Are We Optimistic About Tech with Hasan Minhaj

foreign [Music] welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts I'm Marquez and I'm Andrew and this is a special guest episode I say special because the episode itself is really special and it's a lot of fun this time we have Hassan Minaj with us actor writer comedian Creator I think we have a lot in common but he's he's been prolific over the past few years I'm a fan of his work he reached out he's been watching the podcast so if you guys aren't subscribed on YouTube you're missing out on something Hassan exactly like get subscribed already uh but this is this is a good episode of long conversation we had a bunch of talks we start about basketball uh and like the fact that we use like basketball analogies for like everything I understood all of that because it was a fun intro but then we we quickly jumped into creativity and writing uh and I think one of the most interesting Parts was like trying to stay optimistic on the future possibilities of Technologies on the horizon like AI or Twitter and privacy and privacy there's lots of question marks and and just kind of how we think about those things um and you might be surprised at the depth of some of these conversations we have it's a lot of fun I also at some point had him flip the tables on me and just start asking me questions which has never happened on waveform before but I thought it was great I enjoyed it and uh this is an all-time episode for sure it was so much fun he was such a nice guy and he just like had a bunch of really really fun questions that there's probably points in this episode where my face is totally blank because I'm just thinking about the merch needs to go a little bit we're just immersed it's one of those that just feels like a conversation and you happen to have microphones in front of you which is a good time yeah all right uh also just make sure put your bets in on how fast you think he is at typing the alphabet Oh yeah for reference he brought in sticky notes and a pen so uh yeah this is whether that yeah yeah this is an analog technology person because yeah we didn't let him write it he still had to type it but uh let's get into the actual conversation [Music] Hassan thanks for joining me on the podcast Andrew's here yeah thanks for having me yeah I really appreciate it this is we're looking forward to this we were talking a little bit before the podcast about uh technology and about being a Creator and there's all the stuff that we could talk about I just want to open with because people ask like why do you have certain guests on the podcast yeah like why what's the choice process I want to read a bunch of things that we have in common okay so I think there's a lot more that we have in common that people don't don't understand okay yeah so we both are creators I would say sure we both have a YouTube channel technically technically um we're both hot ones Alum yes one of my favorite shows yeah both sneaker heads oh okay um and you were on um sneaker shopping yes so we've both done that okay I love that show also we both like basketball a lot yeah talking about fantasy yeah and we're both wired autocomplete Alum which basically just means we've done enough media things that it's like interesting to hear that our Venn diagram overlaps just enough the overlap is pretty solid yeah uh do you consider yourself a creator is that a bad question I feel like you do yeah but there's like a weird definition of a Creator mixed with influencer mixed with producer mixed with I mean actor writer all the other things yeah I would say the part that makes me bristle is the content part where they go you're a content creator okay whereas like um it means that like the word content is kind of synonymous with I package things up and it's synonymous with the feeling I get from it is Click bait uh clock in clock out new video there's a heavy kind of tape Tuesdays at 10 yeah uh a still image of me like this with your mouth open yeah that sort of thing of just there's something slightly kind of duplicitous and algorithm uh I'm manipulating an algorithm versus like a Creator or someone who could be a painter it could be someone who does uh you know book reviews OR tech reviews or you write movies or music it just means I I am trying to creatively express myself yeah I I want to Loop you in with content creator because I struggle with this because there are so many things about you make content and then you have to you almost feel obligated to package the content or promote the content in a certain way that works because you have to yeah and uh I try to avoid the like cringy like mouth open thumbnail way of like just pandering to the algorithm basically and doing what I feel like works but I still feel like the the Baseline of what we do is making things that people want to watch yeah and uh that being the core of it and you kind of have to do the things that come with that to give you props though I actually don't think it's content I think you are artistically expressing yourself by telling a story about a piece of technology that's what I try to do yeah so I try to do it's hard sometimes because not all Tech has that good of a story oh really it's funny okay but that's that's the sort of a mission yeah and I appreciate that yeah um we're also just talking about uh this questionable trade I made in NBA fantasy yes I'll run it by you and I'll just read the names yeah I'm in a an NBA fantasy league right now yeah uh and my trade was the headliner was I just traded LeBron yes and that was a little bit questionable but here's here's the full trade rate it was three for four my team gave up LeBron James yeah Lonnie Walker also a Laker and Carter I don't even know his name is the point guard for the bucks okay while Drew holiday is injured I got Kevin Porter Jr okay Kelly ubray Jr okay Mason Plumley and DeAndre Hunter not all how are you feeling Mr names but I'm feeling like I won this trade only because LeBron wasn't playing every night yeah Lonnie Walker is a pretty one-dimensional guy a lot of points not a lot of other things and in this category League getting Mason Plumley is a lot of rebounds sure and getting Kevin Porter Jr is a lot of play time on a bad team and he just puts up numbers and it's kind of just a LeBron numbers so for people that are listening that don't um that are raising their children and not in fantasy or that are neglecting their children and do fantasy yeah um fantasy from the times that I played it when I was younger it is about uh the efficacy of the players vis-a-visa stat stuffing versus the intangible things of like wins and losses clutch Factor can they play Big in the fourth all those all those things that actually kind of matter towards winning growing up as a Sacramento Kings fan a lot of our we were an amazing an amazing fantasy team so like Chris Webber would have been a better fantasy player than Tim Duncan who would be have like 19 8 and five yeah Weber would have like 24 12 and six but just Duncan one more Rings yeah you know produced more in the postseason and went further so I've sometimes I've sometimes been like when people are like look at so and so stat line I'm like you know what matters I feel like sometimes that is beneficial for you can have your team that maybe is winning yeah then when they're losing maybe your fantasy team's winning outside so you have like something you can be happy well it must both lose what tickles it what what do you like about it like what makes you continue to do it is it the camaraderie of like doing it with your friends in the kind of like the betting of it yeah it's off season it's like basketball happens to be in the exact off season of the Frisbee season so we play Frisbee in the summer and then we have a reason to keep talking and also it gets us more invested in more games that we normally would not watch cool so like I'm not a I'm not a Kings fan I'll just say it but I will watch a king's Wednesday night game because like I want to make sure the guy I'm playing against doesn't have a huge night I'm telling you man I mean you you really you know Marquez the reason why I did this podcast and it's so different than some of the other things I do is that you're you're a very level-headed calm air you diet it's a thoughtful guy and now you're just poking me with the Sacramento King slander and it's really making me feel a certain way and I mean that sincerely we are a great team Darren Fox's fantastic sabonis will surprise you we we got a squad we got a squad I had sabonis earlier huge fantasy guy yeah huge fantasy guy yeah I can appreciate it's a bonus for sure no they're good I watch games and I'm a I'm a basketball fan like you I was gonna ask about this too because sure we we have this uh sort of a duel well I'll say a dual life but I you're you've played basketball okay I mean you you're a you have the creative half of your brain yes and then you have the competitive half of your brain yeah you get to exercise the competitive half with the the writing and the comedy or do you do you find like playing basketball or other things can exercise the other so so what's funny about like writing comedy um specifically comedy and rhetoric and logic and ideas it is like these little puzzles and a great joke kind of tickles your brain in a new way yeah and when I see a comedian on stage uh unlocking something the the aha moment because it's such a cerebral art form the aha moment is oh I never thought of the world that way oh I never I never saw it that way I can't believe I've been living my life and that was the way to see it um and then you know just to Enter the 36 Chambers there's levels to it there's also like the degree of difficulty of the joke the subject matter of the joke are you able to do it while still being clean without being like blue or crass like there's all these sub difficulties it's kind of like when you watch basketball and you see a guy like can double cross over step back hesitation dribble go four feet beyond the three-point line launch it with a hand in his face like there are some jokes look to you that's yeah yeah so if you saw that house of highlights think of John Morant jumping up 316 like landing and then he did like a hesitation and he was Off to the Races and then switched hands I love Michael Jordan and against the Blazers uh sorry against the Lakers there's that thing where he switches hands right to left I was telling Prashant who I write a lot of stuff with and and you know we run the company together I go in the 90s that was one move now players have gotten so good that they're doing eight different of eight different moves all at once so they're like I'll switch hands in the air like MJ and 91. I'll also do a double cross like I'm Stefan Marbury and Iverson and I'll do a James Harden step back and I'll hit it in your face like Reggie Miller and they're doing it all at once similarly art is going through that as well interesting so if you see a film like everything everywhere all at once so I'm going to PV about this and I go you used to do one type of film which was like time travel or you would do one type of film which is like a genre family film or you would do another film which was just like um it could be like avant-garde and expressionist if you look at that film whether you like it or you don't like it it's doing the avant-garde of like you know you know they have the interstitials of the Rocks talking to each other about like life and you know their existential crisis then they'll do a family story The Core story of the film is about a family that's about to get like kind of evicted and lose their business that's like minari but that's just one of the plot lines then it's like a Kung Fu Michelle yo just being a [ __ ] badass yeah and it's a time travel movie that used to be just one type of movie hey audience we're gonna take you on one plot line this is the one big leap of faith you have to take we're in a world there are people there are Wizards follow along simple yeah but it's also not cutting to interstitials it's not also doing Kung Fu it's not also doing these things yeah that's the John Morant of films that is really interesting they're doing 12 things at once and they're doing it incredibly well yeah so when people asked me like uh a lot of times I don't know if technology goes through this but art goes through this there's this kind of conservative opinion while movies used to be and it used to be like that oh and back in my day ooh John Havlicek used to da da da yeah and there isn't this bold leap to the Future and I gotta say I'm I'm pretty inspired right now with some of the artists at the bleeding Cutting Edge that are pushing the genre and the medium forward of film TV comedy art all of all those things they're doing it in a really profound beautiful way and I think we should celebrate that I agree that is really interesting I thought a lot about uh YouTube today is amazing because it's obviously huge and the barrier for entry is lower than ever so if somebody wants to make the videos about this feeling they have or this thing they want to share or a product that they use that they want to tell people about yeah it's never been easier you can like Point your phone at it and make a video in two minutes yeah um but that also introduces this uh this concept of like if you want people to watch your video you've got to find something to do that is different or that hasn't already been done so like the iPhone comes out for example and you know it's September 300 people three how many million people get their iPhones the same day and they can all make the same video on the same phone why would anyone watch any of the videos after they've seen the first two right so you you need to find a reason to get people to watch your video and not the others yeah and one of the things I showed you we have in the other room is it's a room that just has a robot in it with a camera attached to it yeah and we spent a lot of money and invested a lot of time into finding something that's difficult to replicate that is just sick that we can we can have some something that separates a tech video about the iPhone yeah from every other Tech video about the same iPhone do you find that in comedy whether it's in writing or in the storytelling or in the production itself I mean you were talking about the the stage for the last special was like 1.4 million dollars or something crazy yeah that's probably unfortunately yeah do you do you focus on things that you can do while on stage or in the writing process that are your differentiator or is it is it purely in the words that you're saying for sure so um to be candid it it always has to start with the idea and your hand will be revealed if um the writing is not great so what I mean by that and you can tell the the most the simplest analogy is when you watch a bad movie and the writing is bad um let's just call it any of the Transformer movies after the first exactly where it's where it's all Michael Bay like circling your head buildings are being destroyed robots are fighting each other and you don't care about any of it at all um I call it the kind of CGI Gonzo porn but the reason why you would tap into great movies is because of the the actual writing the pathos the emotion the way they they s very intricately stack scenes and storylines brilliantly right so take a TV show right now like Severance or a show like The Bear