Youtube is Fake

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hey, welcome to the create unknown, the home of make something mean something. I am Kevin Liieber. YouTube is not real.

[00:00:07]And with me as always is Matthew Taber.

[00:00:11]>> No, YouTube may not be real, which I don't even know what this I don't fully know what this means. I don't know what what your thesis is here. And we were talking, you know, about about the episode beforehand and Yeah. I mean, you you suggest this. I'm like, "What's that even mean?" [laughter] And you said, "I can tell you what it means and you can make fun of me." And I was like, "Oh, oh, this is beautiful."

[00:00:39]Uh, but I I I do want to throw out uh that, you know, you if if you're listening to this not live, if you didn't jump in the moment Kevin sent the link out, you missed good pre-recording talk about Meatloaf and Richard Simmons.

[00:00:57]>> What could be better?

[00:00:59]Not much.

[00:00:59]>> Not much.

[00:01:00]>> Not rip to both.

[00:01:02]>> Uh but but very very insightful analysis of of meat and Richard.

[00:01:08]>> Yeah. So you need to be uh you know join the Discord, set your alerts on uh follow us on X so that you know when we go live because you never know when you're going to miss some Meatloaf Richard Simmons talk. The uh the theory, it's a vague theory, you know. It's like it's like wisps of clouds uh you know forming in my mind that either perhaps you could like form into nice fluffy clouds or you can just blast with a shotgun and just destroy. And either way I'd be like totally happy with that with the result.

[00:01:42]>> Um >> these are these Chinese government seated clouds >> controlling controlling the the Liber YouTube weather. You know, we were also talking about um small talk at the supermarket with the like the checkout people.

[00:01:56]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:57]>> And I once had a moment in which uh the person checking me out uh was talking about the weather being fake, like the weather, like the weather being controlled and like manufactured and man-made, like unprompted.

[00:02:15]that just started talking to me about like how they control the weather and I was like, I don't stay. Can I just buy my groceries and go home? I don't want to talk about this with you. [laughter] It's really awkward. It's like very strange.

[00:02:33]>> Yeah. I mean, it's it's actually a good value. You pay like $6.99 for a a tin of Stoer's lasagna and and you get uh a free lecture about how the Jews control the weather.

[00:02:46]>> Yeah. You get a free tin foil hat on your way [laughter] out.

[00:02:50]>> That's what No, you eat the lasagna and then take the tin that it came and deform the hat, [laughter] >> right? To block the mind control waves, >> right?

[00:02:59]>> Um the So the YouTube is not real thing.

[00:03:02]is something that I have been like like I said vaguely thinking about for a long time for a number of different reasons.

[00:03:08]So I want to throw out some examples of how I think it's not real and also some suggestions as to how it might be made real.

[00:03:18]>> Okay. Um, one of [sighs] the things I was, I think, most wrong about in life, genuinely most wrong about in life, >> is that in, let's say, [snorts] 2015, let's say 2015, I think I was really convinced that from in it would take about another five years for like YouTube and YouTubers to like garner the legitimacy um that essentially I don't want to say they deserved but like the amount of eyeballs in the audience that they captured um basically warranted.

[00:04:06]So, like in 2015, I was in we had lots of different talks and lots of different meetings with agents and traditional media and uh just all kinds of things, books and live shows and TV shows and uh >> right >> like all kinds of old media ways to take someone who has built an audience on YouTube and then give them opportunities elsewhere uh with you know an opportunity unities mean like bigger budgets and support and um you know all all the things that come with those machines that have been welloiled and running for a hundred years, >> right? you I I remember uh you talking about this at the time and in being in some of those meetings with you where where it was like yeah this is a step in the process to pretty much be admitted to the media team like everybody else has been for 50 years you know that this is this is a step on you know to make the YouTube audience on par really with what's happening with with authors and actors and you know TV and and just the and it's a couple different things. I'm glad you said the budgets which really means uh like being seen as an actual operation instead of uh this is a guy with a selfie stick uh who who does some some goofy things and you know a million people have laughed at him. uh there was a point where you know YouTube had matured beyond that. That was the point 2015 plus or minus is when things really got real and it was like okay if this is clearly real now then it should be admitted admitted to the club with the rest of them.

[00:06:00]>> Yes. welcomed into the ranks of the world of uh you know books and newspapers and various forms of publishing and uh you know etc etc etc all all of the old media stuff.

[00:06:14]>> How'd that uh how'd that work out for you?

[00:06:16]>> It didn't work out. [laughter] >> It didn't work out at all.

[00:06:20]>> Not to be true. Yeah.

[00:06:22]>> No, it didn't work out at all. you know, there were attempts uh there were uh various attempts at it >> uh from really both sides. Uh basically pulling talent off of YouTube and plunking it on television um and then also pulling uh you know production companies from television and plunking them on YouTube.

[00:06:45]Like it it they tried both things.

[00:06:48]>> Yep.

[00:06:48]>> And neither of them worked at all. And now, you know, in 2026, it's been plenty of time. It's been 20 years of YouTube >> and it's been, you know, roughly a decade since my initial assumption.

[00:07:06]Uh, so that I think we can conclude like it's not happening. I I don't think it's h I don't think it's ever happening. Um, at least I don't know. Will it ever happen?

[00:07:19]Like I don't know unless we really need like boomers to be gone and Gen X to be gone and then like but it's like the millennials really didn't embrace new media the way that I thought >> they would uh for a lot of different reasons that I could go into but it just hasn't happened and I'm not sure that it will. Well, at this point I think it's a completely different conversation.

[00:07:51]>> Okay, >> because everything that the that the old conversation was based on and to put this in perspective too. Um, [clears throat] so thinking back to that 2015 2016 era, there were some attempts to to break in like Freddy Wong and Rocket Jump had a show on Hulu. video game high school.

[00:08:12]They did uh you know there were some like real budget real streaming series that were a result of um really YouTube stuff.

[00:08:24]Uh you know even on a smaller scale your very close personal friend in real life Felicia Day.

[00:08:34]Um, [laughter] I I like I like taking somebody like I don't know how many times you talk to her. I I I don't know the extent of that relationship, but I personally love taking the tiniest possible social interaction I've ever had and then describing that person as close personal friend in real life. So like Jeremy Rener and I are close personal friends in real life because oh god no it was closer to 20 years ago.

[00:09:07]20 years ago I lit a cigarette of his outside of a coffee shop in in LA. And if I would be stunned if he doesn't remember it today. [laughter] Um, but to date it, this guy drove by in a car who knew who who knew him legitimately. He was like, "Hey, I just saw saw your movie." And that movie was Neoned.

[00:09:32]So >> Neon Neoned is about this was after Jeremy Rener had done truly a remarkable performance as Jeffrey Dmer. It was eerie. It was so so good. And I think it was an HBO movie.

[00:09:49]Um, but he did a film called Neoed where where a neo-Nazi like falls in love with like a black nurse, something like that.

[00:09:58][laughter] >> Okay.

[00:09:59]>> Um, it didn't, you know, it very good film, but obviously didn't, >> it wasn't a blockbuster. Uh, anyway.

[00:10:10]Anyway, Felicia Day was in The Guild.

[00:10:12]The Guild was a series about a World of Warcraft guild, which was very funny. I liked it a lot. I really liked it, you know, and they did something like five or six seasons by the end, but it didn't bust into being, you know, the sitcom of the year.

[00:10:30]Uh, this just never really happened, you know. And I remember with video game high school, I finally had what remained of my wisdom teeth out. And I had um this this is back when you got more than Tylenol. You could just ask for the real drugs and if you you didn't appear to be um somebody who was going to start selling them at the nearest trailer park, they would give them to you. So, I had Oxycontton and I I was just riding out postsurgery with the Oxy watching video game high school on Hulu.

[00:11:13]And that was the peak. That was the peak of your dream. of your dream that YouTube and real media would merge [laughter] was typified by me on my couch eating ice cream by the by by the gallon uh on Oxie watching a video game high school.

[00:11:36]>> Yeah, that was as good as it got. Yeah, that was the [laughter] peak. That was the zenith of the crossover.

[00:11:43]Well, here here's so I have so many examples of this. you know, there were uh so there were a lot of examples of old media people trying to be on YouTube. There was an era where they were paying like Will Smith and Kevin Hart and Amy Polar and um Rain Wilson and Tim Haidker and Jash and all all those comedy people, Sarah Silverman. A bunch of money got thrown at a bunch of YouTube channels that just went nowhere.

[00:12:17]>> People didn't like them. It didn't work at all.

[00:12:19]>> No. Watch them.

[00:12:20]>> And if they did, it was like a tiny audience that was, you know, you couldn't do anything with.

[00:12:25]>> Yeah.

