H.I. No. 119: Hit The Holler Horn

"Hit The Holler Horn"
Hello Internet episode
Episode no.	119
Presented by	CGP Grey Brady Haran
Original release date	February 28, 2019 (2019-02-28)
Running time	1:31:08
Sponsors	Ting Curiosity Stream Molekule

"HI #119: Hit The Holler Horn" is the 119th episode of Hello Internet, released on February 28, 2019.

Website description

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Episode 119 on the podcast YouTube channel

"Brady starts the show with sportsball corner before he and Grey discuss: Netflix spoiling shows for your own good, Amazon HQ2 twist, Brady's (potential) new office, and a YouTube Survey."

Transcript

Why were you late to the start of the show today, Brady? I was late to the start of the show today, Gray, because I was watching a game of football. Sucker. It was a game of soccer between Chelsea and Manchester City. A plus American accent there. Yes, thank you. You would blend right in with the natives. I would. So we're jumped straight into sports ball corner here. We're jumped straight in. It's a final. It's called the League Cup Final. It's one of a few finals that happened each year where you actually get to win a trophy. It's like knockout trophy. So two teams you probably have heard of were playing. As I said, Chelsea from London and Manchester City. Two of the big famous teams. And just by way of background, this actually becomes relevant. The Chelsea manager, like the boss of the team, has been under a lot of pressure in the last few weeks because Chelsea hasn't been performing very well and everyone thinks he's going to get sacked. He's like a man in crisis. His leadership has been questioned. All right. Okay. Coming into this game, everyone thought Manchester City were going to absolutely smash them because about a week or two they beat them six nil in another game. So everyone thought Chelsea was going to get slaughtered in this game. So I was watching it before we start recording. And it ends up the game is nil nil. So it goes to extra time, half an hour of extra time. Right. And I'm thinking, I feel I've got a record with Gray. I'm probably not going to see the very end of the game. And if it stays near nil after extra time, they'll have one of these penalty shootouts, which I know you're familiar with. You're familiar with a penalty shootout in soccer. Yes. Yes. All right. So I thought I'll just put the game on my iPad. And if it goes to a penalty shootout, I'll watch it while Gray and I are recording. That's a big deal just so I can see what's happening. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. How often are you watching sports while we're recording a show? Rarely. Rarely. Rarely is way more than the zero times I would have expected that answer. Actually, watching the game, I probably don't do. But I do keep an eye on school. It's like on, you know, Twitter and websites and stuff. If it's an important game, I can't believe that. Brady, you always have my 100% focus. It's very rare. It's very rare. Anyway, that's what I thought I was going to do. Okay. And just as we were about to start recording in the last minute or two of the game before the penalty shootout started, just when I was about to call you, they were still playing. It was still near nil. Something kicked off. Something was going on in the game. And I couldn't tell what it was. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. And this coach of Chelsea, the guy under pressure, just completely lost the plot. And he was storming all over the place furious. And it looked like he was going to walk out of the stadium. And the cameras were pointing in unusual directions. And the players were doing unusual things. And I couldn't tell what was going on. But it looked weird. Right. So that's when I said to you, great, I need to find out what's going on and watch the end of this game. I couldn't figure out what was happening. And it would be too distracting for me to have recorded. Right. That's when I presume that you canceled the feast time call that I was about to accept. Yes. I would have got off the call anyway, because I had to find out what was going on. I went downstairs and I re-wound my TV. And it was something I have never ever seen in a soccer game before. And I don't think I've ever seen in a sports game before. Certainly a very, very rare thing happened. So I thought I'd share it with you. Well, now I need to know too. What was this tremendous event? All right. So the goalkeeper for Chelsea, right, he started having all these like cramp and needing treatment every few minutes. But I didn't think much of that because that's like a normal tactic. If you're like the underdog in a game and you want the game to go to penalties, sometimes you'll milk the clock by pretending to be injured. So I was thinking, okay, he's just milking the clock. But then it began to look actually maybe he is, you know, starting to get cramped. This game's gone 120 minutes. It's longer than a normal soccer game. And he's probably getting a bit tired. Other players get cramped in these situations. And another thing that often happens at the end of soccer games, if you still have a substitute player you're allowed to use. And you've got a goalkeeper who is a specialist at saving penalty kicks. Sometimes in the last minute or two of the game, you substitute your goalkeeper and you'll put on your penalty specialist so that he will be the player in the penalty shooter and he will save the goals. Makes sense. Yeah. So the manager, the coach of Chelsea, obviously decides that this guy looks like his injured and Chelsea do have a very good penalty saving goalkeeper who was on the bench. So they got him to take off his tracksuit and warm up and signal to do a substitution and the referees held up all their boards. They do when there's a substitution and the new goalkeeper was waiting on the sideline to come on to replace the ailing small goalkeeper who they wanted to take off. And this goalkeeper, because it was a final and it was his big chance to be a hero in a penalty shooter, he just refused to come off. He saw what the coach was doing and the referee was holding up the board saying, substitution time. And he just waved it off and he wouldn't leave the field. The referee obviously didn't know what to do. The coach didn't know what to do. None of the players knew what to do. This guy was just refusing to do it. Okay, I didn't know that was a possibility. Neither did I. It suddenly made me realize what are your options. You can't physically send on police to take him off presumably. Well, I mean, look, I'm a very calm person. But this sort of situation, if I was the coach, presumably you've been hired to be in charge of this team. You're a man under fire as well. You're a man under intense pressure because of all this media speculation. Excellent additional factor that you're including here. But if you're the coach, these players, these are, but pawns in your chess game. Well, yeah. And so I think I would go from zero to furious in about half a heartbeat. If I was trying to move a piece on the chessboard and the piece subjected, this is not your role here. You don't get to decide that's not how this works. Your description of it is that this is not a thing that has ever occurred before. But if I was the coach, I think I would immediately be getting security to pull this guy out of there. Like it's not your call. You don't get to hold up this whole game because you don't want to go along with this decision that's not yours to make. Yeah. Security, get him out of there. That's really interesting that you react that way because when this coach, his name is Mauricio, sorry, he completely lost the plot like he was banging his chair and he almost walked out of the stadium and he was banging the world and he was really angry. And I even thought he was maybe overreacting. So to hear you say that you would be really angry, someone who cares not a jot about sport, sort of makes me think, ah, yeah, he probably was a lot angry than even I realized. Do you have more sympathy for him in this situation now? I do a bit now. At the end of the game, before the penalty kicks, the teams like get to go in a little huddle and have one last tactic talk before the shootout. Like the Chelsea players were having to restrain Sari from this goalkeeper like he was like, he was still so mad at him. And they're just about to start this important procedure to decide who wins the cup. So the reason I said to you, I have to see this out now is I had to actually see what happened in the penalty shootout because obviously maybe this goalkeeper was about to become a hero. And if this goalkeeper was the hero and say, you know, did the important save that won them the trophy? Well, it would cast everything in a completely different light. But what do you hope happened? Well, what I hope happened is security removes the goalkeeper. They put in the specialist, which is exactly what you want in any situation. It's what the whole concept of civilization hinges upon is specialists. You can't do that great. You can't make a substitution after the game has ended though. And the final whistle had blown. You can't change the players then. That's against the rules. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The original goalie was not removed. And what, the clock was just still running. The clock was still running. And eventually the referee said, well, if he can't come off, there's nothing I can do. And the referee kind of knolled the request for a substitution. And they played another two minutes. And then he blew the final whistle. So it was like two or three minutes when this goalie stayed in his goal and they just kept playing. And the manager was just blusing the plot. Like he was just like off on the sidelines banging his head against the wall. The specialist goalkeeper who thought he was going to come on was just kind of sitting there stunned thinking, oh, I thought I was about to have a glory moment. Okay. No one knew what was going on. And then time ran out. So the referee blew his whistle. You can't make any changes then. Okay. And he was the goalie. Do you know what I hoped would happen? What? Because this is allowed. I was hoping the manager wouldn't let the goalkeeper be the goalkeeper, be the goalie because he could have annoyed one of his other onfield players to be the goalie and said, you put the gloves on and the colorful shirt. And you try and save the penalties, which would be ridiculous because it's not a goalie. But it would have been a right up yours to the guy. They would have been like a fight on the field. And it would have been amazing. But that's not what happened. The goalie got to stand in the goals and do the shootout. Also, so the manager is the person who owns the team, right? Just to be clear on the roles here. No, he doesn't own the team. He's an employee of a higher power. But