Why are we addicted to disgusting food videos

Why are food videos so popular online? And why are the most viral ones also the grossest? Today we’re looking back at the history of food videos, from Food Wishes to the hands-only top-down video style pioneered by Tasty to making cereal in a toilet bowl pioneered by TikTok. Petey USA, a creator and musician who’s had a lot of really weird bad stuff to eat while on tour, joins us to about food video culture online — and why we don’t care if it’s good, bad, or absolutely horrifying — we’re gonna gobble that slop right up. Our guest is musician Petey USA, whose work you can find at https://www.peteyswebsite.com/, anywhere you listen to music, or check out his TikTok @peteyusa. You can also catch him live Nov 27 + 28 @ The Empty Bottle in Chicago and December 18 at The Independent in San Francisco. He released oooo, a new 8-song project, back in August. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonuses & exclusives, and access to our members-only Discord? Sign up for a membership for just $6.66 a month at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors If you’re struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at ⁠nocd.com/PANIC⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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• 1:00Ryan Broderick?

  Why are food videos always so popular? And why does each new iteration of food videos come with a gross version that's somehow even harder to look away from than the food you actually want to eat? And why has it all gotten so stale? Today, we dig into the internet's love with food content and try to figure out why we can't toss this current trend we're stuck in away and just let something new grow instead.

• 1:24Ryan Broderick?

  This is probably the first time one of my most listened to artists on Spotify is on our show, so thank you for being here.

• 1:31Speaker 04

  Oh, no way. Thanks for listening.

• 1:33Ryan Broderick?

  I'm a huge fan. Yeah, no. And when we were setting all this up, we wanted to sort of figure out like what you were into, what you're excited about, and you said food videos. So I wanted to start with, what's the most awful thing you've eaten on tour?

• 1:47Speaker 04

  Mixed with time change and like lack of sleep and lack of like any fiber at all. And just like the quality of fast food items over there is fucking disgusting. Like honestly, like everything I ate on my European tour was abhorrent. And I like still have nightmares of it.

• 2:11Speaker 04

  They've got the best shit over there, but it's not built for on the go, you know? And if you go to like Burger King in the middle of Germany, it's like, it's the grossest thing ever.

• 2:20Ryan Broderick?

  No.

• 2:21Speaker 04

  Just like I didn't, I wasn't sleeping. We get to the UK, my circadian rhythm's all off. Noon is whatever the fuck time and it's lunchtime. And then the venue will just be like, would you like a pie? Would you like a meat pie?

• 2:34Ryan Broderick?

  Oh yeah, a savory, a savory pasty perhaps?

• 2:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, like hell no. Like, like I'm, that's the last thing I want to put in my body right now. The thought of it makes me gag, honestly. But like I said, context matters. Like I'm sure those meat pies are amazing. You know, just not, not when you're like jet lagged and it's raining and cold and sleepless. And like you just want to like eat a carrot or something or what, you know?

• 2:59Ryan Broderick?

  I just came back from London and I, I went to KFC at one in the morning, one of the nights. And got a Tower Zinger Burger. Are you familiar with this concept?

• 3:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:10Ryan Broderick?

  So it's a chicken, so a chicken burger is what they call a fried chicken sandwich, right? And it's a KFC and a Tower Burger is when it's on top of a hash brown. And then the zinger is when it's spicy. So it's a spicy chicken sandwich sitting on top of a hash brown.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  How was it?

• 3:25Ryan Broderick?

  I paid for it the next day, but it was good in the moment for sure.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I'm sure London's got it dialed. I was like, kind of like more talking about like countryside, middle of nowhere.

• 3:35Ryan Broderick?

  A hundred percent.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  So end of the supply chain type Scandinavian shit.

• 3:40Ryan Broderick?

  The reason I ask is because like I said, you know, we had, we had reached out to you to see like what you're into online. And you came back with food videos and we realized that we actually hadn't done an episode about food content. But before we get into it, let me set it up. My name is Ryan Broderick. With me as always is my personal chef, Grant Irving, and producer of the show. This is Panic Roll, the show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And joining us today is one of my favorite musicians, truly, PD USA. Welcome to the show. So how, how are you doing?

• 4:09Speaker 04

  Life is amazing. Could not be better. It's really hot. But yeah, move it. I moved down the street, which I've never done before. It's awesome. I really recommend.

• 4:20Ryan Broderick?

  How far down the street? Like, like how many houses?

• 4:22Speaker 04

  Like 500 yards.

• 4:24Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, that's great.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  500 yards, maybe like six houses or something, like new views, more space, more. We were living in a real treehouse before, which was like really fun, but I don't know. Life's great.

• 4:36Ryan Broderick?

  At a certain point, I think when you get to a certain age, practicality is fun. You're like, oh, this is so, this is so nice.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. The easier you make life, the more room you have to think like really, like really psychedelically about stuff, I've found.

• 4:51Ryan Broderick?

  Well, that's like the David Lynch thing where he only wore the same outfit and ate the same thing every day so he could focus on art.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Exactly. That makes total, total sense to me.

• 4:59Ryan Broderick?

  So, okay, let's swing, let's swing back to the topic at hand. So when you say like, you know, you're into watching food videos, like what are we talking about? What are you, what are you actually looking at all day?

• 5:07Speaker 04

  I just got into cooking like, like a couple of years ago. I'm actually like looking for like practical experience and tutorials and stuff like that. And I like, I have a earnest interest in getting better at this thing because I've found, I find myself enjoying it so much. So I just think like naturally like how like algorithms work. I mean, that's just like where my interests are at right now, and that's what's coming up for me. And I think it's just like one of the few bright spots in like the worst thing ever, you know? Which is just Instagram in general. Food stuff seems, it's hard to have a negative spin on it, you know?

• 5:46Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I'm glad you said that because we're gonna show you some stuff today. But, uh, but first, uh, a couple, about two years ago, I finally bought a rice cooker. And I fell down a rabbit hole of like rice cooker hack videos, like how to make crazy stuff in rice cookers. And I have to say, it was like a genuine joy for me for about a year, just like doing weird stuff with my rice cooker.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Rice cooker, that is a life altering.

• 6:10Ryan Broderick?

  Unreal.

• 6:11Speaker 04

  No single item has changed my life more than a rice cooker. And I'm dead serious. Like I like am more of a person than I've ever been because I have a rice cooker.

• 6:23Ryan Broderick?

  Have you ever cooked meat in a rice cooker?

• 6:25Speaker 04

  No, but I've seen videos of that, like doing the, the chicken rice and stuff.

• 6:28Ryan Broderick?

  It works, dude. Yeah. I did like a whole, like basically like a lazy guy's like katsu curry, like one pot thing, and it worked totally perfectly. It was crazy. It blew my mind.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  That's awesome. Hell yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna try that.

• 6:44Ryan Broderick?

  So we're gonna, we're gonna go through sort of the history of how like food content started to become primarily, you know, done via video on the internet and, you know, how that evolution happened. But, um, you know, we wanted to start with something really enraging to show you. And so Grant, you have a, you have a stronger connection. Can you pull up what you've put down in the outline as Rage Bait Peanut Butter Chicken? Cause I actually don't know what this is and I'm excited to find out as well.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  Is everyone seeing this?

• 7:09Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, that, okay. So that's just a chicken that's been dipped in peanut butter?

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, Jesus.

• 7:16Speaker 05

  It's gonna get worse.

