Keeping the Lights on at a Video Game Cafe in Southern Yemen

Mo lives in Aden, an ancient city in southern Yemen. Built on a volcanic crater, it has castles and beaches set against mountains. It's beautiful. Like the rest of the country, it is also in the midst of an ongoing civil war. This summer, protests broke out over living conditions and basic services in the city -- like electricity, which can be shut off for 18 hours at a time. But despite these conditions, for the last five years, Mo has been fighting for a persistent dream of his –– a video game internet cafe for his neighborhood. This week on Endless Thread Ben and Amory tell the story of how Mo, against all odds, has kept the lights on (quite literally) at his gaming cafe thanks to his persistence, and the help of internet strangers across the world. This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. A recent episode looks at what the rise of the gig economy means for workers, businesses, and the future of work. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:21Amory Sivertson?

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season, you create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+

• 0:55Speaker 03

  What are you waiting for? Hop on.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+

• 1:01Speaker 03

  This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, now streaming on Disney+, rated PG-13.

• 1:20Speaker 04

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Amory, you remember my pen pal from earlier this year?

• 1:34Amory Sivertson?

  Your audio pen pal, yes.

• 1:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, my pen pal in Yemen. We were sending voice memos back and forth, and it was surprisingly kind of a fun way to get to know somebody.

• 1:43Speaker 06

  Ben, I think the internet right now is not the best. Can we do like the interview via voice messages, or we can wait till the internet is better for voice calling?

• 1:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, yeah, we can totally do an interview via voice messages. What's your name? What shall I call you? My name is Ben. It's nice to meet you.

• 2:04Speaker 06

  Hey, Ben, you can call me Mo. You can call me Mohammed. You can call me Maho. So, anything is fine, to be honest. I think I'd rather have my nickname, like you can say Mo, because here in Yemen, you know, it's probably the best to stay a little bit under the radar, you know? I just want to make sure to protect, you know, my family, because if the wrong people hear it, just want to make sure that I don't have to look always over my shoulders, you know?

• 2:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mo is talking here about the broader situation in his home country.

• 2:47Amory Sivertson?

  Yemeni politics are volatile. Mo is living in the middle of a civil war, a civil war that's been going on since 2015. External powers like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and by extension, the United States, support the recognized government.

• 3:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  While sectarian tribal groups like the Houthis, backed by Iran, have been fighting the Yemeni government for control, the result of this violent conflict has been poverty and famine, and of course, casualties. But Mo and I didn't talk about that at first. Where do you live? Where are you in Yemen? What kind of place is it? What is the industry that is there? If there's like a major industry, what do you do for work?

• 3:34Speaker 06

  I live in the south of Yemen. It's a city called Aden. It's like on the port, you know, it's like, we have like this endless beach. It's very beautiful here. It's the whole year around. It's summer, you know, blue skies, the beach.

• 3:54Amory Sivertson?

  Aden is an ancient city that used to be the capital of southern Yemen, until southern Yemen and northern Yemen were united in 1990. It's beautiful. It has castles and beaches set against the mountains. It was built on a volcanic crater. Like the larger country, politics in the city seem to have frequent eruptions. Mo sees the good and the not-so-good.

• 4:20Speaker 06

  The people are so nice, you know, very welcoming, very helpful, very like, they're helping each other, you know? It's a very amazing environment to live in, but sadly, there's also some downsides, you know? For example, right now, we're getting into the summer, and the summer is basically a nightmare, because it gets so warm, it gets so hot. Like, how many people already, like, especially people who are sick and the elderly, you know, how many get like a heat stroke? For example, two years ago, my father already had a stroke. My father already had like heart problems, high blood pressure, and

• 5:00Speaker 06

  a lot of stuff. And then, plus, the heat, you know, sadly, he passed away.

• 5:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  That was two years ago, but the problems are perennial, and they seem to be getting worse. This summer, protests broke out about living conditions and basic services in the city, like electricity.

• 5:22Speaker 06

  The warmer it gets, the longer the electricity turns off. For example, right now, we are at nine hours off and two hours on, which the sad part is, it will get worse, you know? The warmer it gets, sometimes it turns off for 18 hours off, and then two hours on, you know? So basically, the whole day is off.

• 5:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  In this environment, infrastructure, the ability for normal business to commence, it's all pretty tricky.

