0:00:00You have a lot of AA batteries.
0:00:02Uhh...
0:00:04Oh. Have you been spying on me, Myke?
0:00:06I was like, how does Myke know that?
0:00:07I wouldn't say I've been spying on you. I have been rummaging through the drawers in your apartment, yes.
0:00:11Oh! I don't like that at all. You're not supposed to do that.
0:00:14Hey look, sometimes a friend needs a smoke alarm changed.
0:00:18You know what I'm saying? And you gotta help him out.
0:00:20Oh, is the smoke alarm beeping when you checked on my apartment?
0:00:23Yeah, so my wife and I went and checked in on your abode.
0:00:26abode and it was just very funny to me. I was doing DIY in your house. I was just sorting
0:00:31some stuff out for you. Thank you. I was like, oh this is beeping, which I'm sure is driving
0:00:35your neighbour insane at this point, because who knows how long that's been going on for.
0:00:41Because I could hear it in the hallway. Oh, oh god, oh no, we've made some enemies then
0:00:46I guess. Yeah, so I was like, oh, smoke alarm! But it's like first it's like, alright, get
0:00:52in a cabinet, turn on the water.
0:00:54So we could turn all the taps and then like,
0:00:56all right, now surely there's a step ladder
0:00:58in here somewhere, 'cause I'm not gonna stand on any chairs
0:01:01'cause I'll only break the chairs.
0:01:03So I found the step ladder.
0:01:04It was in the first place I looked,
0:01:06so I enjoyed the logic in that.
0:01:07Whoever decided to put it in the Coke cabinet,
0:01:09it's perfect, grabbed it, got it.
0:01:11- Yep, that would be my wife.
0:01:12She's in charge of the entire house inventory.
0:01:14- I couldn't work out how to get the smoke alarm
0:01:16off the ceiling, so I had to Google
0:01:19for an instruction manual.
0:01:20(laughing)
0:01:21Because it was one of these ones, I mean you probably know this, it's like attached to a plate and the plate is screwed into the ceiling
0:01:28so there's like a specific way to get it off the plate.
0:01:31Yeah it's like a funny combination lock that you need to do. It's like oh two turns left and one turn right.
0:01:36Yeah and then like pressing the tab when the moon strikes at the right moment and you can get the thing down.
0:01:42And then lots of batteries, you have lots of batteries.
0:01:45Yes. Well, yes.
0:01:47Yeah.
0:01:47That was a disagreement between the wife inventory management system and the
0:01:52husband inventory management system about we need some new batteries and whether
0:01:57or not the old batteries were too old or whether weren't.
0:02:00Okay.
0:02:01A long story short, we ended up with a lot of batteries and mixed up the colors
0:02:04and we don't know which ones are the new ones and which ones are the old ones.
0:02:08So everyone has ended up unhappy.
0:02:10So maybe the smoke alarm's dead already. Cause I don't know what,
0:02:13I just got batteries and put them in there, you know?
0:02:16I don't know how old they are.
0:02:17- Yeah, so if you put the white batteries in,
0:02:20my guess is those are the old batteries.
0:02:22If you put the black batteries in,
0:02:23my guess is those are the new batteries,
0:02:25but it's not 100% sure.
0:02:27There's also sparkle batteries.
0:02:29Well, thank you for checking up on my apartment.
0:02:31It sounds like you might have to do this again.
0:02:33I also especially appreciated it
0:02:34because there's nothing you like getting more
0:02:37when you're going on a long vacation
0:02:39than while you are at the airport,
0:02:42a notification from your bank that they have decided
0:02:46to reissue all of your cards for no reason.
0:02:50- You had more mail than I've ever seen anyone get.
0:02:54There was so much mail.
0:02:55It was astounding.
0:02:57It was like in movies.
0:02:59You know, you can see it in a movie
0:03:01where someone like can't open the door.
0:03:03It was like that.
0:03:04It was so much mail.
0:03:05And then so I think Adina just like collected up
0:03:07a bunch of it.
0:03:08And then that started a whole thing of how on earth
0:03:11to get male courier to Hawaii was like,
0:03:15that was like a whole project.
0:03:16It took her the best part of a week to work that one out.
0:03:19- I can't even believe I'm getting started on this already.
0:03:21You've hit upon one of my great Hawaii pain points.
0:03:24- This whole episode is this.
0:03:26I mean, I have like 6,000 points of Hawaii follow up
0:03:29to get through anyway.
0:03:30So we might as well start with this one.
0:03:32- Okay, let me just,
0:03:33there's a lot of small frustrations in life.
0:03:36And one of them for me is, hey, I'm in Hawaii.
0:03:40You know what I would like?
0:03:41I would like packages.
0:03:43How can those packages get to me?
0:03:45Not easily.
0:03:47Because, okay, so here's the situation.
0:03:49I was like, okay, Amazon, let's make a deal.
0:03:53I'm gonna buy something and you're gonna send it to me.
0:03:55Great, everybody's happy.
0:03:57No.
0:03:58So if you want something sent to you,
0:04:00there's a simple piece of information
0:04:02that you need to know.
0:04:03What's the mailing address?
0:04:06Now, before I go any further,
0:04:10just so people can get some sense
0:04:12of what I'm dealing with here.
0:04:13Some of the addresses,
0:04:15including addresses that I'm involved with,
0:04:18include things like, "Take a left at the big tree."
0:04:23That's what you write on the envelope.
0:04:25- No, you're (beep) me, that's not true.
0:04:28- I am not.
0:04:30I 100% am not.
0:04:32- You swear. - I swear to you.
0:04:34- Like if someone was gonna mail you a letter,
0:04:36they would write on the envelope,
0:04:38"Take a left at the big tree."
0:04:39Where I currently am, no.
0:04:42But this is what addresses are like around here.
0:04:46- Okay. - So this is like,
0:04:47you need you to understand the baseline.
0:04:49I have sent envelopes where I write,
0:04:52"Take a left at the big tree on them."
0:04:55And that's how the mail gets to them.
0:04:56- Do you just throw it out the window
0:04:57when you write mail like that?
0:04:59Like, you just write, and then you just hope
0:05:01a bird comes and gets it?
0:05:02Like, how does that work out?
0:05:05You sound like you're in a Miyazaki movie right now,
0:05:07is what I'm saying.
0:05:08Like this is what I'm imagining for you.
0:05:10- Well, yeah, I mean, yeah,
0:05:10'cause you write it on the envelope
0:05:12and then you hand it to a hermit crab
0:05:13and the hermit crab scuttles off with the letter
0:05:15and follows the instructions
0:05:16on how to get it to where it needs to go.
0:05:18So this is, again, like there's so much,
0:05:22I don't even know where to start.
0:05:23I feel like every time I try to talk about this,
0:05:25I'm just exploding with all kinds of details
0:05:28because no one here ever sees any of this as a problem.
0:05:31And I'm like, I'm the crazy person,
0:05:33but I'm not the crazy person because listen,
0:05:35here's the basic problem.
0:05:37The United States Post Office and private carriers in rural areas are often not friends with each other.
0:05:47And they don't work with each other.
0:05:48And so here's the issue.
0:05:50If someone is sending you a package, if they don't use the mail...
0:05:55All right, let me phrase it this way.
0:05:56Okay.
0:05:57Let me, let me, what's the best way to start this?
0:05:59Okay.
0:06:00Someone wants to send you a package.
0:06:02Like it should be so simple.
0:06:06- It should be so simple. - I just need you to understand.
0:06:08That point where you said, "Hell is best,"
0:06:10that's all staying in, man.
0:06:12I mean, come on.
0:06:13This is too good as it is.
0:06:15You're just tying yourselves in knots,
0:06:17just trying to understand how do you send a package
0:06:20to someone?
0:06:21- Okay, okay, so, all right, all right, all right, all right.
0:06:24So in rural, okay.
0:06:26(laughing)
0:06:27In rural areas, the deal is often everybody gets a PO box
0:06:33Because in rural areas, basically it's like the post office doesn't have adequate funding
0:06:39to actually send a mailman to the four corners of the earth with how spread out everybody
0:06:45is in a rural environment.
0:06:47Just the amount of time to actually deliver the mail is crazy.
0:06:51And so the US federal mail is like, "LOL, nope, you're coming to us.
0:06:56We're not delivering the mail to you.
0:06:57That's logistically impossible.
0:06:59So you have to come to the post office."
0:07:01But here's the thing.
0:07:02What the post office doesn't accept is packages from private carriers.
0:07:08So if someone uses UPS or FedEx or any of these various things, they can't send it to
0:07:15your PO box.
0:07:17So the basic situation is the US mail will not deliver to your house.
0:07:24Private carriers will deliver to your house if you give them adequate instructions as
0:07:28as to where that house is,
0:07:30but they won't deliver to your PO box.
0:07:33Now, everyone seems to be like,
0:07:35yeah, that's quite reasonable.
0:07:37But my position is, you don't know
0:07:39what the person sending you the thing is using.
0:07:43Like you don't know.
0:07:45It's impossible for you to know.
0:07:46And especially for you, Myke, trying to send me something,
0:07:49you yourself don't even know what the hell's gonna happen
0:07:53on the other end when you send something.
0:07:54Well the bigger problem for us is, lots of carriers will not send to PO Boxes.
0:08:01They won't do it.
0:08:02So we had to use FedEx, which would have been my preferred one anyway, but it cost a hundred
0:08:08pounds to send.
0:08:12I didn't know that.
0:08:13I'm so sorry.
0:08:14Because they were the only ones that would do it.
0:08:16Nobody else would take it.
0:08:18I mean what did happen, which is kind of incredible, is like we sent it Wednesday, you had it Thursday,
0:08:23I don't even know how this is possible.
0:08:25It was like, I imagine like there's just a guy
0:08:28and he picked it up at her house
0:08:29and immediately went to Heathrow and got on a plane
0:08:31and just took it to your PO box.
0:08:34But like we, like Edina was struggling for days.
0:08:37Like can, will anyone take this mail?
0:08:40And like she was contacting companies
0:08:42'cause they said they would take it.
0:08:43And she's like, yeah, but I've been in this situation before
0:08:45where you say you'll do it.
0:08:46And then it gets returned to me
0:08:48because you won't take it to the PO box.