• 7:17Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, it gets worse. Okay, cool. So she's cutting bread. She's, she's dipped chicken, raw chicken, I guess, in peanut butter. Now she's wrapping it in bread.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  I think I saw an ice cream version of this the other day. That was upsetting. This is really insane.

• 7:33Ryan Broderick?

  I think I know this woman. She's not one of the magicians that we're gonna talk about in a second. But the, she is clearly, I've seen, I think I saw her videos during COVID. Yeah, I want to see the finished product here. I'm kind of curious. Cause like some of this I bet would be good.

• 7:48Speaker 05

  I just want to throw, there, there was cinnamon toast crunch. And there's, there's also like a jam sauce.

• 7:54Ryan Broderick?

  She did not eat that. That was not a real bite.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  There's, and there's absolutely no way that that is cooked through. That is too. The air fryer is what's changed my life and, and.

• 8:05Ryan Broderick?

  She, there's no way she ate.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, no. That's nasty.

• 8:11Ryan Broderick?

  No, I think what you said though is important. It's an important thing to hit here, which is like there, there is sort of a mental difference between good food videos and bad food videos, right? Like.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah, I would say that, that's like purely Rage Bait. When I'm talking about food videos, I'm talking about like, you know, like classic, you know, this is a dish that you can make. It's a, you know, it's, uh.

• 8:35Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And it's up to the person as a chef, you know?

• 8:40Ryan Broderick?

  Well, let's, let's figure out how we got here. So our, our story starts in 2007. Were you, you and I are roughly the same age. So like, what were you up to on the internet in 2007? What was your sort of like digital diet like back then?

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Two thousand and seven, I was a sophomore in high school. So we were done with MySpace, right?

• 9:02Ryan Broderick?

  It was on the way out for sure.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  I was a big music fan, but like I was never, I've never been very like internet literate or like really given a shit about it at all. I had friends that did though. So I like, I've always defined myself as never someone who's going out and getting the information, finding the new thing on the internet. I've always had friends do that for me. So I would have friends read Pitchfork, tell me about the shit, tell me about the bands, tell me about all the stuff going on. I'd be, I'd, I'd hear the news stories and the gossip and whatever, and like the new albums I should be listening to. But I was never going out to the websites and seeking that out myself. It was always a friend of mine telling me what's good and I, I just like digest.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  That's how, that's how like how I, how I consumed stuff. Um, so I guess I was like privy to like the Pitchforks and the, the, the all, all, all that stuff. Uh, but I was hearing it secondhand, but I suppose like by that ended up being my internet culture, just like by proxy. Two thousand and seven is such a question mark. I, I don't, like, do you guys even believe that that year happened?

• 10:13Ryan Broderick?

  I, I'm mentally stuck there personally, but uh,

• 10:16Speaker 04

  Really?

• 10:17Ryan Broderick?

  And I was beginning to use YouTube and that's the reason I bring it up because one of the earliest, I, we wanted to start with like one of the earliest food videos, which is kind of a crazy thing to think about, like one of the earliest people to just upload a recipe to YouTube. And we, have you ever heard, I have never heard of this, so I, I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't. Uh, food wishes, Grant, you want to pull up, uh, this piece of prehistoric internet content? So this is, oh dude, the, the intro, the movie maker intro is so good. So this is just someone making prosciutto wrapped prawns. And it's just like a normal video, which I think is like kind of, uh, kind of beautiful in a way.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  He's talking, but it is just hands. It is in some ways deeply modern and also like so of a time.

• 10:59Ryan Broderick?

  That's such a good point. Yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  This is the first ever food video on the internet?

• 11:02Ryan Broderick?

  It's one of the early, it's one of the earliest on YouTube. Here, I'll, uh, I'll read you a story about it as we watch it. So this is from, uh, SF Gate. The news, uh, the news outlet who wrote at the time, uh, Chef John lived in relative obscurity. Why he thought taping a $50 cam, uh, video camera to his spice rack and making a couple of cooking videos in his kitchen to post on YouTube was a good idea. No one will ever know. But 500 videos later, uh, Chef John has hobnobbed with executive producers of the Food Network, has more YouTube subscribers than superstar chef Jamie Oliver. Boo. Jamie Oliver, boo. And has two cookbook contracts as well as a five-figure deal with the video sharing website, which is crazy.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Gosh, that's just one of those things where it's just like, you wish you were the first person to do something not even well.

• 11:50Ryan Broderick?

  And yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  I'm never going to be that, I'm not online enough to ever like be that guy.

• 11:57Ryan Broderick?

  Well, do you think you're that guy for TikTok? So like, uh, let me back up. So like, one of the reasons we wanted to bring you on for this episode PD is because like, we're talking about food videos, but we're talking about videos. And you know, for people who might not be aware, you are not only a musician, but you are a kind of a prolific poster on TikTok. So like, do you see yourself as kind of like a, uh, maybe not of the first wave of TikTok, but at least the COVID wave of TikTok. Like, how do, how do you think about that?

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Well, I think that that was less of a result of me knowing what was going, it was, it was more directly a result of me not knowing what was going on and not knowing about it, not knowing about the internet and sort of just being like, having someone describe what TikTok was to me. Um, and the only thing that I heard was just like, it's a minute long video and you can go crazy viral to this. And I had, I had like, I had the sketch that I always wanted to do that I like had written in my notes app just randomly. And there's that wallet video with my friend Albon, we like, that's the first time we did. And I think what people have always told me is like back in those early

• 13:07Speaker 04

  TikTok days is that at least when I saw comments, it was just like, oh, this is such a nice corner of like TikTok or like, this is like not TikTocky. This is like something different or whatever. Um, and that's why I think it was really popular. And the, and the only reason I was probably able to do that is just because I didn't think about what TikTok was or what it, well, the only information I really knew is just, just like, yeah, you'd make minute long videos. I don't know. I think if I knew more about how to use it strategically, it wouldn't have worked out like it did. Um,

• 13:37Ryan Broderick?

  When I was making like viral video content in the two thousands for like digital media sites, I used to call it the wily coyote effect. If you want to go viral, the best way to do it is to run off the cliff and never think, you know how you can run if he doesn't think? And if he looks down, he like falls. And like, you know, for me, it was always like, okay, if I don't have any introspection at all about what I'm putting on the internet and I'm just like moving on pure vibes and instinct, if I can keep that going for long enough, I'll just keep going viral. But then the minute I go, why did this work? It all just falls apart.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. My shit didn't fall apart, but I definitely don't post on TikTok anymore and I barely post, uh, Instagram reels anymore. Maybe because of that, but mostly because of like good things, just like getting older and being like more, whatever, getting money from other ways. And just like being more comfortable, being married. I don't know what it is, but I just like, I like paused and then I just like stopped.

• 14:33Ryan Broderick?

  It seems like you're mentally healthier, so you're posting less on the internet.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Perhaps, yeah. I mean, the, the COVID was funny because that's when the shit started blowing up and we were doing videos every single day. And it was because like, yeah, I was like running and looking and not stopping. We made a rule for ourselves. Just like, yeah, we got to do this every day because there's nothing else to do. Like mentally, I was pretty, uh, yeah, I was in great shape during COVID, just because like whatever, whatever my brain chemistry works. When COVID happened, I was just like, this is fucking awesome. Like I, I've been waiting for this my whole life, like really sad, obviously, but just for my own like, yeah, yeah. So I was one of those guys who like loved it. Um,

• 15:14Ryan Broderick?

