Pod Insights Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast Do You Ever Feel Guilty About Bad Reviews? About this episode Tech YouTuber Michael Fisher aka Mr. Mobile takes over Waveform to interview Marques about everything from whether AI creators will take their jobs to why Marques doesn't use foldable phones.
Michael Fisher YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMrMobile
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Transcript 16,400 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:33 Speaker 01 Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from. But when that context is scattered across tools, threads, and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying blind. That's the problem that Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all these pieces together, from Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more. So, nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who, and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com.
1:18 Speaker 01 That's J-I-R-A dot com.
1:20 Speaker 02 You've done kind of an extraordinary job of staying apolitical. Do you ever wish you could break out of that? Why do you hate fun? Do you think AI creators are a threat? Do you ever feel guilty knowing that a bad review might tank a company?
1:40 Speaker 02 Yo, what is up, people of the internet? And welcome back to a very special episode of the Waveform Podcast. I'm Michael.
1:48 Speaker 01 And I'm Marques.
1:49 Speaker 02 And look at me. Look at me.
1:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:52 Speaker 02 I'm the captain.
1:55 Speaker 02 I apologize.
1:57 Speaker 01 Perfect intro.
1:58 Speaker 02 I'm Michael Fisher. I'm a tech YouTuber, also known as Mr. Mobile. I'm a co-founder of Clicks Technology. And I'm a waveform fan, by the way. I don't know if you knew that.
2:09 Speaker 01 Thank you.
2:10 Speaker 02 I'm an aggressive podcast listener.
2:11 Speaker 01 Nice.
2:12 Speaker 02 Like, for a long time, I was like, I have to keep, I have to get around to Marquez's podcast. And then I finally did, and I was like, hey, this is pretty good. What do you know?
2:18 Speaker 01 Nice.
2:19 Speaker 02 I am not Marquez, but I do get to steal his host chair for this episode. And I'm going to tell you what we're doing here. I'm going to ask him a bunch of questions that I've been saving up since the last time I got to interview you, which was actually 12 years ago.
2:37 Speaker 01 I was gonna say, it's been a minute.
2:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:38 Speaker 01 Wow.
2:39 Speaker 02 Back at Pocket Now, when I, you were still in your bedroom.
2:41 Speaker 01 Right.
2:42 Speaker 02 I believe.
2:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:43 Speaker 02 You still had Honey Nut Cheerios in the back.
2:44 Speaker 01 I sure did.
2:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:46 Speaker 01 I still have that box.
2:47 Speaker 02 Do you? That very box?
2:48 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
2:48 Speaker 02 I might ask you about that later, but I don't think you're ever gonna tell. Have you ever? Well, look, we'll figure it out. We'll get there.
2:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:54 Speaker 02 First, though, we're gonna talk about the art of product reviews. We're gonna talk about the differences between a review and an ad. We're gonna talk about the evolving role of YouTube in the tech world. And, of course, we gotta talk about the tech itself.
3:07 Speaker 01 Sure.
3:09 Speaker 02 Have you, you sound good. Have you forgiven me for the captain joke at the?
3:13 Speaker 01 No, this is great. I thought it was ideal.
3:15 Speaker 02 Excellent. All right. Well, I want to start light. I don't want to jump right into the heavy stuff. I want to start with some tech questions just to get us, get us loose.
3:21 Speaker 01 Sure.
3:21 Speaker 02 And happy here. I could not help but notice that you are not daily driving a foldable. Why do you hate fun?
3:31 Speaker 01 The folds, it's a really interesting question. I really like the folds, and every time I test one, I always think, man, it's finally it. I'm finally gonna be a fold person.
3:42 Speaker 02 Right.
3:42 Speaker 01 And then I go back to, because I review phones all the time. I'll go back to testing a slab. And then I just end up using the slab anyway. Like, I don't, like, I don't use the openness enough. I, for me, it's email, occasional social media drafting and like one or two other things.
4:01 Speaker 02 You're talking about the big boy foldables. You're talking about the wide boys.
4:03 Speaker 01 Right.
4:04 Speaker 02 And so you're not even considering the clamshell. You're like, no, never, keep that away from me, it's fine.
4:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:08 Speaker 02 Huh, interesting.
4:09 Speaker 01 So, yeah, I, I mostly, I'll have a foldable and I'll mostly use it closed. And the more I use it closed, the more I'm like, well, I should just be using a slab so I can have more battery and more screen.
4:18 Speaker 02 And you never miss that inside screen, huh?
4:20 Speaker 01 Well, I do miss it once in a while, but not enough to fully switch back.
4:24 Speaker 02 Okay, you think it'll change when Apple does one next year?
4:27 Speaker 01 Um, I honestly don't think so, for me personally. I still think I'm so, I have an, I have a tablet that I use for tablet things.
4:34 Speaker 02 Interesting.
4:35 Speaker 01 So, for the, the stuff that I would open my phone for, but not go all the way to the tablet, there's like a very small number of things for me personally, so I'm not dailying a foldable.
4:44 Speaker 02 Do you think that the category will continue to exist and, and flourish? It's not gonna go the way of, of 3D phones, then?
4:50 Speaker 01 No, I think it'll continue to exist. I think, it's funny, every time I see a foldable in the wild, I kind of think about like, what type of person is this? I was on a flight recently and the lady next to me had a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.
5:02 Speaker 02 Best place for a foldable.
5:03 Speaker 01 She never once closed it.
5:05 Speaker 02 To open the whole time?
5:06 Speaker 01 Open the whole time.
5:06 Speaker 02 Heck, yeah.
5:07 Speaker 01 Put it down next to her, open, picked it up, open, read emails, open, never once closed it. And I thought, that's a type.
5:12 Speaker 02 Love that, yes, it is.
5:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:14 Speaker 02 Well, we can come back to that. I don't, I don't want to beat foldables' death right up top. Um, you're one of the few people I know who's, uh, as big a phone nerd as I am. If you could take, and I'm sorry that you didn't, but listeners, viewers, where Marquez has not heard these questions, the vast majority of them, so I'm sorry you didn't get to prep for this one.
5:30 Speaker 01 Okay.
5:31 Speaker 02 If you could take any modern phone and the capabilities of any modern phone, stuff it into the casing of any old phone.
5:37 Speaker 01 Ooh.
5:38 Speaker 02 What, what bizarre Frankenstein's monster would you create?
5:42 Speaker 01 I can take only two phones or I can take a bunch of phones.
5:45 Speaker 02 Oh, you can choose as many capabilities of modern phone as you want, but you have to stuff it all into the same casing from the past.
5:54 Speaker 01 Sure. Okay. Now, anytime anyone says, uh, old phone, I always have to contextualize.
6:01 Speaker 02 Right.
6:01 Speaker 01 I'm thirty one. An old phone to me is ten years old.
6:05 Speaker 02 So not a Galaxy S three. Like, that's, you know.
6:08 Speaker 01 I was going almost that far back. I was going HTC one.
6:12 Speaker 02 Oh.
6:13 Speaker 01 And the M seven, the aluminum block, the boom sound speakers. And back in the day, they had a, yeah, well, they had a Google Play edition of this phone back in the day, and I loved that. But I would take like, like a modern Pixel, for example, but also give me a Snapdragon eight Gen Elite or something like that.
6:32 Speaker 02 Good.
6:32 Speaker 01 And stuff it into that old aluminum wonder. I think that would be a sick phone.
6:37 Speaker 02 That would be a great phone. Would you keep Beats, by the way? Like, would you, could you, would you retain the Beats audio on the boom sound?
6:42 Speaker 01 Hmm. Doesn't matter too much. I mean, it was kind of nice. I liked the way they sounded. They were big, front-facing speakers. Anyone who watches videos on the phone, awesome.
6:50 Speaker 02 Yes.
6:50 Speaker 01 Uh, but I think that was a single camera on the back, so I guess just give me the primary, you know, Pixel camera. Give me a nice black AMOLED. Give me like, yeah, give me all the, all the software.
7:01 Speaker 02 Okay. All right. Yeah. I didn't expect you to go that, that recent, because I like, I think old phones and I'm not thirty one, so.
7:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think a lot of people, when I say old phone, go way further back than that.
7:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm like, give me a flip phone with a hinge that reverses the display and like, put it down and like, yeah, give me a StarTech Rainbow Edition. Uh, okay. Last, last little warm-up question. What is your absolute favorite gadget right now? So to clarify, not a phone, not a car, not a laptop.
7:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:26 Speaker 02 Certainly not a tablet.
7:27 Speaker 01 Sure. Hasselblad X two D Mark II.
7:30 Speaker 02 This is a camera.
7:31 Speaker 01 This is a camera. Unfortunately, it's a seven thousand dollar medium format camera.
7:35 Speaker 02 Of course.
7:35 Speaker 01 It's extremely unattainable and ridiculous.
7:37 Speaker 02 Right.
7:38 Speaker 01 It's, it's almost absurd.
7:40 Speaker 02 Is that why it's your favorite? Because it's the absurdity or because it does something amazing?
7:44 Speaker 01 A little bit of both. Like, I had used and talked about Hasselblad cameras in the past being so slow and clunky and immobile that it like forces me to be more intentional with each photo. And you can blast all the smartphone photos that you want, but when you're you're sitting down and you're taking one photo, you take your time with it with a Hasselblad. And it's it's partially because it sucks at autofocus and like the whole thing is just slow to shoot with.
8:07 Speaker 02 You have to take your time.
8:08 Speaker 01 You have to be taking your time.
8:09 Speaker 02 Kind of bad, right?
8:10 Speaker 01 But this new one is 100 megapixel medium format formula, but also with the speed of phase detect autofocus and continuous autofocus and and and built in HDR and just all these other things that make it like, almost like daily driving a supercar. It's like this weird, crazy, fun thing.
8:30 Speaker 02 So it preserves the intentionality, but doesn't make it hurt as much when you're using it?
8:34 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. It preserves a lot of the intentionality, but like opens a couple more doors.
8:39 Speaker 02 Got it.
8:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:40 Speaker 02 I was using, I was out up at, out of upstate with my girlfriend this past weekend, and she was using Dispo. You ever use that on the iPhone?
8:46 Speaker 01 The app. Oh, yeah. Was that David Dobrik's app or something?
8:49 Speaker 02 I believe so. I don't know, but I like it.
8:50 Speaker 01 It like mimics.
8:51 Speaker 02 It mimics a disposable camera on your iPhone. And I actually liked that, not just for the style, but for what you described just then of this like kind of, you're gonna take one shot. You're gonna set up, you're gonna do one, and if it doesn't come out, well, sorry.
9:03 Speaker 01 The moment's gone.
9:04 Speaker 02 Exactly. Right. You missed it. I love that. That's good. We might come back to that at the end about intentionality.
9:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:09 Speaker 02 Let's talk. Let's get serious now.
9:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:11 Speaker 02 Uh, on the life and work of a YouTuber.
9:15 Speaker 01 You live in it.
9:15 Speaker 02 I know. You've, well, you've been living it for 15 years.
