| Do you know what? I'm really stressed. I've been working really hard. I don't know if I'm coming or going. The last few weeks have been insane. But you've cheered me up with our fun chat before the show and you've put me in a good mood. And I don't think I'm at my best when I'm in a good mood. I want to tell you a story. What do you want to tell me a story about? I went on a little holiday to my favourite place in the world. This is The Moldives. It sounds very lovely. Have you been to The Moldives? The very fact that I am currently just realizing I need to pull up a map where I was going to quietly type Moldives into it. On your steam-powered keyboard, there's no quiet typing with you. I was mentally thinking it was somewhere in the Indian Ocean kind of, and it is. Sort of west of Sri Lanka, west of India a bit. Just little emeralds sprinkled in the ocean. It's directly north of the British Indian Ocean territory. Went to a lovely island there and had a week of niceness. A week of blue ocean if the photographs are anything to go by. Every time you sent me a photo, there was just perfect, perfect crystal light blue water all around you. Hashtag no filter. That is what it looks like. That is what it looks like. That's what you need to do now. You have to include Hashtag no filter. Okay. I actually just went on Instagram yesterday. I've just started a new Instagram account yesterday. I want to get into Instagram. You too, huh? I like it. I just think it's a nice platform. I've been enjoying doing Audrey's Instagram and I thought, I'm going to go on there. I've started one up and show me the love people. You can go follow Brady on Instagram and you do Audrey on Instagram too? Is that what I just called? Audrey's on Instagram and now I am too. If you were going to follow one, follow Audrey. Of course. Because they're better. So anyway, one of the really common things you find at these more deviant islands are these water villas. That's a lot of people staying them. They're like the nice thing to stay in. And for people who are unfamiliar with this concept, because these islands are so tiny, normally when you stay on one, they build like a little jetty out to sea. I just want to understand here. You're staying on a private island. Is that what's the description here that Brady goes? I would like an untouched emerald and they go out and they build you your own pier that you will then land upon. Is that what's happening? But the way the moldy's works is because all these tiny little islands all around these atolls are so small. It's not like you go to an island and there's like five hotels there and you choose the hotel you want. Basically, you choose an island and there's just one place on that island and it will have a couple of restaurants and a gym and a spa. But usually the islands are the size of maybe two or three football fields. So what they do is they build these jetty's, these piers out to sea. And then off these jetty's comes a series of little mini jetty's, each one with a little villa sitting above the sea basically on stills on fine ones. Okay, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. I know what you're talking about. So you're staying on a water villa. So you're above the sea at night and this particular one we had had a like a partly glass floor so you can look down at the sea and look at the fish. And you've got your own little platform for round or at the back with a little ladder that goes down into the sea so you can go and swim with the fish. It's all it's so lovely. It's so calm. So I've set the scene. We're staying in this water villa and there's a series of water villas that come off this jetty. And I went to the island. I think I went to the gym. So to do it to do a fit of tron 5000 meters on the treadmill. Counts double when you're on holiday. Exactly. So my wife stayed in the villa and she went out onto the deck at the back of the villa to go and look at the sea. And I think she put her beach headphones on and was listening to music. I came back and my key had stopped working. I was banging on the door on the doorbell and she couldn't hear me because she had the music on. So I looked at the villa next door and the guy who was like cleaning the villas, who I knew because I'd spoken to him on previous days and asked him about things and you know, asked him about the Maldives. We'd become friendly. Of course you do. And I said, oh, I've got a problem. I've locked myself out. So he said, oh, I'll let you in. And he got his like master care. I was going to walk around and let me in. And I said, no, no, no, I've got a better idea. Let me through this villa. So he let me walk through the villa. He was cleaning to their back, their back, veranda area. And then I went down their ladder into the sea. And I swam across to our villa, the next villa. So I could then emerge from the sea and just come up the ladder and just appear before my wife, like out of the water, like James Bond. The only thing that would have made it cooler was if I had like ripped off my clothes and I had a tuxedo underneath. Surprise. He is your man. And she just looks at me and says, well, I didn't see you going to see. And I said, I came from next door. I've been locked out knocking on the door. And I swam here from the villa next door. And she went, oh, I thought maybe you'd gone for a swim. And I hadn't noticed I was so deflated. That was going to be like, that was going to be like the story that she would tell for years to come of the day. Her husband just emerged from the sea. I feel like I'm mostly on your wife's side of remarkable unimpresadeness because I'm looking actually at some satellite pictures of these of these villas. I've been browsing around on Google while you're talking. And it looks like these things, these little houses on the sea, they can't be more than 10 feet apart. So it's like, it's just like you're trying to describe like you're impressed, like you're super impressive here. Like you swam across the open ocean to the next island. To the next island when you got locked out, you know, and like blown across the ocean. But actually what you're talking about is you just got a little wet, barely moving any kind of distance. Like I looking at these photos, I who hates the ocean, who hasn't touched the ocean in a decade possibly, I would feel completely comfortable swimming from one of these villas to the others if I got locked out. That's why I'm totally with your wife on this one. This was not a great fate of swimming. I will grant you that. It's not even like some genius plan that you came up with. Like the obvious thing to do. No, this is the moldy equivalent of walking through your neighbor's backyard to get to your own house. That's what this is. So impressive. You've been building up this story to me about like, oh, Gray, you just can't wait. I have such a story to tell you about getting locked out of my hotel. And I'm sitting here like waiting for the story to happen. But I am just as unimpressed as your wife is. Would you have been as comfortable doing this swim? If the night before when you were looking through your glass window in the floor, you had seen three count them three, five foot long sharks swimming under your villa for 20 minutes. This water Brady is crystal clear. You could see sharks four miles. I'm sure. No, that's not true with that's not true with sharks and fish even when the water is clear. Literally miles. That's not true. I mean, many times I'm swimming in the moldy and suddenly like there's a shark, like a reef shark or something right next to me that you couldn't say from from above. But anyway, yeah, but reef shark like you're not going to get eaten by a reef shark. It's just, you know, you just go, oh, there's a kind of thing to tell someone who I was. There was a reef shark by me, but it's not going to it's not going to eat you. This is this is no great white shark. Gray, I think you're missing the point of the story. And you don't think you I am. You actually, I think you're missing the point of your story. You actually hit the point of the story without realizing it was the point of the story. You actually said what I think the funny point of the story is this is this was not a great feat of athleticism. But the thing that I think is funny about this story is what you said that the that the moldavian equivalent of going through your neighbor's backyard to get into the house involves swimming in the ocean. I think that's lovely. It is lovely. Yes. Remotely impressive now. Well, I'm looking at the satellite photos. The very reason they're able to do build these houses where they are is because you're not over like the continental shelf here with this water. This is water that goes down forever. You're on the top of an atel. Like it's just it's unimpressive in every way it can possibly be. You can I do swim out to the dark part where the drop off goes because I because I love snorkeling and you swim along and it's all it's quite shallow. And then you go to the drop off where it just plunges down into the dark blue and that is freaky when you swim to there. Like that's that's that's quite scary and I see how far I can swim out above that. Yeah, that that's that's terrifying. That's having fun rolling the dice on your life, right? That's something I would not do not under any circumstances not ever. Well, I'll agree with you there. Like that that's why if you were telling me that these eight holes are all in like a circle. And so if you're telling me you had you know, swam across the the open abyss in the center to get to the other side, then I'd be like, now that's a man I am impressed by. Like, but this is just it's nothing. It's nothing. Well, if you can show me the text or the email or remind me of the conversation that happened where I said I did something incredibly impressive to get into a locked hotel room, I will apologize. My recollection is that I had just a funny light hearted moment that happened when I locked myself out of a hotel. And because it did not involve putting my life at risk, it seems to be inadequate for the Halloween to net podcast and for that I apologize. You've been traveling quite a bit. Yeah, you've traveled twice to the same place Amsterdam. We didn't talk about it last time, but yes, I went three months ago and I was just recently in Amsterdam as well again. And I just just came back yesterday or the day before yesterday. So I recently returned. And you just go there and work. You just go there and stay in a hotel and sit on your computer basically. And yet my swimming in the sea story is too boring. I wasn't about to tell you, oh, Brady, I have an amazing story about how I was on my computer. I looked myself out of my room and went down to reception and I get a mere replacement card. Why do you do this, Greg? You haven't. You have a perfectly serviceable apartment. You have a little office space as well in London. You have all your little libraries and coffee shops and nooks and crannies you can work in. Is that not enough for you? It isn't enough for me, Brady. That's true. I need more novelty in my life on occasion. This is a thing that I have always done is to take little breaks away from my normal routine. And now that I'm like self-employed and I'm on my own, it's a situation of like, oh, I can actually take a break. Not just when I have off from work. I can do it at any point. And so I found a place that I liked in Amsterdam. And yeah, so I went there. This most recent trip I was there for two weeks. And everything about this experience I like because I went there with the intention of working. And it was just great. It just narrows my focus. So it's like, I don't have to worry about a whole bunch of other stuff. Like I'm just there and I can concentrate on a few things. Like I can concentrate on the fit of Tron lifestyle, of course. And I can concentrate on some work that had been on my mind for a while that I was trying to complete and finish and concentrate on writing. And like, that's it. Like life is very simple. It's very straightforward. And I really benefit from doing this on occasion. So I did it recently. I don't, I think it's weird. But what is it? Why do you think it's weird? I know why you think it's weird. You think it's weird because you're a workaholic who is able to just work all the time at any time with no problems whatsoever. That's you, Brady. You're the machine in this relationship really. You're always able to crank out stuff. No, that's not true. And home has its distractions like the knocking on the door and the things of life. But also home has all the things I need. And like if I go away, I inevitably not have some things I need. But I don't know. I guess I'd have to travel so much anyway that unnecessary travel like does not appeal to me. You mean unnecessary work travel? Like that's the difference here because you just did unnecessary, unnecessary travel to the moldy use. Yeah. But well, here's the key difference there. I did that with my wife. And the other thing that I find strange about it is that you go away on your own. But I know you're an introvert and all this sort of stuff. But my wife has to work. And she's also happy to have me out of the house for a little while. That's how relationships work. You know, you got to be on the same page about this kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. No, she's cool with it. But I'm happy for you. And you just sit around the hotel, you don't go to Anne Frank's house and walk the canals and stuff. You just sit and sit at your computer or so. I actually happened to when I started this trip, I happened to install a new app on my phone, which does automatic location tracking and tries to build a little report of what you've been up to, which I thought, oh, this is interesting. Let me try this thing. And according to that, I left the hotel aside from Fidotron lifestyle runs, which I was doing. But excluding those in 14 days, I left the hotel three days. Really? One of them was to meet up with a friend who came up to visit me for the final day of the trip. But mostly it was, yeah, I just stay in the hotel. The downside of this though is that the hotel staff get to know me way too well. While I want to just be this anonymous person in the hotel, I also have like picky requests with food or the way things I want things done. And so I'm immediately identified and recognizable by all of the staff. One of the times that I went out was to fix a problem because I was originally only supposed to be an ampionam for a week. And I ended up extending the trip longer for a week. But because I only thought I was going to be there for a week, I did not bring shaving supplies. And I had arrived slightly scruffy. And I thought, oh, but I'll be leaving at the end of the week. It's no big deal. But then when I extended it longer, I realized around day 10 that, okay, all of the hotel staff know exactly who I am. I am this, also this guy who's like clearly not wanting to talk to anybody and is super picky and has now also becoming like extremely scraggly looking. And I realized like, okay, I am falling into like a Howard Hughes type situation here in like the minds of this hotel staff. You know how you just have this feeling like I think the perception of me is suddenly changing. They're beginning to wonder if when I check out, they're going to find bottles of pee in the hotel room stashed away or something. One of the reasons I went outside at one point was solely to get shaving equipment. After because I wanted to shave, but