Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Suddenly Internet Famous

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

It's the summer of Hawk Tuah, so the guys remember Ken Bone, talk about the phenomonon of sudden fame, the difficulties of making money as a meme, and the broader implications of having a viral moment. Get a bonus episode every other Friday for $5/month at www.patreon.com/quickquestion or on Apple Podcasts!

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, I wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it up to? Where did all the fun go? Oh, forget it.

Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here. So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of this podcast, senior writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents. And I'm basically the Chris Evans to Soren's Ryan Gosling because the two of us, we're a couple of gray men.

Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer for American Dad. When that show happens to be on the air, we are gray. You say gray. We are wearing gray today.

But I've noticed with some, I say chagrin daniel that my hair has i've aged like a wartime president my hair has gotten very gray and silvery which is fine i like having my silvery hair yours not only seems untouched by the ravages of time that death's fingerprints are not on yours in fact the reverse seems to be happening where you have more hair than ever. Yeah. And, uh, I don't like this. Well, a few things are happening as far as like, um, white hairs and gray hairs coming in. Uh, and this is not like a, uh, a useful system for you, but, uh, my lovely and wonderful fiance is very diligent about uh one at a time removing them as she sees them it's like fun for her and it's important maintenance for me but the the gray

hairs are coming and like i get like weirdly long white eyebrows and she rips those right out and sets them aside that's so the gray doesn't show up. The other thing that's happening, and I'm so glad we got an organic way into this conversation, is that my barber, Sean, whom I love, who I've been going to for, I think, four years now. And, like, I travel to go to him. Your fiancé. Yes, correct. I think four years now. And like, I travel to go to him. Your fiance. Yes. Correct.

Uh, uh, a while ago he, he started going a little bit rogue. Uh, because like for, for years I was always saying like, I want a pretty short on the sides and like just a little bit off top so I can,

I can do stuff with it. And then time goes on and I, uh, start dating Shay and she starts having opinions about my hair. And so I would come to him and be like, my girlfriend at the time, she likes it a little bit even longer on top. And she likes it curlier. And I like that too. So don't take off quite as much as you used to.

So he started doing that. And the more the top was coming in, the more he was like, I'm starting to to like it and i'm starting to i i'm agreeing with what is going on here and then he saw her vision and like the last two times ago when i got my haircut he did uh he changed the setting on the sides without telling me and we've used the same setting forever and then he just made it like drastically shorter and when the haircut was done then it was like yeah i did one and a half instead of two on the sides this time i think that's gonna give you more shape and i was like uh yes no i can see that things are different now and i thought as it was happening things were different too but i'm not the professional here so So I didn't think I should jump in. And then the most recent time he cut my hair, he took almost nothing off the top. And now I'm just like watching it grow to length that it hasn't been in a very long time.

Since you played the clarinet. He played the clarinet. Yeah. I really think he has got, like you say, a vision. I think he's got a long game that he's playing. And he knows that if he just leaves the top a certain way for a certain amount of time and leaves the sides, then I could be his masterpiece. He can really do something new and special. I kind of love that.

And I'm here for it. I'm here for the ride. Do it. I don of love that. And I'm here for it. I'm here to do it. I don't know what to do. It's always, it's such a, you have to really thread the needle with people who are professionals and whatever thing that they're like servicing you with that you,

you like a bartender, for instance, like I want to tell to a bartender, like, what are you working on? Like, what are you like, what are you concocting?

And sometimes you're going to get a bartender. They'll be like, Jesus Christ, dude, just order a drink. Like, what do you want? And then other times you're going to get a bartender they'll be like jesus christ dude just order a drink like what do you want yeah and then other times you're going to get a guy who's like who's like what's my favorite thing to make it's got to be miller light bottle that's just one of my it's one of my specialties you want two you want yeah you want three four it's a double uh i could shake it if you want um and then there's a

sometimes you get a guy who's just or a woman who who's like, ah, I crave all my own bitters. I'm so glad you asked. Here, take a look at these. This is maple bacon infused, and I like to do like a smoked ice cube in it. And then you get somebody who's psyched. And so finding somebody who's – like you can give that kind of rope to is really great. like you can give that kind of a rope to is really great. It's fun that like this person has taken it in their own hands because that's just another thing that somebody is thinking about for you that you don't have

