Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 161: Do YouTubers Watch YouTube? | Ear Biscuits Ep. 161
Episode Date: September 17, 2018R&L make a confession about their YouTube viewing habits, look back on their earliest interactions with the platform, and issue a challenge to you, the listeners, on this week's episode of Ear Biscuit...s. Sponsored By:Amazon Alexa: Just say, "Alexa, what are your top skills?" to find some of the most popular skills.Spotify: Subscribe to Ear biscuits on Spotify by searching for "Ear Biscuits" and tapping "Follow" to get every new episode delivered to you. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This, this, this, this is Mythical.
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Now let's have a biscuit.
Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Rhett.
And I'm Link.
This week at the Roundtable of Dem Lighting,
we're gonna tackle the question,
do YouTubers watch YouTube?
And the only YouTubers that we can really answer for we're gonna tackle the question, do YouTubers watch YouTube?
And the only YouTubers that we can really answer for are ourselves. Two, there's two of us.
Us two YouTubers.
Yeah, so it's really do we watch YouTube videos,
but do YouTubers watch YouTube videos sounds better,
so that's the question that we're exploring.
We're going to explore our interesting relationship
with YouTube as viewers given that we are also creators.
And I think, let's just get right into it.
Right up top, a little bit of a confession.
Oh it's a confession.
It is a confession,
because it does make me feel a little dirty.
I think.
I mean not dirty, but I just feel a little guilty
about the way that I'm going to answer this question.
We've been on YouTube since basically the beginning,
not technically the very, very, very beginning,
but you know months.
Less than one year in.
Yep, we were in it, on it, doing everything we could,
not knowing how or even what this could be
to get to this point and then still struggling
with whatever else is next in association with our professional exploitation
of YouTube as a platform.
Yeah right, do you remember the period of time
before the story of why we ended up uploading stuff
to YouTube was people were taking our videos
that we had on Rhettandlink.com, our website,
that we hosted on our server
and we paid for the bandwidth as people downloaded them.
So when people downloaded our videos,
we were paying for the traffic as they watched them.
But then we realized that they could just download
the videos, have them locally on their computer
and then upload them to YouTube
where people started watching them.
Do you remember watching YouTube videos
before we discovered that someone had taken our videos
and uploaded them to YouTube?
I don't know.
I don't even recall if I knew that it was a thing.
A thing.
Because we were focused on our own website
using QuickTime like you said,
but then Apple Video Podcasts, which still exists,
but came out about the same time
and we were focused on that and what we could create.
That was like, we just thought that was,
we knew what Apple was so it was like,
oh this is legit, we need to try to get something on here
but there was a barrier to it.
But to continue my thought, we now,
I mean owe our entire livelihoods
to YouTube as a platform.
We would not be where we are,
I would say we would not be who we are
if it wasn't for YouTube.
And of course.
What would it be like?
I'd be wearing tank tops.
Of course a lot of other things too.
I'd be wearing a lot of tank tops.
But if you remove. I'd have a goatee.
If you remove YouTube from the influential things
which have baked us to be the way we are,
we would be totally different.
Of course, professionally, we would be totally different.
So we owe so much to YouTube as a platform
for the opportunity it gave us and still gives us.
And so I do think it is interesting,
given the way that YouTube has been so instrumental for us,
to explore how we actually experience YouTube as a user.
Because.
Not as a creator, but as a user.
But the funny thing is is that,
at least what we wanna talk about first,
is how almost exclusively our experience
with YouTube, even as a user, was in the context
of being a creator.
It wasn't for entertainment purposes, it was for-
Well let's just come out and say it, man.
Business purposes.
Let's just come out and say it.
Rip the bandaid off at the top.
Oh, you wanna confess it right now?
Yeah.
We don't watch YouTube videos.
I feel like I need to leave.
I feel like I need to put my tank top on
and shave my goatee in and go home.
That's my, that's a shamed Rhett is,
wears a tank top and has a goatee, I don't know why.
He slumps a lot too.
Yeah.
He's 6'1".
Slithers around.
We don't watch YouTube videos.
Well okay.
I would say that often.
That is a sensational claim.
Let me justify it or,
I don't know what the word I'm looking for is.
I say let's just leave it lay
and let's trace our relationship with YouTube
like you were doing and let's just leave it lay and let's trace our relationship with YouTube like you were doing
and let's just come back to it because I don't think
it's that simple.
You know, it's not, well we don't watch YouTube,
we just upload videos to YouTube.
We have an evolving relationship with YouTube as a viewer
and I think it raises some big questions about
if we want the platform to go somewhere
and for the audiences to grow in a certain way,
don't, how can, and if we're a part of that as creators,
shouldn't we also be a part of that as viewers?
We probably should be.
So let's come back to that.
I will take a second to let you know
that Jacob just pointed out that this podcast
will be live on the day, 10 years to the day
from the anniversary of us starting our YouTube channel.
Is that what you said?
Yeah.
What the crap?
Starting the GMM channel, starting Rhett and Link 2.
Okay.
The YouTube channel is, because that's been like 12 years,
but the Rhett and Link 2, the Good Mythical Morning channel,
which was Rhett and Link 2 at the beginning.
Well happy anniversary.
Look at that.
We've been 10 years with a second channel
which evolved into the Good Mythical Morning Show.
Yes.
Ha!
The Good Mythical Morning Show.
I feel even more guilty for saying I don't watch YouTube.
Okay, so I remember those early days
and I remember what I was doing when I went onto YouTube,
mostly for me, it was going to the homepage
and seeing what was up there,
most often from Baratts and Beretta.
Oh yeah. You know, and Beretta. Oh yeah.
You know, Joe Beretta, you may know him now
of The Valley Folk, formerly of Sourcefed.
Before that, he was with Barats and Beretta,
famous comedy duo that we idolized and despised
all at the same time.
But they, along with everybody else
that was on the front page or the home page,
was somebody decided to put them there.
Right and so we would watch,
I remember watching their videos and thinking like,
man they really got this figured out.
It was like a stress watch.
It wasn't watching it for entertainment purposes.
Right. It was simply watching it
to see what could happen.
I remember looking at them and seeing,
they were number one at one point, 65,000 subscribers.
And I was like how, how in the world,
how in the world can that happen?
How can you connect with 65,000 people?
Yeah so we would be, and of course you focus in on.
That's bigger than an arena.
You focus in on Barats and Beretta because
they were most like what we saw that we could be.
There were certainly all types of stuff on the homepage.
Everything you can imagine.
And I'm not gonna mention cats.
Just imagine it.
But of course cats.
But we honed in on that because,
well I wouldn't say they were our competition.
We would consider them that but they wouldn't have
at the time because who are these guys in North Carolina?
They didn't know about us.
But I'd watch or watch you watch one of their videos
or something else that was like.
You watched me watch. I would watch you watch one of their videos or something else that was like. You watched me watch?
I would watch you watch sometimes.
Did you?
Secretly?
Well no, I would just glance over
at you watching something and it's a funny video.