  You were the, uh, the Twilight Zone guy who's like, there's time now to read right before his glasses break. You were like, there's time now. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  Exactly. And like, I was like, all right, no rules, no, no societal norms. Everyone's inside blah, blah, blah. So we can just like run with this thing and like, keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going. Lo and behold, like I launched a career out of it and then like had to take, I had to take music really seriously because I signed a major label deal that was just like paying all my shit. And like low and behold, the world opens back up. I become a professional musician, have other things to worry about. And all of a sudden the videos go away. It's not an accident. You know what I mean? It's just like, I'm, uh, we'll see, man. I loved making them. Maybe I'll make, I'll, I'll make some more soon. But it's just kind of like, there's not that feeling of like running the wily coyote thing that you're describing, which I think is super accurate.

• 16:06Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Oh, the reason I wanted to pull over, you know, for a second and talk about your own kind of experience with videos because what, what, what we found was so, you know, interesting doing research for this episode was that this Chef John guy, whose video you just saw, it's like, it's a really ugly, like not really complicated video.

• 16:23Speaker 04

  Like, yeah, yeah.

• 16:25Ryan Broderick?

  Well, three years after he posted that video, he's interviewed by the, by YouTube for their blog. He is in like full on wily e coyote look down mode. And you can tell that he's just overthought this to the nth degree. So I want to read you this quote because it's really funny. Yeah. And so they're like, what are the keys to a really great cooking video? So this is 2010 and Chef John, who made a video that to me looked like the inside of someone's body, basically. Um, he told them, to me, a great cooking video is one that makes the viewer feel like they're making the video with you. Not just watching someone make a recipe. I want to bring the viewer right into the scene. Close, interesting shots of the food with an engaging, affable narration. And then someone's, and then someone at YouTube says, how important is a mouthwatering thumbnail?

• 17:10Ryan Broderick?

  And he says, a great looking thumbnail that is clear, bright and close up is second in importance only to the recipe title itself. And it's like, what are you talking about, man? You're just like, yeah, like you were just, as you said, you were just first and not very good at it.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  I got, uh, to a really sort of like disillusioned place with like press during that first year, I think, like, I don't know. It was like a very concentrated moment in like COVID where there was like, just like a lot of eyes on what I was doing in the TikTok thing. And I got like profiled by like the New Yorker and shit. Like no matter how prestigious the publication or how in some random dude's basement it was. Like all I was doing basically was just like lying about my process and like, and I don't mean like lying, like not on purpose, but I was just like, there's a guy in front of me with a recorder. I don't know what the, how the fuck to answer this question. So I'm just going to make something up.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Uh, and I felt like I did that for like a year straight where I'll read, I'll look back and I'll read back things that I said about like why I do and the things that I do and how I do them. And I'll just be like, that's just fucking gibberish. Like I don't even know what I was saying. I was just like nervous that a guy was in front of me asking me about like my craft and I don't, I, I don't know. The, the answer to everything is just like, I, I have no fucking idea, man. I just write shit and it's funny. My favorite question was always, and I got this straight, was just like, your songs are sad, but your videos are funny. How can you like, what is that? What can you speak more to that? I'm just like, I don't know. Like

• 18:46Speaker 04

  in my mind, a funny short form video is going to get a lot more popular than a sad one. And, uh, a sad song is going to be better than a fun, like, well, I'm not like Weird Al Yankovic, you know what I mean?

• 18:59Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  But like no matter who is, and it was just so funny. That was like the question every single time for like so long. And I just was saying the same thing over and over again. I like, didn't even fully believe them. So when you talk about that guy, talking about the thumbnails, like he's not thinking. That's just like absolute, you know? Like whatever hilarious.

• 19:18Ryan Broderick?

  So if, yeah, if you make internet content for too long, you absolutely get the kind of like baseball player, like if I don't shave, I'll like win the world series, kind of like superstition stuff. And you start overthinking it, but I, you know, I do think there are ways to, to sort of process, you know, what is, what, what's working and why. And I think dissonance on the internet is very powerful, especially in an algorithm, you know, like something that looks ugly and unsettling and strange or has a tone that doesn't fit with everything else, you know, stands out. And like, you know, we, we know this works. And so we're going to go to a break real quick. And when we come back from the break, we're going to swing back into the world of food videos and we're going to talk about what happens

• 19:57Ryan Broderick?

  during the rise of the internet celebrity chef, or basically this moment where a bunch of people do think, okay, we can like systematize this, we can become, you know, the media of the future. And we're going to talk about that right after a word from our sponsors.

• 20:14Ryan Broderick?

  Um, rice cookers.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  It's the most earnest one we've ever done.

• 20:19Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I will never, I will never be flip. Yeah. So we have an ongoing bit where I come up with fake sponsors that, you know, go before the real ones, but I will never be flippant about rice cookers or air fryers. Both of them have

• 20:30Speaker 04

  life changing.

• 20:30Ryan Broderick?

  Considerable, you know, uh, good in my life. Um, all right.

• 20:36Speaker 05

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• 21:49Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So, uh, once again, I want to sort of, uh, you know, check in with where you were at during this time period. So we're now about four years later. This is the rise of, do you remember Drunk Kitchen?

• 22:00Speaker 04

  Oh, I remember drunk history. I loved that show, but I don't remember drunk kitchen.

• 22:05Ryan Broderick?

  So Drunk Kitchen, um, I think you should absolutely pull this up, Grant, because I pulled it up on my side and her outfit actually just gave me like heart palpitations. It's the most two thousand ten video, two thousand, this is the most two thousand eleven video.

• 22:23Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. I think that this is something we should experience a little bit with volume.

• 22:29Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah, dude.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 06

  Welcome to my drunk kitchen.

• 22:35Speaker 06

  Why is it filming? Baby.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 22:39Ryan Broderick?

  All right. Turn the sound off on that. Um, so that's Hannah Hart. Yeah. How many views is that? Is that video?

• 22:45Speaker 04

  Four point five million views fifteen years ago.

• 22:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 04

  My God.

• 22:50Ryan Broderick?

  So that's Hannah Hart. She's obviously gone on to be a very big deal, very big YouTuber. And this is in, this is, uh, the very first, uh, Drunk Kitchen. Um, and at the time, the, uh, outlet Auto Straddle interviewed her about it. Uh, and they wrote, she films it on a MacBook by herself. She created my drunk kitchen's first episode as a long distance internet missive to her best friend. After gaining traction online, thanks to an appearance on Reddit's front page, suddenly my drunk kitchen had millions of YouTube views, not to mention a fiercely adoring fanbase who have been known to call themselves hardo sexuals.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 23:26Ryan Broderick?

  This is also really interesting for, for, uh, long time listeners of the show. We have come across like multiple instances of like early internet viral, like viral content, actually just being something that someone was making to send to their friend and they put it on YouTube. Because that's how you could like send a video. Um, which I think is like really interesting that like that, that is like a thing that has continued to happen. Um,

• 23:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, it destroyed lives, but it's so beautiful.

• 23:55Ryan Broderick?

  I think it is. I think it is kind of cool. I mean, it kind of reminds me of what you were saying, PD, about sort of like the internet for you was distilled through your friends in the two thousands. Like there is something nice about that that I feel like is not true anymore.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Well, there's just too much. There's just too much. Or maybe we're older where like if my friend told me something cool on the internet, I probably just wouldn't. Listen, I wouldn't listen.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  All right. I mean, like I, I like a lot of stuff like my friends told me about that's like new and cool. These days I think I just, it's like, either you show me a song while we're driving in a car or like, that's it.

