Ben: Hey, what's up? Holo, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Simply Podlogical, a Simple Nailogical Podcast. Simply Nailogical Cristine?
Cristine: Yes?
B: How are you and your short nails doing? C: You know, I'm still in mourning.
B: Mm-hmm. C: I'm still ... I haven't accepted the situation yet. So I'm in a mood, you know.
B: #mood So if anyone didn't see, Cristine recently posted a video on her main YouTube channel where she announced that she broke a nail.
C: (sighs) I broke my nail again. And if you guys have eagle eyes in our last podcast, I had the same short nails.
B: You can tell, yeah.
C: I just didn't say anything yet, because I wasn't ready, you know.
B: Mm-hmm.
C: It wasn't explained yet. B: I like that your broken nail was sponsored, too. I thought that was a nice touch.
C: Yeah. Have to pay for my loss and suffering somehow.
B: That's right. It made up for it. All right, so today we thought we would do something a little different. We ... a few days ago we were just watching YouTube-- we're stuck at home watching YouTube a lot--and we saw this video by Tiffany Ferg. That's her name, right?
C: Mm-hmm. B: First of all, I should thank the audience. So you may remember a few episodes ago I was talking about how the fact that I wasn't really familiar with any like female content creators who did like video essay style content and a lot of people who listen or watch this podcast commented her name down below.
C: Yeah. B: So I've watched a few of her videos now and, yeah, she's an excellent content creator, I think.
C: See, this is so cool. So like we love your recommendations, guys, because it helps us discover people. Although I'd personally seen her videos. I saw her one on like MLMs and girlboss stuff a few months ago, but like it ... that kind of stuff wasn't coming up in your recommended based on what you watch, so it's actually a good opportunity from hearing from you guys some suggestions like so Ben could see some like female content creators. B: Yeah, and just to be clear like I wasn't suggesting those people didn't exist, I just ... none of them had really come across my radar, but I saw she uploaded a video just a few days ago on Twitter philanthropy and we think this is a pretty interesting topic. So basically she does like this critical analysis of internet culture and trends, I guess you could say and she covered this sort of recent trend of a lot of online celebrities or just regular celebrities who are giving away money to people through Twitter or other social media and ... Is it a scam? Is it this altruistic thing? Or is it for P.R.? So she basically explores those sorts of questions around the topic. So we thought we could have something to add to this, because, I think a lot of the people watching this probably know we've been sort of public or we have publicized the fact that we have donated money to charity over time and even recently with the healthcare worker tab, that is something we talked about on this podcast and we publicized as well. So we thought we could give a bit of our perspective as people who have publicly donated money. As to, you know, why do we publicize it. Are we just wanting the good P.R. and attention or the tax write-off? You know, I think we can get into all that sort of thing. C: A lot of people have lots of opinions on it, too. B: Yeah, and then I guess the other aspect of it is like this whole donation-shaming topic, right? So this idea that ... I feel like people are just like stuck at home in a bad mood, so people are just looking for anything to be critical about right now. And I'm not saying there aren't times where there are legitimate criticisms of how people choose to donate money or potential scams, but it seems like people are just waiting for people to screw up and to criticize it, especially on Twitter. Twitter just seems like a really toxic place in a lot of ways. C: Yeah, and I think in general I've especially seen in like mainstream media and I'm thinking like Daily Mail articles that I see on Snapchat, like that kind of trash media. I've seen a lot of that, that kind of asks the question, "Where are our celebrity billionaires now? Why aren't they donating to COVD-19-related efforts?" And I saw some people calling out on social media like Kylie Jenner, for example, as, you know, the one self-made billionaire at 19 years old or whatever. B: Self-made. We're using that term loosely.
C: People like to use that, I guess, is what I'm saying, and then they'll call her out because "Well, we know you're so rich, but where are your donation efforts?"
B: Um-hmm. C: And then, you know, maybe a week later she says that she donated a million dollars to some relief fund and then people are like mad at her after that, saying "Well, why do you have to say that like you're all of a sudden a good person?", but people were asking her "Where is your proof of donation?" as if she was required to, which no one is required to donate anything, at the end of the day. Like you don't have to do these things. But it was just so interesting to see even mainstream media basically, like is that shaming? Like calling out celebrities for not donating. Is that shaming? B: I think there's more of a mainstream conversation now going on even about like should billionaires exist. Should we have a society where billionaires exist? So let's get into that. But first let's address our sort of perspective on this or our experience donating things. So the healthcare worker tab people probably know about it. So we just gave some money to local restaurants so healthcare workers could come in and buy a meal. I saw ... let's be real. Like the reaction to that was overwhelmingly positive from our fanbase and just from the attention it sort of got in the broader community, let's say. But even with that one I saw a few negative comments from the perspective of "Wow, like you couldn't do something nice without publicizing it?" C: Yeah.
B: I think like the first answer or a thing that should be said is in some cases you need to publicize it so people can even take advantage of it. It really bothered me on this one the few negative comments I saw, because if we didn't publicize it, healthcare workers wouldn't know to be able to claim it.
(C: Wouldn't know that the tab existed. Yeah.) B: Yeah, so there are certain cases where you literally just have to publicize the donation so people can claim it. Right?
C: Yes.