0:08:50So we went with FedEx.
0:08:51I mean, I think she shopped around
0:08:52because it costs a hundred pounds, right?
0:08:55So it's like, will anyone do it for less than a hundred pounds?
0:08:58The answer was no.
0:09:00And this is why FedEx could charge you a hundred pounds, because they're
0:09:03the only ones that will do it.
0:09:05They've got the local hermit crab connection.
0:09:07Like it's us or nobody, right?
0:09:09But so, so, okay.
0:09:12So you're a human who I can talk to and you're even having a problem.
0:09:15But if you're doing something like ordering through Amazon, you have no idea
0:09:20how it's going to be sent to you, right?
0:09:22So you don't know if they're going to use the mail or if it's going to be a private carrier.
0:09:25So I was just like, "Well, I don't know. I'm going to just roll with it, hope it's a private carrier,
0:09:32and order a bunch of the stuff that I need while I'm here."
0:09:35And I tried so many different variations of the address, and I don't know what happened.
0:09:42But I had like 10 packages. I could see them on the App Tracker, right? I'm using Parcel.
0:09:46It's like, "Okay, it's in New York. It's made it to California. Great.
0:09:51It's made it from California to Honolulu.
0:09:54It's made its way from Honolulu to the island I'm on.
0:09:57Fantastic.
0:09:58Oh, sorry.
0:10:00Undeliverable.
0:10:00Why, why is it undeliverable?
0:10:02And then I sadly watch it slowly make its way back across.
0:10:06(laughs)
0:10:07Where it's like, there were times where I'm like,
0:10:09this package is 20 miles for me.
0:10:12Can I like run and try to get it before they load it
0:10:16on this boat to send back to Honolulu,
0:10:18to send back to the continent?
0:10:20Can I try to intercept this package?
0:10:22So anyway, I had so many packages returned to Amazon,
0:10:25and I'm like trying every combination of the address.
0:10:28What's gonna work, man?
0:10:29How can I make this situation happen?
0:10:31And long story short,
0:10:33Amazon won't let me buy anything anymore.
0:10:36Every single item says,
0:10:39"We will not ship to your location."
0:10:41I think I triggered some flag in their system
0:10:43where they're like, this guy,
0:10:44now that I know it could cost like $100 every time,
0:10:47it's like, this guy cost us two grand
0:10:49trying to ship him a flashlight?
0:10:50No, as long as his address is anywhere in Hawaii,
0:10:54we're not going to do it.
0:10:55So I've been trying to be like sneaky, right?
0:10:56Like I'm changing the address.
0:10:58It's like, I'm trying to like move things around
0:10:59to my Amazon account.
0:11:01I switched the credit cards from like a UK credit card
0:11:03to the US credit card.
0:11:05No, everything I click on, Amazon goes,
0:11:07"We won't ship to your location."
0:11:09I was like, "God damn it, Amazon!"
0:11:10Like 100%, my account was flagged.
0:11:13We can't send you things.
0:11:14- You let me know what you want.
0:11:16We'll put it in a box.
0:11:18four grand later and FedEx will bring it to you.
0:11:22- Okay, so listen, you know how you like,
0:11:23you just want things to be consistent and correct.
0:11:28Oh, there's a system for things
0:11:29and it should just be consistent and it should be correct.
0:11:33And the thing that I have stumbled upon
0:11:35is the highest success percentage of getting packages to me,
0:11:39not a hundred percent success by the way,
0:11:41but the highest rate of success is to do a thing
0:11:45which kills my soul that wants order.
0:11:48And the thing is, I must write the address of where I am,
0:11:53the PO box of a relative,
0:11:57and then a zip code that doesn't match
0:12:02the address where I am, but instead matches the PO box.
0:12:06I know you have not written letters in America.
0:12:10If there is one thing that they teach you in school
0:12:13is how to properly format an address.
0:12:15And rule number one is PO boxes and street addresses,
0:12:19they never mix.
0:12:20You don't put those two things on a letter,
0:12:22'cause that's not how the system is supposed to work.
0:12:24Like these are two totally different locations.
0:12:26Like it's just, it's not supposed to happen,
0:12:29but it's like, but that's what I have to do.
0:12:30I have to tell people if they're starting
0:12:31to send me something like, okay,
0:12:32write this street address, write this PO box,
0:12:35and then the zip code just really gets me.
0:12:38It's like, oh, the zip code only matches one of these things
0:12:41And the reason is because the PO box is in like another town
0:12:45from where we are to go get the packages.
0:12:47And it just, it basically all depends on,
0:12:50literally talk to the lady in the post office,
0:12:52who's like, we'll keep an eye out.
0:12:54And it's like, oh my God. - You're tricking the system
0:12:56and relying on the regional mail carrier
0:12:59to know what that means and then hold it aside for you.
0:13:03- We are depending on whoever is the second to last mile,
0:13:07not the last mile person, to make a reasonable decision
0:13:11on how to send this package to wherever it's supposed to go.
0:13:15So sometimes that means it's the PO box,
0:13:17sometimes it means it comes to our actual door.
0:13:20But it's like, it's such a small thing,
0:13:22but it is infuriating.
0:13:24And for other stuff that I've tried to order
0:13:26and have sent to the house, plenty of companies
0:13:29will simply not let you format an address in this way.
0:13:32No, that's an incorrect address.
0:13:34Everyone knows you can't do this.
0:13:36The street address doesn't match the zip code
0:13:38that you've put there.
0:13:39I know, I know, but you don't understand.
0:13:43We're depending on three people on the island
0:13:46to catch this and know what to do.
0:13:48I know it's not formatted correctly, but just send it.
0:13:52Just send it.
0:13:53And when it gets to the island,
0:13:5580% chance it's gonna make it to me.
0:13:57And only a 20% chance it's gonna get shipped back to you.
0:14:01So that's how the mail works in Hawaii.
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0:16:05of this show and all of Relay FM.
0:16:06There were a number of people in the subreddit and on twitter
0:16:11and in the Relay FM discord as well who were saying
0:16:15"Oh you didn't put any of those spider photos in the show notes"
0:16:20Let me tell you, Cortexians, what you don't want is for Gray to send you spider photos because
0:16:28the last month of my life has gone like this. Message from CGP Gray, "Pop quiz!"
0:16:34That's how he starts every message he sends me now. Pop quiz and then an image.
0:16:40Spot the spider!
0:16:41But they know it, no, but you never say that. You just say "Pop quiz!"
0:16:45And then I have to look at this image and try and decipher, because sometimes there's no spiders.
0:16:50and just try and decipher what it is I'm looking for.
0:16:53And I think my problem was I was engaging with you
0:16:56because they got increasingly horrifying
0:17:00as time has gone on and they've continued to.
0:17:03And now, I'm looking at a lot of people who would have said,
0:17:06hey, I wanted to see one of those.
0:17:08If these people follow you on Twitter,
0:17:10they will have seen the kinds of images
0:17:12that you've been sending me.
0:17:13I will put them in the show notes too,
0:17:14in case people wanna go subject themselves
0:17:17to just abject horrors that you've been dealing with.
0:17:20- Yeah, see the problem for you, Myke,
0:17:22is that you are sympathetic to my situation.
0:17:25- I am.
0:17:26- And no one here is sympathetic to my situation.
0:17:28- This is where it's like,
0:17:30there is nothing in the world I want less than these images,
0:17:35but my care for you is one of my closest friends.
0:17:40I know why these images are being sent to me,
0:17:43so I'm allowing it, right?
0:17:46Because if you were at home and was just Googling pictures of spiders and kept sending them
0:17:52to me, I would block you.
0:17:53I'd be like, "Until you can learn to stop, I'm blocking you.
0:17:58You can send me an email when you're ready to be unblocked.
0:18:00But for now, you're blocked."
0:18:02I think you have sent me more messages in the last month than the rest of the maybe
0:18:06last 18 months.
0:18:08And so I know that you need it.
0:18:09Oh, that's easily true.
0:18:10That's easily true.
0:18:11So like, I'm here, you know, like whenever you need to send me stuff, you send me stuff
0:18:16and we can joke about it or I can commiserate with you.
0:18:19I've been getting a lot of use out of two new emoji.
0:18:22One is the face melting one
0:18:24and one is the dotted line grimacing one.
0:18:27They've been doing good for me right now.
0:18:29Yeah, you've been, oh boy, some of that nature.
0:18:33- Yeah, but see, the thing is,
0:18:34you validate that my opinions are not crazy, right?
0:18:37Where it's like, oh great, I can show Myke.
0:18:40And the thing that I've tuned into is that
0:18:43when I point out stuff to locals,
0:18:46I always get some variation on,
0:18:49"Oh, that's unusual."
0:18:50"No, it's not. Look everywhere."
0:18:53Like, it's everywhere.
0:18:55What's unusual is you're noticing
0:18:57because I'm pointing it out,
0:19:00but your brain is like photoshopping all of this away.
0:19:03I've actually thought of,
0:19:04like we sort of mentioned on the show before,
0:19:06that I think selection effects are really quite powerful.
0:19:09And one thing, say, a jungle environment selects for is lack of sensitivity to arthropods.
0:19:18Like, Hawaii is selecting for that.
0:19:21And so here I am just showing up like, "Oh, this guy should never be on this island."
0:19:25And I'm looking around and seeing all the things and I point them out
0:19:28and it is maddening that people go, "Oh, that's unusual."
0:19:32It's like, okay, so we have now caught a double digit number of centipedes in the house
0:19:37and every one of them is remarked as being unusual.
0:19:41And I'm like, "It isn't! It's not unusual at this point!"
0:19:44So what do you think is the situation?
0:19:46Are people just ignoring them and not noticing them?
0:19:49Yeah, I don't know.
0:19:49I really do think, like, people who live on Hawai'i –
0:19:52again, I am, like – hear me, listeners.
0:19:55I'm the weirdo here, right?
0:19:56Like, I'm the exception.
0:19:58Everybody else on Hawai'i – literally everyone else –
0:20:01is having a great time.
0:20:02Like, I'm the only person who isn't,
0:20:05And I just think that there's a lack of sensitivity, right?