[00:12:25]>> Uh as far as sustain sustain of business surrounding.

[00:12:29]>> Um >> which is when traditional media began to learn about how different the economics of YouTube are compared to the economics of [laughter] network and streaming.

[00:12:41]uh they should have known but I don't think they they actually worked with with people and companies who knew I think they assumed it was substantially similar did all these projects realized the numbers operate in a totally different way and are also on a minuscule uh scale and they're like oh this has to this has to be like literally the most popular thing in the world for us to make a buck and it wasn't.

[00:13:14]>> Yeah. No. And you know, they were definitely sold a song and dance from YouTube as to you know, oh, we're adding this feature and all of these, you know, billions of dollars of advertising revenue blah blah blah. So, there was this like uh gold rush era that is like long since gone. The other thing that they tried to do that YouTube tried to do with YouTube Red and then YouTube Originals was to fund uh their own upscaled, you know, big budget, >> right?

[00:13:44]>> Basically TV shows. So they threw lots of money at things like Minefield on Vsauce and Did You Survive the Movies on Vsauce 3. Uh both of which were ami uh Emmy nominated. one of which uh actually did win an Emmy.

[00:14:02]And this is another sort of notch in my theory of YouTube not being real. Okay.

[00:14:07]And I think that you brought this up last week during your you did your your rant about the CEO of YouTube.

[00:14:16]>> The CEO of YouTube not knowing >> that Could [laughter] you survive the movies, a YouTube original won an Emmy award? The CEO of YouTube did not know that a YouTube funded show won an Emmy.

[00:14:34]Why? Because YouTube is not real.

[00:14:37][laughter] >> Yeah.

[00:14:38]>> It just what happens on YouTube stays on YouTube. It This is like I don't know like my Las Vegas theory of YouTube. It is just this little island where like nothing leaves. Like nothing comes in, nothing leaves. It's just a bunch of boners uploading videos. Some of which are like the most amazing piece of content on various subjects that has ever existed in human history. Okay?

[00:15:12]>> And it's like intangible. It's ephemera.

[00:15:17]it, you know, it's just like a wisp in the air. Uh, what do I mean by that? No one talks about it. The New York Times is not writing an article about um our video on Ignis Semlvvice, >> right?

[00:15:33]>> Right. which they should like it is >> they should >> it is the definitive piece of media about an extremely important topic uh in the history of medicine and health >> uh that led to the saving of uncounted millions of lives.

[00:15:55]It's got to be it's got to be it's got to be over a billion, which I I don't mean to make this an aside, but it's just something that I've thought of periodically because I have, you know, I have um uh ideology of child child bed fever on on the shelf to the side of my my thumb. I have a that's where the the medical stuff is.

[00:16:22]uh and you know so I see the book periodically and and and you know I'll sometimes I'll just have a thought about it and I think it's undersold how how important how important that was and so that's even f you know further proof of what you're saying that this is radically humanity changing it's there are very few things and there are a lot more than we realize a lot more than we recognize things that are seemingly small that have had a shocking effect on on the trajectory of humanity. And that's one of them, you know, that's to me in the top 10. Uh- which it's a long list. So being in the top 10 of that is something, you know, but you know, nobody cared beyond the beyond the audience of the video and in the Vsauce 2 community and all of that. And that I'm I'm glad that they did and they did.

[00:17:24]They liked it. They responded. They took it seriously. It it is a thing that people know now who watch that video.

[00:17:31]And that's a tremendous achievement to have, you know, tens, hundreds of thousands of people remember the point of it.

[00:17:40]But [laughter] but uh that's not what that's not what really anybody outside that ecosystem is concerning themselves with. They're not interested. They're they're not um it's not on their radar at all. Their radar stinks, by the way.

[00:18:00]>> It does.

[00:18:01]>> Their radar is stupid. So this I know this isn't the point of of what you want to talk about. I'm sorry to do another aside on this, but I cannot impress upon people enough how dimwitted and low knowledge people in the media are and how how useless most journalists are.

[00:18:26]Um, people like Donut Operator, you know, you know who I'm talking about, right?

[00:18:31]>> Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's a cop or a former cop.

[00:18:35]>> Former cop. Yeah. He did uh you know a bunch of like body cam video analyses and stuff like that and like he's he's funny solid guy. I I know at least one person in the chat right now knows him.

[00:18:48]Um but yeah like he I saw the other day you know he replied to some really terrible article like you know you don't hate the media enough. you don't [laughter] hate, you know, you know, it's one of those kind of that's a that's a meme that people, you know, say this, but but he added to it a bit and and and explained why um you know, a friend of his is uh Brandon Herrera is running for Congress and and I think that was the impetus is some inaccurate bad article about about him uh donor operators responding to that. just like this is so sloppy and stupid. But I spent years every single like all day going back and forth with with journalists, comm's departments.

[00:19:41]They are so untalented.

[00:19:46]They know so little about about the world.

[00:19:51]The really good ones know their own bubble.

[00:19:56]The best of them know their their bizarre little bubble.

[00:20:00]The ones who aren't the best. Oh my god.

[00:20:05]I it it it's it truly is a shocking like emperor has no clothes. Pull back the curtain to see the wizard. uh Christmas story realizing that it's be sure to drink your Ovaltine when he decodes [laughter] the like that level of disappointment when you realize how completely stupid about the world they are.

[00:20:32]It it's it's abysmal. Abysmal. And so, yeah, I wonder if anybody in in comms at YouTube would have even been able to correct Neil and say, you know, we had a show that was actually ours. This wasn't just a thing on YouTube. This wasn't just a longstanding popular YouTube creator. This was a YouTube original that we funded, we made that won an Emmy. And in the same office, we have another one who who's even more popular, even bigger. He's on the Mount Rushmore in in the the segment, the vertical that you claim is the most important one on YouTube, education.

[00:21:16]He was nominated multiple times on another show that we made.

[00:21:21]I don't think anybody in that department had the knowledge to to even be able to correct Neil and say, you know, hey, check this out.

[00:21:30]Yeah, that's how just stupid and low talent they are.

[00:21:35]>> Which is completely inexcusable. It's not like there's this insane amount of uh like Emmy nominated YouTube originals that they had to bank and somehow remember it's like it's a very short list. I mean, even the list of shows that they funded, I don't know how long that is. Uh but it's not like, you know, >> it was like 55 or something total if I remember right.

[00:21:58]>> Okay. Well, you can remember 55 things pretty easily.

[00:22:02]>> That's not a big deal. It's not 55,000.

[00:22:05]You know, that would be insurmountable.

[00:22:07]>> But yeah, they don't even know that. And don't even care. And that's my point is like if you cared, you would remember.

[00:22:14]if it was real, you would remember and you would be proud of it and you and you would, you know, want to talk about it all the time at your cocktail parties and your uh keynote speeches >> because it was relevant and it was real and it's not because it isn't. That's my point. It just doesn't matter to anyone.

[00:22:37]Like what happens on YouTube does not matter to anyone including YouTube.

[00:22:45]>> Yeah.

[00:22:45]>> They don't even care. And if they don't care, why is someone at the Wall Street Journal or The View or I don't know, name anything, why would they care?

[00:22:58]They're never going to care in a million years. It's not going to happen.

[00:23:03]>> Yeah. You know, it's funny that you mentioned The View because The View is a legitimate place for for that panel to discuss semlice.

[00:23:14]It's a it's a woman's issue, >> okay?

[00:23:18]>> Primarily that is totally uh totally forgotten. And they would find that interesting >> if one of them said, you know, c can you believe we've never heard of this? like [laughter] at the least this guy should be on a postage stamp like right you know some some uh modicum of recognition for something this significant and you know they would talk about that quite legitimately.

[00:23:48]um you know this doesn't happen and the the big difference to me between the traditional media and the current uh the current like the the YouTube landscape is that uh media is traditional media is shockingly centralized.

[00:24:06]It is centralized in structure similar even more so than than most large corporations. It's operated a great deal closer to the way the Kremlin operated in the peak of the Soviet Union. Okay, YouTube is not it's the opposite. It's so decentralized. What matters is end user and then tries to go from uh billions at this point of end users into something meaningful in the center. Mhm.

[00:24:44]>> And that is very hard to do. Like I'm not knocking YouTube for not nailing it.

[00:24:50]>> It's very hard to do. And but we should clarify that YouTube as a company is also completely decentralized.

[00:24:58]>> Yes.

[00:25:00]>> Global all over the place. Yeah. You know, >> not just that, not just the the distribution that way, but that rotating Yeah. you know, the rotating employees that you described makes any kind of of central identity and management extremely difficult >> and continuity. It's >> Yeah, >> there's some, but it's it's much less than you would imagine.

