Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Okay, you ready Mike? I'm gonna hold you to the honor system.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Right now, are you ready?

00:00:05 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Rock paper scissors and shoot.

00:00:08 ◼   ► What'd you do?

00:00:10 ◼   ► Scissors.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Rock!

00:00:12 ◼   ► This happened to me when I played against you.

00:00:16 ◼   ► When you told me, oh I'm gonna go rock!

00:00:19 ◼   ► But my problem was...

00:00:21 ◼   ► I'd already made my mind up before you said that.

00:00:24 ◼   ► And so I was like...

00:00:25 ◼   ► I basically fell into the Monty Hall problem with you, accidentally.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Which wasn't the point of the video.

00:00:31 ◼   ► It's like, you can change it!

00:00:32 ◼   ► I was like, never will change it!

00:00:34 ◼   ► And then I then faked it and then got to the second one.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Knocked out again because I chose scissors again.

00:00:41 ◼   ► So I only legit got to the second one.

00:00:44 ◼   ► That's as far as I got legit.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And then I gave up and just clicked through everything.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean but that's because good old rock.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Nothing beats rock, Mike.

00:00:52 ◼   ► So we are obviously talking about your rock paper scissors video/series of videos.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Video, I feel like, does not capture the totality of what has happened in my life over the past several months.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:06 ◼   ► I want to talk through this with you because I'm very interested.

00:01:09 ◼   ► And also, Cortex-ins have been banging down my door wanting to know about the production of this video.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Oh, okay, great.

00:01:16 ◼   ► People want to hear about this so I'm very interested.

00:01:19 ◼   ► But I want to start at the start.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Because every video that you have starts with a piece of information or an idea that comes from somewhere.

00:01:27 ◼   ► And I'm intrigued to where did this video begin?

00:01:32 ◼   ► Because there's kind of two parts to it.

00:01:33 ◼   ► There is the game but there's also the odds.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And so where did the rock paper scissors video...

00:01:38 ◼   ► Like how did it first find its way into your like, "Oh, I might look at this."

00:01:43 ◼   ► Like what was it that triggered it?

00:01:44 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what you mean by there's the game and there's the odds.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Well, there's the game of rock paper scissors, right?

00:01:49 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:01:51 ◼   ► But then there are also the one in a million because you didn't need to do the one in a million.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Right, okay.

00:01:56 ◼   ► For this to be a thing, right?

00:01:58 ◼   ► Like that's kind of like the two things going on in this video.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Of like, you could have just played rock paper scissors against the internet, right?

00:02:05 ◼   ► And it could have been like a choose your own adventure thing, which it was.

00:02:08 ◼   ► But there was also this other through line of,

00:02:11 ◼   ► "Can you get to one in a million?"

00:02:13 ◼   ► Which is like a specific thing that you kind of decided.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, there's also another thing which is just talking about

00:02:20 ◼   ► the game in itself, like the concept of rock paper scissors, which I didn't do at all.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Exactly, that's what I mean.

00:02:25 ◼   ► And I wondered like, did it start with, "I want to make a video about rock paper scissors."

00:02:29 ◼   ► And then it's like, "Oh, actually I can make a video playing it."

00:02:32 ◼   ► We'll get into the details.

00:02:33 ◼   ► This was an insanely enormous project.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I think by very many metrics, this is the hardest thing that I have yet made.

00:02:41 ◼   ► It was a big asteroid that crashed into my life.

00:02:45 ◼   ► So there's a lot of post-analysis that I want to do that I just,

00:02:49 ◼   ► at time of recording, haven't had a chance to do.

00:02:51 ◼   ► And one of those is doing some Evernote archaeology to try to figure out

00:02:55 ◼   ► when is the earliest documentation that I have for starting this video.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I know that it had to be at least five or six years ago,

00:03:08 ◼   ► because I can date in my mind talking to some specific people

00:03:11 ◼   ► at YouTube actually about doing something like this.

00:03:15 ◼   ► It was back in the day for when YouTube was doing YouTube originals.

00:03:21 ◼   ► And so there was a question of like, "Oh, does this make sense as a YouTube original?"

00:03:24 ◼   ► And the answer was, "No, it doesn't."

00:03:25 ◼   ► It's like, you know, someone was like, you'd heard it through the grapevine,

00:03:29 ◼   ► "Oh, so YouTube will pay you.

00:03:31 ◼   ► The more episodes you do, the more they'll pay you."

00:03:34 ◼   ► And you're like, "I have an idea for a thousand videos."

00:03:36 ◼   ► Yeah, so my memory goes back to at least then.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I remember having a conversation.

00:03:43 ◼   ► But even at that point, I know the idea was pretty solid and had been around for a while.

00:03:48 ◼   ► - So we're talking like, basically for as long as you can remember,

00:03:51 ◼   ► the idea was, "I want to play the game with people."

00:03:54 ◼   ► Like that was the idea.

00:03:55 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Playing the game was the original idea.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I thought that there was something fun about this notion.

00:04:01 ◼   ► And it had been in my mind just because YouTube allowed this,

00:04:06 ◼   ► you know, unlike basically all other video platforms,

00:04:09 ◼   ► they do allow some amount of interaction.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Like it's not a lot.

00:04:14 ◼   ► It's just a little.

00:04:15 ◼   ► You can choose between clicking on a couple of things

00:04:18 ◼   ► and they'll take you to different videos.

00:04:19 ◼   ► - Importantly, on all platforms.

00:04:22 ◼   ► - There's some asterisks to that, but it's basically all platforms.

00:04:24 ◼   ► - It doesn't work well on TVs, but it's possible.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Like you can still click them, but it's hard.

00:04:29 ◼   ► But like, you know, it works best on computers and phones,

00:04:31 ◼   ► which let's be real, that's what people are watching the videos anyway.

00:04:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, for sure.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Like on my analytics, I think it's like 60% of views now are on phones.

00:04:38 ◼   ► It's at least it's over half, but it's a lot.

00:04:40 ◼   ► - I think even when I hear that, it's like, yeah, that's a high number,

00:04:43 ◼   ► but I'm still surprised it's not more.

00:04:45 ◼   ► - I think the truth is it's not more because the majority of desktop views,

00:04:50 ◼   ► I am absolutely certain are coming from people who are supposed to be working

00:04:53 ◼   ► on their work computers watching YouTube.

00:04:55 ◼   ► That's where the other 40% are.

00:04:57 ◼   ► - Oh, I mean, I do that, right?

00:04:58 ◼   ► Like everybody does that, but it's just still surprising to me.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Like honestly, like I'm surprised that like people aren't at work

00:05:04 ◼   ► and they're just looking at their phones.

00:05:06 ◼   ► You know, I know people do that too.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Anyway, that's always a surprise to me.

00:05:09 ◼   ► It's like, oh, 60% is a lot, but I'm also like, yeah, but why is it not 80?