those shows rise to the top because of it always starts with excellent writing or succession the writing on that show is absolutely incredible and then you can use lenses and cameras and lights and all that sort of stuff to heighten that but it starts with that for me I understand that comedy as an art form is a relatively small thing you know it really is like it started in the Jazz nightclub in the West Village much like jazz it's an American art form but it is a basement dwelling people go downstairs drink booze and listen to people tell jokes but I took a great deal of inspiration from Broadway and theater and all these other things and what I was trying to do is open the aperture to the medium and make it feel like if people are going to spend eighty dollars or a hundred dollars or 120 I mean these Live Nation these Ticketmaster prices are insane and that's in the news right now but I am aware of that because I do remember when my dad would take me to a sports game or an event like what that means for a working class like middle class family it's a lot and I wanted it to feel like hey if you're gonna go spend that to go see Wicked I don't want to just do um jokes for 80 minutes no disrespect to anybody who who wants to see that but um I wanted people to feel like you know what I'm not even really into comedy or I'm not really into like storytelling or politics per se but man that was an experience and it felt like it really was an experience and I hope to have a long touring career because of that yeah I really think that like the visuals helped grasp you into some of these like super personal stories you're doing in a bunch of different ways emotionally some of the stories are just super ridiculous so it's like kind of bringing receipts and tapping into this like yeah so that's wow by the way that's a new thing that uh that um kind of Comedy purists think is not great the you don't have to show us the thing I believe you yeah but there's part of me where I really do believe reality can be Stranger Than Fiction for sure and I want to show a level of sincerity and authenticity of like I'm telling you this thing is really crazy yeah and then boom receipts and I do think we're part of a generation of we want to see receipts because we've been duped in lied to so much by institutions candidly yeah you know yeah no I like that I I think there's also probably like a generational gap of people who are like that made the show better versus people who are like oh that was worse or the old shows wouldn't have done that yes which is really interesting yes we get that as well though a lot of times it's like I missed the days where Mark has just rooted his Android and told me the super deep specs and now it's just like uh all he cares about are fancy cameras and rolling shots and stuff like that and that's what we enjoy that's what we like telling the story with and like we still think that that our way of what we're talking about is what we think is the most important but there's always going to be people out there like purists I guess who maybe you know have outgrown a little deeper into technology and they want just the super nitty gritty and I think that's what's also great about YouTube is they can find 50 other channels that can do that the medium the medium evolves like old YouTube was the channels that we have today that are amazing didn't exist and the Baseline everything was that it's kind of like you were just saying like the entire Artistry level was over here yeah and in the last 15 years it's moved up and the floor is now here and the ceiling is way higher yeah and it's kind of the same as like as like watching the shows now that have like all these layers and these different storytelling elements and visual elements and everything like the ceiling is higher yeah but now the the normal stuff that people were used to from 2004 isn't here anymore and they're like I miss that stuff but it's right it's the meat is up here and it's still there I think as long as you're still acknowledging the those things like what they're talking about are the core ideas good and is it more polish and Panache and Pizzazz than it is actual substance but I feel like you know your guys's stuff still is like really meaty and substantive but you're right like I think um art has to grow and evolve and change and what's cool is uh my friends will tell me they're like you always just have analogies with basketball or sport that's all it's always your goal but it's like when people are like uh you know when they do these comparisons of players from different eras and I'm like but the rules were different the world was different and what's cool is and I am very bullish about this like the best players right now have four to five different skill sets like giannis's Kevin Garnett meets Duncan meets this meets me Shaq meets Shaq meets Kevin Durant somehow all in one person and because he's an immigrant he also has the mentality of these like hard-nosed roughneck 90s players as well so you can't check him on either thing like heart or actual game skill set yeah and so those are those things where I'm like that's an exciting thing about um art and culture moving forward and I I want to keep like leaning into that you know all right we're gonna take a quick break here but when we come back Austin flips the script on us a little bit and has some questions for Andrew and I will be right back thank you wait can I ask you guys a question that I wrote down oh you have is this how the Post-its are here well well yeah I'll let you yeah go ahead go for it please please do I'm ready wait wait wait wait wait Marco Marquez are you are you script on me yeah okay go for it okay so the reason why people might be like yo what you know hustle manage Marquez this is this is the crossover I never knew I can see the color yeah yeah so the reason why I actually took the time I mean this sincerely I'm genuinely a fan of what you guys do here and um there is a level and the reason why um I'm getting older and I only have so much time to do media promotion interviews meetings Etc but you guys what you guys have done here that I really admire is a level of discernment and reasoning and nobility to what is otherwise a very um grift-centric medium and one of the the things that I felt with media and I'm saying this personally you know someone who came up in comedy on The Daily Show Patriot Act is news media quickly careened off of the the highway very quickly and it has metastasized so quickly from stage one to stage four just awful cancer where it's like not a great ecosystem yeah for sure and the the grifters that were there was maybe one to three of them in the media ecosystem almost like hydras where you chopped off those three heads and 12 have emerged I feel like YouTube has also had that as well there was a cuteness and acquaintance that the YouTube that I came up on when I first started doing stand-up conduit in 2004 2010 there was a real authenticity to it and now there's a bunch of just algorithm hackers that are kind of just manipulating you through emotion insanity and um craziness and I feel like you guys have somehow maintained this like core ethos through all of it and succeeded succeeded and I I was like I want to spend my time being around people like that rather than I appreciate that I think a key part of what you said was timing so 2004 yeah 2010. yeah so one of the one of the crazy things that I've seen so how old is your kid by the way I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old okay a lot of a lot of surveys I've seen of like kids you ask today what do you want to be when you grow up yeah an alarming number of them say either a YouTuber yeah or or uh or social media famous or something like that yeah and I think it's kind of luck and and timing that when I started doing this which is 2008 2009 yeah uh the Youtube partner program didn't exist and there were zero people doing this as a job so if you wanted to to manipulate YouTube or to to game the algorithm or whatever you were doing it for the views and for the fun of that yeah not for money there were zero dollars involved okay and then so that was fun and that was that was a whole section of like how YouTube was built by creators who were like I have something to share let me see how many people I can share this with and that was like the beginnings of it yeah and that at some point we had obviously the YouTube Partner program monetization happens we get ads now there's this added element of I would like to see how much money I can make from this and that's like a real new thing that emerged from that yeah and so now you do see this Twist of like yeah I'm in a gamey algorithm so that I can maximize revenue and that's a different version of gaming YouTube than I want to just see how many views I want to see if I can get on trending I want to see if my idea is worthy of eyeballs and I think that slight difference is probably around the 2010 era that you're referencing which is like I feel like that's when YouTube changed and I'm lucky to have started in the pre monetization era where my intentions are pure right right I want to make the best videos I possibly can and make the channels that I want to subscribe to and it happened to sort of grow in the background as I was making the videos I was also going to class and and playing sports and other things like that and so now it's like it happens to be a full-time job but we kind of treat it the same way as it started yeah how did you not lose your head and lose your way as you look to your left and your right and say you put out a product review video and a competitor is a little less uh nuanced and gentle than say you are so their their thumbnail is why the new Google pixel 7 sucks you know and it's like it's Sensational or like why the new Apple watch is garbage and it's all caps and do you ever feel that thing where you're like oh man they're they're common yeah I do and I feel that is again it's a good question because there is there's a lot of uh I do see comments for people are like I appreciate that you didn't oversimplify yeah I see those comments and I appreciate that and I know that there are people who who do notice that but also it's like Tech is is so good these days it's really genuinely hard to find an actually bad product and so I think what's happening is there are like you said there's going to be a guy who's just like this product sucks and that I by the way I do disagree with your take there overall okay we'll get to that yeah we'll get to that yeah I guess my point is like I think these are people trying to differentiate their videos rather than their takes on the product so there's gonna be a hundred videos on the pixel so if 80 of the First videos of the people who got it all have come to the same conclusion which is like I've used this phone it's a B plus it's pretty good and you arrive and you're like I need to make a video that somehow gets views and stands out if you just show up with the same it's good people aren't going to watch it click it so you need to find something that you can latch onto and pull that down and be like I need to focus on this this phone sucks and here's why and people will click that video and they might not stay because you can't necessarily deliver on that but people will click that video and I think that's what people are drawn to I think also real quick not necessarily if there are bad there's plenty of bad technology that's fine there are so yeah that's thank you thank you I didn't want to I was like yeah yeah there are so many Tech products yeah since we're large enough that we generally can get our hands on them like we're gonna cover the things that we know look more interesting to us and like generally are going to be a more positive video because like we want to have fun making that video we want to enjoy this piece of tech we don't find the bad product as often because it's more like hey here's this we'd like to do a sponsored review with you and we're like that looks really boring yeah you don't want to do that we're not going to go out and do some video on it or in general make super negative videos on that I wanted to actually apply to be a correspondent for MKBHD I had a sub show that I wanted to pitch you guys sure um and I thought it would be really great and I think the audience would really appreciate it it's called this [ __ ] doesn't work with us and minhajan yeah and so it's just like it's like a YouTube short show so you throw it to me go you know Marquez is like I want to throw it over to our you know senior Tech correspondent husband take it away and I go hey guys it's Hassan I'm here for this it doesn't work without today I'm reviewing the Canon inkjet 5870. as you said it's it's just you look at the Box three steps and it's ready to go say pull it out and you connect to Wi-Fi and you just hit print you just hit print like the boxer you just hit you just hit print then I just take a sledgehammer station someone who did end user work yeah printer stuff I yeah love this song and every week we'd have hey guys hustle men hash here um with the Microsoft Surface the Microsoft Surface says easy you can pull out a tab tablet and you know and you can game on the go here we go let me just set it up and you just connect to Wi-Fi and um just pop it down again so and then you can just you write on it just as simple as just it's just as simple it's really just simple and this is the beauty yeah I just take a baseball bat it's so funny okay there are so many in Tech it's like there are so many stories in Tech where it's like there will be pieces of tech that are awful and then the rest of tech around it is like pretty good yeah and I'm like trying to tell the story of the device and I'm like giving it and the other thing is like I know a lot of people who work for tech companies and they're trying really hard they are sincerely they want the things to work yeah oftentimes like an example this is perfect for this which this segment would be perfect The Meta Quest Pro okay this doesn't work it's bad okay the whole tablet is bad but instead of approaching it I appreciate the honesty thank you okay yes thank you it's 1500 bucks it's bad it doesn't work most of the time okay but I thought a more interesting story would be we like the company has changed their name to Meadow like we there's more things to evaluate here just the one bad product sure so like I have info about the product in in the episode in the video which is like okay this it doesn't really work well but the idea is in the future this gets better and this this point we could evolve at into in the future could be cool yeah and so I'm trying to like tell that story and evaluate how we got here and the trajectory towards the future but along the way we definitely need the short of Hassan slaps like destroying the headset like this version you should not buy yes it's bad yeah so my issue is and again I like comedy is an art form we are the lowest form of entertainers so there's probably like singers actors you know musicians comedians were down here we're right above magicians um and uh pretty far ahead of clowns but we're slightly above magicians and clowns so we're we're we are an art form of the people and my problem is is with technology it's always sold as it's easy as one two three okay so we wanted to do a segment that was called uh the commercial versus reality yes because so often