9:18 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
9:18 Speaker 02 Uh, I've been doing it for almost as long. Do you still feel like you're capable of speaking to the products you review in a way that's relevant to a modern audience? Or do you feel like pressure or or concern that the audience is gonna get younger and younger, and you're gonna have a harder and harder time doing that?
9:36 Speaker 01 Oh, interesting. That's not where I thought you were going. Uh. So yeah, I do, I do think I, it's a skill that, that you develop as you, as you make pieces of content to share to the masses. You have to understand those masses.
9:49 Speaker 02 Right.
9:49 Speaker 01 And so, yeah, as I've made more videos, I've gotten better at talking to the same masses, but then the masses grow and include new groups of people that I have to also think about. Younger people, for example.
10:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:03 Speaker 01 Uh, or even in the specific case of reviewing tech products, the people that make the product. Like, there's a lot of consideration when it comes to like, all the parts of the audience. Uh, but I think so. I think that's one of the skills I've developed, yeah.
10:18 Speaker 02 Do you think you'll be able to consistently hone that skill? Cause I mean, people, you know, the audience will continue being replenished at the low end. To get really dark, it'll keep, you know, evaporating at the high end.
10:29 Speaker 01 No, it's true. Yeah.
10:30 Speaker 02 And I mean, at what point, because I, I'm putting myself into this question because I feel like I've already, I decided at some point that I was gonna not focus on the, on the youth.
10:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I think that's a trap that YouTubers can fall into is to, uh, is to see the, the available, like the eyeballs of like the younger audience and to try to cater towards them. And when you are a young person, it makes sense. Like when I started as a 14 year old, I was making videos, believe it or not, for other 14 year olds who were into tech. As a 31 year old, it feels a little less natural to make videos for 14 year olds and it will continue to feel less and less natural. So I think the idea basically is to continue to talk to audiences that are similar to me in some way, at the expense of maybe some of the, the youth eyeballs. And I think that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
11:19 Speaker 02 Cool. It also prevents you from falling into the trap of like patronizing or, you know, like talking about.
11:23 Speaker 01 I do think that, yeah. It kinda feels, yeah, bad.
11:28 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah.
11:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:30 Speaker 02 Let's talk about the stuff we're covering. I mean, since we last spoke, the smartphone world has settled into this like really dull predictability, in my opinion, even the foldables, even the exotic categories, especially in the US.
11:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:40 Speaker 02 And China is still doing really fun stuff, but we can't get a lot of them here. So have you found ways of keeping phones interesting to you, or have you had to, or have you not had to? Like, I've had to find new ways of keeping myself interested in the job.
11:55 Speaker 01 Totally. I, the part that keeps it interesting to me is the stories. The stories behind why certain things change, the stories behind the releases, or the hype, or the failed features, or whatever, there's always a story behind it.
12:11 Speaker 02 Yes.
12:12 Speaker 01 So even if like, we're reviewing the OnePlus 15 this week, which is another phone.
12:18 Speaker 02 We are indeed.
12:18 Speaker 01 Right?
12:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:20 Speaker 01 There are so many ways that this could be just a boring video of like, yeah, it's got the new chip, and it's got the new RAM, and the new software, and it's another slab.
12:29 Speaker 02 Paint job.
12:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. But finding a theme, or finding a reason why they did something that you didn't expect them to do, or went backwards a little bit, and trying to wrap that all into a video, the storytelling part, keeps it interesting to me. Even if I'm not sitting there going, wow, what a phone, it's the, it's the behind the scenes of the production of telling that story.
12:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:50 Speaker 01 That is the interesting part to me.
12:52 Speaker 02 Does that hold true for phones that you like, I mean, the OnePlus 15 maybe is an example of this. I know for me, I'm not gonna name them, but I know for me, every time a phone, a particular phone comes out every year, there are two or three where I'm like, I would not, given the choice, I would not cover this, but it's too newsworthy, I have to cover it.
13:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:09 Speaker 02 What is the ratio of that to you? Like, if you had to mix them down, if you had to say like, alright, here's a video I really wanna do about a product I'm really interested in, versus, here's the thing that I have to do, because if I don't, I can't support the channel. I get to, we have to make money, we have to stay relevant, we preserve authority.
13:25 Speaker 01 That's such a good question. I think it's almost 100% videos I wanna make.
13:29 Speaker 02 No way.
13:29 Speaker 01 There are maybe.
13:30 Speaker 02 No way, really?
13:31 Speaker 01 And I'll tell you why. Cause there's, there are two or three or four that come to mind, or five, that are like, content strategy decisions, like, a new colorway for a phone that already exists, or an unboxing for a phone where we already know what comes in the box, right? But. I am such a content strategy nerd that the fact that the tech is that interesting and outweighs what's in the content is interesting to me. It's this weird thing where like, yeah, 97% of the videos, I'm excited about it and I can't wait to make this video. And then it's the new red iPhone colorway, for example, right?
14:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:08 Speaker 01 I know you didn't want to say the name of a phone, but like, that's one of them.
14:11 Speaker 02 Sure.
14:11 Speaker 01 It's like, okay, that's, that's a video where I ordinarily would not cover it and there's so many other examples of that. But I know that when this video publishes, it's going to get three and a half million views for some reason. Why? That's interesting to me.
14:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:26 Speaker 01 And so I'll, I'll make the video and I'll acknowledge it in the video. Like you guys are already commenting that this is a useless video, but I just want you to keep scrolling down a little bit and you see the view count? That's why this video exists and it's supporting other videos on the channel and that's interesting to me. So there's a lot going on. Obviously, the new phone is not interesting, but...
14:44 Speaker 02 That is a broad use of the word interesting, but I'll take it.
14:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, the content strategy and I...
14:50 Speaker 02 The tactic itself, the strategy itself.
14:51 Speaker 01 Yes.
14:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:52 Speaker 01 And I think, and I've just, I've told the octopus analogy a million times, but I've distilled one of my functions in this studio environment as the content strategist. So I, I pay a lot of attention to that.
15:02 Speaker 02 Is that an arm you're ever gonna cut off?
15:04 Speaker 01 That's one of the hearts I'm never cutting out.
15:06 Speaker 02 Okay.
15:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:06 Speaker 02 Okay, got it. One of the ways I've found of, of keeping this fresh, because I, it's funny, I don't have that same perspective and I think it's a really useful one. I've had to change the videos themselves to keep myself interested. To, oftentimes to the detriment of the videos. You remember when Asus did that space edition laptop a couple of years ago? They, it was like, it was like a NASA edition. They had an LED on the cover. It was all like gray.
15:31 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:32 Speaker 02 A piece of spatial equipment.
15:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
15:33 Speaker 02 I was like, this is cool enough on its own, but I'm gonna take it to Kennedy Space Center and review it there and watch a rocket launch, right? And then I just crossed an ocean to, and to break a record nobody knows about because I couldn't bear to do another smart watch review the same way. Um, but there's a sacrifice there because in that example, uh, ocean liner nerds are gonna love half the video and they're gonna not gonna care about the watches and vice versa.
15:57 Speaker 01 Hmm.
15:57 Speaker 02 The space one is just ridiculous. So you don't do a lot of those often, but you did one recently, the top five sports tech.
16:05 Speaker 01 Hmm.
16:05 Speaker 02 That was, it was really fun. And one of the most upvoted comments there was like, it's really fun to see Marquez like get excited. About now that you're, now that you're, don't get excited about tech, but like you, it felt like you were showing us a part of yourself that we don't get to see very often.
16:21 Speaker 01 Sure.
16:22 Speaker 02 But, you know, first of all, would you like to do more of those or can we expect you to do more of those or, or not? Was that just a?
16:28 Speaker 01 Uh, definitely. Yes. It is exciting specifically because it is a challenge that I don't get a lot of reps at. I get a lot of reps at new smartphone is coming out. You have an audience interested in tech. How do you tell this tech story to this audience?
16:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:41 Speaker 01 I do not have a lot of reps at new sports tech is available. That's specifically better for your recovery between workouts. And a thing that you do on the side that nobody hears about very often.
16:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:53 Speaker 01 How do you tell that story or share that in a way that's interesting to these people?
16:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely.
16:58 Speaker 01 So it's just a different challenge.
17:00 Speaker 02 Right. I, it's, I, for me, that keeps me energized in the, in the process, but you had the same issue, I noticed. Like that video underperformed compared to your usual format.
17:10 Speaker 01 Totally.
17:10 Speaker 02 Does that bother you at all? Or is it just an example of like, no, sometimes I gotta make a video for me?
17:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, it's, it's a, you've heard so many times, the one for me, one for them type thing.
17:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:20 Speaker 01 That was one for me. There was also a content strategy part of my brain. Uh, that's looking at the area under the curve where like, I know that people are not going to watch the iPhone 15 review two years later.
17:35 Speaker 02 Hmm.
17:35 Speaker 01 Like tech, when it's timely, has this really big spike at the beginning and then an incredibly short tail.
17:41 Speaker 02 Falls right off.
17:42 Speaker 01 You know about this, like super short tail.
17:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:44 Speaker 01 But these more evergreen, as we call them, videos, because they are not extremely timely and it's just a sports tech video. Super small initial curve, but a way longer tail.
17:55 Speaker 02 Right.
17:55 Speaker 01 In a way that the area under the curve in five years will probably be better than an old gadget review.
18:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:02 Speaker 01 So I don't mind it underperforming now.
18:03 Speaker 02 Makes sense. And YouTube gives you that bone often on the analytics. It'll be like not, fewer people are choosing to watch this video, but they're watching for longer.
18:10 Speaker 01 Exactly. And that's a good indicator for when I check back in five years.
18:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Good call. Um, do you, this is a weird question because it's one I've been thinking about for myself recently. Do you have a preference for how people watch your videos? By which I mean, like, if you can envision the ideal scenario for someone who is consuming an MKBHD video, like, is it someone on a tablet on a commute? Or on a couch, on a big screen TV, or like on a phone in a toilet? Like, what? Where do you, where do you, where do you want people to be to watch an MKBHD?
18:40 Speaker 01 I'm hoping phone on the toilet. No, I-
18:42 Speaker 02 A hundred percent.
18:43 Speaker 01 I think-
18:43 Speaker 02 Phone in the shower is a real move.
18:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, right? That's like, I've never been asked that before. And when you started saying that, what I pictured was how often I watch videos, which is on a desktop in a browser, switching to 4K, full screening and kicking back a little bit.
18:58 Speaker 02 Okay.
18:59 Speaker 01 And like really watching the video.
19:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:01 Speaker 01 And maybe that's how I watch it because I make videos and so that's just a unique behavior.
19:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:07 Speaker 01 But I do hope that there's some version of like appreciating the small details while they're, I hope they replay stuff once in a while just to catch something that they might have missed.
19:15 Speaker 02 Sure.
19:17 Speaker 01 But yeah, I mean, we upload these videos in 4K for a reason. So hopefully a few people are watching in the highest resolution, like I'm trying to.
19:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course.
19:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:26 Speaker 02 For me, it's, I like, I would like it if people watched YouTube like I watch YouTube, which is on a big screen TV on my couch.