because I felt as this like responsibility to give some kind of indication to the hotel staff like, don't worry, don't worry, I'm still a normal person who is able to take care of himself. I am not just a weirdo who is checked into this hotel and is going to end up living here, but looking like a homeless person in his hoodie unshaven and scruffy. So I have never ever shaved more thoroughly or more carefully than I did at about day 10 in that hotel because I thought I need to look so well put together. I need to not be coming out cut all over my face because I'm done with this wrong. And I swear, I swear to you Brady. The staff in the restaurant and everywhere else did stop treating me like maybe this guy's a little weird like after I had shaved. This totally did in their minds reset the clock to like, oh okay, he's a person who can take care of himself. He's not just a freak who's going to live here indefinitely. That was your James Bond moment when you came down the lobby stairs in your tux all clean shave and all the waitresses turned their head and went, wow, I had no idea. Who's that guy? That's the guy with the beard that was on omnifocus. That is not. It is the same guy. Oh, he looks amazing now. Let me ask you this though Amsterdam, you know, it's one of the great cities of Europe and as such it is therefore not a cheap city to go to. If you want to stay in a nice hotel and pretty much stay in a hotel most of the time, why go to a city as expensive as Amsterdam? Why not find a luxurious hotel in some remote location where you can get more a nicer hotel for your money? Okay, so Brady, the thing is I didn't go to Amsterdam the first time because I thought, oh, I want to go to Amsterdam like this is a city that I want to go to. No, I did this the exact reverse way, which is I was trying to find a hotel that I would want to spend a significant amount of time in and I didn't care where in the world it was. So I was trying to find a place that looked like a place that I want to stay. And the number one thing, the number one thing that I cannot stand with most hotels is that they're just so fancy, especially European hotels where they have like all of this French 17th century furniture looking stuff and they cramp up the rooms with everything. I just I cannot stand that kind of thing in a hotel like I would I wouldn't want to stay in that sort of hotel because it's just mentally cluttering. It's just overwhelming. So what I was really doing is I was looking all over the continent of Europe trying to find hotels that were relatively minimalistic and that's that was actually my primary thing. And the fact that it was in Amsterdam, that was just a secondary effect. It could have been anywhere and I would have I would have traveled to it. Amsterdam is quite close, which is handy as well. I guess it's like it's not a long flight. Do you fly there or? No, no, I took the train out. I took the train out. I thought like I'll do this the nice way. So I spend like a day traveling out on the train. I'm just going to end a while at the hotel and then I took the train back. What do you do? You get the Euro start a Paris and change or what? Yeah, it's Euro start up to Brussels and then Brussels to Amsterdam. Brussels, which is one of the ugliest train stations I've ever seen. Brussels is horrible. Nice one. So for a lot of people listening, I think Amsterdam is famous for its tolerance of activities that would be illegal in many other places. And you are obviously like one of the squareest people I know. So do you do you ever wander around and sort of experience or not experience, but you know, experience the city and look at all that stuff going on and think, wow, this is cool or do you sort of how do you how do you feel about that side of things? Because if we don't talk about it, everyone's going to comment on it. Turns out you can't go to Amsterdam on your own without your wife for an extended period of time without people making a lot of assumptions about the nature of the trip. Yes. And no matter how much you try to talk people out of it, they're just not going to believe it. This is the thing that I have come across. But as I think we've discussed before on the show, like I'm actually quite boring. Like I'm not a person who has done any illegal substances. I would never have guessed. You would not have guessed? So you've decided enough of that and now you're just going to go crazy in your later years or no, that's not it. So I am still I am still boring in that way. Also some of the other services that Amsterdam makes available. I have not partaken in those services either. But I think it is great that a place like Amsterdam exists. I am so on the side of like if you if grown-ups want to do something and they are consenting or they are not hurting anybody else, like I am very much on the side of like obviously that should be legal. That's that's my position and I like I actually I quite like being in a place where stuff that to me seems like obviously this shouldn't be legal. I'm kind of happy to be in a place where it's allowed even if I am not partaking in any of it. It just it just feels quite reasonable. Even though I am totally on board with them being legal, it is kind of weird nonetheless sometimes to turn a corner and find yourself quite literally face to face with this. Like even though I'm totally on board with it, sometimes I did find it quite surprising on the occasions I was walking around or even just sorted by the hotel like go outside and turn the corner and all of a sudden it's like oh I am literally feet away from someone selling the Amsterdam specialties and also it's like wow the actual buying and selling of these services that seems to me quite socially awkward. You're talking about the physical services, not the chemical services. Yes the physical service is not the chemical services because they're children in the room of course so we have to talk in in broad terms but yes it's a little weird to look one of those vendors in the eye like at close range unexpectedly. It's like oh do you ever and this is not this is not a CD question because this is one of the main tourist things of Amsterdam. Do you ever walk through like the bespoke area of Amsterdam that is more red in its illumination? The red light district. Yes I don't know what we're saying now you've reminded me of all the little people this name but that is that's one of the most interesting things to do in Amsterdam and I can assure you there are about 4000 tourists for every one person who is actually there trying to partake in those services where my feeling was mostly just like well this is very strange again I'm glad this thing exists but it's kind of weird that it does. I'm always surprised that it's quite like it's quite a beautiful area isn't it the little little laneways and canals and the complete foreigners of what's happening obviously makes it quite a bit disorienting but you know obviously it's really a strange thing to see sort of a glass door and there's a lady there wanting to do business. Think of the children reading. But I certainly yeah it's certainly very different it's certainly a very exotic and interesting place and but also a good place for business obviously for grace business. Yeah definitely got a lot of work done got a lot of things done very happy very happy. Today's sponsor is audible.com who has more than 180 000 audiobooks and spoken word audio products you can get a free 30 day trial today by going to audible.com slash hello internet as always audible wants us to recommend to you a book to listen to and this time I'm reaching into the classic archive of books that I have liked to bring you snow crash by Neil Stevenson. It's a classic science fiction book that was written at a bit of the dawn of the internet age in the early 90s but that I reread recently and still holds up marvelously. As always with these things I don't want to spoil any of the plot for you so if you trust me this is just a recommendation that I'm passing on. Though I will say the book has one of my favorite lines ever about companies we'll just say that companies play a large role in this book and that line is the franchise and the virus work on the same principle. What thrives in one place will thrive in another you just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan condense it into a three ring binder it's DNA zerox it and embed it in the fertile lining of a well traveled highway preferably one with a left turn lane then its growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines that's a hell of a paragraph I just love that and I think about that every time I see franchises along the highway that's what a good book can do it can plant a thought in your mind forever so that's my recommendation today snow crash by Neil Stevenson so of course audible has books on absolutely everything in every genre you can possibly imagine and what I really like is if you start a book and you don't like it you can just return it no questions asked it's very easy it makes getting into a new book a no risk proposition so once again go to audible.com slash hello internet and start your free audible trial today and thanks to audible for supporting the show you were saying before the show that we should just talk at length about gun germs and still no no we're not gonna talk about gun germs and sealed it we've had a lot of feedback we have had a lot of feedback but I need to I need to load it all in my brain to be able to talk about the whole thing I can't talk about this now don't worry Brady because I know I know there's nothing you love more than really picky detailed follow-up probably about a topic that you're not super interested in don't worry we'll get to it at some point but not today not today one person wrote a response I saw and I think their response was longer than the book yeah there there there have been many many comments we will talk about at some point you're not gonna draw me into it now I can tell what you're trying to do honestly gray I cannot draw you into it because I have not I've not processed it and read it like I you know I flip I skim read the read it when it was early days but I sort of I didn't understand most of it yeah we'll get back to it later okay let's get to what you really love which is the biweekly way in biweekly way in which is more like a try monthly discussion that's why I was saying today we have to do the biweekly way in because we haven't done it in I can't quite remember how long the last time we did it I just remember saying I'd gain a bunch of weight from Christmas yeah and I think you hadn't weighed yourself then but then you told me today that you haven't weighed yourself again so how long has it been since you weighed yourself man I don't know how would I know that I don't know don't you have a spreadsheet you haven't been keeping a spreadsheet I haven't been keeping a spreadsheet and I haven't actually been running for the last couple of weeks either for a few reasons so here you reason open the spreadsheet is to put my running times in and I have not been running either so I'm basically rubbish he said as he reached as he reached for another skittle and super doctor pepper you reach for a single skiddle I can't eat lots of skiddles when we're doing the podcast because that fill up my mouth but I can I can sneakily get one in occasionally is that what you do when recording you sneaking skittles into your mouth no not normally but I've got a pack here at the moment here that sounds like a pretty big pack one of those jumbo packs of skittles yeah limited edition dark side skittles so I've gone for the dark side skittles not officially part of the fit of tron lifestyle that's why they're dark side skittles right oh I disrupt them oh they're all over the floor oh no oh you dark side skittles I have to make sure I pick them up before Audrey gets back oh they're everywhere great I bet that you are it's like a big rainbow carpet I think those are the fit of tron gods punishing you that's great because they're too big to vacuum up as well you're just gonna have to pick them all up I know oh it's messing with my head no I'm still here eating them though it's still here you shoving them into your mouth I just put one in oh now my fingers are all sticky from picking them up it's all going wrong anyway so while I pick up skittles why don't you tell people uh you know what your weight is and all so I'm seriously gonna try to be picking up skittles while we're doing this podcast yeah no you can't do this I'm doing it now no you can't do this man oh everywhere no I know I bet they are I've picked a lot of them up now um okay go on what do you weigh how you do four hour biweekly weigh in theoretically this is the week that I get to say that I am finally at my goal of being under 200 pounds whoa um thank you I am super excited about that just barely I weighed myself this morning and I am 199.5 which is still within a rounding error of 200 but I'm totally gonna count that I'm totally gonna count that and what did how did you celebrate did you go to five guys and pick up okay so actually I did have a celebration so we were talking before I was at Amsterdam right and one of the other things is like being in Amsterdam being in that hotel one of the other things that's really easy to do was like okay well I'm not at home I don't have the refrigerator like in my room or anything there's limited food selections there so while I was in Amsterdam I was super focused on doing the like the no carb diet thing and just like I'm not eating any carbohydrates while I'm here I can focus on this I can keep I can keep really really intense with it and so I didn't eat any carbs and that was partly why I lost about about two or three pounds each week that I was there wow and but the thing was I knew as soon as I'd been there for a week I thought you know why if I keep this up I could just get under 200 pounds and my my goal and my my mental reward here was that I knew that I had this friend visiting on the final day and I thought oh this is great if if I can get under 200 pounds by the time he arrives then I will allow myself to not be a picky little person when we're going out and we're eating if I can get under 200 I will allow myself to just have like a normal day of going out with a friend and like eating at restaurants and just not being super picky and so on the final day when my friend came to visit we went out to this amazing amazing omelette place which is actually just by the Amsterdam central station and I had a croissant with scrambled eggs and cheese and I swear to god it was one of the most delicious things I had ever it was it was the first bread that I had had in two weeks you're like keep your red light district I'm going to the omelette district exactly it was astounding it was like this croissant with these scrambled eggs is the best food I have ever eaten in my whole life so that was kind of my celebration and it was after two weeks well actually really a few days of every time the hotel staff when I'd get breakfast there they'd bring over like muffins and bread and every morning I'd be like oh no I don't even I don't even want the muffins on my table I don't want the bread on my table and eventually they all learned that I was the weird guy who didn't want bread with anything like whenever you order coffee in the hotel it comes with some cookies and I'd have to keep telling them like oh no I don't want any cookies with this and then eventually they just learned and