B: So that's one aspect of it from my perspective. And then I guess the other thing I'd say is, in the past when we've done like the cat charity stuff or even like, you know, paying for people's tuition and things along those lines, a big part of publicizing the fact we're doing that, I think, is it's just drawing more attention to the importance of that cause and maybe the people who look up to you will think of that the next time they're considering donating to something as well, right? C: Yeah, and usually, like when we did the cats' merch stuff, we would encourage people to donate to their local charity, too, you know, their local animal shelter, if they weren't able to purchase a t-shirt and support our local animal shelters, right? Because we were giving the money to animal shelters mostly in Ottawa. So we'd say things like that, too, and it's not all about, you know, "you have to donate to our cause." It's just ... it encourages people ... It reminds people that these are things we care about, these are things that maybe you should care about, but of course it's up to you and your own discretion how you spend or donate your money. B: Yeah, and I should say like we have donated to things without putting it all over Twitter, right? Like I think we recently did some accounting and like kind of looked back at like how much money we have given to charity and it's a number we are proud of. Like there is an element of this that is like, yeah, it feels good to ... like it's nice to be in a position to be able to give money to charity, but it also does feel good to give money to charity and get some recognition for that, too. There's absolutely an element of that here. C: And sometimes when you're raising money to pay a charity by selling something like merch, you do need to share that that's what you're planning to do in order to sell that merch. So every time we had Menchie and Zyler t-shirts that we were selling, every time we did that we said we were raising money, part of the ... a portion of the proceeds would go to animal shelters and charities. So that's what we did and then we showed that because we wanted to prove, you know, and show that here's a $25,000 check, here's a $10,000 check, after the campaign was over so that people could see like with their own eyes what part of their purchase went to. So I think that's important, too, because it's about its transparency more than just like bragging about how much money you gave to charity, right? So there are other elements and I think reasons why people, at least us--like I'm just speaking for us-- publicize what they donate and like who they're donating to. B: Mm-hmm. And, yeah, it's been an interesting experience, because like especially early on we would just like call our local animal shelter out of the blue and I'd be like, "hey, we're selling t-shirts online, I'm calling on behalf of like a social media" ... like I ... sometimes I'll say like you're a digital media company like, because what you call someone up and say ... C: A YouTuber?
B: "a YouTuber wants to donate money to you," I think they kind of roll their eyes. C: Well, yeah. Maybe they think like, "oh, is this for some silly video that's ...?" Yeah. B: Yeah.
C: Like they're not entirely sure and I understand the lack of confidence in that, so when we first reached out to an animal charity at ... like before we had done much public donation, they were ... seemed to be kind of skeptical. B: Yeah. They basically ... like I asked for permission to like use their logo on the listing of the website so we could say we were raising money for them and they kind of ... they seemed okay with that, but they basically didn't know if we were legitimate or not. I think they basically admitted later, because ... Although the strange thing was, like we walked in there with a big check and we gave them the money and then ... like even then it seemed kind of like strange: like they didn't know how to react. Like they were very thankful. But like ... I remember--maybe I shouldn't say this-- when we gave a significant amount of money to our local animal shelter the first time, they didn't talk about it on like their Twitter or social media or anything. Do you remember that? C: Yeah.
B: And I remember we thought that was pretty strange and wondered if they like just didn't want to be associated with like Youtubers or something? C: Yeah.
B: And I remember talking to them about it after and I think it was just sort of a mistake or missed opportunity on their part, but it did feel kind of strange from my perspective to give what we thought was a pretty generous amount of money to someone and for them not to acknowledge it on social media, which is like where our business is, is on social media. C: And we only ... I guess it only really hurt a little because they often publicize when other people donate. Like that's a lot of what their social media does. So, you know, like twice a week, there'd be, you know, "This hockey player raised a thousand dollars for us. Thank you so much to blah-blah-blah." Like that's what they would often use their social media for. So that's why it was weird.
B: Yeah, yeah. I think the day after we gave them like $25,000, there was some tweet about like, "Local barber shop gave us a hundred dollars." And we're looking at each other ... C: And it's not a compe-- ... Let me just ... It's not a competition of who gave more money ... B: No. No, no.
C: and therefore we need recognition. It's just you do something nice for someone in any context, it doesn't have to be donating money, just like you wash their car and then they thank someone else for washing their car. Like that's all I'm saying.
B: Subsequent to that we did more work with them and we have a ...
C: Yeah.
B: We had a good relationship with them and I think their contact picked up on the ... C: I think it was just an initial they weren't sure of us.
B: Yeah.
C: And you know what? I don't blame them, because I'm not always sure of YouTubers' intentions. B: Oh, totally.
C: And I kind of understand.
B: And I just ... I kind of want to be brutally honest about the aspect of it that, yeah, I'm not going to lie. Part of the attraction of donating charity is (1) There's a tax write-off. That's nice. C: For most stuff we do--not all.
B: Not all of it; that's true.
C: Not all of it is ... yeah. B: But secondly like, yeah, like this isn't necessarily a purely altruistic thing, but maybe there's no such thing as a purely altruistic act, though. It feels good to give money to charity and it feels good when people ... C: Yeah.
B: say nice things about you after you give the money to charity. I don't think that's a bad thing. C: Yeah. We shouldn't always look at it that way either. Like every time a celebrity says that they donated to charity, they're not just doing it because they want to look like a good person. I don't ... I don't make that automatic like assumption.
B: No, but like I guess what I'm saying is it's not one or the other. C: It's not one or the other. Yeah.
B: It can be both. I think it usually is both. Yeah.
C: Yeah. Zyler thinks you're a great person for donating to animal charities.