It's supposed to make you laugh or at least smile
and I guarantee you.
Oh we didn't smile.
You look at our faces, it was just like,
and it had nothing to do with what we thought
of Barretts and Beretta except for what
they made us think about us.
It's like the first time.
It was watching your like arrival.
Yeah well do you remember the first time we ever watched,
and again this wasn't a YouTube video.
Stink face, it's like we'd have like a stink face.
Flight of the Concords, not YouTubers,
but I remember we were in a hotel room traveling, I don't even remember where we were
and why we were there, but.
They had HBO, I ain't got no HBO at my house,
I'ma turn HBO on.
We turned HBO on and there's these two New Zealanders
up there on stage and we were doing some musical comedy
at the time and we just sat there and just looked at them.
In silence.
With just like a slight grimace.
Yeah.
How are they so funny?
How are they, ah!
What is it going to take to get to be like those guys?
So let's just get, hate watching.
Let's give up musical comedy.
We didn't give up.
We didn't give up but we felt like it.
But that's how we interacted with YouTube was okay,
this is what we're trying to do now.
I mean we started uploading to our channel,
the Rhett and Link channel and we were waiting,
we were just looking for an opportunity to get something
that could be featured on the homepage.
I mean that was the holy grail but everything else
we watched, sketch channels mostly, there wasn't a lot of music,
I mean musical comedy on YouTube.
Well we also watched videos to try to see other,
we tried to watch and find the videos that other people
were watching so that then we could create a video response
to those videos so that then people would watch our channel.
So I specifically.
It was all so strategically driven and so professional.
Like those skateboarding twins?
Yeah.
I didn't even watch the video.
Rhett just told me there's this huge.
Skateboarding twins, man.
We need to make a response.
I was like okay.
I never watched the video.
Yeah, you didn't have to.
It wasn't about watching the video.
There was a video of a man drawing a perfect circle
on a chalkboard and everybody loved it.
Now you can see that a million times on YouTube
but there was the original dude
who could draw the perfect circle.
I saw that on Reddit last week, it's still being named.
It's still impressive.
I mean if I could stop right now
and just watch somebody do that, I would do it.
But we did it and we made a response video
just so people would come and watch our videos.
And of course, then we would watch our response video
to see other people watching it.
So it was always. It wasn't fun.
It wasn't entertainment.
It was desperate.
It was a job, you know?
It was like, we're trying to make this work.
And so whatever's working, everything that is working
needs to inform what we're gonna do on our own terms
in hopes that that will also work.
Right.
And I mean, even as we got successful, it didn't change.
You know, we've always been older than the,
what I felt like was the average YouTube viewer. You know, we've always been older than the,
what I felt like was the average YouTube viewer.
I think this is something that'll keep coming up. Well and the average YouTube creator, really.
Yeah.
I mean we got into game late, man.
I mean I had a chin strap,
didn't have a goatee,
didn't have a mustache yet, but I was like 28.
Right, I mean.
With children.
Yeah, it's like who else has kids on YouTube?
Who does it at that point?
It's too late.
But we did.
I mean, that Shay Carl guy, he was a DJ.
I knew he had kids, but he was just doing videos because he was a DJ, I knew he had kids, but he was just doing videos because he was a DJ.
He wasn't doing videos with his kids.
Right, and I remember seeing those videos,
well, and Charles Trippi before that, right?
Because he started it before Shay,
right around the same time.
But I saw that they were, those were the guys
who were doing, oh now they're doing a daily video.
That was much later, that was a couple years later.
But yeah.
Well yeah, it's been a long time.
Yeah.
But watching them again, while,
I find those daily vlogs that they did back then,
I would find them, I would understand
why they were entertaining, but I didn't even open myself up
to being entertained by them.
There was not a part of me that was like,
I'm going to enjoy this and make a consumer level choice
to enjoy this, but it was still in research mode
and I guess maybe there were some things that happened
that made me crack a smile, but I still was thinking,
hmm, these guys are doing this, it's every single day,
and then that began to plant the seed
even for GMM back in the day for us.
But we missed the whole community aspect.
I mean when we had DeFranco on Ear Biscuits,
I remember he told us the story about how he got started
and it was very much, he was just a member
of the YouTube community.
He was commenting and conversing with other people.
And then he started making whatever he made at the time
and how it morphed into what it is now.
But you can still see how, I mean,
his content is driven by, in many ways, the community.
That was something that we just never got.
We didn't look at it properly, we missed that.
We didn't understand.
I'll blame it on our age, but it was like,
you know, we would, we'd just go home
and watch television or movies.
We would come to work, we'd sit at our desks,
and we'd watch YouTube videos to inform our business.
But we didn't really talk to people.
I mean video responses, perfect example.
That's a great way early on to foster community.
Oh, I watch your video, I've got something to say
in response to it.
No, I'm just gonna do, who are these two jerks
silhouetted by light trying to make a joke
about these two skateboarding twins?
That's what we were doing, we were a couple of jerks.
You know, it was so self-motivated, 100%.
So we really missed the boat early on
in terms of community. Meanwhile, we were at home
watching, I was watching reams of DVDs of Alias.
That's what I was actually enjoying.
I mean, I don't even know where we got them,
but Jessie came home with just the box set.
Seasons of Alias.
Yeah.
Jennifer Gardner, man.
Sidney Bristow.
I mean, it was electric.
It was a great show. I wanna see, she's got that new movie I mean, it was electric.
It was a great show. I wanna see, she's got that new movie where she's bloody
and she's going after people.
Oh really?
Jennifer Garner's back and she doesn't care
what's in your wallet anymore, man.
She's coming for your wallet.
It's like a total role reversal.
It's the old Sidney Bristow, man.
She gonna be disappointed in my wallet.
I got a thin wallet, man.
I mean I've got a license, I've got a health card.
Wallets are going away.
I got a credit card and a debit card but I have no cash.
Wallet's gonna be on a chip, man.
It's gonna be inside your hand.
You don't need a wallet.
What's in your chip is what she'll be saying.
Oh she'll be back on that by then?
What's in your forehead?
The mark of the beast, Sidney Bristow.
But I remember in the first YouTube official gathering,
YouTube Live, 2008 in San Francisco.
We were barely invited.
They had a main stage inside,
Katy Perry is gonna perform in a sequined bathing suit.
I remember that.
You know her because she kissed a girl and that's all.
Right. At the time.
Right, mm-hmm.
But then they had a trailer,
like a flatbed trailer out front
that they made a stage out of that.
I wasn't even sure if it was part of the venue.
And we were. But that's where they put us.
We were allowed to get on that and sing like five songs.
Yeah.
And I don't even know how we were invited.
They gave out flip phones, they gave out flip phones
and we didn't even, not flip, flip video.
Flip video cameras, you remember those little flip
video cameras that were before you had cameras
in your phone?
They gave those out but we didn't even make that list.
They didn't give us those. Oh no. I mean, I think they gave those out, but we didn't even make that list. They didn't give us those.
Oh no.