• 24:30Ryan Broderick?

  I have a bunch of like close friends who live in different places and they're all married. And like whenever we all meet up, like their wives inevitably ask like, you know, like, what have you guys been talking about? And I'm like, it's literally just me sending them songs and them listening, but not telling me they've listened or answering the text. Until they six months later do the same thing back at me and I don't, I forget to answer, but I probably listened to it and I liked it.

• 24:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the real not telling the boys.

• 24:57Ryan Broderick?

  That's, yeah.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 25:01Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, looking back at this period is it is a lot of people who are slowly kind of, they're moving from like the gibberish stuff that you were talking about where you're like, I think this worked. I don't know why. Here's, you know, and they're trying to like actually systematize the creation of food content and why it works. And so the Auto Straddle interview has this piece that I thought was really interesting from Hannah. At the time she says, I edit it in iMovie. The editing takes like six hours, which like, yeah, in iMovie, that would absolutely take like six hours.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:28Ryan Broderick?

  It's panic inducing. I shoot for an hour or an hour and a half, and then I edit that hour and a half down to twenty minutes. And then I edit that twenty minutes down to ten. And then I send eight to ten minute draft to my sister Naomi. And then she rips it up saying, this is shit. No, basically she picks the best of the best jokes. Then I cut it down from there to five. She's such a big part of it, which is crazy because like, I guess, you know, I hadn't thought about this, but fifteen years ago on YouTube, five minutes is pro, was the normal thing, even though on YouTube now it's like thirty, an hour, two hours. And TikTok is where you're putting the, the two to three minute videos, basically.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 26:06Ryan Broderick?

  It's sort of, it's moved, you know, on. Um, but it's, you can see that like they're spending a lot of time thinking about this stuff. And it's also beginning to go like, go viral now in ways that like it didn't used to. And we're now getting sort of weirder stuff. Uh, Grant, you want to pull up two tur bacon epic Thanksgiving?

• 26:24Speaker 04

  Uh, I guess I do.

• 26:27Ryan Broderick?

  I didn't realize this was epic mealtime.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Uh, I've heard of this.

• 26:30Ryan Broderick?

  So the tur bacon epic from epic mealtime is a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 26:38Ryan Broderick?

  Do you want to scan forward to show sort of the end result of this horrible thing?

• 26:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll, I'll do the play by play. So da, da, da. There's a lot of gravy making. They, they're stuffing different birds into each other. They debone everything. It's, it's awful.

• 26:58Ryan Broderick?

  This isn't even food.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  It's wrapped in bacon. They don't season anything, which also really offends me.

• 27:05Ryan Broderick?

  Well, they're white.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  There's, they're wrapping a pig in bacon, which is like honestly fucked up.

• 27:13Ryan Broderick?

  I think that is actually, yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  And there's tons of butter too. And now they're serving it. He has a cigarette in his mouth.

• 27:20Ryan Broderick?

  This isn't food at this point.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  I just got an notification. It says my browser is not allowing a recording anymore.

• 27:27Speaker 05

  Okay. So this is not an ad break. There's some technical difficulties and we're about to get right back to the episode, but, um, there's some gentle razzing of you, our listeners, watchers in this next bit. And I just want to say it is only because you're so wonderful and cool genuinely that, uh, we felt comfortable, uh, with this gentle teasing that I'm sure everyone is going to take in good spirit and it's not going to get weird. And we love you. Please keep watching. Okay. Everything's fine.

• 28:00Ryan Broderick?

  For our audience, just a quick clarification here. Um, we had to take a week break in between recordings of this episode. So I am now wearing a different shirt. Uh, PD's on a different device. Um, yeah, I blame the wildfires and wifi problems, but we're back. And so PD, when we, when we, when we last left you, we were showing you this disgusting epic mealtime bacon video.

• 28:30Ryan Broderick?

  Did you ever go through like a bacon phase?

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, I guess I've been in a bacon phase my whole life until like, like two weeks ago.

• 28:37Ryan Broderick?

  What happened to?

• 28:38Speaker 04

  Well, I got on great health insurance because my wife is very successful. So, um, I went to, I got a physical for the first time in like ten years. Um, through, uh, one medical, it's Amazon's health doctor company. And like, you know, uh, depending on the day, I guess, but there are certain days where I'm just like staunchly anti-capitalist. But I gotta say, like, having my health shit hooked up to the Amazon world, uh, it's incredible, man. Like the UX is, is amazing. And that's the type of shit where it's like, if that's not dialed, then like, I'm just like not going to go to the doctor and die probably.

• 29:19Ryan Broderick?

  Wow.

• 29:19Speaker 04

  So, but anyway, I got high cholesterol. So I kept this up. I want to cut out red meat. I, I do want to cut out red meat on my diet because it's, it's environmental impact. Um, like I use AI as a search engine and stuff. And, and so, um, you know, the, the meat industry takes so much more water than that. I'm just, so I'm, I'm trying to like balance my shit out, you know what I mean? So lower my cholesterol and then lower my water.

• 29:45Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, I want to circle back to that one second. You're using AI as a search engine?

• 29:50Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:51Ryan Broderick?

  What made you decide to go with AI as a search engine? I'm curious.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Um, because there's, Google's already using AI for that stuff. Anyway, I want to consolidate my searches, uh, into just like, you know, pulling from things. So I don't have to do eighteen different searches. Um, it's just works way easier for my, for my brain.

• 30:12Ryan Broderick?

  Um, as long as you're not like, you know, using it as like a therapist or a girlfriend or something. I feel like that's, that's probably fine.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Hell no. Hell no.

• 30:18Speaker 05

  Like, if there's just something that you want to pull up, like showtimes for a movie or something, do you use it for everything? Or do you just use it for like, what do I do about high cholesterol?

• 30:29Speaker 04

  Um, I probably use it for everything.

• 30:31Ryan Broderick?

  Wow. Uh, but I, we can't talk too much about AI on this show because our users get violently angry. Um,

• 30:37Speaker 04

  Really?

• 30:37Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 05

  I might have to.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Really?

• 30:40Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, dude.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  No, you guys got.

• 30:41Ryan Broderick?

  We've had.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  Tell people to relax, not relax, but like, just like be a real human being. Like, what are you talking about with your friends?

• 30:50Ryan Broderick?

  Well, hold on, hold on.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  AI with your friends?

• 30:52Ryan Broderick?

  How, well, so, okay, wait, so, you know, the, the point of today's episode is to kind of talk about the evolution of content on the internet and, you know, how it has changed over the years. And, you know, you're someone, you're someone who's so tied to content. I mean, how do you feel? I mean, how do you feel about like AI music?

• 31:07Speaker 04

  Oh, dumb.

• 31:09Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  Dumb.

• 31:09Ryan Broderick?

  All right, well, yeah.

• 31:10Speaker 04

  It's not affecting like the music that I listen to, you know what I mean?

• 31:14Ryan Broderick?

  I do think that that, that is happening like with everything in culture right now, which is like AI is just sort of sucking up all the bad stuff that nobody cares about and all the human made stuff is just like, it's, it's fine, you know?

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, we got, we got to swerve, we'll, we'll swerve.

• 31:27Ryan Broderick?

  Will you use like an AI mixing plugin though? Like, has it changed your like, recording process at all?