B: Oh, well, as long as Zyler thinks so. But I mean speaking of the animal charity stuff, another criticism I saw of us at one point was that "Why were we giving so much money to animal charities when there's people who need support?" C: Yeah.
B: And this isn't in the current, right-now COVID-19 context.
C: Right. B: This was two-three years ago.
C: [unintelligible] a few years ago. So we have given a lot to animal charities. Like of ... I looked at the amount of money that we've donated across organizations since we started Simply Nailogical, and just over half of it was donated to animal-related charities. So that's a big proportion,
B:Yeah.
C: but it's actually not as big as I thought ...
B:Thought it would be more? C: I thought it would be more and the reason is because if you just take a look at like our channels and what we say about our donations, it does seem like we do a lot more to animals. But that's because they're all related to like a merchandise campaign, usually, and that's something you promote multiple times, so it just sounds like we're doing a lot more for animals.
B: That or it's just cute to have like a video announcing "Hey, we're giving money to a cat charity or a cat cafe," because then the video is ...
C: Cats. B: "Look at all these cute cats we're playing with while we announce that."
C: Yeah, so we do talk about that because that's ... it's feel-good. But Ben is right in that we did see some criticism from people who were seemingly upset that we were donating a lot to animal shelters at one point and that we weren't caring about, you know, that people are hungry or there's children in poverty. And that like ... it kind of upsets me, because it's not like I don't care. B: Well, like you just said, I think, yeah, about half of the charitable giving we've done has been to animal organizations and the other half has been split between like tuition, the environment, some stuff with like the Red Cross and food banks and stuff like that. So there's a balance there. But I hear what you mean. And, I don't know, anytime someone criticizes someone else's charitable giving, because they think you should be donating to something else, like really, if that's the thing you're criticizing someone online for ...
C: I know. That's not really fair.
B: I really think you should re-evaluate what you're doing. C: No one is obligated to donate to anything, really. Like we don't have to donate to animal charities either. Would you prefer we just did neither? Like is that the equality you're looking for? Like I'm not really sure what they want.
B: Yeah, I don't know. C: Or they ... or do they prefer don't donate to animal charities at all and only donate to human-related charities? I mean animals help humans, too, and it's really ...
I know, that sounds silly. But like it's about what you want to do and what you makes ... what makes you feel good with how you donate your own money. And we really, I mean, this is a deeper conversation, but we shouldn't be living in a society where it's dependent on financially successful people to really prop up the sort of social causes we all care about, right? Ideally we wouldn't be counting on the Bill Gates and the Elon Musks or Amazon guy's ... what's his ...
C: Jeff Bezos.
B: Bezos. We wouldn't be counting on them giving billions of dollars to the causes we think they should be giving to, right? You shouldn't ... we shouldn't have to count on those people to donate. C: Yeah.
B: Well, we'll get into the billionaire stuff a little bit more, but so the Twitter philanthropy stuff that I think a lot of people are talking about right now. I don't think we're really a good example of that, because like, yeah, we've maybe tweeted about the giving we've done, but I think a lot of people now are questioning the motives and the approach of giving away money like through Twitter, for instance.
C: On Twitter. And then the requirement is like to retweet or to follow or in other words to get the attention drawn to that tweet.
B: Yeah, but let's be fair here. There's ... so some people are doing it different ways. So we're seeing tweets from like there's a guy who calls himself The Twitter Philanthropist who's been doing this a lot. Jeffree Star did this; Tana Mongeau did this. This idea where like they say, "Hey, I really want to just give money directly to the people who need it right now. Tweet at me ... Tweet at me if you need the money and I'll Venmo you or PayPal you some cash," right?
C: Um-hmm. So we've seen quite a few examples of this now and other people have made this point, tiffanyferg and others, but I think it bears repeating that there's something kind of strange about that approach in that it basically turns into this competition for who has a sad story and then it becomes just like this almost endless chain of desperate Twitter replies like.
C: Yeah. B: It's really sad in a way. And you're asking people to very publicly talk about their terrible situation just in case you win the lottery and Jeffree Star or Tana Mongeau decides to give you the money. C: It is kind of sad, I know what you mean. It looks like a shrine of like the Poverty Olympics almost. Like people are competing to show that they're more poor than the next person who Tweets.
B: And one of like the most depressing things you could do on social media is look through the replies on those threads and you'll see, like I don't mean to make light of it, but it's literally people like "I lost my legs in a car accident. My whole family has AIDS. Can I have the $500 you're saying we could have?" And it's just like wow. Like looking at all those comments you know that only a very small handful of people are going to get anything. C: It's one thing for a person to decide that that's what they want to put on the internet and share their stories, but it's another thing for the person who started this like Tweet series ...
B: They're soliciting.
C: They're solic-- ... Like if you had asked like, "Tell me how bad things are for you," basically. You're asking people to just be really vulnerable and like put their stories out there, whereas they may not have done that otherwise unless they were so desperate to like have just a chance of getting your donation. B: Yeah, because like I guess we've wondered if there is a way of us just giving money to people in the current situation and we ultimately landed on that the healthcare worker tab, because we thought it was a more targeted way of doing things. We thought about doing it with like grocery store workers at one point.