00:05:13 ◼   ► - I think actually the big surprise for me in the last two years

00:05:16 ◼   ► is the very clear upward trend of views on TV.

00:05:21 ◼   ► I think last time I looked, it's like 10% now, and it used to be under 1%.

00:05:27 ◼   ► Like it used to not even show up in the analytics,

00:05:29 ◼   ► but it's like YouTube is slowly gaining ground on TV.

00:05:32 ◼   ► - That is much higher than I expected.

00:05:35 ◼   ► That's wild.

00:05:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's also very noticeable that it's on the weekend.

00:05:40 ◼   ► Something about YouTube over the years has, for some portion of the population, become a,

00:05:46 ◼   ► oh, this is what I watch on the weekend along with Netflix and whatever.

00:05:50 ◼   ► - I was gonna say, I feel like Netflix is the reason this has happened in a weird way.

00:05:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it has to be.

00:05:55 ◼   ► - Right, which is just like trained people to be choosing videos using their smart TV.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And so now YouTube is just like shoehorned into that

00:06:05 ◼   ► because people are already there.

00:06:07 ◼   ► Like because people want Netflix on their TV,

00:06:10 ◼   ► they have some kind of smart TV or some kind of thing that makes their TV smart.

00:06:15 ◼   ► So then they also just watch YouTube there as well.

00:06:17 ◼   ► That's fascinating.

00:06:18 ◼   ► I would never have expected 10%.

00:06:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed it either.

00:06:22 ◼   ► I wouldn't have even noticed if a friend hadn't pointed it out to me of like,

00:06:25 ◼   ► go check out your TV view stats over the last few years.

00:06:27 ◼   ► It's like, oh yeah, it's like total upward trend, like surprising.

00:06:31 ◼   ► - Because it's like, I know I do it, but this just feels like one of those things

00:06:35 ◼   ► that I do because I'm a nerd and I have an Apple TV, right?

00:06:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:38 ◼   ► - It doesn't feel like one of these things that I just assume everybody's doing.

00:06:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, everyone who watches YouTube on their TV probably feels like they're the only person

00:06:46 ◼   ► who does it, but actually it's becoming a significant number of people.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Anyway, so like that stuff had just been on my mind because I was thinking about,

00:06:52 ◼   ► I need to make sure where the devices are in order to still do this.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And TV was the one I was thinking about of,

00:06:59 ◼   ► this just basically won't work on a TV for almost anyone.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And so, yeah, I just wanted to double check like, great.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Phones are still basically everything, phones and computers.

00:07:08 ◼   ► I'm good to go on this.

00:07:09 ◼   ► But yeah, so it had been on my mind for a long time of like,

00:07:15 ◼   ► what can you do with this little bit of interaction that YouTube gives you?

00:07:21 ◼   ► And I think some kind of choose your own adventure thing is the obvious thought to have about this.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And I mean, this gets into the math of things.

00:07:33 ◼   ► There are reasons that video choose your own adventure things just don't work very well.

00:07:38 ◼   ► So like I sort of ruled out straight away, like,

00:07:41 ◼   ► well, you can't do an actual choose your own adventure thing.

00:07:43 ◼   ► So then kind of thinking about, okay, maybe it could be a game.

00:07:46 ◼   ► What options are possibilities?

00:07:49 ◼   ► And then very quickly, it just narrows down to like,

00:07:51 ◼   ► rock, paper, scissors is the only thing I ever really considered in a serious way.

00:07:57 ◼   ► As like, what could you do with this interactivity?

00:08:00 ◼   ► It's maybe the most interesting thing that you could simply manage.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Right.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Like that people understand they get you have to explain the rules really,

00:08:09 ◼   ► like it's quite simple, I guess.

00:08:11 ◼   ► I did just want to provide a quick piece of follow up.

00:08:13 ◼   ► The Cortex YouTube channel is 10% TV, which is mad.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Okay, that's really crazy.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Who's doing that?

00:08:20 ◼   ► You know?

00:08:21 ◼   ► But like you do you, I guess.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah, we're in your living room right now on the TV.

00:08:25 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Thanks for watching.

00:08:27 ◼   ► Yeah, so you're totally right that if you start thinking through what are the options,

00:08:34 ◼   ► I think almost anyone would kind of boil it down to rock, paper,

00:08:37 ◼   ► scissors is the only sensible choice to do.

00:08:39 ◼   ► You know, like three things to choose from is significantly more interesting than two,

00:08:45 ◼   ► without becoming as complicated as four.

00:08:48 ◼   ► You can basically assume that it's got to be what, like,

00:08:53 ◼   ► 99% of the English speaking world must know the rules of rock, paper, scissors.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Like there can't possibly be any other game that you could count on,

00:09:02 ◼   ► like a random English speaker anywhere in the world knowing.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:05 ◼   ► So yeah, I was thinking about this for years.

00:09:07 ◼   ► But one of the things that held me back on it was that I was originally thinking,

00:09:12 ◼   ► "Oh, this game could be fun, but this isn't the main thing.

00:09:19 ◼   ► This would be like an addition to doing a video about the game of rock, paper, scissors.

00:09:26 ◼   ► And then like as a little bonus, I can do this game."

00:09:29 ◼   ► I mean, I understand for like the way that you make videos,

00:09:32 ◼   ► but you can't just be like, "Here's a thing I did."

00:09:34 ◼   ► That's not the kind of creator that you are, right?

00:09:36 ◼   ► Like the videos tell a story, there's something to them.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I almost feel like anyone could make the rock, paper, scissors game,

00:09:44 ◼   ► but the way that you did it was interesting in the way that you would do it.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And I guess that's what you're going to say, like you came to that thought.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I think long time viewers of my stuff will know that one of the reasons it just takes forever

00:10:00 ◼   ► for me to make things is I'm not very happy ever doing just the direct description of a thing.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Like I don't like to make a video that's just like, "Let me tell you about this thing."

00:10:10 ◼   ► I always feel like there has to be some other element to it

00:10:16 ◼   ► that makes it uniquely interesting in some way.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Like sometimes it's a critical fact that I'll stumble upon.

00:10:22 ◼   ► Like I've mentioned this before, like I'll be reading about a topic

00:10:24 ◼   ► and it's like, "Yeah, no, this could be interesting."

00:10:27 ◼   ► And then there's like you find one piece of information and you go like,

00:10:30 ◼   ► "Ah, this is what I build the whole video around."

00:10:35 ◼   ► Like for me, the iconic example of this is always the tumbleweed video.

00:10:38 ◼   ► It's like the fact that tumbleweed are originally from Russia,

00:10:43 ◼   ► like, "Oh, now it's a video." Right? "This is interesting."

00:10:46 ◼   ► Like all of the framing can be built around this concept.

00:10:51 ◼   ► But just a video about tumbleweed talking about what they are,

00:10:55 ◼   ► it's like I just think that's kind of boring most of the time.

