 David Pierce? Got it. Okay. So let's talk about the X100 6 itself. This thing has been, I would say, more hotly awaited than just about any camera I can think of. I admittedly am not in like the professional camera world, so I don't know if there are like weird Sony lenses that are getting just as much press. But like, people have been talking about or waiting for this camera for a very long time. Like, there were leaks about every piece of it, which I don't remember happening for a camera in a really long time. What is different from a hardware perspective about the camera this time? Becca, you have one. What are kind of the big upgrades for this generation?
47:23 Speaker 17 You do have 40 megapixels as opposed to 26 megapixels on the V. The LCD allows 15 degrees more tilt, but otherwise it's pretty much the same camera. There's one more thing that's very important. You now have in-body image stabilization. So you can basically shoot at lower shutter speeds and still get crisp photos.
47:45 David Pierce? That feels fine. Were people clamoring for anything new and huge in the hardware? It doesn't sound like they were.
47:51 Speaker 17 I think what's a bigger deal about this camera, though, is there's a lot of scarcity in the V. And now they're producing this camera in China as opposed to Japan, which some folks aren't stoked about. But Fujifilm is promising that they will have more available to folks. And that's just good news for a lot of people who couldn't get their hands on an X100 V.
48:11 David Pierce? Yeah, how scarce was it? Everything got kind of weird during the pandemic trying to buy stuff, but like, how rare did the X100 V actually become?
48:20 Speaker 16 Yeah, I think like after the pandemic, it was just like extremely hard to get. And like I wanted to get one and it just like never made sense. Like the prices were just like insane. Uh, and I think this was like one of the last few Fuji cameras before they switched their factories. So I think like it was the X one hundred V and then like X Pro three. I think the X Pro three was like the last one made in Japan. And then they switched to China, probably did not help with just like trying to get those orders out. And at one point Fuji was just like, we we're not accept- accepting any more orders. So there's the other side of the argument that just like a lot of people are like, maybe not entirely happy with like the the improvements between the two models.
49:04 Speaker 16 And are just kind of saying the like, oh, Fuji is capitalizing on the popularity of this camera. They're gonna do an iterative update for it. And also raise the price for it as well. Instead of making more of the X one hundred Vs, they're just gonna make more of the X one hundred six now.
49:20 David Pierce? Got it. Okay.
49:21 Speaker 16 Which, oh, I think that's fair.
49:23 Speaker 17 I don't think there's anything wrong with having small updates to systems. It's funny, I was sent a review of the X one hundred T done nine years ago. Changed some names around and that review could be used for the X one hundred six. But I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's a good system. It has a good like what we would, you know, quote unquote, call a retro feel. And that's a good thing. Don't fix it if it ain't broke.
49:50 David Pierce? Yeah. So I I do wonder though, if part of the appeal of the X one hundred V was that it became so rare and hard to get and was such a cool kind of status symbol to be able to shoot with and have in the background of your shots and whatever. Is this thing, if it floods the market and everybody who wants one can get one, is it gonna be as cool and viral as the V was?
50:14 Speaker 17 No.
50:15 Speaker 16 Yeah, the answer is like, no. It's been a very polarizing camera since, I don't know, like for like last week, all I can see on threads and everywhere else is just like, people have a lot of opinions about this camera. And I think like it's Popularity is making some quote unquote like real photographers kind of mad. Cause they feel like they're the other ones that like they don't know what to do with this camera, what they have it. The whole idea behind the X one hundred is that it's like a very much like a proper photographer's camera. It's the poor man's like a so to speak. It's the one that's like, you know, you, you're kind of limited to these like form factor of it.
50:53 Speaker 16 I think the general kind of consensus and conversation around it is kind of switching a little bit to like a negative in a way.
51:02 Speaker 17 Yeah, V sent me this, this great thread and it just says, you're going to take the same shitty photos with the X one hundred six that you were taking before you spent that $1,500. Stay broke, King.
51:12 David Pierce? Oof.
51:13 Speaker 17 That's perfect.
51:15 Speaker 16 I know, it's pretty funny. But yeah, I feel like a lot of people have like a lot of opinions about it, about like how to properly use this camera. It's weird. It used to be like, kind of like a, like a little bit of a secret. Like it wasn't never as popular and it was just like, oh, you can get a lot of great stuff with this tiny camera. And now it feels like it's like switches, like the pendulum just kind of like swung in the other direction. And some people are kind of getting mad about it or trying to justify their own purchases. And I don't know, it's weird. It's like, it's like console wars, but cameras.