• 5:54Speaker 06

  So, everybody's struggling, especially the sick and the elderly. They will suffer, you know? And also, like, the other problem that we have in Yemen is the, is the currency, you know? I remember when I started the business, like, $100 was like 85,000 Yemenis, okay?

• 6:15Amory Sivertson?

  That was back in 2018. Now, it costs something like three times that, or more, for staples like food and energy.

• 6:24Speaker 06

  And I was lucky to start my business at that time, you know? And everything I bought secondhand. And, but now...

• 6:31Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, Mo started a business amid all this. It was, in some ways, the culmination of a persistent dream and lifelong interests.

• 6:42Speaker 06

  My whole life, I, I liked video games.

• 6:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mo likes video games. And so, he wanted to make a video game café, a place where people in his neighborhood, those people he describes as nice and willing to help each other, could gather and play together.

• 7:01Amory Sivertson?

  He started years ago, posting questions online.

• 7:05Speaker 06

  Hello, community. I'm in a third-world country, and I would love to open an internet café focused on gaming. But I have no idea how to build a PC over here. It's impossible to get even parts. But I still want to try. Is there a website or someone who can build a computer for $500? Sorry for all these dumb questions. I'm very serious about this.

• 7:31Amory Sivertson?

  These posts made on Reddit are how we found Mo. Eventually, he made progress. He had some basic computers, some headsets, even some customers. So, we wanted to hear more about his internet café, take things beyond the audio pen pal phase, and call him up together. Who is your clientele? Are these kids? Are these adults? A combination of the two? And what do they pay to use the café?

• 8:03Speaker 06

  You know, the gaming café is mostly used as a media hub, because you have to understand, like, the internet in Yemen is very bad. So, people who want to watch movies, they go to the internet café to watch their movies.

• 8:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  But a year in, after huge amounts of work on his persistent dream, Mo thought his dream was about to die forever. Electricity cuts across the city, challenges with equipment, and what he describes as the betrayal of a close friend. It was all becoming too much.

• 8:39Amory Sivertson?

  But he was still proud, so he posted.

• 8:42Speaker 06

  When I made my first post on Reddit, I was like defeated, and I was like, maybe, maybe this is it, you know? I tried my best, and maybe it shouldn't be, you know, with all the electric cuts. And then, I had to spend basically all my money just to repair the generator.

• 9:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Except internet strangers, man, you just never know what they're gonna do. Maybe they love video games, too. Maybe they want to see you stay afloat. Maybe they're ready to step up.

• 9:14Speaker 06

  The next day I woke up, it had like millions of views, tens of thousands of uploads. I was kind of shocked. I'm very grateful that our story reached so many people, and they resonate with us. And yeah, it changed everything completely.

• 9:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is very silly, but we forgot to ask you, what is the name of your café?

• 9:34Speaker 06

  It's called Power Net.

• 9:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Power Net?

• 9:38Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 9:39Amory Sivertson?

  Power Net.

• 9:45Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sivertson.

• 9:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Thread.

• 9:50Amory Sivertson?

  Coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR. Today's episode?

• 9:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mo's Café.

• 10:16Amory Sivertson?

  Mo lives in Aden now, but he wasn't born there. His family's lived in a few places.

• 10:21Speaker 06

  My mother is Yemeni, my father is from Somalia. So they both get to know each other in Somalia. But then in the 1990s, you know, when the civil war in Somalia started, they moved to Germany.

• 10:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mo was into computers and video games from an early age, but like a normal amount.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  I think we had like a Super Nintendo first. And then later on, I think my parents bought also a Nintendo 64. And we had, of course, Game Boy and stuff. I don't know how special my childhood was. It was good. My father used to work in a bank. My mother was a housewife.

• 11:05Amory Sivertson?

  Mo says his parents made sure he and his siblings valued education. But his family also valued family and living in Germany was difficult.

• 11:15Speaker 06

  They had a lot of troubles integrating in Germany and that felt kind of like isolated and kind of like lonely. And because my mother's family, the whole family is at Yemeni, you know? So my mother was always trying to convince my father, hey, well, how about we, we move to Yemen, you know?

• 11:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Around the time Mo became a teenager, they did.

• 11:37Speaker 06

  And, you know, from, from this point on, I loved it in Yemen.

• 11:42Amory Sivertson?

  The family sold all of their belongings to move. And eventually they built their dream home in Yemen.