to keep track of. That's great. There was a bar used to 11 in West LA called Wellsborne that had like all of my celebration events were at the Wellsborne and a bartender there. I just got to talk to him one day and like, you know, I'm a pretty standard, like give me an old fashioned. That's, that's my, my nice cocktail drink. And he was saying, cause he had like a whole bunch of different tiny bitters jars behind

him. And they had like hand-drawn labels on them. So I was like, Hey guy, what's, what's the deal with that? He's like, Oh, I'm really into bit bitters i've just been very fascinated by them i try to make my own it's just always something that's been appealing to me i like the process of it and when i told the owners of this bar they actually paid to send me to a convention out of state where they were like what doing stuff with bitters yeah it's full like the bear shit that this guy had at wellsborne and then i i learned a bunch about bitters and then i came back and now i make

my own bitters for the bar and i'm just like man make me something like you know more about this stuff than i do so like i like old fashions i like bourbon so but like you do your your favorite thing that you're working on and i love it and now that's what's going on with my hair. Apparently. And I'm not to derail this entirely, but if somebody was like, hey, Soren, I want you to get a gun to your head, make some bitters,

I wouldn't even know what to start with. Like what the foundational ingredient is in bitters. I don't know. Well, yeah, you unpeel you get the skin off an orange you put it in a sock and you soak it and then eventually you squeeze i'm not sure it's true i don't know i don't actually know i don't know what it is i don't know i was i was so far behind that when i was like what's up with all those fucking jars and he was like oh these are different bitters he's like there's different kinds of bitters it's not just like like bitter is

the taste of the thing no yeah i would like i'd gamble i'd be like it's gotta be like a root right that's just a soaked root i could do that i have no idea what it is um and i don't i also don't i don't think i've ever just tasted pure bitters. I don't even, I'm such an idiot. I don't even know if it's actually bitter. I would assume not. My drinks that I get are always kind of sweet when they got bitters in them. Yeah.

And I've, it's, it's used in old fashions, but very, very judiciously. It's, it's like, like warning, just get a couple of shakes of the bitters jar in there. Just like a splash that almost looks like you're doing nothing. Just a few drops of this thing. But this guy specializes in it. Yeah. Well, it's really great, Daniel. Oh, thanks.

Put you on the compliment couch for a second. Harold's looking great, dude. Yeah. I've noticed on the last few podcasts when I see you or when you go fishing, like, he's figured it out. He's locked it in. Yeah. There's, it's incredibly vain,

but like when I, from being shaved head for so long and really seeing my future as a bald person and now just having like a clump of hair to like bounce it around and watch it bounce in the mirror,

it's very special. I'm truly mirror. It's a very special, I'm, I'm truly blessed. It's like turning back the hands of time. Yeah. It's like the only time in your life at this point in your life where you're actually going to like things get better. It left my mouth and I heard how dark it was.

I, I, I mean, everything is, is trending in a certain direction once you get past like 37. And not fast, but rarely do you start to like, does your body go through changes where you're like, oh, this is awesome. Like this is even better than it was before. And this is one of those things. And it's just got to feel so good. Listeners should know Soren had a birthday a couple weeks ago.

I don't think he's doing well with it. Listen, I am a spinning top. And there's nothing you can do to make that top go faster. And you see it starting to wobble a little. And now all you can do is just watch all the different steps it takes before that top stops spinning for good. So, let's get into it. Hawk to a girl. What do you think about her?

What's your thoughts on the Hawk to a girl? I love Hawk to a girl. I do have a lot of thoughts about Hawk to a girl, but we don't have to actually get into that. I know that's a joke. I'm a little pissed off about Hawkuck to a girl yeah just so so our our listeners know if you're completely non-internet and have been living under a rock there's for starters there is like a genre of internet video that uh is ostensibly a man on

the street usually outside of like a popular main street with bars where it's a person filming on a camera with a microphone asking random people who've probably had a few drinks yes questions sometimes it's trivia questions sometimes it's just like very casual do you do do you think you like assholes more than you like nice guys kind of thing just like very strange man on the street it's like a whole genre of video that I don't know if it's actually connected to a larger show because I've only ever seen clips of it popping up in like TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit. They go viral every once in a while. This most

recent one, there was someone who I believe was in Nashville and the boilerplate question that he asked these two attractive young women who had come out of a bar and, and it seemed like they'd had a few drinks. He was asking them, what is something that you could do to drive a man wild in bed guaranteed? And this, uh, young woman whom I believe her name is Haley, um, she said, oh, you just got to hack to a spit on that thing. Ha ha ha ha. And then she and her friend leave off camera. The thing in question, I believe, we're talking about spitting on a

wiener, and it drives the man crazy, and you go, Hak Tua, that's the, even though I think the preferred descriptor would be Hak Tui, she just said, Hak Tua, spit on that thing and for a lot of like

it had enough ingredients that contributed to its success to go viral she is unbelievable like crazy viral more viral than things have gone in a while the most viral thing it was everywhere on the internet.