0:20:10Or people who've lived here their whole lives, like they're just totally used to it
0:20:13and just don't really think about it.
0:20:15Whereas for me, it's like, I can't get used to it.
0:20:18And that's the frustration.
0:20:19We can come back to this, but this is actually veering towards something
0:20:22that I've been wanting to talk about for the last couple of weeks.
0:20:26Oh, yeah?
0:20:26I feel like we need to once again address resort Hawaii
0:20:31before we start to receive formal complaints from the Hawaii Tourism Board.
0:20:35Because there have been so many people that have contacted us and said,
0:20:39"I'm never going to Hawaii."
0:20:41And I feel like something has been lost,
0:20:43because I really need to impress upon people here.
0:20:47I have spent two of the best weeks of my life in Hawaii.
0:20:51You're going to go to Resort Hawaii.
0:20:54You're going to go where the hotels are, which is in all of these areas.
0:20:58Are you going to go where the vacation rental homes are,
0:21:01which are like by the beach.
0:21:02I had a couple of people who contacted me
0:21:04to give me a bit more good context for this.
0:21:06'Cause you were saying about, you know,
0:21:08in resort Hawaii, people come around
0:21:10and they like sweep the spiders away, right?
0:21:13Which is like a nice way of putting it.
0:21:14But like I had someone say,
0:21:16like the resort Hawaii is incredibly manicured.
0:21:19The grass is cut really short on the lawns
0:21:22and like the areas, the trees are all cut down.
0:21:25Everything's perfectly planted.
0:21:27The manicuring and sculpting of these areas naturally removes a lot of the nature and
0:21:35the wildlife that you are experiencing because these things grow in places where it's mostly
0:21:42untouched.
0:21:43So if you go to Hawaii and stay in any of the places you would stay in when you're on
0:21:47Hawaii because that's where you would stay because that's what it's made for, for the
0:21:53tourists, you're not going to experience any of these horrors.
0:21:56Yeah, and again, like this is this is why I'm on Twitter and for some people I'm like no no go to Hawaii
0:22:01Like you'll have a great time
0:22:03I just saw so many people say oh I wanted to go I'm never gonna go now and I just I
0:22:08Feel like we really you know
0:22:10We did a disservice to people if that's what they took away people should come people should come because the entire
0:22:16Economy depends on people coming and it can be that way because everyone loves it
0:22:21Yeah people I spoke to there. It was like this is what we do. We're a tourism
0:22:25our entire economy is based on tourism,
0:22:27so I don't want to be, considering how much I love Hawaii,
0:22:30I don't want to be responsible at all
0:22:32for any less people going there.
0:22:34- This is actually quite, this is quite selfish
0:22:36from Myke's perspective.
0:22:37His main concern is he doesn't want to come back
0:22:39and discover that the resort has been shut down
0:22:42and there's just tumbleweeds blowing across the landscape.
0:22:45- Well, to be fair, Grey, what it might mean
0:22:47is that the hotel rooms would be a little cheaper
0:22:48for me next time I want to go,
0:22:50'cause that it is not either, you know?
0:22:52Even when you pass through the little towns,
0:22:55it's like, oh, they all look very great,
0:22:57but you're also seeing the storefronts
0:22:59that are set up for tourists right on the road.
0:23:01Those are always very nicely kept.
0:23:03And for some of them, if you walk just slightly behind
0:23:08where those storefronts are,
0:23:09you can start bumping into a very different sort of world.
0:23:11But you never will when you're on vacation,
0:23:13and that's totally fine.
0:23:14That's the point of a vacation, right?
0:23:16It's supposed to be nice, and you just see stuff,
0:23:19and it's set up for tourists, and it's great.
0:23:21So since our last episode, how has work stuff been for you?
0:23:25Have you had any changes?
0:23:26Are you remaining productive?
0:23:28- Yeah, so when we spoke, I was fairly optimistic,
0:23:33I would say, with my, I will get 80% of the work done.
0:23:38That was my life.
0:23:39I'm only gonna give up 20% of the work,
0:23:43and I'm only gonna give up the 20 unimportant percent, right?
0:23:46and it'll just be 80% and blue skies and rainbows from here on out.
0:23:52I would say I'm probably hitting a lot closer to like 40% of the work.
0:23:59I think that's a reasonable estimate for how it's actually gone over the last six weeks, I guess?
0:24:06I mean, to be fair, I'm still gonna count that as a major win
0:24:10because my assistant, who was around the last time I was in Hawaii,
0:24:15Her baseline was zero percent of work occurred.
0:24:19And so she was extremely concerned about, you know, we're just going to lose two months.
0:24:25And I'm like, no, no, it's going to be fine.
0:24:27We're going to get 80 percent of the work done.
0:24:28And she was like, I'm sorry, the base rate of this is you will get zero percent of the work done.
0:24:33So I am not going to plan for that.
0:24:35So I'm still going to take 40 percent as a big win.
0:24:37So I am reasonably happy about that.
0:24:40People have been mostly good.
0:24:42But the problem is that while people can be informed of schedules,
0:24:49cows and chickens and all sorts of other creatures cannot be informed of schedules.
0:24:57And they don't really care what time it is if there's something that they need.
0:25:01So yeah, my life has been disrupted by animals very often for the working times.
0:25:07So yeah.
0:25:08I noticed there's a chicken in the mix now.
0:25:10Well, no, so I can't even with this whole story. There's six chickens. There's not a chicken.
0:25:16There's six chickens that we'll just say arrived in our lives and are here to stay.
0:25:22But yes, so while I sit down these rules of like, "I will not be disturbed before 1 p.m.
0:25:27I'm not available before 1 p.m." and like, "Please don't tell me about a problem with the chickens.
0:25:32I need to be working." But here's the thing. What happens, Myke, when one of the chickens gets sick?
0:25:38- Becomes a sicken.
0:25:40- No, that is terrible.
0:25:42I absolutely refuse to allow that in the podcast.
0:25:44That is awful.
0:25:45(laughing)
0:25:46- Hey, it's late.
0:25:48What do you want from me?
0:25:50It's 10 p.m. right now.
0:25:50- It's early, Myke.
0:25:51It's 10 a.m.
0:25:52Like, what do you mean it's late?
0:25:53We're only exactly as far as we can be.
0:25:56But yes, so one of the chickens got sick,
0:25:59and a sick chicken making sad,
0:26:03cheeping noises is the most heartbreaking thing
0:26:06in the whole wide world.
0:26:07And so she needed to be separated from her litter mates and she needed medicine and basically
0:26:1424 hour care around the clock.
0:26:17And so yes, I ended up losing quite a lot of time because I ended up taking care of
0:26:23a sick chicken.
0:26:24And so that's the kind of thing that can really blow a hole in your working day is trying
0:26:30to arrange, "Hey chicken, I know you're sick and sad, but also I need to work."
0:26:35But like, chicken don't care.
0:26:37don't care at all like chickens got other things to do so yes this has been
0:26:41one of the one of the interruptions in my life is taking care of a little
0:26:44chicken I am happy to report that she has pulled through and she's now been
0:26:49returned to her brood and so all six chickens are now happy and back together
0:26:54and everything is fine it was it was a week of like oh poor chicken we just we
0:26:59just need to make you comfortable in your final hours like how can I say no
0:27:02to that only a monster would say no to that it's like no we just we gotta make
0:27:05the chicken comfortable. But yeah, so she's all fine now. Not conducive to I'm just
0:27:11gonna get up and get straight to work. It's like, oh no, my wife hands me a chicken after
0:27:17pulling the night shift with chicken medicine and she goes to sleep and it's like, "Well,
0:27:22okay buddy, this is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna put you in my hoodie and we're
0:27:26gonna try to do work." And it's gonna be at a very low productivity rate.
0:27:30This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront builds simple, easy
0:27:35to use products to help people build long term wealth.
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0:28:57I 100% believe that there is a correlation between Sick Chicken and you breaking the top 1000 in Magic the Gathering again.
0:29:05Uh, I don't know what you're talking about, but yes, that did happen during the same time.
0:29:08[Laughter]
0:29:14Uh, oh, you noticed that overlap, that Gray was not able to work as well as he could,
0:29:19and also Gray broke into the top 1000 ranked Magic players.
0:29:23Those might be related, that might be a correlation, I don't know.
0:29:26Congratulations.
0:29:27Yeah, thanks. I know it's dumb, but I do feel ridiculously pleased with myself over that.
0:29:32Being in the top 1000 in any popular thing is always good. It doesn't matter what it is.
0:29:38Yeah.
0:29:38How many hundreds of thousands of people play Magic the Gathering? Do you have like an idea?
0:29:43Yeah, so the company doesn't give an estimate for Arena, which is the online version. Their numbers
0:29:49are that there's something like 5 million players worldwide, but that includes the paper version.
0:29:54Yeah.
0:29:54I've tried to ballpark it. I'm gonna say I think there's about a million players and I would be surprised if the actual number is either 50% smaller or 50% bigger than that.
0:30:07That's kind of my rough estimate, but I'm basing that on I use a like a tracking program to kind of automatically keep track of stats.
0:30:14And that gives reports about how many people are playing games using this tracking system.
0:30:20And the number of games taking place just for the obsessive weirdos like me who like it enough to pay extra for a program to run on your computer only to track your stats,
0:30:31the number of games they're tracking is like hundreds of thousands of games.
0:30:35So it is a big number of people because there can't be 1% of players are using like an add-on system in the way I am.
0:30:44I just think it's got to be basically 0% of players are doing that, so it is a big number.
0:30:49It sounds ridiculous but I was thinking about it. I was like,
0:30:52I think this might actually be, in absolute numbers,
0:30:56the thing that I've been the best at in my whole life?
0:31:00No, that can't be true. No, I-
0:31:02There must have been a time where you were in the top 800 YouTube channels.
0:31:10I'm not confident about that. I also like-
0:31:14Going all the way back in the day? Come on.
0:31:17I don't know. I don't know if that's true.
0:31:19Here's my thought is like, I'm also saying absolute terms as in like top 1000.
0:31:24I'm not saying percentage terms because especially now it's like, I don't know,
0:31:2850% of people worldwide like wants to do YouTube and have YouTube channel.
0:31:33Like the number is just enormous.