• 11:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mo looks back on this decision as unlucky. The political tensions in the country flared up around this time with the official government, which had tacitly supported the Houthis in order to help it resist interference from Saudi Arabia, beginning to clash more often with these fighters.

• 12:08Amory Sivertson?

  Then the Arab Spring happened.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  2,000 police flooded the streets of Yemen's capital. They're trying to halt six days of demonstrations. Protesters are unhappy with the US-backed president.

• 12:21Amory Sivertson?

  After that, in 2014, a full-on civil war broke out in Yemen.

• 12:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  To be clear, specific political tensions is a subject Mo seems to avoid in our conversations. But he does post more generally on YouTube with commentary.

• 12:38Speaker 06

  In the news, all you see is statistics. But this is not a statistic.

• 12:44Amory Sivertson?

  Here, he's showing a pretty torn up street and a building that looks like it's been hit with a bomb.

• 12:49Speaker 06

  This used to be someone's home. And despite all of this, life goes on. It continues.

• 12:59Speaker 06

  And we're making the best out of it. No matter what.

• 13:06Amory Sivertson?

  Mo does seem to embody this ethos of making the best of it, no matter what. As a younger guy, his interest in technology helped land him some odd jobs and even some notoriety. In 2016, he built a Facebook page that made him briefly famous.

• 13:22Speaker 06

  Well, I was a meme lord, you know, on Facebook.

• 13:29Amory Sivertson?

  Not everyone, not everyone can say that, Mo. I was a meme lord.

• 13:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  I was a meme lord, you said, which means you've been dethroned, I guess. But please tell us more.

• 13:41Speaker 06

  Yes, I was. They call it, you got, you got zucked, you know, when you get your account deleted, you know?

• 13:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, you got zucked.

• 13:50Speaker 06

  It was like deleted.

• 13:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  The page got 700,000 followers before Facebook shut it down. At the same time, he was doing side work for Halo Trust.

• 14:00Speaker 06

  I don't know, you know, the Halo Trust, they are an organization that looks for mines.

• 14:05Amory Sivertson?

  Wow.

• 14:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's quite a combination. When you said looking for mines, does that mean looking for landmines?

• 14:12Speaker 06

  Yes, exactly. Even Princess Diana, she is endorsing this organization. And I was like working there in data entry for a few months.

• 14:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Data entry. So you weren't looking for the mines yourself. You were helping with the more computers.

• 14:30Speaker 06

  No, no, no, no.

• 14:32Speaker 06

  No, no, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's for the professionals.

• 14:36Amory Sivertson?

  Over time, though, Mo's longtime interest was the thing that would inspire him to chase his persistent dream.

• 14:43Speaker 06

  But I think the defining change for me was when I had like my own laptop, you know? And it wasn't even a good laptop, but it was strong enough to play some games. And one of the games that really changed my mind about what gaming is was like, I don't know if you know this game, it's like, it's called The Batman: Arkham City.

• 15:05Amory Sivertson?

  Do we know it? Okay, I do not know it.

• 15:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  I know it. I played it way back in the day on an Android tablet. It is indeed pretty awesome. Open world map, super dark vibe, great action, hanging out on rooftops. I get it.

• 15:23Speaker 06

  I remember thinking, man, this is better than any movie I watched in my life, you know? And that was probably the beginning of me not seeing games as just like something, you know, just randomly, but actually one of the best mediums, you know? And, you know, trying to bring it to my community was, I think from that point on, was like my goal.

• 15:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Why is that? Why did you want to bring it to your community?

• 15:49Speaker 06

  I think mostly because I could see that people here in Yemen, they were still stuck in the early 2000s, you know? Because most inside cafes here have like cord-to-duo computers, you know, very, very old computers. And most of these games are like, like I said, very old games, like from 20 years ago. So I was like, man, you guys are missing so much.

• 16:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mo didn't want his friends and neighbors to miss how exciting the video game world had become.

• 16:24Amory Sivertson?

  When you say you want to bring these games to the masses, what do you get out of playing them? What do you learn or how does it enrich your life?

• 16:36Speaker 06

  This is a good question. I think one thing that I love about games is like it, it gives you, it opens the world for you, you know? Like you are sitting in your room, but it like, it like broadens your horizon. There's this game called Mafia, for example, and it focuses on the 1920s. Or there's other games that teach you about old Egypt or Greece, you know, old history. So I feel like there's a lot to learn, you know? And it's interactive, you know? You're, you're, you are learning and also learning also problem solving. I feel like there's a lot to gain from video games.