brought me all the stuff without anything but yeah so that was my celebration what now Gray what what what next like do you look at do you look now weep because there are no more whites to conquer in my mind I kind of thought that by the time I was under 200 like everything would be amazing and I would be some kind of super adonis but actually looking in here and I realized like oh what I've really done is now I'm just a normal person who could still go with losing a few more pounds like that's actually what it is but I think for prior to getting here I had imagined that this was like the final end state right so now I think I realized like I still I still want to lose maybe five more pounds that give myself a little bit of a buffer to never be over 200 again so one 95 is the new target I think 195 is the new target it might take me a long time to get there but I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable having a buffer because if I can I really never want to be over 200 again but yeah I feel like a normal person and I realized I was looking through some of my data before and I realized that I am now 30 pounds lighter than I was at my absolute fattest which was about two years ago nice work yeah so did you did you get because your wife hadn't seen you for a while when you got back from Amsterdam did she like notice a difference and say wow you look awesome yeah pretty much which was very satisfying yeah yeah she noticed right away when I came home she was there there was a big like holy cow you look like a different person followed by the various satisfying you should go to Amsterdam more often hi everyone it's time for another one of our sponsorship reads and this one's a little bit different for me because I'm currently standing at the top of a hill overlooking all of San Francisco and the Bay Area it's quite the site the Golden Gate Bridge is right in front of me and out to my left stretching away is the direction of Silicon Valley and it's here in San Francisco this place of technology that our mind must go to the thing that underpins all of our data led lives and that is backup you guessed it I'm here to talk about backblaze the place to go for online backup I use backblaze and I cannot tell you how much peace of mind it gives me it's just installed on my computer it's worrying away in the background continually backing up everything to the cloud they've got a really cool interface it's really easy to use some ridiculous amount of data I think it's like 150 petabytes has been stored on the backblaze service which I think aren't that far away from where I'm talking to you at the moment so in a funny way I guess I've kind of come all the way from England to be closer to my backed up data now if you lose something on your computer and it happens it could just be a single file you can really easily go to backblaze and just have it restored or if the worst happens and you have a catastrophe you can recover all that data not just through the web but you can also contact backblaze and they'll send it to on a hard drive which I can imagine would be somewhat quicker than trying to do it through the internet pipes it's also really cheap five dollars a month per computer so you can have it running on your main one on your laptop on your wife's on your husbands on your boyfriend's on your girlfriends on your relatives in fact I should probably get it on my mum's computer I can't imagine how upset she'll be if she ever loses all her photos now if you want to check them out go to backblaze.com slash hello internet if you put the slash hello internet they'll know you came from here now you can give them a trial no credit card required get backblaze running see how easy it is see how much peace of mind it gives you and I feel really confident you're likely to sign on for the real deal well I've just come back inside and unbelievably while I was outside recording that I've had a tweet and it says thank you hello internet FM for making me get backblaze which has just saved my brackets vegetarian bacon so literally while I was telling you to make sure you're protected one of our listeners has had their digital life saved by backblaze so I think if people are listening contemporaneously the thing that they expect us to be talking about is the youtube kaffafel involving the film creators known as the fine brothers fine bros fine bros I don't know what you call them yeah you you explain what happened great because this is a I'd be interested to hear your explanation of the controversy for anyone listening to the podcast when it goes up like I have seen an enormous number of people asking us to comment on the fine brothers gate apocalypse like whatever you want to put it however you want to like what suffix you want to fix to this this this big thing that has happened and I think perhaps for people who are unfamiliar with what we're about to talk about talk about maybe the the shortest way to describe the the facts of the situation is that the fine brothers run a very popular youtube channel which before all of this happened had something like 14 million subscribers and they put out a video which was aiming to discuss a new licensing program that they wanted to put in place and then the internet reacted very badly to this video of theirs that they put out they made an update video and the update video made the whole situation even worse and it kind of exploded into a massive massive kind of internet fight over copyright and trademarks and ownership of things and how to make videos for large groups of people and the value of the work of the fine brothers like it spilled over into just everything possible and was I mean I'm going to say probably one of the biggest like internet explosions I have seen in a long long time like it was just constantly on the front page of sites like Reddit it was all over Twitter it was just this big big explosion that connected to a whole bunch of stuff I don't think you've done a brilliant job oh well I think you have very accurately given an overview but I think you've gone a bit too overview there to really be much used to people fine brothers as Grace said very very popular youtubers way way bigger than you know way bigger than us leagues above us they've become they're a huge big thing like 10x the size of our channel huge guys one of the formats that they make which has sort of been their big format that they've become really famous for is this series of videos about reactions it's become a genre of videos this react format they've got one called kids react they've got one called elders react which is older people and they'll basically show them viral videos or objects or things and they'll just film these people's reactions to them they'll interview them about it and it's a pretty but now thing when you think about it but they make them very well and they've become hugely hugely popular now I think it would it seems to be the case that to me I'm editorializing a bit now that these people are feeling a bit proprietary about this format and although they most certainly did not invent the idea of people reacting to things or filming people to react to things I think because they had made it quite popular they felt a degree of ownership of it and they announced to the world that they were going to license to people the ability to make react videos so you could make a video just like theirs and they will take some of your money and they will help you make that make these videos and once they announced this which seemed kind of odd to a lot of people people started scratching a little bit below the surface and it and it was realised that the fine brothers had in fact trademarked the names of some of their series and they had also trademarked just the word react in this in this context and it seemed to be the case that they were now going to attempt to own the whole genre of reaction videos and in fact other people started saying they've taken down all my reaction videos and there and there was an active campaign by someone associated with them to take down videos that were about reactions and at this point the internet turned on them I mean you say it was a huge big thing it was certainly big on redder and in certain spheres and it certainly affected them they sort of did a half climb down and sort of apologised and made this apology me a culper video which was not very successful didn't go down well and wasn't good it wasn't good and that made things much much worse for them and then a couple of days later they did a complete climb down as they were hemorrhaging subscribers and everyone was even some of their sort of friends were saying they haven't done very well here they did a complete climb down and said we're sorry we're releasing all our trademarks on the word react we're releasing all our trademarks even on the ones that we do we're ending this whole idea of licensing videos and they went back into their shell completely beaten to death by the internet now one of the people who beat them with a stick was their good friend CGP Gray what do you mean I don't know what you're talking about Gray was like obviously people were riding blogs and making videos and really getting stuck into these guys and Gray made a sort of a satirical jockey video that I'm sure most of you have seen where he pretended that he was going to trademark stick figures which he uses in his videos and anyone else who ever wanted to use stick figures would have to license from him and it was a rather rather sarcastic video and it was done in a way that kind of parodied and satire the the original things that the fine brothers were doing so Gray was one of the people in in the the mob that publicly shamed the fine brothers away from their position it has been very interesting like I have been talking to a lot of people in the business about this like because the phrase that I keep using to describe what happens to everyone I talk to about this is perfect storm this thing exploded into a big conversation because it just like it hit all of the like the trigger points that it possibly could to make this explode into a big thing what are some of those well one one of those is is even in in your own description I think a thing that is is very tricky about this is in the in the first video that the fine brothers made you know I came to this very late I saw both videos at the same time because I was just wanting my own business uh you know not on the internet very much and just happened to accidentally come across this thing but in the first video that they made they explained what they were doing kind of poorly because I watched that video and I thought wow okay one this is horribly made I don't think it's a very good video but as someone who works in the field of intellectual property right like my business is built on intellectual property I watched the thing and I thought okay they're they're doing they want to do licensing deals right this is this is what they want to do they want to license the fine brothers name or they want to license the particular assets they use to make their videos to other people to use to create you know sub channels and they themselves use an example like you know America's got talent and Britain's got talent right that this is a common thing in the entertainment industry to do yeah yeah it's not it's not unremarkable not it would be it would be certainly a new thing to do it on YouTube and just have anyone in their bedroom starting to license video genres but someone's gonna do it first I guess yeah doing it on YouTube is a is a slightly different thing but it is it is by no means like some kind of outrageous thing to do right it's it's exactly the kind of thing that a media company would do if they have a successful property because that's what media companies do yeah and so I'm watching and like oh okay well you know what this is whatever about this but the but the problem that happened was that as the video went on they were talking about other people like using their format or like making similar videos to them and asking their audience to kind of boycott people who are infringing on their intellectual property rights and that's to me where it flipped over into this perfect storm because then there is this like misunderstanding that the fine brothers are claiming ownership of all kinds of react videos which I don't think was their intention in the original video but it's like man if you guys make a video and you put it out to 14 million subscribers the vast majority of of your viewers they don't have a clear understanding of the difference between copyright trademark and licensing and branding deals like you can't expect them to understand the distinction of these things because they're really complicated things and you know even as someone who works in this field like you have to think about it sometimes like okay what are the difference between these different things and so I think like that was one of the things that made it like a perfect storm is because tons of people make react videos because frankly they're very easy to make and so then this video ends up kind of unintentionally sounding like the fine brothers are going to own all reaction videos and I just I don't think that was their intention from the first video but it sure is hell sounded like it. I disagree with the I disagree with you Gray. I think it was I think it was their intention they trademarked the word react on its own yeah they did they didn't say that at the time yeah yeah but they had done it and let me tell you something else let me take you back in time to April 2014 okay I made a video a reaction video which was basically it was really a parody of reaction videos you know you know how I make those parodies of calculator unboxing I make unboxing parodies where people open calculator boxes yeah do like my comment on the silliness of unboxing videos I made a reaction video the same thing I got a bunch of the professors in my videos to play the game 2048 oh I remember this one yeah that was that was the very zeitgeist game don't all start sending me messages about how three is as better I know just about to say three is way better I know he's better three is the one that I play but 2048 is 2048 was the zeitgeist you think that week and that's what we did I know that one has the mind share that one has the mind share anyway so I made that I made that video I received an email from the fine brothers now I'd I'm not one for sharing emails that are sent to me by people because I just think they're correspondence between people but I this does not feel like a very personal email to me they didn't know who I was they didn't use my name so it was clearly a it was clearly quite a generic email and in it they were pretty much warning me off starting a professor's react to series in 2014 they they were really they were really polite and nice and part of it said we saw your video we thought it was we thought it was really cool you know we assume this was a one off but I hoping the plan isn't to start doing things like this all the time calling things blank react to and playing games or watching videos like our company does they then held out and they were obviously already thinking about this licensing thing because they they then talk about maybe there's a way we could work on something like this together but it would be difficult with the distance but we could maybe start talking about it but then they start talking about but in the spirit of the YouTube community we're hoping