can I say can I be the correspondent to do this because I'm a man of the people I'm holding you up on this is perfect yes because there's so many commercials that are just like look here's an example of like a here's the rock asking Siri for these seven things in a row into yeah maybe Siri's pretty good yeah and we just turn around and we take that exact thing he asked it to do and we try that exact task thank you and it will not work the way it did in the commercial thank you it just won't I've been Vindicated this is all I've been asking yeah people are always like hustling it doesn't work because you're bad you're bad with technology no it's just the tech is hard tech is hard when it works it's beautiful sometimes it does sometimes it does work sure and I love when Tech works and I think about tweeting this all the time Tech is so great when it works but the when it works part holds so much water there bingo because it just doesn't work I wish we had you there was an LG phone that came out a while ago that had like Palm vein scanning and like hand gestures to do things and the the whole we went in for like a briefing it was a hotel room with a bunch of reviewers yeah and the whole room was just people like this and the pr people going around like just like oh so you love it right and we're all just like nothing is happening it doesn't work oh it just doesn't work oh no dude there just toss them out the yeah I try to be an optimist most of the time about like they tried they really had meetings and there are real people who thought this is going to be a good idea and when this works it's gonna it's gonna work and it's Gonna Change the Future and it's gonna be a good thing I think they think about the products the same way I think about the videos I think I want to make something that people will want to watch I'm going to put effort in until I get to the end product and I'm like yes this is good but I think I disagree Market I think it's twisted by the fact that you're part of a public company and you don't get as much say in the final product or in the fact that like things need to be done by a deadline yeah so I think their intentions are usually pretty positive and they just get twisted I I strongly disagree Marquez I think it's about meeting an earnings report every quarter and and pumping Out product to deliver to deliver higher earnings per quarter do you not think though there's because how how have we not figured out just I'm so sorry how have we not figured out just a printer getting connect my laptop to a printer and to get it to print okay let's say a company came along and made a printer that worked wouldn't everyone buy it wouldn't that work yes yes so why doesn't somebody make all the money I've been waiting for it I don't understand I've been waiting like Twitter I mean elon's buying Twitter yeah all this sort of stuff I was just like can you get into the printer please division I've argued the love of God apple apple makes products that work usually like the homepod exclusion I think they usually make products that work and I think Apple should come along and make a camera and a printer those are the two things I would like them to make really just for reference we have a printer here and it doesn't everyone has to send me a slack message because I'm physically plugged into it because the Wi-Fi cuts out yeah yeah everything I try to print something and then we go and Andrew goes are you trying to print something and I'm just like just yeah he's like just send it to me and I'll print it because it won't work for your computer yeah it doesn't work yeah um I kind of negated my point by the way you're saying you are right you're like if there's clearly a problem here and there's a lot of money to be made by solving this problem that being said the the there is what I'm talking about is the the fundamental division between neomania and luddites people that are obsessed with technology we all have that friend that is the worst version of you Marquez yeah Gizmo heads yeah I love Tech snob Tech snob Tech snobs and they will pull out every new smartwatch every new Surface Pro whatever whatever and they're marginally better not even they're actually not even marginally better they they've actually just added more like chaos to your life than than actually simplified anything and what they're not willing to admit is that I'm just like you are just a bottom feeder to what whatever the company whatever the company is serving up and they're masquerading it around under the guise that this is going to make your life easier when in reality yeah you just have Sega CD yeah there are a lot there are a lot of versions there are a lot of you know what I mean Sega CD you know uh mini disc player people walking around where this they walk around like this changes everything and it really doesn't it's funny so back in like 2009 on YouTube there were like 12 Tech channels on YouTube yeah and it was it was actually relatively easy to differentiate yourself because it was like you know Justine does Justine things and Lou does Lou things and Chris Perillo does his thing John for lake is his thing and I do my thing okay and and you know the next year there's 150 and the next year there's 3 000 and so instead of just being like one of them does uh the you know nice production quality and the other one does the Vlog style now it became like all right I'm gonna do the Apple videos just the Apple videos yeah and like hopefully those get the clicks and now in in five years later it's like okay that's not differentiated enough there's already that channel I'm going to do the Apple messed up genre I'm just gonna do videos about when Apple messes up that'll be my my plug just like slip in there differentiate myself a little bit with that and then you just keep devolving more and more into getting these subgenres and subgenres to the point where it's like people genuinely will kind of trick themselves into thinking they're covering a company fairly when really the angle that they must approach everything with is like where do they mess up how can I say this sucks because that's my angle and that's the only thing I will get clicks on how have you remained unbiased how have you been able to navigate that I'm I am luckily in a position where we've grown the channel to the point where it's sustainable where I don't need to devolve to get clicks to make the thing we want to to make I think if I do devolve and become overly biased or overly positive or overly negative or overly clickbaity or whatever the things we're avoiding I think that actually hurts the channel and if the product comes out and it's bad and I don't say it's bad that hurts the channel I would rather be honest about everything you're about maintaining public trust essentially exactly is that what I'm hearing yeah yeah I think there is a little also like we don't we're not completely unbiased we're not you know we're unbiased in the sense of nobody else outside is affecting what we do at all but like yeah people know that Marquez his main driver is usually an Android he knows he drives the Tesla like there is a certain level of bias and what we like to tell people is learn those biases through through learning a channel and then use different channels to make sure like I really want the pixel this year but I know Marquez usually likes the pixel so maybe I should also use his video with another video where a little more and calibrate yourselves yeah two different channels which is sometimes really hard to do also has has this industry this business been disillusioning for you at all or no has it maintained have you been able to maintain a a pretty um healthy relationship with it I think it's been pretty healthy I think my the one thing that's probably changed from the beginning is Tech kind of seemed like magic at the beginning and the more you do the more the curtain gets pulled back and the more you get to see uh the press the how it's made so you get to see the prototyping and get to see the version that doesn't work on its way to the thing that comes out and I think that's good to see because for me on one hand I'm never surprised by anything anymore which is like oh well the thing gets showed on stage and no one's there's a moment where some people are like I know what that's that's what they're making I had no idea where it's like we follow not just the leaks but like we know the people who make the things and like the thing comes out and eventually it's like we saw this coming for years yeah um so it's very rare to get surprised by something but I think it helps to get that context and to know like because then you now know the trajectory of if something is improving very slowly or very quickly I think if you only paid attention to headlines you might think wow the metaverse is like around the corner yeah but if you pay attention to meta and the products they've been making and the trajectory over the past few years and the money they've been pouring in and the products they've been developing and you've actually used the metaquest pro and all this stuff you'll see that the trajectory is just just barely ticking up a little bit um so I think having context helps as far as our ability to deliver a fair verdict on a product got it yeah for sure I wanted to ask you something though uh I'm so sorry I'm gonna read it we just like went off yeah we went back we went we reversed 30 minutes but I have a quote from you I want to read back to you oh God yeah this is always good when you hear a click from yourself this is from 2009 okay in 2009 you said Facebook Twitter and social media or arguably the best thing that's happened to the entertainment industry as a whole and especially in comedy do you still believe that uh yeah yeah yeah from a from uh like macro overarching perspective sure yeah decentralized non-gatekeeper um media that was a that is a great entry point in egalitarian opportunity for people to to become artists and hopefully make a living yeah and they can choose to be a part they can opt in to be a part of um what's quote-unquote Legacy Media which is just yeah media that essentially is uh backed by private uh you know multinational corporation or just scales up your vision you know beyond what DIY videos and art can be um so yeah I think ultimately it is that still is true and a good thing you know it's I agree with you I think the the one difference I have in the way I think about uh I think you said traditional was already used or Legacy Legacy yeah um I keep seeing it as the difference in the amount of time it takes to take your idea and get it out to the world sure and I think in the the media that I thrive in idea published 24 hours 48 hours however long it takes you to make the thing yeah it's out there and you're getting feedback instantly yeah whether it's a tweet takes you two seconds or a video might take us a week whatever and it's just out yeah and then I see like I imagine the Netflix special takes two years months years and you have this idea this thing that you want to make and obviously it's much bigger it's it's an hour long it's it's got all these different parts and it takes longer to put together yeah but there's still this like process before it can be released to the world this thought that you originated with two years ago yeah is that um challenging for you to overcome like I feel like you probably have thoughts and creative things all the time happening in your head you just don't get to do anything yeah I think there's a and it's interesting because as someone who came up on The Daily Show there is something kind of beautiful about that every day you know every day you make these little sand castles and you put them out and then Monday's work is done and you do it again Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and there's something kind of beautiful in that the the downside of that everything has its pros and cons the downside is nobody is re-watching an episode of The Daily Show from February 8th 2012. like it rots like bread yeah uh however people will still go back and watch get out or people will still go back and watch The Godfather there is this feeling of um making something for posterity or for kind of a long period of time that feels like it's Timeless in its nature I don't know if people will still go back and watch you know the Marquez Brownlee iPhone 6 review if that if that Beyond like a nostalgic yeah that's purely it it's just yeah yeah so so it really depends on what you're trying to do so that's the downside of that the other downside potentially is if say you have a a desire aspiration to really scale something you want a world build you want to you want to make something tell a story with dragons and castles and stuff like that from ideation to execution you cannot make House of dragon without really working on it for almost half a decade it's just gonna take that amount of time I think they both scratch different things and as an artist and Creator you just have to become comfortable with the amount of time it takes to do said thing that's it you have to you have to to kind of understand what the deal is and then be okay with the terms of said deal what are we doing here we're making a 40 million dollar movie got it it's going to take a while yeah versus like the risk and reward of a tweet that's a different level of scale different level of impact different level of whatever so level of Life yeah tweet is over in a day or two yeah yeah yeah and so and it just really just depends on what you're trying to do and I'll be honest there's times where I get the itch where I'm like I want this out now I want it now but um PB and the people around me have told me like hey you got to just understand what you're doing and just come to terms with it yeah better but I see what you guys have done here and even when I was at The Daily Show I there is something really beautiful for you personally that every day you just feel like you're building towards something and then you can quickly see the the results of it you know yeah we kind of we kind of feel like we're maybe pulling a little bit from the Legacy not format but like bigger production anyway and and bringing them into our fast-paced like deliver something quickly get a thought out to the world version of what we're doing yeah do you ever think about like um the the catalog of work you have or no are you just like hey I'm looking forward there is no look back on what my a little bit review was of the pixel 4 or whatever we're trying to do more we're consciously trying to do more longer till I guess in the YouTube world we look at how long the tail is so an evergreen video is good for a long time because it's not necessarily focused on one piece of tech or one news story or one period of time yeah we're consciously trying to do more of that um and that's actually fun because there's more stories there like product reviews are product reviews they they just they come and go new products show up is it good is it bad here it is show it with the world all right moving on yeah like that that is quick but I think the the story is happening in the tech world like the metaverse question or like the the what does Pro even mean in the word Pro and product names like that type of stuff is a little more interesting and longer lasting we're trying to do more of that so as people that have like clearly put a lot of skin in the game this is your