C: Actually, that was another comment we got in other forms of donation shaming, I guess. When we did that healthcare worker tab. I did see people being upset, "Well, what about other essential workers? Are we nothing to you?" B: Yeah, but it's tough, you know. Like you have to, pragmatically, we have to limit it in a certain way. But yeah, I get it. I feel like, yeah, grocery store workers specifically right now I think are in a crazy position. They're essential. They have to go to work. Most of these people are like teenagers or people who don't have highly skilled jobs who need to keep working, and they're literally in a position where they're just constantly coming in ... like I know they put up plexiglass and stuff in a lot of the stores now, but still, like it's ... that's ... they should be receiving hazard pay or something. And it shouldn't be up to ...
C: There is some of that in Canada. There is some legislation that's starting up. B: I've heard something about that, I'm not sure if it's happened yet. But it shouldn't be on YouTubers and rich people to be, you know, helping these people win cash prizes through social media competitions. C: You're right. The world should just be a better structured, more equal place so that they don't have to be so ... being put in the position where they're willing to show their empty fridge in travesties on social media. Yeah. B: Yeah. And I want to be careful. I also don't want us to be shaming. So like even though we don't really like that approach of like "Tell us a sad story on Twitter and we'll give you money," I have to think that most of those people's hearts are in the right place. That they're really just trying to find a way of directly giving money to people.
C: Yeah. B: And I'd say ... I know they've faced some criticism for a variety of reasons lately, but h3h3 (Ethan and Hila's) approach to doing it on Twitter, I think is the ... probably the safest and smartest way of going about it. They just have a Twitter bot. They just say "retweet our tweet every day so the Twitter bot can accept it. We're not asking you to follow us. We're not asking for a sad story," ... C: So it's random?
B: and we'll just randomly select. Yeah.
C: Okay.
B: So that's why you have to retweet it. The Twitter bots can only pick it if you have retweeted the tweet.
(C: And that's why no one is ...) C: So because of the nature of the contest no one is really motivated to share all their sad shit.
B: No.
C: Right? Because there's no point.
B: And, hey, if after they win it they share a story about how impactful it is and other people see that, yeah. Yeah, that's up to them. That's at their discretion and maybe there's some value in that. So I have a lot of respect for how they're going about that and they're ... I think it's like a $150,000 over however long they're giving away ...
C: Wow.
B: $500 a day to three people, I think.
C: Yeah. B: It's pretty amazing what they're doing. So kudos to those guys for doing that.
C: Um-hmm. B: Yeah, so speaking of h3h3, they've kind of been at the center of a lot of controversy about donations and donation shaming specifically, because ... actually, he never really said it, but Ethan was facing a lot of criticism for supposedly donation shaming Jeff Bezos.
C: Um-hmm. B: Which didn't happen. But I don't want to dwell on that or revisit that controversy. I think it's just ...
C: I saw that in my recommended and was kind of confused. B: Yeah. He never really said it. But I think there is this broader conversation going on about "Is it okay to shame billionaries for not donating or only donating a little bit of money to causes or specifically what's going on in the world right now?" And I guess the Jeff Bezos example is here's the richest man in the world and even though he gave-- what was it, a hundred million dollars? He gave what looks like a very significant sum of money, but a lot of the reaction to and from critical people online was that, well, if you compare what that money means to him to like your average person that's like him donating like a dollar out of their pocket for someone who just makes the average income.
C: Yeah. B: But for Jeff Bezos, multi-billionaire, yeah, it represents very little. I think there's a lot to unpack about people's anger about that. First of all, if you're someone shaming him online and you're above the poverty line, I would ask like are you donating anything at all? Because you're ... you really aren't in a position to criticize anyone for donating any amount of money, even if it's a small proportion of their wealth if you're not really contributing anything in that way. I understand if you're in a position where you can't donate because you're literally just trying to ... C:Survive.
B: survive and keep food on your table. But there's a lot of people out there who don't donate anything who could be. So I think we should get out of the way and those people should not be criticizing anyone For anything like this. I Kind of get it that you know, there is a lot of anger about billionaires not doing enough But I think the anger shouldn't be about how much they're donating I think the anger is really just about we live in a society where you have such an imbalance pronounced income inequality right the fact that you have a guy like Jeff Bezos who has billions of dollars and the fact that he's built that amazing amount of wealth on The backs of workers on his companies who are not making a lot of money like wasn't this article a while back suggesting that like a lot of people who work in Amazon warehouses are also reliant on food stamps, you know and didn't recently he'd try and do like a Fundraiser for like a Kickstarter for Amazon workers to help front the bill. Yeah I think he was asking Amazon customers to help donate. Yeah, they wanted to crowdsource Yeah to raise money to help like supplement the income, right? Yeah people working at Amazon and so people are upset with him for for those reasons and I think I think Ben's right like that's where a lot of the frustration Comes from it isn't just about that. He donated the equivalent to you donating $5, right? It's more about this broader question of him. Just being that rich I think that he is that much money and that most people know in this world Have nowhere near that yet The hundred million dollars are however however much he donated even if it seems like a small proportion of his net worth That's still an insane amount of money to donate to anything, right? Like the only guy really I saw like Jack Dorsey the Twitter guy He donated like a third of his net worth to this and that's just yeah I know that really raises the bar like that shouldn't be seen as normal or necessary the we shouldn't be donation shaming we should be any Questioning. Yeah, we should be questioning how we ended up in a place They are society with an economic system that allows for this to happen. Right? Yeah, but it does make sense to me like psychologically and unlike a social Twitter feed perspective where it becomes an easy nugget and easy way to Attack someone like just on this very specific point. It's an easy thing to claim to say Oh, this is only the equivalent of me donating like $1 do better so it's an it's an easy thing to attack and unpack because it's hard to have the conversation about wealth