0:31:35So percentage wise, the thing that I actually earned my living at, it's like,
0:31:38oh yes, I've been a very small percentage number of that.
0:31:41But in terms of absolute terms, I don't know.
0:31:43Maybe I was in the top 800 at the very beginning, but I'm just not confident about that.
0:31:49I feel like even when I started, YouTube was still already quite big.
0:31:54And I remember having what I thought were ridiculous conversations with people at some of the very first conferences I ever went to,
0:32:01where this is like 10 years ago, people were already saying,
0:32:05"Oh, it's too late for people to get started on YouTube.
0:32:08Like the people who are big now have such a head start."
0:32:11I always thought that was just the world's worst advice in thinking about it.
0:32:15It's like, no, that's not how any of these things work.
0:32:18Like there's this thing is totally going to get bigger.
0:32:20Yeah, but what about this show?
0:32:21What about the show?
0:32:22A thousand podcasts, right?
0:32:25Because I don't know.
0:32:27I mean, I know that there are more podcasts in the world created than I could ever imagine.
0:32:31But podcasts with listenerships of our size, they aren't that many.
0:32:37And if the fact that we are successful and successful with advertisers and successful
0:32:41with advertisers that advertise on the most popular podcasts, so you know, advertise every
0:32:46episode, Squarespace is, I think, advertises basically every episode of the show.
0:32:50I can't imagine, I'd have to ask them, but I can't imagine Squarespace advertise on 1000
0:32:56podcasts, right?
0:32:58Yeah, okay, yeah, I see what you're saying, but also, okay, I mean, it does seem like
0:33:04Squarespace advertises on every podcast that exists but that's also that's also a selection
0:33:09effect of I think I'm the sort of person who listens to the sort of podcast that Squarespace
0:33:15is way more likely to advertise on.
0:33:17Of course.
0:33:18Right but so so Squarespace isn't advertising on a thousand like they're not going down
0:33:25the list of like one two three four five and then they get to Cortex and they still have
0:33:29money left they're picking some subset of that so I don't think the fact that Squarespace
0:33:34advertises on the show is an indicator that the show is in the top 1000.
0:33:38I don't mean this specifically but like a thousand is a very large number.
0:33:44Yeah.
0:33:46And I just I don't know I mean maybe we're like 1700th most popular podcast in the world,
0:33:51I don't know. But like I just a thousand, a thousand shows where the hosts can make a living
0:34:00I just don't know if the market is big enough.
0:34:04- Yeah, it's funny you mention that,
0:34:05'cause I think I'm in my head now
0:34:08having to try to scale what is the actual size
0:34:13of different worlds.
0:34:15I wonder which is true.
0:34:16Do more people make a living at podcasts,
0:34:20or do more people make a living at YouTube channels?
0:34:23- It's gotta be YouTube.
0:34:24It's gotta be YouTube.
0:34:25- I feel like it has to be YouTube,
0:34:27but I'm suddenly unsure.
0:34:29just law of large number stuff.
0:34:32Like there's just more YouTubers than there are podcasters.
0:34:36- Is that true?
0:34:38I wonder if that's true.
0:34:40I'm not super confident.
0:34:42Like I think it is.
0:34:43I think if I had to take an even money bet,
0:34:46I would say that there's more people
0:34:48who are trying to do YouTube than trying to do podcasts.
0:34:52But I don't know.
0:34:54I feel like I've wandered into the jungle of like no data.
0:34:59Teenagers aren't trying to be podcasters.
0:35:01Why, Myke? It's so cool.
0:35:03Like, isn't everything about being a podcaster really cool?
0:35:06What's cool about being a vlogger? Nothing, right?
0:35:09What's cool about being a podcaster?
0:35:11Everything. You get to talk about microphones,
0:35:14you get to have all your aux cables.
0:35:16One of the biggest advantages, no one sees you.
0:35:19That's what people want, right, is to not be seen.
0:35:22So, like, that's a huge advantage for podcasts.
0:35:24It's gotta be true that there's more podcasters.
0:35:28Man, I can't stop running that number in my brain now a
0:35:31Thousand I don't know any right. I don't know if I've if I've said something that's wrong here
0:35:37no, but like but so this this is actually quite a good thing with
0:35:40like the way humans think about stuff a
0:35:43Thousand is one of those numbers where if like it just crosses the human ability to
0:35:50Conceptualize in a real way. I feel like numbers that are still in the hundreds
0:35:55you can think about in terms of objects and actual things, like how many people.
0:36:02You can imagine 200 people in a room, but I think once you cross the 1000 mark,
0:36:09it starts becoming hard to really think about what that number means.
0:36:17Like, this is just our limited monkey minds.
0:36:19So that's why I'm feeling extremely uncertain now about
0:36:23How do podcasts and YouTube channels rank? I just don't know.
0:36:28What we've actually stumbled in here is the whole power law question about how everything works in media.
0:36:35It's all just related to a power law for audience sizes.
0:36:40You keep multiplying by 10% every time you want to go down an order of magnitude in audience size for how many people are at this scale.
0:36:49Right? So it's like, "Oh, how many podcasts get tens of millions of listeners?"
0:36:55I don't know, like, ten?
0:36:57How many podcasts get millions of listeners?
0:37:00Probably hundreds?
0:37:02How many podcasts get hundreds of thousands of listeners?
0:37:05Thousands? Is that about right?
0:37:08That would be like a power law distribution?
0:37:10And then, you know, what, tens of thousands is tens of thousands as well?
0:37:15I don't know, I lost track of it in my head.
0:37:16I'm desperately googling. I'm trying to get some kind of indications to the numbers, but I don't think I'm going to get it.
0:37:22Yeah, see this is also the thing for listeners, which may not be obvious, is that the podcast industry is shrouded in mystery.
0:37:29Yeah.
0:37:30Like, no one ever talks about the numbers since it's not centralized like something with YouTube. You have no idea how anybody else is doing.
0:37:40I think there's also a lot of shenanigans with listeners being conflated with just downloads that are happening.
0:37:47Well that's just a thing you can't, it's really hard to know.
0:37:50Yeah, there's just so much going on, whereas with something like YouTube it's better.
0:37:56YouTube actually does a very good job of not inflating the view numbers.
0:38:00I think YouTube is just about the only platform where you can quite trust those view numbers.
0:38:06is like, "Oh, an actual person watched this for some amount of time." And like, they're,
0:38:11I think they're quite good about that.
0:38:12But it's the "some amount of time" thing too, though, right?
0:38:15What do you mean?
0:38:16Well, it's like, do people ever consider that? Like, if you had like a 10-minute YouTube
0:38:20video, but 50% of the people stopped watching it in the first two minutes and it counted
0:38:24as a view, you know what I mean?
0:38:26Yeah, but like, I think YouTube does a good job of that, precisely because in the back
0:38:31end they're they're really focused on what is the retention rate and so
0:38:36Like they start counting things as views
0:38:40Fairly soon into watching the video, but then if that person bails it counts against your retention rate
0:38:47And so I think you can see because like oh retention rates are actually I think quite reasonable at least in my experience for
0:38:54Videos of decent length. It's like yeah
0:38:56No, this view number means something.
0:38:58Like, I'm not expecting 100% of the people make it to the end,
0:39:01but I think like, "Oh, when you see a video has X number of views..."
0:39:05I'm basically comparing this to other platforms like
0:39:09Facebook in particular and all sorts of other things.
0:39:12No, no, no, their view numbers are just like garbage and you cannot trust them.
0:39:15But the podcast world, just because of the way it works,
0:39:18download numbers and how many listeners there are,
0:39:21it's just intrinsically more difficult to get a good answer to what that is.
0:39:25I can give you something here, right?
0:39:27Just to try and help put it in perspective.
0:39:29So this American life, it seems like looking at
0:39:34we company called Podtrack,
0:39:36who have statistics that I will trust,
0:39:38they estimate or publish that they have
0:39:40about three and a half million listeners.
0:39:44That is their US unique monthly audience.
0:39:48And they are the ninth most popular podcast in the charts.
0:39:53So number nine has three and a half million downloads.
0:39:58- But when you say in their charts,
0:40:00they're the ninth most popular that this company tracks?
0:40:03- But Podtrack have most of the live shows.
0:40:06So all of NPR, all of Wondery, all of Disney, all of BBC,
0:40:11Barstool, Fox, CNN, they have all of these numbers.
0:40:15- Okay.
0:40:16- So if number nine is three and a half million,
0:40:20what would number 1,000 be?
0:40:22You know what I mean?
0:40:23Yeah, maybe.
0:40:24Okay, so we just need to go around and ask the top 1000 podcasts to see where their listenerships
0:40:33are so we can create a rank.
0:40:35And they'll say, "Why are you doing this?"
0:40:37And the answer will be, "Oh, we want to compare this to CGP Grey's rank in Magic the Gathering."
0:40:45That's why we're going on this data exposition.
0:40:49I don't think we should record the show at these times anymore.
0:40:53[laughter]
0:40:55Myke, what's wrong with this 12 hour time difference? Nothing!
0:40:58[laughter]
0:40:59I've forgotten why we were even talking about this.
0:41:03[laughter]
0:41:04Oh boy.
0:41:05I'm casting slip out the back and we can move on.
0:41:08Let's try and get this episode back onto some kind of course here.
0:41:13If anybody does know the answer to this thing, by the way, I would love to know.
0:41:16You can reach out to me.
0:41:17I can keep it secret if you need it.
0:41:20I just really want to know now.
0:41:22(laughing)
0:41:23I feel pretty confident in it,
0:41:25but it's also one of those things that now I've said it,
0:41:27I'm like, am I gonna regret having said that?
0:41:30I don't know.
0:41:32- I can also feel like this is one of those things
0:41:33that's just gonna, it's just gonna like,
0:41:35it's wormed its way into your brain
0:41:37and you're gonna be thinking about it all the time now.
0:41:40So if you happen to be a person
0:41:42who has secret podcast stats,
0:41:45please get in touch with Myke
0:41:46and relieve him of his constant thinking about this,
0:41:49which is inevitably going to happen.
0:41:51- Myke wants to know.
0:41:52- Myke wants to know.
0:41:53(chime)
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0:43:32So you posted your first YouTube short.