00:10:58 ◼   ► So I'm always like looking for the other thing.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And so for years and years, I didn't make a lot of progress on this rock, paper, scissors thing

00:11:07 ◼   ► because I was always kind of focused on, "Well, I need to make an interesting video

00:11:14 ◼   ► about the game of rock, paper, scissors."

00:11:16 ◼   ► And I never really found what's the interesting thing about this

00:11:24 ◼   ► that's more than just talking about the history.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Yeah, there's plenty of videos out there that will like basically give you

00:11:30 ◼   ► like an entertaining Wikipedia level summary of the history of rock, paper, scissors.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And like that's fine. But I was always trying to find like,

00:11:38 ◼   ► "But what's the additional thing? What kind of makes this interesting?"

00:11:42 ◼   ► The closest I ever got was just how rock, paper, scissors is related to the Pokémon system.

00:11:49 ◼   ► It's kind of interesting. But the problem for me is I just never really got that into Pokémon.

00:11:56 ◼   ► So I like I'm the wrong person to try to do this.

00:11:59 ◼   ► System's totally broken now. But yes, originally it was very much like that.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Now there's too many types is the problem. And so it isn't as simple as it used to be.

00:12:08 ◼   ► That was like the original idea of this was like,

00:12:10 ◼   ► "How far can you push rock, paper, scissors before it breaks?"

00:12:13 ◼   ► And it's like, it works reasonably well with five.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Like there's a bunch of different interesting variations of rock,

00:12:18 ◼   ► paper, scissors that have five different moves.

00:12:21 ◼   ► What are the other implements?

00:12:23 ◼   ► Here's the thing. I was about to try to say them off the top of my head.

00:12:25 ◼   ► If I just said them, it's like, "I'm going to mix them up."

00:12:27 ◼   ► And some of them it's like, "Lizard. Lizard is one of the options."

00:12:31 ◼   ► Yeah. Everyone knows lizards eat rocks. Yep. Okay.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Okay. So the most popular variant is rock, paper, scissors, Spock, lizard.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And you add in this additional one and you can get a sensible five different versions of this.

00:12:49 ◼   ► Now that one's been popularized by, I think the Big Bang Theory.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Like there's the actual like foundational version of it is rock, paper, scissors,

00:13:00 ◼   ► water, fire. Some of these get into strange things where the throws are not equal.

00:13:06 ◼   ► So it's not like there's a one-third chance. Some of it breaks down where it's like you have a

00:13:10 ◼   ► one-ninth chance of winning throwing one thing. And it kind of adds an interesting strategic

00:13:16 ◼   ► element where they're not perfectly equal. Anyway, what I am telling you right now is

00:13:21 ◼   ► part of the problem of like, why did this never happen?

00:13:24 ◼   ► Because the moment you start talking about, there's versions where there are five,

00:13:29 ◼   ► but then you have to explain some of these versions that are five don't have even math.

00:13:35 ◼   ► At this point already, it's like, okay, you're just going to lose people.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And why are you even telling them this? Like what purpose is this trying to serve?

00:13:44 ◼   ► It's not complicated enough to be interesting in and of itself.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Yeah. You know, like with a lot of my videos,

00:13:50 ◼   ► the fact that it's complicated can be interesting where there's just like a deluge of stuff.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Like all the airport codes, right? It's like the very fact that the video,

00:13:59 ◼   ► like you're 10 minutes into the video and it's like, oh, by the way, we've only spoken about

00:14:04 ◼   ► one-tenth of the number of codes that exist. That's the interesting thing in the video.

00:14:10 ◼   ► The complication of those videos, and I also actually feel the same for the highway ones,

00:14:15 ◼   ► which is like, the information, you don't need it.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Like what is making this complicated is all the numbers.

00:14:22 ◼   ► You don't need to remember any of these to understand what's going on here.

00:14:25 ◼   ► And that's what makes it interesting where if like you were doing this video about rock,

00:14:28 ◼   ► paper, scissors, the numbers actually matter for understanding.

00:14:30 ◼   ► It's the rules. It's the rules of the game and like how the game is played.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And so like, if they don't make sense to you, then you're not going to be able to retain

00:14:38 ◼   ► the information to carry on with the video, I guess.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Yeah. And then like the Pokemon thing is also like, why was this always a problem?

00:14:45 ◼   ► It's like, oh, I kind of thought the Pokemon system is interesting.

00:14:48 ◼   ► It's basically even rock, paper, scissors, but you just keep increasing the number of Pokemon of like

00:14:54 ◼   ► bug type wins against ghost type or whatever. I don't know.

00:14:57 ◼   ► There are some that are easy to remember and some that aren't.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Like, but yes.

00:15:01 ◼   ► What's your favorite type of Pokemon?

00:15:02 ◼   ► I'll say grass because I'm a Bulbasaur guy.

00:15:06 ◼   ► You're a Bulbasaur guy? Okay. What does grass defeat?

00:15:09 ◼   ► Grass defeats water.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Okay. What defeats grass?

00:15:12 ◼   ► Fire.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Okay. The fire defeats grass makes sense, but grass defeating water doesn't quite make sense.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I feel like they only made that decision because they have the three that begin, right?

00:15:21 ◼   ► So like you have a fire type of water type and a grass type.

00:15:24 ◼   ► And so like fire and water were easy.

00:15:26 ◼   ► And fire and grass also easy, but then you need the middle piece.

00:15:30 ◼   ► And so then like grass does the thing that kind of doesn't make sense.

00:15:34 ◼   ► But by the end of it, you've got the three.

00:15:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:36 ◼   ► The game is kind of the way that the game structured at the beginning.

00:15:40 ◼   ► It's important that you have the three that can defeat each other.

00:15:43 ◼   ► The rock, paper, scissors of it all, I guess.

00:15:45 ◼   ► But what you're talking about here is also like,

00:15:48 ◼   ► what is the problem with trying to make an interesting video about rock, paper, scissors?

00:15:51 ◼   ► It's like, okay, so say I'm going to skip the whole thing about,

00:15:53 ◼   ► oh, there's versions of five and I'm just going to talk about Pokemon.

00:15:57 ◼   ► It's still the same problem because a huge number of people are just not going to be

00:16:04 ◼   ► familiar with Pokemon.

00:16:06 ◼   ► And so now you have the problem of you're trying to explain two things at once.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Well, I will say just for the record,

00:16:13 ◼   ► Pokemon is like the most successful intellectual property of all time.

00:16:16 ◼   ► Did you know that?

00:16:16 ◼   ► It's not going to defeat the point that you're making.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I'm not rock, paper, scissorsing you here, but that's like a funny fact that I think

00:16:22 ◼   ► maybe a lot of people don't know about Pokemon is just like how successful it is.

00:16:27 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:16:27 ◼   ► But yes, for this video, you would have to explain it.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Which now we're doing a video about Pokemon.

00:16:34 ◼   ► But see, like, that's exactly it, right?

