Dressed as a Pirate

It's a very special episode of The Vergecast. This is David Pierce's final day at The Verge, and as such, we have dressed him as a pirate and forced him to discuss technology, film, and the merits of Snapchat. Nilay Patel wrangles the troops, Sam Sheffer brings the swag, and Emily Yoshida is back from Park City to reflect on Sundance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:06Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I want you to know in your mind. You're in your car right now, probably. Or on the subway. That's true. That's, that's based on the, I'm tracking your phone. And most people who listen to this show are moving.

• 0:17David Pierce?

  At this moment, in the future, when this goes live.

• 0:19Nilay Patel?

  You're moving. You're almost certainly moving.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  Not moving like residences.

• 0:24Nilay Patel?

  No, like you're physically, your body is traveling at some rate.

• 0:27Speaker 02

  You're very chancy in society.

• 0:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, close your eyes, but not so much that you'll be in danger.

• 0:34David Pierce?

  Close your mind's eye.

• 0:35Nilay Patel?

  Close your mind's eye. And I want you to know that David Pierce is dressed as a motherfucking pirate.

• 0:40David Pierce?

  That's true.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  Now, I can tell you why he's dressed as a pirate.

• 0:43David Pierce?

  But, but really?

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  I suspect why. I don't know who is behind this troll. Which is great, but-

• 0:50David Pierce?

  Very uncomfortable.

• 0:51Nilay Patel?

  But know that this day is David Pierce's last day at The Verge.

• 0:55David Pierce?

  Which is insane.

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  For, for some time. We, we tend to reel him back in. But, foreseeable future-

• 1:02David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 1:03Nilay Patel?

  David is leaving us. Uh, he's going to Wired. I suspect that the reason David has been receiving pirate regalia all day is because Wired is not a pirate ship. This is my guess.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  So, so this is not preparation for a pirate ship, though?

• 1:19David Pierce?

  No, this is like-

• 1:19Speaker 02

  This is sabotage.

• 1:20Nilay Patel?

  This is sabotage.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Because you won't fit in on a non-pirate ship.

• 1:24David Pierce?

  Yeah, no, so the other problem is that I just cleaned my desk for like 45 minutes and it's still really messy.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:30David Pierce?

  Which is like, I'm screwed.

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:32David Pierce?

  Like, I'm just objectively, they're gonna be like, "Oh, look at all your kitschy lamps, David, get out."

• 1:36Speaker 02

  What's the best thing you're leaving?

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  So, if you don't know, if you don't know, so David's like, we're all very sad. I, most people are sad. I have vowed to take revenge.

• 1:43David Pierce?

  You are murderous.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  I'm, I, it's gonna be really bad.

• 1:47David Pierce?

  It's basically like Taken 4, starring Neelai Patel. You're gonna come like, blow up a European city.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  I have a unique set of feelings.

• 1:54David Pierce?

  Except the difference is that-

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  And that is, and that is not dealing with breakups well.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Except the difference is that David is voluntarily leaving.

• 2:01David Pierce?

  Taken four, she just left.

• 2:03Nilay Patel?

  That's not.

• 2:04David Pierce?

  She just like walked out.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  No, that's the pre-take any.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  Are you, are you really, are you really breaking down the metaphor?

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Like how the metaphor breaks between the Taken movies and David getting a new job?

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Yes, it's because David is not getting kidnapped by Wired, he is voluntarily leaving.

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I know, Wired, Wired has a beautiful new office, it is beautiful.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  It is beautiful.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  A beautiful new office and when they opened it, Scott Dadd, she had her in chief, who's very talented.

• 2:29David Pierce?

  Really good hair, too.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  Whatever. My, my rivals.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  That's where you'll stop, that's where the line is drawn.

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  Sent out a memo saying that everything, everybody in the office had to keep clean, desk clean, no action figures on desks, no kitchen lamps. And, and the line, Wired is not a pirate ship. So David is spending the rest of his time at The Verge dressed as a pirate to remind him who he is.

• 2:51David Pierce?

  So what I like to assume is that somebody edited out the line after that, which was him being like, it's seven pirate ships.

• 2:57Nilay Patel?

  David, I think you're gonna find.

• 2:58David Pierce?

  It's a pirate spaceship.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Pirate airship.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  Find that the real world in your imagination.

• 3:05David Pierce?

  Or the same, I agree.

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so, look, I'm having.

• 3:10David Pierce?

  Can I take this off now?

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 3:11David Pierce?

  It's all of my.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  I, I'm still your boss for like, I would say, easily the next 24 hours. So no, otherwise I'll fire you. All right, whatever, there's news, Emily is here, hello Emily.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 3:25Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Sam.

• 3:26David Pierce?

  Did you like just get back, Emily?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Last night.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  This is The Vergecast.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  It's been a fun week.

• 3:29Nilay Patel?

  Whatever, it doesn't need an intro.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  A podcast, of course it needs an intro.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  No, it doesn't.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  It's a podcast, I.

• 3:34Nilay Patel?

  It's a podcast.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  If you, if you think the show needs an intro, tweet at me and Eli, if you don't think the show needs an intro, tweet at me and Eli. Sound off, please.

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  Well, you just want tweets, you're just like thirsty for tweets, man.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  What is this, what is this new meme about being thirsty for things, it's like, what is it, 2005 again, come on, guys.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Thirsty was not a thing in 2005.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's like, it feels, it feels like retro, like you're trying to like act like 90s again, and it's like, come on, guys.

• 3:57Nilay Patel?

  Here's, here's what I, I want you to know, right before the show started, Sam confidently announced, Emily, I'm a teen.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  You know what? He wasn't gonna get any argument from me because he knows what Snapchat is and I don't. So therefore, he is a team.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so let's start. It's on the list. This, fine, for Sam. This is the Vergecast.

• 4:15David Pierce?

  This is coming off, I'm sorry.

• 4:16Nilay Patel?

  Where David is just a mutineer.

• 4:20David Pierce?

  Oh god.

• 4:20Nilay Patel?

  A heartbreaking mutineer.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  That's a better explanation for the pirate thing, I feel like. You're mutine.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  You are keeping the hat on.

• 4:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, of course.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  I would say, you do look good in a hat and bandana combo.

• 4:32David Pierce?

  Thank you.

• 4:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay, this is the Vergecast where we talk about stuff. The first thing we're gonna talk about. But is that a good intro for you? I'm Neil Patel, that's Emily Oshida, that's Sam Sheffer, this is a dead man. Alright, dead man walk.

• 4:46David Pierce?

  Ow.

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  Okay, first thing on our list, Snapchat. So Snapchat actually did a bunch of interesting media stuff this week, and before we get into it, Sam, I would like you to explain to Emily what Snapchat is.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  For the tenth time.

• 5:00Nilay Patel?

  Because I tried to show her today, and like, she physically rejected what I was showing.

• 5:05David Pierce?

  Wait, can I introduce one rule?

• 5:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:06David Pierce?

  You can't use the word ephemeral, ever.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  So Snapchat is a way for you to send and receive photos or video that you can draw on, you can do text overlays, and they self-destruct when you send them to your friends. So I can send you a photo of me, you know, going 100 miles an hour in a car, and you'll see it for three seconds, and that's a snap. And then they have this other thing called Stories, so if I want to share with all my friends that I went 100 miles an hour in a car, I could post that photo to my Stories, and then it lives on a clock that lasts for 24 hours, basically. And that's basically Snapchat, and it's used primarily by teens.

• 5:45David Pierce?

  But you know what I just realized? The craziest thing about Snapchat is that it's now everything.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, Snapchat is everything.

• 5:50David Pierce?

  It's now, like, you can have it for 10...

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Maybe this is why I'm so confused.

• 5:54David Pierce?

  Sweet Jesus.

• 5:56Nilay Patel?

  Another bag has arrived.

• 5:57David Pierce?

  Excuse me, everyone.

• 5:58Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you have to understand, David's been receiving... He received a telescope.

• 6:04David Pierce?

  Oh, no. I broke it already. Everything's fine.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Now, David, I want to know, would you have gotten the pirate ship connection? If the, or how, rather, I should ask, how long did it take you to get the pirate ship connection?

• 6:16David Pierce?

  This memo from Wired came out, I think, the day after I told Neelai I was leaving. And Neelai sends me this link like four seconds after it gets posted and he's like, I'm going to send you so many pirate ship things.

• 6:30Nilay Patel?

  It's true.

• 6:30David Pierce?

  And so I think it's been, it's been top of, I've been waiting.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  You're prepared.

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  It's fair.

• 6:35David Pierce?

  Like, I'm waiting for like-

• 6:36Nilay Patel?

  It's a fair threat.

• 6:37David Pierce?

  A dead man to show up.

• 6:38Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I want-

• 6:38David Pierce?

  Or like, he's going to replace my hand with a hook.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I, and, and this is a request to the listeners of the Vergecast.

• 6:43David Pierce?

  Go on.

• 6:43Nilay Patel?

  This is true. If you are a pirate impersonator, or a Captain Morgan wannabe, and you live in San Francisco, and you think that you have the talent and ability to break into the Wired's off, Wired's offices, please, please let me know.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  So you think you can be a pirate?

• 7:00Speaker 03

  So this is now taking five.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  I think there's some business we can, we can do together.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  So take it forward, David Lee.

• 7:05Nilay Patel?

  All right, continue with the Snapchat discussion.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, so then let me segue into discovery.

• 7:11Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, Emily, so you're clear on Snapchat?

• 7:13Speaker 02

  I don't-

• 7:14Speaker 03

  It's a super primitive app.

• 7:15Nilay Patel?

  My question for Emily is why are you so dismissive or suspicious of Snapchat?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  I just don't know how I would integrate it into my every, I don't know what hole there is in my daily experience that needs to be filled by ephemeral media.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  I don't think, I don't think it's about, I don't think it's about-

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Burn!

• 7:33Speaker 03

  So, so-

• 7:36Nilay Patel?

  Corporate burn.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  You could have gotten a lot of usage out of it during Sundance, like, instead of opting to like, post a pretty photo on Instagram that you maybe spend like two-

• 7:45Speaker 02

  You mean of the, the little fur mankini thing?

• 7:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. So you could have like, taken like, a really quick and dirty video of that and either send it to like, all of your friends that are already on Snapchat, which is probably a lot of people, or you could have like-

• 7:59Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I don't think my friends are on Snapchat. Maybe that's not why I'm not on it. I don't, nobody is ever like, did you get my snap? Like, I don't know.

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  I will say Snapchat, as far as I can tell, is like, very popular among like, the New York media and-

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  It's demographic. I did have a Wikipedia research on this before the podcast. Eighty percent of its user base is in the United States and its main demographic is thirteen to twenty-three year olds.

• 8:24David Pierce?

  And I will say like more than almost any other social network I've ever used, it sucks unless your friends are on it. Because in all the ways that like, yeah. Right, like Twitter in a way is like performance art. So if you're just doing it for strangers, then fine. And even Instagram to some extent is like, here are pretty pictures. And even if nobody looks, like whatever. And Facebook is like designed to, I don't know what Facebook is anymore, but Snapchat, like if you aren't getting stuff from people you know, it's just boring. And if you have nobody to send stuff to, then like there's nothing to do.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Say about Snapchat right now. It's like, remember back, I can't put a year on it, but when AIM was at its peak, you would like, you would, you would just be on AIM and it would be like the place to digitally hang out with your friends. That's what Snapchat has become for these kids.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Okay. All right. I guess, I guess since I was a teen, I've moved from being a social animal to a performative animal. So I think.