19:32 Speaker 01 You're the, one of the TV viewers.
19:34 Speaker 02 I'm one of the TV guys.
19:34 Speaker 01 I hear about these TV viewers and I'm like-
19:37 Speaker 02 It, dude, it's a lifestyle, man.
19:38 Speaker 01 So, so you open the TV app-
19:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:41 Speaker 01 And you scroll, are you home paging or just seeing what pops up?
19:45 Speaker 02 I am home paging and my algorithm is really well tuned now. I got a lot of Edmund Fitzgerald content this year.
19:50 Speaker 01 It's gotta be because if you're, because subscription box is one place, but the home feed, the more you use it, the more it's tuned.
19:57 Speaker 02 Trouble with the subscription box on the TV is it shows you shorts. Not trying to watch shorts on a TV.
20:02 Speaker 01 It does? And it plays them?
20:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's annoying.
20:04 Speaker 01 Is it a carousel when you open a short?
20:06 Speaker 02 I don't know. I've never done it.
20:08 Speaker 01 Okay, good.
20:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:09 Speaker 01 Don't find out.
20:10 Speaker 02 I won't. I'm not giving it that signal that I approve.
20:12 Speaker 01 It's funny, the videos, um, 15 years ago, a long tech video was seven minutes long.
20:17 Speaker 02 I know, yeah.
20:18 Speaker 01 Now a short tech video is seven minutes long.
20:20 Speaker 02 A hundred percent, yeah.
20:21 Speaker 01 And I think that's correlated pretty directly with a lot more TV viewers. And YouTube talks about this all the time and I've noticed it. And I'm happy that you're one of the TV viewers. That is really interesting.
20:32 Speaker 02 Me too. And thank you for the, thank you pandemic lockdown. I think that's what did it.
20:36 Speaker 01 Sure, yeah.
20:38 Speaker 02 We're, we're talking about it already. I just want to touch on it. Uh, long form is obviously your bread and butter. Uh, because I don't watch short form, I don't know the answer to this question. What about short form? Like, how, how important is it to your, to your strategy? Um, and, and, and then more interesting to me, is it something you do because you have to? Or is it exciting to you in any way?
20:58 Speaker 01 It's changed. So, uh, I love content strategy questions. This is right up my alley. I've thought a lot about this.
21:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:04 Speaker 01 Yes, long form is my bread and butter, always has been, probably always will be. But you see the proliferation of shorts. They're everywhere and they're exploding in popularity. And you go to a, one of these YouTube creator summits and all they're talking about is short form. And it kind of feels like I have to be in short form. So that was the beginning. I made a shorts channel separately. I was like, my audience doesn't want this, but let me see how it does. Eventually we find a way to like, bring it to the main channel and like mix shorts in. But as I'm making these shorts, I'm learning a lot about how to make shorts, how I think about what a short vertical video is. And maybe how it can drive viewership to the long videos as well.
21:44 Speaker 02 Right? Yeah.
21:45 Speaker 01 And it's, it slowly became more and more of, I want to be good at this and speak this language and make it also my bread and butter. And my shorts went from every single one being 59 and a half seconds because I suck at compressing this stuff into shorts. Into like, wow, we just made one that was 25 seconds and it was the best one that we've made. And it's become a very conscious part of the content strategy. It's the top of the funnel. It'll just go out and take viewers and the funnel and people will find along for it. Yeah.
22:16 Speaker 02 That's the right way to think about it. This is not a question. This is a compliment. Like, because it's the opposite of how I do it. You know, in some ways I'm an old man, right? And actually in a lot of ways I'm an old man. And, and I remember getting pushed real hard by an agent at one point who wanted to rep me. Who was like, listen, you gotta be on, you gotta be on TikTok. And I said, I really don't want to be. And he's like, you gotta skate to where, you gotta go to where the people are. Like, I get that. Also, if I wanted to spend every day doing something I didn't want to do, I would just get a regular job. And, um, that's been okay for me, but I think the, the move is instead to say, this is difficult. This is something I'm not used to. Let me do it. Let me get good at it. Now, do you like doing it?
22:54 Speaker 01 I like it. Yeah. And I kind of view, I've changed again the lens through like, dang, we should do a short every single day. I've had to think about like, okay. What is a good short? How do I measure the success of a short? What do I think is a good idea versus a maybe okay idea for a short? And all these new, different, interesting questions. So, yeah, now I enjoy making them.
23:16 Speaker 02 Cause it's a sense of new challenges that you can excel at.
23:18 Speaker 01 Exactly. The new challenge of like, I think we just had this set, we were talking about on Waveform, that 700,000 watch hours of shorts in the past three months, which is like a crazy number. But the fact that those people just swiped and it was just served to them. That is some person that may find a channel that wouldn't have.
23:39 Speaker 02 It may. Do you find that that is, is the case? Cause I think that's one of my things about short form that I don't like is like, it seems like it's this fire hose. My friend David Kogan pointed this out to me. He's like, this isn't for, like, no one is noticing who's making the content. They're just watching it. If they like it, they're swiping onto the next one. You don't.
23:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. Very valid. Yeah. I think you have to do your shorts in a way that makes the character presenting very quickly memorable.
24:03 Speaker 01 Like if you're a Mr. Beast, you don't have to do that. Like the second I see your face, they know you're Mr. Beast.
24:06 Speaker 02 Right.
24:07 Speaker 01 But if I'm scrolling shorts and I see like a person like handing, like showing me a product, to me that feels a little like an ad.
24:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:15 Speaker 01 And I'm not thinking I want to watch that.
24:17 Speaker 02 Right.
24:17 Speaker 01 But if I get like a nice hook and then a person, maybe it's not an ad. Maybe now it's just a really interesting thing this person found and that's a little more appealing. So I'm, you know, there's no science to it yet. This is just like random things I'm like spewing out, but like.
24:30 Speaker 02 Trying and seeing what works.
24:31 Speaker 01 Yeah. There are certain things that seem to work better as far as like getting your character to appear in shorts, which helps people remember that they've seen the character before and maybe subscribe more quickly than if they hadn't remembered it.
24:43 Speaker 02 Got it. Yeah. All right, good. I should be taking notes on this. I'm gonna listen to this episode later when I have to do shorts.
24:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:49 Speaker 02 Do you think, um, I mean, I feel like I know the answer to this question, but do you feel like short form is a threat to long form or will it always be a compliment to it?
24:57 Speaker 01 I think it's a compliment to it. At first it was like, is this taking out of the pie?
25:01 Speaker 02 Right.
25:01 Speaker 01 It's just a whole new pie, which doesn't happen very often.
25:03 Speaker 02 No, true.
25:04 Speaker 01 But like TikTok made a whole new pie and then YouTube came along, added shorts. And it's like, long form viewership is doing better than ever, but clearly there's a whole new pie.
25:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:13 Speaker 02 Speaking of threats, do you think AI creators are, are, are a threat to, to us? Like is, is a fake, not necessarily a fake, Mark, cause just like, is a fake army of, of unreal people going to unseat us?
25:28 Speaker 01 Intrinsicly, no, because I have this belief with no founding evidence that people want to watch people.
25:38 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
25:40 Speaker 01 But there is evidence of successful AI creators.
25:44 Speaker 02 There are.
25:45 Speaker 01 And I, I think I just believe that they are successful because of the novelty of a successful AI creator.
25:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:51 Speaker 01 And I think if it's all lowest common denominator AI slop, then it's all bottom feeder slop and it's not like standing out.
25:58 Speaker 02 Right.
25:59 Speaker 01 I think people still want to watch.
26:00 Speaker 02 A little spike and then people will be like, no, you know what? I'd rather have a real person.
26:03 Speaker 01 A person, yeah. I, I still believe that to be true.
26:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:06 Speaker 01 Although I can't really prove it yet.
26:08 Speaker 02 And no, neither can I. And I, I, it's funny. If, if there were any wood in this room, I would knock on it.
26:14 Speaker 01 It's all fake wood and laminate and like mesh and metal.
26:16 Speaker 02 It's all very nice though. I like it. I like it a lot. It's clean. One more on the creator economy, then I want to ask you another question. It's, um, it's a fickle thing, the creator economy. I mean, in that, in our specific corner of it, we're almost entirely dependent on external factors. Companies have to release products that we can review. Sponsors have to continue finding our content worthwhile or worth paying for. Do you ever feel like, as I do every day, that it could collapse at any moment?
26:43 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. Like a bubble?
26:45 Speaker 02 Not like a bubble because there's actual value here.
26:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, we've moved on from AI.
26:49 Speaker 01 Yeah. Cause I think when, when you say collapse, it almost implies like that it's being held up by something flimsy like it could collapse.
26:56 Speaker 02 Right. And I don't feel like that, but I feel like there, there, I've heard people, you know, speculate and, and I've heard people try to track, you know, the downward trend in, in sponsor spends. You know, obviously the creator space is getting more full with more creators every day. Influencers are, are, you know, it feels like there's a million introduced to the flow every minute.
27:16 Speaker 01 Totally.
27:16 Speaker 02 It's getting diluted.
27:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:17 Speaker 02 Um, and maybe if it doesn't collapse overnight, maybe, maybe if it helps, don't visualize that. But do you, do you feel like this could all go away with, with very short notice?
27:25 Speaker 01 So, so like for an individual channel, maybe yes.
27:31 Speaker 01 And, and I think that's just because there's more competition. There's more parody than ever before. So if this new device comes out and 60 videos come out about it.
27:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:43 Speaker 01 Why watch mine? Like that, make that to an extent makes it feel like, uh, I'm just one of the dots, you know?
27:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:49 Speaker 01 But I think, once you've built up, which I think you have, some sort of a base of people who are interested in what you have to say, which, and that comes with a lot of reps and a lot of proving yourself and being honest and trustworthy. People care about what you have to say.
28:03 Speaker 02 Sure.
28:04 Speaker 01 And I think that that is enough of like a nucleus to keep it alive.
28:08 Speaker 02 Hmm.
28:08 Speaker 01 Um, whether there's more or less around you.
28:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, I've always said that if you have something, when people come to, as I'm sure they do to you hundreds by the day, uh, what, what are, what is your advice for an up and coming creator? And I always say, if you have something different to say, or a different way of saying it, then it's worth doing.
28:24 Speaker 01 Sure.
28:24 Speaker 02 Right?
28:24 Speaker 01 Totally. Yeah.
28:27 Speaker 02 Just for a fun thought experiment. If it did, if it did end tomorrow, okay? And, uh, if we assume for the purposes of this question, that you've somehow managed to save $0 over the past 15 years, what would you do for money? What would you do for a job?
28:41 Speaker 01 You know, it's funny, initially, so my channel goes away, but the economy still exists.
28:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:45 Speaker 01 So initially, what's funny? Well, what I went to school for, and what I went to college thinking that I was going to do, was that I was going to work in marketing for a tech company that works with creators. I thought I would be on the other side of that email chain that I'm on now.
29:01 Speaker 02 Interesting. Okay.