00:16:36 ◼   ► The problem is it's really about the ratios, right?

00:16:39 ◼   ► The number of people who know rock, paper, scissors is functionally the entire human population.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:45 ◼   ► And the number of people who know Pokemon is a subset of that.

00:16:48 ◼   ► You're immediately leaving behind some set of people who know rock, paper, scissors,

00:16:55 ◼   ► but who don't know Pokemon.

00:16:56 ◼   ► And now you are explaining both things.

00:16:58 ◼   ► So this is just why it's like, I was toying with this for years and years,

00:17:03 ◼   ► and I just like never found what's the thing that for me would make a rock, paper,

00:17:09 ◼   ► scissors video interesting to do that doesn't just cause more problems.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And you're exactly right.

00:17:14 ◼   ► Like you hit on it before.

00:17:15 ◼   ► Fundamentally, it's a game.

00:17:17 ◼   ► And it means like you're explaining rules of a game.

00:17:20 ◼   ► And if you're going to do that, you need to be sure that you're not introducing a new game

00:17:28 ◼   ► in your explanation of another game.

00:17:30 ◼   ► Like, I think that's just fundamentally a problem.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Like, for example, take like the Ken chess with hexagons video.

00:17:35 ◼   ► The difference there is like that video is immediately sorting for everyone who watches

00:17:42 ◼   ► and enjoys this at least knows roughly the rules of chess.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And now I'm just telling you a variation on those rules.

00:17:51 ◼   ► You have the thing to compare it to.

00:17:54 ◼   ► But even in that, like, I'm not sure if people notice,

00:17:57 ◼   ► I assume everyone who watches that video knows how to play chess,

00:18:01 ◼   ► but I still take the time to just remind people what the standard motion of each of the pieces are.

00:18:09 ◼   ► Because I think otherwise you lose people.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Well, I know how to play chess, but not frequently.

00:18:15 ◼   ► So like it is helpful to have a refresher in that video of the movements of some of the pieces.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Because like I have played chess, I know how to play chess,

00:18:24 ◼   ► but it's kind of like Monopoly in a way for me, right?

00:18:27 ◼   ► I just got to just have a quick scan of the rules just so I remember like,

00:18:31 ◼   ► oh, this piece moves that all I got the two mixed up, you know, like, so it is helpful to have that.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:37 ◼   ► How do I get out of jail again?

00:18:38 ◼   ► I don't remember.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Like I rolled doubles or sevens?

00:18:42 ◼   ► Is it craps?

00:18:42 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

00:18:44 ◼   ► So yeah, this is all like the behind the scenes stuff.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Like what am I thinking about while trying to do stuff?

00:18:48 ◼   ► And this is also why at this point now, basically every video I do has been in the background for

00:18:55 ◼   ► a really long period of time.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And this is one of these things of like, I'm not working on it, but I'm just like trying to find

00:19:02 ◼   ► the thing and you never know when you do.

00:19:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:05 ◼   ► Now some projects just, this is the way they die that you never really find the extra thing

00:19:12 ◼   ► and then you just stop thinking about it and then you forget that you ever thought about

00:19:16 ◼   ► it in the first place and it's just like off into ghost land it goes like it did, like it never

00:19:21 ◼   ► existed.

00:19:21 ◼   ► But Rock Paper Scissors has stuck with me for years because I was like, there's something

00:19:27 ◼   ► here.

00:19:28 ◼   ► I just need to figure it out.

00:19:30 ◼   ► I just, I can't find what the thing is.

00:19:34 ◼   ► And so it was really at the very end of last year, sort of rolling over into the beginning

00:19:42 ◼   ► of this year that I finally found what is the thing?

00:19:49 ◼   ► And you never know where this is going to come from.

00:19:52 ◼   ► And for me, the answer, it couldn't have been more unexpected.

00:19:59 ◼   ► Like starting in September of last year, I had for various reasons, a bunch of existential

00:20:05 ◼   ► risks just on the back of my mind.

00:20:07 ◼   ► Like I was thinking about them a bunch and that's where I was like, this is what it is.

00:20:13 ◼   ► This is actually what connects to Rock Paper Scissors is the extinction of the human species.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Like you're dealing with this thing of numbers and like then probability and numbers getting

00:20:24 ◼   ► so huge.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Like what does it mean to talk about millions and billions and trillions?

00:20:29 ◼   ► If you'll allow me to step in for a moment, because there is an important piece of context

00:20:34 ◼   ► that has been missed here.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I don't think it has been missed.

00:20:38 ◼   ► People will not know what you're talking about unless they've clicked all the way through.

00:20:41 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I'll get to that, right?

00:20:43 ◼   ► Okay, cool.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I just want to, because like now we're into existential risk, which is like for a minute,

00:20:48 ◼   ► I was like, what?

00:20:49 ◼   ► And they'll say, oh yeah, the end.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I forgot about the end.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Like I also had a video that was sort of in the works for a long time, which was just

00:20:57 ◼   ► about trying to visualize bigger and bigger numbers.

00:21:00 ◼   ► That was also kind of suffering from the same problem of like, what's the interesting thing

00:21:03 ◼   ► here rather than just trying to do this.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Basically, sometime between the end of last year and the beginning of this year, it merged

00:21:10 ◼   ► into my brain that these things were all connected.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Rock Paper Scissors was connected to this concept of really big numbers, which was also connected

00:21:21 ◼   ► to this concept of existential risk, which is the chance of the human species being wiped

00:21:28 ◼   ► out forever.

00:21:29 ◼   ► And this is where I realized, oh wow, okay.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Because of the way statistics works in this really unintuitive way, the odds of winning

00:21:40 ◼   ► and the numbers of players you would need to like reach a certain number of wins gets

00:21:45 ◼   ► big really fast, like much bigger, much faster than people would guess that it would.

00:21:51 ◼   ► And so you can very quickly run into a case of like, how many rounds of Rock Paper Scissors

00:21:59 ◼   ► would you need to play before no one on earth could possibly win this game?

00:22:04 ◼   ► How many rounds of Rock Paper Scissors would you need to play before all of the humans

00:22:10 ◼   ► who've ever lived no one would win that many times in a row?

00:22:13 ◼   ► And then just extend it further, like how many rounds of Rock Paper Scissors would you

00:22:17 ◼   ► need to play before no humans who might ever live would win this game?

00:22:24 ◼   ► And again, because of the nature of exponential math, it's not like a bazillion rounds.

00:22:30 ◼   ► It's a, I'm going to say the word manageable in like a huge quotes now.

00:22:34 ◼   ► It's a manageable number of rounds.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And so this is what I started to work on in the background of other projects at the beginning

00:22:42 ◼   ► of the year was how can I connect these ideas together?

00:22:49 ◼   ► And that's what Mike is trying to just jump to, to let viewers know that if you keep playing

00:22:56 ◼   ► the game, the game is basically a fake out, right?