• 31:34Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I use it as a search engine to figure out how to do recording stuff, you know what I mean? Instead of like sifting through logic forums, I could just be like, uh, how do I do the, like, how do I do this like fucking compressor, I think? But nothing for music creation, just because I like making music, I mean, that's the thing that I like to do.

• 31:50Ryan Broderick?

  So, I think I can pull this off here. So, the reason we showed you that disgusting tur- bacon epic Thanksgiving thing, uh, which for, for our, our audience, uh, let me just define what this thing is, which is a quail, a Cornish hen, a duck and a chicken stuffed into a turkey, which is stuffed into a pig, which is then wrapped in bacon and then smoked, uh, and had 80,000 calories. Feels like a really good metaphor for all of content in the like,

• 32:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:19Ryan Broderick?

  the first half of the 2010s, just like, let's jam everything together.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:23Ryan Broderick?

  What was your, like, you know, we talked about sort of your origin story on TikTok. Were you making stuff elsewhere on the internet, like SoundCloud, Bandcamp? Like, were, were you putting stuff online in the 2010s anywhere?

• 32:34Speaker 04

  No, no, I, I think I had like a music project in college that I put stuff on SoundCloud, but, uh, not seriously, you know, I was never like,

• 32:44Speaker 04

  never super serious about anything. And that, the TikTok stuff, I just, I started and I would put the videos on my friend's account who films them, like, I didn't have, um, access to the TikTok until I had like 80,000 followers on it. And then I started taking it seriously.

• 33:00Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, so you had, you were putting your videos on someone else's account?

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Well, my manager and best friend, Will, we were in his backyard and he was just like, hey, let's try like making some TikToks or whatever. And he had an account, I didn't have an account, so he switched his account over to mine, PDUSA, it was like, we'll make this your music account or whatever. But instead of making music related content, we started making sketches. And the sketches started blowing up, but I would just never log in, I would just see it as like, uh, I, I didn't ask him for the login until I had like 80, 100,000 followers on it.

• 33:34Ryan Broderick?

  That's so, that's so premium, man. I wish that I didn't have to think about the internet that way. I got, it sounds nice.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  I never thought about it at all. And then, uh, of course, like, my success was like tied to it. And then I got into it, you know what I mean? And then, um, I'm trying to get back there, you know what I mean? I'm trying to get like, back to that mental place of just like pretending like it doesn't exist.

• 33:58Ryan Broderick?

  Say more about that, what, what, what kind of mental place?

• 34:01Speaker 04

  The idea of just like fucking, well, I think we were talking about it last week of just like creating stuff without any intention behind, uh, who sees it or what it is and just, and like completely like, not have to go on Instagram or not have to go on TikTok, it sounds so nice. But still be able to make stuff for people who want to enjoy my stuff on it, you know what I mean?

• 34:22Ryan Broderick?

  I do know, I do know what you mean. And I, I think that is actually a shockingly good transition into the next part of the story that we're talking about, which is the, the period after like peak bacon YouTube, um, which is the sort of corporate food video. Do you remember BuzzFeed Tasty? Was this, was this something that ever came across your feed, the top down videos?

• 34:47Speaker 04

  Saw that.

• 34:47Ryan Broderick?

  It's like, it's just like hands and a recipe and like a pot usually on Facebook?

• 34:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. They created like a formula for stuff that still, that really exists today.

• 34:59Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, yeah, so I was working at BuzzFeed when Tasty popped off. It surprised everybody, like, nobody at BuzzFeed knew it was going to be a thing. It was a, it was sort of made as a fluke and then like heavily professionalized. And I remember like there were all kinds of conversations about like predicting the traffic of a video based on the ingredients that were going into the video, which would sort of, uh, kind of like link to what you're saying about, you know, becoming super self-conscious about what you're doing. Like, I'm sure you have had, you know, moments, I think we all do, when we use the internet and we think, oh, okay, so I did this last time and I bet you if I do it this time, it, you know, it'll make that much views or that much shares.

• 35:44Ryan Broderick?

  And so you start to like get really, have you had moments like that where you're like, okay, like I kind of know the secret sauce here?

• 35:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, of course, of course. I mean, we got it down to such a funny science where it's just like, we started using a nice camera, but then we're like, the metadata from the camera is like blocking the fucking algorithm or whatever. And then we do this video at five o'clock at night when the sun's setting and that does really well. And the videos where the sun's really bright doesn't work. And, uh, so let's try and do it at nighttime. And, I mean, we had these thoughts in our head about like the length of videos, like how long they need to be, like the, the normal ones that you go to. Um, but it was really fun getting so conspiratorial about it. And at the end of the day, it didn't really guide the process that much because we did one every day and we just did it with like

• 36:32Speaker 04

  what we had available to us and the time we had available to us. The only thing we really held ourselves to was like, we're going to shoot it, edit it and release it all in one day. And we did that for like, you know, 200 days in a row. That was the reason why it was successful, because you do something so many times, you're bound to hit the sweet spots on whatever, uh, 20 different boxes need to be checked for a video to like go fucking viral.

• 36:55Ryan Broderick?

  It's funny you say the sunset thing because I, I did notice like a lot of your videos are shot at magic hour.

• 37:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was, so it was kind of just like, let's do that when we can, if we can't, screw it and let's do it anyway, you know?

• 37:12Ryan Broderick?

  Right, it's funny you say that like it doesn't matter. And, and I, the metadata thing is funny because I know a creator who's convinced that YouTube in particular, but also TikTok is nicer to certain videos based on the file name that you put when you upload it.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Interesting, interesting.

• 37:31Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, like, give an example, that's crazy. So, I know someone who like puts certain words in, so it'd be like, you know, YouTube video name underscore a bunch of words dot MOV and uploads it. And she's convinced that like, it would, like, the, the, the platform would be kinder to it based on what's in the file name. So if it was like, my cat video, I love YouTube, YouTube so good, dot movie versus if it was like cat video version six, fuck, let this be the last one, dot movie, the first one would do better?

• 38:11Ryan Broderick?

  No, not I love YouTube, it'd be like my cat video underscore cats underscore cute animals underscore like tabby cats underscore pet owners dot MOV would do better. That's what, that's what she's, yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  This is really, really bringing me back.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  It's so silly. It's so silly. And like, like, I think that like you can get in the weeds just with so many of the, of this thing and it's kind of like talking, I mean, talking about this is like, kind of like talking about getting in the weeds with talking about like free will versus determinism and shit like that. It's just like, you know, I mean, there are so many, uh, invisible forces that we don't know about, that we don't even, that we're not even like conscious of determining our experience. But at the end of the day, uh, anything that we can speculate on probably doesn't really matter. So you might as well just like do your best over and over and over again and, uh, hope that, you know, uh, showing up in your best way gets you where you need to go, because you're not going to get to the bottom of it.

• 39:17Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's right, I, I do, like, I, you know, as a reporter, I've spoken to a lot of these platforms, you know, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok over the years. And I will say like one thing that they really don't like is when you suggest that they are influencing what people are making.

• 39:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:35Ryan Broderick?

  But I think they absolutely do. And I think the explosion

• 39:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:38Ryan Broderick?

  of food content is really visible there where like, I know, I did this project years ago where I interviewed food bloggers. And you know, I basically asked him like, you know, people complain about food recipes online because you have to scroll and scroll and scroll. And all the bloggers were like, I don't want to do that. I don't want it to be like that. But Google makes me do that because Google has requirements that I have to, I have to meet to be seen on Google. And it's the same for any video creator on any platform. And so, you know, yeah, there are, there are six month periods where everything's an animal video, anything, everything's a food video, everything's a news video, a podcast video, comedy video. I think you're right that thinking about it too much does sort of make you go crazy

• 40:21Ryan Broderick?

  and doesn't actually help in a way.

