Do You Ever Feel Guilty About Bad Reviews?

Tech YouTuber Michael Fisher aka Mr. Mobile takes over Waveform to interview Marques about everything from whether AI creators will take their jobs to why Marques doesn't use foldable phones. Michael Fisher YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMrMobile Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Music provided by Epidemic Sound Social: Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Hosts: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Michael Fisher: https://www.threads.com/@captain2phones TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Manganelli?

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, host Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring your fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episodes and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from. But when that context is scattered across tools, threads, and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying blind. That's the problem that Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all these pieces together, from Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more. So, nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who, and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  That's J-I-R-A dot com.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  You've done kind of an extraordinary job of staying apolitical. Do you ever wish you could break out of that? Why do you hate fun? Do you think AI creators are a threat? Do you ever feel guilty knowing that a bad review might tank a company?

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Yo, what is up, people of the internet? And welcome back to a very special episode of the Waveform Podcast. I'm Michael.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  And I'm Marques.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  And look at me. Look at me.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  I'm the captain.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  I apologize.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Perfect intro.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  I'm Michael Fisher. I'm a tech YouTuber, also known as Mr. Mobile. I'm a co-founder of Clicks Technology. And I'm a waveform fan, by the way. I don't know if you knew that.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  I'm an aggressive podcast listener.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Like, for a long time, I was like, I have to keep, I have to get around to Marquez's podcast. And then I finally did, and I was like, hey, this is pretty good. What do you know?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  I am not Marquez, but I do get to steal his host chair for this episode. And I'm going to tell you what we're doing here. I'm going to ask him a bunch of questions that I've been saving up since the last time I got to interview you, which was actually 12 years ago.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, it's been a minute.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Back at Pocket Now, when I, you were still in your bedroom.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  I believe.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  You still had Honey Nut Cheerios in the back.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  I sure did.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  I still have that box.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Do you? That very box?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  I might ask you about that later, but I don't think you're ever gonna tell. Have you ever? Well, look, we'll figure it out. We'll get there.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  First, though, we're gonna talk about the art of product reviews. We're gonna talk about the differences between a review and an ad. We're gonna talk about the evolving role of YouTube in the tech world. And, of course, we gotta talk about the tech itself.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Have you, you sound good. Have you forgiven me for the captain joke at the?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  No, this is great. I thought it was ideal.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Excellent. All right. Well, I want to start light. I don't want to jump right into the heavy stuff. I want to start with some tech questions just to get us, get us loose.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  And happy here. I could not help but notice that you are not daily driving a foldable. Why do you hate fun?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  The folds, it's a really interesting question. I really like the folds, and every time I test one, I always think, man, it's finally it. I'm finally gonna be a fold person.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  And then I go back to, because I review phones all the time. I'll go back to testing a slab. And then I just end up using the slab anyway. Like, I don't, like, I don't use the openness enough. I, for me, it's email, occasional social media drafting and like one or two other things.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  You're talking about the big boy foldables. You're talking about the wide boys.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  And so you're not even considering the clamshell. You're like, no, never, keep that away from me, it's fine.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Huh, interesting.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I, I mostly, I'll have a foldable and I'll mostly use it closed. And the more I use it closed, the more I'm like, well, I should just be using a slab so I can have more battery and more screen.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  And you never miss that inside screen, huh?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Well, I do miss it once in a while, but not enough to fully switch back.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Okay, you think it'll change when Apple does one next year?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Um, I honestly don't think so, for me personally. I still think I'm so, I have an, I have a tablet that I use for tablet things.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  So, for the, the stuff that I would open my phone for, but not go all the way to the tablet, there's like a very small number of things for me personally, so I'm not dailying a foldable.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Do you think that the category will continue to exist and, and flourish? It's not gonna go the way of, of 3D phones, then?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  No, I think it'll continue to exist. I think, it's funny, every time I see a foldable in the wild, I kind of think about like, what type of person is this? I was on a flight recently and the lady next to me had a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Best place for a foldable.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  She never once closed it.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  To open the whole time?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Open the whole time.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Heck, yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Put it down next to her, open, picked it up, open, read emails, open, never once closed it. And I thought, that's a type.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Love that, yes, it is.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Well, we can come back to that. I don't, I don't want to beat foldables' death right up top. Um, you're one of the few people I know who's, uh, as big a phone nerd as I am. If you could take, and I'm sorry that you didn't, but listeners, viewers, where Marquez has not heard these questions, the vast majority of them, so I'm sorry you didn't get to prep for this one.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  If you could take any modern phone and the capabilities of any modern phone, stuff it into the casing of any old phone.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  What, what bizarre Frankenstein's monster would you create?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I can take only two phones or I can take a bunch of phones.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Oh, you can choose as many capabilities of modern phone as you want, but you have to stuff it all into the same casing from the past.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Sure. Okay. Now, anytime anyone says, uh, old phone, I always have to contextualize.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  I'm thirty one. An old phone to me is ten years old.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  So not a Galaxy S three. Like, that's, you know.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  I was going almost that far back. I was going HTC one.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  And the M seven, the aluminum block, the boom sound speakers. And back in the day, they had a, yeah, well, they had a Google Play edition of this phone back in the day, and I loved that. But I would take like, like a modern Pixel, for example, but also give me a Snapdragon eight Gen Elite or something like that.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Good.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  And stuff it into that old aluminum wonder. I think that would be a sick phone.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  That would be a great phone. Would you keep Beats, by the way? Like, would you, could you, would you retain the Beats audio on the boom sound?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Hmm. Doesn't matter too much. I mean, it was kind of nice. I liked the way they sounded. They were big, front-facing speakers. Anyone who watches videos on the phone, awesome.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Uh, but I think that was a single camera on the back, so I guess just give me the primary, you know, Pixel camera. Give me a nice black AMOLED. Give me like, yeah, give me all the, all the software.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Okay. All right. Yeah. I didn't expect you to go that, that recent, because I like, I think old phones and I'm not thirty one, so.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a lot of people, when I say old phone, go way further back than that.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm like, give me a flip phone with a hinge that reverses the display and like, put it down and like, yeah, give me a StarTech Rainbow Edition. Uh, okay. Last, last little warm-up question. What is your absolute favorite gadget right now? So to clarify, not a phone, not a car, not a laptop.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Certainly not a tablet.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Sure. Hasselblad X two D Mark II.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  This is a camera.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  This is a camera. Unfortunately, it's a seven thousand dollar medium format camera.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  It's extremely unattainable and ridiculous.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  It's, it's almost absurd.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Is that why it's your favorite? Because it's the absurdity or because it does something amazing?