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  Cause you're a Twitter person.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  I am a Twitter person. And I'm an Instagram person. Yeah.

• 9:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like I am a Twitter and Instagram person. I went through, I would call it a heavy snapping phase last year.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Where it was just Whiskey Neelai on demand.

• 9:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, he's a character that appears in my life. Good guy. He just shows up.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Is he coming tonight?

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  Until he hates you.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  He's coming tonight.

• 9:32Nilay Patel?

  And he's coming for David Pierce tonight.

• 9:36Nilay Patel?

  No, um, and I, I like, I was like, look, this is too real. Like I literally like had a moment where I woke up and I was like, that shit got too real.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, yeah.

• 9:44Nilay Patel?

  I turned off, like I was like done. And now I consume Snapchat heavily because everyone's always posting their stories and that's really fun and interesting.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  So it's fun to just be a consumer on Snapchat. You don't have to snap.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  If your friends are properly, you know, curating their lives.

• 9:57Nilay Patel?

  If you follow like the real verge on Snapchat, that's my guy. Uh, then like, what? Just keep going. Well, no, that's cool. No, it's gonna be awesome when, uh, you know, when, when your new media company is so good at new platforms. That's gonna be super fun for you.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 10:12Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna lap you on the Snapchat.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Sick burn.

• 10:15Nilay Patel?

  I told you this should be torture.

• 10:16David Pierce?

  But the thing I like about, the thing I like about Snapchat, which is what like fundamentally makes Discover make no sense to me. Wait, is it Discovery or Discover?

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Discover.

• 10:23David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 10:23Nilay Patel?

  With a lowercase d. We should get into it. Right. So first describe it.

• 10:26David Pierce?

  But the, the thing I like about Snapchat is that it's so geared towards not ever being a performance art, right? Where it's like, you don't know how many followers you have. You like kinda have to do work to see how many people open your stuff and like, it's not.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Tap once.

• 10:41David Pierce?

  But like, it's not, it's not out there in the way that like, a follower count on Snapchat is not a thing, right? It doesn't matter how many followers you have on Snapchat. Like, you can know if you'd like, but it's not out there.

• 10:51Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:52David Pierce?

  Uh, in the way that it is on Twitter, or Instagram, or anywhere else. But then, which is the opposite of what somebody like, any big media company that wants to be on Discover, which was just announced this week, uh, which is basically like, a small video platform for brands to get in front of Snapchat people, and teens.

• 11:13Nilay Patel?

  Right, so I think that-

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Isn't that similar like what Instagram did when they started having advertisers?

• 11:18David Pierce?

  Right, but then, for Instagram, it's like, they're all about numbers, right? And Snapchat is like, I'm sure showing this stuff to ESPN, and Vice, and Yahoo on the backend, or whatever, but like, it's very much not designed to be like, a competition, and be like, "Look how big we are." It's like, it's weird in this way, where it's like, I don't know what, I don't know what Vice gains by just like, hanging out with my friends.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, no, I mean, I think about Snapchat-

• 11:41Speaker 03

  I think, I think we need to-

• 11:43Nilay Patel?

  Hype check Snapchat.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  It's everywhere.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  It's uncheckable.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no. Priceless.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  The thing about Discover that's really interesting, is that it's not like a Snapchat story the way most people use Snapchat stories. Like, if you look at our Snapchat story, it's all stuff shot with this, stuff that takes place in the office. Discover is like, a separate kind of part of the app, that's professionally made just for Snapchat. And, it's, it's just interesting, because I think it's gonna confuse a lot of people, because they're, the icons are circles, and the stories on the stories page are also circles. So, I think most people are gonna look at Discover, and like, press and hold, and wait to see like, the Vice's like, story, but it's so far from like, a regular Snapchat story. And it's gonna be interesting to see how people receive it. I-

• 12:35Nilay Patel?

  And it's, and it's, it doesn't just go away, right? You can like, watch-

• 12:38Speaker 03

  You can watch it over and over.

• 12:39Nilay Patel?

  Right, so here's the, but here's the thing about Snapchat, so that, we, it's funny, Snapchat, when we covered, is so polarizing, right? It's, people, some people are like, "Whatever, it's for teens and sexting", and then there's like, Sam, who loves it, and then I'm fascinated by it, even though I barely- Use it like I consume Snapchat, but I rarely use it. But what it is like technically underneath it is like maybe the best video sharing service that exists.

• 13:02David Pierce?

  It's really good.

• 13:03Nilay Patel?

  No, you can take a video with your phone in like a second and send it to somebody else and it shows up on their phone and they can watch it and then it's gone.

• 13:09David Pierce?

  Except for the app to except for the fact that the app is crashy as all hell.

• 13:13Nilay Patel?

  Right, but two versions ago wasn't that bad. It's like the lately they've been had some major problems. And what's really interesting about it is people are making, and I think this is like Snapchat's like flaw. So people have developed an entire vocabulary of Snapchat video. Like our video team loves Snapchat. They're great at Snapchat. And we can never show it to anyone, right? It's like there's an entire way that people have of talking and making and creating on Snapchat that is like lost.

• 13:41David Pierce?

  Well, but why like, why is that? What's unique about Snapchat in that way? Like people have developed it because it goes away and now they're making a thing that doesn't go away. And so like all of this like shame and fear of screwing up and having to make it perfect is all going to come back. Like there's a reason that these news brands aren't putting the same iPhone crap that everybody's doing. Because it's there and suddenly it reflects on you in a way that's something that disappears in six seconds.

• 14:05Nilay Patel?

  I think I think it's just really interesting that there's like an art form here that it's it's impossible to be a critic of.

• 14:11David Pierce?

  Right, because it goes away.

• 14:12Nilay Patel?

  It's gone. So like it, the way it feels to me is like.

• 14:15David Pierce?

  But now it doesn't like that's the thing.

• 14:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, undiscovered it does, but that's like whatever like kids are spending their entire lives and people are spending their entire lives like looking at this app and making and creating an art form that is lost.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Even like I can go back onto an old computer and fire it up and find find transcripts from my AIM conversations. And they're great. They're amazing.

• 14:34Nilay Patel?

  No, but but you but you understand why like Vice and whoever else Mashable. CNN. CNN, right? You understand why like those are video companies like Vice is a video like it's a cable network masquerading as a website, right? Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Well, it's sort of, I guess, a little more like what TV used to be before you could, there was any way to record it or go back and watch it again or anything.

• 14:52Nilay Patel?

  And so it's natural that you'd have one more screen of like pro stuff.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  I think, I think just the thing about Discover on the surface is that teens 13 to 23 are spending a crap load of time in Snapchat. And now that this Discover thing is just already there, people are gonna look at it.

• 15:10David Pierce?

  Well, but so here's the question, right? So here's what I want to know.

• 15:12Nilay Patel?

  But are they gonna look at CNN Snapchat?

• 15:14David Pierce?

  Well, so right, this is what I want to know, is, is Discover about CNN saying, how do we get in front of 13 year olds? Or is it about Snapchat saying, how do we get in front of 34 year olds?

• 15:22Nilay Patel?

  No, I think it's about them saying, how do we?

• 15:24Speaker 03

  I think it's about, I think it's about Snapchat saying, we have all of these kids in this app already, who slash what brands do we want to put in front of them? And we'll take all their money also.

• 15:37Nilay Patel?

  I will say this.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  You know, you know, the rest of the

• 15:39Nilay Patel?

  I just gave Snapchat like extreme credit for building like a great video sharing platform, but this app is garbage. Like, it is just hot garbage. Like, it's like Crash, it's not working anymore right now.

• 15:47David Pierce?

  The like, sharing a video mechanism is great and everything else about it is awful.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Wait, so I'm actually confused because why, I don't understand what about this still would not encourage performance? Because it seems like, like-

• 15:58Speaker 03

  A lot of people use Snapchat for performance. Like, there's a, there's a dude called-

• 16:01Nilay Patel?

  Jerome Jarre, right?

• 16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, Jerome Jarre and Nicholas McGallas, these are like huge Vine stars that are finding that Snapchat is, you know, where they should be right now. Like, Jerome Jarre, in the last year, Nick Billen just did a really great profile, you're watching ESPN right now. Nick Billen did a great profile on this kid, he's like 24 from France, he came to New York broke. Then he made a Vine account and just started doing funny stuff on Vine, he's like, has like 5 million followers on Vine. And now he's just totally transitioned to Snapchat. And is our advertisers paying him to Snap? I don't know. But people, a lot of people, like the big Vine stars, I've seen a few of them move over to Snapchat. Why?

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  ESPN has a sponsored ad in the middle of it. Like, one of their snaps is sponsored and has an ad.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, interesting thing about that, it's a 50/50 rev share split between Snapchat and like the media companies. So like, the advertisers will come in and say, we'll give you a million dollars for the one day or whatever, just making up that number, and then both of them get half the million dollars.

• 16:56Nilay Patel?

  It's just a million dollars for one day of snaps.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:58Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I mean, this is like, I get it. Like, it's cool. But like,

• 17:01Speaker 03

  It's like, it's like, okay, for, for the seventeen year old, like, high school kid that comes home, he can just, you know, watch last night's Daily Show, or whatever is on Comedy Central, like, on the bus, instead of like waiting to get home and like finding that video on the computer.

• 17:17Nilay Patel?

  I do like, so you swipe this way to, yeah. So that's like additions, and then go this way to.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  This is live, live.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  I like how this is, there was a long time when the Verge chats would just turn into online shopping. And I've noticed that now it is like mostly turned into like us watching things.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Did you guys buy things on the podcast?

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  I have bought so many phones and laptops on the show, it's like uncountable.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Whoa. Is it like an extra buzz?

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  Like, cause usually when a phone comes out, I'm like, I don't know. And then I'm like Googling on the show, and then like ten people tweet at me, like, you should buy it. I'm like, yeah, I should. And then like I buy it, and then like someone tweets at Becky, and then Becky emails me, and she's like, did you buy a phone?

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Wait, is there any Snapchat performance art?

• 17:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I can't show it to you.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Rondo has a ridiculous Snapchat.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  I mean, like, like, like contemporary artists, like, like, people who would show, like, do performance art in a gallery or something.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I would say Rondo does that kind of stuff in his Snapchat feed. He, there was one time, it was like, probably five hundred seconds worth of video of his bird. And he was like playing music, and it was like a purple light. It was like a whole thing. And it was like, he, he created a story without any words, and each snap was a full ten seconds. And you just sat there holding down each time, and you got this crazy experience that I really can't even explain. You should, so this is, Emily, you should, you should get into Snapchat and find, and find Rondo.

• 18:38David Pierce?

  This is my favorite thing about, like, what you were just saying about it being like early TV before you could record it.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 18:44David Pierce?

  Where it's like, you have conversations like that now, right? Where it's like, it used to be if you didn't watch the show, you'd be like, damn, I didn't watch the show. And then you'd like go find it the next time, and all you could do is talk about it.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:53David Pierce?