29:02 Speaker 01 So in a world where, insert tech company here, needs a campaign for a new product, they have a marketing manager that organizes it, you know, decides they want to work with creators, does that whole thing? I thought that would be me.
29:16 Speaker 02 Okay.
29:16 Speaker 01 And I think I'd still have that skill, because I've seen it. I think I, I would probably do that.
29:22 Speaker 02 So you wouldn't, it's so interesting, because you wouldn't leave the world, like you would just be on the other side of it.
29:26 Speaker 01 Right. I have the, the baseline of knowledge useful to, to be valuable in that world still.
29:33 Speaker 02 See, that's funny. So that's, it's a smart answer. I, I wouldn't look at, I, you'd never find me with a camera in my hand again. I would be a tour bus driver at Kennedy Space Center.
29:41 Speaker 01 Oh, specifically?
29:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:43 Speaker 01 That's sick. I mean, I would love to have a much more interesting, like a novel answer where I like, I mean, obviously I play a sport that I really like, but that's not really a full-time job.
29:52 Speaker 02 Right.
29:53 Speaker 01 It's like, I kinda don't have anything like that. Like, it would be cool.
29:56 Speaker 02 It would, yeah.
29:57 Speaker 01 Full-time ultimate first be professional.
29:58 Speaker 02 It sure would, yeah.
29:59 Speaker 01 That wouldn't really work, would it?
30:02 Speaker 02 See, that's, that's a shame, because, you know, you're great at it.
30:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:07 Speaker 02 All right, let's pivot. We're going to talk about making things.
30:10 Speaker 01 I love that.
30:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, Mark has the maker. I am a co-founder of an accessory company called Clicks Technology. It's physical keyboards for smartphones. And you are now the chief creative partner at Ridge.
30:22 Speaker 01 Yes.
30:23 Speaker 02 Neither of which was true when we last spoke. So this is a fun new chapter for us both. I'm going to ask you what everyone now asks me.
30:30 Speaker 01 Okay.
30:31 Speaker 02 The world's most predictable question. How does being the builder of a product change the way you cover products?
30:36 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
30:37 Speaker 02 Do you have the urge that I had to suppress for a minute to use a softer touch? Because now you know how hard it is to make something.
30:44 Speaker 01 Right. Yeah, I think actually part of why I enjoy being on the maker's side more is I have so much more exposure to and more knowledge about like how hard it is and what types of challenges and decisions go into making things.
30:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:00 Speaker 01 So I think you could argue that it has impacted my coverage just in that I consider more of these things. And sometimes it probably sounds like I'm defending some more things that seem incomprehensible, yeah, on the surface.
31:13 Speaker 02 Right.
31:15 Speaker 01 But I think, yeah, like I said earlier, like I know that the people who are about to buy the product are watching it. I also know that the people who just worked for years on making the product are also watching this. And so it would be naive to not include that perspective in my coverage. So I think there is a fair amount of like, yeah, understanding that side of it.
31:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:34 Speaker 01 I don't think it makes it softer. I just think it's better to understand why decisions went into making the thing.
31:39 Speaker 02 Same. Yeah, I remember like I'll look at some of my old reviews and I'll criticize the selection of a component. And it's like, okay, like fair criticism, but it's so much better when you can say like, I get why they had to like, the yields weren't there.
31:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:52 Speaker 02 They couldn't, you know, you can't buy, for example, I don't know what silicon carbon, you can't buy it in that, in these quantities yet.
31:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. That's a good example. There's all, I'll notice myself using phrases like, it seems like they.
32:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:04 Speaker 01 Or you know what I think they were thinking like that sort of thing.
32:07 Speaker 02 What maybe they were up against.
32:09 Speaker 01 Which again is good for storytelling. Like if I just go and think, you know, I'm very black and white, like this, good, this, bad, can't believe they did that. That's a little boring, but I think if you go like. Tell the story of the person making the product in the product. That's way more interesting.
32:25 Speaker 02 What you're describing is almost the inverse of something that I've found like this law that I have yet to name. But it is my theory that on social media or Reddit, any response from somebody that starts with the phrase or a variation of the phrase, why didn't they just? Doesn't have enough understanding of how things are made.
32:40 Speaker 01 Valid.
32:41 Speaker 02 Right?
32:41 Speaker 01 That's that needs a name.
32:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, it does. We got it. Let's, let's come up with something.
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34:59 Speaker 02 Do you remember when BlackBerry did the BlackBerry 10 launch?
35:03 Speaker 01 Yes.
35:03 Speaker 02 And the chief creative officer or whatever was Alicia Keys?
35:07 Speaker 01 Yes, yes.
35:08 Speaker 02 In what ways are you not the Alicia Keys of Ridge?
35:12 Speaker 01 Oh, valid.
35:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, because I get asked this, Eclipse is like, are you just the hype man? I'm like, no, I'm just working the product. I do this other stuff, but like, yes, I'm the most visible face attached to it, so.
35:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, okay. So with all due respect to the goat, Alicia Keys.
35:23 Speaker 02 Of course, and sorry, no disrespect. Apologies.
35:25 Speaker 01 Big fan.
35:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:26 Speaker 01 Appreciate you.
35:27 Speaker 02 For sure.
35:27 Speaker 01 But I have no idea what she knows about Blackberries or phones or any of that.
35:30 Speaker 02 Right.
35:31 Speaker 01 What I can say is that Ridge was like the perfect partner for me personally, because I had so many ideas for products I wanted to work on and things that I wanted to change in the like everyday carry space, which is where they were primo like positioned. Like they did wallets already, but there's so much everyday carry stuff.
35:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, they do watchpans and all that stuff.
35:50 Speaker 01 Exactly. Power banks, a little bit of technology stuff too.
35:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:53 Speaker 01 And, and we're working on more stuff that I'll try not to accidentally say out loud.
35:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, no, go ahead, go ahead. Feel free.
35:58 Speaker 01 But the idea.
35:59 Speaker 02 Show stuff here.
36:00 Speaker 01 Is that like I, they're a small enough company that I have some input in steering and creating and innovating, but they're a big enough company that they can actually do it.
36:09 Speaker 02 Ah.
36:10 Speaker 01 Right? So like I could have worked with, insert smaller company here who also has ambitions to making a cool thing. And I suggest a power bank with MagSafe and these cables and this material. And they go, great idea. We can't get supply enough to make that.
36:23 Speaker 02 Maybe in five years we can do it, right?
36:25 Speaker 01 Exactly.
36:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:26 Speaker 01 And there's also a version of like Nike or something where I'm like, I have all these ideas for product and they're like, cool, but we're Nike. So we're going to make you a thing and we're going to hand it to you and you're going to put your name on it and that's the end of the story.
36:38 Speaker 02 Right, yeah.
36:39 Speaker 01 So thankfully they're, they're right in the middle and it's been really awesome so far.
36:43 Speaker 02 Do you get people on social like? Mis perceiving or misunderstanding your role. You know, I'm heavy into product design, product championing, all that stuff. But people come to me on social media for like everything from shipping delays to, you know, product like feedback.
37:01 Speaker 01 Tech support.
37:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. How do you even handle that? Cause I can't. Here's the thing, if I ignore it, you get some, you get a lot more inbound than I do. But if I ignore it, I feel like I'm ignoring a customer. That doesn't feel good. Like I have to hand off everybody to people who can actually do things.
37:14 Speaker 01 Sure.
37:15 Speaker 02 In the office, cause I'm sitting there being like, no, I'm, I'm busy deciding whether a spacebar should be a millimeter shorter.
37:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's probably a valid way of handling it. I mean, I feel like, I don't know if anyone thinks I'm running tech support at Ridge, but it's like, if I was in your position, obviously you make it very clear what you work on and the input that you have and like the decisions that you make that go into the final thing, you can point at those things. But yeah, it's like, this is a company with a lot of other people who work on a lot of other parts of this and someone is inevitably closer to that than I am. So take it away. I think that's probably the best way to handle it.
37:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:49 Speaker 02 Can you, can you see a world where you flip the script and go from full-time reviewer and part-time product maker to the exact opposite?
37:56 Speaker 01 Ah, I enjoy making videos too much, but actually now that I think about your phrasing, yes, I think like full-time maker, part-time reviewer is probably more sustainable.
38:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:13 Speaker 01 Like the treadmill isn't as fast. There's not as much work.
38:16 Speaker 02 You get off the hamster wheel, which is nice.
38:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, we're on a hamster wheel.
38:19 Speaker 02 We sure are.
38:20 Speaker 01 Whether we like it or not, like we stop driving this Uber, it stops making money, right?
38:24 Speaker 02 Exactly right.
38:24 Speaker 01 So I think, yeah, the goal is to build something that can exist without your daily input. And then that allows you to take the foot off the gas for the thing that's like the passion project, which maybe you'd make a few less videos, but you'd still make videos.
38:40 Speaker 02 Right.
38:41 Speaker 01 I think I could see that, yeah.
38:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that would be a cooler balance at some point.
38:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:45 Speaker 02 Let's get back to reviewing. You're happy with that?
38:47 Speaker 01 I love reviewing.
38:48 Speaker 02 It's good.
38:48 Speaker 01 It's my favorite thing.
38:50 Speaker 02 Bouncing around here. I like it. I want to talk about a scourge that has visited our, our segment. I'm not gonna, not gonna call out any names. Some of them are my friends. But I've seen this thing happening. I wonder if you've seen it too. People who are doing phone reviews, carrying their, the phone that they're reviewing, without their personal SIM inside of it, or without any SIM inside of it, and while they have their main iPhone in the other pocket.
39:14 Speaker 01 I see this a lot. Yeah.
39:15 Speaker 02 Yeah. Do you swap into every phone you review? You've got your primary SIM in, in whatever you're reviewing?
39:22 Speaker 01 Yes. And this is why I overreacted to eSIM. The OnePlus, so I'm an AT&T person.
39:29 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting.
39:30 Speaker 01 And I, did you try to put AT&T on the OnePlus 15?
39:33 Speaker 02 I'm a, I'm a T-Mobile guy and I'm a Verizon guy for reviews.
39:36 Speaker 01 Okay, that makes perfect sense. Cause I tried to put my AT&T SIM in the OnePlus 15 and it wasn't approved for the network yet. They had this whole long approval process. So I could have put my main SIM in it.
39:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:45 Speaker 01 So I'm talking to OnePlus about it. They shipped me a T-Mobile SIM, blah, blah, blah. It, it, it is annoying, but yes, I do main the device. Cause you learn way more about it by maining it.
39:55 Speaker 02 Absolutely. You are forced to use it.
39:57 Speaker 01 Exactly. And to live through its, its, not only live through its flaws, but then find potential workarounds for its flaws. Cause if I-
40:03 Speaker 02 So that you can keep doing your thing.
40:05 Speaker 01 Exactly. If I run into a flaw, not maining it, I swap to the other phone and solve the problem. But if I'm maining that phone, I find a flaw, I get around it, and I figure out that, okay, you can still use this phone despite this flaw. I learn way more that way.