he is. So there's a mysterious consortium that owns the team. But the manager is the representative of that consortium on them. Yeah. I mean, in the case of Chelsea, it's owned by a billionaire called Roman Abramovich from Russia. Okay. All right. There's two specific now, right? This is a shady group, whatever. There's like a level of abstraction. The gods own the team and the manager is the representative of them on the team. But for all intents and purposes, the manager is the ultimate power for a soccer team. And let's get sacked by the corporate owners of the club. Well, my thought process here is the wrath of the gods must rain down upon the goalie. And I mean that because it's like a challenge to the structure of the environment that he is in. And I would think tremendously corrosive to the concept of a team and team sports. Like presumably the reason that you have a coach is that the team itself can't make hard decisions sometimes. And so that's the purpose of that role. And then like the manager is then overseeing these two groups. So if you can make a substitution with another player on the field, I think if I was the manager, I would totally make that call because you want to send a message from now until the end of time to players like you follow instructions. This is what you're supposed to do here. I didn't know this was an option that is 100% what I would do. You're saying that that's not what happened. So then all I can hope is that the universe is just and the goalie was completely humiliated and didn't save a single penalty shot. That would be my hope in this situation. He did save one. But he also let one in that he should have saved. He stuffed up and he lost. They lost the shoot out. So justice did reign. Okay. I can accept that. I would like it better if it was pure humiliation. But that's acceptable. It wasn't pure, but he did miss an easy one. He did miss an easy one. I mean, I'm reading some of the comments that are coming now through on like the BBC commentary. And one of the BBC's that pundits is saying, Kepa, this is the name of the local keeper should never play for Chelsea again. That should be his last performance in a Chelsea shirt. It's a disgrace. I've never seen anything like it. I'm with that guy 100%. But what do you think, Brady? Do you think this is too far? He says, why weren't the players dragging Kepa off anyway? I don't know. And another comment I just saw online saying, a friend of mine raises a good point. Did the rules need to be changed? What's to stop every 14-year-old across the land refusing to come off now when their coach tries to bring them off? They've just seen it happen in a league-up final. Right. Anarchy will reign in the land. That's why you need the boot of justice to come down on the neck of the player. Play as a famously petulant when they're substituted and throw their shirt away and discuss as like a passive-aggressive show to the coach that they disagree with the decision. But I've never seen one just say, now I'm staying on the field. Yeah, I mean, look, if you as a player want to do some kind of passive-aggressive action like that and show yourself as a child to the world, you go right ahead. As long as you keep moving off the field. But yeah, to actually just boycott and to stay on the field, that seems outrageous to me. But I feel like you don't think it's that outrageous or you still just in shock from having seen it. It's shock. I think it is outrageous. I think he should be sacked tomorrow. I think the goalkeeper should be sacked. No question. I mean, actually it's particularly famous at Chelsea Football Club that when a coach like they call it, you know, losing the dressing room, when the players no longer respect the coach behind closed doors, that's normally when things start going wrong at a club and it's always the coach that gets sacked because of it because you can't sack all the players. That makes sense. That's why you have the layer above the coach. The idea of the player revolt is not unheard of, but to actually do it in a packed stadium, in a cut final in front of 80,000 people at Wembley, it was amazing. So that's why I was like to start the podcast. Today's episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Ting. Ting is the nationwide mobile phone service that does things easily and is almost certainly going to save you money. Instead of having a set monthly data plan for your phone, Ting lets you pay for just the actual amount of data and text that you use every month. And because of this, you're probably going to save money with Ting compared to a service that you have to buy more data for that you don't use like just in case so they don't hit you with a giant overage fee. No, with Ting, you pay for what you use and for the average person, their mobile phone bill on Ting is going to be just $23 a month. Whatever phone you're currently using will almost certainly work with Ting. 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And thanks to Ting for having such an easy and fun URL to say. High.ting.com. High.ting.com. Go try it out. I have a complaint to lodge Brady. Excellent. Great. Logistic complaint. Yeah. What's new there? We've discussed spoilers on this podcast numerous times. Low these many years. Yes. And I have a new one that I'm going to add to the list because sometimes we have this philosophical discussion about what is a spoiler? And the one I want to add to the list, which is really annoying me currently, is Netflix content warnings. Right. So Netflix traditionally, when you start to want to show, it flashes up on the top something like violence or sexual content to give parents a heads up for what they might see in the show. Yeah. But I have noticed over the years, over time, it went from these broad categories into becoming more and more specific. And I knew one day this was going to happen that they were going to have something specific enough to irritate me. Right. And it is now the case. I'm working my way through a Netflix show. Yeah. And every time I go to play an episode, it has this, I should take a picture of it, hilariously long string of content warnings across the top. And the very last one is suicide that they put as a content warning. Right. I am now six episodes in to like a 12 episode mini series. No one's committed suicide yet. And so every episode all I keep thinking is, well, who's it going to be? I know one of these characters is going to kill themselves because Netflix tells me at the beginning of every single episode. And it's really bothering me. Now, just to get it out of the way, I don't have a problem with content warnings. But this is my complaint Netflix. I am a grown human being. Can I somewhere please in your interface tell you, hey, I can watch whatever I want because I have grown up and I can see these things. You don't need to treat me like a my child or as though there's a child in this house. Like, no, we don't need to do this. It's not only children who could be disturbed by depictions of suicide, though. Like, there are certain things that even adults may want to heads up. Like, I may be fine with all the violence in the world and all the sexual content in the world. But suicide, for example, might be a sensitive subject for me or sexual content might be like, you might have specific things you try to avoid while other things that's like, bring it on. I'll take what you got. So how do you do with that? Well, we live in a land of technology. So I think there could be checkboxes. And there actually is, among the reverse side of this, that there is one thing which to me, is it kind of content warning that I would want? The content warning I would want is people sick in hospitals. Yeah, my wife would want jellyfish. I still think my play that contains peanuts was the most specific warning I've ever seen. But yeah, but over the past couple of years, I have spent more time than I wish with my wife in a hospital. And it's like, boy, those are not fun environments. And we were watching, oh, God, I can't remember what it was. It was some movie about the guy who like, he'd been the iron lung. And it's slowly dawned on me like, oh, God, a lot of this movie is going to take place in a hospital. And that was the one where I'm like, you know what? I'm done. If your movie has a lot of scenes in a hospital, I don't need to watch a movie anymore. There's been a couple of times where we're watching a movie. And I'm starting to be like, wait a minute. I think this might be a hospital movie. So I'm not going to watch this movie. So like, I understand the concept of like, people want content warnings. Yeah. But I don't think it's an unreasonable request to ask for a toggle to say, I don't need content warnings. I can figure out for myself if this is a movie that I don't want to see. I think what you're suggesting is already too complicated, but you could take it a step further. And say, you could have like an interface on Netflix saying, don't warn me about anything, except hospital sickness or don't warn me about anything, except jellyfish. So you never see content warnings. Unless it's going to be a jellyfish show. And then frankly, you could make the content warning a lot bigger and a lot longer because Netflix is a little fast with those content warnings. It's right. It's like, listen, there's jellyfish. I want to know. Right across the center of the screen, you could put that up, but it's totally fine. Like again, I understand that all of these companies are always allergic to options and they don't want to put something in complicated. And I can't conceive of a universe where Netflix is going to let me pick like, oh, these content warnings, I do want and those content warnings I don't. Yeah. I think it is not unreasonable to ask Netflix for a master toggle that says, don't show me content warnings. I'm a grown up and I can handle this. I'll take it all. I can take it out. Whatever you got. Yeah, exactly. You then don't get sued by someone who gets upset by some. No, but put in one of those, you know, put in one of those end user license agreements. Everybody pretends to read. If you want to unclick this button, you have to sign our waiver that says you're not going to die of a hard attack if there's a jellyfish on the screen. I don't think that's an unreasonable request. And I especially don't think that's an unreasonable request if the trend is going to keep continuing that I have seen of more and more granular content warnings in dramatic TV shows. Suicide is often one of the real plot twist as well. It was not, you know, that's often a real device in drama writing. So yeah, or there was another one that was watching where it would have been more surprising, but there was a content warning for torture. Yeah. And again, the way I like to watch shows, there was nothing in the show to give you a heads up that the torture was coming. Yeah. And I'm willing to take that on me that like if I uncheck content warnings, sometimes there's going to be surprise torture. And like, that's what's going to happen. Again, I found it annoying. I'm waiting for the torture to happen. And this would have been a different viewing experience. And the torture would have had the emotional impact that the director was going for had I not known that it was coming. Yeah. I think that this kind of warning is very different from the movie ratings, like PG-13 or R, where it's like, okay, R. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I know this is a serious movie. Right. And then it's like, oh, PG-13, it's barely not a cartoon for children. But you don't know what the details are. And that's what's about reasonable. I agree with you. I agree. Thank you, Broody. Can I give you a technology complaint? Please do. Again, this is one that I don't really have a request or a solution to it because I see both sides of the problem, but it's just something I noticed before. So I thought I'd bring it up. And this is to do with Twitter. So obviously Twitter has the functionality that you can mute people. Right. And this is a feature that I have increasingly been taking advantage of. I have an ever-growing list of muted people. You're getting faster with those mute trigger fingers. I mean, it could just be my mood. It could be a whim. It could be just, I'm not on a plane at the wrong moment. Right. Malice tour, I don't want to block people. I don't know. I've just been getting a bit trigger-happy on the mute. And then figuring out how to unmute is really difficult when you look at that list because you don't know why you muted them in the first place. The mute button is for life. Yeah. And we look, people on the internet, you need to know when you interact with someone on Twitter. No matter what it is, you're always risking the silent mute. Yeah. So anyway, this is a thing. But because there are so many of them now, particularly some of them are muted for excessive replying. So this exacerbates the problem. What I've now noticed on my Twitter is I'll sometimes do a tweet. Right. And I'll see one reply, three replies, ten replies. And I'll go, I wonder what people are saying. And I'll go and to look at the replies. And sometimes I won't be able to see any of them. So what Twitter does is it still tells you the number of people who are replying. But you can't see the replies. And it reminded me a bit of that episode of Black Mirror. You know how in Black Mirror where they had that technology where you could actually mute humans and they just became like TV fuzz. So it wasn't like they were erased from the world. You still knew they were there, but you didn't know what they'd done wrong or who they were or what they were saying. That's what it's like Twitter for me now. It's like I know they're there. I know they're saying things, but I can't hear or see what they're saying. And it's kind of a weird scenario. And I don't really, I wouldn't want it to be another way. I wouldn't want Twitter to make the reply count zero just for me when whole conversations were going on. But I also find it a little bit frustrating and annoying. I feel like this really does show how heavy on the mute button you've been. Yeah. You've like pop up, pop up, pop out, mute, mute, mute. You've done this so much that you can have these threads where you notice the disparity between how many people are replying and the number at the bottom. It is a bit so selecting too because the sort of people are muted maybe people who are like really excessive replies. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. There's the people who want to include you on these threads worth there having some conversation with their friends. And for some reason they want to see you on every single one. I understand. But I still think that's funny that you noticed that there's a disparity there. I have noticed it. I noticed it often, but you don't want them to change the number to be the number that is what you see. I think that could cause problems too. I have no feature request. I just have a complaint. If you ever come back to the tweets, then you can give me better advice. Amazon. Amazon HQ 2. Interesting twist to the story. Yeah, I'm hoping maybe you can tell me a little bit more about this because I just sort of can't this headline. I'm going by the Wikipedia description. But it seems that Amazon has cancelled their plans for the surprise second New York headquarters. It's a little unclear to me exactly what has occurred. I was trying to just read the Wikipedia description. It's like protests against it. But it seemed like Amazon was complaining that the politicians weren't backing them. But I don't understand because presumably that's where they got the deal. I don't know exactly what's going on here. But there is a plot twist. I've only read one or two out. Who's about it? So I'm not going to pretend to be an expert and I'm sure I'll upset someone. But my overriding feeling about this is it makes me love Amazon a little bit. Because you knew this was going to happen. You knew people were going to complain. All the Nimby people were going to be not in my backyard and you're going to ruin our thing and they should be getting the text breaks and stuff like that. And it was you knew this was just going to become a controversy. And Amazon were going to have to see it out and they'd be this PR war. And politicians have to balance their desire for the project versus keeping the constituents happy. And there was just going to be a mess. And Amazon were going to have to like wait through it to get what they wanted. It was probably an am but claim. The people of Long Island City or whatever that place was called were probably thinking this is good. At the end of this they're going to bring the tax rebates down and we're going to get this and we're going to get that. And they were probably rolling up their sleeves for a big battle to see how much they could claw back. And Amazon have just said stuff and just walked away. They're like, oh, hang on. But it's genius. You know, this is like I have all the power. I mean, pardon me thinks they must not have wanted it that much. It's not like they're going to put it somewhere else. They're just going to spread it out over multiple sites. But pardon me also thinks good on you. They're just like, why do we want years of controversy? Fine. We'll just go somewhere else. Genius. It puts them in such a powerful position for any future things like this. Right. Because everyone fights for it and wants it. And then once they've got it, then they start their fight. Amazon have basically laid down a marker saying, no, that's not how it works. If you want us, you want us, if you don't, you don't. But like we're not going to beg. Good on them. I didn't really think of it in those terms. But that does make it kind of hilarious. I love that you're on team Amazon for this one. I mean, I know Amazon, like a lot of people don't like them and I'm sure they're evil and I certainly have my complaints about them. But in this particular case, I think it's great. Imagine if Google and YouTube did this. Imagine if during the ad apocalypse, Nestle said, we're not happy with your content and everyone's complaining. So we're going to suspend our ads for a month while we think about what to do. And then Google just said to Nestle, you can never advertise on Google again. We don't want you. That suddenly will be like, oh my god, we can't advertise on Google ever again. This is like the most important place in the world to advertise. And we just locked out for life. I think Google and YouTube could learn a lot from this. That is even better than what was my original plan for the ad apocalypse. Right? I thought YouTube should just hold strong and say, okay, if you don't want to advertise whatever and just wait. But the live band, that's amazing. Well, I guess they couldn't ban them for life, but they could just say that's fine. But we're doing things in 12 month chunks. So you're off the platform for 12 months. We can't fiddle around with you being odd enough all the time. It's an interesting way to think about it. And it really is the question who has the power in the negotiation. Yeah. I think that is a really interesting point that perhaps New York politicians thought that once Amazon had announced it that Amazon would feel like it was on the hook. But guess what? They don't. I don't think it's really all the big politicians follow. I think they're a bit upset about it. So I think it's more at a lower level. I think it was the nimbace. Well, this is what like just for me, we could pity one. I was a bit confused about it because it sounds like the governor of New York was blindsided by this announcement that like the VP of Amazon just called him up and said, we're out. But like, here's the thing from my perspective. There's a not like a law, but a general rule of thumb, which is the way things start is the way they continue. Yeah. I can imagine that if Amazon felt like it's already a thing that's turning into a big hassle before they've even broken ground that is like, oh, the hell with this. We'll go somewhere else where they actually want us and we'll just do what we want. And like, if it's a hassle now, it's going to be a hassle for the next 50 years and forget this. Like, we're out of here. And look, I do see the other side of the argument, right? And it is bit of a bully moved by Amazon. And they could negotiate or they could come to a negotiating table and be a better community member. I could make the other argument, but I'm just so fatigued by every time there's a big announcement all the negative stuff gearing up, you know, all the complainers complaining. Like, it was just a little bit refreshing to not see Amazon play the game that Google and YouTube always say, you know, we'll do a review, we'll do consultation, we'll make it work. And there's this kind of dance that everyone dances. Yeah. And I kind of like, thank goodness we don't have to do that dance. You think we're really bad? Fine. Kate, be a little town. I almost wonder that Amazon has been under a tremendous amount of flack. It feels like in the past couple years, like it's really ramped up. It's like anti Amazon idea of like warehouses and for a whole bunch of things. Yeah. And I guess because I know I would feel this way. If I was the CEO of some billion dollar company and you feel like, you know, almost certainly these guys feel like they're doing good things in the world, you know, like they're creating like jobs and all the traditional stuff. Yeah. And you've been on the receiving end of people telling you that you're a horrible monster for a couple of years. I don't know. I would feel really tempted to be like, okay, well, I guess I'm just going to roll with this then. And yeah, like push your weight around in New York. Fine. Everybody already