0:43:36- Yes, a thing I actually have data on.
0:43:39Yes, I posted a YouTube short.
0:43:41- I wanna know about this
0:43:43and I hope that you have some stuff you can share
0:43:45because everyone's doing this now.
0:43:48I mean, and really on YouTube,
0:43:50all I'm seeing is people reusing their TikToks, right?
0:43:53Or like it's content is being created
0:43:55for multiple avenues, right?
0:43:58So like I'm seeing a lot of like content creators now,
0:44:01they are creating short vertical video
0:44:03that they are posting on TikTok and YouTube and/or Instagram
0:44:08and possibly Twitter as well, right?
0:44:10Like this is definitely a thing
0:44:13that I am coming into contact more with now
0:44:17than I have been before.
0:44:18- Okay.
0:44:19- Of like the content creators that I follow,
0:44:21I'm seeing more of them post this stuff,
0:44:24like tech and gaming focused YouTube channels.
0:44:29I'm seeing them either post YouTube shorts
0:44:31or I'm seeing them post them on their Twitter or Instagram accounts.
0:44:35Okay, so since I'm in research mode, I feel like with regard to shorts,
0:44:42what do you think of this?
0:44:44Like, not as a content creator.
0:44:46- As a consumer? - As a content consumer, right?
0:44:49Like...
0:44:51As a content muncher.
0:44:54I didn't like that when I said it.
0:44:56- But I said it now. - So much work.
0:44:59As you munch your way through content, how do you like it?
0:45:02- I'm like the cookie monster for video.
0:45:05- That's what consumers are.
0:45:07Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.
0:45:09Right, and it goes everywhere.
0:45:11He eats none of the cookies.
0:45:12- I should preface this by saying I am not a TikTok user.
0:45:15- Okay.
0:45:16- 'Cause I think that, not I think.
0:45:17It's obvious that that is where this drive has come from.
0:45:20TikTok created this new format, this new system
0:45:24of this algorithmically generated content, right?
0:45:27and now Instagram wants a piece of it
0:45:30and YouTube want a piece of it.
0:45:32So the only place I ever see this content
0:45:35is on the social media platforms that I'm already a part of.
0:45:38And for me, it's very much additional, right?
0:45:42So like when I'm on YouTube, I'm not looking for shorts.
0:45:46- Right.
0:45:47- When I'm on Twitter, I'm not looking for quick video.
0:45:50And when I'm on Instagram, I'm not looking for reels.
0:45:53So for me, I see this content
0:45:56mixed in with the stuff that I'm already looking at
0:46:00or looking for.
0:46:02So for me as a consumer,
0:46:03there has to be something about it that grabs me enough
0:46:06to take me out of what I was doing to watch that video,
0:46:10which is very different to somebody who is using TikTok
0:46:14or using Instagram Reels and just like watching the videos
0:46:19just fly by on their own, right?
0:46:20- Right, right.
0:46:21- So I'm not an average consumer,
0:46:23But what I will say is the people whose content I enjoy
0:46:28that do this, I like it.
0:46:31So for me, one of the channels that I see do this the best
0:46:35is Kinda Funny.
0:46:37Kinda Funny is a selection of gaming culture podcasts,
0:46:40which I've gotten into in a big way in the last few months.
0:46:44Like I watch basically all of their shows.
0:46:46But like they are podcasts, but they have video versions
0:46:49and I watch them mostly.
0:46:51So I'm very used to engaging with them through video
0:46:55and they publish lots of content.
0:46:56And so what they do, which I really like,
0:46:58they pick out funny things that have happened
0:47:01either recently or in their past,
0:47:03and they just make a short out of those.
0:47:06And they also make shorts out of game reviews.
0:47:09- Right.
0:47:10- Right, so they'll do like a 30 second video game review,
0:47:13which I watch that before I watch their longer review
0:47:16on one of their podcasts or whatever, right?
0:47:18Like, you know, this is like the snackable version
0:47:20of this content that you're about to go and get.
0:47:22It's like a trailer really for the longer conversation.
0:47:25- Yeah, you're using it like a trailer.
0:47:27- Yeah, or a best of kind of thing.
0:47:29And that content's working for me,
0:47:31but I really only think it's working for me
0:47:33because I'm already so engaged with them
0:47:36that at the moment I'll watch anything
0:47:38that the Kinda Funny crew make, right?
0:47:40Like I'll just watch all of it.
0:47:41So I will watch the shorts the same
0:47:43as I'll watch their two hour breakdowns
0:47:46of a movie trailer or whatever, you know?
0:47:48Like I'm just in on that content.
0:47:51So I think for me, I don't consider myself
0:47:54an average consumer because the shorts that I'm watching
0:47:58or the short form videos that I'm watching
0:48:02are for content creators I'm already really engaged with,
0:48:05which is not what TikTok is about, right?
0:48:08TikTok is like, you don't even know these people
0:48:10most of the time, like, and you don't need to.
0:48:13And that's their whole thing.
0:48:14It's just like, our algorithm is so good,
0:48:16we're just gonna keep serving you this stuff.
0:48:18I'm assuming you're not a TikTok person either.
0:48:21- I have never installed the app.
0:48:23- And for me, I don't have a problem with it.
0:48:26I just don't need it.
0:48:28I don't need another thing personally to suck time away.
0:48:33And I already can't keep up with the social networks
0:48:38that I already like or the content that I already like.
0:48:40Between YouTube, Instagram and Twitter and podcasts,
0:48:45there's already, I am already behind on everything.
0:48:47I don't need to add another one in, right?
0:48:49That's just how I feel.
0:48:50And I'm very much, you know,
0:48:53we spoke about this on the show
0:48:54and I think there are a lot of our listeners are the same.
0:48:56I'm very much the kind of person where
0:48:59I don't personally want an algorithm trying to tell me
0:49:04what content creators to consume.
0:49:07I've already made those decisions, however I've made them.
0:49:11And I want to watch content from people
0:49:13I already know I like.
0:49:14Like I'm not so much of a, hey algorithm,
0:49:17who do you think I'm gonna be into today?
0:49:19So I like that for me, actually,
0:49:22I like the way that YouTube's given me this content
0:49:24maybe the most out of all of them or maybe Twitter maybe,
0:49:27because it's people just posting videos like their tweets.
0:49:29And I also, by the way, I like shorts.
0:49:31I think that's the best brand name.
0:49:32I like it better to Reels.
0:49:34I like it better to TikToks.
0:49:36Like I think shorts, I actually really liked that.
0:49:38'Cause I think it does a very good job
0:49:39of explaining what the content is.
0:49:41They're short videos.
0:49:43Like I actually, I think for once YouTube has landed
0:49:46on the best branding for me.
0:49:48- Yeah, I didn't think about that, but you're right.
0:49:49Yeah, they do have the best name for it, for sure.
0:49:51- Do you ever see any of this content?
0:49:53- Yeah, so this has been on my mind for a long time
0:49:58is trying something with a YouTube short.
0:50:01And I can say just from anecdotal experience,
0:50:05every YouTuber I've spoken to who hasn't done a short,
0:50:09it's the same thing.
0:50:09It's on everybody's mind about,
0:50:11Is this something that we should do?
0:50:14- For like, for YouTubers, I assume the problem there is,
0:50:17you don't have to say anything one way or another,
0:50:19there is either YouTube will ask you to do it,
0:50:22incentivize you to do it,
0:50:24or you think YouTube wants it so you have to.
0:50:26- Yeah, exactly.
0:50:27So YouTube hasn't tried to incentivize me to do it.
0:50:31- I know they are incentivizing some people though.
0:50:33- Yes, but they're definitely incentivizing some people.
0:50:35- The same as how they're incentivizing podcasters.
0:50:38We haven't spoken about this,
0:50:39but since we spoke about this, I don't know,
0:50:41a couple of months ago.
0:50:42- Oh, right, yeah, that's right.
0:50:44- Apparently YouTube is giving money to people
0:50:48to make video versions of their podcasts.
0:50:51This is like apparently a thing.
0:50:53I'll put some links in the show notes.
0:50:54This is something YouTube does, right?
0:50:55It's like, we have this medium,
0:50:57we want you to come and be a part of it,
0:50:59we'll give you money.
0:51:00Spotify is doing it for podcasts too, right?
0:51:02Big platforms do it as they give people money
0:51:05and in the hope that they'll come and produce content
0:51:07in the place that they wanted to produce it.
0:51:09And I'm sure, and I think I've seen reference to this,
0:51:12that there is like a YouTube Shorts fund.
0:51:14I know Instagram has one for reals.
0:51:16You can get bonus payments for publishing this content.
0:51:21- Yeah, so it's important to this conversation
0:51:23that I'm not a part of any of that.
0:51:25Like I just decided to do this thing.
0:51:27YouTube didn't ask me to do it.
0:51:29I'm not getting any extra money from YouTube for doing it.
0:51:32I just thought, okay.
0:51:33A thing came along with our place like this.
0:51:38apparently now every other year maybe or every four years.
0:51:42I don't remember what last time they did it, like little event.
0:51:44Oh, did they say they were bringing it back?
0:51:45Cause I know they brought it back for April falls, right?
0:51:47But like I didn't know if they were like,
0:51:49they're bringing it back on a schedule now.
0:51:51There is no way that they're not bringing it back again.
0:51:53Like it seems so much more popular this time than last time.
0:51:57It was way more popular this time because people knew what the deal was for
0:52:00anyone listening who doesn't know.
0:52:02Basically Reddit had a kind of collaborative canvas that everybody could paint
0:52:07using pixels one at a time. So like every 10 minutes you could put down a little pixel.
0:52:11Technologically this time it was so much better than the time before.
0:52:16Yeah I think it's great. It's honestly the sort of thing that lifts my heart about what the internet
0:52:22should be. It just feels like this is what I thought the whole internet was going to be like.
0:52:26It's like oh pixel rainbows and also fun shenanigans is like oh it didn't turn out that
0:52:33way, but our place is like the best of what the internet can be.
0:52:37A fun way for like millions of people to collaborate on a thing that just
0:52:41wouldn't be possible in the real world.
0:52:43Like it was just great, but it's just a big collaborative art project.
0:52:46And so that came along and it was delightful.