• 40:24Speaker 04

  Well, it just sucks. What kind of life is that? That fucking sucks. I can't. It was fun to think about, like, you know, because I went from like, working in a mailroom, being fucking broke as hell, to actually having a career because of it. So it actually like, it was interesting at the time to talk about it. But at the end of the day, the only thing that mattered is that we just did it every day. That's it. You know, that like that, like if you, if you like, take a snapshot of my life, it's just like, in this period of time, I did videos every day. And that's when I got a career. That's why I didn't have a career. That's why I got a career. And like, all the weeds that we got into were just really fun, bro-y, conspiratorial conversations that like, we didn't, we never

• 41:06Speaker 04

  got to the bottom of everything. And I'm super happy I don't have to talk like that or think like that anymore. But it was fun while it lasted.

• 41:14Ryan Broderick?

  Did that create like a weird relationship with like, your music? Like, the reason I ask is because like, you know, the, the people I knew working in like, let's say, food content, become alienated from what they were doing?

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:28Ryan Broderick?

  Do you feel like you have a strange relationship to your music career because it's off the back of this like, you know, hellish 200 days of thinking about TikTok all the time?

• 41:36Speaker 04

  I just want to rephrase that, that because that wasn't hellish. It would be hellish if I was still thinking about it now, but it was quite fun.

• 41:42Ryan Broderick?

  But it was fun at the time, okay, yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Because it was new. But um, I don't know, man. Like, like, like, like I said, my life is so fucking good that I just don't think about it too much.

• 41:53Ryan Broderick?

  That's good.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  My team gets frustrated when I'm only seen as a comedian and that the music seems like a secondary thing. And I feel like I've sort of been assigned that frustration as something that should be important to me. But the God's honest truth is I don't care at all. I'm just happy to be doing what I'm doing.

• 42:11Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, if it helps, I didn't know about your comedy videos until after I heard your music.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  That's badass. That's cool.

• 42:17Ryan Broderick?

  I came across the video for Don't Tell the Boys. And then I was like, who the hell is this guy? And then I found out TikTok stuff.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  That's cool. That's rare. That's like, you're, you're an enlightened minority.

• 42:28Ryan Broderick?

  I, you know, I will never describe myself like that, but thank you. Yes. After the break, we're going to talk about the TikTok explosion during COVID, which I think is kind of, you know, it, it has changed everything. It's changed your life. It's changed everyone's sort of sense of culture. And it's made things confusing for sure. But first, a word from our sponsors. What's the diarrhea lettuce company called?

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Travis Farms.

• 42:54Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, Travis Farms.

• 42:56Speaker 04

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• 42:57Ryan Broderick?

  And now a word from our sponsors, Taylor Farms lettuce bags.

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• 44:06Speaker 00

  Hey, Bose here. When your next track starts, listen for the decisions that the artist makes. The vocal push right up front. The bass that waits half a beat. That sample

• 44:18Ryan Broderick?

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• 44:34Ryan Broderick?

  TikTok arrives 2018. We got a couple of pre-COVID years where it's like an app for teenagers and sort of people who just left Vine or whatever. But very quickly, it starts to become like a place where a whole new generation of people are just discovering the internet. Obviously, this impacts like, food videos, it impacts animal videos, it impacts everything. It impacts your stuff. When you started to finally actually use TikTok, because I didn't know about this when we put this episode together, the, the fact that you were not actually running the account, when you started to run the account or sort of engage with it, you know, what were your first impressions of this app that was now sort of like giving you a ton of attention?

• 45:12Speaker 04

  It was like, refreshingly separate from everything that I could identify with as like a living person, which was really nice. Like, it seems...

• 45:23Ryan Broderick?

  What does that mean? Say more about that.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  It seemed not real, because I mean, like, nothing seemed real because I was in COVID. It seemed inconsequential. It felt like I was like engaging with like bots, like everything was bots. Or like, everything was like, I don't know, maybe it was because I was also like doing a lot of VR stuff. And just like, there were like a lot of fires going on in LA. And like, I hadn't seen a person for like, three weeks or whatever. But I was just like, everything is, it just didn't seem like, like I could not, it wasn't a human experience at all, which made it a lot easier to like, sort of like, recklessly engage with it as something that like, was very like egoless and not, I wasn't like, whoa, I'm famous on this thing. I was like, whoa, this is like a fake app. And like, this is crazy, you know?

• 46:09Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, makes total sense.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  And it made it a lot easier. Like, I've never dealt with any mental anguish about my place as a successful TikTok person, or like, what, or what that means for my identity. Like, I've never had any highs and I've never had any lows, like I have in maybe something like, um, like putting out a tour on sale and having it sell well, or so, you know, something like that. Emotionally disconnected, in a way that just like made it fun and careless and reckless. And like, it was really fun to like, play with it.

• 46:44Ryan Broderick?

  Do you feel, do you still feel like disconnected from it that way?

• 46:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally. I don't even go on it anymore. I haven't logged, I've, I've lost the login information to my TikTok.

• 46:54Ryan Broderick?

  What?

• 46:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:56Ryan Broderick?

  So are you, are you off the internet entirely? Where, where are you spending your time online now?

• 47:01Speaker 04

  No. Well, unfortunately, I go to Instagram because like, this is my job, you know, and I'm, I'm a professional musician and I gotta play the game somehow. And I still follow close friends and family on Instagram. So I go through the stories, I scroll. I mean, honestly, I hate it so much. It's so weird to like, open Instagram and not even be conscious of the fact that you opened it. And you just like, arrived there. And you're just like, 30 minutes ago, I was enjoying like, literally like, the miracle of being out alive. And now, by complete accident and not by choice, I'm just like, scrolling through an Instagram feed, which for me now is just like musicians complaining about

• 47:44Speaker 04

  fucking the music industry, which is the worst television show I've ever fucking seen in my entire life. And I'm just like, what am I doing? And then I have this like, snap, like this realization. And then I delete the app immediately. Because, and then I re, I re-download it just to post, post my shit. Um,

• 48:04Ryan Broderick?

  I think...

• 48:04Speaker 04

  And then I watch food videos.

• 48:06Ryan Broderick?

  Well, that bit you said sort of about, you know, having this weird recursive negative experience, I think is something, it definitely predated COVID, but I do think a lot of people sort of discovered that relationship or started to have that relationship post-COVID. And I wanted to, I wanted to sort of like, you know, kind of wrap a bow on the food video discussion by showing you something that I've been desperate to show you. Because I think in a lot of ways, these people are the dark inverse of you.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 48:42Ryan Broderick?

  Um, are you familiar with?

• 48:45Speaker 05

  Such an intense way of previewing.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 48:48Speaker 05

  Dark wizard version of you and you're about to be see it.

• 48:52Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I think this is, I think this is the, this is, this is negapedi. Are you familiar with the magicians on Facebook who make bad food videos on purpose?

• 49:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 49:03Ryan Broderick?

  I did this story like right after COVID where I kept noticing these people who were making really gross food content. So this is a woman who is making ice cream in a toilet bowl. Have you seen this video?

• 49:19Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 49:21Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So she's filling up the toilet bowl with all kinds of garbage and bullshit. And then she like eats out of the toilet bowl.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  You, you, you.