day-to-day life and you've tried on these Technologies are you optimist stick about the future of technology I think yeah I think my default is very much optimistic especially because again maybe I'm jaded and thinking like oh yeah everyone wants to make good Tech everyone seems to have the idea of like if we make a better piece of tech it'll speak for itself the features will be easier to use everyone will want to use the newer better thing and that's the goal generally so I think that's the way I see it but I think it's healthy to have some amount of skepticism especially in like some of the more looming future Technologies what about you how do you feel kind of the same thing it's like optimistic about the things that I truly enjoy which are more Gadget based and stuff like that but then you always have to be skeptical about now how much are those gadgets like getting into now your personal life what what are the yeah privacy becomes a huge thing just like we're putting more cameras and microphones on everything there's just exactly what you said there's a lot of companies out there where their main focus is profits how much are we sacrificing our privacy for their profits and yeah and I have to be skeptical about that yeah it's hard to be super optimistic about that I just feel and and try to can you just talk me down from this I really want to be convinced uh otherwise is that um almost like Coca-Cola's goal is to get you to drink more coke their goal is to turn you into an end product and then scrape off data about what type of boxers Marquez wears and what type of aftershave you use and to sell that to advertisers so that they actually aren't they've tricked you they are not the tool you are the actual tool and cudgel that they are then using to sell data on you under the guise of we're going to make your life easier and the thing that was really bothering me the other day is that that I'm forced to opt in so I went to this I was in LA and I had to go meet someone for lunch and um I go can I get a menu please and they go no you have to scan it with your QR code and the problem is is they were like I go I just didn't bring my phone down I actually wanted to like have lunch with a friend you know it's like that the purpose of this was to have a meal with another human being make eye contact and actually have like a human connection yeah and not be a screen baby yeah um for once and they were like no it's um we're actually trying to save the trees and I was like ah come on bro like come on Recycle you know better than this we could use recycled paper come give me a break yeah like you could print it out once we could reuse it you can laminate it's don't do that don't masquerade this around under the guise of virtue you're getting me to opt into this thing now in their defense I get it they can change the menu and they don't have to continue to print it out that being said it's that forced opt-in that I don't feel is fair to me or for my kids that my daughter when she turned six or seven and she wants to go to the gak store and I'm like hey don't worry like don't worry I don't want you to worry about Snapchat and Twitter and YouTube right now I just want you to be present and enjoy the the gak or slime store but if they're like well to to pull up the list of options of what's you have to use the QR code and that she has to become this like it's it's a force opt-in that's the part of it that I'm not cool with you know yeah they're they're it's fine there's a lot of um there's a lot to that there's some companies who are yes just using you for your data it's just true that's just a business model for a lot of companies they're the biggest companies and a lot of the biggest yeah those are the companies they're the biggest ones and they do feel opt-in because they are so massive that the services if you do choose to opt out all their services you're like missing out on core life experiences it's like oh if I don't have a phone I can't use iMessage and my whole family facetimes every weekend so what am I supposed to do it's like you feel like you need to use the thing yes um I do or I couldn't even ask you do you want to just grab lunch and talk about these things I have to do I have to do the podcast yeah wait okay I think someone no I mean I mean this sincerely this is a perfect someone from Chevy is calling me okay because do you want to take a quick break no I'm actually gonna hi all right we're actually going to take a quick break while I accept that real life phone call from Chevy when we come back much more with Hospital foreign that doesn't make you profoundly sad that's the part that makes me profoundly sad and I like the dichotomy of it is 12 hours of screen time 12 12 minutes of sunlight and that the the um entropy of that the rate at which how fast it's going that's the part I don't want to be grandpa I swear to God I'm 37 years old I swear to God yeah but that idea of just like oh wow like I got a Freebase this [ __ ] information 8 30 a.m just like like into my Dome yeah before I can even like take a drink of water like pee like get out of bed get out of bed like hug a loved one like a fellow human being like feel touch of the human being and kiss my children like I just have to be like he's been reinstated on Twitter you know what I mean and it's just right free based to my dome right at 901 and it's we are the speed at which it's happening yeah is a part where I couldn't even watch your your uh meta video you and Mark Zuckerberg I can't oh really because I was like this will put me down a spiral of existential angst and Dread that I don't want to oh I see yeah the topic of being in the metaverse all day every day yeah okay do you think I I wonder if this is like a generational thing too because I have the same thoughts as you where I'm like I I feel kind of old saying this yeah but like ever just go somewhere for the experience and not to take pictures of it like I I have that thought when I see everyone with their phones out and I'm like that's uh maybe that's kind of a grandpa thing to think but it's real and then the younger you go the more people are just like no I don't care at all about that I don't care about experience I don't care about no they don't care about like the fact that they are attached to their phones and the information coming out of the pixels all the time they just live in that world and that's fine so you don't see you I'm and I I mean this like since I'm not trying to uh uh I apologize if this comes off as like a tacky or whatever sincerely um you also don't find it profoundly strange that anxiety depression and all these things are just are way up and I've heard the counter well we were always anxious or we all we were always depressed that feels a little murky I'm talking about there is a feeling that I that I've seen younger people have that I have as a quote-unquote public figure where people feel crippled with anxiety and I think that's a byproduct of the idea that oh my God if I text this person and ask them out oh my God if I say the wrong thing God forbid on slack on iMessage it is now etched in the it's etched in stone and there was something beautiful about human memory that trauma memories good or bad they kind of fade that like passive aggressive thing that someone said to me in eighth grade to like warp a little bit Yeah it I can feel almost like in Back to the Future the photo is faded like I do remember getting made fun but it's like ah it's not as palpable as it was whereas some of my worst moments in my cringiest takes can just be played on repeat and I think what that does to the fabric of society is that it makes everybody massively scared which I think is part of just the the boiling temperature just general existential dread in the air of like I don't know what to say think do or feel I'll have it fed to me and then I will assess and with the flow I and I go God man I signed up to be a public figure like politician celebrity comedian my heart breaks that everybody now is famous where everybody feels like okay I gotta have my stump speech and my position and all that stuff framed and ready to go that part um I did not see happening as as quickly as it did yeah and that feels very profound and different from where we were from web 1.0 like basically 1996 to you know 20034 to like 2.0 to where we are now it is uh and where it's going it's where it's going and you guys live in this and wait in this way more than me so by all means please like push back poke holes like I want I want to be I'm a generally optimistic person yeah it does I I agree with you I think a lot of it is uh it's pretty dramatic in how quickly it changes and it's also it's built on the backs of tech that has to be good to work so if the tech is bad then it doesn't catch on as quickly that's like my basic assumption yeah and so the fact that it has caught on as quickly as it has and works as well as it does must mean that the tech behind it is actually sound and good which is like I guess that's a good thing but it's also kind of scary that it's that good yeah it's like the the tick tock algorithm that learns you better than you know yourself and will start to like help you shape your feelings on the world yeah and it's so good at that that people are just willing to dive in and just let that run their media feed all the time yeah um I think I think there has to be a level of self uh and this is with timing because we grew up before social media but you kind of have to have a level of being able to detach and be able to remove yourself when you feel like you're too immersed or you feel like it's too controlling or if it's causing depression or any of these things you you kind of have to be able to find a way to remove yourself when that's harder than ever which is that's tough it's really tough I also think kind of the hardest part of why it's going to be hard for that to change is because almost every single thing you've said has a positive aspect of it as well yeah whereas we're now connected through way more people there's way more people who can we were able to we were able to meet yeah yeah because of that yeah there are people out there and places who maybe don't agree with a lot of things the way they are and now they have an Alleyway to find other people that they can connect with better and yeah and that could help but every single thing that you said then has the positive and all these companies are going to focus on the positive and and I'm not disagreeing with you at all I completely agree with you it's just hard to like either do you get rid of those in the cons of it and the pros are going to be the better feel-good stories that are going to make it feel like this is something that you need and that down dark side so MKBHD are you guys gonna go let's just jump 50 years into the future you're going to be transhuman are you gonna do it I won't be first in line I will not be first in line but you are going to upload your Consciousness to the cloud and the whole thing I would be interested interesting I think this is like connective tissue of like humanity and and the internet is actually a net positive obviously but I I do think that there's an there's a you really believe that I think yeah I think the internet obviously the the you're connecting your spirit is a beacon of light that is only that is making me feel that way trying to be positive yeah I think I think generally Humanity being more connected that's my like overall high level view of it yeah is a net positive uh I think there are there are people around the world who would never be uh who never like be interested in products that have seen product videos on YouTube from some k in New Jersey and have decided yeah I'm actually turns out I'm interested in that and it's like something they never would have found if there wasn't this connective tissue between us yeah so that that's I think that's cool yeah how would you describe what you've done I I wrote down what you I think you represent the culture and media how would I describe what I've done um I've just I I've decided to make videos I would want to watch and try to be entertaining and helpful along the way and there's products in there how would you describe what is you asked that and I was kind of like I hope he doesn't ask me this because I I don't know if I've thought about it yet um I mean I I would like to think that we're we're generally we're informing people on decisions that are sometimes harder to make and when money is involved in that and we're in a space put where money is involved very much so and we like to help people as somebody who I cannot purchase something without spending days researching about it it makes me feel a little better that somebody maybe has a little more confidence in taking that step but again this is ultra material based this is like very very I mean we're focused on gadgets we're focused on spending money that's but you know what I want it does boil Downs you know what I want to be what's that I want to be the Neil deGrasse Tyson of of gadgets of tech wow because you know Neil does he makes Science and Space just scientific literacy yeah fun like listening to him talk about the universe and and like reading his book on the universe like I I don't think I ever would have read a book on the universe but reading his and like learning about the origins of these things and the scientific the fundamentals behind how the Earth got to be where it is and how the stars in the sky are the way they are and what's happening to them and all this stuff yeah and the way he makes that entertaining is just like that's I'm glad it feels like it's for a greater good which is scientific literacy but he's really good at the storytelling and the entertainment with profound scientific fundamentals that make it all work yeah and I want to be that for technology I was gonna say what I wrote down about you is you're the Mr Rogers meets LeVar Burton of Technology Mr Rogers yeah Mr Rogers yeah and I don't mean that as an insult I mean that actually is a big compliment Fred Rogers and LeVar Burton have done so much for education and humanity and children and they're like a warm blanket in a in a cold cold world yeah yeah I think yeah the grass Tyson in there I think nailed the grass yeah yeah yeah so like I can see that and one of the things that I hope that my my concern with technology but my hope ultimately is is how do we bring big Wikipedia energy to the internet in the tech world big Wiki energy because Wikipedia is this okay so social media is Mad Max Fury Road it's just filled with insane actors and then Wikipedia is just this very just like calm cool collected that's non-toxic that's how it looks like I wonder is it really that all the time you know what's funny about Wikipedia I so for a while before I hit 10 million subscribers I didn't tell anyone my middle name right and it became this like working mystery in the background and the fact is it was kind of out there already but people would be guessing what they thought it was and they would change my Wikipedia to what they thought it was and if they changed it too many times Wikipedia would lock it for vandalism but when they locked it it would lock on one of the wrong answers yeah so anytime anyone went to Wikipedia it would be the wrong answer anytime anyone asked Google it would repeat the Wikipedia wrong answer and it became this thing where it was just like Wikipedia