hates me. I'm just pulling out of New York and I'm making no concession screw you. Yeah. If you're getting pommel everywhere you go, why walk into another one when you don't have to? There's a danger in a kind of over australization that like that you leave a player only moves. You don't want them to make like I'm not saying that's the case with Amazon, but I could just imagine that if I was the CEO and everybody's always yelling, I feel like, well, I can't make these people happy no matter what I do. So, you know, let me take the upsides of being the tough guy instead of always trying to negotiate and play this game. So we've talked about Amazon HQ two and it was sort of a disappointing story. But I'm enjoying this plot twist in it. And I really kind of hope there's an HQ three announcements. And then that one I really want to see and everyone knows that it's on the table that Amazon can just walk away. We're once again really pleased to be sponsored by CuriosityStream. Definitely go visit their website and I challenge you not to be excited by the kind of teaser trailer I just watched. There were all sorts of amazing visuals of astronauts, hot air balloons, volcanoes, and also what looked like a caveman leaping through a forest was amazing. CuriosityStream is a subscription streaming service. It offers over 2000 documentaries and nonfiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers and it includes exclusive originals. Unlimited access starts from $2.99 a month. I was actually just watching this 45 minute film they have on solar eclipses and I tell you why it really captured the excitement of what an eclipse is like. It was beautifully filmed like pro level stuff. It got suitably excited about the great American eclipse of 2017 of course. But I also had some really interesting hardcore details. Some stuff I didn't know much about. Like including how the shape of the umber or the shadow is really complicated and changes as the moon moves across America. That was actually really well worth a look. It's a good film. Now our listeners should go to curiositystream.com slash hello internet and use the promo code hello internet during the sign up process. That's hello internet all one word lowercase. That's going to get you a free 30 day trial and it's also going to tell the curious people at curiosity stream that you came from our show and that's good news for us. Again curiositystream.com slash hello internet promo code hello internet details are in the description as always. Curiositystream describes itself as the world's first streaming service addressing our lifelong quest to learn explore and understand and that sounds like a pretty noble goal to me. Our thanks to them for supporting this episode. Speaking of offices. I am considering but I'm probably not going to do it but I'm considering it but anyway next week I'm going to go and look at an office with the potential of starting to work in an office rather than from home and I want to get your advice or thoughts on it. I think it's definitely a thing you should do. I was really keen on it last week. I've gone off for a bit now but I'm going to have a look in the middle of this week and see what I think I'm going to go and look at a potential space. Okay tell me why were you keen on it? The reason I'm keen on it is like there are changes to my life and you know my light bulbs and my work life balance if you want to call it that I want to make that I seem unable to make and I was wondering whether or not having an office would force some of those things on me. I think maybe I'm someone who needs to have something forced on them rather than just having the mental willpower to do it. Can I ask what kind of things? Yeah like the most obvious example being just my workouts, my start and finish times, my discipline of working. I think mainly things like that working from home as I have been for many many years now, probably approaching 10 years maybe means you develop habits and you work weird hours that maybe aren't the best for me and I wondered if having an office and being forced to work from an office because the way a lot of my work is set up with all my big hard drives and my computer and stuff like that. I can't do a lot of my stuff portably. It's very hard for me to do all my video editing on the road. So having to leave the house to go and do my video editing might force some better habits on me. Do you mean in terms of working more or do you mean in terms of turning off work when you come home? Probably more the turning off work but also when I am working working smarter. So at the moment I can start when I want and I can finish when I want and then I can go downstairs and watch a football match or something on Netflix and then I can go down the kitchen and make a sandwich and then I can play with the dogs or when I shouldn't be working and I should be resting at night I can think oh I might go upstairs and my office for a minute and sit down at my computer and oh yeah I've just had an idea for a little edit or effect I could do and I could sit here and edit for three hours and should I be doing that I don't know like so I wondered if having an office would make me stop give me a hard stop and a hard start and also when I am working make me less likely to drift off and find distractions and decide to re-alphabetize my books and you know things like that. So why have you gone off it then recently? Because of all the advantages of working from home. Okay. In some of those things that I just portrayed as bad things can also be good things and it's nice that I'm with the dogs and I can let the dogs out all the time and you know it's good for them to have company it's good for me that I can just go down stairs and sit in a lovely lounge room rather than just be stuck in some office with a kitchenette and a bunch of people I don't know very well and do you think you're like a shared office situation? A shared office but my own proper sealed office within it because one of the other things that appeals to me is socialization maybe I should have more humans around me because sometimes I can go long time and not see another human. Okay that's concerning because it feels like you're mixing the purposes of this environment. That is a secondary purpose. Okay. It's part of the thinking. You know it's like you know you're coming up with lists and pros and cons. The main reason is to affect a discipline on me and to blur my work and home life. What's going to happen with the dogos? Well the place I'm looking at is like less than five minutes from my house so I can come home and let the dogos out for walks and wheeze and things like that. Okay. I would like one where I could take the dogos. I haven't asked if I could take them to this place but I could take them with me sometimes as well. Okay. I have lucky you know it'd be bed for them there and stuff but at the very least you could sneak Audrey and under your coat. Oh well yeah he doesn't love Audrey. She can go where she likes but she could just walk in the front door of any building. I like as well for example when I'm home alone for the weekend as I am at the moment I like that I can just say or I'm pulling an old knight at night and I can just come up to my office and I can edit into 2 a.m. and then just stagger down into bed when I'm done because no matter what people say about retraining the way you work I definitely work better at night and can work longer and more concentrated at night so I like pulling a long knight sometimes I'll get a lot done once a week I'll do a long knight and their productive time for me and pardon me doesn't want to lose that I like as well that I can get up and think oh I can't be bothered having a share and getting dressed yet I'm going to go and work for an hour first. That's probably naughty and something that I could unlearn from having an office that's part of both pro and the con of having an office but I see the negatives as well and you know my office is very nice. You have a beautiful office like you have a great working space in that house yeah and I wouldn't get a place anywhere near this nice anywhere you know I've got my lovely bookshelves and framed pictures and lovely shutters and lovely furniture and period features and fireplace and things like that and I'm not going to have that in some industrial unit. This is very interesting to hear Brady because I'm trying to think about this as you and while in general to anyone who's listening to the show if you're thinking about like you work from home and you're thinking about getting an office I recommend that 10,000 percent as a thing to do yeah I don't think it's a thing for you Brady it might be something that you want to try but I wouldn't be signing up to like a 12-month lease if I were you. It is a couple of things one of the things is either the more hours you want to work or the more randomly dispersed you want to work whatever hours you work the more that leans on the scale towards a home office is for you. Of course but I feel like I do that more than I should and having a way of us might pressure me to stop doing that. I think maybe that's like a bad habit of mine. Here's the thing it may be but life is full of trade-offs and so like here's what I was going to suggest to you and then I realized as I'm thinking it through in my own head oh this is not going to work for a Brady because if the thing that you want to do is you want to have a clearer separation between you know work life and home life say is that you should get an office but you also don't want to pick an office that's like a really comfy environment like you almost you want a place that is is almost a little bit unwelcoming like that is what is going to encourage you to go there do your work and then leave and then be done with stuff that's interesting to hear yeah so what you don't want to do is make a cozy office right but like everything I know about your Brady I just see you sitting in this antique chair at a fancy desk maybe it like a brandy tumbler in front of you computer mouse in the other hand you know crafting your videos moon memorabilia in the background like that is a Brady cave and I think some of the work environments that I have spent time in as offices outside of my house would be environments that would make you terribly sad right they're just not comfortable environments but I I specifically like environments that I feel like I want to get the hell out of here right I want to go into my office at six in the morning and then leave by nine and it's like great I got some work done and I am out of here and you know I like having the pressure of oh god people are coming in and I hate all of them so I've got to get this work done before like all of the office people show up how is your time split between your home setup and your away office so like here's the thing reason this is an interesting thing right now