  And I've had it, I had it happen with Rondo, where somebody's like, you didn't see his snaps? And then I went back and like furiously added Rondo, and now I will never, ever miss one of his snaps ever again. Cause like, I don't want to miss it the next time. And it's like, because of that, like, that's half the fun of Snapchat. Because people being like, you missed it, don't miss it again. And then like you just, you get in on it.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Do we think that it's like?

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  I'm noticing that you're not wearing your hat.

• 19:14David Pierce?

  So itchy. I am a terrible pirate. I had the telescope.

• 19:17Nilay Patel?

  You are. I think I think it's pretty clear that you're a terrible pirate.

• 19:20David Pierce?

  The thing I don't understand is I've gotten a lot of.

• 19:22Nilay Patel?

  I think I think that's why you're going to.

• 19:24David Pierce?

  Would we call these gifts? I haven't gotten an eye patch. Like, what the hell?

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Well, that's. Interfere with your podcasting duties. You need depth.

• 19:32David Pierce?

  That's a good point.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  I have one more question about this. Wait, what was it? Okay. Do we think, because I'm not, I'm not up on, on, on the philosophy of Snapchat right now, but do we think that it is like kind of a part of the rental economy in general, instead of keeping things and keeping tweets and like you get having a record of things you own, AK followers or whatever, likes that it all goes away. You don't need to own it.

• 19:58Nilay Patel?

  Their origin story like is it's. It's a really interesting comparison because Snapchat definitely started as like a frat boy company to like sext.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  It was, it was a class project for Evan and one of his friends.

• 20:12David Pierce?

  I mean, he like wanted to show his bro, like the girls he was taking home and like didn't want a record of it on his phone.

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. He definitely like wanted to send.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  It was called Snapchat.

• 20:22Nilay Patel?

  It was called what?

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Pickaboo.

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  That's awesome.

• 20:24David Pierce?

  Was it really?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:25Nilay Patel?

  Everyone should be ashamed.

• 20:26David Pierce?

  That's super funny.

• 20:27Nilay Patel?

  But not Evan Spiegel, like, you know, like his emails are out in the world of him being like a pretty douchey frat boy.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  Typical college.

• 20:34Nilay Patel?

  It's just funny.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Weird, a tech guy?

• 20:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But it's funny that you make that connection because I don't see them as being like explicitly part of that rental culture, but it's the corporate culture lines up with Uber so closely.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Right?

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's like, it's right there. Like, that connection is there.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Isn't that a strange kind of the thing that, that these, these companies that are built on not owning and not like not consuming necessarily, obviously spending money, but not hoarding the property.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Unless they're girls that you're taking home, obviously.

• 21:08Nilay Patel?

  Women are indeed property. I think that that much is clear.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but yeah, that it comes out of this, this kind of douchey culture that's, you know, ends up being this sort of non-commercial. I don't know. That's, that's interesting. I hadn't even thought about that.

• 21:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it, I mean, it's like a fact of, and Snapchat. Has dealt with it since the beginning because A like it was started by teens, basically. They had these attitude problems, I'm sure. They've hired now like tons of ex-Facebook executives. So there's like adult supervision all over the place, that company. That's why they're growing so fast and moving into like real media company stuff so quickly. So they are trying to transcend that. And it's Snapchat. So everyone was like, oh, it's for sex. But it's definitely for sexting. That's what it's for, right? It's for sex. Like, and that comes up always. Like Snapchat and sexting are forever linked.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:55Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and it's like, you're watching basically the adults in the room try to get far away from that.

• 22:00David Pierce?

  Well, but isn't it, I mean, isn't that sort of the story of every Silicon Valley success story? Like Facebook started as hot or not.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:06David Pierce?

  It was like all of these, like the, like it's this big cultural thing that like the people who are making these services and apps like, not always, but by and large are like douchey college guys.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  What about Airbnb? Was that originally just like crash places for hookups?

• 22:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man, there's an entire lifestyle. You can live here. You don't own anything, but you're an asshole.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  And you get laid constantly.

• 22:31David Pierce?

  Just with no trace.

• 22:34Nilay Patel?

  Like you got like a jam bag.

• 22:37Nilay Patel?

  Like a rule.

• 22:38David Pierce?

  Somebody like picks up and drops off your laundry.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  You've got a lot of, you've got a lot of statements on your bank account for like, uh, brand products.

• 22:48Nilay Patel?

  No, it's something like, I just think, uh, it's funny because if you look at, I don't know, like it is much as we exist in the media bubble, right? Like the media bubble loved LO, which was like an unsponsored Facebook. And it was like, we're gonna be on LO.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  That feels like a million years ago.

• 23:03Nilay Patel?

  And it was like, it was gonna just flame out because it was never gonna be big. And the media, I think, is like, pretty, like, why Snapchat? Like they, I, I have this conversation a lot and it's just funny. It's, well, because that's where the people are going. Like, P, I think, like, I am very careful with Facebook. It is just a thing. Like, I don't know who is gonna look at my shit on Facebook. And at this point, it's like, I don't, like, my, my parents aren't, like, thank God. Cross my fingers, my parents aren't on Facebook.

• 23:31David Pierce?

  You think?

• 23:32Nilay Patel?

  That would be weird, but everybody they know is.

• 23:34David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Nilay Patel?

  So like, I'm like, I don't swear on Facebook anymore because someone will tell my mom. And like, I'm 34 years old. No, it's a real thing, right? Like, it's, that's a real, like, what? That makes no sense to me, but like, that, so that space is just as public as anything else. And it's weird, because Twitter, for me, like, nobody in my family is on Twitter.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  Speaking of Twitter, perfect segue to move on.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, cool. Hype check segue.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Uh, I've never written one, but I really want to. Um, okay. Look, look, try to, try to keep this.

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  Aren't you gonna be sad when you, when you leave this?

• 24:05David Pierce?

  He died.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  He then died.

• 24:07Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right, all right.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Um, Twitter this week announced, which I still don't have in my app, uh, the ability to post native videos, which is awesome, and to do group DMs. The app update for me, I have group DMs, but I don't have video.

• 24:21David Pierce?

  God, speaking of video platforms, Twitter's native video platform is awful.

• 24:25Nilay Patel?

  It's hot, like, super hot garbage.

• 24:27David Pierce?

  It's so slow.

• 24:28Nilay Patel?

  You can't criticize Twitter in front of Sam, because he gets all sad and defensive.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  No, it's.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  Would you say Twitter's your Bay? Would you say it's on?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Right now, my, my, my at Bay is definitely.

• 24:43Nilay Patel?

  No!

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 24:44David Pierce?

  You did this.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  It's a three-way tie between Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  Why? Why did I go here? All right, let me, why did this happen?

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Three-way Bay.

• 24:53Nilay Patel?

  No, actually, I have a question for Emily. Here's the thing.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:56Nilay Patel?

  And, uh, no, I do. I'm right. It's, it's, it's true. It's a real question. It is not a subtle Sam troll, or a violent threat against David's life. Uh, no, so, Sam is right. So Twitter announced a video platform. Facebook is like, super hot in video platform. We're obviously talking about Snapchat, which is basically a video platform. Do you, do you see anyone not watching YouTube to go to these other places? Because that's the bet everyone's making, right, is that people will create entertainment on all of these other places, and it will just displace text as entertainment, and we'll all just watch videos everywhere all the time. And like, I don't, I don't know. Like, I'm curious. Like, you just came from Sundance, where everyone was doing VR all over the place. But I doubt anyone was like, hey, watch our video on Facebook.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Um, I think, I mean, isn't there kind of an issue of, of bandwidth for a lot of stuff? Like, text is kind of gonna be preferable. I mean, I can load Twitter in so many places where I can't watch a video on YouTube, or watch something on Instagram or whatever, and that alone makes Twitter a, a, a platform of choice for me to get information from, because it generally, I can have 3G service, and I'll get, you know, I'll still be able to read things.

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Stay on the mic, Emily.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  I am on the mic.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I don't, I'm not one of those people who consumes a lot of entertainment on YouTube, I guess. I mostly go there, I guess, to look at advertisements for other entertainment.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Like trailers. That's a really roundabout way to refer to a trailer. Advertisements for entertainment.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  We've been having a lot of philosophical discussions about the trailer recently, so I think that. But, yeah, no, what was the question again?

• 26:38David Pierce?

  Is anybody gonna displace YouTube?

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's kind of the question. It's like, we just, we, like, you can look at it pretty linear. Like, first, there were movies, and then there was television, and television and movies, like, had a relationship for a long time. And then there was internet video, and then internet video and television and movies had a relationship for a long time. And then there was YouTube and Netflix, and they, like, ate television, and then television turned into really long movies, right? And like, that's like a whole little...

• 27:02David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Nilay Patel?

  That's a story that you can tell.

• 27:05David Pierce?

  So you're saying what people are betting on is that instead of, like,

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  Is the next turn?

• 27:07David Pierce?

  Facebook status updates, they'll have videos?

• 27:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, I think Twitter is betting on, like, instead of tweet storming, like, random VCs are gonna, like, hold it, like, they're gonna, like, selfie storm.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  You can't, you can only, the problem with video...

• 27:20David Pierce?

  Selfie storm.

• 27:21Nilay Patel?

  That's good. I made it up, and Farhad will steal it any minute now.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  I do see, I mean, I can totally see that happening, but the problem with video, the problem with anything that exists, that is a temporal way of communicating, I guess, is that you can only do one at a time. You, like, the amount of information you can intake, this is why I don't watch a lot of videos on the internet, because it takes too long.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  I need to read something really fast. I need to skim a whole sheet of stuff. I'm not gonna stop and watch a video.

• 27:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  And so I think that, I actually think, like, as we, as that pressure becomes greater, because of course it will, we'll always wanna be consuming more information in a given amount of seconds, that I, I think that will be the limitation of video.

• 28:00Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's just crazy, because the turn, I think it's like, we haven't figured out how to make money on paper, or off of paper, which is why you're going to a dying print magazine.

• 28:09David Pierce?

  Right.

• 28:09Nilay Patel?

  Just run towards the money, David. That's gonna be great for you.

• 28:11David Pierce?

  Right. Keep going.

• 28:12Nilay Patel?

  No, we haven't. Like, in, there was a time when print magazines like made money. And it was because they could put ads on paper next to words on paper. And like that shift is not just like, it hasn't just happened on the internet.

• 28:24David Pierce?

  Right, it's not that simple.

• 28:25Nilay Patel?

  Like, text is not as easily monetized as it was on paper. And so, but everybody knows how to make money against video. Like, everybody, it's like, put ads on it, like, real ads, like, good ones. And then make them last 30 seconds, and then make people watch them by putting in front of the video.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  I think you can make money off of video, but I think like, you can't dispense with information as easily with video.

• 28:45Nilay Patel?

  No, that's true. Like, it's because it's real time. Like, it takes five minutes. And like, that's why podcasts at like 1.5 speed are a thing.

• 28:51David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Which our producer hates with a passion.

• 28:55David Pierce?

  Hold on, let me, let me, let me say one thing.

• 28:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh, good. Yeah, it's your last day, and now you're just gonna do whatever you want.

• 28:59David Pierce?

  Basically.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  Jerk.

• 29:00David Pierce?

  Uh, so I think the thing, like, the bet that Facebook and Twitter and everybody is making is that you're already there, and they can make more money off of you on video. Right, like, I don't think Facebook is trying to kill YouTube. I think they'd like to kill YouTube.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  I think YouTube is terrified of Facebook.