00:23:00 ◼   ► I'm saying like, we're going to play Rock Paper Scissors until you win one in a million odds.

00:23:05 ◼   ► But that's not really what the video is.

00:23:09 ◼   ► If you get to that one in a million point, it keeps going.

00:23:13 ◼   ► And it says like, we're going to play until one in a billion, which could be someone on

00:23:17 ◼   ► earth.

00:23:17 ◼   ► And then from one in a billion, there's still more videos.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And it goes, we can play until one in a trillion.

00:23:23 ◼   ► But a trillion is such a big number that if you are taking the idea seriously, it calls

00:23:34 ◼   ► into question, will someone ever be able to win this?

00:23:40 ◼   ► Will someone ever honestly be able to win this many games in a row?

00:23:45 ◼   ► And the answer could quite possibly be no.

00:23:49 ◼   ► So that's the way all of this came together.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And so what I eventually realized was the solution of how do I make my Rock Paper Scissors

00:23:57 ◼   ► video interesting was, oh, I don't actually need to do that part at all.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I can just ditch the whole idea of making a video about the game Rock Paper Scissors.

00:24:08 ◼   ► I can just do the game itself, because I've found a way to put what I think is the interesting

00:24:16 ◼   ► extra part hidden inside of this as a surprise to the really dedicated viewers.

00:24:22 ◼   ► So realistically, it's about odds.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And then you tie that into the fact that the world might not ever exist long enough to

00:24:32 ◼   ► do the one in a trillion, even if people were actively trying to do it.

00:24:37 ◼   ► I guess that's how I'd put it.

00:24:39 ◼   ► I would like to, especially listeners of this show, sincerely recommend that people click

00:24:46 ◼   ► all the way through, because I think it's kind of a travesty in a way that it may be

00:24:53 ◼   ► the best writing of yours that I've experienced is the trillion video.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

00:24:59 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:24:59 ◼   ► I clicked all the way through, and I was, I will say, quite surprised by it.

00:25:04 ◼   ► It was very good, very emotional, and beautiful.

00:25:09 ◼   ► So I just think people should watch it, because it's worth it.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Plus, I would say it's fun.

00:25:15 ◼   ► I would do it anyway, but I did it for my work, where I just clicked "Click and Win,"

00:25:19 ◼   ► and I went through the whole thing and just wanted to see where it was going.

00:25:23 ◼   ► I want to ask how many videos there are in total.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Yeah, so if people want to get to that, yeah, Mike's right.

00:25:31 ◼   ► You just need to keep clicking "Win," and I'm trying to remember off the top of my head.

00:25:36 ◼   ► I think it's like 20-something clicks to get to the end.

00:25:40 ◼   ► Again, it's sort of fewer than you would think, because exponential math adds up quickly.

00:25:45 ◼   ► To get to a trillion, you don't click it hundreds of times, but it was just what you

00:25:49 ◼   ► would think, but it's just because of the way that odds work, right?

00:25:52 ◼   ► I actually quite like how when you start getting up to the really high numbers,

00:25:56 ◼   ► you start providing context for that, too, which I thought was really helpful to

00:26:01 ◼   ► help it kind of drive home the idea of just how unlikely it is that somebody could get to this point.

00:26:07 ◼   ► Like you're using the metaphor of the maze, right?

00:26:09 ◼   ► And just people getting knocked out, and I thought that worked really well.

00:26:12 ◼   ► I'm glad you liked the ending.

00:26:13 ◼   ► It's a couple episodes ago.

00:26:16 ◼   ► This is partly why I was saying I think a few things will make sense to people now, right?

00:26:21 ◼   ► Now that I could talk about like, "Oh, the rock-paper-scissors thing is the thing that

00:26:24 ◼   ► was driving me crazy that I was working on."

00:26:27 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, all of the things I was talking about how why I had to be locked away in a hotel

00:26:33 ◼   ► room and I was trying to keep a big project in my head, this is it, right?

00:26:37 ◼   ► This was the thing."

00:26:38 ◼   ► It's like, "Boy, this is not the kind of thing you can work on for like a few hours a day

00:26:44 ◼   ► and then go back to your normal life and come back and just be like, 'Oh, let me pick up where

00:26:48 ◼   ► I'm finished.'"

00:26:48 ◼   ► It's like, "No, no, no.

00:26:49 ◼   ► You've got to do this all at once or you're just never going to finish it, because it's

00:26:52 ◼   ► big and complicated."

00:26:53 ◼   ► It's also the part where I said I was like a little bit nervous about how this would do

00:26:58 ◼   ► because in many ways it's quite earnest.

00:27:00 ◼   ► And yeah, like that last video, I never really know how people take things, but I really

00:27:06 ◼   ► mean that as a video.

00:27:08 ◼   ► So I'm glad that you like it.

00:27:10 ◼   ► I kind of know what you mean by in a sense it's a shame that a very small number of people

00:27:15 ◼   ► will ever see it, but I kind of feel like that's the point.

00:27:20 ◼   ► It is a video for the dedicated people to find.

00:27:25 ◼   ► The way that it feels is the way that you're writing it purposefully, right?

00:27:30 ◼   ► Like it's written to the trillionth person.

00:27:33 ◼   ► And so it has this kind of feeling of a time capsule.

00:27:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And so that's what I think makes it so effective.

00:27:41 ◼   ► It is a message to a person who may or may not ever get there.

00:27:46 ◼   ► I think, you know, this is the kind of stuff where you're sort of putting an emotional

00:27:52 ◼   ► state on the line, which always feels very vulnerable as a creator.

00:27:55 ◼   ► And I was really conscious of, I wanted to write that part when on that great occasion

00:28:02 ◼   ► where I had been just completely isolated from everyone for two weeks and was just thinking

00:28:09 ◼   ► about this.

00:28:09 ◼   ► So like I was kind of, I was really trying to put myself in some ways in this like mindset

00:28:15 ◼   ► of isolation and like, I'm just, there's no one that I know who is around and I'm just

00:28:21 ◼   ► in this room and trying to like think forward about what this means.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And having written that, I had some ideas that like, oh, I was going to revise that

00:28:32 ◼   ► a bunch after I was done, but I thought, no, no, no.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Like I wrote this in a little moment and I'm not going to revise this after the trip is

00:28:39 ◼   ► done.

00:28:39 ◼   ► Like the version that I ended up making there is like, I'm just going to stick with that

00:28:43 ◼   ► even if it's not perfect, because I think imperfect things can sometimes capture a mood

00:28:48 ◼   ► better than if you do try to make it absolutely perfect.

00:28:51 ◼   ► So that certainly explains the way it feels because it does feel different.

00:28:57 ◼   ► Like it feels like it's you coming from a different like style and point of view.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And so realistically it's vulnerable.

00:29:06 ◼   ► Like the writing is vulnerable because you are probably in a more vulnerable state at

00:29:12 ◼   ► that point.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Like working on what you were working on.