• 7:44Speaker 01

  A little bit of both. Like, I had used and talked about Hasselblad cameras in the past being so slow and clunky and immobile that it like forces me to be more intentional with each photo. And you can blast all the smartphone photos that you want, but when you're you're sitting down and you're taking one photo, you take your time with it with a Hasselblad. And it's it's partially because it sucks at autofocus and like the whole thing is just slow to shoot with.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  You have to take your time.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  You have to be taking your time.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Kind of bad, right?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  But this new one is 100 megapixel medium format formula, but also with the speed of phase detect autofocus and continuous autofocus and and and built in HDR and just all these other things that make it like, almost like daily driving a supercar. It's like this weird, crazy, fun thing.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  So it preserves the intentionality, but doesn't make it hurt as much when you're using it?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. It preserves a lot of the intentionality, but like opens a couple more doors.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  I was using, I was out up at, out of upstate with my girlfriend this past weekend, and she was using Dispo. You ever use that on the iPhone?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  The app. Oh, yeah. Was that David Dobrik's app or something?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  I believe so. I don't know, but I like it.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  It like mimics.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  It mimics a disposable camera on your iPhone. And I actually liked that, not just for the style, but for what you described just then of this like kind of, you're gonna take one shot. You're gonna set up, you're gonna do one, and if it doesn't come out, well, sorry.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  The moment's gone.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Exactly. Right. You missed it. I love that. That's good. We might come back to that at the end about intentionality.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Let's talk. Let's get serious now.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Uh, on the life and work of a YouTuber.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  You live in it.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  I know. You've, well, you've been living it for 15 years.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Uh, I've been doing it for almost as long. Do you still feel like you're capable of speaking to the products you review in a way that's relevant to a modern audience? Or do you feel like pressure or or concern that the audience is gonna get younger and younger, and you're gonna have a harder and harder time doing that?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting. That's not where I thought you were going. Uh. So yeah, I do, I do think I, it's a skill that, that you develop as you, as you make pieces of content to share to the masses. You have to understand those masses.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, as I've made more videos, I've gotten better at talking to the same masses, but then the masses grow and include new groups of people that I have to also think about. Younger people, for example.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Uh, or even in the specific case of reviewing tech products, the people that make the product. Like, there's a lot of consideration when it comes to like, all the parts of the audience. Uh, but I think so. I think that's one of the skills I've developed, yeah.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Do you think you'll be able to consistently hone that skill? Cause I mean, people, you know, the audience will continue being replenished at the low end. To get really dark, it'll keep, you know, evaporating at the high end.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  No, it's true. Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  And I mean, at what point, because I, I'm putting myself into this question because I feel like I've already, I decided at some point that I was gonna not focus on the, on the youth.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that's a trap that YouTubers can fall into is to, uh, is to see the, the available, like the eyeballs of like the younger audience and to try to cater towards them. And when you are a young person, it makes sense. Like when I started as a 14 year old, I was making videos, believe it or not, for other 14 year olds who were into tech. As a 31 year old, it feels a little less natural to make videos for 14 year olds and it will continue to feel less and less natural. So I think the idea basically is to continue to talk to audiences that are similar to me in some way, at the expense of maybe some of the, the youth eyeballs. And I think that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Cool. It also prevents you from falling into the trap of like patronizing or, you know, like talking about.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  I do think that, yeah. It kinda feels, yeah, bad.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Let's talk about the stuff we're covering. I mean, since we last spoke, the smartphone world has settled into this like really dull predictability, in my opinion, even the foldables, even the exotic categories, especially in the US.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  And China is still doing really fun stuff, but we can't get a lot of them here. So have you found ways of keeping phones interesting to you, or have you had to, or have you not had to? Like, I've had to find new ways of keeping myself interested in the job.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Totally. I, the part that keeps it interesting to me is the stories. The stories behind why certain things change, the stories behind the releases, or the hype, or the failed features, or whatever, there's always a story behind it.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  So even if like, we're reviewing the OnePlus 15 this week, which is another phone.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  We are indeed.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Right?

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  There are so many ways that this could be just a boring video of like, yeah, it's got the new chip, and it's got the new RAM, and the new software, and it's another slab.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Paint job.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. But finding a theme, or finding a reason why they did something that you didn't expect them to do, or went backwards a little bit, and trying to wrap that all into a video, the storytelling part, keeps it interesting to me. Even if I'm not sitting there going, wow, what a phone, it's the, it's the behind the scenes of the production of telling that story.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  That is the interesting part to me.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Does that hold true for phones that you like, I mean, the OnePlus 15 maybe is an example of this. I know for me, I'm not gonna name them, but I know for me, every time a phone, a particular phone comes out every year, there are two or three where I'm like, I would not, given the choice, I would not cover this, but it's too newsworthy, I have to cover it.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  What is the ratio of that to you? Like, if you had to mix them down, if you had to say like, alright, here's a video I really wanna do about a product I'm really interested in, versus, here's the thing that I have to do, because if I don't, I can't support the channel. I get to, we have to make money, we have to stay relevant, we preserve authority.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  That's such a good question. I think it's almost 100% videos I wanna make.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  No way.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  There are maybe.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  No way, really?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you why. Cause there's, there are two or three or four that come to mind, or five, that are like, content strategy decisions, like, a new colorway for a phone that already exists, or an unboxing for a phone where we already know what comes in the box, right? But. I am such a content strategy nerd that the fact that the tech is that interesting and outweighs what's in the content is interesting to me. It's this weird thing where like, yeah, 97% of the videos, I'm excited about it and I can't wait to make this video. And then it's the new red iPhone colorway, for example, right?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  I know you didn't want to say the name of a phone, but like, that's one of them.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  It's like, okay, that's, that's a video where I ordinarily would not cover it and there's so many other examples of that. But I know that when this video publishes, it's going to get three and a half million views for some reason. Why? That's interesting to me.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  And so I'll, I'll make the video and I'll acknowledge it in the video. Like you guys are already commenting that this is a useless video, but I just want you to keep scrolling down a little bit and you see the view count? That's why this video exists and it's supporting other videos on the channel and that's interesting to me. So there's a lot going on. Obviously, the new phone is not interesting, but...

• 14:44Speaker 02

  That is a broad use of the word interesting, but I'll take it.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, the content strategy and I...

• 14:50Speaker 02

  The tactic itself, the strategy itself.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And I think, and I've just, I've told the octopus analogy a million times, but I've distilled one of my functions in this studio environment as the content strategist. So I, I pay a lot of attention to that.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Is that an arm you're ever gonna cut off?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  That's one of the hearts I'm never cutting out.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Okay, got it. One of the ways I've found of, of keeping this fresh, because I, it's funny, I don't have that same perspective and I think it's a really useful one. I've had to change the videos themselves to keep myself interested. To, oftentimes to the detriment of the videos. You remember when Asus did that space edition laptop a couple of years ago? They, it was like, it was like a NASA edition. They had an LED on the cover. It was all like gray.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  A piece of spatial equipment.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  I was like, this is cool enough on its own, but I'm gonna take it to Kennedy Space Center and review it there and watch a rocket launch, right? And then I just crossed an ocean to, and to break a record nobody knows about because I couldn't bear to do another smart watch review the same way. Um, but there's a sacrifice there because in that example, uh, ocean liner nerds are gonna love half the video and they're gonna not gonna care about the watches and vice versa.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  The space one is just ridiculous. So you don't do a lot of those often, but you did one recently, the top five sports tech.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  That was, it was really fun. And one of the most upvoted comments there was like, it's really fun to see Marquez like get excited. About now that you're, now that you're, don't get excited about tech, but like you, it felt like you were showing us a part of yourself that we don't get to see very often.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  But, you know, first of all, would you like to do more of those or can we expect you to do more of those or, or not? Was that just a?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Uh, definitely. Yes. It is exciting specifically because it is a challenge that I don't get a lot of reps at. I get a lot of reps at new smartphone is coming out. You have an audience interested in tech. How do you tell this tech story to this audience?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  I do not have a lot of reps at new sports tech is available. That's specifically better for your recovery between workouts. And a thing that you do on the side that nobody hears about very often.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  How do you tell that story or share that in a way that's interesting to these people?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  So it's just a different challenge.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Right. I, it's, I, for me, that keeps me energized in the, in the process, but you had the same issue, I noticed. Like that video underperformed compared to your usual format.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Does that bother you at all? Or is it just an example of like, no, sometimes I gotta make a video for me?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's, it's a, you've heard so many times, the one for me, one for them type thing.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  That was one for me. There was also a content strategy part of my brain. Uh, that's looking at the area under the curve where like, I know that people are not going to watch the iPhone 15 review two years later.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Like tech, when it's timely, has this really big spike at the beginning and then an incredibly short tail.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Falls right off.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  You know about this, like super short tail.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  But these more evergreen, as we call them, videos, because they are not extremely timely and it's just a sports tech video. Super small initial curve, but a way longer tail.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  In a way that the area under the curve in five years will probably be better than an old gadget review.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  So I don't mind it underperforming now.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Makes sense. And YouTube gives you that bone often on the analytics. It'll be like not, fewer people are choosing to watch this video, but they're watching for longer.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's a good indicator for when I check back in five years.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Good call. Um, do you, this is a weird question because it's one I've been thinking about for myself recently. Do you have a preference for how people watch your videos? By which I mean, like, if you can envision the ideal scenario for someone who is consuming an MKBHD video, like, is it someone on a tablet on a commute? Or on a couch, on a big screen TV, or like on a phone in a toilet? Like, what? Where do you, where do you, where do you want people to be to watch an MKBHD?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  I'm hoping phone on the toilet. No, I-

• 18:42Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  I think-

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Phone in the shower is a real move.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? That's like, I've never been asked that before. And when you started saying that, what I pictured was how often I watch videos, which is on a desktop in a browser, switching to 4K, full screening and kicking back a little bit.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  And like really watching the video.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  And maybe that's how I watch it because I make videos and so that's just a unique behavior.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  But I do hope that there's some version of like appreciating the small details while they're, I hope they replay stuff once in a while just to catch something that they might have missed.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  But yeah, I mean, we upload these videos in 4K for a reason. So hopefully a few people are watching in the highest resolution, like I'm trying to.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  For me, it's, I like, I would like it if people watched YouTube like I watch YouTube, which is on a big screen TV on my couch.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  You're the, one of the TV viewers.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  I'm one of the TV guys.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I hear about these TV viewers and I'm like-

• 19:37Speaker 02

  It, dude, it's a lifestyle, man.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  So, so you open the TV app-

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  And you scroll, are you home paging or just seeing what pops up?