• 29:13David Pierce?

  I think so too, but I, I think Facebook is less concerned with YouTube than YouTube is with Facebook.

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:18David Pierce?

  Uh, because what Facebook is saying is essentially like, hey, you're already on our page. You'll probably watch a video if you're already here, and it already starts playing. Like, that's why this stuff auto plays.

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:28David Pierce?

  Right, and like, if, for, like, Instagram, for whatever reason, it never really has worked, that I can tell. But what Facebook is saying is like, oh, if you scroll over this thing, like, we already have so much of your attention. If we can get 30% more, and then put a big ass ad in front of it, that's a ton of money. And like, that's gonna work.

• 29:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:44David Pierce?

  Like, I don't see how that doesn't work for Facebook. Well, they have to figure out how to, is how to make them and the people who make the videos for them money.

• 29:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, they have the biggest, their biggest problem is Facebook video, I mean, we put videos on Facebook, we have all the stats.

• 29:56David Pierce?

  Yeah, they do huge, huge numbers.

• 29:58Nilay Patel?

  It's funny when we talk about this stuff, because there's like a line that I shall not cross, which is like, I know a lot of this information.

• 30:05David Pierce?

  But like, I mean, I don't think it's revealing too much to say a lot of people watch videos on Facebook.

• 30:08Nilay Patel?

  A lot of people, but we watch our videos, but like, here's the thing.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  They released a number, it was like a billion views a...

• 30:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's crazy, but like, but that, the key to Facebook is they silently play.

• 30:18David Pierce?

  Right.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:18Nilay Patel?

  But like, if they change it, so like, we're like, oh, I'd like to watch that, and you hit the button, and then like, an ad plays for 30 seconds, like, they will wreck that conversion rate.

• 30:24David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 30:25Nilay Patel?

  Like, I will just scroll, like, screw you, I'm done. Uh, okay, I'm gonna hard transition, because there's a, there's a real reason Emily's here. Which is to tell us stories of adventure from Park City, Utah.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  So you were just at Sundance?

• 30:36Speaker 02

  I was.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  And Sundance sounds like it was actually pretty crazy.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was my first time there. I went with, uh, Brian Bishop and, and Casey Noonan. If you want the full Sundance report, there is a separate podcast, so, you know.

• 30:47David Pierce?

  It's wonderful. Everyone should listen to it.

• 30:49Nilay Patel?

  We pushed it to you like Bono.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can, you can actually, um, yeah.

• 30:53David Pierce?

  It's in your iTunes.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  You can, you can play it while you're over this. You can layer them, and there's a secret message.

• 30:57David Pierce?

  All at 1.5 speed.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:59Nilay Patel?

  And it's Sam just begging for a retweet.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  I don't need your retweets, thank you very much. You see my babe count lately? Thank you very much.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Um, uh...

• 31:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, Sam.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  I just like, I just wanted to crawl on my skin for a second just to...

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  First of all, what was your face? And what was that, like, non-humble brag?

• 31:16Speaker 03

  You were throwing shade, I throw shade right back.

• 31:18Nilay Patel?

  I don't, whatever. Emily, please, please save us.

• 31:21David Pierce?

  What was the, like, tell us a story.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Ask me questions, ask me questions.

• 31:25David Pierce?

  Like, the single strangest encounter you had with a human being at Sundance?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  The single strangest encounter with a human being?

• 31:32David Pierce?

  I feel like there are a lot of weird people at Sundance.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  No, there's not really weird people. I mean, if you've lived in New York City or LA for any amount of time, all of these people will be completely familiar to you. You'll just, they'll just be wearing Searl boots. Like, that's it. Uh, it's, uh, it was really interesting, though, I mean, because I, you know, I was coming at it, like, from the point of view, obviously, of wanting to watch a lot of movies, and it was gonna be a big, like, thing for film lovers to go binge five movies on a day. The thing I ended up thinking about way more, which is obviously what I ended up writing about more in my, um, my diary entries from it, or journal entries, I was saying, trying to say journal, because I, every, but everybody says that they're doing a Sundance diary. I wanted a journal.

• 32:10Nilay Patel?

  Oh, nice.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  And I wanted it pronounced gurnel.

• 32:12Nilay Patel?

  Okay, your gurnel.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  My gurnel. But I, yeah, but, but I, a lot of what I ended up thinking of was actually hype. Hype is like the biggest, was the thing that I found myself walking around thinking about more than any one movie or anything like that. Um, because it's such a strange, small, concentrated ecosphere where everybody goes in knowing nothing and hits the ground and immediately wants to have that, that one line review or report from a movie they saw that they can tell somebody else and, and, and feel in the know about. Um, and I think what, in one, one post where I was talking about that, one of the readers was like, oh, that sounds like CES.

• 32:53David Pierce?

  Yeah. So is it like currency if you're walking around, like you saw the movie that only like a few people have seen?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  I think it just, you know, a lot of times it's not even currency. It's just like you're on a, on a shuttle with a stranger and you need something to talk about. There's that. Um, but yeah, I mean, but yeah, if you're pressed, definitely it's currency. I mean, you know, you want to be able to have the, the speed at which some people would go watch a movie, you'd see like, you would be able to tell a journalist because they would, they would be out like before the credits were even over, like with their laptops already open, like, and going off to some corner to write it, which just, I mean, we didn't really approach it from that way there, but, um, but it's, that, that is, uh, that is a big rush. And it's funny because a lot of these people, a lot of people won't even see these movies, you know? I mean, there are exceptions. There were a few really big deals there, but, um, and I guess a bigger, there, there was a bigger market

• 33:45Speaker 02

  there than it's been in years past, like more stuff was bought, but yeah, no, it was, um, yeah. I thought a lot about, you know, how a movie can go from being something nobody has even seen a trailer for. And then four hours later, after it screams, everybody is rushing to the next screening of it because they heard that everybody cried during it.

• 34:04David Pierce?

  Is that like a unique, like social media enabled thing or is that like a?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  I would be really interested to see what it was like there before that or how word would travel like that. Like, would it take till the next day till everybody had like gone back to the bars and socialized and, you know, actually real time shared the, their, their buzz about movies. Um, but now it's just, you know, you know, like, oh, this movie's getting out now, I'll check. Check my feed and see what people are tweeting out of it and then.

• 34:27David Pierce?

  Was the opposite true too? Like, did you watch movies die in real time? Like, people would come out and be like, this movie's garbage and then you just like never heard about it again?

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Well, that's sort of how I felt when I watched, uh, when I watched advantageous, one of my favorite movies that I saw there. Um, which is also one of the few real sci-fi movies there. And I think you can just feel an energy in the room where you're like, uh, yeah. And then, and then immediately afterwards, I was, I was, I was checking Twitter and I was seeing, you know, what, what are people saying out of it? And there was, you know, noticeable silence compared to other stuff and other stuff that had had, you know, bigger stars in it and, or that wasn't genre. I mean, and that's the thing I think that was a little bit discouraging to me about it is that there is definitely a Sundance film. And that is something that I was kind of joking about ahead of time, but actually being there and seeing the stuff that gets prioritized again and again and again,

• 35:20Speaker 02

  which is mostly coming of age stories about white kids. Uh, there's some exceptions. There's tons of exceptions, but that's like the, one of the biggest deals was this film called Mural and the dying girl, which is based on a book and it was one of my least favorite films that I saw, but it was.

• 35:35David Pierce?

  And everybody else liked it, right?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Everybody.

• 35:37David Pierce?

  You were like the crazy one.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  I felt like the crazy one. I think, and this is what friends of mine who've been before tell me is that like, eight months from now, when these movies come out, everybody will kind of like not be able to remember why they were freaking out so much about this. I don't know.

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  They're like anything.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:52David Pierce?

  Wasn't that true every year at Sundance? Like, there's always like the three movies that everybody's like, oh my God, they're gonna change the world. And then they come out and people are like, oh, those came out?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, the exception, I mean, like, like last year, the big thing there was Boyhood and that's an example of something that actually did end up like, yeah, that, that worked out for them.

• 36:07David Pierce?

  It did.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  It also happened to have, you know, two named talent stars and a beloved director.

• 36:13David Pierce?

  Coming of age tale.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, coming, the, the coming of age tale to end all coming of age tales. So, I mean, it had a lot going for it in that department, but, um, yeah, there's other stuff. And Whiplash was also last year too. That was a big one out of last year. So, you know, all these, another kind of coming of age tale. Um, so, you know.

• 36:30David Pierce?

  Can I, can I just say that I really dislike coming of age tales?

• 36:33Nilay Patel?

  I don't like them. Like, I don't know, every time I-

• 36:36David Pierce?

  It's a broad statement.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  It's dope. I don't know.

• 36:39David Pierce?

  Isn't like, like-

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Anne of Green Gables? You don't fuck with Anne of Green Gables?

• 36:44Nilay Patel?

  Okay, fine.

• 36:47Nilay Patel?

  Screw you, Anne. Get back to your gable. That's awful. That's the worst. I don't, like, I should be fired for that joke. I should have to go work at Wired. That should be my punishment.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Yeah, no.

• 36:57Nilay Patel?

  It's got you. It's just sitting there. I got, I got this much more time. No, like, I, you know, it's like the, it's like the iTunes thing.

• 37:06David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Nilay Patel?

  Like iTunes, like, loves Sundance movies. Like, it's like, comic books? Or a delightful coming-of-age tale?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:12David Pierce?

  Well, aren't these the movies that-

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  And they're always in front of me, and I always watch the trailers, and I'm always like, I bet that's heartwarming and super annoying.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 37:20Speaker 02

  It's the thing, and that's the thing, that, this is the kind of thing that reassure, like, cause at Sundance, you're obviously forced to see a lot of things you probably wouldn't normally see, just because they're there and, you know, you should see them because you were at Sundance and they are a Sundance film. So I saw a lot, a lot of those movies are not things that I would normally seek out in a theater, but I'm seeing them there, and then it's like, I have my preconceived notions, oh yeah, I don't like, care about, you know, a Brooklyn, a Brooklyn family drama or something like that. And, uh, and then I see one, and I'm like, yeah, I, I still don't.

• 37:50David Pierce?

  Is it weird just watching a movie at Sundance? It's a very particular crowd of people to go see a movie with.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's weird. It, it's, uh, I mean, there's a lot of, um, actually, the biggest population of moviegoers there that I was most aware of was the Park City mom.

• 38:05David Pierce?

  Really?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Yes. Uh, or like, local-

• 38:08David Pierce?

  It's just like townies in fur parkas just run up like, let's go see some-

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Is a thing. They're like, yeah, they're, they're like resort, maybe they don't even live there. They live with the winner, they're there to ski or something, and they're like, oh, we'll also catch some movies, and we'll see if we can like-

• 38:20David Pierce?

  They just leave the chalet for the day.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they, they love, yeah, they love that stuff.

• 38:25David Pierce?

  Jason Schwartzman, by the way, like, is Sundance. Like, if you were to personify Sundance, I feel like it's Jason Schwartzman.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Well, Kristen Wiig was, was equally, I think, I think the most prominent people this year there, just in terms of like, being at stuff and being in films also, is Kristen Wiig, James Franco, and I feel like there's a third person who was in several things.

• 38:47Nilay Patel?