and equality in like a simple tweet It's much easier to just do a quick donation shaming, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's easy to just oh, you didn't donate that money because who are you really criticizing? if it's it's are you criticizing this person as an individual like Jeff Bezos because he has such a bad moral conscience that he only Donated the equivalent of five dollars like for him. No, like I think it's a broader question of Society and inequality that people are upset by and that's what should make people upset So so should billionaires exist Christine. I think that's the Billion-dollar question billion good one bet Well, you've kind of touched on this before I think in a video of ours I mean, I think I kind of got in trouble or I I saw some criticize some criticism of something I said in In a simply neurological video or basically I think we were briefly having a conversation about a wealth tax somehow that came up while we were you know Eating nail polish or you were painting my nails. Yep, and and I would just ask people to kind of keep in mind when we're having conversations and simply neurological videos and you're seeing like For quick jump cut like 30 seconds of a conversation instead of like the 5 10 minute conversation you had like, of course It's not a nuanced conversation and of course It's kind of quick and doesn't have the full context and I probably cut it just to something that Sounded out a place like on purpose because that's kind of how my simply illogical videos go yeah, so I think I said something along the lines of I Think I advocated that I thought of wealth tax made sense, which is fine But I made some comment about how I had a bigger issue and this is related to well tax I had a bigger issue with people who have inherited vast amounts of money as opposed to a guy who created an Amazon or PayPal and All the sudden became they've got hundreds of millions of dollars that way. I'm not saying in either case It's a good thing that we have such in you know income inequality in in our country, but I Still think I hold by that point though I think there is a huge problem where you have such vast amounts of wealth in the US and Canada around the world that are concentrated in these these families like these oligarchies where someone's Great-great-grandfather happened to be the guy who started working in the oil and gas sector like a hundred or 150 years ago and for that reason all of his like generations after him are the people with like an Enormous amount of influence on politics just because of how much money they have and how much they can donate to the causes or lobby Governments to do what they you don't they aren't paying as much in Taxes to their governments and back to society because they're that inheritance is not an income, right? So the people maybe who made the exact same amount as an income They're paying way more back in taxes. Yeah, I'm not a tax expert just like on shows very high level That's kind of also. There are inheritance. Yeah, we should be careful. There are sorry I'm not saying there's not it's just not as much as someone who earned the same amount as like a salary sure and I guess the issue What you see is people with a lot of money more more money than us Like I'm talking like I'm amazing amounts of wealth have teams of people Dedicated to their personal and corporate taxes and figuring out ways not of paying tax tax avoidance And that's why you hear these crazy Headline or see these crazy headlines about Amazon paid no tax or X corporation made hundreds of millions of dollars and paid no tax because their Company is in Ireland. Yeah, they're using shell companies. They're writing off losses they're doing all sorts of crazy things even even the charitable giving stuff like we joke about We don't do this, but there are tricky dubious legal ways of inflating the value of your charitable giving to give yourself like how bigger write off then you should be getting for example, like let's Say you're donating artwork to a museum because you're some billionaire You could have bought that artwork for a hundred thousand dollars but You get someone to appraise it for a million dollars you donate it to a museum and then you get a million dollar tax Right, you know there's all sorts of weird tricky ways of not paying tax. Really essentially scamming and the tax code in general is just so Incredibly complicated. It's propped up this entire industry of Corporate tax lawyers and accountants who have to be familiar with these bizarre laws That we have to pay and they only really exist because the tax code is so complicated So I feel like we're sort of due for the reform of taxes in general like that I don't know. This is taking more of a Tax degree and I thought but like I thought a lot of people really responded to like and rougane being in the last He running for the Democratic presidential nominee in the states and this still current election cycle I guess and I think he's just like 10 15 years ahead of his time. Maybe I think ten years from now We're gonna be having Conversations about all the things he was trying to raise now The automation of people's jobs away the way we have to supplement, you know People's income or like a universal basic income or what? I think might even be I mean, I'm not an expert than this. But from what I've heard of economists who seem to be Very smart and I've thought about this issue. I think a negative income tax is a thing that could actually work. What is that? So the same way we have like a progressive income tax like the more you make the more tax you pay It just means right now that line sort of ends at if you make under a certain amount You don't have to pay taxes It just means it goes down Right, and you actually get a credit if you make under that base amount so like a universal basic income for example would just give anyone regardless of how much they make a Thousand dollars a month or something like that But that includes like the people who don't need it CEOs of banks would also be getting that and then it just gets taxed back at the end of the year I think the issue with that and like a lot of Psychological research has shown this that people hate giving up the money they have yeah more than Yeah, that that con outweighs the benefit of receiving the money in the first place So you'd be better off not giving those money in the people those money in the first place just to take it away You'd be better off only giving money back to people You know in a way that's tested that they actually need the money in the first place so let's tie this back to Should billionaires exist and since since they do exist now What is the way out of their existing them in the ocean? No? There are billionaires currently And yeah, I don't think it's it's kind of a stupid question in a way because It's not that billionaires shouldn't exist It's that we shouldn't have an economic system that lets someone become a billionaire while their employees are reliant on food stamps I think that's a really good way to put it because it's not just outright like no one should have X amount of money It's what are they doing to get that money? And who are they using to help them get there? And that is really sad when you see a company with such a disparity within