that this is just a one-off and you're not planning to do more of it so this was this was two years before I made one reaction video and I was basically been told don't you shouldn't do it again it would be against the spirit of YouTube we hope you're not planning to make more of them like our company our company does so I think I think they were thinking about this then you know yeah I mean yeah that that doesn't that doesn't look good I but I've no I don't know these guys by the way and I think you know obviously make good videos I saw them gave a talk once at VidCon but you know I have no yeah we should we should say it's I mean it's it's a funny position to me and because as well like I don't I don't know the fine brothers I don't watch their videos but it's a thing we're like the fine brothers know lots of people because they have a whole channel that's like whatever or the whole series it's just YouTubers react yeah they're very well connected in the YouTube community yeah they're very well connected people but I do not know them I am not familiar with their work yeah very much but yeah I guess part of the stories that were going around at the time and I can't say I like I didn't go in and verify them but apparently they had some spat with like TV channels that were doing people reacting to stuff so like I think they they clearly had some sense of propriety over the idea of react channels that react videos that was out of scope with reality yeah that that's what happened I think they they made something very good and very successful and and it continued to be successful and I think they suddenly thought I think they got yeah they got they got a bit carried away with how much it was theirs I think they also forgot that it was not a new thing yeah I mean okay so like to go into the details of this for a second though when I was watching this thing and they're talking about licensing and trademark so this thing comes up every once in a while where you hear that a company is trying to trademark a word right this time it happens to be the fine brothers and react but this kind of thing comes up on the internet every once in a while when when companies do this so you try to trademark let's play yeah I think they did so I mean one of the things with with trademarks that people need to understand is that trademarks are relatively narrow and of the three kinds of intellectual property copyrights patents and trademarks I think that trademarks are the least problematic of any of them because the idea of trademark is it's supposed to be you you as a consumer by seeing these words in this circumstance know that this company is the one behind it this is like this is the whole idea like Coca-Cola right like you you can make soda but you can't call it Coca-Cola because that is a trademark to let you know that the Coca-Cola company has made this thing like this is the purpose of trademarks and when people apply for trademarks you have to specify where and how those trademarks are going to be used and the thing that's funny about this whole fine brothers thing it's like it blew up over trademarks but it's like I have a trademark and I that very morning this fine brothers thing occurred I had actually used a trademark I had enforced a trademark to gain control of like a URL squad are basically as like this is this is what trademarks are for to like you can't have someone represent themselves as you or your company if you have a trademark like this is the presumably your trademark is your name yeah well that's that's the super weird thing right like I have trademark CGP Greg which is just very funny thing but yeah it was and that's what I was using it's like someone else was was using CGP Greg and it's like okay that's nobody else's name like I have trademarked this thing you can't represent yourself on the internet in this way so when people talk about like they were trying to trademark the word react I would be shocked if that trademark was actually granted and even if it was granted if it was enforceable because it's just it's too broad it's too generic and like there's no way they were going to be able to take down everybody's videos that were using the word react but apparently they were great because obviously the draconian way that the YouTube system works and YouTube's fear of running into legal problems is they kind of err on the side of caution and if someone says oh I and the trademark on that word they kind of take down first and ask questions later and a lot of react stuff apparently I don't know they didn't they didn't take down my video two years ago by the way they made no attempt as far as I know they made no attempt to take it down so I'm not saying they tried to take mine down but a lot of other people in the net more recently have been saying they have had problems with it I don't know if it's true but a lot of people saying it and and they've acknowledged it because they they have said oh we're trying to undo those they said we had nothing to do with it I think they said it was their their multi-channel network that did it on their behalf and they said they were trying to undo that mess now but um so it does seem that it was happening so I mean this is again what why I think partly this this blew up into this this big thing is because there's a lot of frustrations that people have with the whole way that YouTube deals with intellectual property and and enforcement and yes there there is a bit of a like take down first ask questions later uh policy that YouTube has but but one of the things um one of the things that I was was just astounded by is that that Hank green wrote an article which was talking about explaining that the the whole controversy which you put up on medium which I'll link to but there's one line in there which was astounding to me where he said that the YouTube apparently gives some creators some of the big creators the power to on their own without oversight take down other people's videos which is amazing to me and I think maybe that's what's happening or or that's what had happened with some of these people saying like the fine brothers were able to just take down my video is that like the fine brothers it sounds from this were one of those people who had the ability to just like press a button and nuke someone's video off of off of the YouTube platform and I just I cannot believe that this is this is part of YouTube system and it just it's like fuel on the fire uh so like I'm not sure if they were you know properly enforcing trademarks or what but it seems like they were able to take down videos that they thought and they felt were just too close to what they were doing and it's it's just bad it's just really bad to do I don't want to come to your I don't want to come to your video yet right I want to ask you separately about your video that you made on this issue in a couple of minutes but the funny thing is the way we've been discussing it so far you almost sound more sympathetic to them than than I do and I actually do feel a little bit sympathetic towards them so it's kind of this conversation has gone differently to what I expected because I have I actually uh I feel I feel a bit sorry for them in some ways but your talk you you're talking like you think they had pure motives and it just came out wrong and I actually don't believe that I think they were getting a bit greedy and they got caught with their fingers in the cookie jar they got disproportionately slapped around because of it we can discuss whether it was disproportionate in a minute they certainly got slapped around very hard because of it and and they climbed down from this position either because they changed their mind or it was going to it was starting to have uh serious business implications for them I don't know which but they certainly climbed down and you seem to be saying they just didn't communicate it very clearly and therefore they got in trouble I think they were doing a bit of smoke and mirrors and making it sound like a great opportunity for everyone when really they were trying to take ownership of something that I'm not entirely convinced they had the right to take ownership of and they were and they were getting dollocons in their eyes yeah I think there is there's no argument about them owning the idea of react videos like there's there's clear prior art there's there's no there's no universe in which they own the idea of react videos just just without without uh uh without a doubt the question is of this whole idea of like licensing what they do in particular like I think that's a very different question and yeah great they were clearly trying to set up this licensing program but I think it was running in parallel with a more concerted campaign to stop other people making reaction videos I think that was happening in parallel they were talking about that so much because that's not such a nice thing to talk about in a positive let's do it together video but that was clearly happening at the exact same time these two things were happening in concert yeah maybe maybe I guess this is this is the exact conversation that I've been having with with many people with like why aren't you more angry about this like aren't you the guy who made some videos like super angry about this and and I do feel like my my opinion on this is is largely like their their trademarks would have been just unenforceable anyway like you like what it like the the worst case scenario here is that they would have gotten some trademark but it would never have held up you know the idea of trademarking the word react just just like every other company that tries to trademark a single word it just never holds up or it never gets accepted because it's just too broad it's too it's not specific enough right it's not like your trademarking mountain dew at when you are selling sodas right it's just it's just not specific enough so that's why I think like it's not the trademark that it's it's more what it's more the intent at signals it's more the intent that we're getting you know it was they were they were trying to create an arsenal of weapons that would help with them stop other people make reactive videos and a trademark is one of the arrows in your quiver and whether or not that arrow was successful or got got taken out of the quiver doesn't matter it shows what they were doing another thing that shows what they were doing with these takedowns another thing that shows what they were doing is maybe emails like the one I alluded to before they were you know this was clearly happening they clearly thought it was their thing and other people shouldn't be doing it so whether or not the trademark is a is a red herring yeah let's not talk about whether the trademark was enforceable okay well there could be court cases and whatever but there was a whole other thing going on that was not being talked about how much being hidden by this whole licensing thing they clearly felt a ridiculous ownership over the idea of people reacting to stuff and I like I just I just found it here which is the the thing where they were criticizing the Ellen DeGeneres show because they Ellen DeGeneres did it's apparently some bit where she was showing kids old technology yeah and and and the quote here from the fine brothers his wow the Ellen show did a kids reacting to old technology didn't mention us didn't check with us not cool you need to go to their Facebook and blast the kids react links and it's like okay well there there's them trying to rally up an angry mob against the Ellen DeGeneres show for having people look at things and make comments about them yeah and to me that is like okay you you are just out of touch with what you have made and it's importance in the world and your ownership of it and like that's the thing that for me was was the really galling part about it because like I totally agree with you like if the trademark in some way doesn't matter I think the idea of doing a licensing deal it's like whatever it's just boring business who cares is a totally standard thing but to me the the galling thing is like the way they presented themselves was that was the thing that just really set me on edge like I cannot believe you guys have made this video about how amazingly important you a react videos are and and how you want everybody to to join in on this thing didn't they say change the world I downloaded the video as soon as I saw it because I thought surely they're going to take this video down and I want to make sure I've got it because I thought there's no way this video is going to last another hour on the internet but I'm sure every man that don't get that too at this point in the podcast I'm going to edit in some of this video because you just you have to hear this people it is unbelievable I really think you should find some of the many re-uploads on video to see it like seeing it is a whole other thing because it's just strangely put together but for those listening I am just going to put in a couple of clips just so you can hear we're talking about hello everyone our company has grown so much over the years and we are so grateful to have experienced this with all of you who have been with us for years as well as new people who joined the fine family every day we're now announcing this big thing that will bring us closer than ever before by creating a new way for us to create content together this is not only a huge step for our company but for the entire global media industry ever since react first debuted over five years ago we saw the impact of the series we strive with react to be making episodes that will not just be interesting and entertaining now but live on forever as a time capsule even a hundred years from now that people can look back at what various generations were saying about culture and the issues of our time we are excited to announce react world which is the first of this kind program that allows people and companies to license all our popular shows online so that anyone even you watching right now can create your own versions in a fully legal way and they part of a new and exciting global community as digital media has become more corporate the spirit of wanting to do things differently than traditional Hollywood has started to dissipate but our company has never lost that spirit by licensing our formats and trademarks everyone will know that you're doing this legally with our company's guidance we are so motivated for this to know that our formats can inspire millions of people and open that up for all of you to have the chance to do the same as as exciting as anything we have ever done before and we look forward to the time when we can look back to this moment to this video with all of you knowing that this was when we all stood together changed the way things were done and created this first of his kind global community we can't wait to work with so many of you and change the world together their lines of like we are going to make this a global phenomenon with all of you there's the part where they talk about how react videos are going to be looked back upon in a hundred years as an amazing time capsule of like current day events and yes they do talk about changing the world together it's it's it's amazing it's amazing because okay so listen I like something I just want to make clear before we continue to talk about this react videos when you use that phrase it covers a wide variety of things some of which I think are are just like the worst lowest content on YouTube and some of which