is for various reasons I have spent most of this year starting in January working from the home office this just happens to be a coincidence for a bunch of stuff and I hate it I really don't like working at the home office how come because of the distractions of home I wouldn't say it's the distractions but I want the same thing that it feels like you want in your life which is the clarity of the borders separation of powers yeah like what is this place for and in an ideal world I would want my home office to be barely more than a podcast recording studio and like occasional administrative work space and then my office outside the home would be for everything that's like a more creative project but I happen to have had everything kind of collapsed down into my home office for the past two months really and I just don't like it I don't know if that work setup is for you and I can totally understand also this thing where you say you have late nights that work because that happens to me too is like I sometimes have nights where I just like you can just feel oh I'm going to be really productive tonight and then I'll do the reverse like I go into the office way after everybody's left and I'll be there for a really long time and then I'll come home but it's a similar thing of I like that the office environment is not super comfortable because it feels like it helps focus you're doing work here and then you're leaving but I also think that like the nature of the work that you do actually it fits much better to have an office environment in which you're very comfortable because you're doing this like processing of the filming and you're doing the editing and like you're shaping the things that have been recorded like that feels to me much more like I would want to be in a comfortable work environment if that was the kind of thing that I was doing like if we imagine an alternate universe where I only made vlogs like the two I made on my YouTube channel I would totally then not feel the need to have an office outside the home if I did that because it just it feels like a very different kind of work and that's probably the closest I ever come to doing what you do so what's the sort of work that you like doing in an office it's an intense kind of work so it's things like writing it's things like researching and it's a couple other projects that fall into that kind of category like right very intense self-contained generative kind of work and then stuff that's like administrative or editing I don't do in that environment so like I have that split so I would have thought kind of the opposite I would have thought like writing and researching would be the place you'd want to do in the in the smoking room with the brandy tumbler and the iris etter at your feet and the grind of like animating and the grind of administration would be the thing you'd do in the office where you just have to focus and not get distracted by a nice painting and stuff I have found that it just doesn't it doesn't work that way for me that yeah if like oh I'm trying to do the research and reading in a comfortable environment it just doesn't work as well like it feels then like oh what am I doing am I reading for pleasure am I reading for work I do want to have those divisions it's hard it's not another thing that just occurred to me is when my office is tidy and looking nice which isn't always it isn't at the moment but when it's at its nicest it is motivating as well because like why do I do this job you know I do it because I really enjoy creating things and all the altruistic reasons but I also do it because I have to earn money and I have to like have a career and you know be a successful person to put food on the table and be a proper human right and coming up into an office that's nice and it's got a few little trophies and it's got a few nice little trinkets of my successes and it's got some nice little happy memories and pictures and hello internet things around the place and pictures from my adventures it's almost like a little reminder as I start my day that I'm doing all right and things are good like you know this is a nice place to come and work and I'm surrounded by all the little tokens of accomplishment and I felt like if I went into some really boring office with white walls and industrial carpet it would feel a bit like it'd feel a bit like you know the office you know I'm working at Burnham Hog Stationery and I'm not working in my snug little room as a result of my minor triumphs I totally get it and one of the reasons I've been home much more these past couple months is I've been doing a lot of dog sitting and in all seriousness this is one of these things that it feels like a way to reap some of the rewards of a lot of the work that went into becoming a self-employed person is oh I can be home yeah there's a chompers around I'm still doing stuff I'm not working as effectively as I would otherwise but this is like taking advantage of a kind of upside that the nature of the work allows and was a thing that I was driving toward so I completely get that and I think again especially your office I feel like really reinforces like the kind of person you are and the work that you do so I totally get it and for me part of like having the office that I go to is the horror of it that to me is like a little bit of the fear again so it's motivating in that way it's almost like a self-legulation though it's like I'm gonna go sit on this spike while I work so that I'll do my work quicker and get the hell off the spike I wouldn't put it that way but that's it's adjacent to that idea there is something to this that the comfort level of my office has an inverse proportion to the amount of what I would call quality work that I get done there but I just don't think you're the same personality type maybe I am maybe I just don't know you might want to try this but I the more I think about it the less I think an office out of the house that's anything like an office would actually get you what you want and here's the sad punch line to this I just think that you will always have a hard time with the boundaries of what is personal and what is work and when are you working and when are you not but I think that is the the downside that is in trinzyk to the same characteristics that got you into the position that you currently are I think you're but like oh there's lucky coin that I have I love the head side but I hate that the tail side is here right and it's like well but you have this coin and that's the way it is that's my personal guess but don't get me wrong I would totally love it if you got an office outside of your house and tried it for a while because I would be very interested to hear how that goes that lucky coin analogy that was worse than one of mine I don't even know what's going on with that one that's why I'm moving moving right along all right I'll keep you updated I'll let you know after I've looked at it how I've heard basically I want to have an office that's away from the house but really really close and is some like cute little loft in a barn conversion or something right I've got this like fantasy office in my head right that is just like you know so lovely that you could almost want to be there as much as home and that right there I feel like is the fundamental problem that you want an office that you would love as much as your home office is like oh no then you're going to be there so much and you're going to defeat the whole purpose of the thing yeah but when I came home I would be home and like I wouldn't be able to edit because all my hard drives were in a different building yeah that is one advantage that you have is that your video process requires a physical location yeah I genuinely think that's a huge advantage one of the frustrations that I have in my own working life is that I can do anything anywhere I could hardly matters where I am or it doesn't even really matter what machine I have with me like did I bring an iPad and I bring a computer like ultimately I can do all of it anywhere and so I always feel like I'm trying to create artificial boundaries that don't exist so I am genuinely kind of envious that you could move a bunch of hard drives down the street and create for yourself a real barrier but I don't know I think you might end up just with the problem that you're there a lot and then you're not going to create the thing that you want which is to feel relaxed at home that you're done with work especially if you end up with an office that is so close you might find yourself popping over quite a bunch yeah let me know what to do Brady this episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by molecule molecule is the modern air filter now you have an air filter in your house you might not know that those things were invented in the 1940s this is the HEPA filter that most systems use and in the last many many decades that technology has not changed molecules filtering technology goes way beyond HEPA filtration to not just capture but completely destroy the full spectrum of indoor air pollutants including those one thousand times smaller than a traditional HEPA 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air can transform the way you sleep particularly if you have allergies or if you are as medic and molecule customers have reported feeling energized and getting some of the best sleep they've had in years molecules technology and research is backed by the EPA and was funded by the EPA and has been extensively tested by third parties and verified so a filtered air in your house is something that you want check out molecule that's M O L E K U L E so you're going to go to molecule.com and at checkout enter hello 75 that's H E L L O and then the number 75 no spaces to get 75 dollars off your first order that's go to molecule with a K dot com and at checkout enter hello 75 to get 75 dollars off your first order thanks to molecule for supporting the show and for silently filtering the air in my home office I should really probably get another one for my other office so Brady I logged into youtube the other day and there was one of their little blue banners across the top of the system you know the blue banners that let you know annotations aren't getting much love so we're going to remember the little blue banners tell you something that you don't want almost certainly is going to happen they're supposed to be like friendly little nudges but they're more like catastrophic changes to your whole career I have been have Lovian response to these banners of like right you kind of suck in and go oh god before my eyes land upon the words and they are read into my head like what is this going to be it's especially scary if there's a date on them yeah yeah yeah this one had the underlying lines for a link and this one was a little different and so here's what it said help us make youtube better for