• 49:31Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. And obviously people are really mad about this. This video was watched 15 million times. And then, and then I was like, you know, digging around, looking for other stuff. And I, I came across another video where this woman makes SpaghettiOs in a pie crust. And it's fucking gross and it was viewed 42 million times. And all the videos are the same where it's like this woman just like doing gross food stuff. And everyone's mad at her, you know, because it's disgusting. And I started poking around and what I discovered are all working for the same guy. Who was an out of work magician that decided to pivot to being a content creator during COVID.

• 50:16Ryan Broderick?

  Because Las Vegas had shut down. And so him and all of his Vegas stage performers started making viral content to piss off old people on Facebook. And they're still doing it. I discovered another viral video that everyone's mad about this week or last week. And it was connected to the same like network of out of work magicians who are now content creators.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  Wow. And the, and this is like specifically a Facebook thing.

• 50:44Ryan Broderick?

  They've jumped to Tik Tok and now they're on, you know, what used to be Twitter now X. I see them on Instagram. They're, they're sort of operating on every platform, making the same bullshit disgusting. Like food and like lifestyle content that's like bad on purpose.

• 50:58Speaker 04

  Interesting. That's really, that's crazy. I mean, I had a really similar conversation that this with one of my friends who's in the vertical drama space.

• 51:09Ryan Broderick?

  Whoa.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  He's not making these vertical dramas.

• 51:12Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  Obviously, um, they're like.

• 51:14Ryan Broderick?

  I, I've heard about them, but I, I would love to hear more about what it's actually like to work in one of those. Like, that's crazy.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  We couldn't even really get into it because I was unaware of this whole world before. So he was just sort of explaining to me what it is and we can, we didn't even get into what it's like to work there. But I was just sort of astonished to figure out how much activity was still going on on Facebook. And about how it's just like people in their 50s watching this insane shit on Facebook. Uh, and the numbers are like staggering, like a, a, a large number of people on Facebook watching crazy disturbing things.

• 51:47Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  All the time.

• 51:48Ryan Broderick?

  And I, and I think it's like to play into that feeling you talked about where like, you don't even know you're looking at the app. And it's not making you happy, but there's like a, it's, it's like infinite jest. It's like this videotape that you can't turn off, that you just die watching. Like it's, it's really bizarre.

• 52:04Speaker 05

  I, I cannot, we've made it over a hundred episodes before the words infinite jest were said on the show.

• 52:11Ryan Broderick?

  Is that true?

• 52:11Speaker 05

  It has been not spoken about and spoken about so many times.

• 52:15Ryan Broderick?

  I've never directly.

• 52:17Speaker 05

  Pete, I'm so sorry. This just like needs a moment. Uh.

• 52:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 52:21Speaker 05

  This is wild.

• 52:22Ryan Broderick?

  Really? I've never said infinite jest on the show ever?

• 52:25Speaker 05

  I've restrained myself from saying it a billion times. This is a monumental, Joe Rogan was mentioned on almost every episode, but the words infinite jest.

• 52:36Ryan Broderick?

  Well, you think those are equivalent? Okay. So.

• 52:38Speaker 05

  No, I'm just.

• 52:39Ryan Broderick?

  I, I will say I read a third of infinite jest and I was like, all right, like I got it. I don't really want to do this anymore. It's like not a pleasant read, but.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  It's an embarrassing book to admit that you really love, right? Because it's like performative guy stuff, but then like most things, there's a bit of a horseshoe effect where you're kind of just like, well, I'm, I'm reading and it is good.

• 52:58Ryan Broderick?

  I just, I'm not a footnote guy. I don't like footnotes. I don't like the experience of reading footnotes. I don't find them interesting or cool. Anyways, infinite jest has like a sci-fi conceit at the heart of it where it's like this, like this thing that when you watch it, you waste away watching it because it's, it's a media that's so addicting. That you like, can't take your eyes off it. I'm, I'm simplifying it. Yeah. My understanding is infinite jest involves some sort of like tennis match to decide the fate of the world or something at the end. I don't fucking know, but, um, um, yes, I, I feel like meta platforms in particular, Instagram and Facebook are very good. It's sort of capturing this negative attention loop that you're discussing where, where, where like, I get

• 53:39Ryan Broderick?

  served a whole feed of stuff that like, I don't care about, but I also like, kind of just can't stop looking at. And then I don't want to, I don't feel good.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Just like endless stuff. I mean, that's how I feel on, on Instagram. I'm not seeing anything that I really like, you know what I mean? And, but I'm, but yet I find myself on it.

• 53:57Ryan Broderick?

  And yeah, the, the reason I sort of said that these magicians were like the dark version of you is that because like they kind of went the opposite way. Where they were stage performers that it like leaned fully into being content creators. And now like, that's all they do.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:11Ryan Broderick?

  And I, and I think it's like, you know, it's very seductive, you know, like I, the, today's episode has been extremely bipolar. Both because we recorded it over two weeks and also because we're sort of talking about two everything simultaneously. But I think at the heart of it, it's like, the internet wants you to keep posting and is happy to provide you with so much information to sort of optimize yourself. And I do think it takes like a certain amount of restraint to not do that until like, to, to, to do sort of what you did and use it as a launchpad. Sure. You said you have to play the game.

• 54:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:43Ryan Broderick?

  But like to, to know like, okay, like I'm going to go focus on like my art or what I care about and not have to make slop, you know?

• 54:50Speaker 04

  These are the platforms available to us to like promote our art. I've definitely like, I've probably sacrificed a good amount of success with my slowing down. Just so that I could just have a more holistic, uh, life outside. And I'm cool with that. I'm really cool with that.

• 55:10Speaker 05

  Was that, was that like an active decision?

• 55:12Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah. Did you choose to do that actively?

• 55:15Speaker 04

  Uh, no, I think just like, kind of like life just happened and I got married and my wife is fucking, she's a machine, you know, she like owns her own business. She's so successful. Like we have a ton of fun. We go hiking all the time and I put out music, people still like it. I can put tours on sale, people go, I'm just like, how much do I need to, how much do I need to fucking, how much bad shit do I need to do? To make myself more successful. And to me, the answer is like, not so much.

• 55:45Ryan Broderick?

  Well, it's funny, like I, I've been thinking about this dynamic with people like, I, I think people in our age group feel it acutely right now. Which is like, you have two options, which is you chase like an internet thing. That's like quickly digestible, disposable, might make a lot of attention, but that attention doesn't really mean anything a year from now. Two years from now, three years from now. Or you unplug from that system and you make something that could. So like, you know, your album, the yips like will probably sound as good five years from now as it does right now, 10 years from now. I mean, you, that's the one you worked on with Chris Walla from Death Cab, right?

• 56:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:27Ryan Broderick?

  So like Chris Walla has made records that are 20 years old that I listen to and they sound just as good as they did. But if I go and watch a Tik Tok video that was popular three years ago, it might not make any sense at all. Like it, it's like speaking to a world that doesn't exist anymore.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  The drunk cooking video, like that, like what's, that would never happen. All of it, all the videos that you showed in this thing that existed 10 years ago would be, are nothing. It would just be nothing.