40:18 Speaker 02 Yes.
40:18 Speaker 01 But it is so annoying sometimes.
40:20 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
40:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:22 Speaker 02 Here's the thing. In the States, we have the blue bubble, green bubble thing. Does that introduce problems into your personal life? Do you have to tell, like?
40:29 Speaker 01 So I, and I famously carry two phones.
40:31 Speaker 02 Same.
40:31 Speaker 01 Basically for this exact reason. It's, it's not my username, but it's like-
40:35 Speaker 02 It's not just a Twitter handle, it's a lifestyle.
40:37 Speaker 01 It's a lifestyle. Exactly. So yes, um, there are notoriously things that I just do on the iPhone because they are better to do on the iPhone.
40:46 Speaker 02 True.
40:46 Speaker 01 When I main a phone, my iPhone use goes down a bit, like my screen on time is like an hour a day or less or whatever.
40:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:55 Speaker 01 But yeah, when I'm testing iPhones, then my Android use goes down, but the iPhones like twice a year or whatever. So it's not that, not that hard.
41:01 Speaker 02 True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough.
41:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:03 Speaker 02 I don't know. And I've always got the iPhone in my backpack as a B-roll camera. And I'm sure that's
41:08 Speaker 01 Nice.
41:08 Speaker 02 Probably, probably the case for you too.
41:10 Speaker 01 I got two pockets. I got two pockets.
41:12 Speaker 02 Well, yeah. All right. What? So you're just saying you're not a backpack man?
41:15 Speaker 01 No, I have a backpack, but I got two Sims.
41:17 Speaker 02 Oh, well, yeah.
41:18 Speaker 01 So I have my main SIM in the Android phone. I have my second SIM in the iPhone.
41:23 Speaker 02 Okay.
41:24 Speaker 01 And then I also have a backpack full of crap.
41:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:26 Speaker 01 Which is probably not healthy.
41:28 Speaker 02 The way it goes. No.
41:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:31 Speaker 02 Let's talk about reviews of non-phones for, for, for a second. You got famously some backlash on your reviews of the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI pen, which is confusing to me because they're both unquestionably great products.
41:45 Speaker 01 Yeah. That's what I was about to say.
41:48 Speaker 02 Do you think that people, I mean, you know, to, to, you know, I think everyone knows what the backlash was, but it was like, there was this criticism that you were, you know, perhaps being glib, flippant, or not forgiving enough of these new companies. And, you know, one of them failed as a business. And then, you know, Fisker, there's, we've had these, a lot of these examples. Do you think people would have responded so negatively a decade ago, given the same products? Or has something changed about the way people view or understand reviews recently or semi recently?
42:22 Speaker 01 I, I think that's a really good question. I, I think it actually is in the scale of what we do a little bit more.
42:32 Speaker 01 Socially, people love punching up and hate punching down.
42:36 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
42:36 Speaker 01 And I think, you know, five, 10 years ago, when we had smaller channels and it was Seemingly less impactful on the product to give it a negative, or you would say something bad about a product.
42:48 Speaker 02 Didn't matter what we said.
42:49 Speaker 01 Didn't matter, it was what it was, the company was gonna do its thing, it's punching up. And I think people, for whatever reason, saw the balance tipping and finally it was me with ex-subscribers and startup, it felt like punching down.
43:03 Speaker 02 Felt like bullying.
43:04 Speaker 01 And they didn't like that as much.
43:05 Speaker 02 Right.
43:06 Speaker 01 My perspective didn't change, my methodology didn't change, I'm still reviewing it as like, should you buy this or not, clearly no, this is actually one of the worst things I've ever reviewed.
43:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:15 Speaker 01 But because it felt like punching down, there was a bit more of that like pushback and reaction, which is understandable.
43:21 Speaker 02 Yes, now do you think, I have a pet theory.
43:24 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
43:25 Speaker 02 I think that the recent change that is relevant here is that influencer, influencer coverage of products has multiplied like 11 million fold in the past decade. And that is almost universally positive coverage. It's not review content on the whole, it's almost always like, I'm here at this very exciting thing and look, and now it's blue, or whatever. And I feel like that has changed the expectation broadly for like, oh, I'm watching product-focused content, it's probably gonna be good. And when it's negative, people maybe get bumped by that and it's like, this guy sure doesn't know how to like a new thing.
44:07 Speaker 01 Interesting.
44:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a theory, I have no data to back it up.
44:11 Speaker 01 I think, well, I'll give you one of my theories.
44:14 Speaker 02 Please.
44:15 Speaker 01 Well, it's not a theory, I guess it's an observation, which is basically that when I started 15 years ago, in order to stand out in YouTube's landscape, being a tech channel was enough. It's like, oh, I make tech videos, oh, that's the kind of channel you are, got it, got it.
44:29 Speaker 02 It's like a niche.
44:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. And a few years later, it was like, oh, I make, okay, I make software tutorials, which is a part of tech, but you know, you can make gadget videos or whatever, so that was a segment of it. And then now, you know, go to fast forward to 2020, 2025. There is the tech channel, but there's also the unboxing channel. There is the unboxing and destroy it channel. There is the review channel. There's the only reviews Apple products channel. There's the only positively reviews Apple's products channel. There's the only negatively reviews Apple's competitors channel. Like there's, everyone has a tiny slot that they live in to stand out and be a little bit different. And I think you saw way more negative sentiment as a way of standing out.
45:14 Speaker 01 And so now there's way more videos of whatever comes out, I've got something negative to say about it.
45:20 Speaker 02 Sure.
45:20 Speaker 01 And that was kind of like a weird byproduct of like the niche being more saturated.
45:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's interesting. There is like a flip side to my example, right? Yeah. Oh God, but then there's that, that pressure exists to counter whatever's out there.
45:34 Speaker 01 Right. And especially with the, with what people kind of talk about, which is like how early you are in the wave of like a product comes out and there's the initial wave. The, the cycle is like, okay, everyone who's on day one. And then if you're not on day one, you're late. So now how do you stand out from all the day one stuff people already watched?
45:52 Speaker 02 The truth.
45:52 Speaker 01 I gotta say something different.
45:54 Speaker 02 Right.
45:54 Speaker 01 I gotta imply everyone on day one was wrong.
45:56 Speaker 02 Of course.
45:56 Speaker 01 And if it was a good product and everyone on day one said nice things, guess what I'm saying?
46:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:00 Speaker 01 So that's not helpful.
46:02 Speaker 02 Sure.
46:02 Speaker 01 But it's out there.
46:03 Speaker 02 But it is out there, yeah.
46:06 Speaker 02 I do not like surfacing this question because I feel strongly about my own answer to it, but it's a good question. So I'll ask it.
46:11 Speaker 01 Sure.
46:12 Speaker 02 Do you ever feel guilty knowing that a bad review might tank a company?
46:15 Speaker 01 No.
46:15 Speaker 02 Yeah. That's, I also feel that way.
46:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. There is a famous quote, I'm trying to remember who said it.
46:23 Speaker 01 But I'm pretty sure it goes, I don't give a about your stock price. Was it Walt Mossberg? It was Walt Mossberg.
46:30 Speaker 02 Was it Mossberg? Yeah.
46:31 Speaker 01 Yeah. And, and that, you know, he's writing for the Journal or the Times or whatever it is. And he's very impactful and he'll give a negative review. And he got asked about it and it's, I literally couldn't care less about the stock price of the company. And if it's a startup, it's less about the stock price and more about can they afford to make it to the next product or not?
46:49 Speaker 02 Sure.
46:50 Speaker 01 And so, yeah, maybe you feel a little guilt in knowing that they won't make it to the next product. But I'm not accelerating that. I'm not causing your product to be bad.
46:59 Speaker 02 I think you said that in your do do bad reviews kill companies video, you were like,
47:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:03 Speaker 02 No, bad products kill companies. If I can paraphrase your
47:07 Speaker 01 Yep.
47:07 Speaker 02 Your, your, your, your theme. And I think that's, that's true. Whatever you, whatever review you make is going to accelerate a trend that was already existing.
47:13 Speaker 01 Exactly.
47:14 Speaker 02 Right.
47:14 Speaker 01 I am not causing the trend, but I, you could argue that I would accelerate it.
47:19 Speaker 02 Sure.
47:20 Speaker 01 But also think about this, a product is terrible. Everyone is saying it's terrible. Someone like big comes out and says it's great. Does that
47:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:29 Speaker 01 Help anything?
47:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:31 Speaker 01 Or do more people buy it and find out it's terrible and then get even more negative feedback?
47:35 Speaker 02 It's so funny. Uh, I, I was not, I was like a midsize pocket nowadays, like pretty small. And everyone else hated, you mentioned it before, the red hydrogen one.
47:46 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. I remember that.
47:48 Speaker 02 And I also thought it was a problem, but by the time I got around to it, I was like, you know, this isn't as bad as everybody's saying. And I did my review, which was much more, more moderate. I think I still came away with a don't buy, but I was like, yeah, but there's a lot to like here. And the comments just roasted me. How dare you give this any points at all?
48:06 Speaker 01 They wanted to see pile on.
48:07 Speaker 02 Exactly.
48:08 Speaker 01 That's crazy.
48:08 Speaker 02 Which is, you know, a very human thing, but it's unfortunate.
48:13 Speaker 02 It's speaking of unfortunate. If we can get deep for a second.
48:17 Speaker 02 When we started, I think it would be my argument that tech was a relatively frivolous thing. You know, you could tell people you made videos about technology and then you'd be like, oh, wow, fun. That's cool. Wow. Now tech has, has become so intertwined with everything in the world. That's like, you know, so much of the world is not great. Do you ever feel disenchanted by it all? Like, I mean, it's as, as we as a society and, and as reviewers had it better back when everything was just kind of a fancy toy?
48:45 Speaker 01 That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think to an extent, everything is tech has always been kind of true. Like there's, you know, whether it's high tech or super impactful, like obviously there's very, very political intertwined, like technologies that people are talking a lot about now. And you kind of feel like that is taking over tech and that's what people think of as tech.
49:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:06 Speaker 01 But everything has always been tech, so I don't feel that differently about it now.
49:12 Speaker 02 Really?
49:12 Speaker 01 I thought, I, because I, I do cover some of this stuff.
49:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:16 Speaker 01 And I think what I'm still trying to answer is, is this good? Should you use it? Should you buy it? But I'm not, and maybe this is bad. Maybe this is something I should adjust, but I'm not really thinking as much about. But what are the political ramifications of you using a product made in this country? Or like the way it's made or how recyclable, like all these other things that people are talking more about now.
49:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. And it feels like almost like that wouldn't fit on your main channel because your, your mission there is unchanged. Like, is this good or is this bad? What's it like to use this? But it's almost like a whole other channel could be spun up to, to cover exactly.
49:48 Speaker 01 Oh, totally. And I actually have like a sort of a, a template, like bullet point list of things I want to make sure I talk about when I review certain products. And I added sustainability, for example, to that list. And I realized that I don't talk about it with every product because it's not really a part of the story with every product. But for certain products, it is very much a part of the story. I just talked to Apple about the way they 3D print the titanium for the Apple Watches to use, to have less leftover waste material. It's like, that's kind of sick. I'd probably mention that.