the company like those people collectively Whether at different times, yes Obviously there was a CEO who started it from the ground up not saying that they should all get paid the same rate obviously there's going to be differences in the But to see such wide gaps within companies is is sad. Yeah, and that's kind of the hard reality Maybe that's how people should look at it rather than just write-off Billionaires overall. Yeah, and not to say we're anywhere close to having that amount of wealth, but like we're pretty well off now we've had a lot of financial success and we've seen a little bit about what it means to be a business owner like Through hollow taco. We have a lot of financial responsibility for other people now we had to shut down hollow taco operations for the previous two months, and we're just sort of ramping things back up now and It would be very easy to just sort of criticize business owners for not doing a much enough for people in our position for not doing enough but like We have seen what it looks like on the back end you know own a company that doesn't have any revenue coming in for two months and how financially How that adds up very quickly, you know So we're not saying this is I think it's really easy to criticize rich people And you're not rich and there's no chance of you being rich in a way. You know what I mean? Like, yeah There's a reason why a lot of students Are the ones at these rallies protesting? and saying eat the rich and Then a lot of those people grow up and get jobs and they have families and all of a sudden they're making amounts of money And you just see this generational shift that as they get older they get a little more conservative in politics We've seen that that trend is really consistent and I've probably gotten a little more conservative over time. That was when I was like Fiscally no otherwise, but I would say even Even in a social way. I think what we consider progressive now when were 50 60 years old? Yeah What shift that what was progressive to us probably won't seem progressive to the 18 year olds 50 years from now Right. Yeah, and we can't really predict that and that's why but that makes sense Like that's just an evolution of thoughts and discourse in history. So like of course, that's the natural progression Yeah, but and when I'm done, I'm just saying like it's a kind of natural progression that one day we'll be the people on our porch shaking our fists Oh kids with their their thoughts and their tick-tock see Whatever it is. Yeah And this doesn't mean that like we should just ignore, you know, what students for example what those rallies are saying? they're saying eat the rich like I understand a lot of this criticism and the anger and the frustration that is coming out of people who are Donation shaming on Twitter and getting mad at Jeff Bezos for his equivalent of five dollar donation or whatever it is I understand the frustration and we do need some of that We need that right to just socially push people towards thinking about inequality and imbalances if we didn't have those groups of people Then like what's just gonna happen? Like everyone will just go status quo and not care about these things and imbalances and no one will push towards making anything better So we're not trying to like discount know these thoughts and feelings at all I don't want to dismiss the political leanings of young people in a lot of ways my biggest fear With the success, we've had through YouTube and the nail-polish company and all of that One of my biggest fears is that we sort of lose perspective on Certain things and one of those things is like what life is like for? 95% of people who are living paycheck to paycheck like one of the scariest things about this current situation is I saw some headline about like how many people were not in a position to be prepared for an Emergency that would have cost them like a thousand dollars out of pocket or two thousand dollars out of pocket. Yeah Just knowing like how much of the population is not in a position to handle An unexpected financial burden like that that doesn't necessarily seem like a lot of money to us at this point So yeah, I I do worry about that And that's why I think you see I remember there was a huge blow back to the celebrities singing imagine the gal gadot Yeah, very out of touch celebrities in their mansions during because they were trying to say we're all in this together So let's just sing a song on Twitter and all you see in the background of their singing is the twenty million dollar mansion They live in Oh Yeah, and I'm not shaming them for having that success but what they should be ashamed of is really suggesting that they're in the same position as the person who was just Laid off of their job and doesn't know how they're gonna put food on the table I think I don't think like they thought that way I really don't believe that know that they thought to themselves We're all exactly equal in our financial economic situation They didn't think that obviously when they were filming it, they just didn't they're doing exactly what you said. They lost perspective And they just didn't think well Wait a second. I am filming this in quarantine Which for me is amazing cuz my house is great And it's like other people don't have that luxury and a lot of people can't even stay in quarantine because they are essential workers and they have to go to work like at the grocery store like we were just talking about and It did come off kind of out of touch Even though I really don't believe that they were like ill spirited and trying to show off their mansions Like I don't think that was their mindset No, but I think just even implying that this we're all sort of in this together feeling Yeah, and just how that doesn't acknowledge at all how different this situation people imagined versus actually I saw an interview or just like a transcript of part of an interview with Miley Cyrus recently She I think she did an Instagram live where she talked about how quarantine is not the same for her as it is for other people and she did exactly the opposite of what these levees did should Be easy and obvious - yeah, but she acknowledged it like point out like yes, I'm in quarantine. Yeah, it kind of sucks It's not the same as what other people are going through I know that so I really appreciated like seeing her just explain that just flat-out being like I'm not suffering there are many people who are and kind of laid out and we should say to like, you know, where we're not in a mansion in Hollywood, but like We're in a house That's pretty nice That we were able to afford because of the YouTube success and we live in a neighborhood we can walk around and stuff. So like That's why I don't want us to complain about quarantine or anything either, right? Because I think we have it better than most people know and when I complain like it's for jokes and entertainment, you know I'm like, I'm so bored with Ben I'm gonna paint his nails with hockey stick like status4 and tainment because a lot of the role of influencers will especially youtubers is we Entertain, so there are gonna be some silly jokes that hopefully people find more funny than out of touch Yeah, you want it to be a bit of a distraction, but then you got to be careful, right? Cuz then you