I mean, I think they gave Shay Carl one.
Oh yeah, all those people were up front
and we were like barely in there.
You got a flip video camera?
And then that night in the lobby of the hotel,
you've got Ryan Higa, Philip DeFranco.
Bo Burnham was there. Bo Burnham.
Yes, I remember that.
Ian and Anthony from Smosh.
A bunch of other people, there was a photo that was,
I think Joe Beretta posted because Joe was there.
And we were on the fringe of that photo.
We weren't allowed into the board game that they were having
because we didn't know anybody.
They might have known of us but they knew each other
because there was a sense of community
that we didn't understand.
They had been to like one additional YouTube gathering.
Well but they were talking, a lot of them were talking
to each other online.
Yeah.
I wouldn't peg Bo Burnham as one of those people
but he was also very funny and very cool
so there he was in the middle of all of it.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Maybe he was talking to him, I don't think he was
a video response type of guy but anyway,
we just didn't, I think we missed the boat on that.
Right.
But then in spite of it, we were still able
to get some traction but it, so that didn't draw us in
either, that was the big thing at first was the community
and the connection and the conversation.
It wasn't just the quality of entertainment.
The funniest skits you can ever find are here.
Forget SNL, it wasn't really the case.
But how does this relate to your use of YouTube?
Where are you going with this?
I'm saying that it just, as time progressed
and we started to get successful,
we still didn't really invest personally.
We didn't talk to other creators.
Right, but what about the use of the platform
for your own personal entertainment?
That didn't start happening.
No, it didn't.
I mean, and what we just said, the confession,
is that hasn't changed a lot.
So let's take a break and come back and talk about
how we use it today and if anything has changed
in terms of the way we view the platform
and maybe what we desire for ourselves
and what you might be able to help us with.
Change is gonna come.
But first we wanna let you know that every single episode
of Ear Biscuits is now on Spotify.
Yes, the same app that has millions of songs
also has thousands of podcasts.
I wanted to say millions of podcasts
but that wouldn't be true.
But we're doing our part to change that
by continuing to make millions of podcasts eventually.
Ourselves.
Well but do we really want the competition?
I think that.
No I want us to make all of them, all millions.
We will be responsible for millions of podcasts.
And you may know this, you may be saying,
well I'm listening to it on Spotify.
It's like well, I'm just reinforcing your choice.
Yeah you should feel affirmed. Or I'm listening to it on Spotify. It's like, well, I'm just reinforcing your choice. Yeah, you should feel affirmed.
Or I'm not talking to you.
You're either being affirmed or informed, live with it.
On Spotify you can listen to all your favorite shows
and discover new ones if you haven't discovered ours,
which again, you probably have because, well,
it's pretty obvious that you have.
Yeah.
To subscribe to Ear Biscuits, tap follow,
and then get every new episode delivered to you.
Live with it.
Podcasts on Spotify, they're streaming right now.
I'm gonna start saying live with it in more of our ads.
Good luck with that, I'll say that,
because it's on a mug.
Live with it.
Now on with the biscuit.
You wanna know how I use YouTube now as a viewer?
Here's one example, here's a story.
Warning, it may involve a little nakedness.
Man, I don't know how I'm gonna tell this story.
How far should I go?
I should have told this story in my own brain
before I'm telling it with my mouth.
This is very risky.
Because there's some pitfalls to this story.
Uh oh.
I don't wanna, I just don't wanna overshare.
Okay, probably too late.
Okay, let's see.
Last week, I didn't have to be here at a certain time.
I actually knew you weren't gonna be here until later,
which I'm like, I ain't gonna be there either.
So I was hanging out at home.
Oh, yeah.
Christy was out at home. Oh, yeah. Christy was also at home.
And nobody else was.
Okay, all right.
But there, and so we just had some.
And what?
We just had some.
What happened?
Well we had some business we had to take care of.
Like you know when the kids are around,
I mean it's just like, it's like a zoo at my house.
Sounds like it.
I got three kids.
I've been at the zoo, I've seen,
I've caught animals on the act before.
No no no no no, I'm not talking about that at all.
I'm just saying that.
See you've already gone off track man.
You brought up zoo, that didn't help.
In the hustle and bustle of life at home,
there's just certain things that you put off
like a stack of mail that you need to go through, okay?
So let's just say that Christy and I had a stack of mail
that we needed to go through.
You probably shouldn't use that analogy with her
just so you know, baby you know.
I don't know what you're talking about.
When we're enjoying one another.
I'm literally talking about male.
When we're enjoying each other,
I think of it like a stack of mail.
You know what, but you could say,
but technically I am a stack of mail.
You know?
Yes.
Yeah, right.
But I don't know what you're referring to
because I'm just talking about literal male here.
Okay.
M-A-I-L.
So, we're like, you know the best place
to sort through your stack of mail.
Is in the bedroom?
Is in our bedroom upstairs.
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, but I'm like, but she's like,
well, there's the painters coming over
to paint our bathroom.
Yeah.
Which is in our master bedroom.
It's not that bad of analogy because you have
the stack of mail and you have the mailbox.
Again, I have no clue what you're talking about.
So we're like, well, so then there's a moment
of negotiation, it's like, yeah, we don't wanna,
if you don't wanna sort half the mail
and then the painter shows up.
It's really putting the mail into the mailbox.
You wanna sort.
I mean, it's sending the mail.
It's really, the mail is going into the box.
I'm not listening to you.
Is technically what happens.
You're derailing.
The stack of mail is a great,
like you could wear a T-shirt that says,
I'm a stack of mail.
Ready for deposit.
You're derailing, you're demailing my story actually.
Okay, I'm sorry.
So, because you don't wanna,
if you're gonna start sorting your mail,
you wanna get all the way through it
before the painter shows up, but we're like,
well, let's take a risk, even if we.
Who's the painter in the analogy?
Oh, a literal painter.
It's all literal.
Okay.
So I'm like.
You got construction at your house, got it.
And the painter has a key to our front door.
So and then lots of times he comes in when we're not there
because of the lockbox and he'll just come up
to our bedroom and start painting.
Oh wow.
So locking the front door of the house doesn't help us.
But locking the deadbolt on our door does help us.
Which we did.
In the bedroom door.
And so took the mail up there,
Christy locked the deadbolt and,
well because you wanna have a secure zone
when you're sorting the mail.
Right, yeah, because there's confidential documents.
Right.
Sensitive information.
So we sort the mail.
And lo and behold.
How long did it take you to sort the mail?
Very quick.
It's over before you know it.
Two, three minutes.
Just like.
Didn't have a lot, huh?
It's a lot easier to.
Lot of junk mail.
Oh gosh.
I'm not gonna be in trouble.
So,
sort of the mail, that was great. It's good, sense of accomplishment every time you do that.
Right, yeah.
It's something you've got to do.
Right, clean slate.
It builds up if you don't.
It's just too easy.
I mean, you said it, you started it.
Painter didn't show up.
It's like we're in the clear, everybody wins.
Yeah, yeah, right.