• 19:45Speaker 02

  I am home paging and my algorithm is really well tuned now. I got a lot of Edmund Fitzgerald content this year.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  It's gotta be because if you're, because subscription box is one place, but the home feed, the more you use it, the more it's tuned.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Trouble with the subscription box on the TV is it shows you shorts. Not trying to watch shorts on a TV.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  It does? And it plays them?

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's annoying.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Is it a carousel when you open a short?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  I don't know. I've never done it.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Okay, good.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Don't find out.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  I won't. I'm not giving it that signal that I approve.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  It's funny, the videos, um, 15 years ago, a long tech video was seven minutes long.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  I know, yeah.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Now a short tech video is seven minutes long.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  A hundred percent, yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  And I think that's correlated pretty directly with a lot more TV viewers. And YouTube talks about this all the time and I've noticed it. And I'm happy that you're one of the TV viewers. That is really interesting.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Me too. And thank you for the, thank you pandemic lockdown. I think that's what did it.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  We're, we're talking about it already. I just want to touch on it. Uh, long form is obviously your bread and butter. Uh, because I don't watch short form, I don't know the answer to this question. What about short form? Like, how, how important is it to your, to your strategy? Um, and, and, and then more interesting to me, is it something you do because you have to? Or is it exciting to you in any way?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  It's changed. So, uh, I love content strategy questions. This is right up my alley. I've thought a lot about this.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Yes, long form is my bread and butter, always has been, probably always will be. But you see the proliferation of shorts. They're everywhere and they're exploding in popularity. And you go to a, one of these YouTube creator summits and all they're talking about is short form. And it kind of feels like I have to be in short form. So that was the beginning. I made a shorts channel separately. I was like, my audience doesn't want this, but let me see how it does. Eventually we find a way to like, bring it to the main channel and like mix shorts in. But as I'm making these shorts, I'm learning a lot about how to make shorts, how I think about what a short vertical video is. And maybe how it can drive viewership to the long videos as well.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Right? Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  And it's, it slowly became more and more of, I want to be good at this and speak this language and make it also my bread and butter. And my shorts went from every single one being 59 and a half seconds because I suck at compressing this stuff into shorts. Into like, wow, we just made one that was 25 seconds and it was the best one that we've made. And it's become a very conscious part of the content strategy. It's the top of the funnel. It'll just go out and take viewers and the funnel and people will find along for it. Yeah.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  That's the right way to think about it. This is not a question. This is a compliment. Like, because it's the opposite of how I do it. You know, in some ways I'm an old man, right? And actually in a lot of ways I'm an old man. And, and I remember getting pushed real hard by an agent at one point who wanted to rep me. Who was like, listen, you gotta be on, you gotta be on TikTok. And I said, I really don't want to be. And he's like, you gotta skate to where, you gotta go to where the people are. Like, I get that. Also, if I wanted to spend every day doing something I didn't want to do, I would just get a regular job. And, um, that's been okay for me, but I think the, the move is instead to say, this is difficult. This is something I'm not used to. Let me do it. Let me get good at it. Now, do you like doing it?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  I like it. Yeah. And I kind of view, I've changed again the lens through like, dang, we should do a short every single day. I've had to think about like, okay. What is a good short? How do I measure the success of a short? What do I think is a good idea versus a maybe okay idea for a short? And all these new, different, interesting questions. So, yeah, now I enjoy making them.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Cause it's a sense of new challenges that you can excel at.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. The new challenge of like, I think we just had this set, we were talking about on Waveform, that 700,000 watch hours of shorts in the past three months, which is like a crazy number. But the fact that those people just swiped and it was just served to them. That is some person that may find a channel that wouldn't have.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  It may. Do you find that that is, is the case? Cause I think that's one of my things about short form that I don't like is like, it seems like it's this fire hose. My friend David Kogan pointed this out to me. He's like, this isn't for, like, no one is noticing who's making the content. They're just watching it. If they like it, they're swiping onto the next one. You don't.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Very valid. Yeah. I think you have to do your shorts in a way that makes the character presenting very quickly memorable.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Like if you're a Mr. Beast, you don't have to do that. Like the second I see your face, they know you're Mr. Beast.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  But if I'm scrolling shorts and I see like a person like handing, like showing me a product, to me that feels a little like an ad.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  And I'm not thinking I want to watch that.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  But if I get like a nice hook and then a person, maybe it's not an ad. Maybe now it's just a really interesting thing this person found and that's a little more appealing. So I'm, you know, there's no science to it yet. This is just like random things I'm like spewing out, but like.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Trying and seeing what works.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. There are certain things that seem to work better as far as like getting your character to appear in shorts, which helps people remember that they've seen the character before and maybe subscribe more quickly than if they hadn't remembered it.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Got it. Yeah. All right, good. I should be taking notes on this. I'm gonna listen to this episode later when I have to do shorts.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Do you think, um, I mean, I feel like I know the answer to this question, but do you feel like short form is a threat to long form or will it always be a compliment to it?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  I think it's a compliment to it. At first it was like, is this taking out of the pie?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  It's just a whole new pie, which doesn't happen very often.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  No, true.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  But like TikTok made a whole new pie and then YouTube came along, added shorts. And it's like, long form viewership is doing better than ever, but clearly there's a whole new pie.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Speaking of threats, do you think AI creators are, are, are a threat to, to us? Like is, is a fake, not necessarily a fake, Mark, cause just like, is a fake army of, of unreal people going to unseat us?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Intrinsicly, no, because I have this belief with no founding evidence that people want to watch people.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  But there is evidence of successful AI creators.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  There are.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  And I, I think I just believe that they are successful because of the novelty of a successful AI creator.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  And I think if it's all lowest common denominator AI slop, then it's all bottom feeder slop and it's not like standing out.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  I think people still want to watch.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  A little spike and then people will be like, no, you know what? I'd rather have a real person.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  A person, yeah. I, I still believe that to be true.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Although I can't really prove it yet.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  And no, neither can I. And I, I, it's funny. If, if there were any wood in this room, I would knock on it.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  It's all fake wood and laminate and like mesh and metal.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  It's all very nice though. I like it. I like it a lot. It's clean. One more on the creator economy, then I want to ask you another question. It's, um, it's a fickle thing, the creator economy. I mean, in that, in our specific corner of it, we're almost entirely dependent on external factors. Companies have to release products that we can review. Sponsors have to continue finding our content worthwhile or worth paying for. Do you ever feel like, as I do every day, that it could collapse at any moment?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Like a bubble?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Not like a bubble because there's actual value here.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've moved on from AI.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I think when, when you say collapse, it almost implies like that it's being held up by something flimsy like it could collapse.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Right. And I don't feel like that, but I feel like there, there, I've heard people, you know, speculate and, and I've heard people try to track, you know, the downward trend in, in sponsor spends. You know, obviously the creator space is getting more full with more creators every day. Influencers are, are, you know, it feels like there's a million introduced to the flow every minute.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  It's getting diluted.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Um, and maybe if it doesn't collapse overnight, maybe, maybe if it helps, don't visualize that. But do you, do you feel like this could all go away with, with very short notice?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  So, so like for an individual channel, maybe yes.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  And, and I think that's just because there's more competition. There's more parody than ever before. So if this new device comes out and 60 videos come out about it.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Why watch mine? Like that, make that to an extent makes it feel like, uh, I'm just one of the dots, you know?