50:18 Speaker 02 Right.
50:19 Speaker 01 And then another phone comes out and I, I don't talk about how they didn't put the charger in the box because none of them did. And it's not really interesting for the story.
50:25 Speaker 02 Worthy anymore. Right, of course.
50:26 Speaker 01 So I don't know. It's something I could do better is to try to, you know, weave that into the story in some way, if it makes sense.
50:33 Speaker 02 I think I could do it better too. I think we all could. And I think, but what is nice is I think there's a lot of pressure to do that. There's increasing pressure to do that from certain corners of the audience. And I think, I thought for a couple of years ago that that was like kind of a, kind of a greenwashing trend that would, that would collapse. And I'm glad it really hasn't. So I'm glad people still care about it.
50:51 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, these are the biggest companies in the world, shipping the most volume of the most stuff. So if they can make little changes and then they make a big deal about it, that seems like greenwashing. But you look behind the scenes with the numbers and it's like, well, it is helping.
51:03 Speaker 02 Actually, look in volume. Yeah.
51:04 Speaker 01 Kind of not against shining a little bit of a light on that. That's fine. Yeah.
51:09 Speaker 02 Related news, you've done kind of an extraordinary job of staying apolitical.
51:16 Speaker 01 Sure.
51:17 Speaker 02 Even as it seems everything has become political. Do you ever wish you could break out of that and address like a polarizing or fraught topic, or are you happy not to have all of the accompanying negative attention that comes from taking a stand?
51:32 Speaker 01 I, I think products are one of those things where kind of everyone can agree if it's good or bad, no matter where you stand in, in this like political spectrum. Uh, I do have a video I'm working on right now that kind of feels like it is maybe the most political. It's a video about the Xiaomi SU7.
51:52 Speaker 02 Oh.
51:53 Speaker 01 And it's a Chinese electric car.
51:54 Speaker 02 It's a car, yes.
51:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. And, you know, we've reviewed Chinese smartphones forever, but you can't get these Chinese electric cars here in the US. And the question that I always see about this car is, if it was in the US, would it crush? And it's a question I want to answer so bad.
52:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:09 Speaker 01 But the real answer is, the only reason you can't get it here is politics.
52:14 Speaker 02 Right. It's being actively prevented from coming here.
52:17 Speaker 01 Like, I can't answer this question, this really interesting tech story question without going, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, geopolitics, politics.
52:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:24 Speaker 01 So, yeah, I don't know. I, I still want to answer the question. I'm still working on like writing this video and it is more of a challenge for that reason.
52:31 Speaker 02 Right.
52:32 Speaker 01 But it is still a tech story. I don't, I don't feel guilty about like including politics if it's interesting.
52:36 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, good. No, and not, you know, I didn't mean to suggest that you should feel guilty about it, but I think there are times that I want to weigh in on something. And I don't, because, look, because it annoys me as a consumer of, say, entertainment, when an actor I otherwise enjoy decides to be vocal about an opinion I don't agree with. And now I can't watch, you know, my nineties sitcom anymore.
53:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:01 Speaker 02 Or I can, I can, but I can't watch it without thinking of that.
53:03 Speaker 01 Without thinking about it.
53:03 Speaker 02 Why did you, why did you ruin this? And that's what I feel like. I'm like, what? Look, I've got a, I've got a little phone review channel here. Like you come for my opinions on volume rockers.
53:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:13 Speaker 01 That's fair. I think though, if you feel strongly enough about something, that you should feel free to express it. And it's always to me gonna be through the lens of tech probably in some way. Like, I'm not out here talking about like whose war is to end. Like, it's basically, I'm only talking about tech and my interests here.
53:29 Speaker 02 Right.
53:30 Speaker 01 And sometimes sports and sometimes other interests I have. But like, if I have an interest, I would say, if you have an interest that you feel really strongly about. You feel strongly about it for a reason. You shouldn't feel like you should holster that.
53:44 Speaker 02 Muzzle yourself.
53:45 Speaker 01 And the other thing, and I see so many people like diving way into the politics. It's like if, if you have an audience member who would stop watching you because of this thing that you feel really strongly about, do you really need to keep that audience?
53:57 Speaker 02 Do you want that audience member to remain?
53:59 Speaker 01 Like if you really like strongly believe in it's like, okay, that is probably not the worst thing to lose that part of the audience.
54:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, self-selecting is good.
54:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
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56:00 Speaker 02 We have one more category.
56:02 Speaker 01 Okay.
56:04 Speaker 02 That's not true, we have two more, but one of them is very short. Want to talk about sponsored content, want to talk about making money.
56:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:10 Speaker 02 Okay? How do you feel about the current moment regarding sponsored content and people's reaction to it? Because I feel like people are talking less about it than they did maybe five years ago when we last talked about it. Last time I was on the show, we talked about ethics exclusively.
56:26 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
56:27 Speaker 02 And I feel like it's not as big a conversation anymore. Like, have audiences and creators reached this kind of broad understanding about paid versus non-paid? Or am I misreading that?
56:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's so many facets to that. I think the audience understanding part kind of comes in waves.
56:46 Speaker 02 Oh.
56:46 Speaker 01 If that makes sense.
56:47 Speaker 02 You find it's variable.
56:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, I guess like early days YouTube, like super early days YouTube when there was no partner program and like Smosh gets a Wendy's sponsorship or something. I feel like those are the days where it was like, congrats, bro. That, you made it. Like, that's amazing. Like, that was one wave. And then it became like a little bit too much. Like, they'd like see that it worked and then they'd sponsor 10 of the biggest channels and then it would be like, I didn't think you would take the Wendy's sponsor money.
57:18 Speaker 02 Right.
57:18 Speaker 01 And so it goes down and then it comes back up and then everyone understands it and then it's back down. I think it depends on who you're watching on YouTube. I think there are a lot of channels that have endless sponsored content and it's fine. And I think there are a lot of channels that have almost no sponsored content and the second they do one, it is, it's like poison.
57:33 Speaker 02 Right.
57:33 Speaker 01 They hate it.
57:34 Speaker 02 Right.
57:34 Speaker 01 So...
57:35 Speaker 02 You sold out.
57:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think their reaction kind of comes from your audience's expectation. And if you set an audience expectation of, I do tons of sponsored content, then eventually that's what they expect.
57:47 Speaker 02 That's right.
57:47 Speaker 01 It's fine for them.
57:48 Speaker 02 I did some unintentional Reddit research on this. I was reading Reddit last night and the r/OPPO subreddit popped to the top of my feed for some reason. So I was reading it and I think the thread was something like, why aren't people, why aren't reviewers as interested in whatever, the Find X9 Pro or something? And I'm like, okay. And you were quoted specifically, or not quoted, but you were cited specifically. Why isn't Marquez looking at this, at this phone? And these responses jumped right out to me and I, they, they confuse me.
58:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:20 Speaker 02 Because the, this response, one of these, because the two reviewers you mentioned, you being one of them, aren't as impartial as they used to be. Not saying I blame them, as they get good money for it and we'd all be the same.
58:31 Speaker 01 Yeah. I want to talk to these people sometimes. I do like ask them, because I read those comments, which are like so broadly asserting something that's clearly not true. I want to ask like, where did, because they got that from somewhere.
58:42 Speaker 02 Somewhere.
58:43 Speaker 01 Like they, they read something else or they just watched something and they go, oh yeah, these are all paid. Like what, where did you get that from? What do you, can I, can I talk to you about why you're wrong? Can I explain this to you? I want to have those conversations.
58:55 Speaker 02 Like another one, YouTubers are not really independent tech reviewers. Many are simply sponsored by big brands to the detriment of Chinese brands. And I'm like, okay, we see, sure, sure, there are sponsorships that exist.
59:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:08 Speaker 02 Right. But like.
59:09 Speaker 01 But they're like painting this character that's like, oh, I'm the one that takes money to say this about American brands and this about Chinese brands.
59:16 Speaker 02 Right. And it's like these background deals are happening where it's like, no. So I, I also, I feel like that's, that can be a whole separate thing. But I think that undermines my, my thought that I had coming into this before I read that last night. It's like, haven't we all, I think everyone understands now, right? Like where's, where's the difference? Like the FTC, I gotta say, when it was being very aggressive about mandating disclosures, like that was a big help in things. And you had, suddenly people had to say they were, they were paid.
59:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:43 Speaker 02 But one thing that, that, that hasn't changed is that, and I think this is probably an impediment to understanding, is that the ethics of our world still exist in this big gray area.
59:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:53 Speaker 02 Because it's not like a traditional journalism.
59:55 Speaker 01 I was hoping you'd bring that up.
59:56 Speaker 02 Firewall.
59:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:57 Speaker 02 Right? Like just famously, the verge is always out in front of this. It's like our ad people who make the money are completely separate from our editorial people. The editorial people don't read the ad spots and all this kind of stuff. And it's. But it's not like that in the creator world.
1:00:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:11 Speaker 02 Everyone in the audience has to say, has to make their decisions based on individual creators' policies.
1:00:17 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:00:18 Speaker 02 And that it's like, that is an opaque world. You have to do a lot of work to understand that.
1:00:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:23 Speaker 02 So I mean, my ethics policy, I don't think I've changed the wording of since we talked five years ago. I should change it. I think there's like maybe one or two things that have, that have, that have changed. But like, where do you draw your lines these days? What, what money do you say yes to? What do you say no to?
1:00:36 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:00:36 Speaker 02 How do you decide those boundaries?
1:00:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, so at the end of the day, I still just want to keep the focus on making good videos. So I'm keeping the main thing, the main thing. So if there are sponsored opportunities that arise, the number one question I ask is, does this like work with what we're doing? Does this supplement what we're doing? Or is this a distraction? Or is this like trying to shoehorn something in that doesn't work? Cause as you can imagine, we get endless inquiries about things we could do or make.
1:01:02 Speaker 02 All the time.
1:01:03 Speaker 01 So.
1:01:04 Speaker 02 And you're saying no to like, what, 80%, 90% of those?
1:01:06 Speaker 01 99 and a half percent of them.
1:01:09 Speaker 02 You ever just want to put it out there and be like, hey, here's all the stuff we said no to today?
1:01:13 Speaker 01 Uh, yeah, which is why I did a video on saying yes to everything for a while, which was not even sponsored stuff, but it was just reviews.
1:01:19 Speaker 02 Right.
1:01:19 Speaker 01 But even that is like crazy.
1:01:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:21 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, I think I, I put in the Slack the other day, which is like, I got a, I got an email whose subject line was like, can you, I don't want to misquote it, but I think it was like, can you do a video about AI something in Dubai, something, something? It was like all the worst headline, like email subject line words possible. Um, either way, no, I, I think the idea is if you feel something is a good fit and that your audience would enjoy it, and then you would like to cover it anyway, then it's a good fit for, for working with the company.