And then Christy goes over to the door
and she's like shaking the door and I'm like,
what are you doing?
She's like, the deadbolt is stuck.
We're locked in our bedroom.
And I'm like, well, let me handle that.
I'm moseying on over there.
Of course I was naked because.
Yeah.
You don't want the mail to soil you.
You don't wanna get a stain.
Don't wanna stain your clothes while you're sorting the mail.
And I'm over there, I'm like, you're right,
the deadbolt is stuck.
I could see it move a little bit but it didn't go,
it didn't retract far enough for the door to open.
Again, the deadbolt is literal, right?
Yeah.
Just making, I'm trying to, I wanna parse.
It's all literal.
Because if that's metaphorical.
Stop asking.
That's metaphorical, we have a medical situation.
If the deadbolt gets stuck.
Oh gosh, I needed a good laugh today, man.
This is exactly what I needed.
Of course this is all gonna get cut.
This is just for me and you.
Okay.
So I'm like, let me step in and shimmy the deadbolt.
There's no hope with that.
I mean it's not the type of thing
you can put a credit card in there.
I didn't have one of those anyway.
I actually looked around.
I was like, in my bedroom, I didn't have anything
except sorted mail.
You got a small wallet.
And it's a double door, so at the top,
there's one of those things that like,
if the door were open, you can pull down on the thing
that goes into the ceiling to the top.
To lock the non-swinging door.
To lock the non-swinging door.
The non-primary door.
So I could push really far and try to shimmy that,
but I thought my fingers were gonna get caught
and then I'm like, okay, I have to,
we're gonna have to unscrew the deadbolt and disassemble it
in order, your eyebrows are raising,
just because I said unscrew the deadbolt.
We're gonna have to disassemble the deadbolt
but I need to get a Phillips head screwdriver.
Don't have one of those up here.
So I'm like well.
You're just throwing me a lot of softballs
but I'm just letting them all go by.
I'm waiting for the home run.
So then I'm like I'm going to have to go out
on our balcony, jump off our balcony into our pool.
Oh just like a douche.
In order to get down to go into my garage
and get a screwdriver to then throw back up to you, Christy,
so you can disassemble the deadbolt while I'm down there,
naked, while I'll put on swim trunks, which I did.
And so we had this whole plan.
And then I'm like, you know what, don't panic.
Don't do that.
You could injure yourself jumping into your pool
from the second story.
That's crazy.
You have your phone, go on YouTube.
So I went on, well I actually just Googled
how to unstick a deadbolt.
I don't think that's on YouTube.
It's another tube you gotta go to.
A YouTube video came up and I started watching it
and it was a guy telling you how to step by step,
but it's magic right there.
I knew watching it in video so much better
than just reading it.
Just out of curiosity, what is the process?
Well as I started getting into it,
all of a sudden I hear this noise and Christy's over there
with a Dr. Pimple Popper blackhead remover
which was given to us by Dr. Pimple Popper.
It looks like a, however long that is,
I'd say that's nine inches.
Three and a half inches?
Oh gosh.
Three and a half inches long.
It's a shorter stack of mail than you thought.
Metal, metal.
I set you up for that one.
It's just a metal tool and she was over there
just going at the door with it.
And so all of a sudden she's, I'm like,
I'm like about to get to the part of the video
where it's helpful.
He's about to pop the lock and then all of a sudden,
she's like, I did it.
She gets it. She gets it.
She got it.
She got it.
Solved the problem, didn't need you.
So didn't need me, didn't need my swim trunks,
didn't need my screwdriver and didn't need YouTube.
But I watched YouTube, that's the point of my story.
Last time I watched YouTube, let me tell you,
I was sorting mail.
Actually there's one more part of the story.
So I'm like celebrating, I'm like,
sorry I didn't believe in you, baby.
You did it.
The door swings open, the painter's standing
on the other side and he had been there the whole time.
No.
Yeah, I'm joking, he wasn't there.
No, no, no.
Didn't even show up that day, what a jerk.
Yeah, painters are really, really unreliable.
Your dad's a painter.
Very reliable painter.
Interestingly, I recently used.
That was a big story to just say,
that's how I use YouTube.
Well and I use YouTube in a similar way.
I mean I wasn't sorting my mail.
But I was having car problems,
and that is not a euphemism,
and it was, you know, we're using the FJ Cruiser,
the four by four truck that we have been off-roading in
before but we have not done it lately,
so it's been sitting under a cover
for a pretty extended period of time.
Kind of sad.
But we're actually using it for YouTube.
We're using it in a Good Mythical Morning video coming up.
But I needed to drive it in
as they were going to conduct some tests
for the purposes of how we're going to use it.
And I've been letting it sit so long
that the battery was dead.
And then I popped the hood of my car to use my car
to try to charge the battery of the truck.
And the car is a 2017 model.
Oh it's too fancy.
You had to go on YouTube just to skip to the chase here.
Just to figure out.
Just to figure out how to get.
Where the battery, where the terminals are.
You couldn't find the battery?
The battery's in the trunk, guys.
What?
The battery for my car is in the trunk.
Did YouTube tell you that?
Jacob, did you know that?
We have the same car. The battery is in the trunk. Did YouTube tell you that? Jacob, did you know that? We have the same car.
The battery is in the trunk.
I did not know that.
Did YouTube tell you that?
I don't know if YouTube told,
what YouTube told me, I open up the trunk,
I open up the hood, and I'm like,
it's a battery.
And then I'm like, this whole thing just looks
like a computer, it looks different than the last time I opened the hood of a car, you know what I'm like, this whole thing just looks like a computer, it looks different than the last time
I opened the hood of a car, you know what I'm saying?
It's like, things have changed, it's clean.
And I couldn't even find the dipstick.
And listen, that is a euphemism.
So then I'm like, where are the battery terminals.
About 3 quarters of the way down your stack of mail.
On a make and model of the car that I have.
And it turns out that the battery's in the trunk
but because they know that you might wanna connect,
it's under the spare tire.
Oh God.
Which incidentally I watched another YouTube video
about how to get the freaking lug nuts off of my tire.
Anyway, so it turns out that they send terminal connections
up to the front of the car.
Oh.
And there's like a positive and a negative,
but you have to know where you're looking
so you can still do traditional things like clasp
your jumper cables on there and slowly charge the thing.
But again, did YouTube tell you that?
Yeah, like a, okay.
Cause when you type in battery terminal locations
on this particular model of car,
the first thing that came up was a YouTube video.
And it was like a four second video of just a guy going,
he has a phone and he's just like, there and there.
And that's it, that's a the video's like four seconds long.
It's like, thank you!
That's the best one, it's like 10 seconds of intro
and then three minutes of, all right, click the bell
and the like and subscribe, because I do lots of these.
It was exactly what I needed, it was so great.
That's beautiful.
But you can't monetize a clip that small.
So, again, I go back to business for these things
and we're like old guys who are just so practical.
It's like, well, YouTube's gonna tell me how to do things,
how to build something, how to fix something.