• 17:20Amory Sivertson?

  But before he could help other people in Yemen gain something from video games, Mo was going to experience some loss.

• 17:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  In a moment that he was certain would be game over. Back in a minute.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. What gets lost when work stops looking like a nine-to-five job?

• 18:10Speaker 04

  If I am not committing to be working with you exclusively at a particular point in time for a certain amount of time to do certain types of work, then you can't necessarily expect the employer on the other side to provide guarantees either.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode about the changing dynamics of the gig economy.

• 18:39Speaker 07

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  What are you waiting for? Hop on.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  This is the way. Our only chance is to work together.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.

• 19:41Amory Sivertson?

  So Mo has a dream of bringing the expansive world of modern video games to his neighbors in Yemen, but there's an issue with building out that dream.

• 19:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  You might not even get electricity for two hours per day in the summertime. To get the kind of high-speed internet connection so that you can sit at home, chat, and game with your friends without the kind of lag that would make, say, I don't know, storming a castle in a video game, of course, together, or passing a ball back and forth, that is pretty much impossible.

• 20:13Amory Sivertson?

  Both because the infrastructure doesn't exist and because the capital doesn't exist, even with technological advances like internet via Elon Musk's satellites, Starlink.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  More people have good internet because I think a year ago or two years ago, Starlink started to work in Yemen. So more and more people are getting Starlink. But of course, you know, you have to understand that most people are making like barely $20 in a month.

• 20:45Amory Sivertson?

  Starlink can cost $50 a month. But let's go back to the good that Mo sees in his community, how people take care of one another.

• 20:55Speaker 06

  This is probably the best thing about Yemen, you know, the people who like every street is like a family, you know? So we have people who checking up on us, there's people we checking up on, you know?

• 21:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  So there are people in Mo's city of Aden who can afford Starlink, in part because they create hotspots that they can then sell for a much cheaper price to other people in the community. Basically, daisy chaining internet access so that people all over town can show up and get it.

• 21:25Amory Sivertson?

  Mo doesn't have the kind of money to get his own Starlink, but he knows some places to get it for a price he can actually afford, which is why, like Batman, he's become nocturnal, awake when the bandwidth is high.

• 21:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Because online gaming isn't really a thing there, Mo settled on a plan to build a gaming cafe with a close friend, where people could go to play downloaded games with each other in the cafe and experience the kinds of games and other media that he sees as part of an expanding world of possibility. But at the last minute, his friend backed out.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  He kind of decided to just open his own internet cafe where it kind of left me like stranded, even though I gave him the idea, I gave him the name. But when he found like a location and we already spent some money on it, he said, no, I'm just gonna open it myself, which kind of put a little bit of fire under me where it's like, no, I cannot just, this was always my dream.

• 22:35Amory Sivertson?

  Mo says even though he's not that aggressive of a person, he just felt like he had to follow through.

• 22:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  We haven't talked to Mo's old friend. They might have a different story to tell. But while Mo says he isn't aggressive, he is persistent. So he restarted scrounging the money to do it himself and started looking for a new location that was viable, somewhere that had electricity, for instance, which in Aden, isn't guaranteed.

• 23:04Speaker 06

  It took me like four months to find a place to rent, but the guy who rented me the place, he kind of, again, kind of lied to me because the whole area didn't have electricity. So I had to buy like a very long cable. It's like 300 meters to use like an electric pole from another area. And it was a whole thing.

• 23:30Amory Sivertson?

  Another not insignificant setback, but Mo kept going. He got the 300-meter cable hooked up. He found a generator that could burn 20 liters of diesel fuel at a time to keep the lights and computers on when the power got cut.

• 23:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  And he started looking for used computers, which can be hard to find in Yemen. He was using every avenue he could.

• 23:53Amory Sivertson?

  Slowly, surely, Mo's persistent dream started to build.

• 24:00Amory Sivertson?

  He pulled together cash, scavenged for parts, got his hands on some used computers, but only a few of the computers had graphics processing units, GPUs, the kind of technology you need to play the more modern single-player games that Mo saw the community rallying around in his mind's eye.

• 24:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  He started getting the word out and kids started showing up. He started decorating, a mural on the wall, combining the Arabic word for PowerNet, a new name, not the one his former friend had taken for the other gaming cafe, and a bat, sort of like the Batman insignia, and other references.