misinformation and I wonder like I I do see Wikipedia from the outside as like this like here's the sources here's the information here's the new thing yeah here it is yeah and I wonder if it's always always like that well I'll I'll just do this from personal experience type in the word Muslim into Google and Twitter and it's a it's it's pretty ugly yeah cut to any sort of again like uh contentious third rail issue it's it's it is like PBS broadcast of of that context yeah again not perfect it is it can be imperfect but what I mean by that is just the boiling temperature is way down um and it stays pretty calm and collected yeah I wonder maybe your guys's algorithm is way different than mine maybe mine's is insane and yours is just much comfort so you have like more Twitter maybe or Twitter and probably YouTube maybe because I have to I have to wait in like culture and politics and all these things my my YouTube recommendations are so many it's it's products it's like tutorials how to's okay great pretty tame okay got it yeah got it got it got it I think my Twitter is closer to you my YouTube's a little more tame because it's like video games and Tech and hockey that's about it and oh great but Twitter yeah okay I see what you mean it's the the ultra polarizing versus the middle of the road and like you would prefer to just be the the middle of the road easier going maybe I'm not a sane version the same same yeah just just sane you know and it's not um it is not incentivized to trigger me or to get me to feel an extreme emotion kind of you're tricking me you're tricking me into being either upset you you're just manipulating my emotions getting me to be really upset or crying or sad about this particular thing you know yeah there's a lot of times where you close Twitter because you can't deal with that anymore and there's not a lot of times you close Wikipedia because it's making you deal with all these sources yeah yeah I mean I just can't deal with this like nuance and depth and and all this information is coming to me yeah I I you you probably have some questions I had a few more questions for you is that okay go for it yeah yeah um how do you feel about um AI are you optimistic about it and Dolly and all this stuff I'm gonna ask you Where'd I see Dolly right there in my notes I was going to talk about did you write this out or you typed it I typed this I mean I could you know yes I have I have a lot of thoughts about Ai and I was going to ask you about Dolly I I am optimistic and I know that there is a heavy dose of skepticism on the edges that I have to have um but I think something like dolly is a great interesting example because it let's just project out it gets better over time yeah right now Dolly can generate photorealistic thousand by thousand pixel images with a text prompt sick is that art that's like kind of the question right now whatever but let's say let's fast forward let's say now sometime in the future it can give us like a 30 second clip like a video clip yeah moving clip yeah then you fast forward to the future it gives us like a nine minute YouTube video yeah keep fast forwarding it's giving us the Patriot Act it's giving us shows it's giving us a comedy special yeah is that watchable is that art is that creative what is that so so my opinion is when it is more robot than human to me I Define art as a human expression of emotion that helps me understand the world and what it means to be human loss pain jealousy and anger Envy love those are the things of what it means to be a human being a sentient being on planet Earth and sure AI could maybe like masquerade as that it does from all previous human Expressions yeah and does that matter yeah to me the the thing about a movie or a poem or a song that moves you to tears is the fact that those words were were belted from a human being they're expressing the Pathos and the emotion of what it means to be human that's why people are crying at Adele concerts and stuff like they can tell that Adele is is singing from a place of pain and it's not dolly that is like you know programming and you know I'll toss this at you there are entire do you care I mean it seems like you're just more stoic about it yourself I don't care I I'm I know that I'm a less sentimental person I don't think I'm fully on cold robot side but I'm I'm I Am shifting that side of the spectrum I can I can tell there are entire YouTube channels like V tubers where it's not a real person yeah it's a it's an animated person yeah with scripts written by AI yeah that just self-generates new videos and people subscribe to it not become a bar just but these exist some of these exist and people subscribe to them and become fans of them and get invested and watch them and care about them yeah they're not people wow how is that sure how is that real and you're right and maybe like it's like hey Mario and Luigi aren't real like they are just video game characters you know Pikachu is not a real thing that is a like a cartoon human creation human creation yeah I think what we're talking about though is the fact that Mario and Luigi were created with the human touch and there was that kind of feeling and this goes back to like ancient tradition where there is this I think somehow inherent belief in us as human beings that we we are the the creation of of God and we are a representation of that and when we create worlds it's that but you you seem like do you feel like you'd be like yeah that's fine I would subscribe to an AI generated Channel if it was good enough I do think I would not subscribe to it and I'd prefer the human version the human generated version I just can't articulate why and I can't figure out why it's kind of like the the VR question of like if VR becomes so immersive I think Neil deGrasse Tyson asked me the same question if VR becomes so immersive that it completely covers a field of view that perfectly matches your vision it you have headphones on that you can't feel you hear everything perfectly yeah right versus all seven Ready Player one right you think you're in a new world it is perfectly realistic will you still feel the need to like like if You observe the Grand Canyon through this VR and then you take the headset off will you still feel like you've seen the Grand Canyon knowing that it's VR even though it's a perfect representation through VR yeah I I still feel like I want to see the actual Grand Canyon because look at the thing like that's amazing like that is you get to visualize the river carving out the canyon and the whole thing but like I've seen it already I don't know why but I still want to see the real thing I can't figure out like how to articulate why that's my problem yeah I like so the real thing I just do you want to know why I think it is I would love that so um the internet and technology created an idea of infinity and the reason why life is beautiful is because it is fundamentally limited this may be like the last interaction we have and there's something beautiful in that or like when you say you love someone and they say they love you back there is that inherent risk there's that skin in the game of like I don't know if they are or they're not and the fact that our memory and our existence is finite makes it beautiful whereas if you can play The Legend of zeld and just hit restart it doesn't have that feeling and that is the only hope that I have going forward the feeling that like technology and um the companies have tried to mimic the beauty of humanity as best as they could but pornography will never feel as good as the the touch of a person that you love it just won't and and no matter like how many tabs of sorry to get grass that you want to open it just won't like I still will be sitting in my boxers ashamed you cannot make it more meaningful than the real thing yeah that it hasn't happened yet and I and I think they're just trying to make the they're just turning up the realism knobs on everything they're just trying to make the soda the the Facebook fentanyl the social media math they're the Heisenberg blue stronger but at the end of the day you're still snorting Heisenberg blue that's the thing you can't get around um that is the only like sense of you know I want you to be right I I so want to because there's a lot of younger people whose lines are blurred way more than ours yeah and I ca and I can't wait to watch the MKBHD video where they where like the younger people that you work with Ty you to the to the chair plug me in and they just plug you in um it might happen someday but I'm I'm holding on to the what did you mean by I'm a less sentimental person what does that mean I just I I am I think in the general like sense of it like I I don't hold on to old things as much oh really I'm like I'm very pragmatic about like things I need and things I get rid of so oh I don't really hold on to like tangible objects as if they have I think a lot of people connect them to a memory they don't want to get rid of it I'm just I don't need it anymore really yeah that's me wow okay can I ask you guys this I can tell you I can tell by our body language you need to leave no no oh sincerely you don't you don't have to go no yeah we got all that okay so we got I have two worlds that I want to touch with you touch on with you guys um and then and then you tell them tell me how you want to approach it um I want to talk about uh I would love your perspective about this you know coming from the world that I've come from my my world majority being like political comedy and satire the kind of the Apex of what I've done is sat down with heads of state and get to interview them but fundamentally politics is about messaging and technology is about product itself what's interesting is now Tech in in public policy these things are overlapping in a really interesting fascinating way so what I wanted to ask you about was what you think is happening right now with Twitter you spend a lot of time with Elon Musk and what you feel like your responsibility has been now as a person who's been able to sit down with some of the most powerful people in the world and I would argue they're bigger than autocrats and politicians and their impact on the world yeah yeah it's really it's three parts but I loved it I like so with Twitter it's like really hard to answer because I that will only come from the mind of Elon probably as far as like there's a lot of theories about what people think he's trying to do versus what's happening versus what is about to happen yeah all I know is I know I know people who've worked at Twitter for a long time who are just like yeah I'm leaving there's no Clear Vision here no one's communicated to us what we're supposed to be doing here which is perfectly reasonable reason to leave um but it does feel like the other companies that elon's built were very much engineering problems that he solved yeah and that was I mean the teams the teams involved are amazing obviously launching rockets and Landing them electric cars the whole thing is is incredible uh Twitter is a uh people problem it feels like like a social problem and it's a very different problem to solve so I think he's going about it trying to fix the company um and I don't know how connected that will be to like Twitter itself Twitter is all about the people who are on Twitter and I think when you lose that you don't really get it back uh but I'm kind of just watching what he does with the company itself I think he's just kind of like hitting the reset button on the entire company oh people who work here have this history and this expectation of what working for Twitter will be like take this throw it out put in new people who are kind of like people who work for Tesla or SpaceX who are like just willing to do what I say about my vision here for Tesla or for Twitter that's one thing I don't really know how to feel about that that's just like what he's doing with the company he's just run companies before cool um but I like I really like Twitter like using Twitter really like I tweet all the time I get instant feedback on my thoughts from fans like I interact with people I was just uh you're one of the few I I have I love Twitter I have like moved away well well because I think I uh the types of ideas that comedy politics you're wading into it's it's it's not a healthy place I see I think yeah um Can tech review be an unhealthy place are people generally good faith actors I think people are generally yeah generally I can tell you there are very vocal edges I'll say that I would also say Tech Twitter seems to be like on the optimistic side Tech Twitter seems to be very tight-knit and generally an equal mindset where like ultimately the things we're arguing about are like products and stuff where it's less along the lines I mean you do say like you said it's getting closer and closer to those people being the most powerful over potentially politicians for sure for sure so like we'll see in a few years where that gets to but yeah Tech Twitter versus political Twitter might be a little just more like I love Twitter as well I I'm very worried about something happening to it because it feels like it's going down a bad path right now yeah um but there are sides of tech Twitter that are insanely toxic um that are just very and I find it interesting to even go back to kind of a point you made before of just like these companies are making things for profits but they have found ways to make people their absolute DieHard loyal fans and like they can do no wrong despite those companies probably do not care about these people they care about their wallet they do not care about them at all whether they're having a good experience whether their printers working or not yeah and those people will fight to the death for them and then that can create sometimes I mean we've so yeah I mean I couldn't agree more and before I lose this thought sure can we hit pause on this there's two fundamental things that I wanted to add as a pitch for your dear Twitter thing but we just didn't know each other at the time okay we could talk about this later yeah I can do punch up for free it's it's perfect it's perfect well there's actually two things that I actually think are a big part of the problem and something that's worth considering I think the quote tweet function fundamentally incentivizes bad faith actors and bad behavior and because the quote tweet function socializes [ __ ] posting so you have a video and you're like strongly disagree and I can get clout by [ __ ] posting or dunking on someone else's idea prime example of that was the cottage industry of trump tweeting and outrage to Trump or the other side of it somebody on the left tweeting and then outraged two set thing but the move was exactly the same look at person below aren't they stupid and so the things that are necessary I think for like a functioning robust society which is like um conversation dialogue understanding like coming to get sorry I'm being sentimental here I agree but like all of these things like even simple things of like I bump into you on the subway my bad that is not an incentivized behavior um on Twitter and that was really bad incentive yes second thing so you've you've incentivized bad faith actors and bad behavior you can quickly rise the ranks through that and we are just incentive machines like human beings we are designed that way hey why are you studying this in college why did you choose this