0:52:49And I happened to have this little fact about the Albert Memorial in London
0:52:55having messed up the reconstruction.
0:52:57And long story short, I'd been kind of angling for a long time to try to do
0:53:02something about the Albert Memorial, but as we have discussed on previous shows, sometimes
0:53:08institutions are really uninterested in working with you if you are not a gigantic corporation,
0:53:14and if you're like but a humble YouTuber, they have a whole bunch of GTFO for you if
0:53:20you come along with like, "Hey, I have an interesting project!"
0:53:22So I kind of had a fact that I was like, "This is never gonna go anywhere."
0:53:27Like I think this video about the Albert Memorial is never gonna happen, but this is one like
0:53:31fun fact from that thing.
0:53:33And so, I don't know, it just popped into my head one morning.
0:53:36I thought, "Oh! Everybody's griefing on the Canadian flag
0:53:40and messing it up on our place."
0:53:42And it just sort of made me think about this pixel art in the Albert Memorial.
0:53:46I was out for my morning walk with the cows who were following me around,
0:53:50and this popped into my head, and I thought,
0:53:53"Okay, I'm gonna spend my work morning working on this,
0:53:58and like, whatever I have at the end, it's just done.
0:54:01I'm not gonna spend any more time on it. I'm just gonna upload it and we'll see how it does.
0:54:04Mainly because I wanted to start getting some data about how do shorts do on my channel?
0:54:12Because I know again from talking to other youtubers that my channel has a lot of...
0:54:17It's a bit of an outlier in a way that a lot of the statistics work.
0:54:22And so I just knew I couldn't really depend on anybody else's data about how shorts have worked for them.
0:54:28I needed to do something for myself and just see because my channel always ends up just being a bit weird when I compare the
0:54:34Numbers to other people. So yeah, I put it up. I had just no
0:54:37Expectations of how would this do I just didn't really have any thoughts
0:54:42I'm just like I'm just gonna collect some data and see and at the time of recording it's at about
0:54:471.7 million views right now, which I'm very happy with because that means like oh I have
0:54:54Actual reliable data about this short like I can try to make some decisions about it and that would be you know
0:55:01Correct me if I'm wrong if you made a video a typical gray video
0:55:05Even like a gray explains video and you got those numbers you'd be like, I'm happy with that. Oh, yeah
0:55:11Yeah, you come away and be like, yep. That was worth my time, right?
0:55:15so oh why I was keen to know kind of more about the kind of as you say that the stats and the deets of this because
0:55:23This is obviously vastly different in a production process
0:55:27And I'm really keen to know if you think that like having now achieved those numbers
0:55:32What does that actually mean on the other side?
0:55:35Yeah, and for just for a frame of reference for the listener roughly my median video on the channel is about two million views
0:55:43So this lands it like very solidly in the middle because it's gonna get there right like yeah, it's only two weeks old
0:55:50Yeah, I think it's gonna hit two million views.
0:55:52So this this makes it very very solidly like right in the middle of the pack for a video
0:55:57which is actually perfect for making a decision about statistics.
0:56:01And I guess the summary that I can give is my experience with shorts is
0:56:06terrible.
0:56:09It is unbelievably bad.
0:56:12And so now if you are not in the business,
0:56:15you're hearing me say a thing like "I spent a morning making a video.
0:56:19It's done about two million views and that was awful. Like it sounds crazy
0:56:25but so let me just talk through why is this just
0:56:29abysmal. When you make a video, there's a bunch of things that matter.
0:56:34There's the obvious stuff that matters like how much money did the video make and
0:56:40I'm in the position now where it's like, this is not just a question about paying myself.
0:56:45I have to make decisions about paying all the people I work with and so how much money does the video make?
0:56:52Versus how much time did I spend on it is very different now from how it was when I was starting so
0:56:59Revenue can't be a like trivial consideration
0:57:04This is kind of at the top of the pile was that did this financially make sense or would I go bankrupt if I kept doing?
0:57:09This there's other things that you care about
0:57:11So one of the things that you can care about is how many new people saw this video
0:57:18versus how many of people in my existing audience saw this.
0:57:23Which is slightly different from another thing that you can care about which is how many subscribers did you get?
0:57:29So YouTube, they do a pretty good job of trying to track viewers who are basically like
0:57:34non-subscriber subscribers, so people who watch all of your stuff, but just haven't subscribed.
0:57:40So you can kind of get a metric of roughly how many people who haven't seen one of my videos in like the last year
0:57:48watched this video. So it's new people. One of the other things I care about is
0:57:53engagement. Like how many people who watched this video watched another one of my videos?
0:58:00So they watched this thing and they thought, "Ooh interesting. I want to see more from this guy.
0:58:04Let me see another one of his things." And as
0:58:08Listeners to the show will know I love spreadsheets
0:58:11and I put all of this stuff into a spreadsheet to try to give me an overall view of like
0:58:17How well does this video do against a bunch of metrics that I care about?
0:58:22let me try to combine everything together and think about it and make comparisons and
0:58:27the bottom line comparison is that for me to be happy with the way this video is performing
0:58:36[sigh]
0:58:38It would have to do somewhere between 10 to 20 times as many views as it has done to be worthwhile.
0:58:48Which is to say, every metric I care about is like 1/20th what I would want to see in terms of a video.
0:58:59And so it's just abysmal looking at the stats. Like, across the board for everything.
0:59:05The revenue is, even though I only spent but a morning working on this,
0:59:10it's like, "Oh, if I just made shorts, I would go out of business."
0:59:14Like, paying all my expenses and doing all of that kind of stuff.
0:59:18It's like, "No, I literally couldn't make a living doing shorts."
0:59:21So then you can ask questions like,
0:59:23"Oh, but is it worthwhile because you're reaching a new audience?"
0:59:27No. Like, as far as I can tell,
0:59:30maybe 90% of the views have come from people who have watched my other videos
0:59:38and maybe 10% of the people who saw this were actually new people.
0:59:44And that's like, what are the subscriber numbers?
0:59:47They're like 1/30th what I would expect from a video.
0:59:51They're just brutally bad.
0:59:54And the absolute worst one is,
0:59:57Has someone who watched this video, have they gone on to watch another video?
1:00:03I think that number, it's a little bit hard to estimate, but that may be a literal like,
1:00:09four digit number, right? So like this video got two million views,
1:00:14and maybe a thousand times someone watched another one of my videos after this.
1:00:20Like, it's just savage. It's so bad.
1:00:24I don't know if I would have assumed differently, if I'm being honest with you.
1:00:30Yeah.
1:00:30If you would have said to me, "Hey, I'm going to do this short video.
1:00:33How well do you think this is going to turn out for me?"
1:00:37I think my assumption would have been like, "You'll get a bunch of views on it,
1:00:41but it's not going to make you any money."
1:00:43Because there are less ads on it, I'm sure, if there are any.
1:00:45And I'm sure the ads are cheaper anyway, so the CPMs will be lower.
1:00:52so any cut you would get is already tiny. And on YouTube, I don't know...
1:00:57I mean maybe it's being served to people. Honestly, maybe like you ended up in the best
1:01:03place situation because you were doing it about R/place because people may have seen that in their
1:01:10recommendations and they were like "what is that thing? I've been seeing people talk about it."
1:01:14Like you may have actually ended up doing best case scenario for you, for a short,
1:01:19which I think makes this even worse.
1:01:21I think that's very possible.
1:01:23I think it's very possible this is best case scenario for a short, yeah.
1:01:26And I think that if this is the situation you're seeing,
1:01:29I don't really know why people are doing it.
1:01:32I think by and large my expectation is...
1:01:35So I'm talking about the content creators I'm seeing, right?
1:01:39So tech and gaming and culture YouTubers, right?
1:01:42Why are they publishing this stuff?
1:01:45My expectation is they're making it for TikTok
1:01:47And because they've made it for TikTok, they're also just going to put it on YouTube anyway,
1:01:51because if you get any benefit, like it's not even made for this platform, so anything else,
1:01:55it's just sprinkles right on top. I think that's what we're seeing everywhere, right? Like if
1:02:01you're seeing this content anywhere, it's because it started on TikTok. I bet if you put this on
1:02:05TikTok, you would have got 100 million views, but you would have made even less money probably.
1:02:09But for some people, I mean, understandably, the most important thing is views at the start.
1:02:15The money is not important. It's about trying to build an audience. And some people have
1:02:19successfully built audiences in TikTok. I think it's harder to build audiences in TikTok because
1:02:24you don't have a feed as such of like, these are the people I've chosen to see.
1:02:28I think you can follow people and I think that increases your likelihood of seeing their content,
1:02:33but it's not the same, right? And you see a lot, like the most popular TikTokers, they are trying
1:02:39eventually to shovel you off somewhere else. They want you to subscribe to their YouTube channel or
1:02:45or their podcast or whatever, right?
1:02:47Because they know TikTok is not the place
1:02:50for them long term.
1:02:51I mean, this happens everywhere.
1:02:53Then at a certain point,
1:02:54YouTubers wanna get television shows, right?
1:02:56Because they know that YouTube's not the thing
1:02:59for them long term, right?
1:03:00Like you see this a lot, like people,
1:03:02they move you from place to place, right?
1:03:04Like, "Hey, check out this other thing that I'm doing.
1:03:06We do it, I do it, right?
1:03:07Like, hey, I'm doing this other thing.
1:03:08Come check this out."
1:03:09- There are very natural career progressions.
1:03:12And it's one of the reasons why,
1:03:14Like I wanted to start this off by emphasizing,
1:03:17I'm in a different position now for making content
1:03:20and I have to think about things differently.
1:03:22So if you are at the start of your content creation career,
1:03:27views is the only thing you care about
1:03:30because you're not making any money off of it anyway.
1:03:34But when you fast forward and you are running a business
1:03:39and there's people whose livelihood depends
1:03:41on that business, then the views question changes
1:03:46because it's like, yeah, views are great,
1:03:50but it matters that they translate
1:03:52into things that actually matter.
1:03:55And that's where I did not expect
1:03:58to make a bunch of money off of shorts.
1:04:01Like, that was never in my dreams.
1:04:04I mean, the fact that I made less than minimum wage
1:04:07was quite surprising to me.