  I feel like, um, I was listening to the Vergecast special edition, and I like, it was like on the background, but like, I definitely, my ears perked up when I heard Brian be like, I just can't take James Franco seriously.

• 39:00Nilay Patel?

  And like, it's weird, because the last thing I saw James Franco in was like, on Broadway, in Of Nice and Men, but I had that feeling of being like, this is really serious and like, quite sad. But you're, you're just joshing.

• 39:12David Pierce?

  You're James Franco.

• 39:13Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna do something funny. And it was like, he did nothing funny.

• 39:16David Pierce?

  Well, you know what's weird is, I feel like it was, of all the things he's done, was it the Oscars that he hosted?

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:22David Pierce?

  Where he was like, clearly high and being, that was what ruined James Franco for me.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's when it became less like-

• 39:27David Pierce?

  Pineapple Express, I'm like, it's good, you can still be a serious actor. But then he does that with Anne Hathaway, and I'm like, you're done.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  It's, I think it's-

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. You got Hathaway love.

• 39:34David Pierce?

  I got mad Hathaway love.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, and it's, it's just sort of like, at a certain point, you can be kind of the goofball in the room, or always like, always be super stoned, or always say something weird. But at the, like, that just kind of, I think, crossed the line for a lot of people who are just like, just do your job a little bit, though. Like, you can do like, a goofball stoner version of your job, and that's fine. But like, he was so checked out. And, and I, I mean, I, I don't want to be like, oh, respect the Oscars, they're a storied institution, you need to, you know, show some respect, kid. But like, he's getting paid a lot of money for that.

• 40:09David Pierce?

  Yeah, like, show up.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  And that's, yeah, and it's, it's just sort of, it's sort of gross.

• 40:12David Pierce?

  Like, if Seth Rogen had done it, and like, done Seth Rogen things, it's fine.

• 40:16Nilay Patel?

  Nah, is it fine?

• 40:17David Pierce?

  But James Franco, like, he wasn't even there. I just, I hated, I hate James Franco.

• 40:20Nilay Patel?

  You're so mad. He's so talented. Is he?

• 40:23David Pierce?

  I mean, yeah, he is pretty good.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Oh, he's not.

• 40:25David Pierce?

  But like, I hate that guy.

• 40:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, he has many, he chooses to use them poorly.

• 40:29David Pierce?

  Right.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  Hype check, James Franco.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  I did that already.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  When?

• 40:33Speaker 03

  I vividly remember doing it, and I was like-

• 40:35Nilay Patel?

  In this room?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Hype changes. Hype changes.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  No, he's great. I rewatched, I watched the interview.

• 40:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Uh, and I watched-

• 40:41Nilay Patel?

  You would.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  I bought the interview.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  You watched the interview twice.

• 40:44Nilay Patel?

  It's on Netflix.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  I watched it once.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  Why would you buy that?

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Only watched it once.

• 40:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I bought, I bought it because you had to that day.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I bought it that day, and I watched it like, a week ago.

• 40:50Nilay Patel?

  Think about the number of, like, curious Americans whose curiosity was rewarded by owning the interview.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  It felt good.

• 40:56Nilay Patel?

  Like, that happened to all of us. That's like, a moment that we all-

• 40:59Speaker 02

  I don't own it, I rented it.

• 41:01Nilay Patel?

  Could you rent it that day?

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was six bucks, and then fifteen to buy.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Why on earth would you buy it?

• 41:07Nilay Patel?

  What did I do?

• 41:08Speaker 03

  You're the problem.

• 41:09Nilay Patel?

  We're all in a club together, and that is a club of desperate people buying stupid movies. Wait, so the other thing we need to talk about is, but you didn't hype check Franco. You can't just say I did it already.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  No, he loves him. He loves him so much.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  The love is back.

• 41:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh geez. Alright, Emily, so the other thing we gotta talk about something, which is like a big story all around, was how much VR was there.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know what? I'm not the person to talk to about that because I didn't get to see any of it.

• 41:32Nilay Patel?

  Why not?

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Because they only did The Lost one day, but I mean, I was, and I really wanted to see it because Brian Bishop went and you can read his report on it and it sounds amazing. Basically Oculus is rolling out kind of their first, I think they're getting different filmmakers. This person I think did some shorts for Pixar before this director. And so this film, the first film is called Lost and it's just sort of, it sounds like a really simple short. It's sort of about this big giant, but you are, you are in a film, you're in, it's a computer generated thing. So they don't have to worry so much about the, you know, the resolution of the, of the screen and everything. It's sort of, it's an animated film. But, but you know, there's like credits that roll in it while you're in this three dimensional space in Oculus.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  And that sounds, and then, you know, you're actually a part of the story. It seems like there's very small interactive portions of it, but, but it still feels like you're watching a movie. And that's super exciting. But yeah, no, that, that's actually, because I've seen one thing on Oculus, it's like a narrative thing. And that was the, the, um, the Wild thing that, that Fox did. And that has a fox in it. And the fox is, and the fox is like one of these sort of semi-interactive parts of it. And I'm kind of wondering if we are going to discard with that part that we feel like we need in, in Oculus as far as like a narrative format.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Cause it's like, I, I don't, I don't know why we feel like we have to have something that like is triggered by you looking at, or I don't know. I, I don't know. Cause I, I missed that part when I did the, the Wild thing, like I didn't see it and it's still kind of played out for me. So I don't know.

• 43:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's kind of like you're on rails, right? Like things are going to happen and it's going to move for you because you can't move in an Oculus.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:16Nilay Patel?

  And you can just like look around really hard.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:18Nilay Patel?

  Right? And that's, that's kind of, I mean, I think that's, that's fascinating. And then the interactive stuff, like I saw a picture of, I think it was Casey, like horizontally suspended.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Oh, right. From Birdley. Yeah.

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  Flapping his wings.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  I missed that.

• 43:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it was ridiculous. Wow. And like, I think they thought that was like Brian and Casey from like, I thought that was like the most amazing.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, that sounds really, I, I do wonder about like scaling some of that stuff because Birdley feels like it sounds amazing to me and I haven't, again, I haven't done this stuff, but it feels more like a ride. Whereas the Oculus thing and Lost, that's really more of a film. Like you can call that a film. When I was asking Brian, like what was, what were your favorite movies here? Like he said, Lost. Lost was his favorite movie there. Um, so it's really interesting that, you know, we think about some experiences some way. And, and others as like a story that's being told to us. I think, yeah, I, I would, I would be a little bit nervous about a potential future where we feel like all these films have to be interactive in some way because I think that the beauty of film is that you lay back and like,

• 44:22Speaker 02

  lay back or sit back, either one. But, but you let somebody else's vision be, you know, your complete field of vision and reality for two hours or whatever. And that's, uh, you know, it's, it's kind of passive and there's something nice about that. Um, and I would be, you know, I would be a little bit disappointed if, if it felt like everything had to be like, oh, you're in control of the story. Cause I don't think that that's the most interesting thing about.

• 44:50David Pierce?

  Does that go away even when all you can do is like, look around? I wonder, cause like, there is something to the idea that you just sit on your couch and like look straight ahead and watch a thing in front of you.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:00David Pierce?

  And like, I wonder if that still persists, even if there's something going on like next to you and behind you. And you don't change it, but you can see it differently. You know what I mean? Like, that's the part that, that's why I'm curious. It's like, are you gonna be tired at the end of one of these?

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. It's like, and it's not gonna be relaxing or something. I mean, I think, uh, like, I mean, I understand that like, you know, you can have a character who's like, look over there. And then you look the way they're pointing and then you see the thing that you're supposed to see. But, you know, I would, I, I would still feel like I was controlling it in some way, even though it's like supposed to feel natural and fluid. Like you look over there and you see the thing. But I would, I would still be conscious of like, oh, I, I looked that way. So the sensors in my helmet are triggering an event over there. And that doesn't feel, I don't know, that, that, that still feels a little bit, uh, I don't know, hackneyed or something.

• 45:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, video gamey. I mean, like, that's, that's, I think.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're two different things.

• 45:56Nilay Patel?

  When I talk to the people who work at Polygon, right? They're, they're always like, a thing about Polygon, which I think is really interesting. Is it like, I think it's really natural to think of Polygon as being like an extension of tech stuff.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  Because it's video games.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:08Nilay Patel?

  But like, most of their writers have like drama degrees.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  Or like, screenwriting degrees, or like, film degrees, right? Like, uh, because it's, what they're doing is evaluating performances of various kinds and like, stories and art forms. Uh, and it's like, really funny, because I, A, I don't think that's really obvious to people, and B, it leads to like, a lot of like, talking right over the top of each other. Because I'm like, "Oh, you must be a nerd."

• 46:31Speaker 02

  That's funny. See, I would totally have assumed that, because I mean, the people who went into gaming studies and stuff, that when I, when I was in school, they were all in our department, in the film department.

• 46:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's funny. That reminded me of another conversation we had, well, during Sundance. We were talking about South By, which is the next big thing that's coming up that everyone has to go to. But, they were like, it's, yeah, they're like, "Oh yeah, it's, it's gonna be interesting for our readers to like, kind of realize that, hey, there's some art and some music at South By too." And I was like...

• 47:01Speaker 02

  To me, that's all South By is. Like, the interactive part is like a, like a footnote for me, so.

• 47:07David Pierce?

  For the record, that's how everyone feels about South By.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  I truly hate South By, so. But it's because I never get to go to the music part. I never get to go to the film part or the art part. I always go to interactive, which is like, a hundred startup bros being like, "We started out the company as douchebags, but now we think we have poten-" And it's like, "I don't wanna talk to you."

• 47:24David Pierce?

  No, they didn't say that. They're like, "Come to our party."

• 47:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:27David Pierce?

  And then, you leave.

• 47:27Nilay Patel?

  And then, and then it's always the Nashville party, and it's always awful. It's just like...

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Child's fired.

• 47:33David Pierce?

  It's true. But was it really, like, the thing I wanna know is like, were people at Sundance who don't care about this stuff the way that like, The Verge as a publication does? Like, was everybody talking about VR? Like, were the Park City moms talking about VR?

• 47:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 47:47David Pierce?

  No? So it's not, it's not there yet?

• 47:49Speaker 02

  It's not like, what peop- what the average conversation that you're gonna overhear, or that you're gonna start talking about with somebody within a bar is.

• 47:55David Pierce?

  So it wasn't the hype? You weren't like, riding shuttles, being like, "How about that VR?"

• 47:58Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think that, I think that, on the internet, people can get more excited about VR, because... Right now, it's more of a concept and an exciting thing that people want to learn about and see how it's going to be integrated in their lives. And you can, you can get a sense of that from reading somebody's report on it, or, you know, seeing some photos, or seeing some video or something. And it's, it's a little harder, I think, you know, when you're not at Sundance to understand what's special about the overnight, like this movie with Jason Schwartzman in it, for example. Like, you, you know, that's, that, those are like subtler little differences between different versions of the same form. And so I think, I think that people outside of Park City are probably more curious about that than the people in Park City who are still kind of into seeing what the, what

• 48:43Speaker 02

  this so and so famous actress is doing.

• 48:44David Pierce?

  I feel like you keep bringing up Jason Schwartzman.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I'm fixated.

• 48:47David Pierce?

  Tell me, are you?

• 48:48Nilay Patel?