[00:25:25]>> Yeah, Charles Khan has a good point in the chat about Netflix being very proud of Netflix original Cobra Kai. And yeah, they have they've had a few Netflix originals, true Netflix originals, not the ones that are made in foreign countries that they buy and then rebrand, uh, but the ones like Cobraai that they actually made. They did a good job of saying, "This is our content. We're making this because we think we know what people on our platform like." And then celebrating a success of that like they did with with Cobra Kai. Well, they got that from YouTube.

[00:26:05]>> Yeah, that's right. Yeah, >> that was a YouTube original that YouTube, it was the one show that Yeah, they abandoned. They were like, I don't know what to do with this. Here you go, Netflix. You know what to do with shows, so you could just buy it. You know, >> there was That's right. There was a point where uh YouTube Premium is a fantastic value now.

[00:26:24]>> Now, I have no regrets at all. There was a time when it was not. And I remember going one more month so that I so that I could watch Cobra Kai before cutting it because that was the last thing on the platform that that I had any interest at all in watching. I'd watched everything that I'd wanted to see and there was nothing new and I'm like great, I'll do this. Well, they eventually introduced enough features that it became really useful to me to keep the subscription.

[00:26:59]Uh, but you're right. That was a good one. They fumbled hard for whatever reason. [laughter] I don't know.

[00:27:07]>> They just didn't they didn't want to be in the business of producing original content anymore. You know, at some point somebody else came in and they said, uh, we're just a platform for hosting, you know, user generated content. That's what we are. That's what YouTube is.

[00:27:22]That's our wheelhouse. stop with this funding, you know, Cobra Kai and Kevin Hart's special and the the YouTube Comedy Awards and whatever. Just get rid of all that and we'll save a billion dollars a year. Uh, and be no worse for wear because, you know, we'll just focus on what we're good at and what our market differentiator is and and all of that stuff. But here's another thing that I uh so here are some more YouTube is not real and uh sort of ideas that I think are potentially useful. Maybe they're bad.

[00:28:01]>> Okay, >> but let's throw them out anyway because I so I was thinking about um I was thinking about awards. Okay.

[00:28:10]>> Um, you know, one person who I would say in our circles in our not only in in our personal circles of people that we're friends with on YouTube or online in general, but also like the ripple concentric circles around them.

[00:28:29]>> Okay. Couple out.

[00:28:32]person who's really important in in YouTube history is James Rolf, the angry video game nerd.

[00:28:40]>> He is >> Yep.

[00:28:42]>> Uh he is seen as one of these Mount Rushmore people.

[00:28:46]>> Um which I agree with, you know, for good reason. He was making YouTube videos before YouTube existed. Okay, that's what how much of an OG and a pioneer James Ralph is.

[00:29:00]He is like a zilch and non-existent to YouTube and to like anyone outside of that pond that I'm talking about of like people we know and are friends with and their friends and their friends and their friends. Once you get out to a certain ring of that, he doesn't even exist. Okay. It's crazy to think about that, >> but uh there was some sort of I think Vid So I know that VidCon is now all of a sudden doing a Hall of Fame.

[00:29:33]Okay, this is like part of VidCon's thing is they're doing a Hall of Fame.

[00:29:37]>> Maybe this is why James's name came up.

[00:29:41]I don't recall exactly what the impetus was, but there was some impetus where a bunch of people were like, "How could you talk about XYZ and not talk about James Rolf?"

[00:29:54]>> And the answer is is because he's there they don't even know who he is.

[00:30:00]>> Yeah.

[00:30:01]>> Like the people at YouTube don't know who he who he is. And he's like one of the most prominent and important [clears throat] people in the history of YouTube. Flat out.

[00:30:13]>> Yep.

[00:30:14]>> Like objectively.

[00:30:16]>> Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think people realize the phenomenon you're describing here. They I don't think they understand that it's real, but it is completely and totally real that that you encountered at least in the past. I I will admit that I have been out of out of the the conversations for like five years just because I I'm I'm I'm not I'm not doing that anymore.

[00:30:51][laughter] like it's it's dead to me. Uh but back in the day, you you'd mention people at events or in a conversation who you could have just made up the name and and it would have had the same impact like they had no recognition at all.

[00:31:14]And what I what I don't think people understand is Like that would never happen in any other circumstance, right? Like if you went to any political event with with people involved in politics in the United States and said something about Marco Rubio and they were like, "Who's that?"

[00:31:47]That's that's what happened over and over. Somebody's like, "Okay, this is a significant name in in like political discourse. This is a person with a real job. Uh, you may not know anything about them, but you know that the person exists. You know who AOC is.

[00:32:09]You know, you know who uh uh you know, I guess JD Vance has a pretty big job, but you get my point. These are top tier top tier people in that arena and it would be bizarre re regardless of what kind of political event you were at friends or foes of the names they're going to know who the names are with YouTube that very very seldom happened very seldom happened. And there was a time I I mean like when when all the Vsauce channels were were hopping. I don't know how many times somebody would say, "Oh, you know, who do you work with?"

[00:32:51]Whatever. I say, "Well, you know, the VO, oh, what do they do? Who's that?"

[00:32:55]And this is when like Michael was probably in like the top 10 most recognizable faces on the platform.

[00:33:04]You'd know who he was even if you had never watched a video.

[00:33:09]and never planned to but that happened over and over, you know, um that decentralized enduser thing. Two times two times I've had I've had uh really neat experiences. Um I think I mentioned this a very long time ago on on the podcast. Um I bought uh an Italian Carano rifle. This was a standard issue rifle for the Italians in World War II. Um, and I bought one from a place in Kentucky. And the way you bought it at that point is it was sight unseen because they they had them by the crates surplus thing. and you would have to pay extra for like what they would call select where you'd pay an additional $20 and they would give you the best of of the 10 and the great.

[00:34:05]So like you you to not get a shitty one, you had to pay all these upgrade fees, [laughter] whatever. And I'm working [clears throat] out the permit stuff and sending the guy my my, you know, uh, forms and certifications and all that for the background, whatever. And the email address I was using was mattvsauce.com.

[00:34:28]And the guy's like, "Is that the Vsauce?" I'm like, "No, it's the other one." [laughter] Like, like, "Oh, do you know it?" Uh, and he just he was a super fan of you, Michael, and Jake. It was awesome. and he just was going bonkers just riffing on the videos he liked from all three channels and he's like I'm gonna he's like I'm gonna take care of you. I'm gonna take care of you and just I'm going to get you the best one out of the crates.

[00:34:56]>> The one and only perk you've ever gotten [laughter] for I got two.

[00:35:01]>> Oh, you got two. Okay.

[00:35:02]>> Yeah. I don't know if I I told you the other one. Um, [laughter] I was in Las Vegas like a year or two ago and left. Yeah. Oh, by the way, the rifle was fantastic. It It was like collector grade. It was a gem. This guy absolutely gave me a great one. Usually they're all pitted with rust and like need some work. This was just ready to go. It was so nice. Um, but the other I had to file a thing. I left something very valuable in a hotel a hotel room in Las Vegas. And so I was at the security office and I had to fill out, you know, this long form to get them to send somebody to the room and find the item because I couldn't just go up in there.

[00:35:49]I checked out >> checked out and and left this thing. I had to put my email address on that and I used the the Vsauce one and the security guard there was a Vsauce super fan.

[00:35:59]>> Wow. [laughter] >> It was amazing. It was so It was so funny and there was no guarantee that I was going to get this item back. And so I'm sitting there like sweating bullets big time. Uh as as he's fanboying on the Bsauce. Uh I did get it back which was great and it turned into a really nice experience. It was fun. But that sort of thing has happened in the wild a few times.

[00:36:27]It has I I don't know if it's ever happened in an industry setting.

[00:36:35]The only times it's come up in an industry setting are when you are a commercial target. Somebody knows the channel because they have a service that they want to sell to the channel or it's it's that type of arrangement. It's not actual fandom, right?

[00:36:53]>> So, it's happened with the end users. I don't think it's ever happened in the YouTube scene.

[00:37:01]>> Yeah, >> these are anecdotes, but I I don't think they're in.

[00:37:05]>> They add up. Yeah, they add up though to like paint the larger picture that, you know, I'm trying to to paint here. So, one of the other things that I've been thinking about a lot recently, uh, that I think helps illustrate this point of YouTube not being real has to do with Wikipedia.

[00:37:23]Because I don't have a Wikipedia page. There's no there's no Kevin Liieber uh, Wikipedia page.

[00:37:32]>> Do you have a Wiki Feed page?

[00:37:35]>> Uh, I don't think so. If if I do, then it's news to me.