1:04:08Like, I didn't expect it to be that bad.
1:04:11I wasn't looking at this as a money maker, but what I wanted to see primarily was,
1:04:16okay, views for me matter if they're translating as "new audience". Then, like, that's a thing that
1:04:26really matters, is bringing more people into the extended CGP Grey universe. And so, like, ooh,
1:04:33do shorts accomplish that as a goal?
1:04:36And my experience so far has been no, like even that thing, which I would say YouTube and
1:04:46many YouTubers the way they talk about it, that's sort of the dangled promise is,
1:04:51oh, shorts will gain you new audience.
1:04:54Look at these huge view numbers.
1:04:56They'll translate into new viewers.
1:04:59and my initial foray into this has said, "No."
1:05:02Like, that does not hold true.
1:05:04And so that is the part that I am a little bit more surprised at.
1:05:08I expected that, like, at a bare minimum,
1:05:11it would be something like 50% new viewers and 50% existing viewers,
1:05:16but it's just not close.
1:05:18And then that really calls into question, like,
1:05:20"Man, I don't know about this."
1:05:22There is an asterisk here, which is just that
1:05:25I am going to do some more shorts
1:05:28because I do think that there's like a self-feeding nature to this.
1:05:34So the only question that I have left is,
1:05:37does it matter if you have three shorts or if you have four shorts?
1:05:42Because from having browsed around on YouTube and using the actual short system,
1:05:47it's like, boy, one thing I have learned is,
1:05:50if you watch a short from one person,
1:05:52YouTube will go way out of their way to show you every single short
1:05:56that that person has ever made.
1:05:57Yeah, I mean they do that with anything.
1:05:59Like if you watch a video from someone on their recommended page,
1:06:02or at least I find this on the rare occasion that I do it on the homepage,
1:06:06well then I'm gonna get a string of everything that these people have made for as long as possible, you know?
1:06:13Yeah, I just think the way that it works on the phone, the way you browse through,
1:06:16it's just a much more, it's way more aggressive.
1:06:18Right? They're not presenting you with options,
1:06:20they're just literally showing you like every single thing that the person has made.
1:06:24So that's the question. It was like, maybe there is a way in which one short is not great,
1:06:30but there's a kind of—the reverse of a power law distribution—there's an exponential effect
1:06:35that having two shorts is four times better than having two, and three is nine times better than
1:06:41having two. So that's the only thing that I do kind of want to see before I can make a final
1:06:47judgment on this, but my initial foray is like, "Oof!" This may literally be the worst
1:06:54video I have ever made across every metric I could ever care about, even after you divide
1:07:01by the amount of time I spent on it. It's just brutal.
1:07:04[laughs]
1:07:05All right, so if one of the things is increased new people that you're looking for, would
1:07:13Would you consider then publishing them on TikTok?
1:07:17Yeah, I don't know.
1:07:19I think part of the problem there for me is like, that's just a platform that I have no
1:07:23experience with.
1:07:24But it doesn't really matter.
1:07:26You're making the content that that system wants.
1:07:28I mean, I may just, if I make more shorts, I may just put them on TikTok.
1:07:31Yeah, that's what I mean.
1:07:33But again, I think the issue is my experience from talking to people and just from seeing
1:07:38a little bit of this world is the thing that you're saying like, "Oh, people on TikTok
1:07:42try to push you to YouTube doesn't seem to be very successful except in quite unusual
1:07:50cases.
1:07:51Oh I have no doubt that it's really unsuccessful but my point more is just like if you're doing
1:07:56it anyway, why not try because you could end up being one of those people where it's weirdly
1:08:03successful for them in some strange way.
1:08:06To me it's just more like if you're putting the effort in you may as well just do it.
1:08:11them for YouTube, but then just put them on TikTok too. Just because you could at least
1:08:17then compare.
1:08:18Yeah, yeah, I might as well do that.
1:08:21You might as well just see what happens, right? Because the content's exactly the same. Like
1:08:26you don't really need to do anything different for either of them. And then you can just
1:08:30publish it there and just see what happens.
1:08:32Yeah, okay, I'll do that. I'll just throw it up on TikTok and just see what happens.
1:08:36I guess the reason why I'm just so meh about that is again this issue of I care about views
1:08:43that connect to something real and I just see that as like, man, I could easily imagine
1:08:49even in the most dream case on TikTok of like, oh, this gets a hundred million views.
1:08:54It still doesn't translate to anything real and I'm not at the stage of my career where
1:08:59that part of it, the view number is the thing that is paramount.
1:09:02But then it's like, why even tweet links to videos?
1:09:04You know what I mean?
1:09:05(sighs)
1:09:07Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong.
1:09:09- We will do it, right?
1:09:11But how many people are like,
1:09:13"Oh man, I never even known about this."
1:09:16I would just be keen to see if you just made
1:09:20a TikTok account, publish video, what would happen?
1:09:23Would you get 100 views or would you get 100 million?
1:09:26I think it would just be intriguing.
1:09:27And because you've already made the content anyway,
1:09:30you might as well just try it.
1:09:32And then if you ended up getting,
1:09:34say 50 million views on a TikTok video,
1:09:38then there's questions, right?
1:09:39I don't know if you can find the answers to them,
1:09:41but like, why?
1:09:43Why is it more popular on TikTok
1:09:45when these people don't even necessarily know who I am
1:09:48because they have no relationship to me?
1:09:50So this is kind of stuff that I've seen.
1:09:51Like, I think it was MKBHD was talking about this
1:09:55at one point, like when they set up a TikTok account
1:09:58and he published like something about like an LG phone
1:10:01that wasn't even new at the time.
1:10:02time, you got like 70 million views on it.
1:10:04He was like, this is my most watched piece of content ever.
1:10:08And he does.
1:10:10And it's like, why did this even happen?
1:10:11Right.
1:10:12Well, I do have serious doubts about TikTok's view numbers, but if it pleases
1:10:16you to know, I have sent a message saying, please post my short up on TikTok and
1:10:21please don't involve me in this as much as possible, just make it happen.
1:10:24I just think it would be a fascinating little thing to just do some comparisons
1:10:29on after you've done maybe a couple more of them.
1:10:31And I also do, like, I was gonna suggest
1:10:34don't just do it as a one and done,
1:10:36like, 'cause you don't know, right?
1:10:37You don't know what it could end up being like.
1:10:40And, you know, maybe the next one
1:10:43you make truckloads of money from, you won't,
1:10:45but you never know, right?
1:10:46Or it might be like, if you say that second one
1:10:49or that third one, that's when you start
1:10:51to see positive changes towards the lead-on
1:10:54to further videos, right?
1:10:56- Yeah, and the weird thing about shorts
1:10:59and all of this content that I do think
1:11:00captures everybody's mind who is in this business is...
1:11:05So when I say something like,
1:11:06"Man, this video would need to do numbers
1:11:08that were 20 times bigger in order for it to make sense."
1:11:11That's possible.
1:11:12- That's the thing, right?
1:11:13- That's the thing that's unbelievable is, right?
1:11:17So if there's no universe in which I would go like,
1:11:19"Oh, if I spent a morning just working on a video
1:11:22and I published it as a regular YouTube video,
1:11:24could I get 30 million views on that?"
1:11:26No, no, you're not gonna get 30 million views.
1:11:28Like that's never gonna happen.
1:11:30But having just scrolled around on the Shorts viewer,
1:11:34it's like, man, the number of videos I see
1:11:36that have 50 million views.
1:11:38- On YouTube?
1:11:39- Yeah, on YouTube.
1:11:40- Who's watching them? - Like there's huge ones
1:11:41on there, I don't know.
1:11:43I have no idea.
1:11:44But like there are gigantic numbers
1:11:46even on the Shorts channel.
1:11:47- Like I get it on TikTok, and I even get it on Instagram.
1:11:51But like who's spending time on YouTube Shorts?
1:11:54Like, that's so intriguing to me.
1:11:56- Yeah, so here's the thing where I give credit to YouTube.
1:12:00So when I publish the video, from the backend, everything is the same.
1:12:04There's no special button to tick that says like, Oh, this is a YouTube short.
1:12:08YouTube is just automatically inferring it's under a minute and it's vertical.
1:12:12It's a short.
1:12:13They've just done that automatically, even if you don't label things as shorts.
1:12:17Which I don't know if you labeled our, our one short on the cortex channel as a short.
1:12:22I thought you did it.
1:12:22I didn't do it.
1:12:23And if you didn't do it, that means YouTube picked up that one video where I scare you in VR on cortex.
1:12:30like it just retroactively declared that's a short.
1:12:33- The reason that I came across this is recently,
1:12:35I was like, that used to be our most viewed video.
1:12:39And I was thinking, how many views did that get?
1:12:41And I didn't see it.
1:12:42And I was like, oh, where's it gone?
1:12:43It's like, oh, cause in the YouTube studio,
1:12:44it's now in the Shorts tab, not the Videos tab.
1:12:47- My assistant has replied back with OMG to my request
1:12:51to put a video up on TikTok.
1:12:54I told her it's for Cortex, that's why we're doing it.
1:12:57- Well, here's the thing.
1:12:58This is where we can find out.
1:13:00Is it because she is a TikTok viewer herself
1:13:04and is now like, I can't believe what's happening here
1:13:07or she's just genuinely just surprised?
1:13:09You know what I mean?
1:13:10It's like, I'm wondering from her perspective,
1:13:12why is this a surprise, you know?
1:13:14- It's a mystery, we'll find out later.
1:13:16So the reason I'm mentioning about,
1:13:17oh, you just publish it as a regular video,
1:13:19there's no special button to push,
1:13:21is YouTube has said that when you publish a video
1:13:26that they identify as a short.
1:13:29They are doing their best to not notify your subscribers
1:13:34if those subscribers have not already watched shorts
1:13:38and if they don't regularly watch short content.
1:13:42So YouTube is doing something to identify
1:13:45the subset of their whole audience
1:13:48that wants to watch shorts.
1:13:51And while I have been extraordinarily vocal
1:13:54complaining about YouTube not notifying subscribers,
1:13:58I think this is 100% the right decision.