51:45 David Pierce? And if I've learned one thing about the photography community over the years, that everybody is super chill about new ideas and new things. And everybody, nobody has like really strong entrenched opinions about the right ways to do things. And everybody's just very relaxed.
51:59 Speaker 16 Yeah, it is fundamentally like a very objective art form.
52:06 Speaker 17 But okay, what, there's like so many other products that are sold with like the promise of greatness, right? Like I, my mind goes to the Apple Watch Ultra. It's like people are going to buy this and then they're going to go hike mountains and get lost and get saved. And it's like, no, so it's kind of, you know, similar to that, which there's nothing wrong with that. We all have ideas of who we want to be and think that buying something to make us that thing will, you know, I don't know, make us feel better.
52:30 Speaker 16 Are you calling it an aspirational product?
52:32 Speaker 17 For some, I, yeah, I am.
52:34 David Pierce? So Becca, you've been, you've been shooting with it a little bit. You're gonna, you're gonna make a video and do some stuff for us. But what's the, what's the early returns on your time with it so far?
52:43 Speaker 17 Yeah, I mean, it's it's beautiful to hold. It's very fun to use. I love that about it. I don't think it's as turnkey as everybody claims. The idea that anybody could pick this up and just have great photos is, I mean, simply not the truth. Even knowing like what each film stock looks like and like kind of honing in the look that you want to get from this camera is not a walk in the park. So I've been thinking about it like, I don't know if I've just been watching too much HGTV, but I've been like, tons of curb appeal in this camera, but it is not turnkey.
53:18 David Pierce? That's very good. HGTV would be very proud of you. I thought you were gonna make a whole like house flipping analogy, but I like that. That's very good.
53:25 Speaker 17 Don't give me, don't give me props for that. I am workshopping it.
53:28 David Pierce? Veron, are you gonna buy one? You sold, did you have a five that you sold?
53:32 Speaker 16 No, I only had the the third, the T.
53:35 David Pierce? Oh, right. Okay. So you had the T, you sold it hoping for this one. Is it everything you hoped it would be?
53:41 Speaker 16 Um, honestly, like Rebecca said earlier, like you can look at the old review and it'll like a lot of things would just like transfer over. I think it's like, it is very much like the form factor of it is fantastic. The fact that it has this like new sensor, which I haven't used yet, it's been in the XD5, it's been in the XH2 with IBIS and the 40 megapixel count. Very intrigued by that. I've heard great things about just like how well it maximizes the smaller sensor. Some people wanted it to be a full frame camera and I completely understand that. I do think there's like, you know, Fuji's kind of like putting their eggs in the crop sensor and the medium format and they're skipping full frame entirely. And with a fixed lens, they're like, maybe one day they will make this thing a full frame.
54:27 Speaker 16 I can see that happening because, I don't know, I feel like you can only get that much out of a smaller sensor, but it looks like they are able to get a lot out of it. People are raving about like how good the sensor is. So I sold the tea. I was like, you know, maybe I'll buy this one. I have a confession. I did preorder it late last night.
54:45 Speaker 17 Oh.
54:46 Speaker 16 I know. I was waiting to tell you, Becca, but here we are. I'm doing it publicly in front of you and everyone else. No, I was, I had it in my basket for a while and I was like, can I get it? And then I read a couple of reviews late last night because I was only able to like, go through all the X100 coverage yesterday. And I'm like, I just miss having that camera. Like, I just miss having an X100 in my arsenal, just like a thing that I can bring everywhere and feel good about. Just like, yeah. Like, I don't know, not bringing like a massive camera, but have something that's like fundamentally like super fun to use. So the preorder is in. I've caved.
55:26 David Pierce? We always knew you were going to, Viren, if it makes you feel any better. There was never a question.
55:30 Speaker 17 I mean, truly, I, I almost pre-ordered one as well, but then I remembered that I can just put a pancake lens on my A7C. And I know Lightroom well enough. I could pop things into there, so.
55:42 David Pierce? But hey, if the answer is it looks kick ass and takes kick ass pictures and it will make people follow me on TikTok, and that's the reason people buy cameras, I'll take it. I'll take anything we need. I'm into it.