1:01:54 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:01:55 Speaker 01 And then there are lots of things that are like on the gray area that you can decide to not do, just to keep it clean, basically.
1:02:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:03 Speaker 01 But yeah, there is.
1:02:05 Speaker 02 Like, do you do you have category block offs? Because like, I don't take, I don't, I won't take money from a, from a smartphone manufacturer.
1:02:11 Speaker 01 Right.
1:02:12 Speaker 02 But I feel like that's a little too restrictive because what if I never cover a real me phone, for example, organically?
1:02:17 Speaker 01 Sure.
1:02:18 Speaker 02 And real me wants to pay me to do like, I still, I don't do it, but I'm like, I don't know.
1:02:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. And my firewall is even a different place. Like I will do, like Google makes smartphones, but sometimes Google is advertising an ad feature or a, or YouTube feature and I will work with them.
1:02:31 Speaker 02 Yeah. So it's a different part of Google.
1:02:33 Speaker 01 It almost feels like a different company sometimes.
1:02:35 Speaker 02 Sure does.
1:02:35 Speaker 01 They barely talk to each other.
1:02:36 Speaker 02 Yeah. The pixel division is its own thing.
1:02:37 Speaker 01 Yeah. So like, I will never do a, a sponsored content for a product that I would review.
1:02:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:45 Speaker 01 But there's also like, there's even like, people do like showcases, which is one version of, of a sponsored thing. And then there are people who do sponsored reviews, which is insane.
1:02:56 Speaker 02 Like a contradiction in terms.
1:02:57 Speaker 01 It's weird that that exists and the fact that that exists ruins it for everyone else.
1:03:01 Speaker 02 It does.
1:03:01 Speaker 01 Because then you make-
1:03:02 Speaker 02 It undermines the trust in the whole review kind of, right?
1:03:04 Speaker 01 Exactly. Everyone who's making reviews, who is honest about it and properly discloses every time will read Reddit comments about how they're bought and be like, no, no, that's not how this works.
1:03:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:13 Speaker 01 But it kind of is how some people work. So it ruins it.
1:03:15 Speaker 02 Right.
1:03:16 Speaker 01 So yeah, I get it. It's frustrating, but all you can do is have a public policy like you do.
1:03:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:21 Speaker 01 And ideally if, if people call it in a question, then you can at least say something about it, point at that thing.
1:03:27 Speaker 02 Here, here it is. Yeah.
1:03:28 Speaker 01 It's the best we can do.
1:03:29 Speaker 02 Yeah. I, uh, I, I, I could talk about that forever, but I, let me ask you, because I recently figured out what my favorite way to make money is.
1:03:38 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:03:39 Speaker 02 What's your favorite way to make money? Integration, like in terms of integration, full-length sponsor videos.
1:03:45 Speaker 01 My favorite way to make, well, I mean, AdSense is the best.
1:03:48 Speaker 02 AdSense is the best. You don't have to do anything. You don't touch it. It just, YouTube puts ads where it belongs.
1:03:52 Speaker 01 So among the like potential, um, integrations in a video, for example?
1:03:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. Or, or just, or different formats because. I'll tell you mine.
1:04:02 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:04:03 Speaker 02 Licensing.
1:04:05 Speaker 01 Oh, well, easy.
1:04:06 Speaker 02 It's the best.
1:04:07 Speaker 01 I love licensing.
1:04:08 Speaker 02 So this is when you've already published your review.
1:04:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:11 Speaker 02 Maybe there's a quote in there that Samsung, for example, wants to use in their marketing material.
1:04:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:15 Speaker 02 They pay for that privilege. I don't know that a lot of people know that. I didn't know that before I got into this space.
1:04:20 Speaker 01 Have you noticed even that is gray, though?
1:04:22 Speaker 02 What do you mean?
1:04:22 Speaker 01 At least to me. Some companies ask.
1:04:24 Speaker 02 Oh, and some companies just do it.
1:04:26 Speaker 01 Use it.
1:04:27 Speaker 02 Which is cra- yeah.
1:04:27 Speaker 01 Which is crazy. I had my, my, a quote from, God, okay, this is insane that this even happened. Like, I get quoted without my permission all the time.
1:04:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:36 Speaker 01 And I've, I've accepted it because there are some versions of it where it's like, look, I said this publicly, it's out there, fine. Apple quoted me in a keynote. They didn't tell me about that.
1:04:45 Speaker 02 No.
1:04:45 Speaker 01 They didn't pay me. They just did it.
1:04:47 Speaker 02 Right.
1:04:47 Speaker 01 Whatever. But I had a quote up here. I was on a website that someone sent me for an AI standalone AI product. Already a red flag.
1:04:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:57 Speaker 01 And I scrolled down and there's a couple quotes about people who like loved it. And then there was one of, a quote from me.
1:05:05 Speaker 01 And I had never reviewed this product or made a video about it. And it said like, this is a very interesting something, something. I tweeted about this.
1:05:11 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:05:12 Speaker 01 And I was like, when did I say that? Did I say that? And I scrolled back and what I found was me quote tweeting
1:05:22 Speaker 01 a product announcement tweet with a GIF of an NBA player saying that quote.
1:05:30 Speaker 01 And they took that, it was Russell Westbrook going, that's interesting sarcastically.
1:05:36 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:05:37 Speaker 01 And they took those words and put it next to my name as me saying that the product was interesting on their website next to other positive like quotes.
1:05:46 Speaker 02 There's like five layers of what to that.
1:05:48 Speaker 01 Like, that is clearly over the line.
1:05:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:51 Speaker 01 But the line is so gray. Like, where is the line?
1:05:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:54 Speaker 01 I did say the thing that Apple put in the keynote, that's publicly available.
1:05:59 Speaker 02 Right.
1:05:59 Speaker 01 I did technically post the player with the GIF that said the words about the
1:06:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, but that's not like
1:06:07 Speaker 01 but like that's
1:06:08 Speaker 02 In, in no court of law would that
1:06:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. In no court of law. So the court of law could find a place for that line, but like, where is the line? I have no idea. It's crazy.
1:06:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think if you're going to use my name and logo and like do the quote on a website and it's like going to be against a phone, like trying to sell a phone, I'm like, no, you come on, we have to have a
1:06:28 Speaker 01 Typically, good etiquette is if you're going to use the quote in paid marketing, then you are paying the creator who said the thing.
1:06:34 Speaker 02 And I like it. It's my favorite thing because I already said the thing and I didn't do it to get that. Like licensing is such an occasional thing, at least for me, that it's nice when it comes in.
1:06:42 Speaker 01 And you know such a way with words that your quotes are beautiful for like on-screen close, you know?
1:06:47 Speaker 02 Thank you. The last time a quote of mine was used for marketing purposes, it was it was me making a joke about the product. What did I say? I was at a pickle festival? I was reviewing the Flip 7 at a regional pickle festival.
1:06:59 Speaker 01 As one is.
1:06:59 Speaker 02 And I said something like, this is a really big deal or something. And that's the quote they wanted to use. So I was like, if you guys want to use that quote out of comp, please.
1:07:07 Speaker 01 I did say that. That's hilarious. Yeah.
1:07:10 Speaker 02 Okay. We happy on ethics? We feel like we've gotten to the bottom of that?
1:07:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think we nailed it all down.
1:07:15 Speaker 02 Good. I think the problem solved.
1:07:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:19 Speaker 02 Lightning round. Then we're out of here.
1:07:20 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:07:21 Speaker 02 Okay. What's your favorite failure in mobile tech? Mobile tech?
1:07:26 Speaker 01 Favorite failure? What an oxymoron. My favorite failure in mobile tech is
1:07:33 Speaker 02 It's one of two things.
1:07:34 Speaker 01 The Apple Vision Pro.
1:07:38 Speaker 02 Just not that that's not what I was expecting. Oh my God.
1:07:41 Speaker 01 I just said the first. I mean, there's so many failures that were interesting that I mean.
1:07:45 Speaker 02 Is your favorite failure?
1:07:46 Speaker 01 It's probably not my favorite failure, but that's a really interesting.
1:07:49 Speaker 02 It is.
1:07:50 Speaker 01 Very high tech, very impressive piece of technology that clearly failed at meeting its goals.
1:07:55 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:07:56 Speaker 01 But it's still sick.
1:07:58 Speaker 02 It's wild. I don't know what to do with it as my
1:08:00 Speaker 01 Same. It's gathering dust.
1:08:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:02 Speaker 01 But like every six months, when I do do the software update and I'm I put it on my face and I go, damn.
1:08:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:08 Speaker 01 This is really good.
1:08:09 Speaker 02 They may have gotten me to put it on tonight. They have a new fighter jet like movie in Apple TV plus a documentary that I think you're supposed to watch.
1:08:15 Speaker 01 That's how they get you, the content drip.
1:08:17 Speaker 02 That's what I want.
1:08:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:18 Speaker 02 Okay. Top feature from an older phone that you want a modern manufacturer to bring back?
1:08:23 Speaker 01 Boom sound.
1:08:24 Speaker 02 Oh, come on.
1:08:24 Speaker 01 Just give me front-facing speakers at all.
1:08:26 Speaker 02 Just, just, okay.
1:08:27 Speaker 01 Good speakers.
1:08:28 Speaker 02 You get the overdriven earpiece.
1:08:29 Speaker 01 Well, because everyone's obsessed with the bezels now.
1:08:32 Speaker 02 I know.
1:08:32 Speaker 01 And no one does the good front-facing speakers.
1:08:34 Speaker 02 I know, yeah.
1:08:34 Speaker 01 I want good.
1:08:35 Speaker 02 Put the speakers back.
1:08:36 Speaker 01 Beefy boom sound speakers.
1:08:37 Speaker 02 I thought you were gonna say notification LED. I'm a little disappointed.
1:08:39 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm changing my answer.
1:08:41 Speaker 02 Yeah?
1:08:42 Speaker 01 Notification LED. So I can flip my phone like this and go, ah, that's just Twitter. I won't check it.
1:08:45 Speaker 02 Right. Just the light blue? No, I don't need that.
1:08:47 Speaker 01 Please. That's so easy, too.
1:08:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, agreed.
1:08:49 Speaker 01 They could bring that back.
1:08:50 Speaker 02 I, look, well, let's, let's make that a number one request list for every phone going forward. What's your favorite thing you ever got right?
1:08:59 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:09:02 Speaker 01 Let me think about this one. There's so many told-you-so moments.
1:09:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:07 Speaker 01 Okay, so there's one that's not quite over, but I'm, I'm gonna be right. So I'm just gonna say it.
1:09:14 Speaker 02 We got a lot of confidence in the room right now. I like this. Okay.
1:09:17 Speaker 01 I said that, so I was at Tesla's RoboTaxi event.
1:09:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:21 Speaker 01 Couple, not even that, not even a year ago. And I'm pretty sure Elon got on stage and said that they were going to ship the RoboTaxi as it existed. No steering wheel, no pedals, no nothing. They're gonna ship it for, I wanna get this right, I think $27,000 or less before the end of 2026.
1:09:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:40 Speaker 01 Instantly, I was like, well, no, you're not.