00:29:16 ◼   ► And like, this is one of those things that I feel like hasn't happened in actually quite

00:29:20 ◼   ► some time where I was just like very aware of the growing complexity of the project.

00:29:26 ◼   ► Like I feel like this used to be something that you would be dealing with more years

00:29:33 ◼   ► ago than recently where like something's coming, it slips, it slips, it slips.

00:29:39 ◼   ► It's just kept happening.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Right.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And so I'm also assuming at that point you, and I know you, are so over it.

00:29:47 ◼   ► There's some parts of this which kind of naturally bleed into our like yearly themes

00:29:53 ◼   ► discussion.

00:29:53 ◼   ► So I want to intentionally hold some things back, but I will just say here that in many

00:29:59 ◼   ► ways I actually feel like this project was a real kind of, for me, personal crowning

00:30:04 ◼   ► work achievement, even though it just absolutely destroyed me because like you said, I don't

00:30:10 ◼   ► think you have had that experience in a while of like the, of the project slipping in the

00:30:15 ◼   ► way that this did, which was much more frequent.

00:30:17 ◼   ► And I feel like I have gotten so much better at managing complicated projects over the

00:30:23 ◼   ► years.

00:30:23 ◼   ► And what has just happened is I was able to do something that a past version of me just

00:30:30 ◼   ► would never have been able to do.

00:30:33 ◼   ► That is a great point.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:35 ◼   ► You have two years ago even, you wouldn't have been able to do this.

00:30:38 ◼   ► There's just no way.

00:30:39 ◼   ► You wouldn't have been able to get it done.

00:30:40 ◼   ► It's too much.

00:30:41 ◼   ► It's nice in careers to be able to have moments that you can point to and be like,

00:30:45 ◼   ► "Oh, look, I like objectively developed in some way in my work."

00:30:50 ◼   ► And I think the rock, paper, scissors one is that for sure.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Personal growth.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:55 ◼   ► People like to feel like there's some kind of motion and momentum, but this is just such

00:31:01 ◼   ► a strange project for me because in some ways it just ended up completely destroying all

00:31:08 ◼   ► of my plans for the whole year and it was ruinous, but was also like I feel really, really

00:31:16 ◼   ► happy with the way this came out.

00:31:18 ◼   ► And I feel like there is no reasonable version that could have gone better than this did.

00:31:23 ◼   ► And there is no younger version of me who could have possibly made this.

00:31:29 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm pretty happy with the way it came out and I'm pretty happy with kind of

00:31:34 ◼   ► like getting into the right state to write that last video.

00:31:37 ◼   ► And I don't know, to try to like earnestly express some ideas that have been on my mind

00:31:44 ◼   ► for a while in just in a different way or in a different context.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And I'm okay with the fact that a small number of people will ever see that because I think

00:31:58 ◼   ► it works that if someone just shows that to you, it's in a very different context than

00:32:04 ◼   ► if you click through all of the videos.

00:32:07 ◼   ► I think it's an important part that, and it took a long time to make it work right,

00:32:12 ◼   ► that as you keep clicking through, you have this sort of like opposite experience that

00:32:18 ◼   ► you as the player keep winning.

00:32:20 ◼   ► And so that's great for you, but the longer it goes on, the sadder the character of Gray

00:32:27 ◼   ► is.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And it's not really clear why exactly is he sad or these references to the future.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And then I think that last one kind of can really hit you at the right moment.

00:32:40 ◼   ► And I've gotten a lot of just really great feedback from people on that.

00:32:44 ◼   ► And it does really seem like it has worked.

00:32:47 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, this is why I'm telling people to go watch it, but I'm not going

00:32:50 ◼   ► to put a link to that video.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Yeah, no, don't link it directly.

00:32:54 ◼   ► You have to go through.

00:32:55 ◼   ► It's important because it won't make sense.

00:32:58 ◼   ► You have to see the escalation.

00:33:00 ◼   ► It's an important part of then being able to contextualize why we're talking about

00:33:06 ◼   ► the end of civilization at the end of a rock, paper, scissors sequence.

00:33:10 ◼   ► This is also why when I came upon this idea, like sometimes you just know something is

00:33:14 ◼   ► perfect because it's also just like, what an opposite ending to the start of a seemingly

00:33:21 ◼   ► trivial video.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Like there's almost this meta level of it.

00:33:24 ◼   ► The video itself comes off as, oh, this clickbaity thing of like, oh, we're rock, paper, scissors.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Like, let's internet plays the game.

00:33:30 ◼   ► And then at the end, it's like, this is the most serious video I've ever made.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Yes.

00:33:34 ◼   ► Step one, would you like to play a game with me?

00:33:36 ◼   ► Step four, I'm worried about the extinction of the human race.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Like, oh, okay.

00:33:43 ◼   ► That's related.

00:33:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:45 ◼   ► And again, like the reflection of it of like the very fact that you have been experiencing

00:33:50 ◼   ► odds and you're experiencing what unlikely odds feel like is the reason I am worried

00:33:57 ◼   ► about these unlikely events.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Like it just, everything just kind of comes together and I'm really happy when a project

00:34:03 ◼   ► does that.

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00:36:10 ◼   ► I have some technical questions for you.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Project this complexity working within a system you do not control just means there's going

00:36:18 ◼   ► to be a lot of weird things that go on, but I would like to know to start with how many

00:36:22 ◼   ► videos are there and how long is the total runtime?

00:36:26 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:36:28 ◼   ► In the end, the number of finished videos uploaded to YouTube that are connected together

00:36:38 ◼   ► is 113 videos.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I phrase it like that because there were many more videos uploaded to YouTube, but things

00:36:46 ◼   ► don't always work out.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Like there's just you have to re-upload things.

00:36:48 ◼   ► There's glitches.

00:36:49 ◼   ► The original version was probably going to be closer to 120, but at the very last minute

00:36:54 ◼   ► I was like a couple of these I just have to cut out because I just like I just I just

00:36:58 ◼   ► can't like I have to get this thing finished.

00:37:00 ◼   ► So the final version has 113 videos and I am so glad that I did not know this until after

00:37:09 ◼   ► it was finished, but the runtime of all of those videos is one hour and 33 minutes in

00:37:16 ◼   ► total.

00:37:17 ◼   ► It's quite a lot.

00:37:18 ◼   ► Again, if I had known this at the start, I would never have started.

00:37:21 ◼   ► So I'm very glad that I did not.

00:37:23 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Why is that?

00:37:24 ◼   ► Like about the runtime?

00:37:26 ◼   ► Like it seems like the amount of videos isn't the problem, but it's the length of them.

00:37:29 ◼   ► It's more just like I was completely shocked by the runtime is the way that I would put

00:37:33 ◼   ► it.

00:37:33 ◼   ► Like I always knew the number of videos.

00:37:36 ◼   ► The number of videos was the thing that I was thinking about.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:40 ◼   ► That runtime is a bit of an overestimate, right?