I think.
But do you entertain yourself?
Because, okay, we use it functionally.
I watch YouTube less now than I did five years ago.
I mean, since the success of Good Mythical Morning,
Wow.
I've actually, we have a system
for how we churn out these episodes
and it's not so dependent from video to video
on learning from what else is happening on YouTube,
to a fault.
I think it's, I mean,
I think it's actually a problem that we can get
to lackadaisical in like the rhythm of how we produce
Good Mythical Morning that we used to be
because every video was starting from scratch
on the Rhett and Link channel.
We're like okay, what are we gonna put on the menu
at the end or what are we gonna use these annotations for?
How can we get more people to actually watch it?
You know, every video was like a strategy session
to learn from the last thing
and that doesn't happen every single day now.
And we've got a whole team of people that put out the show
so I'm not as motivated to scour YouTube every day
to figure out what someone's doing better than us.
And that's a problem, but it actually gets me
further away from, now I'm not even watching videos at all.
Unless I need to shimmy a deadbolt.
You know?
Well I feel like I am watching, I am watching.
So you feel like you're.
But I don't feel like it is,
it is definitely not my primary source of entertainment
and I, let me just tell you how I find myself using it.
Right, okay, so.
What's your routine here?
Again, well the way that we're logged into YouTube
is we are logged into YouTube on the account
that manages the Good Mythical Morning channel. Right?
I think we can select some other accounts
that are kinda tied into that, but essentially,
I don't have a personal,
I'm not a personal user on YouTube,
I'm just kinda watching it through these managed accounts.
And so who the Good Mythical Morning channel
is subscribed to, which is a conglomeration of people that we subscribe to
back in the day, along with typically people
who are guests on the show will get subscribed to,
and there's like, you know what I'm saying,
I'm not in control.
Right, we're not using it.
I'm not actively managing it, so I don't actually
have a channel where I am putting in my preferences,
or Google is recording my personal preferences.
So I don't have a personalized curated experience as a user.
Now it would be easy for me to do that
because I could just simply make the decision
to always watch YouTube through my personal Google account,
but I don't.
So just right off the bat, because I wanna check in
and I wanna see things that I can see
in the Creator Studio backend for our channels. Right. And I don't wanna be constantly switching I can see in the Creator Studio back in for our channels.
Right.
And I don't wanna be constantly switching.
So right off the bat, I'm not.
We don't have a user experience.
So the algorithms and the robots behind the scenes
that are supposed to be determining what I need to see
are not having a two-way conversation with me.
So I don't look at the subscription tab.
What I do is I'm just like trending
and I go to trending for two reasons, three reasons.
Reason number one is to see if we're there, right?
I'm gonna go and see if there's an episode of GMM
that has made it to the trending page.
Number two.
And I would say that there are many legitimate arguments
that it doesn't matter but what's on trending?
You know, there are people who will make that argument.
It seems to matter less than it did at one point.
But it's. I'll give you that.
Even though that may be true,
it still is some sort of quick check indicator of something
that would make us feel good about ourselves and also make us feel like we need to apologize some sort of quick check indicator of something
that would make us feel good about ourselves and also make us feel like we need to apologize
because we're in there a lot.
The second thing.
I would just want to apologize that Good Mythical Morning
is in trending so much.
We haven't done anything illegal.
I'm not gonna apologize, I'm very happy about it.
Second reason is to see what else is trending,
again, from a business standpoint,
to be like, who else is trending?
Who's breaking through?
Who in the old school, the old guard is still,
oh, Phil DeFranco, he's got something else trending.
He has stayed the course as well, that's cool.
And I will actually, if I see Phil trending
and he is talking about something that I'm interested in,
some news item or whatever, I'll click on it
and typically go to him talking about that specific thing.
I don't watch the entire thing,
I go to him talking about that specific thing.
So I will go a layer deeper.
And then sort of the third reason is,
is there something that I could be legitimately
entertained by right now?
But when you do that level two and level three,
you still only have a limited window of time
that you're willing to give to YouTube.
Well and I will say that.
And it's gonna be like what, four minutes?
This does not happen in what I would call
my designated entertainment window.
Right.
My designated visual entertainment window.
Now this may be not just because I'm old
but because I'm married and because of my schedule
and the fact that I've got kids and we are typically
hanging out or whatever and then they go to bed
and then Jessie and I make a decision
to visually entertain ourselves
unless we wanna sort the mail.
Which is also very fun and productive
and then at the end you don't have to,
there's a sense of accomplishment that the mail is gone.
Sometimes you can sort the mail and then watch something
and sometimes you can watch something and sort the mail.
I typically recommend sorting the mail
and then watching something because if you watch something and get too tired, you don't and sort the mail. I typically recommend sorting the mail and then watching something because if you watch something
and get too tired, you don't wanna sort the mail.
I've tried to sort mail while watching something.
It depends on what you're watching.
But I just think that it's disrespectful to the mail.
To the creator of the program you're watching.
No, I don't think they know.
To the mail. I think they know. To the mail.
I think it's disrespectful to the process.
And I'm only talking about literal mail again.
And then when I make a decision
to visually entertain myself, it is.
Visually, that's a weird slogan.
To visually entertain yourself,
go to youtube.com slash Rhett and Link.
It is most often television series
on platforms such as Netflix, HBO.
Amazon.
Amazon, Showtime.
Hulu.
Hulu.
It is, you know, it's series that nine times out of 10,
friends who I respect have told me about, right?
And then I get into some of the things that I love,
like Handmaid's Tale, which is, you know,
the second season is over at this point.
I absolutely love that show show and every single time
an episode came out, Jessie and I would rearrange
our visual entertainment schedule so that that would be
the next thing that we enjoyed together.
And so typical sort of like 40-year-old viewing habits.
Now, movies, less and less and less, why?
They're too long, right?
Yeah, they're too long, but yet they're not long enough.
I absolutely love films, and it's a passion of ours,
and we hope to make one, another one,
besides the one we made a long time ago.
But when I just think about my lifestyle,
I think about the fact that okay, kids are in bed,
we've got time, if we wanna sort the mail,
we definitely can only watch a television show,
like 40 to 60 minutes is all we're gonna give to this.
90 minutes, two hours, three hours?
You remember three hour movies?
No.
When does that happen?
I've wiped that off my memory.
Who has the time?
And so I believe, I don't believe that the golden,
and this is a tangent, but I don't believe
that the golden age of television is simply based
on the fact that Netflix decided to start making television.
I think it's definitely based on a discombination
of the amount of programming that is available, people's schedules, and I think it's definitely based on a discombination of the amount of programming
that is available, people's schedules,
and I think that the length of a television series
has fallen into a sweet spot that has become
easily insertable, nah, probably shouldn't say insertable,
easily accommodated by people's modern day schedules.
Definitely. Tangent.
But that's.
I have the same routine.
I mean, Christy and I, we just never sat down
and watched a YouTube video.
Now, there's a television within eye shot of our kitchen
and sometimes we can throw a YouTube video up there.