55:52 Speaker 17 People pay a lot of money for clothing accessories and this is, this is one of them for some folks, not for everyone.
55:57 David Pierce? Exactly. All right. Thank you both so much for being here. Super fun as always.
56:02 Speaker 17 Thank you.
56:03 Speaker 16 Thank you.
56:05 David Pierce? All right. We gotta take one more break and then we're gonna do a question from the Vergecast hotline. We'll be right back.
56:14 Speaker 02 Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them, that's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard, confessions.
56:23 Speaker 03 I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it, it wasn't.
56:31 Speaker 02 Cut the bullspend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
56:45 Speaker 14 This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18+.
57:10 Speaker 15 College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake-up call at 5:55 in 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.
57:45 David Pierce? All right, we're back. Let's get to the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE11, or you can email [email protected] . We love all your questions. We try to do at least one on the show every week. This week, we have a question about our Right to Repair segment from last week, which Will Pore is here to help me answer. Hi, Will.
58:01 Speaker 18 Hello.
58:02 David Pierce? We got a bunch of good feedback on that episode. People liked it. People are super interested in Right to Repair.
58:06 Speaker 18 Love it.
58:06 David Pierce? Everybody wants to break their own batteries by themselves.
58:09 Speaker 18 Don't. I don't want to be responsible for that, but...
58:13 David Pierce? That's great. But we got one question from a bunch of people. I would say, as people want to do, some people were very nice about it. Some people were very rude about it.
58:21 Speaker 18 Oh, God.
58:22 David Pierce? But we got this question over and over. So I'm going to read an email from Mike that I would say is representative of a bunch of the feedback we got. Mike says, "One big thing you left out of the parts pairing section of your Right to Repair discussion was the rise of phone chop shops. Because things like activation lock and stolen device protection prevent thieves from using or reselling iPhones whole, there's now a burgeoning market of phone chop shops where, much like their automotive counterparts, stolen phones are being disassembled and sold on as parts. Serialization and parts pairing deters this since thieves can no longer use or sell parts from stolen phones." I know this is something you also talked to a bunch of people about, so I'm curious what your thoughts on that piece of the parts pairing argument are.
58:58 Speaker 18 Yeah, so that listener mentioned activation locks, which we didn't talk about because it is a completely different system from Apple, but that is sort of the primary way that Apple prevents stolen working phones from being wiped and resold. So that's the system where your phone is tied to your iCloud account, and if someone steals it, that motherboard is sort of forever locked to your account. And without you, there's nothing they can do to resell that working phone. So that is a very important anti-theft mechanism for Apple. That's different from parts pairing, and there's nothing, to my knowledge, that prevents someone from stealing
59:40 Speaker 18 a phone and chopping it up and selling all of the parts individually. You know, one thing we didn't talk about a ton is that not all of the parts in an iPhone are paired to the motherboard. Lots of them aren't. So any of those parts would be super easy to take apart and sell, and activation locking doesn't prevent that in any way. And even the paired parts are resellable. It's annoying to reuse the paired parts from a stolen phone, just like it's annoying to reuse the paired parts from a non-stolen phone, a broken phone. So that's, you know, that doesn't help or hurt the anti-theft cause one way or the other.
1:00:18 David Pierce? Have you heard Apple try to make the security argument at all? You know, you mentioned it's put out statements kind of both in favor of these laws for right to repair, but also making what I would say are relatively consistent arguments that not having parts pairing and allowing right to repair is a security risk for lots of different reasons. I mean, like we talked about on the show, there's issues with the biometric stuff and all that. Has Apple made the theft argument at all that you've seen?
1:00:45 Speaker 18 Not really, no. And they, you know, offered a kind of a rare public testimony in Oregon that we talked about on last week's show. They ran down all of the reasons why they're very attached to part pairing. And like you say, it's, it's safety, it's security around keeping people from hacking your, your biometric sensors. They didn't bring up theft one way or the other when it comes To part pairing, is it possible that Apple sees parts pairing as part of their anti theft strategy broadly, just because, again, it makes parts more annoying to work with outside of Apple's own repair ecosystem? Sure, maybe they see that as a knock on benefit, but it's not something that they talk about actively around parts pairing.