creators exclamation mark we want to know how you really feel don't hold back exclamation mark take this survey that should just listen to hello internet well I thought typing out a bunch of words on a survey for youtube I'm not going to do that that sounds like a lot of work that's the last thing I imagine you do yeah instead I'm going to screenshot this survey and I thought you and I could go through some of the questions okay is this like a suggestion box or a satisfaction survey or what is it like so this ended up being a pretty in-depth survey from youtube where they were asking how much you agree or disagree with the bunch of statements and then I'm very sure bander snatch like they were sending you down different routes depending on how you answered and having a little follow up question so I tried to go through the survey as neutrally as I could for the most part just to get the questions for us to take a look at that's not a big secret one then we're allowed to talk about it away the questions that I'm going to ask are perfectly fine in the public domain okay and I'm genuinely curious because we're very different kind of creators I would like to know how you think about some of these things as well all right there were maybe a hundred questions I'm just going to pick a few of them a hundred questions survey so Brady question one huh are you 18 years of age or older I'm older okay great you can now complete the rest of the survey okay and thinking about youtube in general all caps underline and bolded yeah how strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statements yeah question number one right out of the gate the big question youtube is the best place for creators like in life you may in like just like Brady youtube is the best place for creators I don't agree with that oh okay don't agree why well because there are lots of things about it that caused me lots of frustration and I'm sure there are like lovely creative spaces somewhere in the world like my fantasy loft in the bank conversion where creators can just sit and be happy all day long like you're thinking of this just in terms of physical spaces as well you're taking a very literal approach to this question it's a very open-ended question I would say Instagram is a better place for creators than youtube probably but not if you want to do what I do right you have to be on youtube but like Instagram is a much easier more pleasant interface to you so I mean the youtube interface is a bit of a moving face and has its strengths and weaknesses it's not the worst website in the world to use and it was worse in the past but there are better places it's not the best place in the world for creators it's certainly the place you have to be if you do what I do though what's your answer to that question so youtube is the best place for creators I didn't really interpret it in the way that you did and so I put down a gree and then youtube immediately was like hey why did she fill in this text box tell us why it is that you agree I wonder if that text would have popped up if you put it was the worst place for creators well yeah I didn't get text boxes all the time tell me why you think it's the best place for creators the answer was there is no other viable alternative so I think it's the best place in terms of like by default but not because it's good yeah I mean that's kind of what I said wasn't for me it's the best place because I have to be there but yeah so I would like like we gave the same kind of answer but I was like I guess I agree but I agree not in the way I think that youtube wants me to agree no I think like some shallow in the Swiss mountains would be a better place for creators to be I really love that you're imagining like a writer is retreat somewhere as like where could we go what would be the best place for creators they referred to youtube as a place if they said youtube is the best website for video creators I probably would have said yes right but they made it like it was this like campfire we're all sitting around right if they want to make it like a place for creators but he creators that word creators if that even said is youtube the best place for video makers I probably would have started leaning towards yes but I had to be creators and suddenly I was imagining myself as like a painter sitting by a river or something in your new office all right I'll go with your feet next if we've got a hundred questions we better crack on no I think that was one the better ones but they're following up with a few that I think are you'll enjoy is more specific Brady youtube provides me with the biggest potential audience do you agree it provides me with a bigger audience than anyone else could I mean it could provide me with a bigger one if it was better at its job I guess but I would say I agree it provides me with the biggest audience yeah other than the fact it has an algorithm that then takes that audience away from me over the years but these are questions that can't be answered simply no Brady it's like you're trapped in black mirror and you have a smiley face that you can press or you have a frowny face that you can press and youtube's asking you this question and you get depressed the smiley face or you get depressed the frowny face I mean youtube has provided me with millions and millions of people that have been willing to subscribe to my channels right it now denies me access to a lot of those people but fair enough everyone wants access to them I have no divine right that brings us right to the next question hmm agree or disagree youtube is trustworthy that's an interesting question because the people are trustworthy now the individuals youtube is trustworthy I don't want to say no to that because I feel like I'm then sliding a lot of people who are trustworthy I understand that feeling and I know what you mean and yeah we have had opportunity to talk to individuals at youtube and I feel like at least the people that I have been able to speak to I've never felt like any of them are bad untrustworthy people all of them seem like good well-intentioned people if perhaps not entirely understanding the needs of creators but like none of them are bad I don't feel like I met someone who had real shifty eyes I felt like I don't trust that guy all right I'll answer the question my answer to the question despite the fact we've carried on about this annotation thing like it was like the betrayal of by Judas or something which it was when all is said and done I would fall down on the side of trustworthy interesting why I generally trust them I trust them to do the right thing in most cases sometimes I think they get it wrong sometimes I think they get it right but you know we trust them a lot don't we are we actually getting the right percentage of the money they're making from us I don't know I trust that they're doing that are they going to shut down tomorrow and delete all my videos I don't know I trust that they're not I generally put a lot of trust in them and I don't stay awake at night worrying about it I would say they are trustworthy they do things that cheese me off they make decisions that sometimes I think of poor but you know there are lots of people in life I trust who make bad decisions it doesn't mean I don't trust them I think you're selling me I'm pulling back a little bit from disagree to a merely neutral because you move the bar to some fundamentals of the platform that I feel like yes I trusted they will do the things that are the basics that the channel won't disappear that the videos get uploaded and processed and all the rest of it I just I feel very strongly that you can't really trust platforms at all that this is the fundamental thing that keeps coming up again and again in a million different ways all over the internet is new platform comes along and makes promises and everyone says oh this one's great and then surprise it still has a corporate structure and ultimately that corporate structure bends it in ways that you know make the initial people yeah I like if the question was I can depend on YouTube to support me through my career for the rest of all time I probably would disagree with that right okay right I like that that okay so they have they have a bunch of questions about money right but the basically boils down to one of these questions is YouTube provides me the best opportunity to make revenue as a creator and I think everyone in the world can see by the fact that almost every creator of any size is running merch games and other advertising on their own YouTube videos that this question could not possibly be a more disagree strongly I mean I could play with words here again I can feel it coming I already know what you're gonna do well yeah the obvious one is you talk about merchandise and all the other ways that creators make money but they wouldn't be able to make any of that money if it wasn't for the exposure of YouTube right we can start leaning on that word opportunity yeah but you're just talking about ad sense here presumably yeah I'm thinking of ad sense and the YouTube red subscribe money which I have a particular bee in my barnet about over but yeah I think that's what I think they mean by this question okay well the way ad sense works and the way the advertising auctions work aren't optimized for CGP Gray or number file so of course you know when we take control and do specific deals or have specific ideas and merchandise of course we can optimize better than the huge online auction that just treats us like fodder if I had to be charitable to it the part of this question that I think is good and that is genuinely motivating is YouTube is the place where if you have some success at all you can start making some money almost immediately and I think that's really motivating for new creators so like if I'm trying to help them out that's what I would do that you know you're just someone who started YouTube channel and as soon as you cross whatever their current arbitrary minimum threshold is you can start putting ad sense on your videos and it's like the CPM you know the dollars per thousand views that you're going to get on that is very low but it's immediate and automatic and like I do think that's really motivating for new creators I know that was hugely motivating for me when I started out was being able to see like I have made a video and I have just directly made some money from it that really helped in focusing my mind on oh maybe YouTube is the path out of this wage slavery that I'm currently trapped under I'm so baffled by this questionnaire it's almost like basically it seems like there are a bunch of people working at YouTube who's like pay rises or bonuses depend on achieving certain satisfaction levels it doesn't seem like they want to know what we want to say it's just like last questions like that why isn't the question just how could we help you make more