Well, I'll say the kids will do that sometimes.
Just to watch a YouTube clip.
And the kids will watch, I'll look over their shoulder,
I mean, Lincoln watches some gamers,
and he has an assortment of YouTubers that he'll watch,
you know, and they've started to move through things.
Like Lily used to be really into Minecraft and Stampy Cat
and that's a thing of the distant past now
and she's very into Netflix shows
and she went through Parks and Rec
and now she's onto The Office
and I'm extremely proud of her.
And that's what my kids do.
My kids binge watch old shows.
Lincoln's more of a YouTube watcher
and then Lando is not yet.
But so Lincoln, I'll look over his shoulder
and watch gaming videos.
You know those Let's Play things?
I've heard of them.
Does Locke watch YouTube or does Shepard watch YouTube?
Shepard watches, Shepard will watch,
Shepard watches Good Mythical Morning.
Shepard is like the one person in my household
who watches Good Mythical Morning.
And like pretty consistently.
And he watches, I've noticed that there's a couple other,
I can't even tell you who they are but basically,
he's really into, is it Roblox or Roblox?
Roblox. Roblox.
And so he plays that game all the time
so he watches a lot of videos about that
so let's play an instructional videos about that
because it's all the games within the program.
But Locke watches, he just goes through a bunch of shows.
Shows that I really wanted, like,
he actually is almost all the way through Breaking Bad
by himself, and I wanted to watch that with him.
Like I was looking forward to that being like a.
Oh you're talking about on Netflix.
Yeah, but now it's on Netflix,
and I'm like seeing him watching, I'm like, whoa, you're talking about on Netflix. Yeah, but now it's on Netflix and I'm like seeing him watching,
I'm like whoa, you're already watching Breaking Bad
without me and you're like in season three.
He's like dad, it's the best show I've ever seen.
And then I'm like okay, missed that bonding opportunity.
But the YouTube that he does watch
is basketball related videos.
So.
But not shows.
No, there's a few, there's a, first of all,
you wouldn't be surprised, but there's like
basketball instructional videos, but then there's guys
who just talk about like, there's NBA compilations,
but then there's also just like basketball experts
and people, and so he's into all that content.
And he was also, he was really into Complex and Hot Ones
and so us being on Hot Ones was like,
at that point, that was the coolest that we have ever been.
That was the coolest that I've ever been as a dad
is when I was on Hot Ones.
The Tonight Show five times, who cares?
Right.
Is what, is a 14 year old's perspective.
The only videos that I've watched,
there wasn't, when you introduced me
to primitive technology, this is the guy, where is he?
Australia, I believe.
It's silent, you just see footage of him,
some time lapse mostly just cut of him
creating huts and stuff.
And I would just watch that because you could watch,
there was like one sitting where I watched
three of those in a row.
And he doesn't, I mean, he puts so much effort
into each video because there's so much effort
into the actual physical thing that he's documenting
that you can go and watch his,
you can watch his whole channel in a few hours.
And by the way, there's like ripoff channels
that do the exact same thing now.
He is in the far north Queensland, Australia.
There's people in other places now
who are like making swimming pools
and they're like, they don't seem to be,
there are more questions raised
about how legitimately primitive.
Are they talking?
No, they do it.
So he created a genre.
Created a genre. I love that.
And they are emulating it and getting just as many views
because they're making, but I question whether they're doing
it as legitimately primitive.
But I have found myself watching those.
And then every time a bad lip reading trends,
I will make sure to watch that.
But it's not in the shared time.
Well first of all, if you're in a relationship with somebody
and you've chosen to be visually entertained with them,
like we have, there's not a lot that I watch on my own.
And so I think that right off the bat,
that ends up kind of changing your habits.
When I'm alone, when I do have an option
to watch stuff alone and I don't choose to watch,
sometimes I'll be like I'm gonna watch a war movie
because she would never watch this.
But those are the times in which I find myself
being personally entertained by YouTube.
Because you're watching a war movie on YouTube?
No, no, no, no, when I'm alone.
Okay.
And I decide not to go.
And sometimes I do it a little bit out of,
again, like a sense of guilt.
Like, man, I should be watching YouTube.
There's so much stuff on there.
And then how do you do it?
You've literally spent an hour to have a session of like,
I'm just gonna watch YouTube and see what happens.
YouTube.
I watched about an hour's worth of cringe compilations.
That was a loop that I got lost in one night.
Cringe compilations.
I highly recommend them.
Well this is ironic.
Based on some of the comments that we've gotten before
on some of the cringier things that we've done,
like anytime we've done anything
that made anyone feel uncomfortable,
like the vast majority of the Mythical Beasts
have reacted negatively to it,
so I don't expect the average GMM watcher
to enjoy these things.
You probably hate them, but there's just something
about the dark sinister side of me that loves cringe compilations.
And so you're trying to find one that,
okay this one's got 12 million views,
and it's got a long runtime,
so this is the one I'm gonna watch.
I found one guy that just numbered them.
Cringe compilation five.
And I was like, oh there's six.
It's hard to find. There's seven.
There's eight.
Cringe all night, brother.
I do now remember that Lily sat down a couple weeks ago
and she was like, mom, I'm gonna give you
a crash course on Vine, which of course is no longer.
This happened recently? Yeah.
Did you tell her that it's a dead platform?
She knows this.
She's just like, she pulls up Vine compilations on YouTube.
Your kids watch that.
Like anytime my kids are over at your,
like we do like a social event at your house,
I have noticed that by the end of the night,
all the kids are watching Vine compilations.
And so Christy didn't do it, but I sat down.
They are mesmerizing.
I sat down with Lily and I watched almost an hour
and a half of Vine compilations on YouTube.
And how did it make you feel about yourself?
I was like, oh, I get Vine.
I should have done this when Vine existed.
Maybe then I could have been a part of the zeitgeist.
But don't you feel like you just ate a lot of candy?
Oh yeah.
It's like you can go to a restaurant.
But it was fun because Lily and I were just laughing
and it's just, I mean, incessant is usually negative,
but it was like a barrage of laughs and it's so quick.
Yeah.
It's like a weird clockwork orange situation
where I feel like my eyelids are peeled back
and I'm just like laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh.
It is like, it's a weird thing.
It's like sitting down and just eating
just like a pound of bacon, you know what I'm saying?
It's like, watching the cringe compilation, I just, and every once in a while, sitting down and eating a pound of bacon, you know what I'm saying? It's like, watching the cringe compilation,
I just, and every once in a while,
sitting down and eating a pound of bacon is awesome.
But again.
But I don't wanna do it with my wife.
Here's the thing, and I did talk Christy
into watching Game Show Blooper.
Yeah, those are good.
And again, that's a compilation.
Yeah.
And it's, I mean, so the way that we have found
to enjoy YouTube as a viewer is just these compilations that range
from like decent to absolutely crappy.
Well, and let me make an observation about this
because I think this is, again,
this is where I feel a little shame
is that none of the stuff that we've described
is content that was created with a YouTube audience in mind
in the way that Good Mythical Morning, what we do.