are just like barely acceptable content but if people like react videos I have no problem with that they're not for me but I don't care if like if people like you think that's totally fine right you can't argue against people liking it but there's no doubt that this is just the minimum amount of effort that you can possibly put in to create content because you you take somebody else's thing and you film some people reacting to it just occasionally making comments about you're not creating the emotion someone else's hard work is creating the emotion of the video exactly right the other person is doing the heavy lifting here yeah and then you are just filming reactions you're not you're not lighting the fire you're just warming your hands up with it yeah you're warming your hands up with someone else's fire and I think this is another element of like the perfect stormness of this because I don't know for a fact I have heard second hand that the fine brothers do get permission for all of the videos that they react to I don't know if that's true let's just assume that it is for this conversation but there are plenty of react channels that just they're just they're just copyright infringement channels they take other popular videos and they film themselves as a person looking at their computer screen and reacting to the thing that's on screen but then they'll put whatever it is in the corner so you can just watch it there that's a transformative work right that's transformative yeah it's not even remotely transformative and I think like that's another reason why this really blew up as a thing because on YouTube like those kind of react channels like people just hate it because it's you're just taking someone else's work and you're making money off of it and you're giving like no credit to the original person the worst thing is many of those channels will then sanctimoniously say like oh we're doing this to promote the other channels it's like no yeah exposure and it's like yeah if it was I'd be happy to receive it but I don't like please don't react to my videos where it's just your face looking at the screen saying nothing sometimes is my actual video plays like that stuff is just infuriating right but I think that like that's why the fine brothers think blew up is like okay there's plenty of people out there who just can't stand react channels but then on top of it to to make these video where you're talking about how like react channels are going to change the world together and like you're doing this amazing culturally important thing I mean when I watch the video just like oh come on f*** off mad right like you're just you're just filming someone reacting to a thing that you didn't make and again I was not familiar with the fine brothers before this except only in like the dimest way of like oh right fine brothers I've heard their name but I went and I watched some of the react videos and it's like oh yeah this is exactly why I would have expected just like the easiest type of content to create in the world and again there's nothing wrong with things being easy right the world doesn't doesn't reward people in proportion to how hard they work nor should it but it's it's that contrast of like you're just making this super easy thing and you're also telling people how super important it is like that that's one of the like triggers in this perfect storm of like why people got so riled up about these videos so can I move on to your video for a bit okay all right let me tell people how your video unfolded from my end because okay something a bit different then you can tell me your end I coincidentally started communicating with you via text messages not long after you first heard about this and saw this right and because I had meant to bring it up with you but I thought you'd probably be off in one of your bubbles and didn't want to know about it yet and then you messaged me I think something about it and I said oh that's funny I did want to talk to you about it and you were not acting like outraged or really really upset but you were more engaged than usual I could I could tell you thought it was really interesting and with you and I were joking was sending each other a few jokes and I actually sent you I actually you'd already thought of it obviously as we soon find out but I even sent you a joke saying you know you could trade you could trade Mark stick figures right yeah but you know we were making a few jokes about it like we do and then within a minute of me making that stick figure crack you sent me a recording of your script which you'd obviously already had where you did that exact thing and made a joke about you trade marking stick figures and you did it in that funny voice that kind of enthusiastic California voice that you did it in I thought it was really funny and I actually went downstairs because I'd told my wife a little bit about the controversy and I said I listened to what Greja sent me and I played it to her and she thought it was really funny as well so we had a laugh about it it's the it's the self-important vlogger voice yeah exactly yeah sort of the yeah a lot of beauty vloggers sort of talk like that and so anyway I came I came back upstairs and I think in the space of time that I had been downstairs you had put the video on YouTube I thought I didn't actually know if you were going to do it but I thought if you did you were going to have to animate it but you obviously you didn't go for animation you just sort of went for a single card so you had turned it around really quickly and it was up and finally enough my wife then came upstairs and she and she actually said you are going to advise Greja not to put that on YouTube aren't you and I and I turned and I said I said too late he's already done it like and and I have to say I thought it was funny I thought it was clever I thought it was a very fair criticism and I always find satire a very effective way of criticizing someone and I am still and I am definitely not the only one among people who know you I am still absolutely astounded that you did it I cannot believe it it's like it's like someone else took over took over your body for the day that you would do that because I will say this like I think there's lots of things that you do weird and I know they work for you and I find they're really interesting and you know you're a good friend and I'm happy things work for you but if there's one thing that I have learned from you that that I have taken from our friendship that has made me a better person and a happier person it is your ability to kind of ride above controversy to not get involved with things that don't affect you you are the master of not being having your feathers ruffled by things that shouldn't ruffle your feathers and very often things that used to really upset me and I'd take to Twitter or I'd send angry emails and I'd get upset so often I just sit back and I even think about great I think you know what Gray would do would be really good here he would think it through he would think this doesn't affect me I don't need to get involved I don't need to put my ore in the water I'll just do my own thing you know think before you act and in this case something that had nothing to do with you it didn't affect you in any way you didn't need to put in your two cents worth and kick these guys who were already been kicked from a thousand different angles it's not like they needed a kicking and you just jump in with this huge kick like you know and you know hundreds of I don't know how many people have watched it hundreds of thousands a million I don't know but it was a very you know it did really well the video but I just I can't believe you did it I still can't believe you did it what did you do it I told you after I uploaded this video that this is something I would have never done a year ago and I actually put it down in no small part to your influence through his podcast I'm not saying that it's your fault or anything but you are constantly constantly braiding me for not just going with things like what do you always want to make sure like Gray you have to just go along with this thing right and you're always trying to get me to just be more spontaneous and just do stuff and I felt like putting up that video that was totally a Brady influence right if we had never done this podcast I would never have put up those videos well I think that's good because because the criticism I would have of you is I sometimes think you don't have the courage of your convictions like there are things that I know you feel feel about and you know you have have opinions of what's right or wrong or even if you don't know what's right or wrong you certainly have opinions and then you'll say we shouldn't talk about on the podcast it'll just cause us a world of trouble it's not worth a hassle let's just talk about something else and that's fair enough and I've learned from that so to see you feeling passionately about something and an act on it is a good thing I guess but but I still think I still don't know why this was the thing that made you do it and that and yet this one you know with these in a community you move among as well you know you're you're a youtuber you don't know the fine brothers as far as I know but you're certainly friends with some of their friends yeah like in some ways this is like an incredibly career stupid move yeah like like I think you're you're you'll probably meet them at some point just at some I know you don't go to many things but there's a there's a certainly as you would say a non trivial chance that your your paths will cross with the five brothers and now you've made this quite well-known video completely ripping the piss out of them there's two videos oh yeah two videos sorry yes that's right gray also spoofed to the apology video so yeah so he had to kick them twice okay so just like I think this was a perfect storm of things that turn this into a big deal on the internet the reason I reacted is I felt like this video was a perfect storm of things for me right which is why I reacted so again like just with just with everybody with with every opinion that everybody has on everything like there's there are levels above and below which you're gonna cause actions and not and so yet I am very much a person who just like doesn't care and avoids internet drama for the most part but I felt like almost like these two videos that they made the first announcement and then especially the update video that was that was really the one that put me over the edge I felt like these two things couldn't have been more perfectly crafted to it to annoy exactly me and like that's how I felt about those videos like they had sat down and looked at an MRI scan of my brain and come up with the thing that could maximally frustrate me and so that this is why I reacted and I also reacted because I thought as soon as I saw that update video I made the two videos where I won one one as a mockery of the the first announcement and one as a mockery of their update video but I only made the two because I really just wanted to make the second one and so to make the second one I had to do the first one as well and that's why I made both of them. Thing one about this that annoys me and this is just this is just my own personal situation but I I get frustrated by these huge channels that have like big staffs of people working for them that then also want to talk like they're just a person in their bedroom making videos. I mean this is this is the funny thing like you and I Brady like for the large part we we are still individuals making videos like we work with people on occasion to help us make videos you have someone who is making the computer file videos for you but neither of us have like employees and just like omnipresent dozens of staff who are helping us out with stuff. Yeah and the fine brothers it just we're just being like this pinnacle example of trying to talk like oh we're just we're just some normal people and we want to we want to make videos too and bring this to the world and it's amazing but like we also are sitting on top of these hundreds and hundreds of millions of views and 14 million subscribers and we're showing pictures of our company that has 20 employees the distance between like what you are and the way you are portraying yourself that just kind of infuriates me. Like I my feeling is like there's nothing wrong with being a giant company but if you are a company with a whole bunch of people like you have to talk in a different way when you're discussing your plans. So what because I mean obviously obviously you don't think people who have this success and go in this direction of starting companies like lose their right to to be people and talk to their audience obviously you're not saying that so what is it about the way they spoke because these two brothers sort of fronted the video and yeah spoke directly out out to their audience. So I wrote down a couple of quotes but like almost in in the very beginning they do this thing that companies do that I just absolutely hate which is talking in terms of a family so they have a reference about like everybody who's joining the fine family and this is a thing like when I would work in schools a school okay a school is already so much closer to a family than a company ever is but boy did it irritate the crap out of me whenever the administrative staff and any of the schools that I worked at talked about like everybody is a family it's like you know what we're not a family you want to use the word family to have a certain feeling in the people who are working for you but family is not even remotely this word right like I just it just sets me right on edge like I hate that kind of thing where someone's trying to appropriate a more friendly word in a situation that is not even remotely applicable right so they're talking about like join the fine family it's going to bring us closer than ever before like excuse me uh could you explain to me what about your licensing program is going to bring this quote family closer than ever before like it's a business deal there's nothing wrong with the business deal there's nothing wrong with doing licensing but I think it's it's just gross to present it in this way right and then and then they transition from talking about a family to talking about like the community like we want to do this with the community and for the community and how this is great for the community and that's the other one that just again is a kind of a YouTube thing that just really bothers me like I don't like the use of the word community especially in this kind of situation with the fine brothers where it's like what community where is this community right I think what you have is an audience right like you should use the word audience here there's a large number of people who are watching you do a thing and there's nothing wrong with that but you want to use the word community to put in people's mind this vision of like a village where we're all equal and all working together for a thing as opposed to the actual situation which is like the two of you are the focus of everything in the world and all of the individuals on the outside are separated from each other and their only focal point is you I think the reason why people use the word community on YouTube is because the word fan is uncomfortable like we've discussed this right I don't like using the word fan and one of the main reasons why I don't I don't like to try never to say