I was seeing like memes and reactions to it before I'd seen it itself. Because it was just like, it had spread everywhere. And it's, lots of people had opinions on it. It was a very, it's charming in the way way that like we haven't had big viral things in a while so i was i was uh curious to to to see like you know a a piece of internet monoculture the likes of which we haven't seen in a very long time um so i'm curious if you do have any thoughts on her i do this woman who i believe is named hayley um i was also very charmed by the fact that so it used to be in the day where like a movie came out in the 80s everyone you know saw that

movie a show was on in the like early 90s or whatever like everybody knows that's that's cracked was predicated on this fact that everybody had like collective knowledge that they weren't even aware that they possessed that gave them like a good head start starting point on any critical analysis of like that decade, which was not true of anybody else like it or any other time. Like you can't you can't talk about shows the same way you could talk about home improvement when it was on this like mediate mediocre b-minus show that but every single person watched it and so you all like there's only so many things on and movies there were only so many movies that came out and everybody saw every movie that's not the case anymore now yeah we were already lamenting that fact in the age of the internet not realizing that the internet itself was one of those new things that yeah early on everybody on the internet was seeing the same internet it was like turning something on and all watching it together because there it was such a limited supply of content already and it was really nice it was really nice when like everybody had the same shorthand for

what was going on around the world and we don't have that anymore and this felt like reminiscent of that all of a sudden there was this event yeah and everybody shared it everybody knew it everybody had it and like everybody's reaction to it while varied was like the same that like this is our inside joke but everybody's okay with that you don't want your niche group to just have it. Everybody having it was fine. Now, I think that it's – I've watched this several times trying to get what people are like really – what they're latching onto about it. And I'm so fucking baffled because it doesn't seem – there's no like – other than like surface deep, there's like nothing else that I'm really seeing that like is making people latch onto this.

My brother and I talked about this a lot too, because he came to me, he's like, I don't get it. It seems like something that people, that people latch onto who don't actually know the internet. Like people who are just like very early on when people get caught up on memes,

like they would be people who had no actual interest in the internet, but a coworker or whatever would pass something along to them and be like, hey, check this out. Or they get forwarded it by their uncle. They'd be like, I got to show that to other people. That's what Hawk 2 felt like to me. there, you can, you can explain why it's not famous in a couple of different ways. We're not, the joke isn't on her. So we can't say like this spread because we're all making fun of her. This isn't like Ben Shapiro said something embarrassing online or a while ago, there was that guy who became the main character on Twitter because he wrote a post celebrating his overweight wife in a way that was very like flattering of himself and just like answering

a question that no one asked this guy I was like by the way I love my chubby wife and I think you're crazy if you don't and we're all like everyone's like we don't know who you are but like we're gonna talk about this for a week and we're gonna kind of make fun like you're not brave you're trying to get hero status for doing this and we're gonna make fun of you for it yeah that's not happening here no one is like she is not ripe for being made fun of so we can cross that off the list she is conventionally attractive it's not like she is world explodingly attractive it's not like this is like like that's not if you've never heard of this before and you're trying to to play detective now and you're you're sitting at home listening and thinking this girl must be really hot it's

not that it's not like everyone is saying look at this hot girl and no one is saying like we're gonna pretend she's this this what she is saying is is funny or meaningful because we're attracted to this person so we can cross that off the list too she is not saying the most insane thing in the world it's not like uh a guy said what is a move you can do in bed that drives a guy crazy? And she was like, oh, obviously light their pubes on fire. Goodbye. She didn't say something so nuts that we all had to like stop in our tracks and look at it. All of these are reasons why it didn't go like our explanations for why it didn't go viral.

We still don't have a compelling explanation for why it did and like i have since you can learn about this this woman who by all rights seems like a great person sincerely and that might just be like the narrative that's building around her now but she lives in uh somewhere in tennessee she works at a factory. She takes care of her grandmother. She has no aspirations of being a viral star or anything like that. It's a great story for a good person to get 15 minutes of fame. That also isn't why everyone on the internet was talking about her. We didn't know any of that shit. We didn't know about the factory or grandma. That's not why it showed up on my page.