• 56:59Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, they're, they're meaningless, nothing like it. And you know, it feels like a lot of people get stuck in this trap where they're like, oh, the attention is there, the numbers are going up. You know, uh, the, the, the, the platforms are begging me to post more and they're verifying me and they're giving me data and insights. And it's like, yeah, but I could also just like go make something else. I could go paint a painting or drawing or do a song or a movie.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  Or use the, use the platform to, to try and launch a career and, uh, and another thing. I mean, the people who like made it out of the Tik Tok thing used it to get like other jobs, you know what I mean? I'm like, you're a great example. Like this is like, like you got, you, you, you have to know that you have to have something else. And there was like kind of a thing in Tik Tok when like, there would be like comedians on the app doing a serious video, like forward facing, being like, the movie industry, the producers, they're scared of us and we have all the power. It's just like, bro, no, you don't, man.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  You're, you're making a one minute comedy video. Like that shit is easier than making a fucking feature film. And don't go crying when no one's watching your independently financed feature film because it's bad, man. Like it's way harder to do that than to make people laugh on the internet. Like I use my Tik Tok thing to go out and like launch my music career and get like money from major record labels. So I can continue fucking living and making music and all this stuff. There was not one part of me that ever thought that like Tik Tok is my job and it's going to pay my shit. Because you're just going to die when you think that. I mean, it's going to destroy your life to be a slave to this algorithmic, like ever changing thing. You know what I mean?

• 58:45Ryan Broderick?

  I do.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  And I'm so proud to see like, uh, fucking people show up on like SNL, like, uh, fucking like Jane Wickline. Was doing comedy videos same time as me and we would comment on each other's shit. And she's on SNL now. That's so fucking cool. But she had the foresight to be like, okay, I'm going to use this to fucking do a, a thing and perform live things in front of real people and an audience and on television. And like, it's just like, that's like, God bless it. You know what I mean? That's so sick.

• 59:16Ryan Broderick?

  I'm so, I'm so glad you brought this up because I, I forget the name of the Tik toker. But there was this girl, she was like Gen Z. She was like super popular on Tik Tok during COVID. And then she announced, she's like, hey, thanks everyone. Um, I'm a real estate agent now. And if you want to hire me, you can hire me. And then she just like went and became a real estate agent because she was like. I'm gonna just advertise my business because like that's why I did this. I did I I that's all that matters, right? And I think that is like a very healthy thing. So I you know, I I wanna I wanna wrap up our incredible two week recording journey on this episode by just

• 59:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, and who's to say that the time in the middle of our it even happened at all?

• 59:59Ryan Broderick?

  I you know what? To the to the listener, it didn't. We've been here the whole time.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  They are hawkish about Ryan's in my hair. If there's a hair out of place

• 1:00:08Ryan Broderick?

  That's true. They get really weird about it. Yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 05

  Caught you.

• 1:00:11Ryan Broderick?

  They're like, eh, yeah, that is so weird. Our audience is

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  Not to get you guys in trouble, but based on a couple of things you said, your audience needs to to chill out a little bit.

• 1:00:23Ryan Broderick?

  Our audience is really weird about trying to catch

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  Like, you guys should be not be getting in trouble at all. You guys are like so good.

• 1:00:30Ryan Broderick?

  Well, thank you.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  Like, you guys are good. How the fuck you get in trouble?

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  We're gonna put that at the beginning of every episode that we upload.

• 1:00:36Ryan Broderick?

  That's that's it. We're gonna put it on. I know, it's weird. Our YouTube audience is obsessed with like like being like, oh, they did a pickup here. And it's like, yeah, we did a pickup there. Like, I sure. To wrap this up, I guess, like, do you see yourself going? You said you were trying to like relearn how to not care about the internet and have fun with it? You know, do you think that's possible? Do you are you? Are you excited and optimistic about like putting more stuff online?

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm like, that's so funny. Like, I'm on the eve of like, starting just like a crazy campaign on the internet where I'm gonna just like post a bunch of shit and like go do absurd stuff. You know what I mean? I do feel like, and I think, like, just like, a larger conversation on like, the entire world, separate from the internet. But like, obviously, and I know everyone feels this too. I'm sure you guys feel it too, because you're so well researched. But just like, in general, I feel like we are absolutely balancing on the tail end of a moment, and it's just so unstable. You know what I mean? There's just this like, like, something's

• 1:01:44Speaker 04

  about to crumble, you know, like globally. We can shrink that down to like, just social media use in general. But like, I'm looking at Instagram, and I'm looking at TikTok, and I'm just like, this is done. We don't even realize that this has been done. You know what I mean? And I'm so like, let's, let's passively engage with it until the finish line. But I'm really looking forward to what's next, because right now, I think it's crap, you know? And I'm optimistic about what's next.

• 1:02:13Ryan Broderick?

  I have I was literally talking to Grant about this like, right before today's episode. I've also been using the term

• 1:02:18Speaker 04

  You're shaking your head. Good

• 1:02:19Speaker 05

  I'm shaking my head because like, like, you just summarized like, Ryan's like, like, if you were to distill everything Ryan's written about for the past three months, it's been like, it's all crumbling. Wait, I'm excited about the crumbling. I am excited. Savor these last moments.

• 1:02:33Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  You know, something cool might follow.

• 1:02:35Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, I I've been calling it the the end of the long 2010s. It's like, this moment that started around 2012 has has sort of gone on longer than it should have because of political power or corporate power not wanting to let it go. But we've all realized that it's gonna go. And we're all just waiting for like, that first little domino, that first little spark. And I do, I have sort of gotten to a place that I think you're at too, which is like, it is nice to have a second to say goodbye to this. I am happy I'm saying goodbye. But I'm enjoying the sort of farewell lap, I think.

• 1:03:13Speaker 04

  I'm not, but I

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  I'm just like, let's go. Let's

• 1:03:18Ryan Broderick?

  No, I'm I'm antsy. I'm I'm I'm antsy. I I'm ready.

• 1:03:22Speaker 05

  Making this outline, like, food videos have been, since like, the modern internet, food videos have been popular. And you see it, like, since COVID, you're either repeating trends or stuck doing a parody of the trend before. There, every iteration of food video killed off the last thing that was that was popular, to your point about like, getting stuck in that time period. And then you reach, like, 2023, and there's just reiterations of the same thing that like, we can't even create a new version of the thing that just always does well on the internet, because it has a

• 1:04:03Speaker 05

  beginning, middle, and end with a end is like, everyone can understand it. So I think that really speaks to like, we're off the precipice.

• 1:04:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm trying to lose followers.

• 1:04:14Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, PD, last question for you, because I don't think I have asked this in the entire episode. What is the best thing you've cooked recently?

• 1:04:22Speaker 04

  Okay, I want to shout out this woman on Instagram, that her account's not big, but it's called Lunches at Home. And she cooks Asian lunches in one pan. And I made this sort of like, caramelized Japanese chicken rice with miso, fresh ginger, and soy sauce. Lunches at home, big shouts. And it was so easy and delicious and no cleanup. And like, I felt so good about myself afterwards.

• 1:04:56Ryan Broderick?

  That's amazing. If people want to follow you on the internet when you decide to post again, where should they do that?

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  I'm posting, man. I'm posting on Instagram.

• 1:05:05Ryan Broderick?

  On Instagram. What's your Instagram?

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  P underscore USA.

• 1:05:08Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 1:05:09Speaker 04

  I guess since I said some some weird pro capitalism stuff, just because being a human being is complicated, I do want to say that line, I wish that plastic cups were banned by all coffee shops. I want to ban ban all plastic cups.

• 1:05:23Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, that's a good take. Hundred percent agree.

• 1:05:31Speaker 05

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• 1:05:46Speaker 06

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