money I agree with you I think it feels like there's someone in management who this is like an internal metric yeah they're just wanting to kind of pat themselves on the back with these sort of nebulous questions I mean you'll really like the next one then which is YouTube is the best place to build a fan base I mean it's the biggest fan base I have I look at that question and I think if someone was just interested in playing the influencer game they just want to be an influencer and they want to have a bunch of fans I don't know how you could do anything but recommend them to double down on Instagram and put all of their effort there do you think oh that's interesting yeah I think if you want to play that game of I am building a fan base it feels like Instagram is the no-brainer option that's the way to go right now at this exact moment in time and that's obviously that's always very fluid so I would feel like no I can't agree with this as just a general statement follow me on Instagram people Brady underscore her and yes follow me on Instagram as well I'll be posting any day now I post some good Instagram stories sometimes that's really interesting that you say that yeah you're talking like bang for your buck obviously yeah I'm 100% talking about probability of success bang for your buck you're nobody and you're trying to make yourself into somebody where should you put a lot of your effort and I know nothing about your particular skill set yeah right whereas if I know that you were great at making videos then obviously you'd be an idiot not to focus on you too oh so you saying Instagram requires less talent and less hard work I'm not saying it's less talent I'm saying it is two advantages I think it has a like general audience that is different from YouTube but people who are like actively looking for new things to follow like that seems to be a like a behavior I'm very aware of in my wife when she's on Instagram like she's always looking for more people to follow whereas on YouTube when there's a code new channel you're like dammit I haven't got time for this yeah there really is that effect and also I just think on Instagram you have the possibility to show off a like a wide variety of other things it's a less specific skill then can you film and edit a video in an entertaining or interesting manner your audience is less niche and more forgiving of a departure from your usual content yes yeah that's a good way to put it as well yeah here's a question that I enjoyed I understand what YouTube offers creators of various channel sizes this is definitely an internal tick box process these questions to get it more and more obviously people trying to justify their jobs and success at what they're doing no but here's the thing I looked at that question and I was like wait a minute YouTube offers different channel size creators different things like I've never heard anything about this what was I supposed to get when I was small what am I supposed to get now that I'm big where's my special switches on the dashboard do I have special switches on the dashboard like this one made me feel like I'm missing something disagree great disagree this was disagree strongly if there was a disagree angrily option I would have totally ticked that and it's planted this idea in my head that big creators have extra stuff that's somehow I'm not getting you don't think this is like more of a nod to all like the resources they create like hey if you're a small creator here's like 10 points you know use a good thumbnail use a catchy title if that's what they mean that's not what this question seemed to say at all I interpreted this question as YouTube hands out special goodies to different size channels and I've gotten none of them and now I'm angry that's how I interpreted this question I mean that's an impossible question to answer because maybe I know 20 things that fit that category but in fact there are 100 and I didn't know that there were another 80 yeah they needed to make it clearer what those things were so you knew if you knew the very next question with which I could not disagree more strongly or more hard YouTube offers clear communication which they then put brackets easy to understand you should have a first clear communication easy to understand I love that they have brackets to clarify this statement but it's not even written in a good way like it's so strange YouTube offers clear communication open brackets easy to understand close brackets I don't think communication is their strong site I'm willing to go with disagree on that one what about YouTube offers transparent communication this too might be one that's impossible to answer because you don't know what they're not telling you follow it immediately by YouTube clearly communicates how copyright and the content ID work on the service can strongly disagree yeah I'm willing to go with disagree on that that's a bit of a mess I don't understand how all the copyright system works and the claims and things like that I've just been going through something related to this because there's a thing I'm working on where I've like I've licensed a bit of music and I was just trying to get information ahead of time be like hey how can I make sure that licensing this music doesn't totally screw me when this thing goes online you mean you've paid for someone else's music like permission to use yeah I paid for someone else's music like there was someone who made a song and I was like hey can I use this in a thing that I'm making sure we exchange money and I have an email agreement and it's like yeah how can I make sure that this doesn't screw me like some yeah automatic copyright strike or something yeah yeah either from that artist unintentionally or one of the many troll places that just you know sucks up a whole bunch of music that isn't registered to anyone says oh it's all hours give us the ad revenue yeah so that was not fun and also not clear like I still don't have a good answer to that I'm I'm very happy to disagree with that the copyright system on YouTube partly for reasons that aren't there fault but partly for reasons that are there fault is very perplexing I will give them that point that they're in a tough situation and it's obviously it's very hard but it just it really makes everybody furious yeah so there were a bunch of questions all about how YouTube communicates the one that I gave them in a gree on which I was like I'll give this one to you YouTube whatever a person whose internal ratings I'm slaughtering with my six strongly disagrees in a row yeah I will give you an agree on YouTube gives timely updates on changes that could impact me solely because of the heads up they gave me about removing those annotations like you know what they told me a month ahead of time I had plenty of time to prepare I can give you an agree on that one I do tend to ignore them because there was you know it becomes noise and you don't know what to ignore what is important but I let you know beforehand okay here's a couple quick ones here all right YouTube inspires me to keep improving no that's like saying the road inspires me to keep driving the road is just what I have to drive on right YouTube makes it fun to be a creator you know what I mean just before the recent VidCon in London they hosted an event educon and they got all the educational youtubers together and they put on what I thought was quite a nice couple of days for us and they've done other things in the past I think YouTube does more than it has to in that respect they make you feel good for a day you know they give you some free drinks and they put you in a nice room and they organize a nice event and they send you these buttons and sometimes they send you a gift I actually just got I got a Christmas gift from them that was quite nice like a personalized sort of suitcase thing you know they do okay in that they do make you sometimes feel a little bit more important than you are they make you feel like bit of a star for a day sometimes I'm going to give them that so now I've skipped over one where I would recategorize this which is YouTube makes me feel part of the creator community and having just been off the back of educon and London and they did one of these out in LA yeah I completely agree that's a thing that YouTube doesn't need to do it all and especially for our little corner of the internet it's really great to be invited to those things yeah it's really great to be able to talk to and hang out with a bunch of people who you don't get to see very often and people from YouTube as well you know pick their brains yeah there's people from YouTube there who are talking to us and like telling us what they're up to and like genuinely because there there have been a couple years where YouTube hasn't done those edu meetups in the past and I feel like those years were very different years whereas like oh there was never a time to meet up with everybody and it's just helpful when an when an organization like YouTube says we're hosting this thing everyone come that crystallizes people into coming so I will give them that and like you said because they really don't need to do it for edu creators we're a very small corner of YouTube yeah it's very nice that they do it and I'm really appreciative that they do yeah so I will give it to them for there but I'm not going to give it to YouTube makes it fun to be a creator that to me is too close to all the corporations are like isn't it fun to work at amazon like no I come here because it's work you know I come here because you pay me and this is work this is what we do here there's also one there's a question here which I actually like and I want to get it on the record as well that I strongly disagree with this one and it is breaking through on YouTube has become more difficult over the last few years I really strongly disagree with that one I think people can still break through on YouTube this is kind of like an argument that always happens between creators I feel like if you come to YouTube and you're doing something interesting I think it might even be easier now to build up an audience than it used to be I would need to see data because certainly there's more and more people coming through there seems to be more of them in volume but I don't know how many people are trying if it's been 20% more superstar channels but 400% more people are trying than it is harder there certainly seems to be plenty of people coming through and always new people having success and you know I'll always go along to something like VidCon or EdgyCon and meet a whole bunch of people I'd never even heard of who have become massively successful right so I think gosh there must be millions of them out there but I don't know how many people are trying I don't know how many failures there are on the scrap paper for all these self selecting successful people who I'm exposed to because