something like my fans because fan implies something about the internal emotional state of the person right they are a person who just loves everything that you do oh it implies they're fanatical yeah right exactly that's what it means yeah and so this is why like I wish that people who were uncomfortable with the term fan wouldn't jump to the word community because the word community is a lie like unless you are actually making your audience into a community by having them arrange gatherings like where they independently of you do things like okay if that's occurring that is a community but if you are the central focus all the time of everything that's occurring what you have is an audience and so like that is why I try to use the word audience and I also like audience because it's like well all it says is that there are people who are watching what you do but it again it doesn't put a mental state in their head these are fanatics who love you it's just an it's an audience like that's what it is and this is the actual relationship here like a person is on stage and there are people watching what they're doing so all the community stuff it just again like when they're trying to make a business deal that is just like perfectly designed to irritate me like whenever I hear the word community it just like it sets my teeth on edge if the if there is no actual community there like that's that's why that first video just it it sent me off on the wrong foot like I cannot believe how frustrating this is and then the other thing about that which I mentioned earlier is like this amazing misunderstanding of who are they making this video for so it's okay they have an audience but the very fact that they are putting out this video to me seemed like some kind of amazing misunderstanding of who their audience is like how many of your subscribers do you think care at all about your licensing deal here like this this just seems amazingly tone deaf and then to follow like oh we have this licensing deal thing with I was looking at trying to like put at the time for the video but like the second half of the video is then entirely all about like make sure that you don't watch any videos that are different react videos make sure you only watch our react videos and kind of like boycott people who are doing it illegally and if you want to do it legally do it through our licensing program so that that first video like kind of set me off and like oh man this is just I think I tweeted something about like this is like perfectly wrong in every way that it can possibly be there like it's going to be misunderstood it is aimed at an audience who can't possibly care less and will only be irritated by the implication that they're doing something wrong by watching other react videos or making react videos and this false friendliness of like we're a community we're a family like you're coming into our family it's like yeah but in families you know you don't pay licensing deals to your parents for their names right like that's not how families work there's nothing about that that's a family let me let me give you a prickly devil's advocate question then I don't think we use words like family and community if we do I hope we don't do it often because they're a bit silly but we do have things like we sell you know flags for example like the fun like that the halloween to net flag and like we make a little bit of money from that but at the same time we are saying buy the flag and you know fly the nail and gear and we make joky jokes about you know the mighty nail and gear and show you support for halloween to net and that how is that different how are we how are we different when we sell a flag and say you know put the flag on your wall and fly your flag for the mighty nail and gear halloween to net I guess we are being a little bit ironic but yeah I mean we call it nation building yeah so so you think we're being sufficiently sarcastic about it or silly about it that because what's the difference what's the difference between what's the difference between that you know they're saying they've got a community and you know we have got a bunch of people that you know like joking about this stuff and talking to each other about it and okay so like like when you think about what a community is right I just think a key part of that is people doing things like independently larger than people doing things related to you and so I I still just think like we have an audience with halloween to net like halloween to net is by far and away the thing that comes closest to the possibility of using the word community right but I I would still stay far away from it and I don't I don't like that word and I try to avoid it although I'm sure people go back through the podcast they can find someplace where I've slipped up I just I just don't like that word and it's not something that I would necessarily use to describe this because again it feels it feels like there's something in there which is trying to put something into the minds of the people in your audience that is almost exploitive because when I think about again like working for a school and when they talk about a family these conversations always came up when like administration wants you to do something that you would never do if you were thinking about this as a company right and you were an employee in a company they want you to think about this as a family because in a family like you go way out of your way to help family members in a way that you would not help strangers or co-workers you're appropriating the the goodwill and emotional baggage of the word family to try and achieve something else yeah it's like but you know what in families uh you don't give people you know trial memberships in families you don't fire people from families like like like like you want all of the good parts of the word family and we know to be associated with you but you also still want all of the control of a company right and that's what I don't like about the word community like especially especially when it's combined with asking for money it's like I would never want to say something like buy a flag so that you can be part of the hello internet community yeah I do see like what happens there is and don't and don't and don't fly a flag that wasn't made by us because then you're not part of the community yeah that's exactly it like I'm actually thinking like I mean because when we talked about the when the flag thing came up like that was one of the very reasons why uh you know we we gave over the design like to the public domain right and I think uh this is the one of the main main this is one of the few places I think I may have used the word community because I can genuinely say like the community made this because we had nothing to do with that flag yeah that flag was several iterations of other people and actually they're doing and they're doing what you said they're like 3d printing it and doing all sorts of making phone cases out of it and also yeah so and that's got nothing to do with us yeah that that's that and but that is the closest you're going to come to a community and it is a it a moment where like we discussed it ahead of time let's like yeah we are not going to be the exclusive owners of this flag we didn't make it like it came organically without us and so it makes sense to like throw it back out organically like we can't claim ownership of this thing that's what I mean with this this kind of community thing like it's it's very very tricky but I just think audience is almost always the correct word it doesn't have emotional baggage and it's a it's a description of the situation now the the the update video the farm brothers made the kind of the the half retraction before the complete retraction happened yeah which was not done with the video that was just done quietly with a blog post but this kind of half retraction attempt to uh to stem the hemorrhaging editorially aside if you just ignore the content and what they were trying to achieve with it that was not for guys who make films for a living that was not well executed artistically the way that they looks and their expressions and the sum of the scripting like I think if they could do that differently a second time they would take that option yeah that that video was the one where when I watched it I knew immediately I had to make the two videos that I made making fun of it but the choice was taken away from you I honestly felt like I have no choice now right like this like the first video annoyed me on these things that are particular annoyance to me and and just like press my buttons but I swear to God when I watch that update video the moment they use the word free boot it was like yeah no I have no choice right I forgot I forgot they used to go with free booting and I know that that almost made me forgive them yeah I was I was watching the thing and I like I knew I was already going to make this video but it's like when they said free boot it's like it's like they they handed me a letter of permission to make a video about this and I just had I really felt like I had no choice and you know and those two videos I made like I have never made anything faster in my whole life like those those two videos they were just you know it was like God was reaching down from heaven and just made everything go right like I did it in a take you know it took no editing there was like it just came out perfectly the first time for both videos and it was like well you know this is divinely ordained right like I'm not even thinking about this like up they go right and then once they're up there it's like God ushered each video wanted time to the very top slot of all the Reddit for both videos and it was like well you know again out of my hands totally out of my hands yeah but that but that update video is one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen and that that was the one where it was like okay man you made this video that was poorly misunderstood that pressed my buttons in the wrong way and then your update video it seems like it's nothing but you expressing contempt for your audience not understanding your poorly made first video and it was that was that was the astounding part of it was it's like like I thought this first video was was bad but this this doesn't this does not even a double down this is like it like an octople down on your mistake the first time and I can maybe I'll play some audio clips from people here because like you just have to hear it it's unbelievable how they sound and if you watch it if you watch the video the facial expressions they're making is again like shaking their heads can't believe that their business licensing plan that they sent out to 14 million subscribers who normally watch react videos wasn't well received it's it's amazing it's amazing and my personal theory here is I get I do not know the fine brothers I don't know any of the details behind the scenes of any of this like I'm just even though I'm a youtuber like in many ways I'm just as much on the outside of this is everybody else my guess about this is just that the fine brothers have to have been spending so much time as the heads of this company talking to other media companies and talking to other business people that they just they were just kind of out of touch with how to talk about all of this business stuff to a normal audience like that that this is where they spend all their time with people who are like boy we'd love to license your intellectual property and so they think everybody would be interested in licensing our intellectual property and that's why they made this video and then that's also why they were surprised that it wasn't well received because from their perspective everyone they talk to loves this idea great this was their phantom menace and then they made they made a tag at the clones I wish they'd made a third one just to finish it off but it's like that it's like they had a great moment they'd become successful and but but did no one watch it I mean this is what makes like did someone watch the second video like they must have played it to people and said we're thinking of putting this out to improve the situation what do you think and did those people look at it and go great that's that's going to sort it guys well done every that's you know you're going to put the fire out there well obviously obviously they just poured fuel on the fire but speaking of the prequels as the red letter media reviews show so well in those prequels there are many scenes where George Lucas is talking to underlings and you can totally see that the underlings have thoughts on their mind that they are not saying right but everyone's agreeing with George Lucas and this is this is again where I think like this idea of there's there's nothing wrong with being a company but but one of the problems with being a company is that it can be difficult for the people at the top to have a sense of how people below them are actually thinking and so I imagine the same thing kind of happen where it's like these guys are in charge of the company they made this video they're the ones who are the final say of whether it goes up or not and they show it to a couple people and they're like oh yeah it's great you know like and then up it goes right and the whole thing goes up in flames like they showed they showed it to some some people who salary they're paying exactly what do you what do you think of this video that we appear in physically and no one can say well well boss I know you pay my salary but the way you're rolling your eyes there makes you look really dodgy and yes I know I know that you pay my health insurance but you look really poor in there and you're like unconvincing and you know they may I don't know they maybe when you say sorry you shouldn't say it with all of the contempt in the world right and could you tone it down like a little because when you're saying sorry you're clearly sorry that you have to make this video not sorry for anything that has occurred let me ask you one more thing um have many of your other friends and YouTube buddies and people like that what have they said to you about the fact that you put your order in the water here have they said you know good for you Gray or they said well man that was crazy or what's what's the general reaction being from other people like me in your life well this this actually you know this actually just goes back to the like the company thing in some ways where it's like you don't know what people's private thoughts are you know when when I talk to people the universal consensus from my perspective seems to be like one the fine brothers thing was a total unmitigated disaster and then two the parody videos were hilarious like that's you know that's that's what I've been hearing from people but you never know what are the complete internal thoughts of other people about whether or not they thought it was a good idea to do this or you know you don't know that like that's not a thing you can necessarily tell because I mean you're you're Mr. Cost Benefit analysis and I don't imagine these videos have been like I have been like that been I guess you've made some advertising income from them and you got some new subscribers but they haven't they haven't been big for you like you know yeah I mean in terms of of dollars earned per minute spent they're actually probably the most profitable videos I've ever made okay okay because I was going to say what's I was going to say now