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  But I think, once you've built up, which I think you have, some sort of a base of people who are interested in what you have to say, which, and that comes with a lot of reps and a lot of proving yourself and being honest and trustworthy. People care about what you have to say.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  And I think that that is enough of like a nucleus to keep it alive.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Um, whether there's more or less around you.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've always said that if you have something, when people come to, as I'm sure they do to you hundreds by the day, uh, what, what are, what is your advice for an up and coming creator? And I always say, if you have something different to say, or a different way of saying it, then it's worth doing.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Right?

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Just for a fun thought experiment. If it did, if it did end tomorrow, okay? And, uh, if we assume for the purposes of this question, that you've somehow managed to save $0 over the past 15 years, what would you do for money? What would you do for a job?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, initially, so my channel goes away, but the economy still exists.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  So initially, what's funny? Well, what I went to school for, and what I went to college thinking that I was going to do, was that I was going to work in marketing for a tech company that works with creators. I thought I would be on the other side of that email chain that I'm on now.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Interesting. Okay.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  So in a world where, insert tech company here, needs a campaign for a new product, they have a marketing manager that organizes it, you know, decides they want to work with creators, does that whole thing? I thought that would be me.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  And I think I'd still have that skill, because I've seen it. I think I, I would probably do that.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  So you wouldn't, it's so interesting, because you wouldn't leave the world, like you would just be on the other side of it.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Right. I have the, the baseline of knowledge useful to, to be valuable in that world still.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  See, that's funny. So that's, it's a smart answer. I, I wouldn't look at, I, you'd never find me with a camera in my hand again. I would be a tour bus driver at Kennedy Space Center.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Oh, specifically?

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  That's sick. I mean, I would love to have a much more interesting, like a novel answer where I like, I mean, obviously I play a sport that I really like, but that's not really a full-time job.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  It's like, I kinda don't have anything like that. Like, it would be cool.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  It would, yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Full-time ultimate first be professional.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  It sure would, yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  That wouldn't really work, would it?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  See, that's, that's a shame, because, you know, you're great at it.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  All right, let's pivot. We're going to talk about making things.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mark has the maker. I am a co-founder of an accessory company called Clicks Technology. It's physical keyboards for smartphones. And you are now the chief creative partner at Ridge.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Neither of which was true when we last spoke. So this is a fun new chapter for us both. I'm going to ask you what everyone now asks me.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  The world's most predictable question. How does being the builder of a product change the way you cover products?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Do you have the urge that I had to suppress for a minute to use a softer touch? Because now you know how hard it is to make something.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I think actually part of why I enjoy being on the maker's side more is I have so much more exposure to and more knowledge about like how hard it is and what types of challenges and decisions go into making things.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  So I think you could argue that it has impacted my coverage just in that I consider more of these things. And sometimes it probably sounds like I'm defending some more things that seem incomprehensible, yeah, on the surface.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  But I think, yeah, like I said earlier, like I know that the people who are about to buy the product are watching it. I also know that the people who just worked for years on making the product are also watching this. And so it would be naive to not include that perspective in my coverage. So I think there is a fair amount of like, yeah, understanding that side of it.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  I don't think it makes it softer. I just think it's better to understand why decisions went into making the thing.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Same. Yeah, I remember like I'll look at some of my old reviews and I'll criticize the selection of a component. And it's like, okay, like fair criticism, but it's so much better when you can say like, I get why they had to like, the yields weren't there.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  They couldn't, you know, you can't buy, for example, I don't know what silicon carbon, you can't buy it in that, in these quantities yet.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's a good example. There's all, I'll notice myself using phrases like, it seems like they.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Or you know what I think they were thinking like that sort of thing.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  What maybe they were up against.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Which again is good for storytelling. Like if I just go and think, you know, I'm very black and white, like this, good, this, bad, can't believe they did that. That's a little boring, but I think if you go like. Tell the story of the person making the product in the product. That's way more interesting.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  What you're describing is almost the inverse of something that I've found like this law that I have yet to name. But it is my theory that on social media or Reddit, any response from somebody that starts with the phrase or a variation of the phrase, why didn't they just? Doesn't have enough understanding of how things are made.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Valid.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Right?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  That's that needs a name.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does. We got it. Let's, let's come up with something.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from Shopify. So, starting a new business is so daunting that most people quit before they even start. But you don't have to be like most people and you don't have to do it alone. Shopify makes it easy to take the leap. Everything you need to start selling is included and ready from day one. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide from household names to small businesses just getting started. Their templates and AI tools help you get a website up and running fast. No coding needed. If questions come up, Shopify's built in AI assistant Sidekick is ready to help you build, troubleshoot, and keep moving. And the best part is that all of Shopify's tools are conveniently located in one easy to use platform. And because Shopify handles the setup and checkout, you have more time to focus on growing your business and the tools to do it.

• 33:39Speaker 01

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• 33:54Speaker 03

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• 34:34Speaker 04

  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 plus.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Do you remember when BlackBerry did the BlackBerry 10 launch?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  And the chief creative officer or whatever was Alicia Keys?

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  In what ways are you not the Alicia Keys of Ridge?

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Oh, valid.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I get asked this, Eclipse is like, are you just the hype man? I'm like, no, I'm just working the product. I do this other stuff, but like, yes, I'm the most visible face attached to it, so.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. So with all due respect to the goat, Alicia Keys.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Of course, and sorry, no disrespect. Apologies.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Big fan.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Appreciate you.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  But I have no idea what she knows about Blackberries or phones or any of that.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  What I can say is that Ridge was like the perfect partner for me personally, because I had so many ideas for products I wanted to work on and things that I wanted to change in the like everyday carry space, which is where they were primo like positioned. Like they did wallets already, but there's so much everyday carry stuff.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, they do watchpans and all that stuff.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. Power banks, a little bit of technology stuff too.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  And, and we're working on more stuff that I'll try not to accidentally say out loud.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no, go ahead, go ahead. Feel free.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  But the idea.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Show stuff here.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Is that like I, they're a small enough company that I have some input in steering and creating and innovating, but they're a big enough company that they can actually do it.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Right? So like I could have worked with, insert smaller company here who also has ambitions to making a cool thing. And I suggest a power bank with MagSafe and these cables and this material. And they go, great idea. We can't get supply enough to make that.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Maybe in five years we can do it, right?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  And there's also a version of like Nike or something where I'm like, I have all these ideas for product and they're like, cool, but we're Nike. So we're going to make you a thing and we're going to hand it to you and you're going to put your name on it and that's the end of the story.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  So thankfully they're, they're right in the middle and it's been really awesome so far.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Do you get people on social like? Mis perceiving or misunderstanding your role. You know, I'm heavy into product design, product championing, all that stuff. But people come to me on social media for like everything from shipping delays to, you know, product like feedback.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Tech support.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. How do you even handle that? Cause I can't. Here's the thing, if I ignore it, you get some, you get a lot more inbound than I do. But if I ignore it, I feel like I'm ignoring a customer. That doesn't feel good. Like I have to hand off everybody to people who can actually do things.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  In the office, cause I'm sitting there being like, no, I'm, I'm busy deciding whether a spacebar should be a millimeter shorter.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's probably a valid way of handling it. I mean, I feel like, I don't know if anyone thinks I'm running tech support at Ridge, but it's like, if I was in your position, obviously you make it very clear what you work on and the input that you have and like the decisions that you make that go into the final thing, you can point at those things. But yeah, it's like, this is a company with a lot of other people who work on a lot of other parts of this and someone is inevitably closer to that than I am. So take it away. I think that's probably the best way to handle it.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Can you, can you see a world where you flip the script and go from full-time reviewer and part-time product maker to the exact opposite?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Ah, I enjoy making videos too much, but actually now that I think about your phrasing, yes, I think like full-time maker, part-time reviewer is probably more sustainable.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Like the treadmill isn't as fast. There's not as much work.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  You get off the hamster wheel, which is nice.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're on a hamster wheel.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  We sure are.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Whether we like it or not, like we stop driving this Uber, it stops making money, right?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  So I think, yeah, the goal is to build something that can exist without your daily input. And then that allows you to take the foot off the gas for the thing that's like the passion project, which maybe you'd make a few less videos, but you'd still make videos.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  I think I could see that, yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that would be a cooler balance at some point.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Let's get back to reviewing. You're happy with that?