[00:37:39]>> [laughter] >> I don't think so. Um, but that the the the way that Wikipedia works is that you need all of these third-party references uh to fill out a Wikipedia page. So, you have to have um things to point to that that are outside yourself. So, like I there's there's no way for there to be a Kevin Liieber Wikipedia page with a whole bunch of links to Vsauce 2 because that's just a primary source. That's just me.

[00:38:13]>> Yeah.

[00:38:13]>> That doesn't count. Like it would need to be articles from I don't know Wired and Deadline Hollywood and whatever tube filter. I don't know. for there to be links, like outside links that proves the legitimacy of like why there should be a page about this person.

[00:38:40]And that's nearly impossible to do as a YouTuber unless you have all of these like outside experiences, outside jobs, like if you get a job like hosting a TV show or you write a book, like a book would help.

[00:39:03]They could, you know, link to the book that was published. Like you have to go outside of YouTube. Like this is my point again of YouTube not being real.

[00:39:15]You have to leave YouTube to go in these other playgrounds in order to prove that you're real, that you're a person >> that has like some sort of legitimacy.

[00:39:27]And you don't have to do the reverse.

[00:39:30]Like if you are a reality TV star and you are already on TV and then you make appearances on uh Fallon or whatever or uh you know top tier podcasts maybe um you get written about in People magazine or you know even a much lower like rag version of that whatever like the bottom wrong of that is it still counts as counts as you being a real person that people are talking about. I guess a YouTube video about you, a commentary channel ripping you would be an effective source on a Wikipedia article for a non-YouTube person like you know the the accounts that do film TV analysis and and criticism uh you know 20 30 minute video ripping on the boys is just fine just fine as a source on a Wikipedia article for anything regarding the, you know, the boys TV series or Amazon or or anything else. Um, so the stuff on YouTube exists to support the other stuff. The other stuff does not exist to, you know, it's a one-way street is my point.

[00:40:58]>> It's a total one-way street. And yeah, and you can be some bit actor on some show that barely anyone watches, but you have so much more legitimacy than a YouTuber with millions of subscribers and, you know, half a billion views. You have more legitimacy in like the public eye. You're more real than that. like, you know, some like D-list actor has more legitimacy than like Kadicas.

[00:41:33][laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. And I mean, I look up a lot of these people because, you know, that I collect cards from TV shows that were not much of a thing. Uh, Garrison's Gorillas is one I was reading about recently. I I'm really close to completing the Garrison's Gorilla set. The premise of it, this was maybe ' 67, the premise uh was was a lot like Hogan's Heroes where we're assembling a team of 12, you know, military convicts and they can, you know, conduct the missions or, you know, rot in Levvenworth or be put to death or something like that. So, they have no choice and, you know, they're given the the high-risk uh missions, the secret missions. It ran for I don't know like 25 episodes, something like that. And and then TV kind of changed. Uh it if that show had come out a few years prior, it it would have had a really substantial run. Uh but it ran into stuff like The Mod Squad, which was just a a different era of television. Okay.

[00:42:42]Um anyway, Garrison's Gorillas. I collect these cards precisely because they're really low value. Nobody is interested in them. I've never in my life met a person who knows what Garrison's Gorillas is as a TV show.

[00:42:58]>> This has not happened to me once. Nobody has ever heard of it. That's how insignificant it was.

[00:43:02]Um, but it means, you know, I I like I'll load up the article and start clicking on blue names to see what what other things these people were in.

[00:43:16]You could be like Dminus list and if you were a working actor in the 60s on shows that didn't even survive the test of time in their own decade.

[00:43:31]Um, there's a there's a whole write up about you and and a great deal of coverage and references, which is where the Wikipedia articles have to come from. They have to have the references to Sport. There's all sorts of newspaper stuff and magazine stuff from the time and and even um you know things as simple as being in the credits of of a western when you were you know cowboy number 17 in the background is is sufficient to to get a write up.

[00:44:05]Um, you know, I waste time reading those articles constantly.

[00:44:10]And you're right that there's a mechanism to support that. There's not a mechanism to support somebody who who may have an audience of a million loyal people.

[00:44:26]Yeah. Kadicuras is a great example here who just had a video on trending. He it was a very funny tweet because um [laughter] it given his time zone it hit trending while he was asleep. So he wakes up in the morning, hits studio whatever and uh sees that it's number nine on trending. It may have been higher but if it was higher than number nine he slept through it. So he's like well [laughter] you know the best I can confirm while I'm awake is number nine. So this is content that a shocking number of people loved.

[00:45:02]Uh and you know if you if you walk around an industry event saying you know oh you see the the kadicas video like isn't you know he's really doing doing well when a lot of gaming people have faded. You'd have any conversation like this and yeah, they they'd be like, I don't know who that is at all. That's what somebody should do is uh go to the events and just make up channel names and have full conversations with industry people about channels and people that don't exist and see what they say. I bet some of them will bite.

[00:45:51]>> Yeah, there'd be no difference at all.

[00:45:53]So, here's a really funny example of what we're talking about. I have an IMDb page.

[00:46:00]If you if you go to Kevin Liieber IMDb, one of my credits is something called Third String Kicker TV series Government Lab Zombie.

[00:46:15]>> I see that.

[00:46:16]>> Okay.

[00:46:18]What in the hell is this?

[00:46:19]>> I don't know. I don't like I remember [laughter] it's eight. It's eight.

[00:46:30]This is a hit.

[00:46:31]>> Apparently, it was really good. I uh remember one day at the YouTube space in LA, I was asked if I wanted to uh be made up like a zombie.

[00:46:43]>> Okay.

[00:46:44]>> Like get the full zombie makeup. And I was like, "Yes." Uh, it was actually by uh the Stan Winston people who are >> like legitimate legends in Hollywood for um special effects and practical effects. So he was like, "Yeah, the Stan Winston people are here. They're making people into zombies. Do you want to be one?" And I was like, "Yes, I do." Um, and then later in the day, maybe I shuffled around as a zombie for some reason and it was recorded for something called go third string kicker. I don't know what the piece of media is.

[00:47:27]>> Yeah.

[00:47:27]>> But this is one of the four things on my IMDb is some thing I forgot about. Uh, I don't know what it was for. I was most certainly an extra and in the background of and like this is how I get a credit on IMDb.

[00:47:45]>> The best part of your IMDP IMDb page to me is this key of awesome listing because your role on it is dancer and I can [laughter] just picture >> Wait, really? Where is that?

[00:48:00]>> It's right in the middle. Uh Kadicas is on there too. Um, but uh, yeah, dancer. I'm picturing the Jim Downey meme. That's like Kevin Liieber, the famous dancer.

[00:48:12]>> The famous dancer. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:16]>> I know.

[00:48:16]>> Three.

[00:48:17]>> I know what uh uh what Key of Awesome video. It was a parody of Walk Off the Earth's cover of Somebody That I Used to Know.

[00:48:28]>> Okay.

[00:48:28]>> Um, I was and I did not dance in that video. So that's not who am I going to believe you or IMDb and it's it's not you.

[00:48:37]>> I guess yeah pantoiming in a music video. How else are you going to label that as um other than dancer I guess?

[00:48:46]Well actor I would think I don't know but there are >> shows though the mechanism is that that was written about somewhere. It was included somewhere you know. So interestingly uh Sailor Versus it lists that as a TV series. This was the submarine video that you did >> and that was one of four videos uh that the US Navy produced. So there there actually was a series there.

[00:49:11]>> Um but you know the the Navy Comm's PR people sent stuff out about those videos and it was talked about you know somewhere >> and it says the creator of it is Michael Reeves which is >> definitely not true.

[00:49:27]>> He didn't he didn't create that. No.

[00:49:30]>> Uh, and I'm seeing on here too, this is the the sheer eraser eraser uh with Yeah, I I know for a fact who who wrote a couple of these videos, you know, and I'm saying that it was Kevin Liieber on IMDb and I have insider knowledge that [laughter] the writer should be listed with a different name.

[00:49:59]>> [laughter] >> Oh yeah, it it's crazy though that there's a real problem with the the centralized stuff going outward and then the enduserbased uh taking the popular people, the impactful people and then shuffling them inward toward the center. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen.

[00:50:27]Uh, and when it does even happen in the tiniest ways like this, it's not even accurate, right? It's not accurate at all. Mindblow, creator, Kevin Liieber. Yes, absolutely. Sailor V versus creator Michael Reid. I like him a lot. He's cool. He's great. We've we've talked to him on the show, but to my knowledge, he didn't create that series, you know. So you have and famous dancer Kevin Liieber. Um so even when it does begin to happen in a really small way is is that real? No.

[00:51:09]>> Half of this isn't real.

[00:51:10]>> You're right. [laughter] You're right.

[00:51:12]Even when it's real it's fake. Yeah.

[00:51:14]That's crazy. What a good point.