So we've got a show that has been seen as much as any show
when you're talking about a show on YouTube.
And we create that with the internet in mind.
That's what we do for a living.
But yet what we enjoy on YouTube is not anything
that was created with the YouTube audience in mind.
Now, let me just say, there are some exceptions.
And I wanna talk about one because I tweeted about this.
Shout out to RedMC on Twitter.
You wanna follow the best in the YouTube world.
At least one time I talked about it.
Go make sure you check that out.
No talking.
What, just tell the.
No talking of mail sorting on RedMC Twitter.
What is the thing?
Shane Dawson.
Oh yes.
So I talked about, first of all,
this Tanacon thing that happened
around the same time VidCon did.
If you know us, you know that Tanacon is not
the kind of thing that we would get roped into typically.
But I was very interested in all the hubbub around it
and then I found myself, I saw that Shane had a, very interested in all the hubbub around it
and then I found myself, I saw that Shane had a, the thing that got me was that he had a very long video
that was trending, a 30 minute video.
Maybe it was longer than that.
I was like, wow, this is interesting.
And again, my initial interest in it was the fact that
I've always kinda known and I kinda keep up with what Shane is doing
because he's, again, he's an OG, he's constantly innovating
and kinda reinventing his channel and he's got
a super successful podcast and he signed this table
somewhere.
He's a trendsetter, man.
And so I've always respected how he's kind of reinventing
himself and also inventing, trying new things
on the platform,
also doing it with YouTube in mind from the get-go.
And so I was like, okay, what's he up to?
And I would add with artistic integrity.
Yeah, and so I see this TanaCon thing
and I start watching it and I am immediately mesmerized.
And I think that I'm just in one of my toe dip
YouTube sessions which is like 99% of my YouTube watching.
It's like checking in on something.
Even if I like something, I don't watch the whole video.
You reach a conclusion about what he's done
and then be informed by it.
Send you a text.
Let me tell you what Shane's doing.
I watched two minutes of it and know everything about it.
Right, and I'm like, yeah, I watched the thumbnails.
So I know.
That's literally what I do.
I watch thumbnails and I feel like I know enough.
So I go into this thinking that this is a,
just an educational experience and I find myself
being drawn in to the content in a way
that I would be drawn into, and this is what I said
on the RedMC Twitter account,
like Making a Murderer on Netflix.
A documentary.
Which was a documentary series that was mesmerizing
and my wife and I enjoyed it together, right?
And so, and I watched this 45 minute thing
and then immediately tweeted about it and said,
you know, this is, I don't know what it was,
but it was essentially, this is got me.
This content has absolutely sucked me in
in the way that what I consider
a sort of a higher tier of content traditionally
has sucked me in, and of course I watched the whole series.
And then he, since then he's done,
he did the Jeffree Star series, which I haven't watched yet,
but the way that he has approached it is again,
it's in this like YouTube meets this crime,
conspiracy, documentary process.
And I'm absolutely mesmerized and I was like,
I think I could just watch this for entertainment purposes.
What?
And also the thing that was weird about it
is that it was long.
So it was, it fit, it began to fit into that little window
of time, that sweet spot, the 42 to 59 minute sweet spot
that entertainment kind of fills in my life right now, that sweet spot, the 42 to 59 minute sweet spot
that entertainment kind of fills in my life right now, which is so smart of Shane to start pushing the content
to those links.
And so, it's funny,
because at the same time that Shane is doing this,
and he's not the only one, again,
we just don't dig deep enough to know,
I'm sure you guys will be like,
and that's what we're gonna get to in a second,
is you telling us who we should be watching.
The same time, ironically, that this has been going on,
YouTube has been doing YouTube Red,
now known as YouTube Premium, which incidentally,
there are two seasons of a show that we made,
Rhett and Link's Buddy System, available on YouTube Premium.
We have a YouTube Premium account
and we have the ability to watch YouTube Premium
and basically this whole old fart conversation
that we've been having this whole time,
recognizing that we are entertained in a certain way
and we didn't feel like YouTube fit that bill.
Premium's supposed to address that.
YouTube, yeah, attempted to address that, is attempting to address that bill. Premium's supposed to address that. YouTube, yeah, attempted to address that,
is attempting to address that with YouTube Premium
and I haven't found myself going to that platform
in the same way that I go to these other platforms.
Even though we have a show on it.
I haven't even watched all of Buddy System.
What? Yeah, I did't even watched all of Buddy System. What?
Yeah, I did, I watched all of Buddy System
when we reviewed it but I haven't watched it,
I haven't watched it on YouTube.
I like watched it for professional reasons
to make sure it was what we wanted it to be.
That's the last time I watched it too.
Yeah.
You should watch it, it's good.
Yeah, I watched part of Cobra Kai because
I was just curious but we watched it, it's good. Yeah, I watched part of Cobra Kai because I was just curious, but we watched it at work
and we just judged it and we said,
well, a lot of people really like this,
even friends of ours that I respect their taste.
So I was celebrating the fact that,
okay, this is moving the needle.
This is bringing people over.
Yeah.
But I personally didn't keep watching it.
I had multiple mutual friends of ours
whose entertainment opinions I respect
who really liked Cobra Kai.
And so I think.
Of course I haven't seen Karate Kid
so maybe that's the problem.
Well that is a big problem.
As a Karate Kid watcher but not necessarily,
I wouldn't consider myself a huge Karate Kid fan.
I wasn't like super into it.
I had trouble getting into Cobra Kai.
Did you like Cobra Kai a lot?
I liked it.
Thelma's just rolling his eyes
because I haven't seen Karate Kid.
It's crazy that he hasn't seen it.
Let's just start making a list
of all the movies I haven't seen.
Oh yeah, I'm working on that.
All right.
But then there's another handful of things,
and again, I don't wanna get into like,
I do find it a little bit odd that I visit YouTube,
the homepage of YouTube every single day
for professional reasons,
and I'm also a YouTube Premium subscriber,
but yet what's on YouTube premium is not on my radar.
Like I'm not being introduced.
I know there's other stuff that's on there.
There's a tab you can click on,
but nothing compels you to do it.
I don't find myself being confronted with it.
I haven't crossed over into a place
and I also don't know if there would be enough stuff
there currently that would cause me to then incorporate it
into the larger conversation
that I'm having with Jesse which is
what do you wanna watch tonight?
One of my favorite things to watch are music documentaries.
I mean, shout out to Link Lamont on Twitter
because I will tweet a really good music documentary
in podcast form or otherwise.
How's that? Isn't there a music documentary in podcast form or otherwise. How's that?
Isn't there a music documentary on YouTube?
There's one specifically, The History of G-Funk.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I'm gonna watch that.
But I, it,
But you haven't yet?
Going there, I keep forgetting to go to YouTube Premium
because I don't think of it that way.
I'm like, I'm ready to watch a documentary.
I don't remember that that's there. I'm like, I'm ready to watch a documentary. I don't remember that that's there.