• 24:39Speaker 06

  I don't know if you know the Naruto anime, there's a character called Itachi from the Naruto anime. So my friend, he actually painted it on the wall. I still think this looks good, you know?

• 24:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Cool.

• 24:52Amory Sivertson?

  It's very cool.

• 24:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  From the mural to the ramshackle computers and headsets, PowerNet Cafe wasn't necessarily the best gaming cafe in the world, but for Mo, it was.

• 25:10Amory Sivertson?

  But the hits to the dream, they kept coming.

• 25:14Speaker 06

  Someone is, for me personally, the worst time. Like two years ago, in June, which is my birth, like the month where I was born, you know, my father passed. And then last year, also in June, my little brother passed, you know?

• 25:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Was he sick?

• 25:34Speaker 06

  Yes, he was. He had like some problems, you know? He was already sick. He had like tuberculosis and with the heat, I guess, it increased everything and, and yeah.

• 25:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm sorry.

• 25:51Amory Sivertson?

  How old was he?

• 25:53Speaker 06

  He was like 29, so very young.

• 26:08Amory Sivertson?

  A year into the opening of his PowerNet Cafe, Mo was barely holding things together. People use the phrase "keeping the lights on" when they talk about running a business. For Mo, this could not have been more true.

• 26:22Speaker 06

  You have to understand that like you're playing video games and then bam, there is just this off, the whole, the whole room is dark, you know, people with flashlights, you're looking for the generator, you have to turn on the generator and then you turn on the generator, but then you have to be careful because if you keep the generator on for too long, it becomes too hot.

• 26:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  The generator practically exploded every two weeks. It was always a ticking time bomb. There was no information about the blackouts. Could Mo keep the lights on literally long enough for the generator to not overheat and the electricity to come back on? Would the generator even last that long?

• 27:05Speaker 06

  I think like the first year, I had to probably repair my generator like 20, 30 times. And, you know, I was kind of, I kind of felt defeated. But then I, inside my gaming cafe, you know, I was still proud of myself. I was like, wow, this is something you did by yourself, you know, like it was always your dream and you did it, you know? Nobody can take this away from you.

• 27:33Amory Sivertson?

  In a tender moment, Mo posted a selfie to Reddit, showing himself inside the cafe, talking about how proud he was of it. But also, Mo felt like his business couldn't survive. There were still only a few working computers. The electricity was dicey at best. And fuel, when you could even get it at the long lines at Yemeni gas stations, was expensive. His selfie post felt more like an ending than a triumph.

• 27:59Speaker 06

  I posted it on Reddit, funny of opening my dream project in Yemen. And, you know, the rest is history. The post went super viral. The next day I woke up, it had like millions of views and tens of thousands of uploads. I was kind of shocked.

• 28:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  He was also inundated with messages that offered to help. People wanted to send laptops, video game mouses, headsets for gaming. All of a sudden, PowerNet Cafe was feeling the power of the community beyond the Yemeni street it sat on. But Mo wasn't sure what to do.

• 28:40Speaker 06

  We don't have individual mailing address here.

• 28:43Amory Sivertson?

  Meaning it's tough to send stuff there. People wanted to send those graphics processing units that would help Mo upgrade his computers. They might cost $30, but a guy in Australia discovered that trying to send something to Mo would cost $800 in shipping costs. This left Mo with a lot of people who wanted to help, but who couldn't afford to.

• 29:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  A few people did come through in a big way.

• 29:10Speaker 06

  You know, at the beginning, we only had like 12 terabytes for the server, but somebody on Reddit sent us a 20 terabyte HDD, which directly doubled our like storage.

• 29:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which was amazing. Another crucial moment came when Mo reached out to an old friend he had had in Germany, who he had met through a language learning app. Demetrius Murky was from the US, but was living in Germany. So we met on a language exchange app called HelloTalk. Demetrius was in the US Army and was sent to the Middle East twice. Like, I won't get into like, you know, like politics and everything, but not a huge fan of the things happening to civilians there. But anyway, so yeah, so I do have a lot of sympathy for Yemen. Demetrius could help Mo do something that Mo couldn't do from inside Yemen: set

• 30:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  up a GoFundMe to help send Mo cash from Redditors. Because fundraising in countries that are partially controlled by organizations labeled terrorist groups by the United States is difficult. I had to go through a bit of red tape with them and provide proof like, oh, here's

• 30:25Amory Sivertson?

  exactly what is happening. Demetrius had to provide documentation. So did Mo. But GoFundMe administrators approved the page, and Demetrius has been sending a couple hundred bucks at a time to a friend he's never met in person. It adds up. I just logged in and as of today, so from the summer of 2022 up till

• 30:49Speaker 02

  I guess now the summer of 2026, uh, he's raised $22,859.