• 38:47Speaker 01

  I love reviewing.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  It's good.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  It's my favorite thing.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Bouncing around here. I like it. I want to talk about a scourge that has visited our, our segment. I'm not gonna, not gonna call out any names. Some of them are my friends. But I've seen this thing happening. I wonder if you've seen it too. People who are doing phone reviews, carrying their, the phone that they're reviewing, without their personal SIM inside of it, or without any SIM inside of it, and while they have their main iPhone in the other pocket.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  I see this a lot. Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you swap into every phone you review? You've got your primary SIM in, in whatever you're reviewing?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yes. And this is why I overreacted to eSIM. The OnePlus, so I'm an AT&T person.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  And I, did you try to put AT&T on the OnePlus 15?

• 39:33Speaker 02

  I'm a, I'm a T-Mobile guy and I'm a Verizon guy for reviews.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Okay, that makes perfect sense. Cause I tried to put my AT&T SIM in the OnePlus 15 and it wasn't approved for the network yet. They had this whole long approval process. So I could have put my main SIM in it.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  So I'm talking to OnePlus about it. They shipped me a T-Mobile SIM, blah, blah, blah. It, it, it is annoying, but yes, I do main the device. Cause you learn way more about it by maining it.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely. You are forced to use it.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. And to live through its, its, not only live through its flaws, but then find potential workarounds for its flaws. Cause if I-

• 40:03Speaker 02

  So that you can keep doing your thing.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. If I run into a flaw, not maining it, I swap to the other phone and solve the problem. But if I'm maining that phone, I find a flaw, I get around it, and I figure out that, okay, you can still use this phone despite this flaw. I learn way more that way.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  But it is so annoying sometimes.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Here's the thing. In the States, we have the blue bubble, green bubble thing. Does that introduce problems into your personal life? Do you have to tell, like?

• 40:29Speaker 01

  So I, and I famously carry two phones.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Same.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Basically for this exact reason. It's, it's not my username, but it's like-

• 40:35Speaker 02

  It's not just a Twitter handle, it's a lifestyle.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  It's a lifestyle. Exactly. So yes, um, there are notoriously things that I just do on the iPhone because they are better to do on the iPhone.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  True.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  When I main a phone, my iPhone use goes down a bit, like my screen on time is like an hour a day or less or whatever.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  But yeah, when I'm testing iPhones, then my Android use goes down, but the iPhones like twice a year or whatever. So it's not that, not that hard.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  I don't know. And I've always got the iPhone in my backpack as a B-roll camera. And I'm sure that's

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Probably, probably the case for you too.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  I got two pockets. I got two pockets.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. All right. What? So you're just saying you're not a backpack man?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  No, I have a backpack, but I got two Sims.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Oh, well, yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  So I have my main SIM in the Android phone. I have my second SIM in the iPhone.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  And then I also have a backpack full of crap.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Which is probably not healthy.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  The way it goes. No.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Let's talk about reviews of non-phones for, for, for a second. You got famously some backlash on your reviews of the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI pen, which is confusing to me because they're both unquestionably great products.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's what I was about to say.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Do you think that people, I mean, you know, to, to, you know, I think everyone knows what the backlash was, but it was like, there was this criticism that you were, you know, perhaps being glib, flippant, or not forgiving enough of these new companies. And, you know, one of them failed as a business. And then, you know, Fisker, there's, we've had these, a lot of these examples. Do you think people would have responded so negatively a decade ago, given the same products? Or has something changed about the way people view or understand reviews recently or semi recently?

• 42:22Speaker 01

  I, I think that's a really good question. I, I think it actually is in the scale of what we do a little bit more.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Socially, people love punching up and hate punching down.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, five, 10 years ago, when we had smaller channels and it was Seemingly less impactful on the product to give it a negative, or you would say something bad about a product.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Didn't matter what we said.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Didn't matter, it was what it was, the company was gonna do its thing, it's punching up. And I think people, for whatever reason, saw the balance tipping and finally it was me with ex-subscribers and startup, it felt like punching down.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Felt like bullying.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  And they didn't like that as much.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  My perspective didn't change, my methodology didn't change, I'm still reviewing it as like, should you buy this or not, clearly no, this is actually one of the worst things I've ever reviewed.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  But because it felt like punching down, there was a bit more of that like pushback and reaction, which is understandable.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Yes, now do you think, I have a pet theory.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  I think that the recent change that is relevant here is that influencer, influencer coverage of products has multiplied like 11 million fold in the past decade. And that is almost universally positive coverage. It's not review content on the whole, it's almost always like, I'm here at this very exciting thing and look, and now it's blue, or whatever. And I feel like that has changed the expectation broadly for like, oh, I'm watching product-focused content, it's probably gonna be good. And when it's negative, people maybe get bumped by that and it's like, this guy sure doesn't know how to like a new thing.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a theory, I have no data to back it up.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  I think, well, I'll give you one of my theories.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Please.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Well, it's not a theory, I guess it's an observation, which is basically that when I started 15 years ago, in order to stand out in YouTube's landscape, being a tech channel was enough. It's like, oh, I make tech videos, oh, that's the kind of channel you are, got it, got it.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  It's like a niche.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a few years later, it was like, oh, I make, okay, I make software tutorials, which is a part of tech, but you know, you can make gadget videos or whatever, so that was a segment of it. And then now, you know, go to fast forward to 2020, 2025. There is the tech channel, but there's also the unboxing channel. There is the unboxing and destroy it channel. There is the review channel. There's the only reviews Apple products channel. There's the only positively reviews Apple's products channel. There's the only negatively reviews Apple's competitors channel. Like there's, everyone has a tiny slot that they live in to stand out and be a little bit different. And I think you saw way more negative sentiment as a way of standing out.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  And so now there's way more videos of whatever comes out, I've got something negative to say about it.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  And that was kind of like a weird byproduct of like the niche being more saturated.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting. There is like a flip side to my example, right? Yeah. Oh God, but then there's that, that pressure exists to counter whatever's out there.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Right. And especially with the, with what people kind of talk about, which is like how early you are in the wave of like a product comes out and there's the initial wave. The, the cycle is like, okay, everyone who's on day one. And then if you're not on day one, you're late. So now how do you stand out from all the day one stuff people already watched?

• 45:52Speaker 02

  The truth.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  I gotta say something different.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  I gotta imply everyone on day one was wrong.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  And if it was a good product and everyone on day one said nice things, guess what I'm saying?

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  So that's not helpful.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  But it's out there.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  But it is out there, yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  I do not like surfacing this question because I feel strongly about my own answer to it, but it's a good question. So I'll ask it.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Do you ever feel guilty knowing that a bad review might tank a company?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's, I also feel that way.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. There is a famous quote, I'm trying to remember who said it.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  But I'm pretty sure it goes, I don't give a about your stock price. Was it Walt Mossberg? It was Walt Mossberg.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Was it Mossberg? Yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and that, you know, he's writing for the Journal or the Times or whatever it is. And he's very impactful and he'll give a negative review. And he got asked about it and it's, I literally couldn't care less about the stock price of the company. And if it's a startup, it's less about the stock price and more about can they afford to make it to the next product or not?

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, maybe you feel a little guilt in knowing that they won't make it to the next product. But I'm not accelerating that. I'm not causing your product to be bad.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  I think you said that in your do do bad reviews kill companies video, you were like,

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  No, bad products kill companies. If I can paraphrase your

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Your, your, your, your theme. And I think that's, that's true. Whatever you, whatever review you make is going to accelerate a trend that was already existing.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  I am not causing the trend, but I, you could argue that I would accelerate it.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  But also think about this, a product is terrible. Everyone is saying it's terrible. Someone like big comes out and says it's great. Does that

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Help anything?