  He's the Alpha and Omega, the Alpha and Omega of Sundance.

• 48:51David Pierce?

  Everywhere you look, he's there.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, because there's also like Sundance is like where business happens.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  Right? People, like, a lot of people come to Sundance to like buy movies and like figure out distribution deals and like there's Russian oligarchs there being like, I own 10,000 theaters.

• 49:05David Pierce?

  I mean, that's ostensibly the purpose, right? Like, that's, that's theoretically why Sundance exists.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, it's a market. It's not like the biggest market. I mean, Cannes is more of the market, like, over the whole year. And, and Toronto to an extent, too. But, yeah. But, I mean, for, for that indie level of movie, I mean, like, the deals that are being made there, it's like, I think Mural and the dying girl was the, one of the biggest ones and it was, or it set a record, actually, I think, for Sundance for 12 million. So that's the kind of money you're talking about there. And then Dope, I think, was sold for 7 million. So, you know, it's still, it's, it's, it's not like these huge, it's not the biggest deal that such and such a studio is going to do. And it's still all their indie divisions, like, it's like Searchlight and Sony Picture Classics and stuff like that.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  But, but, yeah, I mean, I still, I still think for a certain, yeah, it is a small world, I guess, is what I'm saying. It feels like a small world there. It's a small world of people that care about the stuff right now on the internet. They, for the films that break out and people care about more, that's the rewarding thing, because you see them right now in their infancy when people start, start talking about them. And then, you know, we'll find out half a year from now which of those end up being an actual thing.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  Right. You know what's funny? Because the news that came out of Sundance concurrently about VR was that like airlines are like looking into VR headset is like in-flight entertainment and that shit is dystopic.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 50:29Nilay Patel?

  Like can you like just it's like a thin metal tube hurtling through the air at like 700 miles an hour, 35,000 feet and everyone is just wearing a headset and they're just in another world.

• 50:39David Pierce?

  You know what sounds amazing? That.

• 50:41Nilay Patel?

  I I I do not know about that.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Like what's the motion sickness factor there?

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  That shit sounds crazy.

• 50:48David Pierce?

  No, it's that sounds amazing. Like what?

• 50:49Speaker 02

  That sounds like a really good use of VR.

• 50:51Nilay Patel?

  No, it makes sense. It makes perfect sense.

• 50:53David Pierce?

  On your six hour flight, what if it wasn't a screen this big that is like 400 pixels wide that looks like garbage? What if you could forget that you were on a plane? And just like lie there for six hours?

• 51:02Nilay Patel?

  This makes sense. Like this is the this is the slippery slope.

• 51:05David Pierce?

  If you say Wally, I'm gonna punch you in the face.

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's that.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  I know what you're talking about, though.

• 51:08Nilay Patel?

  But it's like at the individual level, like that sounds great, but it's like the eye walking onto a plane and all of these people are like

• 51:14Speaker 02

  They check out.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  They're like out of and out and just like zone the VR universe.

• 51:18David Pierce?

  You're like, would you like some water?

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, because it's like it's like dealing with an unpleasant situation by removing yourself from it through artificial means.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  And the more we do that, the more we're all gonna be blobs.

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

  It's like you one step away from just like the the stewardess is just like handing out the Vicodin like in flight.

• 51:38David Pierce?

  Also, something I'd be psyched about.

• 51:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm saying at the individual level, this is like, yes.

• 51:44David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Nilay Patel?

  That's what I want. But like

• 51:46David Pierce?

  It's really the I mean, that's the problem with VR in general to me.

• 51:49Nilay Patel?

  That ends that that ends with like the Billy that ends with like Zuckerberg going crazy and like only living on a plane. And just like existing in a world below through his VR headset.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 51:59Nilay Patel?

  That's the final four. That's why he bought Oculus.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  What if what if that's all?

• 52:03David Pierce?

  To live on a plane. He's gonna buy what was the airline? Was it like Qantas Airlines?

• 52:07Nilay Patel?

  Zuckerjet.

• 52:07David Pierce?

  He's gonna buy Qantas Airlines next and be like, it's over.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  You know what it ends up being is people's space travel when you have to have a really, really long space flight. That's what you use it on. And then you're in Oculus, but you're in space. You're in space, but you're not even there. You're in the coolest place in the world, but you don't even want to be there.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  But then you go on a space flight in the Oculus?

• 52:27Nilay Patel?

  You just keep repeating.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  It's like, it's like, how was the trip? Oh, man, the Oculus of it was awesome.

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, like, they're gonna keep moving the seats closer and closer together.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 52:38Nilay Patel?

  And they're just gonna start providing more and more drugs, and then they're like, check it out, here's gear VR.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Everybody's in like a little chicken coop with their heads.

• 52:46Nilay Patel?

  They're just like feeding us through tubes. Like, it's coming, it's super crazy.

• 52:51David Pierce?

  So VR is, it's, it's, that's it, it's over now, we're done.

• 52:54Nilay Patel?

  Can't you just see, like, United Airlines, yep, Samsung, we figured it out, we know what it's good for.

• 52:59David Pierce?

  I will say, though, I am psyched about the first time I get on a plane and, like, walk past the first-class people who I just, like, reflexively hate. And they're all wearing VR glasses, and I get to just, like, stop and just take a picture of each one of them as I walk by.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 53:11David Pierce?

  That's what I want.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  No, this actually is something I've been thinking about a lot with VR, is that you are completely distracted while you're on VR. You're gonna get so much shit stolen from you while you're doing virtual reality.

• 53:21David Pierce?

  And you look like a crazy person.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  You could get murdered while you're doing VR, and, like, the subway station or whatever.

• 53:29Nilay Patel?

  You have to be really dumb. It's like, all of the stories about, like, when the iPod came out, it's like, these white headphones are gonna get you jacked.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be, like, copy and paste, but, like, wearing Oculus at night alone on the street is dangerous.

• 53:42David Pierce?

  I just like the idea of, like, people standing on subway platforms, like, tied to the beams so that nobody can push them onto the subway.

• 53:48Nilay Patel?

  Like, bungee cordy, like, they get all the way to the edge of the platform.

• 53:53David Pierce?

  They're like, no, I'm good, guys, back in the game.

• 53:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm sorry. I'm telling you, no, it's great. VR is totally not gonna curate Wally.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Well, do you think that it looks weird enough to wear it right now, that there will be that barrier, that you can only do it in the privacy of your own home?

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 54:08David Pierce?

  You're not a glass hole. I think planes will work. I don't think people are gonna stand on the subway platform and do it, but I think people will sit on a plane and do anything.

• 54:15Nilay Patel?

  Do you ever have that moment where, like, something really crazy happened to you early in the day, and then, like, you had a really weird conversation, and, like, that is totally contextualized now? Because here's what happened earlier to me today. I was sitting at my chair upstairs, totally normal, pretty quiet. The verge, like, the story meeting was happening, so most of the people were not in the main floor of the office, they were having a meeting. And Addie was behind me, and I didn't realize she was on the phone, she was just listening, and I just heard her, like, yell, "Wally, what about Wally?" I did it. She was talking about VR. Like, I've been wondering about that all day.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  No, no, no. That's not what she was talking about.

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  That's not what she was talking about?

• 54:52Speaker 02

  No, she was on the call with us.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  Oh, really?

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Okay, this is, and this is important. This is a really good segue.

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  All day, like, I feel like, why did she just start yelling "Wally"? But she was on the phone, so I felt bad.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  No, this is, this is, this is, this is a really good segue for a discussion we should have. Okay, so we were talking about Chappie.

• 55:11Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  And we were talking about Mordecai. And we were talking about movies that are terrible and flop. Because they are named after a thing that nobody knows what that person is.

• 55:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's, so that's what she was yelling "Wally"?

• 55:25Speaker 02

  That's what she was yelling about.

• 55:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's totally, I thought I had it.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  But then, but then TC was trying to prove us all wrong by saying like, "What about Harry Potter"? And I was like, "That's not the name of the movie. It's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Then that's more, there's more explanation there. That you don't know who Harry Potter is necessarily, but like, "Oh, that Sorcerer's Stone sounds pretty cool. I'm gonna check it out."

• 55:47Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't know if that is...

• 55:50David Pierce?

  That was what got me.

• 55:51Nilay Patel?

  I disagree with you.

• 55:53David Pierce?

  Stones?

• 55:54Nilay Patel?

  Harry Potter.

• 55:54David Pierce?

  I love Stones. I'm gonna see that movie.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  Harry Potter is a bad example. Shit, I love goblins and fire. Damn, son.

• 56:00David Pierce?

  I love goblins, I love fire. Who knows? How bad could this be?

• 56:03Nilay Patel?

  Dude, I drink out of a goblet every night. Put some fire in that shit?

• 56:06Speaker 02

  A Chamber of Secrets.

• 56:09David Pierce?

  I need one of those. What is this, an instructional video?

• 56:13Speaker 02

  I'm familiar.

• 56:13David Pierce?

  I'll pay for that. 1350, done.

• 56:18Nilay Patel?

  That's great, that's, that's...

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Anyway, this is, this is our theory. I'm gonna do a big list of movies that, that failed because they were named after a person. And Annie Hall does not count.

• 56:29David Pierce?

  What about Medea?

• 56:29Nilay Patel?

  Harry?

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Was that the whole name of the movie?

• 56:33David Pierce?

  Oh crap, I don't know.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 56:34David Pierce?

  I bet it wasn't.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  No, that's the, the Greek, the Greek tragedy is Medea. That is the single name.

• 56:42Nilay Patel?

  What about Anne of Green Gables, huh? Bringing it back.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  No, she lives, that says where she lives. There's more information there. It's not just, it's a location. Also, two people.

• 56:52David Pierce?

  It's not like the old school last name where you, it used to be what you did. It was like Smith if you were a blacksmith. Like her last name is just of Green Gables.

• 56:58Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I'm just saying that Emily's.

• 57:00David Pierce?

  Her father's name is John of Green Gables.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  To guy in a thing is a winning formula, but just guy is definitely doomed. By the way, Chappie is super doomed.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  I know, that's what we were talking about.

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  Like, you can argue like the, the fringes of this, but like right in the middle of it is Chappie. And it's like, yeah.

• 57:16David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 57:16Nilay Patel?

  No one knows that's a story about like a lovable robot who has to fight.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  I didn't even, like, I wasn't even aware of that. I have to say like.

• 57:24Nilay Patel?

  Chappie.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  There's no hype. There's no hype.

• 57:27Nilay Patel?

  No clue.

• 57:27David Pierce?

  I saw a trailer, it looked pretty cute.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, until he has to like fight for his life.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  So the most important.

• 57:34Nilay Patel?

  Until it like goes totally District Nine. What are you, sorry, Emily?

• 57:36Speaker 02

  The most important thing about this movie that is like buried and I totally forgotten about until I was looking at a press release again for today is that Ninja and Yolanda Visser are in it.

• 57:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  And that's like crazy and that's enough to make me want to go see it.

• 57:49Nilay Patel?

  And like Russell Crowe has like basically, they gave him a haircut.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:55Nilay Patel?

  Do you not, have you not seen the trailer?

• 57:56David Pierce?

  No, I don't think so. Excuse me, I'm gonna watch the trailer.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  Let's watch it.

• 58:00David Pierce?

  Everybody be cool.