[00:51:17][laughter] >> No. And I this is a larger topic for me because I I feel bad anytime, you know, somebody posts something history related in the in the Discord.

[00:51:31]I'm just like, I hate this. This person is dumb and it's it's it's all fake and wrong. Um which, you know, I'm half right about about that. Not completely right each time. Uh but it's the same problem with lots of historical things where you have really limited knowledge about about what did or didn't happen and you have to make judgment calls at every step, every juncture.

[00:52:02]You have to assign like a reality value to a quote. Uh, and as I've gotten older, um, you know, I there are a lot of things that I don't remember accurately, and I'm they're not traumatic.

[00:52:20]They're not I'm not trying to rewrite the past. It's just been like 30 years in some cases and I don't I don't remember it, right? I just don't you know and so you have to inject that in too where did some Civil War general who wrote his memoirs in 1882 get it right uh about how you know who he talked to uh giving orders in this particular battle and they listened and we had tremendous success or this guy didn't listen and and it failed like you don't know you have to guess you do your past. Uh, it's hard, right?

[00:53:05]And what strikes me the the way it comes to this is that we actually can verify all of these things right now. It's e Kevin, somebody could email you and ask if you were a dancer and you'd reply and say, "No, I don't think I ever danced for money without a poll." [laughter] you know, whatever.

[00:53:31]It's all accessible and it's still not right. So, it has all the foibless and problems of like ancient history [laughter] with all the accessibility o of modern times.

[00:53:45]>> Yeah. Anyone can send me a message in a split second on almost any platform.

[00:53:52]>> Yeah.

[00:53:53]>> Couldn't be easier.

[00:53:55]>> It doesn't happen. [clears throat] But that was that was also one of my points that I wanted to make. And it's also a couple things. First, I wanted to mention like just because you know like Wikipedia is not the beall end all of things. IMDb is not the beall end all of things, but these are emblematic of like a larger discussion. So that's why you have to have examples and I think those are two important examples that illustrate a point. Um, so you know after 15 years or whatever and like all of the videos and you know nearly a billion views, do you know how many podcasts I've been invited on to [sighs] which costs, you know, essentially nothing.

[00:54:42]>> I'm going to say four.

[00:54:43]>> It's an email. Um it the answer uh is the answer of like legitimate invite that I uh accepted is one uh no two two um two >> I think we've together been on on two >> we have what have we been Um, uh, the Gush podcast with Glink and Slush. That was one.

[00:55:22]>> I think we did the first podcast.

[00:55:25]That's the name of it.

[00:55:27]>> This is years ago. I mean, well, then it's not more than five.

[00:55:31]>> These are people we we knew.

[00:55:33]>> Yeah.

[00:55:34]>> You know, >> so does that count? Like those are those are our friends.

[00:55:38]>> Yeah. So, you mean like getting an invitation in your email inbox that you didn't know?

[00:55:44]>> Yeah. From someone who's not a friend, who is legitimately like, "Oh, this is a person with four and a half million subscribers on YouTube who's been doing it for a long time." And uh, you know, they they would be interested uh to talk to.

[00:56:00]Uh, it's for sure less than five, but I think it's less than three.

[00:56:08]>> That I believe. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz when I came up with four, it was factoring in two or three of the ones that we just decided don't really count. [laughter] So, >> yeah. Like, like I've talked to like Kino Corner I've talked to, but like Kino Corner is our friend. Like, >> yeah, that doesn't count. That wasn't a an invite in the wild. No.

[00:56:31]>> Yep.

[00:56:32]>> No.

[00:56:32]>> Yeah. Okay. So, I would revise if it's somebody you didn't know before receiving the invitation, I would have said two.

[00:56:41]>> Yeah. Yeah. I think Yeah. It's like two in like 15 years. [laughter] >> Like, >> yeah.

[00:56:49]>> Do the reason is because YouTube is not real.

[00:56:54]>> That's why like it's just not a thing.

[00:56:57]>> Yeah. People are not clamoring to talk to YouTubers.

[00:57:01]to be to be trying to be fair about it.

[00:57:07]There are a lot of people now who are prominent with who have a real thing going on YouTube or Twitter, you know, any of these sites where they have they have a distinct presence and they, you know, talk about some topic or just they they have a distinct presence, right? There are a lot of them compared to like 2015 when there were not very many. That that was the pioneer era. That was, you know, I think of it like like the sports leagues where, you know, it it's funny reading about really old baseball stuff.

[00:57:54]Uh let's say like 20s and 30s and whatever. um the familiarity that journalists and and also fans had with the people playing baseball and who was on their team especially. They knew all of the players like in the league basically because the league had eight teams.

[00:58:24]it like and you you only played the people in your league. There wasn't interleague play. Uh you know, you were watching, you know, the Socks play the Yankees like 18 21 times a year.

[00:58:38]Uh and so you knew everybody on both teams uh and you knew intimately about their their season. Well, now it's really tough. I see these videos where I don't know if it's bar stool or something like that, but they'll go around the office and ask them trivia questions about sports. The one I saw last night is there's one team in the NFL whose team name, not the city part of the team name, the team like the the mascot name is in alphabetical order.

[00:59:12]>> Okay, >> who is it? You know, and they'll go around ask them. Um I I remember it because it's like the first one that I've actually gotten right. Uh Bills is in alphabetical order.

[00:59:25]>> Yeah.

[00:59:25]>> Yeah. And you know this occurs to me obviously because that's the team that I follow the most closely. So it's the first thing I think of.

[00:59:33]>> Uh but like that's that's the level.

[00:59:36]It's like can you you know another one was with baseball like which five teams don't have a city in their name?

[00:59:46]That's really hard because there are 32 teams. You've got to go division by division and think about it. I got four of them. For some reason, Minnesota Twins didn't didn't click for me. So, I missed that. But now it's like decentralized trivia in a way where in 1927, you know, you could have asked me like, you know, the height of anybody on the Yankees and I would have told you with confidence if I was a fan then, you know, um it's too big now.

[01:00:18]>> It's too big to manage.

[01:00:20]>> And you have like subcommunities like gaming where somebody is going to know both Kadicuras and James >> Rolf.

[01:00:30]uh people know the the famous makeup creators, all that stuff. You you know your niche, right?

[01:00:38]>> But there are so many niches, >> hundreds.

[01:00:43]And that's just in English, >> right?

[01:00:48]>> Yeah.

[01:00:48]>> Right. When we talk about YouTube, when anybody talks about YouTube, you you have to keep in mind that they're only talking about YouTube in their own language.

[01:01:00]It is [laughter] not the same. It is not the same when you're talking about like Hindi YouTube which is huge, massive with so many people in India.

[01:01:13]That's its own world.

[01:01:17]So what do you do? What do you do when there are probably like 30 legitimate uh legitimate meaning of sufficient size language-based YouTube ecosystems and then within those >> well hundreds of niches?

[01:01:37]>> All right, a few things. First of all, I want to be clear that I'm I it's it's hard to talk about this with personal anecdotes without sounding bitter. I'm not bitter.

[01:01:49]>> Like it's fine. Um >> and I can attest to that.

[01:01:54]>> Yeah. Like to pull back the curtain like >> you have never complained about anything ever. The only things you've ever complained about are like individual issues, individual things, not which are to you're totally right to to be like, "Oh, well, this is a pain.

[01:02:17]This one thing is a pain, but you're never like, oh, I I really should have been, you know, I I I should have a beach house on the Riviera."

[01:02:29]>> Yeah. Yeah. Why aren't I as famous as Tom Holland? It's not fair. Like, yeah, that's not a thing.

[01:02:36]>> Don't put any any energy into that.

[01:02:39]>> Um, >> but I am interested in this overall phenomenon of YouTube being [clears throat] kind of invisible. Uh uh another example, another personal anecdote example is um when I've told people in real life that I know that I have been writing a book, their eyes light up.

[01:03:03]It's like a book.

[01:03:05]>> Yeah.

[01:03:05]>> That's the most incredible thing I could possibly imagine you ever doing, Kevin.

[01:03:11]uh where as opposed to running an extremely successful YouTube channel for you know the better part of uh almost 15 years. It's like I don't know what that means.

[01:03:24]>> Yeah.

[01:03:25]>> And and that was another thing where in like 2015 I was like all right by 2020 everyone will know what that means. And it never happened. It [snorts] it just hasn't happened. It's still nobody knows what that means. I don't understand views. I don't understand subscribers.

[01:03:41]Um, you know, I go to YouTube just to occasionally watch like a funny clip of something or to look up a recipe and that's that's it. That's what I understand uh YouTube as being.

[01:03:56]I forgot the other thing what I was going to say. So, I will go into potentially Oh, yes. to answer your question, all those territories have their own hubs uh within YouTube.