we've come out the other end what was in it for you or did you just want to play I mean that the part of it was like this was just irresistible I really do you know like I had no choice right I just honest to God felt like I had no choice I saw those videos I immediately record the audio it came out perfect everything was perfect and like well I'm uploading them that's why it was so fast from your perspective like you didn't make it down to the kitchen and back before I'd uploaded the video yeah so it was that's just the way it was and the second thing is like it was everything about it just push my buttons perfectly I wanted to upload these things I thought they were funny I thought that their their commentary was like was on point as far as satire goes so I was like I just I just couldn't not like what you know what is it a great career decision like maybe not but you know I've learned to be I've learned to be more reckless from you Brady that's what I've learned so as I alluded to earlier I felt a bit sorry for them at time you know you know I don't like Lynch mobs and these guys were certainly lynched and they they were they were kicked from all angles and like at times I you know I thought oh that must be really hard on them and you know lying in bed at night because I don't know they're human beings and I felt sorry for them but another part of me thinks if this hadn't happened if people hadn't piled on and people just tried to reason with them or to have a rational discussion with them they wouldn't have stopped and this would have come to a head in another way I don't know how I don't know where that more videos would have been taken down I don't I don't know if it would have you know the battle would have been one or lost anyway but certainly something good came from this and that is this thing they were trying to do that I don't think they should have been doing it or been allowed to do did stop so it felt like it did achieve something that I think probably should have been achieved and that is them taking control of a format that I don't think they own but I don't know if there was a better way to do it because I don't I don't I didn't like watching them I didn't like watching what they had to go through I'm not lumping you into that in terms of the really bad stuff but I so I don't want to sound like I'm picking on you oh no no I don't I don't think I don't think you are at all but this is this is always what happens with the mob right and especially when you have a mob that is in this the like the size of hundreds of thousands maybe millions you're gonna get behavior that's not great and that's what this is where like every person always ends up drawing their own line and so like like the thing that I've discussed with a few people is the point at which it seemed to me like okay this is this is gone from like a fun mob to like ooh a little scary is when it starts becoming the meta thing where there are all these trackers that we're keeping record of how many subscribers they had lost per hour and then it then it becomes like live feeds that people can watch of how many people are unsubscribing you know per minute to their channel and that's that's the part where to me it felt like ooh this now has suddenly become like a dangerous thing because it's not even about the issue anymore now it's like a mob that just wants to see a number go down and yeah and they know they no longer cared about the verdict I just wanted to watch the execution I don't think an execution in some ways is too strong of a metaphor there because internet internet mobs like they don't kill people but I think taking away or threatening the way someone makes a living in the modern world like that's pretty close to threatening someone's life like to to take away the way they make a living yeah and and then to turn that and into the central focus of it is where it's like ooh that's that's the way mobs go that's always the way mobs go this episode of hello internet is brought to you by square space start building your website today at squarespace.com and enter the offer code hello at checkout to get 10% off when it comes to giving yourself a place online there's no place like square space all of the power of professional websites without any of the worries or hassles that you have to deal with if you're running your own thing from top to bottom no worries about hosting no worries about upgrading a linux server on the other side of a country it's just so easy which is why I use square space for all the websites that I run with square space you can build sites that look professionally designed regardless of your skill level no 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them out square space.com offer code hello to get 10% off and to show your support for this show thank you to square space square space you should hello just finishing my skittles so great this actually segway somewhat nicely with a book that I happen to have just finished reading and it's a book that you're previously recommended in one of our audible ads and that is so you've been publicly shamed by John ronson that's right isn't I sometimes call him Mark ronson in my head because he's a music producer I always worry about getting that wrong I keep calling him Ron Johnson as other people have pointed out I think in that very audible ad I made a mistake twice oh really yeah no so John ronson not Ron Johnson but yes the segway the segway is a perfect segway perhaps talking about mobs and mobs on the internet I had not read the book of course I'd heard you talk about it I I went for the dead tree version in this particular case because it's always nice it's always nice to have a dead tree version when you're on holiday and the beach and stuff so and good book very very thought provoking it's been a while since I read a book that got me that down about the world but in a good way I've been working on the script for the Q&A video from my channel for the two million subscriber thing and one of the questions someone asked me was like what was the best book of the last year that I read and I looked over my list and I think I'm going to give my book of the year award to this book this one is a really interesting book and it's also a book that I can almost universally recommend like where some of the other books that I happen to really like that I read this year I need to know something about the person is like I'm not going to recommend super intelligence to everybody as as a book is like if you're a lot of crazy stuff that AI like I need to know some things about you but this book it falls into the interesting category of like okay if you make your living on the internet this is required reading right absolutely required reading but also just for anybody who participates in social media on the internet I also think this is required reading and so now we're talking about like 90% of the internet connected human population so I like I think it's a very interesting very well written book I don't agree with everything in it as always with these kind of things but but man it's it's one that has really stuck with me since I read it like a year ago so for people who don't know what the book's about basically in a nutshell he's talking about what he's talking about the way that Twitter can be used to sort of turn on someone when they do things wrong or they perceive to have done things wrong and sort of a Twitter mob it's usually it's very Twitter centric this book which is perhaps one of my criticisms of it but he talks about how a Twitter mob will turn on someone and basically destroy their life and how basically shame them and then he goes off on a few tangent it's very well written book and it's very chatty and he goes on bit of a journey as he explores this whole issue of public shaming and he goes and meets different people he meets some victims he meets some semi perpetrators he meets other people who have interesting views on shame and public shame so that's that's what the book's about it's about what it's like for people who have the internet turn on them like the 500 brothers just experienced the prime example the main girl that he's using it's justine what is the last thing? sacco I think her name is that's right yes she is justine sacco and her her story was making a tweet where she joked about she's going to Africa and that she doesn't have to worry about getting AIDS because she's white like you know not the best joke in the world kind of actually I can't believe that people didn't realize that was a joke like that that is a testament to people's inability to understand sarcasm I will get to that in a second I had a particular theory about this right okay but but she made this this joke and she know she didn't have very many Twitter followers she's sort of like just a regular citizen on the internet you know she's just a normal person using Twitter but so she's on her way to South Africa she gets on a plane and while she's on the flight this thing explodes into people you know saying like we we have to get this racist fired from her job right anyone who's seen these these internet mob like you know this thing like it explodes into a bigger thing and just like the fine brothers were a perfect storm the reason it happened to justine like this perfect storm for her was like yes one her job was in PR right so that makes the story way more delicious to there was this element of boy isn't she going to be surprised when the plane lands like there were reporters going all you know to be at the airport so there was like a countdown clock for excitement there was suspense and a narrative and yeah and then the other thing which which is more like my personal theory on on why this stuff happens is that I think people were able to willingly misinterpret her tweet because she's a case of where like beating down on her allows people to signal to all of their friends how they don't like racism it like the beat down on her is is twice as strong because people feel like I get to tell everybody how great I am because boy don't I hate racists it's like do you really think that joke is like some super racist joke or like is it it's just a bad joke or it's just sarcasm but I think like this is the this is the combination of things that turns it into a gigantic storm is like this perfect stuff and so her life is just ruined from this like she loses her job and has just been like harassed by like a not understandably sized large mob like I cannot imagine how traumatic this must be again just for like a regular citizen living their regular lives not someone who makes a public living on the internet like I can't imagine what it would be like to be at the at the center of this kind of thing that one does drive me crazy because that tweet the way I interpret that tweet it actually was kind of it was kind of making a racial commentary anyway like it was making a sort of a positive racial commentary about sort of the disproportionate number of people getting AIDS and but she was just doing it in this kind of reverse she was doing it the way a comedian would do it like a comedian would do that on a stage and everyone would get it and actually think it's a it's actually an interesting commentary on the state of the world and she did it and people just thought that she was some kind of moron who didn't understand how AIDS worked or something but John Ronson does make that same point and he goes like the history of comedy which I do which is one of the things where I think he oversells that a little bit because because my perspective on it is it doesn't even really matter if it was intended as some kind of commentary like the amount of incredible pushback she got was disproportionate to this thing right even if it you know like there's there's version of the best version of her is like she's sitting there intentionally crafting like commentary on the situation of AIDS and Africa right or like or she just made a thoughtless joke like but even if she just made a thoughtless joke that what happened is just wildly disproportionate yeah yeah so I came I came out of this book again wishing I didn't I wasn't on Twitter and thinking and thinking about social media and you know I still don't think it's just I still think it's not as bad as a Reddit I still think I still think red it's the worst place but we got to talk about that sometime yeah but it's it made me it made me think Twitter was poison as well but and it's just really scary isn't it's like it's like any book or film you see where something really bad happens to someone and you think gosh you know that could that could happen to me and you mentioned maybe a week ago that you were reading this and that it might be an interesting thing to talk about on the podcast and of course it ties in very well with the whole fine fine brothers thing where I was just recently part of a gigantic internet mob never thinking a lot about this because I can't over maybe the last year I've just been I've just become fascinated with the way like arguments happen on the internet and the way people talk about things and this ties into guns terms and steal which we'll get to at another at another point but like I'm just kind of fascinated more and more by the way in the internet like affects people's behavior but I was trying to think about like why do some mob seem okay to me and other mobs don't so like the justine thing mob seems really bad to me but then when you get like mobs against a company trying to change the company's behavior it's like well that seems fine to me thinking about it and in my notes I came up with kind of three axes that make it more or less okay from my perspective I think one of those is like individuals versus corporations so like the more the dial is turned towards is this mob against one individual acting alone like that seems worse than a mob acting against like some gigantic trans continental company the other axes I was thinking about is like public versus private people and this again is where like he has a few examples in the book but again I'm just like regular internet citizens that get swept up into a thing that is way beyond them because they are the spark that kicks off a fire but their normal life is that they're just normal people so not public figures yeah and the closer you are on the end of being a public figure the more okay it is or like the less of a problem I would have with a mob depending on the circumstances it doesn't mean that it's totally okay to just like beat down all public figures but I'm trying to think like when do I get mad about which hunts on the internet and when am I less likely to get mad so like the more famous a person is the more you can have angry mob seem normal and at the most extreme end of this you you get all the way up to something like politics right the most public of all public people are politicians and they just seem to have constant standing armies of angry mobs that hate everything they do right and it just seems like oh but that's just part of politics and then the last one on my three axes here is like context versus lack of context and this is my big big problem with the internet is when people take like a single piece of information and decide everything about a person based on that so like one poorly worded tweet is reason enough for people to decide you are a total racist or you are total sexist and then once they decide that's what you are now it's okay to hound you until the ends of the earth because I have defined you as a bad person