see someone like Ellen post a video where she goes In quarantine, my house is just like being in prison Because I can't leave and I'm surrounded by lesbians. It's actually kind of a funny joke in a way but her so for someone in Yeah for someone in her position to be even drawing a parallel between like her being confined in her mansion to being in prison when people in prison and people imprisoned and a lot of people in prison are not there for Horrible terrible violent crimes. I think we should point that out Those people were in an incredibly dangerous Situation in terms of being exposed to the virus because and no one really wants to advocate for prisoners, right? So they're kind of like the last people you think about in situations like this But I think that parallel made people even more upset about her sort of trying to make One of the worst situations for people in prison right now given that epidemic at work Maybe we should like this got a little too negative maybe we should give a some kudos other than h3h3 there have been people have been doing some cool things and I'm not a huge fan of him. I think some of the stuff he does is a little immoral or irresponsible but david dobrik Okay, I know you don't really watch his content I think it's a little too frat boy for you that period of my life is over seeing a bunch of guys act like reminds each and then but you know, he's he's basically turned into like a car dealership like he's yeah, he's done some pretty amazing philanthropy on his channel and Recently, I guess he's kind of stopped making videos since this whole situation, but he came back for one video He had a sponsor. I guess I helped him pay for this stuff. But he basically just drove around LA like throwing money at people and giving people cars and giving kids video games and I did see that video and I thought it was well done and it seemed like he had good intentions and it's great I don't care like who you are it's impossible to Squatch a video like that and not like just have a smile on your face and Thinking forward to future things that we want to donate to like I know we already have two things know three things this year that we want to Donate to an animal related charity Well, I don't think you have to say what they are. But like yeah, typically these things we know well in advance that yeah like Yeah, and I would say like now more than ever With a lot of people in the financial positions, they are a lot of charities are really in desperate need of money right now, right? So yeah, I think what you were about to ask or what you were getting at is With these like upcoming things are people bothered when we talk about them publicly Would we rather just sort of do it quietly and not really draw attention to it, or do we see a value in? You using your platform to show like here's a cause I'm contributing to and then also just giving airtime and apply to that cause yeah, it's like when we do tuition giveaways I Mean, I don't just do them because I want to help out like like three students because that's what we do like We're just helping three students It's not a widespread thing where if you give it to an animal charity they can do many things for many animals. For example Like I'm just it's just three students. It's not just that it's I Support education and I want to encourage young people especially young women but but everyone to think about school and think about post-secondary, so when I do these tuition giveaways It's not just like giving away money to some kids. I think who deserve it It's telling other people how I feel about that and that I think it's so important that I want to help people out So you're right like it's not just about Giving away money. I'm so good It's I have like a message or an important thing that I want to share and encourage people to consider that message, too yeah, and there's This might sound kind of pretentious but there's a bit of like a legacy aspect to it. I see as well because like One day we're not gonna be online anymore We're not gonna be making videos and we don't have kids and we don't have kids people will forget about us we'll just be dead in the ground a Couple people's tuition. So they're like our children, but you know, actually There is something to that right like many years from now people won't be remembering that girl who did a hundred layers of nail polish freely, but there might be people out there who are like, oh I remember My way through school or like she gave enough money to this pet rescue organization that they were able to keep their doors open, you know like that sort of impact we can have that is more impactful than Yeah, you know the cultural impact of your YouTube videos. Let's say Yeah, I wonder though like what people will really remember cuz Daily Mail will always just remember me as the girl who put a hundred Layers the woman who put a hundred layers of nail polish on that's all I'm known for. We should have a podcast just looking at the Articles that have Acknowledged your existence. There aren't many of them, but it's always funny seeing like the sort of narrative spin on it Yeah, I guess lately. It has been more of the philanthropic stuff and we actually had a conversation with someone recently who is may be interested and interested in doing a piece on you that really focused on the Philanthropic side of things maybe that will happen. I don't know. But otherwise if we see coverage of you and like Daily Mail or these Kind of random click baby websites. Yeah, a lot of the time it really presents you is just some like dumb nail polish girl But is that my fault though? I guess I kind of is you're pretty sure my fault yeah, but there have been some headlines that were kind of like almost insulting like When you painted your dad's nails there is an article. Do you remember this? I think this Daily Mail - and like the headline was bizarre. Like dad says nails should be in a museum like what? But the caption like I pretty she described you as like dumb nail polish girl like something pretty close to that anyway Hilarious, yeah, but that's another podcast of media and its perception of youtubers And you know we should really try to get some sponsors on this podcast So we have more money to give away to people, you know, actually, that's a good question We didn't talk about yet is sometimes when people do sponsorships or just have ads on their videos They then turn around and say okay. We're donating that right? So for example the when there was a power outage like a couple years ago in Ottawa We filmed during that power outage But we wanted to do something with the ads then that we got from that video. So we ended up donating it because like $12,000 To the Ottawa Food Bank or the Red Cross and I remember like instead of people reacting positive Okay A lot of people reacted positively and we're like, that's so cool of you because we were also affected by the tornado So it was a personal costume not affected like our how our house was not destroyed We're just lost but we lost power for three days and our community had impacts as a result but there were some people who said like That's how much money you make on a youtube video like that was the reaction that was the folk Yeah, wait a second. You make $12,000 on this YouTube video. I'm so