[01:04:09]>> So like there is a hub for you know Japan and India and there's a hub for uh in Germany and there's a hub for South America and Brazil and so all of those hubs can take care of their hubs. uh in my ideal world of having some kind of solution to this problem which would be YouTube to actually caring about their creators. [laughter] [sighs] What does that mean? Um it means a few things. First of all, there have been like awards, okay, for online media that no one cares about. So like >> correct >> the Webbies, the Streamies, >> the like hearties or there was something else. Loveies or something like that.

[01:04:58]The loveydoveies, I don't know. There have been like a few. They're meaningless. Like no one recognizes them. Nobody cares. I I do not know. For example, if that's the type of thing that gets referenced in a Wikipedia page. May maybe it does.

[01:05:15]>> I'm sure. Yeah. I you think so? Okay.

[01:05:17]>> Yeah.

[01:05:18]>> But overall, um it's it's like largely unrecognized and inconsequential.

[01:05:26]And I thought about awards in general.

[01:05:28]Uh I think it's interesting to think about how like largely also laughed at the SPS are in sports.

[01:05:37]>> Now, I wanted to use that as an example of like this is actually really hard to do. It is really hard to create an awards ceremony and have people take it legitimately and like to take it seriously like as it actually is an impressive thing to win and to be lauded for. Um, in sports this does not happen outside of Hall of Fames. Hall of Fames are 100% recognized as being important. Yes, >> people take them really seriously. The football hall of fame and the baseball hall of fames, I think, specifically are really widely respected and talked about even for people who like kind of don't care that much. They get invested in who gets elected in those things. And there's you're dealing with and I know that the scale is still so much bigger, but the scale is pretty big in football and baseball. I mean, it's thousands of people that you're whittling down to like three in baseball, maybe, >> right?

[01:06:51]>> Sometimes less.

[01:06:53]>> Yeah. before they, you know, I don't know if you remember the different eras of of uh election that the Baseball Hall of Fame had.

[01:07:03]>> Not really.

[01:07:04]>> Like >> it used to be pretty straightforward where it's like who's eligible now? To be eligible, you have to be out of the game for five years. That that's one of the things. Um and and now there's uh you know they had the veterans committee to look back at at older overlooked players at the time that sort of thing. Now it's done by a rotating system of eras. Uh so it's sort of like a breakdown of veterans committee. you know, it's more complex and so you have more people coming in whereas like in the 80s and early 90s uh little peak into into the local economy, way tourism dollars function, it really mattered who was up for election, whether it was going to be a big year for the induction ceremonies and therefore the town as a whole.

[01:08:04]And there were years where it's like, oh man, [laughter] there are people worth going into the Hall of Fame, but they're not going to bring a big crowd or they're from a place that it's not easy to travel here [snorts] as opposed to a really big New York player.

[01:08:27]Well, yeah, it's really easy to get from New York to the Hall of Fame. You know, it's a it's a day trip if you want it to be.

[01:08:34]you know, and popular player, big year, boom. Um, yeah. So, you'd sink or swim based on the whims of time. It's not like they coordinated their retirements or whether they were first ballot or a few down the ballot, you know, a few years down the ballot. Um, but it's a significant longstanding like you're looking at decades of thousands of people and their relative contributions to each other compared to each relative to each other to other people in their era. You know, it's it's very complex. I don't know how you do anything meaningful for YouTube other than I don't know. I don't know what what the markers would be. So like in baseball at one point 300 wins automatic in as a pitcher.

[01:09:38]500 home runs automatic in. 3,000 hits automatic in.

[01:09:45]Uh, what would be an automatic in for a YouTuber?

[01:09:52]A billion views. I don't know.

[01:09:54]>> Billion views would be an automatic.

[01:09:56]>> Definitely a billion views should be an automatic in. But you're right. It it it is hard. I'm not saying that there's an easy answer to this, but I'm saying that I I think it's something that they should consider. Uh or or or not, or they just don't care. And maybe that's the answer.

[01:10:12]And I think that is the answer. That's it certainly seems to be the answer is that like it doesn't matter. We don't care. Uh people are going to just upload any you know no matter what we do. Let's just make sure they do that and um we're done trying to compete with Hollywood.

[01:10:30]Uh because it's a you know it's a losing battle.

[01:10:34]Um, I don't think that they ever I think that they tried like one or two things to do. So, they failed and then they just like took their ball and went home and they gave up after that, which I find depressing.

[01:10:48]>> It is. It is depressing. And I don't think that their attitude is we're going to wait for things to settle out a bit so we can understand it better and then make a really good effort. I think it's just they they don't care at all.

[01:11:01]>> Um, >> no. But I I I wanted to say something about your wrong prediction in 2015.

[01:11:09]Okay.

[01:11:11]That entire prediction rested on the assumption that traditional media would continue to be as it was. And by the time your prediction broke down, media had broken down and been altered in a shocking shocking way with what happened on network TV with the sorts of shows I mean really like shows like The Office that was the last time there was that nationwide everybody watches this show feel with network TV stuff the way you've talked in the past about Cheers or Seinfeld or Friends or Frraasier.

[01:12:01]Oddly, [laughter] it turned out to be uh so big that the other day you showed me currently produced Frasier trading cards. [laughter] >> Yeah, I just thought that was funny.

[01:12:11]Like >> who's blowing their paycheck on Frasier cards?

[01:12:16]>> Well, I'd do it if they were cheap, >> but they're like 150 a box. So the office I wanted to look at the dates.

[01:12:23]>> The fi the final episode was 2013.

[01:12:27]>> Yeah.

[01:12:27]>> So it was done by the time uh you know social media was going like this.

[01:12:32]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[01:12:35]Now there's not dominance in print media with uh there used to be like heavy hitters, New York Times, Washington Post, um some regional semiational heavy hitters, Chicago Sun Times, etc. Uh LA Times was on that heavy hitter list where it's like this is the gold standard and everything else doesn't matter nearly as much. Well, now that's not the case. Now, a lot of stuff matters, way more than it used to. And if it comes out in the New York Times right now, it's not automatically uh accepted as being a huge thing that matters. It's not a blockbuster thing the way it was 15 years ago. Um so that has diluted completely. Uh people used to get the paper, a paper, and read it each day. That paper, that one paper.

[01:13:31]Nobody does that now.

[01:13:34]I used to do it with ESPN on sports.

[01:13:36]That was my homepage where I'd wake up and as I was, you know, becoming sentient, I would recap all the sports stuff. Well, now I don't. I I go to Google News and I read a bunch of different things from a million different outlets. It's all over the place. Does this interest me or not?

[01:13:55]It's not what is this outlet, you know, writing about. Um [sighs and gasps] the streaming services have diluted as well. 10 years ago it really was like do you have Netflix or not? Like actually I have Netflix and Hulu because I'm a super user.

[01:14:18][laughter] >> Dude, I got to watch all those carry adaptations. I had to get MGM [clears throat] Plus. Have you ever looked at MGM Plus? I got I could bundle it with Acorn, which is a sort of semi-niche British one that I already subscribed to. So, it was like $3 more to to bundle with MGM Plus.

[01:14:37]>> Well, opening MGM Plus to me, it was like, you know, in a movie where you like walk into the wrong saloon and everyone like turns around and it's like, "What are you doing here?"

[01:14:46][laughter] That's how I felt opening MGM Plus. All of the shows I'd never heard of, they're all staring at me and they're like, "What are you doing here?" And I'm like, I don't know. I should probably leave.

[01:14:57]>> Well, you were saying in 2015 that in five years the YouTube people are going to be part of this landscape. And what happened is that landscape completely changed completely changed of of independent of YouTube.

[01:15:17]>> I don't know what it would even mean. I don't know how your prediction could have become true with the general media changes.

[01:15:30]I I don't know what it would have looked like. Um, you know, maybe there would have been some big opportunities for a couple years. I don't know.

[01:15:39]But it's not like somebody was going to have a really good YouTube channel that then was like a serious uh series on CBS.

[01:15:52]Yeah. I guess it's just odd to me and maybe um I'm wrong about this and I just don't watch like morning shows, you know, which I don't like Good Morning America or Today's Show or whatever.

[01:16:04]>> Yeah. But to me, it seems as though those types of shows can have like like the fifth housewife on the real housewives of, you know, Tallahassee or whatever on that show and everyone's like, "Oh my god, I can't believe like, you know, this is so much fun. We're g." But meanwhile, they would never have uh, you know, someone that has like a billion views on YouTube. Like there's just there's this gulf [snorts] between those worlds with no bridge.

[01:16:41]>> No, probably the only the only person they could have that would be recognizable in the way a movie star would have been on the Tonight Show, you know, 30 years ago. Even if you didn't watch their movies or like them, you knew who the famous romcom people were.