1:09:41 Speaker 02 No.
1:09:42 Speaker 01 And I said I would shave my head if it happened, so I'm that confident.
1:09:46 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:09:47 Speaker 01 So I got about 13 months left to be proven wrong, but I'm, that is going to be my favorite.
1:09:52 Speaker 02 I think you're, yeah.
1:09:53 Speaker 01 I think that's gonna be my favorite.
1:09:54 Speaker 02 I think your hair is, is gonna stay where it is.
1:09:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:09:56 Speaker 02 Uh, what's, what's the biggest thing you ever got wrong?
1:09:59 Speaker 01 Biggest thing I ever got wrong?
1:10:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:00 Speaker 01 Um, there is a quote circulating on Twitter this week where, I forgot I did this. In a video, I bet a million dollars.
1:10:13 Speaker 01 So I clearly was confident.
1:10:16 Speaker 01 And it was from a year ago. I bet a million dollars that Apple would not get rid of the mute switch in any of the next five years of iPhones. It's too integral to the design of the iPhone. And technically, they did change it to a button.
1:10:30 Speaker 02 That does more than mute it.
1:10:32 Speaker 01 It's the action button, which could be a mute switch, but it's not really mute switch anymore. And that I gotta, I don't know who I give the million dollars to.
1:10:39 Speaker 02 Who gets the million?
1:10:40 Speaker 01 Someone, I have to give it to me. I'll just give it to you.
1:10:42 Speaker 02 I was gonna say, best interviewer you've had today.
1:10:44 Speaker 01 Surfacing this.
1:10:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:46 Speaker 01 But, uh, yeah, no, I did. I must have been super confident in that. And like literally the next iPhone was like, yeah, we're getting rid of it right away.
1:10:54 Speaker 02 Right before the 15 then?
1:10:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. So that was wrong.
1:10:57 Speaker 02 And now as a bonus, we have it on OnePlus phones too.
1:11:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, they added the same exact button.
1:11:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:02 Speaker 01 They also, I guess the Oppo Find X9 added camera control, which is insane.
1:11:05 Speaker 02 Did it? I keep looking for it on this.
1:11:07 Speaker 01 Dude, bar for bar, like I accidentally swiped just like on the iPhone and accidentally zoomed in just like on the iPhone. It was crazy.
1:11:13 Speaker 02 Excellent.
1:11:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:15 Speaker 02 Um, would you ever, I'm gonna save that for last. Uh, do you still do Easter eggs in any of your videos?
1:11:20 Speaker 01 All the time.
1:11:21 Speaker 02 Are they all secret?
1:11:23 Speaker 01 Um, so some are more cryptic and some are more obvious. Like I'll put an object behind me. That's pretty obvious, but some are more like, like one layer deep, which is very exciting because people find Easter eggs that are like four layers deep. That I didn't plan, but I'll accept the credit because they're so good.
1:11:43 Speaker 02 Hundred percent.
1:11:43 Speaker 01 So yes, the more Easter eggs you hide, the more they find.
1:11:47 Speaker 02 Do you still, have you stopped doing Cheerios altogether?
1:11:49 Speaker 01 Cheerios I stopped doing, but I have the box still. Uh, I can tell you the origin story if you want. Have you heard the origin story?
1:11:56 Speaker 02 No.
1:11:57 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:11:57 Speaker 02 I thought this was a secret.
1:11:58 Speaker 01 No, it, it feels like a, it should have been like some coded secret, but it was really simple.
1:12:04 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:12:04 Speaker 01 I was making videos in my college dorm for that one year where there was a microwave behind me. And the little LED on the microwave was like out of sync with the camera shutter. It was just strobing, super distracting. You know, it looks weird on camera.
1:12:19 Speaker 02 Does.
1:12:20 Speaker 01 And for like weeks, that was the only thing anyone commented about, dude, the microwave is driving me. I can't look away from that thing. I was like, it's, it's my microwave. I can't move it.
1:12:29 Speaker 02 Right.
1:12:29 Speaker 01 So I just put like a Cheerios box in front of it just to stop people from commenting about it.
1:12:33 Speaker 02 To mask it.
1:12:34 Speaker 01 And obviously the first wave of people seeing the box in front of the microwave was like, I know what's behind that Cheerios box. But eventually it was just people talking about the Cheerios box.
1:12:44 Speaker 02 Of course.
1:12:44 Speaker 01 And I move on to my new spot and I keep the Cheerios box behind me. There's no microwave back there. I just keep the Cheerios box around. So that was how that started happening.
1:12:53 Speaker 02 Do you ever do like little shout outs to like, like a special person in your life? Like I've, I've been known to do a, a single frame heart somewhere in a heart emoji.
1:13:03 Speaker 01 That's a good idea. I've had teammates on frisbee teams ask for shout outs, like in the middle of a video. Can you just like click a pen twice and we'll know what it means? And uh,
1:13:15 Speaker 02 Do you ever do it?
1:13:15 Speaker 01 I think I've done it once, once or twice since college. Somebody asked in college to do it and I did it. It's really hard though.
1:13:21 Speaker 02 It's tough.
1:13:21 Speaker 01 I have to remember to do it.
1:13:22 Speaker 02 And not make it distracting.
1:13:23 Speaker 01 And not make it weird.
1:13:24 Speaker 02 Right, right.
1:13:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:25 Speaker 02 That's fun.
1:13:26 Speaker 01 It's hard.
1:13:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. Oh my God. That's cool. Now I want to figure out what I need to ask you for. Two more. What, um, would, would you ever actually try digital detox with a, with a, with a dumb phone, a light phone or, or like not, Not with the apps. Yeah. Let's say long-term, a week. Okay. Not long-term, but or two weeks. Not with the timeout apps, not with brick.
1:13:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:50 Speaker 02 With like a real dumb phone.
1:13:53 Speaker 01 I'm not going to rule that out. Um, part of the ultimate frisbee experience for me is switching this part of my brain completely off and flipping over to the competitive, like totally different side of my brain.
1:14:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:14:07 Speaker 01 And I'm often offline for two straight days for a frisbee tournament.
1:14:11 Speaker 02 Really?
1:14:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:12 Speaker 02 Oh, that's amazing.
1:14:13 Speaker 01 And it's two days and it's fine. And I come back on Monday and I'm ready to get back to it. But uh, these international tournaments are like a week, a week and a half long. And I think that is, you know, it would be hard to be offline.
1:14:26 Speaker 02 It's very hard. Yeah.
1:14:27 Speaker 01 I won't rule it out. I think that's something I could do.
1:14:29 Speaker 02 Can I recommend it? I had such, I learned so much in my two weeks with the, with the light phone. You know, you don't have to use the light phone, but whatever. That's, that's what gave me the excuse to do it.
1:14:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:38 Speaker 02 It's really fun, even when it's really frustrating. And I'm still, I'm holding on to stuff from that, like lessons I learned this summer from it. Like it's great.
1:14:46 Speaker 01 Learn about yourself?
1:14:48 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:14:48 Speaker 01 Interesting.
1:14:49 Speaker 02 And I've learned how to manage myself better. I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm a better phone user now.
1:14:52 Speaker 01 That is the best possible encouragement I could hear to try to do that.
1:14:57 Speaker 02 Try it. Just, just for the, for the personal growth, even if you don't do a video, just try it.
1:15:01 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:15:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:02 Speaker 01 All right.
1:15:02 Speaker 02 Uh, and finally, what was your favorite instance of being recognized in public?
1:15:08 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:15:10 Speaker 01 There's a couple, there's a couple of fun ones. People are generally very respectful and, and very excited to talk tech, which is super cool. Uh, a recent one that comes to mind, so uh, we often use music in our videos.
1:15:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:25 Speaker 01 Oftentimes just like we'll license something or we'll, or we'll use something from an artist and give them a shout out.
1:15:30 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:15:31 Speaker 01 And I was at Newark Airport a couple of months ago and I was like sitting, I think I was just like waiting for my bag or something. And a gentleman came up to me and he said, hey, just want to say, I love your videos, appreciate what you do. You've used some of our music in our videos. Uh, I sing for a band called Wolfpack. Good to meet you.
1:15:50 Speaker 02 No.
1:15:50 Speaker 01 And walked away.
1:15:53 Speaker 01 And I, like, as he walked away, I, I was like, oh my God, his voice, like, of course. And I like, hey, well, I, dude, thank you so much for the music. Like I was super excited about that.
1:16:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:16:04 Speaker 01 But just the fact that like, he's just like another guy in the airport, just like, oh, yeah. That little connection, that was, that was a fun one.
1:16:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, that is, no, that's a fantastic one.
1:16:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:13 Speaker 02 Do you want to know mine?
1:16:15 Speaker 01 Oh, yes, I do. Please.
1:16:17 Speaker 02 I was having a really bad end of the week and I was really fried and I was in Williamsburg, just kind of like absorbing the sun and trying to breathe and trying to let the week go.
1:16:25 Speaker 01 Photosynthesizing.
1:16:26 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:16:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:27 Speaker 02 A guy drives by in a, in a, in a car that's got a real loud exhaust system and he rolls down and it was like, hey, hey. I'm like, ah, what? He's like, YouTube, I love your stuff. And it really, you know, it changed my whole day around. I was like, dude, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. And he kinda keeps pointing at me. He's like, mister, who's the boss?
1:16:50 Speaker 02 I said, yep, you got it, man. Have a good day.
1:16:56 Speaker 01 That's incredible.
1:16:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:16:58 Speaker 01 Wow. Yeah.
1:16:59 Speaker 02 Fun weird life we've got.
1:17:00 Speaker 01 It is a small world. He's not fully wrong.
1:17:02 Speaker 02 No.
1:17:03 Speaker 01 He got half mister. Yeah. Mister. You got it.
1:17:06 Speaker 02 That's all you need.
1:17:06 Speaker 01 Yeah. That's amazing.
1:17:08 Speaker 02 Dude, thank you. This has been a blast.
1:17:10 Speaker 01 This was fun.
1:17:11 Speaker 02 I appreciate the time.
1:17:12 Speaker 01 We should do this again sometime.
1:17:13 Speaker 02 I would love that.
1:17:15 Speaker 01 Perfect.
1:17:15 Speaker 02 If I start one of these, you should come on and interview me. It'd be fun.
1:17:18 Speaker 01 Deal.
1:17:19 Speaker 02 My studio will be less fancy, but you know.
1:17:21 Speaker 01 We got sound effects.
1:17:22 Speaker 02 I was gonna say.
1:17:25 Speaker 01 That's how we book it.
1:17:27 Speaker 02 Perfect. Thanks, man.
1:17:30 Speaker 01 Hey, thanks for watching this bonus episode. If you enjoyed, get subscribed because we're back to your regular scheduled programming on Friday. We're from us produced by Rufus, Adam and Ellis this week. Our intro outro music is by Vane Still and we are a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:17:50 Speaker 02 Yo, what is up, people of the internet? I am going to take that again because that's not what I say next.
1:17:58 Speaker 05 Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.
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