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Or do more people buy it and find out it's terrible and then get even more negative feedback?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  It's so funny. Uh, I, I was not, I was like a midsize pocket nowadays, like pretty small. And everyone else hated, you mentioned it before, the red hydrogen one.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I remember that.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  And I also thought it was a problem, but by the time I got around to it, I was like, you know, this isn't as bad as everybody's saying. And I did my review, which was much more, more moderate. I think I still came away with a don't buy, but I was like, yeah, but there's a lot to like here. And the comments just roasted me. How dare you give this any points at all?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  They wanted to see pile on.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Which is, you know, a very human thing, but it's unfortunate.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  It's speaking of unfortunate. If we can get deep for a second.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  When we started, I think it would be my argument that tech was a relatively frivolous thing. You know, you could tell people you made videos about technology and then you'd be like, oh, wow, fun. That's cool. Wow. Now tech has, has become so intertwined with everything in the world. That's like, you know, so much of the world is not great. Do you ever feel disenchanted by it all? Like, I mean, it's as, as we as a society and, and as reviewers had it better back when everything was just kind of a fancy toy?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think to an extent, everything is tech has always been kind of true. Like there's, you know, whether it's high tech or super impactful, like obviously there's very, very political intertwined, like technologies that people are talking a lot about now. And you kind of feel like that is taking over tech and that's what people think of as tech.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  But everything has always been tech, so I don't feel that differently about it now.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Really?

• 49:12Speaker 01

  I thought, I, because I, I do cover some of this stuff.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  And I think what I'm still trying to answer is, is this good? Should you use it? Should you buy it? But I'm not, and maybe this is bad. Maybe this is something I should adjust, but I'm not really thinking as much about. But what are the political ramifications of you using a product made in this country? Or like the way it's made or how recyclable, like all these other things that people are talking more about now.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it feels like almost like that wouldn't fit on your main channel because your, your mission there is unchanged. Like, is this good or is this bad? What's it like to use this? But it's almost like a whole other channel could be spun up to, to cover exactly.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Oh, totally. And I actually have like a sort of a, a template, like bullet point list of things I want to make sure I talk about when I review certain products. And I added sustainability, for example, to that list. And I realized that I don't talk about it with every product because it's not really a part of the story with every product. But for certain products, it is very much a part of the story. I just talked to Apple about the way they 3D print the titanium for the Apple Watches to use, to have less leftover waste material. It's like, that's kind of sick. I'd probably mention that.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  And then another phone comes out and I, I don't talk about how they didn't put the charger in the box because none of them did. And it's not really interesting for the story.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Worthy anymore. Right, of course.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  So I don't know. It's something I could do better is to try to, you know, weave that into the story in some way, if it makes sense.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  I think I could do it better too. I think we all could. And I think, but what is nice is I think there's a lot of pressure to do that. There's increasing pressure to do that from certain corners of the audience. And I think, I thought for a couple of years ago that that was like kind of a, kind of a greenwashing trend that would, that would collapse. And I'm glad it really hasn't. So I'm glad people still care about it.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, these are the biggest companies in the world, shipping the most volume of the most stuff. So if they can make little changes and then they make a big deal about it, that seems like greenwashing. But you look behind the scenes with the numbers and it's like, well, it is helping.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Actually, look in volume. Yeah.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Kind of not against shining a little bit of a light on that. That's fine. Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Related news, you've done kind of an extraordinary job of staying apolitical.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Even as it seems everything has become political. Do you ever wish you could break out of that and address like a polarizing or fraught topic, or are you happy not to have all of the accompanying negative attention that comes from taking a stand?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  I, I think products are one of those things where kind of everyone can agree if it's good or bad, no matter where you stand in, in this like political spectrum. Uh, I do have a video I'm working on right now that kind of feels like it is maybe the most political. It's a video about the Xiaomi SU7.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  And it's a Chinese electric car.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  It's a car, yes.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, we've reviewed Chinese smartphones forever, but you can't get these Chinese electric cars here in the US. And the question that I always see about this car is, if it was in the US, would it crush? And it's a question I want to answer so bad.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  But the real answer is, the only reason you can't get it here is politics.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Right. It's being actively prevented from coming here.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Like, I can't answer this question, this really interesting tech story question without going, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, geopolitics, politics.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I don't know. I, I still want to answer the question. I'm still working on like writing this video and it is more of a challenge for that reason.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  But it is still a tech story. I don't, I don't feel guilty about like including politics if it's interesting.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, good. No, and not, you know, I didn't mean to suggest that you should feel guilty about it, but I think there are times that I want to weigh in on something. And I don't, because, look, because it annoys me as a consumer of, say, entertainment, when an actor I otherwise enjoy decides to be vocal about an opinion I don't agree with. And now I can't watch, you know, my nineties sitcom anymore.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Or I can, I can, but I can't watch it without thinking of that.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Without thinking about it.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Why did you, why did you ruin this? And that's what I feel like. I'm like, what? Look, I've got a, I've got a little phone review channel here. Like you come for my opinions on volume rockers.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  That's fair. I think though, if you feel strongly enough about something, that you should feel free to express it. And it's always to me gonna be through the lens of tech probably in some way. Like, I'm not out here talking about like whose war is to end. Like, it's basically, I'm only talking about tech and my interests here.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  And sometimes sports and sometimes other interests I have. But like, if I have an interest, I would say, if you have an interest that you feel really strongly about. You feel strongly about it for a reason. You shouldn't feel like you should holster that.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Muzzle yourself.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  And the other thing, and I see so many people like diving way into the politics. It's like if, if you have an audience member who would stop watching you because of this thing that you feel really strongly about, do you really need to keep that audience?

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Do you want that audience member to remain?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Like if you really like strongly believe in it's like, okay, that is probably not the worst thing to lose that part of the audience.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, self-selecting is good.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 01

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• 56:00Speaker 02

  We have one more category.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  That's not true, we have two more, but one of them is very short. Want to talk about sponsored content, want to talk about making money.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Okay? How do you feel about the current moment regarding sponsored content and people's reaction to it? Because I feel like people are talking less about it than they did maybe five years ago when we last talked about it. Last time I was on the show, we talked about ethics exclusively.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  And I feel like it's not as big a conversation anymore. Like, have audiences and creators reached this kind of broad understanding about paid versus non-paid? Or am I misreading that?

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's so many facets to that. I think the audience understanding part kind of comes in waves.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  If that makes sense.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  You find it's variable.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess like early days YouTube, like super early days YouTube when there was no partner program and like Smosh gets a Wendy's sponsorship or something. I feel like those are the days where it was like, congrats, bro. That, you made it. Like, that's amazing. Like, that was one wave. And then it became like a little bit too much. Like, they'd like see that it worked and then they'd sponsor 10 of the biggest channels and then it would be like, I didn't think you would take the Wendy's sponsor money.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  And so it goes down and then it comes back up and then everyone understands it and then it's back down. I think it depends on who you're watching on YouTube. I think there are a lot of channels that have endless sponsored content and it's fine. And I think there are a lot of channels that have almost no sponsored content and the second they do one, it is, it's like poison.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  They hate it.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  So...

• 57:35Speaker 02

  You sold out.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think their reaction kind of comes from your audience's expectation. And if you set an audience expectation of, I do tons of sponsored content, then eventually that's what they expect.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  It's fine for them.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  I did some unintentional Reddit research on this. I was reading Reddit last night and the r/OPPO subreddit popped to the top of my feed for some reason. So I was reading it and I think the thread was something like, why aren't people, why aren't reviewers as interested in whatever, the Find X9 Pro or something? And I'm like, okay. And you were quoted specifically, or not quoted, but you were cited specifically. Why isn't Marquez looking at this, at this phone? And these responses jumped right out to me and I, they, they confuse me.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Because the, this response, one of these, because the two reviewers you mentioned, you being one of them, aren't as impartial as they used to be. Not saying I blame them, as they get good money for it and we'd all be the same.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I want to talk to these people sometimes. I do like ask them, because I read those comments, which are like so broadly asserting something that's clearly not true. I want to ask like, where did, because they got that from somewhere.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Somewhere.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Like they, they read something else or they just watched something and they go, oh yeah, these are all paid. Like what, where did you get that from? What do you, can I, can I talk to you about why you're wrong? Can I explain this to you? I want to have those conversations.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Like another one, YouTubers are not really independent tech reviewers. Many are simply sponsored by big brands to the detriment of Chinese brands. And I'm like, okay, we see, sure, sure, there are sponsorships that exist.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Right. But like.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  But they're like painting this character that's like, oh, I'm the one that takes money to say this about American brands and this about Chinese brands.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Right. And it's like these background deals are happening where it's like, no. So I, I also, I feel like that's, that can be a whole separate thing. But I think that undermines my, my thought that I had coming into this before I read that last night. It's like, haven't we all, I think everyone understands now, right? Like where's, where's the difference? Like the FTC, I gotta say, when it was being very aggressive about mandating disclosures, like that was a big help in things. And you had, suddenly people had to say they were, they were paid.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  But one thing that, that, that hasn't changed is that, and I think this is probably an impediment to understanding, is that the ethics of our world still exist in this big gray area.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Because it's not like a traditional journalism.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  I was hoping you'd bring that up.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Firewall.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Right? Like just famously, the verge is always out in front of this. It's like our ad people who make the money are completely separate from our editorial people. The editorial people don't read the ad spots and all this kind of stuff. And it's. But it's not like that in the creator world.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Everyone in the audience has to say, has to make their decisions based on individual creators' policies.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  And that it's like, that is an opaque world. You have to do a lot of work to understand that.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  So I mean, my ethics policy, I don't think I've changed the wording of since we talked five years ago. I should change it. I think there's like maybe one or two things that have, that have, that have changed. But like, where do you draw your lines these days? What, what money do you say yes to? What do you say no to?