The only thing I can assume is that it was, there are people who are living their lives in places like Tennessee and the surrounding area that are, in which they have discovered something like spitting during sex and thought i can't ever tell anyone about this like this is a thing that only i can know about and it's working and this is great and not that they are completely oblivious to pornography that currently exists to anyone else talking about this kind of thing and then all of a sudden somebody came out and did this very cathartic thing and just gave you the most brass tacks version of it the most clumsy like gross version of it not even like a spit like a i'm gonna i'm gonna garner up some mucus first and spit that this guy's dick which was i understand why that would be super cathartic for some people of like the way comedians used to land on something like everybody's doing but nobody's talking about

and everyone was just like yes yes i i have to assume that that's what it is for like this huge wad of the population that wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to something like this for the rest of us who are fucking rad at sex right that's not it's not there's nothing crazy about it but we're sort of like ah ha ha ha and then we're left to just sort of live in this pool of like people who are like so excited about a thing that we're like yeah yeah dude uh i don't i don't know what what's actually going on here but it's fine she's she seems nice yeah it's i was i'm all i and to be clear i'm all for this woman and her success i i like this is not we're not angry i don't i don't no i think i can speak for sorry we're not mad about about her success or anything the only the thing that gave me slight pause is that last week uh hollywood reporter did an interview with the management

company that signed this young woman and uh not an interview with her just with like her new manager and it's a very you'd think this was like written by the management company it's a very fawning interview and the manager is just talking about what a great story this is and how much money they're turning down from different brands and all these other opportunities that they're saying no to and like these million dollar deals they're saying no to so they can do the right deal and they can really tell her

story and the interviewer at Hollywood Reporter is like not totally and what makes her different and what makes her special? It's like oh thank you for asking. She is just special and wonderful and has a great story to tell and we love her for it and she loves her grandma and I'm like that can't be the end why isn't so like I want this girl to make a Billion dollars I do because I want everyone to make money for doing whatever

I want us all to be comfortable and live the lives that we want. I don't want to gatekeep her from anything. But the question I would ask if I'm the Hollywood reporter talking to the manager is like, yeah, but like, what is she going to do? That's the, the,

the strange thing about, uh, internet virality, especially now where it's like you were viral for like, specifically for a very strange organic lightning in a bottle moment like you could even say the answer could be actress or the answer could be writer or podcaster or i'm going to use this i'm going to sell haktua merchandise to start a business selling honey or I'm going to use this to

launch a music career. Any of those things are acceptable answers because they are all like jobs that I understand. But none of that was covered in this interview because that's, uh, this silly business of internet virality to larger fame pipeline, no one understands exactly how it works. There's a whole lot of, it's a big shell game and there's a lot of like management companies who are just, who will sign someone because they're popular, because they captured the attention of the entire internet for a moment. And they're like, great, now we get this and we're going to monetize it. We're going to sell it. And it's like, sure. But like how, and like what, and like, what are you actually selling? And I, and that, that kind of,

that economics of the internet that, uh, I don't understand because I don't think anyone understands it yet, but they're just so the beginning and end seems to be like hey 18 million people saw this video so i'm right there it's just so that means so that means it's a good business decision for me to sign her and it's like okay but then what are you gonna do is she gonna the internet hasn't changed in that regard so like there things used to go viral like this in a very big way. The same should happen.

Like Ken Bone gets signed by an agency and like a talent agency and Ken Bone gets like optioned. Like there's options of Ken Bone's life story and stuff like that. And no one quite knows what to do. And they all end up failing. Like I can't think of a single success story out of this um yeah that the closest i can think of is shit my dad says which got its own show but then that show collapsed like shit my dad says was a was a twitter profile that was just the

things somebody's dad was saying and they were always really funny things like is this the movie with the draculas and stuff like that and uh they and somebody was like okay that's going very viral lots of people look at this um let's do a thing and then they made a television show out of it and that feels like the most substantial thing even that is like a very um that's sort of an outlier because that was a a twitter account that was just this guy regurgitating things that his dad said in real life that was that that was so popular that it was sold later as a book and the book was turned into a tv show the the guy behind the twitter account is justin halpern who has since written other books and is the co-creator of the harley quinn show on max he is like like fully a television