1:14:01I would have been so much more hesitant publishing this
1:14:04if it was going to be sent as a normal notification
1:14:07to everyone like, "Hey, CGP Grey has uploaded a video."
1:14:09It's like, no, no, no.
1:14:11They're just trying to shovel this
1:14:13to people who do like shorts.
1:14:15And so I think that's correct.
1:14:17I am glad that they have done that
1:14:19because part of the reason why I asked you
1:14:22about what's your experience with these things
1:14:23is I don't watch a lot of TV, but I watch a lot of YouTube.
1:14:27And I feel really annoyed when I click on a video
1:14:32and, oh, it's a short, it's not an actual video.
1:14:35I'm quite frustrated by that experience as a YouTube viewer,
1:14:38but because I was watching shorts to figure them out,
1:14:41YouTube thinks I'm a shorts viewer now,
1:14:43and so now they're just showing up
1:14:45in the recommendations for video.
1:14:47Big shorts fan.
1:14:48I don't even wear shorts in Hawaii.
1:14:50I'm not a big shorts fan at all.
1:14:51- Oh, boy.
1:14:52But like, so I don't like them from like all of my subscribers.
1:14:58I would greatly prefer not to be notified and shown the short.
1:15:02One of the things that does bother me about YouTube shorts is they are entirely
1:15:08the energy of the beginning of a YouTube video.
1:15:10Yeah.
1:15:12And I don't always want that, you know, like sustained for a 20
1:15:15minute period of me watching.
1:15:16Right.
1:15:17One after another, after another.
1:15:19Welcome to the Smash the Like!
1:15:21That's what they're like, you know, because they are their entire thing is they need to catch you and grab you and keep you which is
1:15:27I actually think is different to YouTube videos, right?
1:15:29Like you get those first few seconds when you might catch someone and they're gonna leave
1:15:34But you let that calm down most of the time not always but a lot of youtubers like you get that
1:15:39Immediate bump and then it calms down into the rest of the video
1:15:43But most of the shorts content that I've seen is like it is that energy for the entire length of the short
1:15:50however long it is. Right, which is a bit exhausting after 20 minutes. I find it. Yeah.
1:15:54One of the other things for me about shorts, which is tricky, is whenever you talk about
1:16:01spreadsheets, right, you use spreadsheets to help you make decisions, but the spreadsheet is not
1:16:08your boss and there are things that the spreadsheet cannot capture. And there's one thing that I
1:16:15really feel like is actually the way in which the short may perform worse than everything I have
1:16:22previously mentioned that a spreadsheet can't capture, but I think is really important. And that thing is
1:16:30how many
1:16:33really engaged fans does this video create?
1:16:38And so one of the things we have talked about many times is at
1:16:42at large scales, when you post a video,
1:16:46it's going to be guaranteed that it is many people's
1:16:50favorite video you have ever made,
1:16:52and it's very many people's final straw
1:16:55where they unsubscribe, and they're like,
1:16:56"I can't deal with this," right?
1:16:57You get both ends of that.
1:16:59And people who unsubscribe, like, that's fine.
1:17:01That's no problem.
1:17:02Like, preferences change, or you subscribe to a thing,
1:17:04and you realize, "Oh, I don't actually like this
1:17:06"as much as I thought that I would."
1:17:08Whatever.
1:17:08What matters is people who are really engaged.
1:17:13And I think one of the reasons why, for a lot of analytics,
1:17:19my channel is a real outlier on YouTube
1:17:22is that I think I create more people who
1:17:27are super engaged with my videos than an average YouTube
1:17:31channel.
1:17:32Again, this is the kind of content that I like.
1:17:35I like stuff that I am super engaged in and I don't like middle of the road.
1:17:41So it's like, why did I put off getting back into magic?
1:17:44Because I knew I was going to be incredibly engaged when I got back in.
1:17:48It's like YouTube channels that I watch.
1:17:50I'm really engaged with those things and I want to create that kind of stuff for people too.
1:17:56Videos where when they watch them multiple times it's like,
1:17:59"Oh, I got more out of this the second time than the first time."
1:18:03But I think the Shorts format, it's fundamentally opposed to the ability to even create that sort of thing.
1:18:11I think with less than a minute, you simply cannot create an engaged audience.
1:18:20I think you can create stuff that's like fun to watch once.
1:18:24I think you can create stuff that's really funny in a minute.
1:18:27I think there's a lot of stuff that you can do in that constraint.
1:18:31But what you can't do is create fans who are really into something.
1:18:38I think it's just too small of a format.
1:18:42So the metric that can't go on a spreadsheet is how many people saw this and it's the favorite
1:18:49thing I've ever made that they saw.
1:18:51I think the answer to that question for this short is literally zero.
1:18:56There's no one who saw this and thought, "Wow, that's amazing."
1:18:59And that's a really important metric and I just think shorts, even if I continue to do
1:19:04them in the future, like let's say everything turns up sunshine and roses and it's like,
1:19:09"Oh, I am bringing in new audience members and all of the shorts are feeding into each
1:19:14other so the view numbers make sense for them to do, blah, blah, blah."
1:19:18Let's say all of that works.
1:19:20I still think no one will ever become really engaged because of the shorts.
1:19:25The short's whole purpose is to funnel them over into the actual main thing.
1:19:32That's the way in which I think the shorts actually perform the worst.
1:19:37This is no one's favorite video I have ever made.
1:19:41It's just not going to happen with the nature of the format.
1:19:43- You know you wish you could ever gonna have said that.
1:19:46Someone's gonna be in the Reddit and gonna be like, "Gray, this is my favorite video
1:19:49you ever made."
1:19:50- Yeah, sure.
1:19:51- But I know what you mean.
1:19:52I know what you mean.
1:19:53- Yeah.
1:19:54In a weird way, my wife is a particular exception because she loves that thing where I point
1:19:58out that the towels aren't real.
1:20:00It's her favorite video I've ever made.
1:20:01Is that not a short?
1:20:02Yeah, it is a short.
1:20:03Surely it has been classed as a short on the channel.
1:20:07It's not filmed vertically.
1:20:08I should just re-crap and upload it to the main channel.
1:20:10That's what I should do.
1:20:11Actually, maybe I should do that.
1:20:12That's not a terrible idea.
1:20:13I think you should do that.
1:20:14I think you should do that.
1:20:15I feel like you're right.
1:20:19I think the asterisk I would maybe make is like, it probably takes time, like a frequent
1:20:29uploading getting into the system and then you have the ability as a short video creator
1:20:37to break through to someone and be like "I like this person" but I would hazard to say
1:20:44say it is harder than YouTube. It is harder than long-form content. I would expect it
1:20:51is easier with longer-form content to develop that bond.
1:20:55And it's also, genre really matters here. Like, pure comedy can do a lot better in the
1:21:01shorts format than anything that is even vaguely trying to explain something.
1:21:08Comedy and dancing, that's what the short-form video is best at. And that's what all the
1:21:12popular TikToks are, the comedy and its dancers.
1:21:15That's what I'll do for my next short, comedy dance.
1:21:18Great, if you made the stick figure character do a TikTok dance,
1:21:22I swear to you it'd be the most popular thing you've ever made.
1:21:25This is again, you put me in again like this no-win situation
1:21:28of if I do it I will be so depressed I can't possibly tell you if it's
1:21:33successful and if I do it and it's not successful
1:21:36I'll also feel better. It's like there's no winning there so no.
1:21:40- Well, I tell you, it would be amazing, man.
1:21:43It would be so good.
1:21:44- So we actually have an interesting comparison point here
1:21:47for Cortex, which is the Cortex animated stuff,
1:21:51which all of those animations,
1:21:53they're not much more than a minute,
1:21:55and almost every single one of them
1:21:57is actually two little scenes,
1:21:59so they could easily be cut down into two videos
1:22:02that are 30 seconds each, right, every single one of them.
1:22:05But I just don't think if they were shorts,
1:22:09they would be as good at getting people into the Cortex show
1:22:14as they are as actual videos on YouTube.
1:22:18And this is just anecdotal my using shorts,
1:22:21but it's like YouTube really seems to treat
1:22:23the shorts browser and the regular YouTube browser,
1:22:27I'll say almost completely as totally separate worlds
1:22:31with the little asterisk that the main YouTube browser
1:22:34does try to funnel you into shorts
1:22:36by putting stuff in the recommended side
1:22:38and then like you're in the shorts browser.
1:22:39But there's no way going back.
1:22:41And one thing I found quite interesting is,
1:22:44so again, I've spent time using shorts
1:22:45and just watching them.
1:22:47And even the channels where it's like,
1:22:48oh, I clearly have watched a ton of their shorts.
1:22:52When I am on my computer or I'm on my iPad
1:22:54and I'm just using YouTube,
1:22:56YouTube is not recommending me the real videos
1:22:59from those creators.
1:23:01I'm just very aware of that.
1:23:02It's like, guys, there's channels where you know
1:23:05I have watched 20 or 30 shorts from these guys
1:23:09and you've never put them on the actual main YouTube channel.
1:23:14- Like on the homepage?
1:23:15- Yeah, on the actual homepage.
1:23:17Like it just doesn't show up in browse.
1:23:19And like again, maybe that's just some peculiarity
1:23:22of the way that I'm doing stuff.
1:23:23But like I have for some channels literally gone to check.
1:23:26Do they have any real videos?
1:23:27And the answer is, oh yes, they have a bunch.
1:23:30All of which are performing way worse
1:23:32in terms of view numbers than their shorts.
1:23:34I would not recommend like, "Oh, we should do the Cortex Animated stuff as shorts because
1:23:40maybe this will convert more people over."
1:23:42It's like, "No, I don't think that will."
1:23:44I think YouTube will just show people all of the shorts that we would put up as Cortex
1:23:49Animateds and never in any way recommend that like, "Oh, hey, maybe you go listen to one
1:23:56of the whole episodes on YouTube the way that they do on the actual main youtube.com or
1:24:01in the YouTube app."
1:24:02So yeah, I don't know.
1:24:04I just think it's interesting that we have content that easily could be a short, but
1:24:08I just don't think it's a good idea to do it.
1:24:12But yeah, I don't know.
1:24:13Maybe we cut them up and we put them on TikTok, Myke.
1:24:15There we go.
1:24:16We could do that.