[01:17:01]You know, the only guest you could have on like that is probably Mr. Beast.

[01:17:06]>> Mr. Beast. Yeah. Right.

[01:17:08]>> Um the um Oh, >> or people who started on YouTube like the Paul brothers but then got >> Yeah.

[01:17:19]>> they crossed that bridge into that world with whatever boxing and like whatever that they do. like they really kind of crossed that bridge into where those types of people live. They got kind of out of the YouTube pool. That's what I was thinking this morning. It was like YouTube is like a pool. You're either in the pool or you're not in the pool and there's nothing in between.

[01:17:45]There's no like halfway in the pool. You can't just dangle your feet in the water. Like you're either in the water or you're out of the water.

[01:17:54]>> Yeah. It's It's oddly self-contained, despite being the craziest diaspora possible. [laughter] >> Yeah. Despite being so massive, it's unfathomable.

[01:18:06]>> Yeah.

[01:18:08]>> Oh, a good point here. I'm going to pull one of the names out of out of here. Uh Charles Kh says, "Cat Denning, Justin Bieber, Donald Glover." Justin Bieber is a an incredible example of YouTube to >> He got out of the pool with YouTube. He got out of the pool.

[01:18:26]>> But Justin Bieber again, it's Jim Downey, the YouTuber.

[01:18:30]>> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.

[01:18:33]>> Yeah. There are many people who got out of the pool and you can get out of the pool, but not many have successfully.

[01:18:40]and others have and it did went really, you know, poorly >> pretty much. I I think a lot of them have uh I I don't know. I mean, any any kind of success is still success, right? But, uh, you don't you don't go on a show or be in a movie or something as a a middling in a middling role and have a million people love you the way a million subscribers are actually interested in what you're doing video by video. And and maybe depending on your channel, they're interested in you as a person. You know, I know that's not what like the Vsauce channels, that was never an element of it. you know, there, you know, your personal stories and lives were not part of the content that you made. Um, but people look forward, what's he working on now? What's he, you know, he doing now? Coffee Break is doing this exceptionally well now where it's like, what's the thing that he's going after? What's the next project?

[01:19:44]Um, you don't have that when when you're cowboy 17. You may have a paycheck uh and you may pay all your bills just fine and that's cool, but it's not the same thing.

[01:20:00]>> There's another really weird thing that I haven't brought up that's important in this discussion, which is that if you're a YouTuber who gets to a certain level where traditional media would pay attention to you, they can't afford you.

[01:20:18]>> Oh, that's true.

[01:20:18]>> They cannot afford you. Like Marquez Brownley will never ever ever ever ever make the money that he makes on his YouTube channel with a TV show on, you know, the Sci-Fi network or something reviewing tech would never.

[01:20:42]>> This is a problem for us.

[01:20:44]>> Yes, >> this is a tremendous problem for us.

[01:20:46]When we were talking about TV shows, there there were a couple rounds of this where we had like full seasons outlined >> of shows in in detail.

[01:20:59]>> And you look at the numbers and it's like this has to be a passion project >> because the amount of effort it would take to do this is insane compared to uh applying that effort just on the YouTube channel with videos. And what you'd get out of that, you would have to want to say, "No, I want to do this TV show for these reasons and sacrifice all the economics of it on the other side."

[01:21:31]You know that that's a really good point is that there's a a crazy mismatch between the economics of the two systems and it makes it impossible for uh for the YouTube ones to go to the traditional media. It made it comical when it was the other way because they were funding these uh you know let's give Liza Koshi $73 million to make a YouTube channel.

[01:22:03]They funded it the same way the TV stuff would be funded.

[01:22:08]But yeah, it doesn't work the other way.

[01:22:10][laughter] There's a mismatch completely.

[01:22:14]>> Yeah. No, there's a ton of money in TV.

[01:22:17]if you get to like season three at least, uh, is is what I remember from talking to production people is like if for some miracle your pilot gets green lit and it gets picked up and then some miracle after that is you actually make a full season of the show and then some miracle after that you make a second season of the show. you're still on that first like poultry garbage contract for season two and then if somehow they order a third season then you can renegot then it's a hit show.

[01:23:00]>> Now you have a real show that they want more of. It's like official and then you can renegotiate your contract and all of a sudden you're making real money. But until then, it's like I really might as well bag groceries for what I'm making on this TV show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:23:21]>> The minimum wage hourly is better than what you would put in on the early early bits on the TV show.

[01:23:28]>> And there's no headache with, you know, with working the BK window.

[01:23:33]>> [snorts] >> Uh there's this is you know not something that we would go into as a a topic. It's a different topic completely. But when you switch to the TV style things you run into a bunch of rules that you don't don't have with YouTube like uh union rules.

[01:23:57]>> Oh.

[01:23:58]>> With how things are made. Mhm.

[01:24:00]>> You can't just do it yourself like you do on YouTube. And if you, you know, you don't get to set the rates for a lot of things. You don't get to contract out to whoever you want and whoever you trust.

[01:24:15]You're in a system that is completely independent of how it's ever operated for you on YouTube, >> dude. licensing photos, licensing video, licensing music. Totally different ballgame on TV than it is on YouTube.

[01:24:32]>> They're really incompatible systems.

[01:24:35]They're completely incompatible systems, >> you know, and I think that is a big part of why uh the the YouTube style and the people who were succeeding at YouTube did not cross over as you thought they would, not because it had anything to do with them or their content being viable on those platforms, but the actual making of it and the systems that clashed there. It is not a system conducive to any of this stuff. You know, when I'm I'm sort of vaguely remembering the discussing the TV show ideas and I mean I had I had meetings with in [clears throat] in Japan, you remember >> uh I I you know did three four meetings with TV channels worldwide.

[01:25:30]>> [laughter] >> It's even worse. It's even worse in some countries that have even more rigidly defined network systems. Um, you know, one with with Australia and I I went to Australia years ago and you know, was talking to people um uh about about a show starring the great dancer Kevin Liieber.

[01:25:59]And one of the elements was, well, we can do this, but it was either 50 or 75% of of the people involved in the show have to be have to be Australian citizens. Mhm.

[01:26:21]And I was like, well, it's it's great if they're a fit, but like we know people to fulfill several of these roles that do great work honestly better than what I'm seeing from your people by a mile. Uh it's more cost effective.

[01:26:40]uh just there were hundred reasons why it would have been a tremendous liability to have you know twothirds of the people involved in a show uh having to fall under an arbitrary umbrella considering you know the content of the show. Um but that was just this is this is a rule with this network. This is what we do. It's like yeah this is not worth it. This is not worth the time and the trouble and the result is going to stink.

[01:27:12]>> Yeah.

[01:27:14]>> Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't work.

[01:27:16]>> It does not fit. The systems clash. The systems are antiquated and bad on the traditional side. They're really efficient and good on the YouTube side.

[01:27:28]The numbers are better on the YouTube side. I mean, >> well, when you hit a certain level, they're better. Yeah.

[01:27:36]>> I don't know. I don't think you have to hit a very high level anymore I to to ek out let's say a $50,000 a year living which is not amazing. It's not like it's not epic levels of salary but it's like can you pay your phone bill without worrying? Yes, you can do that if you live really modestly. I don't you know you don't have to have like a million sub channel to do that anymore.

[01:28:03]>> No, but you can make more money than that with a lot less work. on TV depending on the gig. I mean, it's just it's possible. I'm just saying. You could be like the host of something and get, you know, shoot a few episodes over the course of like three days and get paid, you know, 80 grand to do that.

[01:28:21]>> And to do that, you have to live in a certain area.

[01:28:26]You have to be >> Yeah. There are trade-offs >> connected to those opportunities. There are very, very few of them.

[01:28:32]>> Very few of them. Yeah. and a lot of people a lot of people competing for those few opportunities >> as opposed to YouTube. You decide what >> the whole thing is going to be. Do I want to do this? Yes or no?

[01:28:44]>> And and then you do it and see if people like it.

[01:28:46]>> Well, and that's another thing that I wanted to mention that uh [sighs] is another interesting thing maybe to people. It's interesting to me at least is that uh the people who hire people for like a commercial or to host some show or whatever, they want to hire people who they can brag to their friends that they're working with.

[01:29:08]That's never a YouTuber. That's never ever ever ever a YouTuber. So, like for instance, I was up for a um Colgate Colgate some toothpaste commercial. Uh I don't remember if it was Colgate or Aquaresh or whatever.

[01:29:28]>> I don't remember this at all.

[01:29:29]>> This was years ago.

[01:29:31]I was up for some, you know, Johnson and Johnson's Colgate, whatever. Big deal. A big deal commercial. And I lost, you know who I lost the gig to?