yeah if there's one thing that the internet has convinced me more and more of it's that there is a large segment of the population that is either incapable or uninterested in understanding people as anything other than absolutes and that to me is the most dangerous kind of mob like you take one sentence and then people just decide that person is evil which totally justifies their behavior and that links back into the thing that I said before where people doubly enjoy a beat down because they feel like they are crushing badness beneath their boot while also waving a flag to all of their friends showing how virtuous they are and that to me is like the most dangerous aspect of what makes mob more or less frightening it sounds that last thing you said they're great that's almost like two points because like I completely agree that context is really important you know if they'd gone back through this just a woman's Twitter feed and there'd been a pattern of comments that were not that were racist basically that would that would be different to one tweet and that's a really important and really important point you make but I feel like this is a whole separate point the empowering nature of social media it's almost giving people too much power it's becoming like a drug a drug for them they're not just they're not just attacking the racist person because racism is wrong they're doing it to show off to their friends so it has this double double effect I think that's separate from the context issue yeah I think you're right if maybe that doesn't add that doesn't exist on a spectrum but that's like a that's like an accelerant to every other yeah yeah it's it's we're giving a powerful weapon to people and it's got the extra problem that it makes people feel really good to use it this is slightly tangential but boy do I hate the fads that pass over Facebook and Twitter where people are supposed to be changing their icon to support whatever and that to me is like the purest version of this kind of thing people change their Twitter icon to support issue x or you know or to support issue y and really like what have they done they have done literally nothing the actual thing that is occurring here is that they are just wanting to signal to their friends like oh look how virtuous I am because I care about this thing that would someone tweet so my thoughts are going out to the people who've all lost their homes in that fire and someone replies if only your thoughts could rebuild all their houses yeah that's exactly the thing it's like you want to get all of the credit for being a good person but you're actually doing nothing like that like that is the the purest version of of this kind of of thing and you know again just a few of his examples in the books I think the ones that I find most calling all had that element of it where this person is being beaten down in no small part because then the crowd is able to show how virtuous it is like I forget the other girl who had that like dumb picture of her in front of the like the the soldiers yeah I like to that the subject right yeah yeah so she taken a picture of herself in front of the the sign at Arlington which was asking for like quiet and respect and it was a picture of her pretending to yell and flipping the finger it's a stupid picture but that has the additional problem of like now everybody who's on the side of like let me show how virtuous I am and how much I love America yeah right gets to feel awesome by beating down on this girl because of this one picture yeah and to put that in context her and her friend had like a running joke of them in front of signs directly disobeying a sign so smoking in front of a no smoking sign or running in front of a no running sign so it was just the fact that the sign said be quiet and respectful so they thought oh let's pretend we're being loud and disrespectful right right it was at Arlington cemetery was was irrelevant to the joke right then everyone thinks this is a chance to show that they how much more they respect you know the war fallen so the mob you joined you don't normally join these mobs obviously the mob you recently joined I'm just figuring out where the fine brothers are on the spectrum there they are sort of a company and as far as the individual people they are quite public context wise my feeling on the context was when I came to this story I saw both videos so I did not exist in this time period where there was only one yeah and so that that to me was like I got to see your thing and then I got to see your clarification of this thing yeah I think I have all of the context to do this so at all three axes they were they were ready for a whipping you reckon yeah and and and also the like the virtuous thing I just want to point out again is extra funny because it's like that very morning I had enforced my own trademark against somebody else so there's no there's no version of this where I feel like I am defending people against trademarks it's like I have a trademark I just used a trademark like that's that's that's that's not what I'm feeling like we're going to defend everybody against trademarks so that's kind of why like I think it's it's okay and it's also why you know again I think people have the right to do it but like I didn't want to do a video that was insulting them as individuals like and there was no shortage of that right like there was no shortage of videos going after them personally I don't know this is like the tricky thing with with like these public mob does it also kind of runs up into issues about like what can people say on the internet like how much do you want to limit people's actions and it's just I think that this book is a really interesting book because it's it shows a certain side of internet behavior but it's also just connected to a lot of other things about how people interact with each other and the nature of public and private space and the nature of shame in the modern world like it's I think it's a really interesting book that I think everybody should should read yeah runson didn't really go though in some of those issues they did he in terms of anonymity of the commenters and you know yeah liable and what you can't I can't say or the or the criminalness of some of it as well like he didn't he didn't go there he sort of he he talked about you know is it wrong or right that people are doing this yeah but he didn't go into some of those those finer details which maybe are important they are definitely important but I think when you're reading the book you can't help but think of those things even if he's not talking about them explicitly and you know what when I think about this stuff is like what would you do if you were in charge of society to change this and I think there's like this is an incredibly different or difficult question to answer because it's like okay when I think about the kind of mob that I don't like that seems scary that seem illegitimate and then you try to separate them from the particulars of any situation it's very hard to know if there is even anything that can be done about this or I mean in some ways if there even is anything that should be done about this because like I can't think of any kind of systemic solution that doesn't also then rub up against other things that I also value like people's ability to express themselves on the internet even if it is in ways that other people feel isn't nice or like I think that that's an important thing to have and so like that's why I feel like this book puts me in an interesting like defensive mood about like there's a lot in here that I don't like but I'm also not sure that there can be any solution that isn't ultimately worse than the thing that it is trying to fix. I haven't thought about this as much as you so whenever I talk about it I feel like you run rings around me sort of debating wise but I do think the internet is changing so much or the world is changing so much with the way the internet is integrated into it that I think things should be changed because I know you're I know you're all about the free speech and people expressing themselves and I know how empowering the internet has been in that way for goodness sake I mean I've been able to start a whole new career expressing myself on the internet and having my own business and making my own films that would never have happened without the internet you know I'd still be working at a newspaper or something if it hadn't been for the internet so I'm very grateful for it but the but we as we live more and more of our life on the internet I think maybe we need to think about whether or not we need to protect people more because if it was allowed if it was legal for when you were walking down the street for a hundred people to come up and start screaming in your face or saying racist things or doing that like there is a lot of stop that there is a lot of stop people being harassed but on the internet we say well this is great because normally these people would never get to express how they felt or they'd never get to tell Tom Cruise that they think he's an idiot or they'd never get to tell these famous people this or they'd never get to go to tell strangers what they think or they'd never get to speak their mind and now they're getting a voice well that's that's nice but as as we move more on to the internet I think the modern equivalent of walking down the street is becoming spending a bit of time on Twitter or Facebook and if that is the new walking down the street I think we should be afforded a sum of the protection that someone walking down the street has and at the moment we don't have that at the moment at the moment you can get away with things on the internet you would never get away with face-to-face in real life with people and that's fine but our lives are moving on to the internet less of we're spending less time walking down the street and now we're walking down the cyber street and we're having a hundred people scream in our face and assaulting us and everyone's like well it's different because it's the internet man well it's because I think it's becoming less different and maybe something needs to reflect that whenever you're having a disagreement with someone it's always good to try to find like what is the fundamental point of disagreement which which is not always an easy thing to do and I think what you have expressed is is the fundamental point of disagreement between us on this topic which is a thing that we've sort of talked about on the podcast before and then not we've had like vigorous conversations that we've totally cut and we've talked about this before my view on it is that there is a difference with stuff that is online versus the real world and I think that is the fundamental difference and like I'm not saying that getting harassed on the internet isn't upsetting but there is no doubt that behavior that you would never accept in the physical world is is accepted on the internet I would find like I've gotten into like these these huge arguments about guns germs and steel and like people have been calling me idiots like in hundreds of comments and like this stuff is all over the bad history section of Reddit and my feeling with that is like awesome I totally love this kind of debating on the internet I think people should be able to call me an idiot and say that like I'm dumb and I don't know what I'm talking about and then I can argue with them if I want or I can leave it alone I have a feeling about that kind of thing that's like I am happy that this can exist even when people disagree with me in a very vigorous sometimes super unfriendly way I am happy in that world in a way that like I totally agree with you if I was walking down the street and hundreds of people were yelling at me that I am a moron that would not be so welcome that would feel incredibly threatening yeah in a way that it just doesn't on the internet at least not to me I'm not so naive that I don't see some differences but telling me that the internet is different to the real world is absolutely fine up until the point that Justin Seco flies back to New York and gets fired from her job because I'm more apt turned her on the internet like that's not on the internet anymore man she's now not getting paid she now she's not allowed to walk into her office now that's not just on the internet anymore man that's why like I find this book is really sticking with me because it's I don't know how we can legalize the distinction because like we are both in agreement and I even said before like when you take someone's job away that is that is the modern equivalent of threatening their life you are you are taking away their ability to live in a world that requires them to work and when you have done it in this way so that their name is forever associated with the thing that like nobody wants to touch Justin Seco because she's radioactive not because of the thing that she said but because of the controversy around her you know it's it's like an execution and so like I totally agree like that is awful that shouldn't happen but I like I don't know like how how do you systematize the difference between these things like I have a very hard time thinking about like what is the solution to this problem because I will I'm with you on this like that is too far that is too much that is without a doubt awful but I just don't know what the answer is and I think I like I think about this a lot when you made your video poking fun at the Thine Brothers and then like a day or two later you saw their subscriber count was dropping which means their revenue is dropping admittedly it's still in the millions I don't think they're going to be on the bread line but when you when you saw when you saw that in some tiny tiny way the the the bottom line of that business that employees people is being affected and you were you know you were you know you're a minor contributor to the mob I'm not saying it was all you far from it but you played a role did you think maybe maybe I should maybe I shouldn't or did you think fair enough you know you do the crime you do the time well those those are two different things a question about maybe I shouldn't have versus do they deserve this I would make those videos again doing what I was doing like I would make them again like I think it's totally fine to criticize public companies for doing dumb things right and also again a company is not taking away like an individuals living in this same way the fine brothers things so even though I don't like the let's focus on people unsubscribing like that starts to make me feel uncomfortable I think you can make a pretty good argument that that is not that different from a boycott I don't have any problem with people boycotting companies whose policies they don't agree with this just happens to be like a super internetty super public way of making this very clear but there's no way I would be like oh man if there's some company that you don't like and you want to boycott them I would never try to argue like but you're taking away that company's living man like people work for that company that's not how this works it's so different when you get down to the scale of like a single person especially a single person who doesn't live in this public way I hope you don't make a video kicking me though gosh after that insisive or in your super cally voice you do it I was divinely inspired at the moment I don't think I can I can reproduce it
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