they're successful yeah it's interesting that you mentioned that because surely YouTube has data on this like actually this is suddenly occurs to me it's a strange question to have on the survey unless they're just trying to get the impression of people yeah sentiment yeah but it's like they must know they must know the answer to this question however it is they want to measure it I feel that maybe you're right yeah again this is totally anecdotal but even just with my own viewing habits of like I feel like I've stumbled across smaller channels that seem to have gotten bigger pretty fast not even channels are like of mainstream interest but just like it seems like people are able to pick up subscribers and do well in a way that I think might even be easier than it used to be for catering to niches isn't it yeah I went to VidCon in London for one day and one of the only talks I went to was by the chap who makes the low spec gamer channel and he did a talk all about niches and how you can be successful by really focusing on a niche rather than trying broad appeal it was a really good talk it was really good very clever one of the few talks I've been to where every time I thought of a question or a problem with the argument that was the next point that was made and that made me realize yeah because the audience is so big now on YouTube if you're smart and concentrate on a niche and don't try to be PewDiePie you can have a quite happy and successful existence that's partly what I think of it as well is how many people are able to make a full-time living on YouTube I mean this is where going back to the revenue thing I think people make that transition when they start bringing on sponsors to the channel or like where they start up a patreon or they start up something else like that's usually when people make the transition but you need to have a big enough audience for that to work and I feel like the whole ecosystem on and around YouTube allows a person with a smaller audience yeah than five years ago to make the transition into being a full-time person because the audience has passed like a critical mass of massiveness and also the thing with the niches is just YouTube is expanded so tremendously much yeah that there's room for a whole bunch of other things like something that actually came up a number of times at the EDIU conference was talking to people about how say five years ago in EDIU land in theory if you wanted to you could be pretty much caught up to date on almost everybody's channel in the EDIU world yeah and even now just within the already small category of education on YouTube even just within the number of people they had at the conference it'd be like a full-time job keeping track of what is everybody up to I thought it was interesting to see that there are more like niche education channels that are able to do things full-time so yeah I'm gonna strongly disagree with it's harder than it used to be yeah YouTube does a good job distributing my new videos to my subscribers I disagree with that why do you disagree with that Brady well unless my subscriber numbers wrong like obviously not all of my subscribers getting my videos and in fact I see that in data when I look at my viewing numbers and you see the percentage of people watching who are your subscribers and who are not your subscribers that's like skewing more and more to the non-subscribers like so not only are the view numbers like holding solid or sometimes folding the number of those people who are subscribers is folding as well right yeah point mark strangers who are watching my videos more than subscribers I'm happy for both but if the question is are they distributing my videos to my subscribers the answer to that is no they're not and fair enough you know if that's the way they think it should work I have to accept that that's like the rules of the game and I don't think they're picking on me specifically but they're sure as heck not showing all my subscribers my videos my number one and forever case for this will always be PewDiePie who's got 80 million subscribers at this point yeah and his his videos for years have been getting around the same view numbers yeah like yeah in the past several years he's tremendously increased in subscriber numbers but suspiciously the view numbers are always like two million three million four million ten million yeah they're always in that range the subscriber count has become you know we have this discussion all the time but in the last sort of six months to a year it's become like just a crazy meaningless number it's totally meaningless but here's the thing I was thinking about this today it's a bit like YouTube removing the annotations hashtag never forget but with what's happened to the subscribers I feel like I just today kind of made a mental piece with it which is YouTube has sort of screwed over creators who have been on the platform for a long time with the way subscribers used to be and then slowly changing that out from under us but if we start the universe at time zero right now and say how does this system work and say there's two levels there's a button which indicates that you are interested in this channel and there's another button which says notify me every time this channel does everything yeah that's not a bad division contingent upon there will not be bell inflation that two years from now there's not a super bell which really notifies you every time and the regular bell mostly notifies you right as like as long as we don't have an inflationary curve I don't think that's the worst system now you'd have the same problem you'd have the same problem within five years where people have switched on the notification for too many channels and it just builds up like a gunk a backlog on their account and they have like a little hack in their brain where even though I've switched on notifications for 800 channels these are the 10 channels I still like and then suddenly that notification number would be the inflated number that we get upset about you'd be starting this new problem again just under a different name this is the question about the trustworthiness of YouTube I don't trust YouTube to not do bell inflation that they're going to be another super notification method in the future is that YouTube's fault isn't this a problem with human nature oh 100% this is a human problem and the reason that I don't trust YouTube is because it will always be that people are terrible and don't know what they want yeah and so people are always going to overbell themselves yeah and it will always be true that YouTube can come in and say hey if you let us algorithmically value bro yeah you will use YouTube more and so I don't think YouTube will be able to resist that temptation two or three years down the road when some manager needs to get his numbers up for the quarter right and then they'll be like well we're going to algorithmically value yeah you're right because I can hear certain people saying to me our job here at YouTube is to give people what they want even when they don't know it like you know we've got a kind of second guest them you've got to help them let hold their hand and that could be taken as like a lovely thing they're doing a service to the viewing community or it could be taken as pushing people around taking control and not letting people just figure things out for themselves and the reason it irritates creators is I've I've seen more and more channels not even mention anything about subscribe to me I've seen more and more channels just jump straight to the bell they say hit the bell all right and they don't talk about subscriptions and this is the same thing with annotations where if there's a super bell in the future you know there's a hollerhorn and you got to hit the hollerhorn people are going to look dumb for saying bell me bro yeah and if YouTube can hold the line and just let there be a place where people can make decisions that YouTube knows full well aren't aren't even in their own interest about overbelling themselves then I would agree with the sentiment YouTube does a good job of distributing my videos to people because they would show up in the notifications if they hit the bell and the subscribe button is more like a thumbs up I'm interested in this channel button yeah that would be fine but again I think the reason so many longer time creators feel really burned by this is because the rules were changed but if we start now as like day zero I think I can agree with this system but then I can also see two years from now being furious again because they've introduced the super bell yeah okay final question my favorite question yes or no have you heard anything from or about YouTube in the past 90 days yes no not sure yes I love this question because it's so perplexing like wow have I heard anything from or about YouTube in the past 90 days I almost feel like you would have to go to like an uncontacted tribe in Brazil you're the only person in the world who has half a chance of answering no to that question but it's like anyone hasn't heard something about YouTube in the past 90 days it's like have you heard anything about Hollywood in the past 90 days it's like yeah yeah everyone and the industrialized world is gonna say yes to that question have you used electricity in the last 90 days yeah it's crazy as I was like I click yes and then this is this is the best what have you heard just give you a box type in what have you heard what have you well YouTube I hear there's another ad apocalypse on the horizon that's what I've heard when I start I just send them a link to a few hello internet episodes yeah anyway I just I love that it's like the weirdest open-ended question in the world what have you heard oh I've heard a lot YouTube I've heard a lot about you and also bear in mind this is a survey for like professional YouTube creators it's not like and I've gone to like an old folks home to ask me if I've ever heard of YouTube they're asking people who like make YouTube videos for a living yeah it's like especially in a community where like a huge portion of the industry is gossip about the industry oh dear is there anyone who's doing this survey who could possibly click no or even better yet click not sure I'm not sure if I've heard anything about YouTube in the past 90 days what's the point of this question is this question like the equivalent of someone saying you know ah so uh did they say anything about me did I come up at all it's why I love this I think it totally feels like that especially with the way it's raised what have you heard question mark it completely feels like what were people saying about me at the party after I left that's like that's what YouTube is asking so needy YouTube so needy you I seriously hope the people that you tube don't listen to this podcast but I hope they do I hope they do really hi Susan I know you're listening