writer for the rest of his life which is like a career arc that makes sense to me it's like oh this is a funny thing on the internet i'm gonna write it because i'm a writer and now i'm gonna like continue like parlay this into writing success in a way that makes tremendous sense that's makes more yeah that that they pluck individual people out of this world because the person is being funny it also makes a lot of sense to me like um what jenny graham is that her name whoa just a second what's the name of the woman who got a job on um parks and rec i think maybe the office megan amram megan amram okay so like uh, who, uh, or Shelby Farrell, like people who were very funny online in 180 characters and somebody else saw that and was like, oh, there's an easy one-to-one

translation into like actual writing for this. That's an easy trajectory that I totally understand. Hak Tua, there were some other like Ken Pone, like these ones, there is no, the trajectory doesn't exist. It's just somebody who got famous for a minute and maybe like the assumption is that they're capturing something in the zeitgeist like that they have their finger on some pulse and so everybody wants a piece of that so you watch these people come out of the woodwork who are like i will represent you i have this idea for you i want you to open a bowling alley and like and and everybody everybody wants a piece of that fame because they think that those eyes will then turn like the eyes of the millions who watch this will turn to them too

which is i want you to open a bowling alley yeah i don't know so i'm thinking opening a bowling alley and i need this podcast i need you to talk about it on last week tonight it would really help me out So I'm thinking of opening a bowling alley. And I need this podcast. I need you to talk about it on Last Week Tonight. It would really help me out. The thing that makes me excited about the Hot Toa Girl story, or Young Woman story, that I never thought about at the time as a little baby internet person is that, um, I have gotten so much enjoyment. Millions of us have gotten so

much enjoyment out of, uh, memes and sometimes like single images, like a joke that is punctuated with an image of Ken Bone or that meme that is just three stock photo models where a woman is walking down the street, a man and his girlfriend are walking. He is turning to look at another woman while his girlfriend looks at him disgust. He's clearly checking out someone that image has been used and memed all over the place and uh it's given me and a lot of other people hours and hours and hours of enjoyment i'm not trying to be glib about memes creating a lot of enjoyment uh even though memes perhaps destroyed sites like crack.com because that's how people wanted their comedy they no longer wanted articles they wanted pictures in two words um but still like we've we have seen like like memes spread

and like serve as punch lines the the overly attached girlfriend just like a single image of one woman from a video tilting her head and making a strange face has been used a billion times on the internet and a thing that we didn't think about at the time that i've thought more and more about as i've gotten older is like hey the people who are responsible for all of these hours of entertainment should be paid in some way so if like hawk to a girl like in in the wild west days of the internet we that idea was unthinkable it was just like who owns the internet who owns anything we're all just putting stuff out there and maybe i'm the one

who should make money because i put it in this context that creates the joke none of us really care too much about it now we're all a little bit savvier so like someone can look at Hak Tua Girl and say like, this is, this has gotten more eyes on it than the young Sheldon finale. Yeah. She should be paid. She should be paid for the amount of enjoyment that she created on the internet and all of the water cooler moments that she made. And I am all for that. I don't know if this management company is the way to do it

because i don't think if they know what they're doing i mean you're absolutely right and there's not yeah there's unfortunately not like a just like a bank of internet that we all feed into that the president of the internet goes at goes through at the end of every month and been like that the president of the internet goes at goes through at the end of every month and been like all right time to distribute the money the internet money to the the people who created the most enjoyment this month here you go hawk to a girl yeah here you go here you go llamas to escape yeah yeah you're absolutely right like yeah these people deserve some sort of compensation not even compensation i mean like the fame is not enough is what I'm saying. That used to be the thing.

At the beginning of the internet, nobody cared because there was no money there. And the fact that millions of people were seeing you and suddenly you were vaulted into stardom felt like enough. Like you, people recognized you and that was exciting. It's not, for the same reason that like college sports, that's not enough for them. There's consequence to this. There's a bunch of people peeking into this woman's life now. People know where she lives. Like there's – because she's caught the attention of everybody, you've also caught the attention of dangerous – of danger.