00:37:42 ◼   ► Like probably the real speaking runtime is something closer to an hour because by the

00:37:47 ◼   ► nature of it, like every one of these videos has 10 seconds where nothing happens.

00:37:50 ◼   ► My favorite part is one of the videos where you're like we just have to sit and wait.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Which is really good.

00:37:57 ◼   ► This one's meant to happen quickly, but like we just need to wait a minute and now we can

00:38:02 ◼   ► finish that.

00:38:03 ◼   ► I just like that.

00:38:04 ◼   ► That was me expressing my frustration with the YouTube system of like YouTube, please.

00:38:10 ◼   ► Why do you have these arbitrary restrictions about how short the video can be before end

00:38:15 ◼   ► cards are?

00:38:15 ◼   ► Why do you only let me put them in the last 20 seconds?

00:38:18 ◼   ► My whole life would be so much easier if you would just let me put them in a video of any

00:38:24 ◼   ► length at any time, but no.

00:38:26 ◼   ► So yeah, that was me being like a little passive aggressive towards YouTube.

00:38:29 ◼   ► I mean, at the point where you put the YouTube robot thing that you've created in there,

00:38:33 ◼   ► I'm not sure if it was passive anymore.

00:38:35 ◼   ► You're like explicitly calling them out, but.

00:38:38 ◼   ► YouTube, you know, we've got like a complicated relationship.

00:38:40 ◼   ► I love that you allowed this whole thing to exist in the first place, but also it's incredibly

00:38:44 ◼   ► frustrating to work through your system.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Was it one script in the end that you were working from?

00:38:49 ◼   ► No.

00:38:50 ◼   ► So that's why it's like I had no idea how long the actual runtime would be.

00:38:54 ◼   ► So the way I like on my back end, it's a you know, it's basically 113 individual scripts.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Like I always see what the word count is of whatever I'm working on.

00:39:03 ◼   ► And so I know roughly like, oh yeah, like 2000 words is going to be this long.

00:39:07 ◼   ► But I just.

00:39:07 ◼   ► In the process of making it had never seen it, and so it wasn't until someone when I

00:39:14 ◼   ► was doing the director's commentary, someone pointed out that I could like select all the

00:39:17 ◼   ► files in Final Cut and see the total runtime and yeah, it was just genuinely shocking.

00:39:23 ◼   ► But I was also kind of relieving in a way because it made me feel less like, how did

00:39:31 ◼   ► I get so overwhelmed with this?

00:39:33 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, the answer is you uploaded like three years worth of stuff.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Like that's how this got so overwhelming.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Whereas when they were the individual videos, I think in my head, I could kind of round

00:39:46 ◼   ► all of them down to zero in some sense.

00:39:49 ◼   ► It's like, oh, none of these videos individually is any kind of big deal.

00:39:53 ◼   ► So if I round them all down to zero and then sum it up, it's like, it's not a lot of

00:39:57 ◼   ► work.

00:39:57 ◼   ► It's only when you see it all together at once that it was, it was really shocking.

00:40:01 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, I actually did end up writing a ton for this.

00:40:04 ◼   ► And this also explains why the audio took weeks to do to get all of the different parts

00:40:13 ◼   ► of it right.

00:40:14 ◼   ► I think much to the chagrin of my animator, I refuse to like copy paste the things where

00:40:21 ◼   ► I'm saying like rock, paper, scissors or paper beats rock.

00:40:24 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, I want all of these to be unique.

00:40:27 ◼   ► I don't want any of these to be repeated.

00:40:29 ◼   ► There's one little section like depending on which path you take through the maze where

00:40:33 ◼   ► I'm, I've copy and pasted a description of what has happened because the same thing

00:40:38 ◼   ► has happened in each place.

00:40:39 ◼   ► But even on those videos, they're not exactly the same because I wanted it to sound different

00:40:44 ◼   ► when I say like rock beats paper or, you know, whatever thing I'm saying at the end.

00:40:50 ◼   ► These are little details like I don't know if listeners really pick up on that, but to

00:40:54 ◼   ► me it was important that it didn't feel to the person like, oh, I just copy pasted the

00:41:01 ◼   ► same audio 300 times.

00:41:02 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, I want to actually say these different.

00:41:04 ◼   ► There are some videos I'm assuming that are written in such a way that someone will and

00:41:11 ◼   ► could see them multiple times right through one playthrough.

00:41:14 ◼   ► No, there's no video that someone's seen multiple times through a playthrough.

00:41:17 ◼   ► There's no repeated videos?

00:41:19 ◼   ► If you are doing an honest playthrough once, there are no repeated videos.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Even on the like going backwards part?

00:41:28 ◼   ► Yeah, even on the going backwards part.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Wow.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Commitment to the craft, man.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Geez, you did not need to do that, but I appreciate that you did.

00:41:37 ◼   ► People tried to talk me out of this, but I felt like this was important to do.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm all in on the idea of making it as artsy project as you can possibly make

00:41:46 ◼   ► it like if anyone I'm going to be all in on that.

00:41:49 ◼   ► The reason I thought is just because some of them have no context in them and they're

00:41:54 ◼   ► fast, so I just assumed that they were made so you could see them more than once and wouldn't

00:42:01 ◼   ► remember that.

00:42:02 ◼   ► So hats off to you.

00:42:03 ◼   ► I can send you the map of the whole thing.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Well, I was going to ask how were they linked?

00:42:10 ◼   ► Like how did you work that out?

00:42:13 ◼   ► The linkage?

00:42:14 ◼   ► What were you using to?

00:42:16 ◼   ► So that's half of it.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Oh my word.

00:42:18 ◼   ► Let me squeeze something together so I can try to get like one shot for the show notes.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Are you effectively using an Obsidian canvas here?

00:42:27 ◼   ► Yes, I am quite effectively using an Obsidian canvas.

00:42:29 ◼   ► And I'm assuming that these are all going to Obsidian notes then, right?

00:42:33 ◼   ► Yeah, so each one of these is an Obsidian note.

00:42:36 ◼   ► What a great use of that feature.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Look, I'm just going to say it.

00:42:40 ◼   ► I think this is the biggest public project that has ever been done with Obsidian.

00:42:47 ◼   ► Like it just has to be.

00:42:49 ◼   ► What other thing made on the internet has been seen by as many people that required

00:42:57 ◼   ► as complicated an Obsidian setup as this?

00:43:00 ◼   ► I think I'm at the peak.

00:43:01 ◼   ► I think there is no one on Earth who has done something that hits both of those at the same

00:43:07 ◼   ► level of like maximum viewership and also maximum complicatedness for an Obsidian project.

00:43:15 ◼   ► So yes, what I have sent Mike is some images of how did I put this project together?

00:43:24 ◼   ► How did I keep everything straight?