• 30:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Whoa, that is wild.

• 31:01Amory Sivertson?

  Wild indeed, and Power Net Cafe is still going strong.

• 31:09Speaker 06

  A lot of people, they come and then they sit and watch a movie or play video games. Or we also have courses, we have like anything they want, you know, nothing that requires any internet. But then there's also some people who want us to help them fix their phones, you know, maybe they need their WhatsApp open or something like this, or they need like anything that's PC related. And how much it costs, it's very cheap, you know, like it's 100 Yen, which is, how much is it, like maybe 20 cents? And you can sit for like half an hour.

• 31:50Amory Sivertson?

  I love the idea of this because I feel like with the technology that is available in many other places in the world, playing games and watching movies or watching shows or whatever it is, that's generally an activity that you don't need to leave your house for in some cases. If, if the internet is good or you have all of the, you know, all of the various forms of media right on your phone or at your fingertips. But the whole idea of the gaming cafe is the opposite of that. It's, it's the idea that you would come together in person with a group of people and watch

• 32:33Amory Sivertson?

  your various, you know, forms of media or play your various games, sitting next to each other.

• 32:41Speaker 06

  Yes, this, this probably you, you hit the nail on the head.

• 32:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mo's post that went viral was nothing special, just a selfie with him and his gaming cafe, celebrating his successes, even though he was teetering at the brink of his project failing.

• 32:57Amory Sivertson?

  A few weeks ago, Mo sent us a message on Reddit. It was a link to an update video on his small YouTube channel. Mo's standing among some nondescript buildings in a blue shirt, the sun shining from behind him.

• 33:13Speaker 06

  So I decided to make a video about, it began with an ending.

• 33:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  He's talking into earbuds, using them as a microphone. You can hear crows calling in the background. Mo's still talking about his persistent dream.

• 33:29Speaker 06

  You know, when you lose a job or you lose a relationship, you lose money, you lose a dream, you know? For example, my dream was for seven years to open this dream project of gaming cafe, you know? And if it doesn't, when it doesn't work out the way you want it to work out, it feels like this is the end, this is final. But what if it's not final, you know? What if it's, what if this ending was actually the first line of the new chapter? But the first year has been, I don't want to say hell, but it was pretty bad. It's been a great journey. We'll see what the next chapter brings. I hope you have a good, good day, good evening, the rest of the year.

• 34:10Speaker 06

  I'm sorry that the video is kind of like, uh, random, you know, but we reached 1,000 subscribers, five years opening my dream business. I think we made it, guys. I think we made it. But life is good.

• 34:30Amory Sivertson?

  Mo gets ready to do that oh so familiar influencer video sign off, stepping towards the camera and turning it off, his palm taking up the screen. It's an ending, but his dream is still going.

• 34:45Speaker 06

  So take care and see, see you guys. Wanna see you. Peace.

• 35:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Kolyani Saxena, Grace Tatter, and Pranay Monahan. It was written, reported, and hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson.

• 35:19Amory Sivertson?

  And co-hosted by me, Amory Sivertson. It was edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

• 35:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  The rest of our team is Dean Russell, our production manager, Paul Vikes, and our senior managing producer, Suma Tijoshi.

• 35:32Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between video games and internet access that runs on diesel fuel.

• 35:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you have an unsolved mystery, an untold history, or another wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, you can hit us up, [email protected].

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Brandeis University Professor David Weil on a question at the heart of the gig economy. When an app controls how you work, is it really just a platform or is it your employer?

• 36:31Speaker 02

  It is very true that the platforms allow, let's say, drivers to find riders much more easily in a way that would be impossible absent the Uber or Lyft technology. Yes, the technology's connecting people, but the technology is also doing all the kinds of things that we usually associate with management. Setting the rate of pay, setting the pace of work, deciding on who gets the job and who doesn't, monitoring the performance of that party. There's a lot that these technologies do that are all about what we would call management.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 37:29Speaker 07

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season, you create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  What are you waiting for? Hop on.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.