as a career path because of certain social and economic incentives number two the pipeline from Twitter to Media to Google news that one two three was a quick like tornado of absolute insanity absolute absolute insanity and the fact that blue check journalist twitters Twitter like I call it Journal Twitter from Tech Twitter to New York Times Twitter to it all exists on Twitter can make something that is of small size and of minimal scale the biggest story in the world and can tear apart the fundamental fabric of society and we've seen that manifest itself from um you know political insurrections in our own country to what's happening in Myanmar India like just mobs of people causing actual violence in in the streets that to me is like oh this did not exist in 1999 this did not happen in 2003 this way and it all starts with Twitter PV was going to write a whole Patriot Act episode on this like yeah just like me too camera being like here's the breakdown of like how it is fundamentally affected Society in a profoundly negative way and it's quickly through this quote tweet to news to Google news and now it's officially a real thing yeah so you can make the nothing something God help us all I mean that is like the devil and in as a thing yeah I kind of Wonder like when I because I see this as well and I also think like first of all the quote tweet thing as far as the way it was designed it was probably designed with the Positive version of it in mind where it's like I can reply to someone but then people might not see who follow me so maybe someone took has this bit of information I want to add some information so I'm going to quote tweet here's also my perspective boom that's like I've seen lots of positive quote tweets but then which version is incentivized is the question um and I think that's not Guided by Twitter guidelines as much as it's Guided by human behavior and then the version of like but wait can we let's let's interrogate that more yeah it's tapped into the worst of human behavior yeah to go back to what we started with the reason why I'm here is actually some of the stuff that exists in the DNA of your work represents I believe the best of human behavior Noble honest sincere straightforward like these are the best things about human beings they are difficult to achieve they are like they are not as incentivized as salaciousness lewdness crudeness insults ad hominem attacks those are the worst of like schoolyard bullying by the way I I'm a comic like we can do that you want my tongue to be a razor blade I can play that game we will all feel icky in society we will ultimately be worse for it but we can do that it is it is in our DNA as well yeah and I think what it did is it incentivized that part of it because it is more profitable I gotta get you to feel an extreme emotion extreme anger yeah extreme and it's easier to hit like rage than it is to hit extreme happiness or because we've seen like occasional viral positive stories yes but the viral negative story is way more common yeah yeah totally agreed yeah yeah it does take it it takes a bit of effort to work against or to work towards something that is not incentivized and I think I guess I get a little bit of um of energy from the fact that people do occasionally of notice and appreciate when something that you're doing that isn't incentivized is positive yeah um and trust me I've had videos and things go viral because it's like there is something true in it that really resonates deeply yeah but there is a difference between a tool which is designed to help humans in a weapon which is designed to hurt human beings and I think that the the percentage right now in my opinion and again I'm open to being convinced is that it's 80 weapon 20 tool I would be curious about that because you remember when YouTube got rid of what do they do they got rid of the dislike button and their their public reasoning for that was this is being used as a like a tool to harm creators meaning like a dislike Brigade on a video for a Creator that's like having you know a personal story or like sharing something vulnerable and then a dislike Brigade coming from some other outside site and it's like we just got rid of the button across the whole site and that made me think immediately like how frequent was that was it was it 10 of videos was it one percent of videos but at the end of the day it didn't really matter because the couple of times that did happen was enough for them to go yeah we just don't want this to happen anymore and I wonder the same thing about about Twitter which is like I know what's visible to me which is I it Twitter's kind of what I make of it it's who I follow I see a lot of positive things but there's the trending stuff there's the negative stuff how much of this usage of this tool is actually negative and is it skewed enough for Twitter to do anything about it like YouTube did I can't really tell I don't have the numbers I can just tell what I observe based on my timeline you've curated a pretty healthy experience I think that yeah I think my Twitter experience is pretty close to what I've designed which is a lot of positive you've created like a digital Utopia I've made a nice little Echo chamber of positive thoughts yeah which is cool I think the dislike comparison's a little tough though because as somebody who goes and dislikes a video I gain nothing out of that whereas someone who goes and quote tweets a tweet with a negative take on it I can gain off of that because that can then be promoted in the algorithm that can make it to other people's timelines people can see that that's doing that and then they can be incentivized to do that as well yeah so like the extra what you're gaining out of that and what Twitter's algorithm is potentially pushing that forward is when it makes it so much more dangerous and so much more common I think than just a thumbs down on a YouTube video that no one sees you do it's it's yeah people seeing you do it and then those people also wanting to do it feels so much worse than I will say that humans always will find a way to to create the most negative version of a feature do you remember video responses on YouTube like they eventually got rid of it because it was abused I loved the idea which is you make a video and someone has a response for you yeah in video form instead of a comment they can make a video response they click a video response button they record it to their webcam and it shows up underneath the video in the comments right below yeah right above the comments is the video responses okay wow I just finished this video from Hank Green about why this new thing is the future but oh there's a video response from a scientist let me watch that yeah and it was a great tool but it was obviously going to be gamed by the worst possible actors yeah sure enough there's like people you know thumbnail abusing idea abusing the whole thing they nuked the feature yeah and I just think like you're probably right about quote tweets let's say they get rid of it yeah they're on to the next one they're gonna find the next possible way to be the bad actor even just because they're incentivized in that way to get the most attention from Rage from this one feature I just don't think I don't think there's money in in goodness that's the problem and like that's the thing I'm trying to again I respect and I I sincerely like pray and hope for the best for you guys because of that and I try to like live my life that way just as a personal life decision that being said one of the I'll give you I'll actually I'll give you one because I'm sure there's waveform listeners that are like I love technology so I'll give you an example of a community that I love but it couldn't scale so when I first moved to New York I got hired at The Daily Show I didn't own a suit I needed to I needed to understand where to go and for guys there's just not a healthy place to go to be like hey man where do I buy a suit and you're not going to make fun of me because that's yeah that's the problem it's like hey dude I actually need to go do this and I can't be clowned right now get arrested yeah yeah we just don't have time for that right now there's a there's a group on Reddit called reddit.com mail fashion advice and it's a bunch of dudes and you're not in your head you know what I'm talking about right you're just like hey no ego hey man where do I buy chinos and like yeah and the moderators are really cool they're like yo we are trying to help people here yes so like no roasting no snaps no blah blah blah like just try to you know big up people or help them out and what was really cool about the community is in certain Urban cities where guys you know like 25 year old guys or whatever were going out for their first job they'd all help one another hey man I have this jacket I gained a little bit of weight it doesn't fit me anymore why don't you take it and people were helping each other out funny enough that Community helped me when I first moved moved there and I used you know like my government name and people were actually like really like kind and sincere and the mods were like hey be be positive be proactive and exhibit skin in the game and if you are a bad faith poster we're booting you out the problem is is that like that group only hovers at a certain number unfortunately right you know and it doesn't scale or bring more people in because there's no car crash to watch right there is no like Andrew Tate fight where people are kickboxing and you know like spitting on each other and calling each other names or whatever there is no spectacle unfortunately do you think that's also partially because there's no one jostling to be the top dog when communities are smaller like that and then therefore creates just a more intimate because like I love read it read it when you were their sub pocket there's probably sub Pockets that aren't good yeah they're a terrible reddits for sure yeah yeah big reddits that aren't as fun because it's not a community but yeah I've seen Reddit and in some cases there's like Discord communities that are also very active and generally it's because it's appointed moderators that have a general goal and that you can create a good atmosphere there yeah so I thought about this so this and I would love to know what you you think about this the problem with um I would just say social media platforms or media platforms is they have removed skin in the game so what I mean by that is that they have removed the say that [ __ ] to my face Factor oh yeah yeah there was a level of like whether it's ultimate or basketball like if people talk [ __ ] you are going to pay a price and if you really believe it sometimes a fight would break out at 24 Hour Fitness that being said there was there there was um there's a great book called anti-fragile by Nasim Talib was one of my favorite authors but there is actually actually an honor in that because there would be a scuffle and all parties involved at the 24 Hour Fitness would go this is mutually assured destruction we cannot just fist fight at 24 Hour Fitness break it up and for the rest of the night there's actually no more fights or those two people that fight get booted from the gym and then like calmnesses uh reinstated because we know those those guys as Government names don't let John and Brad back into the gym they're bad they're just Bad Dudes don't don't let them back in here but if ball drapes 79 and Afghan killer 917 these guys at scale can then just create Havoc um there is no skin in the game and that there's part of me that that's what I want to be that was a pitch that I had potentially for Twitter I need your government name because if you don't have anything to lose you can just create Havoc I want your [ __ ] LinkedIn profile here so hey you wanna you wanna cause Havoc you might lose your job at FedEx like I need to know that's for real for real because everything that I do I'm ten toes down on if I'm a bad comment I'm going to lose my living my kids won't get braces like I we won't I won't be able to provide for my mom and dad and all that stuff so at least you can disagree with me but you know that I'm being sincere and authentic and Twitter doesn't have that now I will provide a caveat I understand there are whistleblowers and there are people that live in autocratic regimes that need a safe way to express themselves I think those um the platforms should provide that anonymity but I think you have there has to be some backdoor verification like whistleblower or like you know protected rights kind of program there for that for that but the stuff I'm seeing on YouTube and Twitter that's Amateur hour these are not like activists in Iran that are like trying to be protected and not be persecuted by the state yeah these are people that are just trying to post your hot ones video in the comment section yeah you know what I mean and I think that like uh nature in society and human beings living amongst each other we've we are sitting on millions of years of just like data that has provided this like kind of beautiful system yeah you know and the algorithm is trying to catch up to that or it's like a couple engineers and you know San Bruno that are trying to create that you know yeah I I also think about like how real is the uh how real are the are the consequences of the anonymous chaos like the anonymous fights like you you know give the example of like two people coming to a gym they fight they leave they're real people uh two Anonymous characters arrive in a comment section on Reddit they fight they leave how damaging was that fight to the subreddit around them much less than the gym no no this is this is the problem is our fundamental Reliance on technology means potentially say um four people on Twitter say Marquez Brownlee is um a racist I already have a filter for this hypothetically right yeah then NBC News uses those as primary source reports this is the problem without like actual documents and evidence that is tied to again a government name trust me I mean this is like the Patriot Act I'm all about hey whistleblowers people that are trying to like through evidence you know provide you know uh stuff to to protect themselves I totally get that and I'm for that those persons people say that about Marquez NBC News picks it up and because Twitter is now an aggregator it's through that same pipeline for people Anonymous people tweeted this about Marquez Brownlee at NBC News decides to pick it up because of that at CBS News picks up the reporting of NBC News at Huffington Post picks it up then that's pipelined into Google News which Google now you know they said the New York Times is all the News That's fit to print or it's the it's the paper of record that gets the pass Google news is the paper of record that's your reality and if I'm marquez's mom and I'm just like I type in Marcus Riley and I go Marquez I didn't know you were a race yeah do you see the level of chaos four people have caused we are we have now careened into this [ __ ] tornado of insanity yeah that has not been corroborated in actual like capital T truth that's my problem that a small like a small group of people can create absolute chaos and it has just been Amplified by technology it's been worsened yeah so I disagree with you those two people fist fighting we can identify the problem we all know who these people are right we know their driver's license so we know like their name