confused. That's way too much Right, I mean it was a lot usually a single video doesn't make that much money I think That video did well from a CPM perspective and for some reason just did really well I'm not trying to hide the fact that we make a lot of money on a given month But typically it's not a single video that does that well, I would say hey I also think when youtubers say that they're donating all the ad revenue from this video to whatever cause Most of the time they don't actually disclose how much that was so that's how well that's why a lot of people were like what the hell there's 1000 they were shocked like they're like that makes no sense Yeah, and I guess yeah, we should be clear that we don't really feel above other people in the sense like we've talked about The criticism that someone's only donating maybe five percent of their net worth to something as if that's a terrible thing we've donated I don't know the exact figure but I think it's close to two hundred thousand dollars to charitable causes through simply illogical and You know, we've acknowledged that we've made millions of dollars through you to pay so you know Is it some incredible percentage of all the money we've ever made this gun to charity? No, but I I would say it's a good amount of money and it's an amount. We feel good about But we're not pulling a Jack Dorsey Twitter guy and donating 1/3 yeah, I've heard that worth also when someone donates 1/3 of their net worth like Liquid cash assets. Yeah, when people talk about billionaires It's not like they have a billion dollar sitting in a checking account Most of that money is tied up or are literally just like the stock they own of their own publicly traded company, right? They'd have to sell all those stocks to actually be able to donate the money presumably are you I guess you could sell You could donate the stock itself could donate shares of? these things Financial fans gonna have his own podcast. I'm like financial advice. Is that actually you know, what I wanted to do I wanted to bring our Financial guy on yeah our advisor on to give people financial advice. I think that would be amazing It'll be fun. We could take Twitter questions about how to save up Is that something you guys want like financial advice with buy an and and our financial? Branch, wait was this title financial manager financial planner? No, he's more than that. He's a Yeah one yeah, if you have enough money you get a wealth manager not just a financial planner I don't know what the difference is. Just someone who helps you make decisions about Stocks and how to diversify your portfolio we could have a whole conversation about like you - Money - because I'm shocked with how many youtubers we meet who don't have people taking care of their yeah That is scary It's and then they just go buy a bunch of Lambos and nothing and then it's just money like sitting in the bank But not an investment. Well, I'm more scared of the car, I guess I've don't have too much sympathy for people making tons of money in general But if you're making a lot of money and then you're just putting it in an account where it's sitting is liquid cash You're just losing Value over time to inflation, right? You should be doing something with that money other than just it's it In an account and I always question like do these young people like now on tik-tok making millions of dollars. Do they have people looking out for them like their parents or do they have someone who's Well protecting what they're making or managing it. Well, I really don't know. Are they paying their taxes? Are they think we'll never know? The IRS might find out. Oh, well, we have lots of ideas for future podcasts Apologies to david dobrik we were gonna have him on but he was too busy donating We were supposed to have him on today, but a seat geek didn't want to sponsor the video. So He couldn't work it out. So maybe another time we'll try it out I hope everyone is doing well Yeah, yeah. Thank you guys for just all your support just for watching her videos Thank you for 300,000 subscribers on this podcast Channel and you don't leave a comment below to tell us what amazing people we are So we feel better about ourselves all you have to do that. I just wanted to say thank you It's a tough position to be in you know, like I don't know what it's a tough that we're in no, it's not She's not exactly Exactly my point sometimes I just wonder like should I talk at all cuz it's better if you just think don't talk Well, that is the david dobrik approach to things actually is it he just doesn't talk? Videos. Well, no, like anytime anyone in his circle of friends has done something controversial like he just gained an underage girl He just goes silent on it. And honestly, that is the smartest approach the less you say the less you say. Yes a great manager Or you just smart and knows not to say anything Yeah, but it kind of makes you wonder like why we started a podcast because the more we say things the more we're risking people hating us Oh I'm sure there will be something that we said like maybe one sentence of this podcast was problematic in terms of not recognizing Someone's reality or a narrative that we just didn't see in our particular conversation So I know this happens and it's happened with a few of our podcasts now where there's like one thing where people pick apart Well, they didn't acknowledge this So therefore they are ignorant of that and I just want to say like as much as this is a conversation between Ben and I it's it's hard for it to be a true conversation between us and you guys even though we're taking questions from you because we'll take your Questions, we'll say a few things. We don't have your response to our response though And then that podcast is over right like that. The podcast is just in and of itself. We don't follow up again so it is kind of tough sometimes to have these tough tricky conversations and then like know that There's probably something that I'm missing and that's frustrating to me enough people know we're well-intentioned enough to know that even if we misspoke or said something stupid, you know, we were wrong but not Malicious in our opinion or you know we but I'm sure we do. Yeah, of course, we have blind spots. We don't know everything we're not always the smartest people about certain topics, you know, yeah, so yeah, I wouldn't worry about that, but I think the idea of I'm excited at the prospect of eventually having guests on the podcast Potentially because then there is you getting that feedback of having another conversation like the other week. We had a conversation about collabs and While I thought we were pretty fair and careful and what we said You know, we're talking about other people and they're not there to say their side of things as well And that's not really fair to do as yeah, right, which is one of the reasons why for a year At least I was like we're not doing a podcast All right, we're gonna end this podcast before Christine changes their mind All right everybody, thank you so much for listening for watching for subscribing appreciate all this everyone is saying well Instincts Aidan don't break any nails don't like, you know, don't be like me. Okay eat your hummus. Stay safe Stay happy drink your tea, and we'll see y'all later next Tuesday