1:01:30 David Pierce? Okay. Yeah, it seems like one of those things where there might be something to the idea that having these parts be digitally signed might help you sort of trace things as they go wrong, like it would help in an investigation of stolen parts, maybe more so than it would actually deter people from selling the parts.
1:01:49 Speaker 18 Yeah. Again, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't really hamper the existence of chop shops anymore. So then again, repaired parts are annoying to work with. So I, you know, the one thing I will mention is that that activation lock system is something that repair shop owners are not super wild about and right repair advocates are not super wild about.
1:02:10 David Pierce? Interesting. Why?
1:02:11 Speaker 18 Because it means that, you know, abandoned phones or just any kind of phone that is not stolen, but, you know, has, doesn't have an owner anymore. It's sort of lost forever. The activation locking is pretty bulletproof. So if someone brings a phone into a repair shop and never comes back for it, there's not much that the repair shop owner can do with that, even if they've done all of their due diligence to try to return that to the owner, that phone basically has to be scrapped for parts or tossed.
1:02:40 David Pierce? That always makes me think of like at the verge, obviously, we get tons of review units of gadgets and every once in a while, somebody will, you know, put their data on a phone or a tablet or a laptop or whatever, lock it with a passcode and then leave the verge. And so we have this closet full of devices that literally no one can access. We can't access them. We can't send them back to the company to have some way in. Like this stuff is permanently tied to someone's PIN code that they set up, you know, in a moment of just sort of randomly setting up a device. And you forget how, especially, do you remember on old Android phones, you had to draw the shape?
1:03:14 Speaker 18 Yeah, yeah, totally.
1:03:15 David Pierce? Of the unlock. If you didn't have one of those that was The one you always did, I guarantee you 50% of the time you would forget what you did because you're constantly setting up new funds.
1:03:24 Speaker 18 Right.
1:03:24 David Pierce? Which on the one hand, huge security win. On the other hand, total disaster. And so I can imagine that being a problem for basically anyone like I have a drawer full of smartphones because of what my life is. And there's probably at least a handful of them that neither I nor anyone else will ever get into ever again.
1:03:42 Speaker 18 Well, clearly what we need is a Verge chop shop. Like, we just need to start selling parts from all of the random gadgets that we've accumulated.
1:03:51 David Pierce? Listen, you just saved the media business right there at Will Poor.
1:03:55 Speaker 18 Always happy to help.
1:03:57 David Pierce? All right. If you want to reach Will on all the right to repair stuff, you're covering this basically for the rest of the year. I think this is like a thing you're going to be interested in and presumably forever, but definitely for the rest of this year. Because we both feel like this is a big year.
1:04:08 Speaker 18 This is why I don't, I never wanted to have a beat because I wanted to just do a story and move on with my life. But yes, I'm the right to repair guy forever.
1:04:15 David Pierce? I love this for you. How can the people reach you if they have other questions?
1:04:18 Speaker 18 [email protected] , P O O R.
1:04:25 David Pierce? Will, thank you as always.
1:04:26 Speaker 18 Yeah, later.
1:04:30 David Pierce? All right. That is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who was on the show and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, the Fuji camera, Mia's flip story, all this stuff about right to repair, all of it at theverge.com. We'll put some links in the show notes, which we're putting into full posts. Leave us comments. Tell us everything you want to see. Read theverge.com. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or things you want to see in the X107, you can always email us at [email protected] or keep calling the hotline 866 VERGE11. Like I said, we try to do at least one hotline question every week and we're going to probably do a hotline episode coming up in the very near future. So keep all your questions coming. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poor.
1:05:14 David Pierce? The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex and I will be back on Friday to talk about AI, more Google naming weirdness, MWC, and a whole bunch more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.
1:05:37 Speaker 19 Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claud.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claud.ai/spotify.
1:06:02 Speaker 20 Looking for a simple way to thank your clients or recognize employees for a job well done? A Starbucks card is more than a gift. It's a pick-me-up, a break in their day, and a reminder that you appreciate them. Whether you're shopping for digital or physical cards in bulk, Starbucks cards are the perfect gift to brighten anyone's day. Share the joy of coffee and connection when you give the gift of Starbucks. Shop Starbucks cards in bulk now at starbuckscardb2b.com.
Previous The smart kitchen is a great idea — and a strange reality Next The Apple Car crash Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