we know that they're booted out of 24-Hour Fitness for like we're never having to deal with them again and it is not it is not like um it is not metastized and just become a wildfire right yeah I'll be honest man the people that like who have said mean things to me or like on the internet I go I'd rather have you just punch me in the face can you punch me in the face then actually the name is attached to it yeah because we're actually done with this yeah it is not etched in Amber of the internet yeah please please actually you know when they're just like words or violence I actually prefer please be violent I actually want you to hurt me for the record don't come punch me in the face I I do feel that way I was just like let's just be done with this I I whenever I start to see the like random uh I think I think there's a lot of incentive for people to say the craziest possible thing for attention yeah and so kind of the way I've behaved online as a whole in general yeah is I try to reward the behaviors that I like right so if there are people who are leaving constructive criticism I actually respond and will say thanks for the feedback and we'll implement the feedback and if I have people going hey this video was great or just like blank empty feedback I don't respond to them and if there are people who are just giving blank empty criticism this video sucked I don't respond to them and so I think people who are after attention over time start to notice what you're rewarding and will sort of Bend to what you're incentivizing and this is just me online yeah so I noticed that when people try try to get my attention they will start with crazy crass things they'll start with what those four people said and tweet at me and try to get my attention that way yeah and I just ignore it completely and they'll slowly realize that the way to get attention is to be reasonable and constructive and then they'll actually be rewarded in that way um just with like a reply or if attention is all they want then they got a reply yeah um and so I think a lot about like how do we build larger incentives around us online to make sure the things that we want to happen are actually happening and rewarded and the things that we don't want to happen which is lots of examples we can give are completely unrewarded it's harder when it's Anonymous for sure yeah that's a thousand percent harder because people don't walk up to you in the street and start with the crazy crass thing yeah they kind of have a narrower window of what they start with because it's in real life um but I do think that at least the way I try to they have online is like rewarding I feel like you should run some of these tech companies then this this kind of like big NPR High School librarian energy of just like hey I'm here for curiosity like well-constructed debate like I would be I'll be building in rules into the platforms that incentivize that yeah kind of like Wikipedia there's probably like a system that's what I'm saying reporting Wikipedia editors for good edits yeah these are they're super Wiki users yeah right isn't there aren't there like super Wiki peoples my mic is unplugged in as far as I know yeah um it's like it's totally on our system there's negative consequences if you're if you're making edits to articles that are constantly being re-ended then you will get privileges revoked that's great um but I don't think there's any sort of like Karma yeah that's the best is the internet is it those I mean those people are just the true heroes right yeah do you donate to Wikipedia I don't but I how dare you Marcus do you of course of course you do of course you did I should isn't it this is why Marquez is why we deserve nothing we'll do this Humanity deserves a nothing every every like two months Wikipedia goes panhandling like please give us four dollars and you're like shut the [ __ ] up Wikipedia what have I ever gotten from yeah other than my college education I have to I have to renew peacock right now for nine dollars a month like to know they have given us so much it's true that's what I mean by that I'm like that the wiki that Wikipedia thing is like is just a macro if that is a macro representation of what is wrong with Humanity yes if Wikipedia went behind a paywall right now how would would they go under or would people pay for Wikipedia but they're so useful I would pay for sure I would pay I think a lot of reasonable people would pay um but a lot of people would get mad we we have gone down a little a little bit of a side tangent what do you you know we didn't even get to the other two questions but what do you feel about um do you hope Twitter's gonna work and um do you ultimately think it's gonna work yeah I I so there's the the business behind the scenes half of Twitter and there's a public-facing version of Twitter I like Twitter and I hope Twitter works I hope Twitter continues to exist and if there are changes made to Twitter I do hope that they're somewhat in the vein of incentivizing positive behavior I think that's a good goal to have for Twitter but I like just to be because it's for me it's the creative part of my brain just like vomiting out thoughts into the world and getting instant feedback on them like that's fun yeah it's just like I live in that world all the time so you I mean you have been able to curate like a really amazing experience because there's so many ideas that I have that I will work out privately I'm like there's no way I'm going to open this up to the masses I have to I want to talk this out but you've somehow been able to be like here's my unadultered thoughts let me just straight up here's a poll a b or c here's a question what do you guys want to know maybe maybe it's also the fundamental like the world you are trafficking in is again as objective as it could be in a subjective world do you prefer you know phone a b or c yeah are you excited about the new Apple yeah it removes Nuance for sure I'm not getting nuanced feedback on Twitter I'm getting like the the like I wish I could a B test versions of thumbnails on YouTube but I can't so let me just tweet both images and ask what Twitter thinks and I'll get i'll get a pretty broad brush version yeah I can work with that yeah yeah um so that's why I like Twitter because I wouldn't do that on Instagram I wouldn't do that on LinkedIn I wouldn't do that on Facebook anywhere else so yeah that's I like Twitter I like having Twitter for that little little blurbs yeah yeah so Twitter created subcategories so you were on a specific timeline similar to a subreddit oh that's cool you're like I just want to watch my technology timeline right now yeah they were they were working on that feature I know they have the like what are you interested in click this but then it just shows you people from those and like and then you're following that now your timeline's still this mess of stuff but yeah because I forgot I mean Marquez isn't like gun rights your thoughts like you're not you're not opening they were working on a feature I don't think it was called circles I think it was called communities or groups or something like that but you could tweet to a group okay a certain group and you could label a group and section off a certain amount of people and only people in the group could see the tweet and so then you're curating your engagement based on people who you want to see a thing that removes like the public facing I was just talking to YouTube about this last week like when you say something publicly you make a YouTube video public it's the equivalent of getting on a stage saying something into the microphone and the doors of the theater are open you don't know how many people will come in you could get three views you could get three million views yeah but it's public so should you have a place to share something privately or with a smaller group where you can really curate that feedback yeah and like not risk the public overreaction or the blowing up Suddenly NBC picks it up that whole ladder yeah and you can just share with a private group and a small group The YouTube is genuinely curious about that and I think that there is a big difference between putting it on the stage and risking three versus three million or just guaranteeing these 200 people totally 10 and I call it I call that you know what you're talking about circles rough draft versus final draft and there is something really beautiful if you wanted to go to you know New York tonight and see me on stage we'd go to the West Village you'd go to a basement and there's part of the social contract of I'm [ __ ] around I'm I'm just reading my rough draft yeah please do not use this as an indictment of who I am as a human being I'm I am still in V 1.6 it won't even be ready until V3 that's a difference between us is I don't get the rough draft of the product review video so I there is no like medium in between uh the idea yeah and hitting publish so there's a lot of weight on that publish button because that's the final draft and that's when everyone sees it right there yeah um you might see the beginnings of the thoughts of it developing on Twitter or maybe I had an Instagram story and I pulled somebody or I asked a few things or you saw it developing yeah but the final draft just drops and it's just like I hope like all the pressure is on that but I hope I did a good job there and there it is can I ask the question if you were to you've now been you know one of the the people on YouTube that has been here uh for quite a long time and you've stayed on the platform yeah if you had to start all over again could you do it today yeah in today's environment I could but it would be a very different path you'd have to work you'd have to it's a different set of skills that you have to learn in a different order so when I started in 2009 it was like I just wanted to make better videos better videos better videos had no thoughts about SEO packaging thumbnails titles tags descriptions copywriting advertising didn't think about that for five plus years yeah if you wanted to start over today that would be near the top of your list of things otherwise your videos will never grow or take off or be viewed in a way that you're probably if you're intending to get to where we are today you'd never get there so it's a different set of skills learned in a different order right and I I see that all the time and like people starting new channels in 2022 and immediately they're diving head first into like first I think of a title then a thumbnail then a video idea to satisfy the title and thumbnail then the actual video production behind it oh boy that's like how videos you've seen the crazy thumbnails and everything like that that's totally so how those get made totally which is the exact backwards way of how I was making videos for eight nine years which was ideal I have an idea yeah you made it and as it's uploading I go what do I title this I don't think I have a thumbnail for this yeah I'll just toss one out like the packaging was the last it was the afterthought so I yes you can start today but it will look very different from it will literally look very different from how it started but if you're starting from like uh marketing slash Sensational spectacle aspect that is not incentivizing good ideas first it's it's incentivizing extreme ideas it's incentivizing uh extreme packaging yeah extreme packages I think you can do I think there's a lot of good examples of extreme packaging with good ideas behind them yeah a lot of my friends they constantly have to justify it to their audience who was like why are you doing these cringy mouth open neon thumbnails I hate these it's like it's like an insult to my intelligence that I have to click these yeah I don't even know what the video is about it just says like this thing sucks and I don't know what it's a blurred product I don't know what this is it's extreme packaging and then you click the video and it's a 12 minute well thought out in-depth analysis of a topic that I would love to have clicked on if it had better packaging yeah and so I think yeah you do incentivize crazy packaging for sure yeah in this day and age if you start yeah and what you hope for I mean the downside the tail risk of that is if you're incentivizing in same packaging the idea itself could match the thumbnail yeah you try to match the thumbnail yeah which is because you because again because you don't want to see duplicitous so it's like how I lost a million dollars buying and you're like I guess I gotta do this insane think I'm gonna go believe in it yeah um you've spent a lot of time with Elon Musk and I've noticed that the media covers him very differently than the way um people who are fans of him cover him uh what is something that the media or the general public doesn't understand about him that you feel um needs to be thought about I don't know if it's a lack of understanding as much as it's um I think we've only we've only done we did two videos with him which was a an interview and then a factory tour and the factory tour was fun just like walking around pointing at stuff just being a nerd for 45 minutes in a factory making cars yeah um and I think a lot of the stuff that's not necessarily not understood but just like boring and not fun to cover or not as salacious yeah is just like uh a nerd just like a guy who's just like in the trenches of engineering and is like obsessively micromanaging an engineering company which is like um I say this all the time some of my favorite Executives to talk to are like the product people oh and a lot of companies are are they have product people and those people don't get camera time and it's the marketing people that get the that get pushed to the front brother get to talk to them and that's no fun you speak in my language and I just want to do this in advance I want to apologize to um all the engineers out there um all the people that that code and design and are behind the scenes Tyler I want to apologize no because what's beautiful about engineering and science it's kind of crazy that I'm saying this as a comedian and I'm actually proving my father right I should have uh I should have studied medicine but what's cool about science and engineering is that you have to humble yourself to something beyond your own opinion you can have ideas about how something should be but it's it doesn't matter yeah it's up to physics you are fighting physics which is like whatever you want to call it physics God the universe you must submit to something bigger than yourself and Twitter get back to it in social media everyone's God is their opinion and what a horrifying place to be if you've ever been at like Christmas dinner Thanksgiving dinner and like all your families around the table and you're just hearing everyone's opinion yeah I just scaled it up to eight billion people what a nightmare yeah but somehow Marquez you don't feel like it is a nightmare yeah so so there's that last question for you do you have any questions let me check I might have one I might have actually I do have one I have one oh yeah okay so I'm gonna end with and end with this is really early on yeah um you got to do something that I've always wanted to do I got to go sit down with heads of state oh wait no no let's finish this do you feel a level of responsibility that you're interviewing some of the most powerful people in the world and as much as you're like I'm just the Gizmo Gadget