• 58:01Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna, don't worry, I'm gonna buy a phone.

• 58:03David Pierce?

  I'll be back in a minute.

• 58:04Nilay Patel?

  Emily's gonna watch Snapchat.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  This is gonna get real weird. Uh, no, the trailer's crazy. Uh, uh, oh, I just blanked. What's the, the band? What's the band?

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Oh, Deantward.

• 58:14Nilay Patel?

  Deantward, right? So they're in it as like real characters.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:18David Pierce?

  Fun fact.

• 58:18Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so, but they're in it like for real and they look like themselves. Like they didn't do any like additional casting. They're like, we're building a fucked up version of the future. You should just be in it as yourself.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  Well, the great thing about, that we were talking about is that I remember when they first came out and there was like one video of them and they were just like in their backyard and they're like, you know, shady little neighborhood and they were talking about how much they love Neil Blomkamp and how they had a script that they wanted him to make and like they were like obsessed with District Nine.

• 58:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  And now it's like four years later and the dream came true. So the dream came true for somebody.

• 58:51David Pierce?

  I feel like that's Neil Blomkamp's perpetual problem. Everybody's like, what if you just made District 910 more times?

• 58:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:57David Pierce?

  Because that movie is awesome. And then he's like, what if I made a different movie? And everybody's like, I hate you.

• 59:01Nilay Patel?

  Check out Elysium, guys.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Oh, my god, Elysium. I was so excited for that movie.

• 59:06David Pierce?

  What if all the rich people lived in space?

• 59:08Nilay Patel?

  I was really excited for that movie.

• 59:10David Pierce?

  I was too. It should have been great. It was like such a good idea.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, everything, everything about it, if you explain it to somebody, it still sounds great.

• 59:18David Pierce?

  Right.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  It just, it just wasn't.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The entire third act of that movie is like, oh, the, oh, he's back.

• 59:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, there he is again.

• 59:28David Pierce?

  Hey, Matt, dude.

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, cool. Your super cool health machine works again. Good, now this is, gee, I got it, you're back. What was I gonna say? Oh, somebody is tweeting me Michael Clayton. Here's what, here's what you've done to me. People are just gonna tweet names at me.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  Well, this is what was happening just during our meeting. Was that people were tweeting from the meeting, different, well, just TC, actually.

• 59:53David Pierce?

  That sounds right.

• 59:53Nilay Patel?

  Professional troll TC Sonic was tweeting from the meeting. Oh, me tweets.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  I don't have any.

• 59:59Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna start real douchey, but then we're gonna have a real business plan. It's just gonna be pictures of girls in meetings.

• 1:00:05David Pierce?

  Nice.

• 1:00:06Nilay Patel?

  That's the first wave of adoption.

• 1:00:08David Pierce?

  And then eventually you'll be like a go-to-meeting competitor.

• 1:00:11Nilay Patel?

  Then we build a real conferencing business.

• 1:00:13David Pierce?

  That involve girls in meetings.

• 1:00:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but the backstory.

• 1:00:15David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:00:16Nilay Patel?

  It's like, yeah.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Girls in meetings sounds like a really, really boring sequel to my old podcast.

• 1:00:24David Pierce?

  It's also definitely like a rich shutterstock category.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  Did you see, uh, Ract wrote a story today called, "We Need to Talk About Your Laptop."

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:00:34Nilay Patel?

  It's basically a response to, uh, you know, Lockhart Steele, our editorial director, gave an amazing, like, quote to New York Times. Like, the New York Times wrote, like, a bad-style trend story about how, like, the new media elite don't go out to power lunches anymore. And Locke was like, "Just going to Le Pen quotidien is a massive move." Which is like crazy, because of all of the people who go to lunch, like Locke is like, the power, the power is power launcher of all time. So Ract wrote a story today called, "We Need to Talk About Your Laptop", which is just a list of shit, like crumbs, like types of crumbs. But the, this is awful for the people on the audio, but the stock photo is just amazing. Like, it is the best.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Wait.

• 1:01:12Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's just a woman, like, at a laptop, like, holding, like, an enormous coffee cup and, like, giving the, like, the thumbs up finger. Like, finger gun.

• 1:01:21David Pierce?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:01:23Nilay Patel?

  This is also, I believe, a Wired memo.

• 1:01:26David Pierce?

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:01:26Nilay Patel?

  About keeping your place, especially to clean.

• 1:01:28David Pierce?

  It's gonna be good for me. It's great.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Wait, so are you excited to live on the West Coast?

• 1:01:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so we just moved to Emily. I feel like you guys have like cross-country.

• 1:01:36David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, it missed you is really what it is. It was like, what we need is one more.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Souls!

• 1:01:41David Pierce?

  Exactly.

• 1:01:42Nilay Patel?

  Soul!

• 1:01:46David Pierce?

  That sounds about right.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you're going to San Francisco, which is different than L.A. It's actually not even comparable.

• 1:01:52David Pierce?

  I can't tell you the number of people who I have told that I'm moving to San Francisco, and they immediately are just like, that's the worst thing you could possibly do with your life. Yeah, like Chris Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon, met him outside. He's just like, standing outside, talking to somebody. We were talking, he's like, so you're here to move to San Francisco? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, let me tell you why San Francisco is bullshit. And like, I thought he was kidding. I thought he was gonna like, you know, give me a hug and then go tight. But I stood outside in the freezing cold with that man for like 15 minutes, while he explained to me all the reasons that San Francisco is bullshit. And he made a very compelling case was the problem.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, he probably made a compelling case because it's true.

• 1:02:28David Pierce?

  No, it, uh...

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I hate to break it to you, but San Francisco is terrible.

• 1:02:34David Pierce?

  Burritos, though.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  There's burritos so many places. There are better burritos in San Diego, and San Diego is even more bullshit than San Francisco.

• 1:02:42David Pierce?

  If I could move to San Francisco, if I could move to San Diego, I would do it right now.

• 1:02:46Nilay Patel?

  I would move to San Diego.

• 1:02:46David Pierce?

  San Diego is the city that I go to.

• 1:02:48Nilay Patel?

  Wait, why do you think San Diego is bullshit? Because here's my, I've only been there once. Here is my conception of San Diego. It is full of somewhat annoying but extraordinarily beautiful people who are all just chill the fuck out.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, they're very chill. They're more chill than San Francisco people.

• 1:03:02Nilay Patel?

  San Diego is like ASU-built, climate-controlled dome for its students to move to.

• 1:03:08David Pierce?

  Where it's just 77 and beachy everything.

• 1:03:09Nilay Patel?

  Just take your Jeep Wranglers and drive directly to San Diego. Like, that is my entire conception of San Diego.

• 1:03:16David Pierce?

  Yeah, the first time I went. The first time I went, I was like, I was visiting a friend out there and it was like, 1 o'clock on a Tuesday and he just left work to hang. And I was like, don't you have work? And he was like, nah, pretty much everybody's gone. I was like, whatever. That's cool.

• 1:03:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's the last coast.

• 1:03:32David Pierce?

  Yeah. So we go out on the beach and we're sitting there on the beach because that's what you do at, you know, 1:45 on a Tuesday. And I was like, so what's the difference? He had moved from New York. So I was like, what's the biggest difference between New York and San Diego? And he's like, you know how like, everybody checks the weather obsessively in New York? And I was like, I was like, yeah, of course. And he was like, nobody does that here because it's just like this all the time. And he just like, grandly pointed around and is like, this is my, I was like, I hate you. And then I almost didn't leave.

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  I'm gonna interrupt and say we need to talk about the FCC because humongous changes happened today.

• 1:04:03Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 1:04:05Nilay Patel?

  I spent the early part of my week like at a telecom conference.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  Then talk about it. It's super important. Just mention it. Two minutes.

• 1:04:13Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Why, why is he got to tell you what to do?

• 1:04:17Speaker 03

  Because he just doesn't know how to stay on topic.

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  We're on topic. The topic was David being afraid to his blood and family.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do we really want his last podcast to be about?

• 1:04:28David Pierce?

  Real talk, how many times has the Vergecast ever been on topic?

• 1:04:31Speaker 03

  We're, we're, we're gonna get better around here, David, right? Now that you're leaving, we're gonna get better around here.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Can we have a quick Twitter survey of who wants, who wants us to talk about the FCC right now?

• 1:04:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm just playing the Sarah McLachlan song and having the remaining emotions that I will have.

• 1:04:44David Pierce?

  Do you know how much these rights cost?

• 1:04:51Nilay Patel?

  Now, look, here's what I know, David, and I want, I want to experience this moment with you where this song, I think signifies what you might perceive as love. But I'm telling you.

• 1:05:03David Pierce?

  This is the song you're gonna play when I'm dead.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  Dead animals, dead animals.

• 1:05:06Nilay Patel?

  This is, this is how you die.

• 1:05:09Nilay Patel?

  This is, this is a soundtrack to, to, to your, your demise. It's, sorry, it's really loud, I'm gonna turn it off. Here, okay, David, say something cool about The Verge before you are a traitor, and I believe Jordan has a surprise for you.

• 1:05:23David Pierce?

  Jordan, oh no. Oh god. I'm so sorry, everyone. I, so, today is my last day. This is like, the last thing I'm doing here.

• 1:05:32Nilay Patel?

  No one likes you. I mean, there's one more thing you're doing here, but it's, it's gonna be really damaging to your body.

• 1:05:37David Pierce?

  There is that.

• 1:05:38Nilay Patel?

  Whoa. His liver, specifically his liver. We're gonna force feed David Grain and eat it.

• 1:05:44David Pierce?

  Like, to be clear, the way, the way this night ends for me, is drunk, and just beaten to a bloody pulp with Neelai writing a note, like, Neelai did this on my, like, dead body, and then just like giggling and running away.

• 1:05:56Nilay Patel?

  But you're in a VR headset, so.

• 1:05:58David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's how we kill people.

• 1:06:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think that's right. I, like, so, somebody asked me today what my favorite Verge memory is, and it took me forever to come up with one.

• 1:06:09Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:06:10David Pierce?

  Uh, because there's like, a billion, and I've been here, basically, my entire life. Like, I was, people are like, "Tell me your life story," and I'm like, "Well, I was born, and then I started working at The Verge."

• 1:06:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19David Pierce?

  And then I've been here ever since, and now I'm 66 years old, and here we are.

• 1:06:23Speaker 03

  You look pretty good for 66. I got you.

• 1:06:25David Pierce?

  You look like garbage.

• 1:06:29David Pierce?

  But I think, my actual answer is, uh, I think my favorite Verge memory ever was from our old office, we'd been, which was like, for anyone who doesn't know, basically, a converted, not very nice apartment near Union Square.

• 1:06:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 1:06:45David Pierce?

  Right, okay. So there were like, two little rooms and a little kitchen, and the bathroom was right in the middle, uh, so you always knew who was going to the bathroom, but that's a whole different thing, not relevant to my story.

• 1:06:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's a weird favorite memory of The Verge.

• 1:06:57David Pierce?

  Favorite memory.

• 1:06:58Nilay Patel?

  Like, I knew I was total, like, perfect bathroom information.

• 1:07:04David Pierce?