Like things that aren't good for your life. And there should be – I absolutely believe that there should – she deserves to be wealthy now. She did this thing that everyone loved. We understand these as jobs. And so in the past and perhaps the present, that is the pipeline that we tried to get going. We tried to get viral success into, let's try to, let's make that now fit into moment uh and that doesn't necessarily mean she should get a reality show or a podcast or or whatever other right you know first thought ideas a management company has yeah that's like the real downer of it is that they i think you're at you you really nailed it which is that they're like, okay, now we're going to, now we're going to monetize this and we're going to monetize it in the realms that we know. So like immediately it's like, well, these things make money. Let's just throw her at one of these things. And those are not the right fit at all. But I love your idea that there should be a,

that we all pay to use the internet, like not a huge fee, but like it's like buying into a lottery. And because we're all participating, occasionally you might be the winner of that lottery because you did something. And if you're like, if you're making content for the internet, if you're doing anything on the internet, you just pay in a little bit, you pay in a little bit. It's part of your, it's part of like your subscription Spectrum or whatever it is. And then every month they're like, okay, let's see who the top performers were this month.

Oh, this thing brought a lot of joy to people. Hey, let's throw some money at it. I could see it being certainly gameable by bad actors. I could also see it blowing up in our face when they're like, all right, we crunched the numbers. And once again, that's a million dollars to the estate of Michael Jackson for that gif of him eating popcorn. We got to stop using that. Don't know where that money's going.

Throwing some money at Orson Welles clapping gif. What are we doing, folks? I have to think that it's not true they're like the same ones don't stay forever because we do get sick of it the same way like memes have a clear shelf life like we still get used or they find a way to resurface but they're never as powerful as they were at the very beginning and so i have to think that as new stuff develops and people get excited about kalisi making like a little scrunchie face. Yeah.

Like everyone's like, okay, well this time it was, it was her. Like, hold on. Let me rethink this. I don't know if I want to give Game of Thrones any more money.

Maybe the, or like, like the inventor of impact bolt. Does, do you think that person knows that like they, they must've gotten paid, whatever you get paid to create a a font which i cannot imagine is more than a thousand dollars and impact bold is now the most important font to our entire culture uh there's a a clip from the office where uh our friend played sean berry played a barista. He has like one line. I think it's

either he's like got a coffee for Dwight or he's got a coffee for Michael Scott. It's one of the two where he's like holding out a coffee, coffee for Michael, coffee for Dwight. And, uh, whomever is the subject of this is like pretending he doesn't hear the person it's i'm doing a terrible job explaining it but it's a funny scene in a funny show uh and that gif for whatever reason went gangbusters and is like still used as like a reaction gif and i and it's great to see our pal sean get his his face out there but at the end of the day i'm like, hey, Sean's an actor. I don't think he's getting paid every time this fucking gif gets used all over the internet.

That would be great if we could. I'm just now realizing it because he's responsible for one of the very early memes. Sean, everyone has seen this. I'm sure of it. There's a big dog and there's a guy who's got his face in front of the big dog, too close to the big dog for like two seconds and then the dog just takes a paw and

swats at him and like hits him square across the face for being too close and we all loved it that's sean like that's him again that's sean berry and and that was like his great big dog yeti and that's yeah i mean gets used so so much and sean i assume that did not help his career anyway in any conceivable way and i would like it to have yeah that would make me happy yeah i uh sincerely cannot believe we did a ho'tu'a Girl episode. I'm so happy. I kind of hoped it would happen. I didn't know this well. It turns out I had a lot to say about it.

So, before we started recording, I thought it would be a funny joke if I asked Sorin his thoughts on Hak'tu'a Girl. it would be a funny joke if I asked Sorin his thoughts on Hog to a Girl and I would it was like in the back of my mind as a joke I could play with if there was a lull and Then there wasn't a lull you were just talking about being a spinning top who's gonna die And I was very this is even better than a lull. I am so excited For this non sequitur that we somehow milked for 35 minutes. Um, yeah,

this is immediately. My brother texted me and he was like, I don't understand what's going on. I don't understand why this is so popular. And I was like, I don't either, but you're right. I hadn't thought about how important it is to me that she sees some sort of

benefit from this because you're right. She deserves it. Yeah. Whether I understand it or not yeah if you're out there you deserve money um this isn't this is gonna sound hypocritical but i promise it's not um i'm not gonna give you any money. No. No. Yeah. And here's why. Because what I did is I gave us the thing that gets us to the thing. I had the brainstorm that was you should have money. And so that's my contribution to your coffers.

Everyone else needs to fill them. But like I opened the door. I'm not a VC. I'm not a guy who's in charge of money. No. I'm an idea man. And this is my idea. You know, the other thing we did for Hot Toe Girl, Dan, was we paid her an exposure with this podcast. And that's always a famously good thing.