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  How do you decide those boundaries?

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so at the end of the day, I still just want to keep the focus on making good videos. So I'm keeping the main thing, the main thing. So if there are sponsored opportunities that arise, the number one question I ask is, does this like work with what we're doing? Does this supplement what we're doing? Or is this a distraction? Or is this like trying to shoehorn something in that doesn't work? Cause as you can imagine, we get endless inquiries about things we could do or make.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  And you're saying no to like, what, 80%, 90% of those?

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  99 and a half percent of them.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  You ever just want to put it out there and be like, hey, here's all the stuff we said no to today?

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, which is why I did a video on saying yes to everything for a while, which was not even sponsored stuff, but it was just reviews.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  But even that is like crazy.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I think I, I put in the Slack the other day, which is like, I got a, I got an email whose subject line was like, can you, I don't want to misquote it, but I think it was like, can you do a video about AI something in Dubai, something, something? It was like all the worst headline, like email subject line words possible. Um, either way, no, I, I think the idea is if you feel something is a good fit and that your audience would enjoy it, and then you would like to cover it anyway, then it's a good fit for, for working with the company.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  And then there are lots of things that are like on the gray area that you can decide to not do, just to keep it clean, basically.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  But yeah, there is.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  Like, do you do you have category block offs? Because like, I don't take, I don't, I won't take money from a, from a smartphone manufacturer.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  But I feel like that's a little too restrictive because what if I never cover a real me phone, for example, organically?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  And real me wants to pay me to do like, I still, I don't do it, but I'm like, I don't know.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And my firewall is even a different place. Like I will do, like Google makes smartphones, but sometimes Google is advertising an ad feature or a, or YouTube feature and I will work with them.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's a different part of Google.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  It almost feels like a different company sometimes.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Sure does.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  They barely talk to each other.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. The pixel division is its own thing.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, I will never do a, a sponsored content for a product that I would review.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  But there's also like, there's even like, people do like showcases, which is one version of, of a sponsored thing. And then there are people who do sponsored reviews, which is insane.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Like a contradiction in terms.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  It's weird that that exists and the fact that that exists ruins it for everyone else.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  It does.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Because then you make-

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  It undermines the trust in the whole review kind of, right?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. Everyone who's making reviews, who is honest about it and properly discloses every time will read Reddit comments about how they're bought and be like, no, no, that's not how this works.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  But it kind of is how some people work. So it ruins it.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  So yeah, I get it. It's frustrating, but all you can do is have a public policy like you do.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  And ideally if, if people call it in a question, then you can at least say something about it, point at that thing.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  Here, here it is. Yeah.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  It's the best we can do.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, uh, I, I, I could talk about that forever, but I, let me ask you, because I recently figured out what my favorite way to make money is.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  What's your favorite way to make money? Integration, like in terms of integration, full-length sponsor videos.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  My favorite way to make, well, I mean, AdSense is the best.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  AdSense is the best. You don't have to do anything. You don't touch it. It just, YouTube puts ads where it belongs.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  So among the like potential, um, integrations in a video, for example?

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or, or just, or different formats because. I'll tell you mine.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  Licensing.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Oh, well, easy.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  It's the best.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  I love licensing.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  So this is when you've already published your review.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Maybe there's a quote in there that Samsung, for example, wants to use in their marketing material.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  They pay for that privilege. I don't know that a lot of people know that. I didn't know that before I got into this space.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Have you noticed even that is gray, though?

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  At least to me. Some companies ask.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Oh, and some companies just do it.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Use it.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Which is cra- yeah.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Which is crazy. I had my, my, a quote from, God, okay, this is insane that this even happened. Like, I get quoted without my permission all the time.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  And I've, I've accepted it because there are some versions of it where it's like, look, I said this publicly, it's out there, fine. Apple quoted me in a keynote. They didn't tell me about that.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  They didn't pay me. They just did it.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Whatever. But I had a quote up here. I was on a website that someone sent me for an AI standalone AI product. Already a red flag.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  And I scrolled down and there's a couple quotes about people who like loved it. And then there was one of, a quote from me.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  And I had never reviewed this product or made a video about it. And it said like, this is a very interesting something, something. I tweeted about this.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  And I was like, when did I say that? Did I say that? And I scrolled back and what I found was me quote tweeting

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  a product announcement tweet with a GIF of an NBA player saying that quote.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  And they took that, it was Russell Westbrook going, that's interesting sarcastically.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  And they took those words and put it next to my name as me saying that the product was interesting on their website next to other positive like quotes.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  There's like five layers of what to that.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Like, that is clearly over the line.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  But the line is so gray. Like, where is the line?

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  I did say the thing that Apple put in the keynote, that's publicly available.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  I did technically post the player with the GIF that said the words about the

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's not like

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  but like that's

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  In, in no court of law would that

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. In no court of law. So the court of law could find a place for that line, but like, where is the line? I have no idea. It's crazy.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think if you're going to use my name and logo and like do the quote on a website and it's like going to be against a phone, like trying to sell a phone, I'm like, no, you come on, we have to have a

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Typically, good etiquette is if you're going to use the quote in paid marketing, then you are paying the creator who said the thing.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  And I like it. It's my favorite thing because I already said the thing and I didn't do it to get that. Like licensing is such an occasional thing, at least for me, that it's nice when it comes in.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  And you know such a way with words that your quotes are beautiful for like on-screen close, you know?

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Thank you. The last time a quote of mine was used for marketing purposes, it was it was me making a joke about the product. What did I say? I was at a pickle festival? I was reviewing the Flip 7 at a regional pickle festival.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  As one is.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  And I said something like, this is a really big deal or something. And that's the quote they wanted to use. So I was like, if you guys want to use that quote out of comp, please.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  I did say that. That's hilarious. Yeah.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Okay. We happy on ethics? We feel like we've gotten to the bottom of that?

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we nailed it all down.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Good. I think the problem solved.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Lightning round. Then we're out of here.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  Okay. What's your favorite failure in mobile tech? Mobile tech?

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Favorite failure? What an oxymoron. My favorite failure in mobile tech is

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  It's one of two things.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  The Apple Vision Pro.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Just not that that's not what I was expecting. Oh my God.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  I just said the first. I mean, there's so many failures that were interesting that I mean.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Is your favorite failure?

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  It's probably not my favorite failure, but that's a really interesting.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Very high tech, very impressive piece of technology that clearly failed at meeting its goals.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  But it's still sick.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  It's wild. I don't know what to do with it as my

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Same. It's gathering dust.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  But like every six months, when I do do the software update and I'm I put it on my face and I go, damn.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  This is really good.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  They may have gotten me to put it on tonight. They have a new fighter jet like movie in Apple TV plus a documentary that I think you're supposed to watch.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  That's how they get you, the content drip.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  That's what I want.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  Okay. Top feature from an older phone that you want a modern manufacturer to bring back?

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Boom sound.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Oh, come on.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Just give me front-facing speakers at all.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Just, just, okay.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Good speakers.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  You get the overdriven earpiece.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Well, because everyone's obsessed with the bezels now.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  And no one does the good front-facing speakers.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  I know, yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  I want good.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Put the speakers back.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Beefy boom sound speakers.