  Listen, you gotta know things. I'm a journalist, you know, I'm a reporter, it's what I do. But I think my favorite memory, and I think Jordan will probably remember this, was one night, we were at the office and I was trying to take pictures of something. And my favorite thing to do when I was taking pictures would be go out on the windowsill of our office. There were two windows, we were on the 10th floor, and the windows were just open. So you could just like die out the window if you wanted to. And William Savanna, our reviews coordinator, his dog at one point almost fell out the window. Do you remember this?

• 1:07:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33David Pierce?

  That was awful. And then that dog did not come to the office anymore.

• 1:07:35Nilay Patel?

  Nope.

• 1:07:36David Pierce?

  But so there was one night, I'm like perched precariously out on this ledge, trying to get like the little bit of light I can to take a picture. And I don't remember who, but somebody, I think it was Jordan, like comes around the corner looking for me and like doesn't actually know that I'm out there, but comes around as like David, and then like comes around and then like yelps because they see me on the windowsill. And hearing the yelp freaks me out. So I'm sitting there like leaning out over 10 floors and start like tripping and falling out of the window. And I'm like, oh, this is how I die, taking a picture of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.

• 1:08:07Nilay Patel?

  And if there's a way, you're gonna die.

• 1:08:09David Pierce?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:08:09Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's the one.

• 1:08:10David Pierce?

  It seems very appropriate. And then I was like, I grabbed onto the window, pulled myself back up and whoever it was that had said something to me was like, you're very dedicated to your job. And I was like, yeah.

• 1:08:23Nilay Patel?

  And that was it?

• 1:08:23Speaker 03

  That's your favorite, my favorite first memory?

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  That's terrifying.

• 1:08:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28David Pierce?

  Because that was one of many times I've almost died for my job.

• 1:08:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The thing about memories like that is that you realize that over time, working here, and Emily, I believe this is a curse that will afflict you as well, it all just fades into an endless series of Samsung products.

• 1:08:41David Pierce?

  No, people like.

• 1:08:42Nilay Patel?

  Just an endless, never-ending flood of tablets that aren't quite good enough.

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  You will always be at CES.

• 1:08:47David Pierce?

  No, no, the thing is, you're never.

• 1:08:49Nilay Patel?

  Emily's like, get, get, get, and leaves.

• 1:08:50David Pierce?

  The thing is, I'm never at CES. Because you feel this way too. Like, I go to CES, something happens, and then I leave. Every year at CES, I don't remember anything. I have no memories ever from CES.

• 1:09:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01David Pierce?

  They just, I, I have, why I go to Vegas, and then I leave.

• 1:09:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05David Pierce?

  And everything in between is nonsense.

• 1:09:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then, and like our group me at the end of the.

• 1:09:09David Pierce?

  Right. I like catch up and I'm like, okay.

• 1:09:11Nilay Patel?

  It's like illegal.

• 1:09:11David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Nilay Patel?

  Illegal group me. That's why you're banned.

• 1:09:14David Pierce?

  Yeah. I, I don't know, I love The Verge. If I talk too much, I'll cry, so I'm not gonna cry.

• 1:09:19Nilay Patel?

  And I think that's really, when I said I was gonna torture you.

• 1:09:21David Pierce?

  And I have almost cried oh so many times.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  You have to cry on your last podcast. It's like.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  Did you? When you left Crayton?

• 1:09:26Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I cried so much. My last podcast, it was really embarrassing. I didn't think I was going to.

• 1:09:31David Pierce?

  Uh, no, I'm not gonna do it.

• 1:09:32Nilay Patel?

  Let's see what happens.

• 1:09:33David Pierce?

  It's not gonna happen. I'm not gonna cry.

• 1:09:34Nilay Patel?

  You have one, you have, you have a choice. You have a binary choice. You can weep, or you can, or you can dress up like a pirate.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Do you, do you remember?

• 1:09:41David Pierce?

  We both know my choice.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Do you remember the first time that you knew that this was your home and that you were like, you were destined to be here like for a really long time and that you, you had a spiritual connection to it?

• 1:09:52David Pierce?

  It was actually in my interview.

• 1:09:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54David Pierce?

  So I interviewed, my interview was with Joanna Stern, who was my first boss when I got here. R I P. Uh, she's not dead.

• 1:10:02Nilay Patel?

  Geez.

• 1:10:02David Pierce?

  Hi Joanna, I love you.

• 1:10:04Nilay Patel?

  Extremely successful Wall Street Journal columnist Joanna Stern. Okay, fine.

• 1:10:07David Pierce?

  Joanna and Josh Sapolsky, uh, also R I P. Uh, now Bloomberg.

• 1:10:11Nilay Patel?

  Extremely successful Bloomberg editorial director Josh Sapolsky.

• 1:10:13David Pierce?

  Uh, and the, my interview was with the two of them and I sat down and Josh didn't like introduce himself, didn't ask me questions. He just informed me that if I took this job, I wasn't gonna have any friends. I wasn't gonna have any hobbies. I wasn't gonna have a life. I, just nothing. He like, he spent like 30 minutes explaining to me like how god awful this place was gonna be. And then we get to the end and he was like, so what do you think? I was like, okay, I'm in. And then he was like, great. And he left. And that was my whole interview. And then Joanna was like, okay, can you like fill out this piece of paper? And like, maybe we'll call you.

• 1:10:46Nilay Patel?

  Do you know anything about laptops?

• 1:10:47David Pierce?

  Yeah, right. She was like, let's talk about netbooks. And then we talked about netbooks, but that was like, that was when I knew. It was like Josh gave me this like whole long speech. He was like, this will be the only thing you do. And he was right. Like that was, we do, all my friends. Uh, yeah, like all my friends in like the Verge heartbreak is the thing. Uh,

• 1:11:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, Verge breakup club is real.

• 1:11:05David Pierce?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:05Nilay Patel?

  It was more real, I think, earlier.

• 1:11:07David Pierce?

  Yeah. When it was like, when all of us in a smelly office that nobody wanted to be a part of.

• 1:11:12Nilay Patel?

  Startup time.

• 1:11:12David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Nilay Patel?

  Like Verge breakup club was like.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Oh, because everybody got dumped?

• 1:11:16Nilay Patel?

  Uh, wow.

• 1:11:18David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Nilay Patel?

  I didn't know that. Like dumped is like the wrong word, right? It's like everyone just like faded out.

• 1:11:24David Pierce?

  Well, I assume everybody had some version of the conversation of like, it's either me or your job. And then everybody went, uh, and then their significant other was just like, okay, bye.

• 1:11:32Nilay Patel?

  Like, it was, it was that early crew and it's, most of that early crew is still like around. Like the, those stories are like, they, they, they.

• 1:11:40David Pierce?

  Oh yeah. We've all, we were all there.

• 1:11:42Nilay Patel?

  It was, it was real. It was funny because Engadget breakup club had been real too.

• 1:11:46David Pierce?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:46Nilay Patel?

  And I, so I was like the wise old man. I was like, it's, it's blogging. It's blogging kid. Like it was super silly. Yeah. Um, okay.

• 1:11:56David Pierce?

  But that was when I knew. I was in.

• 1:11:57Nilay Patel?

  Here, I'm gonna, uh, whatever. Jordan. So here's what, here's what I want to tell you to the, the loyal listeners of Vergecast. I will say something nice about David, oh god, uh, but it's a lie, because he's a dead to nature. Uh, no, David is very talented. David helped us build this place. Employee number one of The Verge.

• 1:12:13David Pierce?

  Which, by the way, is basically the kind way of saying, "You all refuse to make me a founder."

• 1:12:18Nilay Patel?

  Which, because, because you don't belong here. And I think that's clear. Uh, so get out. Uh, no, it's true, David. And the, the, I will say, I'm very proud of David for taking this job at Wired, even though I think he's, you know, picking the side of evil instead of the side of good. Um...

• 1:12:33David Pierce?

  Their offices are so nice.

• 1:12:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're gonna, I mean, just the amount of fucking pirate ships.

• 1:12:40David Pierce?

  Can you, can I just build a whole pirate ship in their office? And then be like, "I don't know where this came from. Look, it's a pirate ship."

• 1:12:45Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:12:46David Pierce?

  Okay, good. Sounds fine.

• 1:12:47Nilay Patel?

  And I'm telling you the materials to do that. Like lumber is on its way.

• 1:12:52Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, I will say this. David came to us, uh, you were David Pokes intern.

• 1:12:56David Pierce?

  I was.

• 1:12:57Nilay Patel?

  You were a baby laptop reviewer at PC Mag, uh, and you came to us as a baby laptop reviewer. Uh, and over the past four years, you have managed to do this thing where you are going to take the job formerly occupied by Stephen Levy at Wired, which is incredible, and I'm very proud of you, even though you are a stupid jerk. I never want to see your dumb face again, and it's a good thing you're moving across the country.

• 1:13:20David Pierce?

  I hate you. Call me later.

• 1:13:21Nilay Patel?

  Um, because I would hit you with my car if I had to.

• 1:13:24David Pierce?

  Your 2001 Escalade.

• 1:13:25Nilay Patel?

  So that's that. That's for The Verge. My 2000, because I'm gonna buy a 2001 Escalade, my dream car, for $8,000. I'm gonna find you.

• 1:13:33David Pierce?

  You can take it, get it, and set it.

• 1:13:34Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna love tap the shit out of you with it. It's gonna be great. Um, so that's David. Um, please forget that he exists, and don't read him that our competitor.

• 1:13:43David Pierce?

  Goodbye forever.

• 1:13:44Nilay Patel?

  Please unfollow him on Twitter.

• 1:13:45David Pierce?

  R.I.P. me.

• 1:13:45Nilay Patel?

  You can follow any number of the rest of us here at The Verge. You can follow The Verge.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Just follow somebody else named David Pierce. I'm sure that they're so fun.

• 1:13:53Nilay Patel?

  So David is at PierceDavid. Today is the day you unfollow at PierceDavid, find at David Pierce, and confuse the hell out of that guy. True story, because that dude is hired. True story. Straight up one-to-one replacement.

• 1:14:05David Pierce?

  That guy is delightful. He's a lawyer.

• 1:14:09David Pierce?

  He went to ASU. True story. Probably lives in San Diego now. I don't know.

• 1:14:12Nilay Patel?

  He drove his white Jeep directly to San Diego.

• 1:14:15David Pierce?

  Delightful.

• 1:14:17David Pierce?

  Lovely guy.

• 1:14:18Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so we're at The Verge on Twitter.

• 1:14:20Speaker 03

  No, no, no, we're at Verge.

• 1:14:21Nilay Patel?

  Oh shit.

• 1:14:22David Pierce?

  Smiley face.

• 1:14:23Nilay Patel?

  We're at Verge, yeah. There's a script that will correct you if you sure it up. We're at Verge on Twitter, we're at The Real Verge on Snapchat. You should, you should actually go.

• 1:14:33David Pierce?

  Our Snapchat is awesome.

• 1:14:34Nilay Patel?

  If you're not into Snapchat, like, I would actually recommend, like, getting it, just to see what Sam and Helen and the rest of our crew is up to on Snapchat, because it's great.

• 1:14:43Speaker 03

  Youtube.com/TheVerge, you should subscribe, you can't, well, and you should also go to Instagram.com/verge and follow us on Instagram too. Now, throwing the ball back to you, Eli.

• 1:14:53Nilay Patel?

  That was our show, David is dead to you. I'm sorry, I'm gonna, don't worry.

• 1:14:57Speaker 03

  I love you forever, David.