What is the problem here though?
How can two guys who are the target audience
for especially one guy who is the target audience
for music documentaries who makes a living on the platform,
who has two seasons of a show on the exact premium platform,
how come you're not watching the music documentary
that is available on said platform?
Viewing habits.
It's all about habits.
I mean, I'm big on habits and systems, you know that.
So I go into my ruts.
And yeah, I think we're highlighting a big problem.
We want YouTube, even Good Mythical Morning,
I want to grow an audience that is broader
and even older, right?
So if we start to see more fans join and be vocal
that are in our age range, I think that would be a good thing
not to, not instead of a younger audience or whatever,
but I just wanna expand in that way.
But I think in general, I wanna see YouTube
be a place where those people come as well
and start to see it as a legitimate source
alongside Netflix.
And I'm not necessarily,
so we can talk about YouTube Premium.
I'm not that interested in figuring that out.
I mean, obviously YouTube is invested
in trying to figure that out
and hopefully the people who make those decisions
and got me to a place where I was willing to pay for Hulu
and Showtime and HBO and Netflix and Amazon
and all the things that I pay for
will get other people like me who aren't YouTubers
to a place where they will pay for YouTube Premium
and Nils Incorporated.
But I also feel like in the big slice of pie,
the whole pie of YouTube, YouTube Premium
is going to remain a very small slice
because of the billions and billions of minutes of videos that are being uploaded.
And so things like what Shane is doing.
Yeah, I wanna see, I mean, just normal YouTube
be something that.
Get to a place where you actually are compelled
to watch it for non-business purposes.
Right.
And here's what I think.
Because by the way, it benefits our show.
So I'm just being honest that like my professional
selfish motive is that if I'm motivated to watch other stuff
on YouTube, then other people like me will be motivated
to watch me on YouTube.
Well the tipping point for me is going to be
when I feel like my wife will watch it with me.
If it's going to break through into my habit,
it's going to have to be something
that Jessie will watch with me.
And I didn't show her the Shane documentary.
I think she probably would have been interested in it
because it was fascinating and I did recommend it
to some other friends and they were like,
yeah, super fascinating.
But I think that I wanna find that kind of content
and I think that that, and again, this is strange.
It's a little bit of a strange conversation
because as we've said many times,
YouTube, my perspective on YouTube is that
it is largely personality based,
it's not necessarily content based.
Right.
And so, and it's also the type of content that you produce
is if you're gonna put it in front of a,
if you're not gonna put it behind a paywall
but it's gonna be AVOD they call it.
So basically it's just free to watch, it's ad supported.
That's gotta be cheap, per minute,
you're not gonna be putting a lot of time into that.
And that tends to,
Money into it.
You're not gonna put a lot of money into that.
So that lends itself to personalities that can,
getting somebody to be themselves is pretty cheap.
And so those are the kind of things
that come to the fore on YouTube.
Shane has found an interesting way to do something
that's very compelling because of him,
but the way he has crafted these stories,
I mean he's investing some money into it,
but it's getting a lot of views,
so it's probably paying for itself.
All I'm saying is that I don't think I could get my wife
excited about watching someone vlog.
Unless they were talking about something very specific
that she was interested in that I probably
wouldn't be interested in.
Right.
So getting into that place where what is the nature
of the kind of content that we want to sit down and enjoy
is probably gonna be something that has got,
we'll watch, it doesn't have to be scripted.
We'll watch documentary, we'll watch reality television.
So I do think that it can live
just in a regular YouTube world,
but I don't know what it is.
And so I'm asking you guys who are watching.
With your ears or with your eyes.
And listening to tell us
what you think we should be watching.
Now it doesn't have to be something that is like,
oh you and your wife will love this.
On YouTube.
That would be great.
Only on YouTube though.
But yeah, just YouTube.
YouTube content, now if there is a YouTube premium show
that you're like, oh you definitely should watch this one,
I do think you'd like it, we can recommend that.
Yeah.
But just, it's gotta be on YouTube
and if you think it's gonna be something
that we would actually be drawn to
for entertainment purposes only
and we're gonna take your suggestions,
we're gonna follow those rabbit trails,
we're going to enjoy, seek to enjoy some of this content
and then we're gonna have a part two.
Oh snap, so this is a grand experiment
and we're gonna have a part two. Oh snap, so this is a grand experiment
of can we find enough stuff already on YouTube
that will compel us to then change my viewing habits
and to shift my own brain to see YouTube differently.
And I feel like it's so important.
Like we got a lot riding on this.
Am I building this up too much, am I wrong?
Because I feel like if we can't.
We're just gonna quit?
Then I have a lot less hope for where our career is going.
Well would you watch Good Mythical Morning
if you didn't make it?
Oh.
Let's table that question, I need to think about that.
Let's table that question for part two.
And you know what, part two's not gonna.
Don't recommend Good Mythical Morning in your things.
We'll watch our own show in conjunction with the rest of them and then we'll let you know if we recommend watching Good Mythical Morning in your things. We'll watch our own show in conjunction
with the rest of them and then we'll let you know
if we recommend watching Good Mythical Morning.
Yeah, maybe we think too highly of ourselves.
I think that's a fair question, that's a good question.
So I don't know exactly what's riding on this
in terms of what I feel about YouTube
but I'm hopeful that you're gonna help
give us a shortcut to the work that we'll be doing
on our own to find these things.
Maybe we'll help some of you out when we share it
on part two but there's a lot to learn when we conduct it,
when we independently conduct these experiments
and then report back to each other in part two
which won't be next week.
Yeah, we're gonna take some time to digest
and enjoy your suggestions to do some research
and then when we think we've got our answers,
we will come back to you and report back.
So use hashtag Ear Biscuits and just let us know.
I think you should watch this on YouTube
or YouTube Premium.
And let me just, last thing I'll say is it doesn't have to,
I know I said some things, we were just talking,
just off the cuff throughout this thing.
So this was actually an unscripted podcast.
So I said 42 to 59 minutes.
It doesn't have to be that because obviously
you can watch a series of videos that would add up
to that sweet spot for me personally.
So just anything you think we would enjoy for any reason.
But I do think that you should keep in mind
it's things that there's enough of it
to kind of commit to it.
You know what I mean?
It's not like, oh, there's this really great video
where this guy does this one thing.
It's like, no, a place that I could be like,
oh, I'm gonna go back to this place, like a show,
maybe a channel, a personality, whatever,
that we can kinda go back to.
Those are the kinds of recommendations
that we're looking for.
Cool?
Cool.
All right, guys.
Thanks for hearing us out.
I feel a little dirty still.
I feel like.
Yeah, a little shame.
Man, there's some shame.
Yeah, yeah.
Except for the mail story.
I felt really clean about that.
Yeah, yeah.
I shouldn't have mentioned that
since that's gonna be cut out.
Right, right.
Nobody knows what you're talking about.
All right, we'll talk at you again next week
and we'll be working on your assignments.
Hashtag Ear Biscuits.