To be paid an exposure. People love getting paid an exposure. Absolutely. We've been paying ourselves an exposure for like six years now. We are so flush with exposure. I wish that I could buy a house with exposure.

I'm just... I've got piles of it sitting around. Because we're living proof. With exposure comes opportunities. What kind of opportunities? Why, later today, I'm guesting on one of our other friends' podcasts. So you tell me. When I was thinking about getting off of X, I was like, yeah, I've got this audience, like 70,000 people here.

It would be a shame. I spent a long time building that. It would be a shame to just lose all that. And I was like, wait a second. Why? Why would that be a shame to lose a bunch of bots or whatever they are? Like all these people that aren't actually even paying attention to my feed. Like who cares?

The exposure means nothing. Like, who cares? The exposure means nothing. I just need a place to do my jokes where people aren't going to try intentionally take them in bad faith ways. So I moved on to Blue Sky. I can't recommend downloading Blue Sky and following Soren enough. He is really just doing jokes jokes and some of them are pretty dark getting old is a theme but it's just like I go to blue sky and it's

it's a lot of people who are saying that like like reposting things from Twitter that are bad and a few people promoting stuff it's not uh like i haven't curated a uh robust following uh stream to make it an enjoyable experience for me so it was just like a bunch of bullshit and then soren doing like four jokes a day just like four like crafted jokes that he's thought about and he's he and they've got punch lines and they're and they're they're clever and everyone else is just like okay that's what he's doing you know you're walking down time square and someone addresses elmo and someone's doing backflips and you're like okay that's his thing i don't i don't know why you're doing that okay all right that's nice there's a naked cowboy they're soaring doing his thing who cares this guy has some flyers flyers aren't even for a show or anything this is for a

religion okay that's his thing um yeah i i it's it's for no one there i mean i don't i don't interact with anybody so occasionally though like i'll do a joke on there i'll be like that's a good joke and then like it'll get like seven likes i'll be like oh it probably wasn't a good joke i don't really know what people want here. There's such a purity to it because with Twitter, there were, at some point, reasons for using it. It was essential for our career to build an audience on Twitter. It was also a place where writers could get discovered and get other work and make more money.

discovered and get other work and make more money blue sky um neither of those things are true of blue sky that's not you're not building an organic audience there you're only building an audience of people who have decided to make that migration and decided to track you down and remember you no one is hiring writers off of blue sky you're just in it for the love of the game you're just making jokes there and uh and and you should try it it's really fun it's really rewarding i wouldn't say rewarding but it's something no no but like it's like i'll put my money where my mouth is on this hock to a girl stuff i'm gonna venmo you some money because you oh that'd be great i haven't worked since February. That would be awesome.

Is it really February? It can be. No, I'm being hyperbolic. But we've had a pretty long hiatus as these contracts with the NBA and our network get all negotiated. So it's taken a while. All right, everybody. Well,

thank you for listening to this podcast. Do you want me to end it here? Is that okay? It's okay with me. All right, great. You've been listening to quick question with Soren and Daniel. This was our Hawk Tua episode,

as we've been announcing for a while that we were going to do. I hope you enjoyed it. You can follow Daniel or I on Blue Sky. You can follow Quick Question on X still. Sometimes they'll do video clips of this exact podcast because this is both an audio and a video podcast. You can watch it on YouTube or you can watch it on Apple Podcasts. And if you're interested in bonus content, you can find that on our Patreon. And if you don't really want to join for Patreon, you can sign up for Apple Podcasts, which I think is like $5.99 a month.

And you will get bonus content to a lot of other podcasts as well as this one where we do both video and audio bonus content. We answer questions from you guys a lot. And if you like our theme song, that's by me Rex, that you could find their music anywhere you stream your music, or you can go to me, Rex dot bandcamp.com for full albums. Oh,

obviously I cannot forget about Gabe harder. Gabe harder is the, the glue to this podcast. I don't even know what to call him anymore because he plays so many different roles. It feels silly to go through all the different things that he does. But everything you like about this podcast was probably Gabe Harder. So you won't find him anywhere.

This is the only place he exists, and we're keeping this nugget to ourselves. That's it. I think. Bye. Bye. Bye. That's it. I think. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite?

Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it out to? Where did all the good things go? Oh forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it

I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here