[01:29:44]You don't because I guess you don't know this. Alton Brown. I lost the gig to Alton Brown >> because >> at least you lost to a baller.

[01:29:54]>> Yeah. Like why wouldn't you choose [laughter] Alton Brown over Kevin Lever?

[01:29:58]Like >> I would I would choose Alton Brown over you.

[01:30:00]>> Yeah. [laughter] I would choose Alton Brown over me. Yeah. Like Good Eats was a great show.

[01:30:05]>> Yeah.

[01:30:06]>> Um I'm losing that battle 10 out of 10 times.

[01:30:10]>> Yeah.

[01:30:11]>> Yeah. And that's also just part of this is that yeah, the YouTubers are always always always have and always will lose the battle to Alton Browns, which Alton Brown is not, >> you know, Tom Cruz.

[01:30:26]>> Yeah.

[01:30:27]>> But he's Tom Cruz compared to Kevin Liieber. Kevin Liieber is nobody is like literally no one knows who that is at all >> except my agent who's like I got this guy and he does science videos on YouTube and people like them he'd be good for this toothpaste thing.

[01:30:44]>> That's it. [clears throat] And then everybody else receiving that information is like they throw up in their mouth and then they like frantically look for Neil Degrass Tyson or Alton Brown instead because they know who that is.

[01:30:57]Um, there's one last thing I want to say about this topic, which is, and I I would love people's comments on this because I want to know what they think, but at the more I think about like the even the idea of YouTube having their own SPS or like, you know, uh, the video game awards have their own game awards, which like people watch and talk about.

[01:31:20]>> Yeah.

[01:31:22]is that everyone think would think it was cringy and lame and that even being a part of it uh would not be this like pro- football hall of fame Canton gold jacket proud moment. It would be like literally everyone on the internet making fun of you >> like walking up on stage like accepting your YouTube award.

[01:31:48]>> Yeah.

[01:31:48]>> Right. Am I right about that?

[01:31:50]it would get ripped because >> ripped >> generally.

[01:31:56]So if you're really popular in your niche or, you know, with a big subbase, those people like you and think you matter and they respect you and then the entire rest of the world thinks you're a loser.

[01:32:09]>> A loser. Yeah. Right. in a way that that like uh okay, your favorite player is uh Terrell Owens and uh you don't really like Larry Fitzgerald, but you completely respect Larry Fitzgerald. You don't think he's a loser, you just hate the Arizona Cardinals, so you hate Larry Fitzgerald because he beat your team for a decade, but you're like, "Okay, Larry Fitzgerald was amazing." That would not be the same thing on YouTube. You'd be like, "Who is this? They make the stupidest videos ever and anyone who watches them is a bum and a [ __ ] >> People don't value what happens outside of their niche. I don't I like >> No one does.

[01:32:54]>> No one does.

[01:32:54]>> No one does.

[01:32:55]>> No one does.

[01:32:56]>> There's not a single person who would.

[01:32:58]>> It's beyond not caring. It's I think this person sucks and I think their content shouldn't exist. [laughter] Most of the time I think they and their content is is a ne negative on society.

[01:33:13][laughter] It's it's not just like, "Wow, that's really impressive." Uh, you know, that this this like makeup person got a billion views on tutorials. Like on some level, I'd respect that. be like, "Oh, that's only because I know what it takes to make videos." And I, [laughter] you know, and like I have the personal experience where I'm like, "God damn, they spent three years. They had to put their their dumb face on camera a lot of times when they didn't want to and they had to look good because they were in makeup and beauty. Like, this is hard."

[01:33:49]Like, they really sacrificed and I respect them for that. At the same time, I don't care. It [clears throat] doesn't matter to me, you know, if I'm just like the average YouTube user, >> I don't go through that thought process of like >> I respect the grind, [laughter] you know, like I'm positioned to respect the grind.

[01:34:11]Nobody else really really bothers with with any of that, you know. Um, I [laughter] this is off topic, but I decided to do something on Sunday or Monday, I forget which that I've I've never done. This is big personal growth for me. I'm going to overshare like Meatloaf. Like this is what we talked about in the pre-cast was Meatloaf being really wearing his heart on his puffy sleeve. Puffy frilly sleeve. Um, >> you emptied your piss drawer.

[01:34:48]>> I emptied the piss. [laughter] >> So, I basically listen to like the same 70 songs all the time and have for years.

[01:34:59]I didn't I didn't I did like YouTube Explorer, YouTube Music Explorer.

[01:35:06]And, you know, it started based on on songs I liked.

[01:35:13]It is cursed. the suggestions. My feed is ruined and cursed.

[01:35:19]It it I bring it up because a couple songs in, what do I get? I get a track from the 20th anniversary release of Silverchair's album. [laughter] >> Yeah.

[01:35:32]>> Which I I've never listened to a Silver Chair song, [laughter] >> but since you talked about it last week, that was one of those like YouTube and China are listening to everything. I I think >> they are listening. Yeah.

[01:35:45]>> But the next one was the theme from Lone Wolf Mccade.

[01:35:50]>> Oh wow.

[01:35:51]>> Or McUade.

[01:35:53]>> Wow.

[01:35:53]>> Which is the Chuck Norris film that >> I don't know if you ever watched it but was the inspiration for Walker Texas Ranger.

[01:36:02]>> Yeah.

[01:36:02]>> I've never listened to that >> that movie theme but that's what it thinks of me. It thinks that I want to listen to Silverchair and the theme from Lone Wolf McUade. [clears throat] I thought I there's no there's there's no working with this.

[01:36:18]Like it's it's going to take too much effort to refine this this cursed vision of my tastes.

[01:36:27]>> Um Charles Khan mentioned that uh the Critical Role team's cartoons are on Amazon Prime. So, uh, that's an example of someone who got got out of the pool. You can get out of the pool. It's hard getting out of the pool, though.

[01:36:44]>> But once you're again out of the pool, there's no crossover. It's like, you know, now you're out of the pool and you're in the out of the pool gang, they don't really care about your pool. Um the the the I guess the only devil's advocate to that is that I [snorts] have heard a lot of complaints actually about actors needing to have a huge social media following in order to get hired for gigs.

[01:37:13]>> Oh. which is a newish phenomenon where they're like literally looking at your Instagram to see how many people follow you in order to hire you on some Netflix show or whatever.

[01:37:28]>> Is that why I'm not not getting hired because >> I think that's the only reason.

[01:37:33][laughter] >> Yeah.

[01:37:34]>> You know, I was up for a hosting hosting gig before we started talking.

[01:37:39]Did you know this? Did I ever tell you this?

[01:37:41]>> No. No.

[01:37:42]>> This must be almost 20 years ago.

[01:37:44]at this point uh which I had lustrous hair like Fabio back then. I had all sorts of things like every single one of my teeth.

[01:37:59]Life was very different 20 years ago. Um I So I was like medium lististed. What's is there What's the list between the long list and the short list?

[01:38:11]>> Oh, I don't know. the midlist.

[01:38:13]>> The mid I was I was midlisted and yeah, I was midlisted and discarded because I was overweight and back then I weighed like 168 pounds.

[01:38:30]>> Oh wow.

[01:38:32]>> I I wasn't a ripped Adonis, [laughter] you know. I'm not pretending like I was.

[01:38:38]Uh, but it's not like I was um, you know, what is it? Carl from Aquatine.

[01:38:44]>> Oh, yeah.

[01:38:46]>> Yeah, that wasn't the case. Uh, but that was like, yeah, this is going to work.

[01:38:50]They filmed the pilot with somebody who was a contestant on like some mid-range contestant on one of the Survivor series or something like that. The pilot never got picked up, so I didn't miss out. But that was a that was a wakeup call where it's like, "Oh, I life is pretty good.

[01:39:10]Uh, I'm glad to be in this conversation."

[01:39:14]But yeah, it was like, "No, you you're you're a fat idiot."

[01:39:17]>> Yeah. You're not invited to Harvey Weinstein's [laughter] hotel room.

[01:39:24]>> Kicked off the casting couch.

[01:39:26]>> You're an obese disgrace with your BMI at 23.

[01:39:30]>> Mhm. [laughter] Yeah.

[01:39:31]>> Like, pig. I guess what I'll do is is hide in a corner and and work on on scripts forever, >> right? Like some sort of Yeah. Gargoyle >> Quasimoto [laughter] Gollum Smeaggle [laughter] and your lake in the cave, the bottom of a cave in the dark just eating fish raw.

[01:40:01]Um, all right. Uh, no more no more of this. Um, [laughter] YouTube is fake.

[01:40:07]That's the that's the takeaway. Uh, but welcome to uh read your comments if if anybody has any rebuttals. Open to them.

[01:40:15]Open shotgun blast my theory at your leisure. Um, all right. We're out of here. We'll be back next week. until.