guy yeah these are people that like the the engineers in San Bruno actually shape Society I would argue even more than the the politician and yeah and fully Diplomat in DC fully agreed so this is completely unintentional I do feel that I bear that responsibility now but the way this started with these interviews my first ever interview as like a quivering High School child it was Kobe Bryant during his farewell tour at the Staples Center oh this is the sneaker one I was going to ask you that was my first on-camera interview with anyone ever wow this is for the Kobe 9 right yeah yeah and so I was like okay let's talk about tech with Kobe no one ever asked Kobe about tech like I if I could ask obviously I'm a tech nerd if I could ask Kobe anything yeah uh yeah basketball's cool but people will be able to get into more Nuance let me hear what Kobe has to say about tech yeah and I got real honest answers about like what he cares about what he chooses not to listen to I love him I love this video by the way this is a great video it's one of my favorite things I've ever done yeah and it should be in the Library of Congress that's one of my favorite videos it was it was Kobe was very good at being interviewed he made that a great experience for me okay um and so but the idea behind that was okay if I ever do another one of these let me interview someone else with a unique perspective on Tech nobody ever asks these people just about like what phone is in your pocket right now what what what are we talking about like Tech like do you listen to music before you play a game like let's get those questions out of people real Tech questions yeah um and then I made the mistake of doing one or two interviews with uh Tech Executives yeah and what happened was those got so visible and blew up so much that every other tech company went ah and he'll talk to them and it'll be he'll think of some nice questions it'll be a good YouTube video and that'll be that yeah and suddenly it's six CEOs in a row and I'm stuck in this and Marquez is interviewing the CEO of Halliburton about their new drone and I'm like wait a second I was trying to get to like interesting people and their feelings on Tech and that's something I'm actively trying to jump back into because I think it's been like six in a row and like Elon was somewhere in that six in a row and there's there's a CEO of Google and of Microsoft and we've done this with dance now I get that they're not going to answer questions about what phone is in their pocket like I I now have done that interview enough times yeah um I I mean more specifically though about the potential nefarious tail end risks of the things that they're making yeah so now that I've done those interviews and I've gone in front of those people and asked those relatively harmless questions all of the comments are like why didn't you ask those questions yeah and I'm like that's a really good point I think that interview with those people should have been a little bit more on the critical of what they're building yeah on the questions of the future of what they have planned for these companies yeah so when I was asking about like what phone was in your pocket what I was trying to ask Kobe years ago uh it turned out that wasn't a very constructive or useful question and so now I just have all these interviews of like kind of fun humanizing versions of these like corporate leaders where I'd rather have asked the most questions so I would go back I appreciate you wanting to do that man because you have you have access in a way that like us at The Daily Show or even Patriot Act they know don't even take it because we want a softball interview right so don't have don't sit down with Trevor or Jon Stewart or Hudson they're gonna Grill you don't do this yeah but I do feel like um media and Tech really shape the narrative and they shape reality I'll give you a fun example I I was doing I went on CNBC Squawk Box and I remember this and the the running gag that I did I showed up and you know like the full turtleneck and I kind of did this whole piece of like every Great American grifter shows up on his clock box like Shilling some product and then whether it's Elizabeth Holmes or Steve Jobs I've I have come I have come full circle yeah but the joke the real truth of the joke that I was trying to land is I remember during the pandemic these shows created such great financial fomo in the middle class for the retail investor that you guys really gave these people fomo and we all wanted to to you know pocket Gamble and Retail can never compete with institutional investors and here we are two years later I could feel my Spidey Sense going off and you have all these people left holding the back and the people that aren't holding the bag are the people that run those same companies and Banks they are not left holding the bag and all of them get golden parachutes on their way out you'll see these c-suite Executives literally jump out of a burning building with a 28 million dollar package they'll never lose their homes they'll never lose their retirement and their kids future will never be on the line so the point the point of me going there was to land that point so I actually did talk about how like hey I was watching you guys during the pandemic and I bought Bitcoin at 50 000 and and I lost my money and they were laughing at me but I go understand the real point I'm getting at is that you guys have this incredible apparatus to create financial fomo and um nobody's saying this to you nobody is like telling you like there are profound tail risks it's not just the hedge fund manager in Connecticut that's watching you that's at the same income class you're at there's a bunch of people that are working class that are just getting hosed right now because of it so I appreciate you taking that note because um they don't get asked those tough questions a lot and and they're really smart they're gonna avoid it Marquez at all costs yeah yeah but the problem is is that I think the um the size the tail end size of their impact is becoming bigger and bigger as we become more reliant on technology yeah yeah they'll they'll be the most influential people of the generation clearly they already are yeah and it's uh it is a it's not even about I mean obviously I would like to ask them lots of these questions but I think it's about uh incentivizing them to make the right choices as far as the future of these policies that these companies have because they have more of an impact on Humanity than a lot of the other policies totally crafted how do you feel about some of the stuff that they try when they um build things uh what does it break things move fast and break things fast and break things when we are the collateral damage of that how do you feel about that I don't like it I like when they do that with uh Technologies because that does happen sometimes and I think that we kind of that's cool that's great sure with the the headset a renewable rocket sure yeah move fast break things make new things that's great uh but you're right a lot of the companies uh that are the most visible uh have us as the product and when they move fast break things it's more than just breaking code it's like breaking behavior and and incentivizing bad behaviors like all sorts of weird things that you're also breaking in the meantime which is a consequence of lots of people using a product which is it's gonna happen yeah um not a fan of that particular uh social networking mindset but it is a mindset a lot of them take yeah you remain optimistic despite that I do at the end of the day if I zoom all the way out like really far out top level I think you succeed if you make a good thing hope right and I think if you make a Bad Thing eventually it fails because people stop using it or stop wanting it or stop enjoying it that's true of like regular basic products obviously already but of like social media products social connection tools a lot of times they're only good within a certain ecosystem but they'll be good enough here that they'll survive yeah but I think just generally I'm optimistic because the good stuff keeps working and it either gets stale or it gets bad and it dies got it and that's you know we remember Myspace it's not like Myspace turned to a pile of garbage but it just got stale yeah and it was over and I I think that that's the way I think about generally the products and technologies that we've seen in our generation favorite Kobe 11s you talking about the hype do you know about high top the high top the wrestling shoe I wore it uh for an entire off season of frisbee practice in a little winter gym at Stevens Tech and I love those things I you know I never wore the 11 but I will say this is I mean I've worn a lot of the Kobe's yeah that is also my dream job if I were to wear test shoes but yeah to me the all-time the best Kobe I think that perfected the technology was the Kobe 6 Kobe 6 Pro Trail Kobe 5 and Kobe six a low-cut shoe with a wide with a wide toe base that way you don't like twist your ankle yeah um you can train in them running them but also play ball in them best shoot Kobe special yeah what are you what do you play in Ultimate uh we have soccer cleats so it's also a low cut uh I'm kind of a lot of people use like LaCrosse or football or whatever I like the lightweight shoe it depends on kind of like how you play I don't know football I was using football cleats because they had a toe Spike where soccer cleats don't have a toe Spike because interferes yeah but getting the little extra pump off your uh toes just about how you run yeah the way you connect to the ground when you're training or weightlifting what do you have a particular type of shoe that you like I am barefoot no socks oh wow yeah okay I keep getting advice on how my feet are supposed to be flat and anytime I try a shoe don't have an arch in your shoe and I just went to like I'm just wearing socks so you're like dead lifting that much basement Jim oh wow I don't have to yeah I don't have to worry I'm not like in like a 24 Hour Fitness Barefoot I am at home in my basement with socks on now okay okay got it yeah yeah one more question for you yeah please how fast uh can you type the alphabet A through Z oh this is like like this is like a Mavis Beacon question yeah just like a through z a b c d just straight home row are you a you type fast I'm okay I mean I'm I'm good I got my homeostas yeah yeah could you type it blind you think uh don't even worry about blind I just we've gotta we've got a keyboard for you oh wow is this a thing do you watch Top Gear at all I've seen guys the celebrity and the reason like okay you want me to type the alphabet right now yeah I guess do we have we have uh this test and we have a leaderboard as well okay got it yep got it we have a choice of keyboards if you prefer so the the MacBook Pro keyboards now let me do let me do that one mechanical yeah I like this yeah I like a clicking it sounds way better I think we might need a USB am I allowed to look or do I do I have to look it up so the fastest way possible the way we do it is we give everyone three shots and the way you'll notice as you start typing if you miss a letter it won't continue until you hit that letter so you must hit every letter A through Z that's the Only Rule all right when you get to the end don't press enter it'll just tell you what your time was okay after you hit Z is there is there a time who's the who's the leader right now do you want to know times right now or do you want to wait to see where you are let's not worry about it right now let me just let me I have it all up for you this gun let me just go is that screen recordings yes okay cool all right perfect see a timer that's intimidating right everybody has a late night game like Jimmy Fallon will put you in a dunk tank this is you guys are making me this is the obvious version get on a qwerty keyboard yep well I gotta get dude I gotta get like I gotta get some no one's requested doing this on a phone yet that day will come I feel like where someone's been around typing on a phone you already started the timer reset come on dude don't do that don't just start tell me one tell me one okay it's at all zeros the second you hit a it starts the second you hit Z it stops okay here we go yeah okay so you now know how hard it is you now know how hard it is it's not something you're using that's not easy I was like I was like yo I was on cue and it's like I'm at I like what are we doing there's a lot of glancing you have to do just to make sure you didn't miss one yeah one of my tips yeah what what this number uh 21 21 21 everyone gets better as they go everyone yeah so I'll get a second chance you get three chances oh that's great yeah you got plenty you guys are you guys are like you guys are good faith actors first chance is usually the tough one for everybody you're trying to create it like a median and I mean great I love it yeah start again do I hit reset yeah you hit reset and same exact same exact idea okay here we go yeah three foreign that's about as fast as Usain Bolt could run 100 meters are you serious yep this is the nerdiest thing you didn't know that you just compared Vita you're saying voltage yeah that's amazing the starting line at a him chest over the line as you hit Z great that's pretty good I I think you'll beat that though great I think you'll get better here we go yeah foreign that's all good you want to see the leaderboard this is the leaderboard right here you fell wow seven four so you're right between David Blaine and Tim our graphic designer amazing well it's not that's not bad Hassan that's not that's good man single digits you started at 21. that's it I know 100 Improvement dude yeah and by the way like like we got to the third I was like running back again yeah for sure this is that was great that was so fun stop recording this is this is fun man thank you man I appreciate it thanks for the time obviously pleasure man sincerely yeah I think um this will be a fun one for the people uh Thanksgiving break this is when this comes out yeah sorry for being uh I know that kind of put you on the spot and I I disagree with you but I was trying to be yeah like yeah cool we'll publish this in a couple days yeah you want to come do some shorts of bad Tech we will take you up on all the time I mean this sincerely yes yeah product versus the ad I also want to do that that's for sure he should uh announce the uh bust of the year for smartphone Awards we used to give a trophy that was a toilet bowl I thought you guys I thought you guys weren't the clickbait cruel people yeah we do that sometimes one shitty fun of the year I mean it's not on the thumbnail but like you got to give the worst phone of the Year award okay it happens okay great low blow something yeah let's do the let's do the how it is and how it really works done Perfect all right thanks for watching y'all watching the next one base peace thank you so much again Hassan uh hopefully have you back on sometime in the future waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis rovin we are partnering with VOX media podcast Network and our inter outro music was created by vayne Sill [Music] y thank you [Music]

Channel: WVFRM Podcast

Views: 442,719

Keywords: MKBHD, Marques, Brownlee, Andrew, Manganelli, Waveform, Podcast, WVFRM

Id: 3Zch9Uaxtrw

Length: 121min 28sec (7288 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022