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna say notification LED. I'm a little disappointed.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm changing my answer.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Notification LED. So I can flip my phone like this and go, ah, that's just Twitter. I won't check it.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Right. Just the light blue? No, I don't need that.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Please. That's so easy, too.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  They could bring that back.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  I, look, well, let's, let's make that a number one request list for every phone going forward. What's your favorite thing you ever got right?

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Let me think about this one. There's so many told-you-so moments.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  Okay, so there's one that's not quite over, but I'm, I'm gonna be right. So I'm just gonna say it.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  We got a lot of confidence in the room right now. I like this. Okay.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  I said that, so I was at Tesla's RoboTaxi event.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Couple, not even that, not even a year ago. And I'm pretty sure Elon got on stage and said that they were going to ship the RoboTaxi as it existed. No steering wheel, no pedals, no nothing. They're gonna ship it for, I wanna get this right, I think $27,000 or less before the end of 2026.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Instantly, I was like, well, no, you're not.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  And I said I would shave my head if it happened, so I'm that confident.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  So I got about 13 months left to be proven wrong, but I'm, that is going to be my favorite.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  I think you're, yeah.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  I think that's gonna be my favorite.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  I think your hair is, is gonna stay where it is.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Uh, what's, what's the biggest thing you ever got wrong?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Biggest thing I ever got wrong?

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Um, there is a quote circulating on Twitter this week where, I forgot I did this. In a video, I bet a million dollars.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  So I clearly was confident.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  And it was from a year ago. I bet a million dollars that Apple would not get rid of the mute switch in any of the next five years of iPhones. It's too integral to the design of the iPhone. And technically, they did change it to a button.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  That does more than mute it.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  It's the action button, which could be a mute switch, but it's not really mute switch anymore. And that I gotta, I don't know who I give the million dollars to.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Who gets the million?

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Someone, I have to give it to me. I'll just give it to you.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, best interviewer you've had today.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Surfacing this.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  But, uh, yeah, no, I did. I must have been super confident in that. And like literally the next iPhone was like, yeah, we're getting rid of it right away.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Right before the 15 then?

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that was wrong.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  And now as a bonus, we have it on OnePlus phones too.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, they added the same exact button.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  They also, I guess the Oppo Find X9 added camera control, which is insane.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  Did it? I keep looking for it on this.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Dude, bar for bar, like I accidentally swiped just like on the iPhone and accidentally zoomed in just like on the iPhone. It was crazy.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  Excellent.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  Um, would you ever, I'm gonna save that for last. Uh, do you still do Easter eggs in any of your videos?

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  Are they all secret?

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Um, so some are more cryptic and some are more obvious. Like I'll put an object behind me. That's pretty obvious, but some are more like, like one layer deep, which is very exciting because people find Easter eggs that are like four layers deep. That I didn't plan, but I'll accept the credit because they're so good.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  So yes, the more Easter eggs you hide, the more they find.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Do you still, have you stopped doing Cheerios altogether?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Cheerios I stopped doing, but I have the box still. Uh, I can tell you the origin story if you want. Have you heard the origin story?

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  I thought this was a secret.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  No, it, it feels like a, it should have been like some coded secret, but it was really simple.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  I was making videos in my college dorm for that one year where there was a microwave behind me. And the little LED on the microwave was like out of sync with the camera shutter. It was just strobing, super distracting. You know, it looks weird on camera.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  Does.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  And for like weeks, that was the only thing anyone commented about, dude, the microwave is driving me. I can't look away from that thing. I was like, it's, it's my microwave. I can't move it.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  So I just put like a Cheerios box in front of it just to stop people from commenting about it.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  To mask it.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  And obviously the first wave of people seeing the box in front of the microwave was like, I know what's behind that Cheerios box. But eventually it was just people talking about the Cheerios box.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  And I move on to my new spot and I keep the Cheerios box behind me. There's no microwave back there. I just keep the Cheerios box around. So that was how that started happening.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Do you ever do like little shout outs to like, like a special person in your life? Like I've, I've been known to do a, a single frame heart somewhere in a heart emoji.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  That's a good idea. I've had teammates on frisbee teams ask for shout outs, like in the middle of a video. Can you just like click a pen twice and we'll know what it means? And uh,

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  Do you ever do it?

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  I think I've done it once, once or twice since college. Somebody asked in college to do it and I did it. It's really hard though.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  It's tough.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  I have to remember to do it.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  And not make it distracting.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  And not make it weird.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  That's fun.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  It's hard.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh my God. That's cool. Now I want to figure out what I need to ask you for. Two more. What, um, would, would you ever actually try digital detox with a, with a, with a dumb phone, a light phone or, or like not, Not with the apps. Yeah. Let's say long-term, a week. Okay. Not long-term, but or two weeks. Not with the timeout apps, not with brick.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  With like a real dumb phone.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  I'm not going to rule that out. Um, part of the ultimate frisbee experience for me is switching this part of my brain completely off and flipping over to the competitive, like totally different side of my brain.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  And I'm often offline for two straight days for a frisbee tournament.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  Oh, that's amazing.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  And it's two days and it's fine. And I come back on Monday and I'm ready to get back to it. But uh, these international tournaments are like a week, a week and a half long. And I think that is, you know, it would be hard to be offline.

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  It's very hard. Yeah.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  I won't rule it out. I think that's something I could do.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Can I recommend it? I had such, I learned so much in my two weeks with the, with the light phone. You know, you don't have to use the light phone, but whatever. That's, that's what gave me the excuse to do it.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  It's really fun, even when it's really frustrating. And I'm still, I'm holding on to stuff from that, like lessons I learned this summer from it. Like it's great.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Learn about yourself?

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  And I've learned how to manage myself better. I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm a better phone user now.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  That is the best possible encouragement I could hear to try to do that.

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  Try it. Just, just for the, for the personal growth, even if you don't do a video, just try it.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Uh, and finally, what was your favorite instance of being recognized in public?

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  There's a couple, there's a couple of fun ones. People are generally very respectful and, and very excited to talk tech, which is super cool. Uh, a recent one that comes to mind, so uh, we often use music in our videos.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Oftentimes just like we'll license something or we'll, or we'll use something from an artist and give them a shout out.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  And I was at Newark Airport a couple of months ago and I was like sitting, I think I was just like waiting for my bag or something. And a gentleman came up to me and he said, hey, just want to say, I love your videos, appreciate what you do. You've used some of our music in our videos. Uh, I sing for a band called Wolfpack. Good to meet you.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  And walked away.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  And I, like, as he walked away, I, I was like, oh my God, his voice, like, of course. And I like, hey, well, I, dude, thank you so much for the music. Like I was super excited about that.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  But just the fact that like, he's just like another guy in the airport, just like, oh, yeah. That little connection, that was, that was a fun one.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is, no, that's a fantastic one.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  Do you want to know mine?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, I do. Please.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  I was having a really bad end of the week and I was really fried and I was in Williamsburg, just kind of like absorbing the sun and trying to breathe and trying to let the week go.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Photosynthesizing.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  A guy drives by in a, in a, in a car that's got a real loud exhaust system and he rolls down and it was like, hey, hey. I'm like, ah, what? He's like, YouTube, I love your stuff. And it really, you know, it changed my whole day around. I was like, dude, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. And he kinda keeps pointing at me. He's like, mister, who's the boss?

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  I said, yep, you got it, man. Have a good day.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  Fun weird life we've got.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  It is a small world. He's not fully wrong.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  He got half mister. Yeah. Mister. You got it.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  That's all you need.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's amazing.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Dude, thank you. This has been a blast.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  This was fun.

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  I appreciate the time.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  We should do this again sometime.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  I would love that.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  If I start one of these, you should come on and interview me. It'd be fun.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Deal.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  My studio will be less fancy, but you know.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  We got sound effects.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  I was gonna say.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  That's how we book it.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  Perfect. Thanks, man.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks for watching this bonus episode. If you enjoyed, get subscribed because we're back to your regular scheduled programming on Friday. We're from us produced by Rufus, Adam and Ellis this week. Our intro outro music is by Vane Still and we are a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  Yo, what is up, people of the internet? I am going to take that again because that's not what I say next.

• 1:17:58Speaker 05

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