00:43:26 ◼   ► And what I did is in Obsidian, there's a feature called Canvas.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Basically, you can take any of your individual notes in Obsidian and drop them onto the Canvas

00:43:38 ◼   ► where they just become a little box and you can connect them with lines to other boxes.

00:43:44 ◼   ► And this is how I built up the map for how should the game work.

00:43:51 ◼   ► So, listeners, you will just have to pause your podcast player and take a look at the

00:43:57 ◼   ► show notes to have any concept of what I'm talking about here.

00:43:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:00 ◼   ► But in the image that you're going to look at, each little square represents one of the

00:44:07 ◼   ► videos in the screenshots where I've zoomed in close enough so you can see the individual

00:44:12 ◼   ► squares, you can see that the script for each video exists in one of those squares.

00:44:19 ◼   ► So I can kind of get an overview of like at least the starting part of each script that

00:44:24 ◼   ► I'm working with.

00:44:25 ◼   ► And then I connected each square representing a script representing a video with red, green,

00:44:35 ◼   ► or white lines sort of depending on what's happening for what other videos should this

00:44:43 ◼   ► video connect to via the end cards.

00:44:46 ◼   ► So that is what Mike is looking at right now is a big complicated mess of squares broken

00:44:53 ◼   ► up into a bunch of different sections connected with lines.

00:44:57 ◼   ► And the red and green lines represent the win or fail state and where the viewer should

00:45:02 ◼   ► go.

00:45:02 ◼   ► This is incredible.

00:45:05 ◼   ► I kind of can't believe that it does work.

00:45:07 ◼   ► It seems so complicated.

00:45:09 ◼   ► But like, did this allow you to effectively plan out how they were going to be linked

00:45:17 ◼   ► when uploaded?

00:45:18 ◼   ► Yes, it didn't start out this complicated, right?

00:45:21 ◼   ► Even when I say like, Oh, I got the idea of what I want to do, I'm gonna have this rock

00:45:24 ◼   ► paper scissors game that's going to end with the possible extinction of the human race.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Great.

00:45:29 ◼   ► Very simple.

00:45:30 ◼   ► It's like one line, it's going to be 20 games, just a straight thing.

00:45:35 ◼   ► And we're done.

00:45:35 ◼   ► And so I was thinking like, okay, I need to just have some way to look at this.

00:45:41 ◼   ► I don't want to write this all out in a single script.

00:45:43 ◼   ► I do want to take advantage of like, breaking things down into individual notes, because

00:45:48 ◼   ► it's nicer to work with stuff that way.

00:45:49 ◼   ► And so like, let me just throw this on a canvas and start to think about it because I need

00:45:53 ◼   ► I need a little bit of like, what happens when the person loses kind of stuff.

00:45:56 ◼   ► So I started to think about it.

00:45:59 ◼   ► But then the moment I started drawing this out, it made much clearer where there were

00:46:05 ◼   ► problems in the potential flow of how players would travel around.

00:46:10 ◼   ► It also made it much more obvious where things just weren't going to be fun.

00:46:16 ◼   ► And so you're looking at the end result of trying to solve a bunch of problems.

00:46:23 ◼   ► One of those problems is, well, if I'm playing rock, paper, scissors, people are going to

00:46:30 ◼   ► lose.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Like basically, the definition of this game is every honest player will lose eventually.

00:46:38 ◼   ► Some people might make it to one in a million.

00:46:40 ◼   ► But we can easily round that off to zero percent of the viewers will win.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Well, that's kind of a bummer, isn't it?

00:46:50 ◼   ► Like, that's no fun.

00:46:51 ◼   ► Let's play a game.

00:46:53 ◼   ► All of you are going to lose.

00:46:55 ◼   ► Oh, right.

00:46:56 ◼   ► I don't like that at all.

00:46:57 ◼   ► So what I tried to do was slowly increase the number of ways that someone could have

00:47:06 ◼   ► more chances.

00:47:07 ◼   ► So this is where, depending on how people went through the maze, it's a bit like, if

00:47:11 ◼   ► you fail, I repeatedly try to give you multiple chances to get on a winning streak.

00:47:20 ◼   ► And so on the map that you're looking at, there's three vertical lines in the center.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Those are three main paths that can be winning streaks for a player.

00:47:30 ◼   ► They're like these columns?

00:47:31 ◼   ► Yes, those columns.

00:47:32 ◼   ► So the leftmost column at the top, that is the one video that is public, the one that

00:47:40 ◼   ► has a yellow line that's connected to it.

00:47:41 ◼   ► That's the start.

00:47:43 ◼   ► And if you just keep winning, you're going down that vertical column.

00:47:48 ◼   ► That is like you're winning the first game.

00:47:51 ◼   ► It's the golden path.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Yeah, the yellow line is just there for me to mark off that the final ending video where

00:47:57 ◼   ► I have like a general message to everyone who has played that also connects back to the

00:48:02 ◼   ► very first video.

00:48:03 ◼   ► So that's why there's that one color that's different.

00:48:06 ◼   ► I'm just talking about there's a bunch of boxes that are in a blue rectangle.

00:48:10 ◼   ► That is, if you keep winning every time, you're continuing down this first path for a one

00:48:17 ◼   ► in a million victory.

00:48:18 ◼   ► But you can be knocked off that path, but then you, I will, if you win after you get

00:48:26 ◼   ► knocked off, direct you to the start of a second chance to try to win a one in a million.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And then if you get knocked off that second chance, I will try again to redirect you to

00:48:38 ◼   ► a third chance to win one in a million before you are actually knocked off.

00:48:44 ◼   ► So the player doesn't know this at the start, but they really have three chances to try

00:48:49 ◼   ► to win one in a million, and that will only become clear to them when they lose the first

00:48:55 ◼   ► round.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:48:57 ◼   ► It makes sense.

00:48:58 ◼   ► And so those three chances to win one in a million, those all then direct you to the

00:49:05 ◼   ► one in a billion and one in a trillion run.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:08 ◼   ► So if you get to the end of any of those three, you'll get directed onto there.

00:49:13 ◼   ► And then across the top is something else that I added halfway through, which like doubled

00:49:22 ◼   ► the complexity of what I was doing when I realized like, wait a minute, if someone keeps

00:49:30 ◼   ► losing, like if they lose every time, that actually also starts becoming very unlikely.

00:49:38 ◼   ► And so I realized, oh, I can do what I called an anti-luck run where instead of winning

00:49:44 ◼   ► to one in a million odds, you can not win until one in a million odds.

00:49:50 ◼   ► So you draw or lose every single time.

00:49:53 ◼   ► And I often decide like I'm doing a project, I found the thing, this is interesting.

00:49:59 ◼   ► And then it is a professional delight when I find like, oh, there's something else that's

00:50:06 ◼   ► even more interesting in here that I just didn't even conceive of when I started the

00:50:10 ◼   ► project.

00:50:11 ◼   ► And this concept of like someone is anti-lucky and they never win, but they never win so

00:50:19 ◼   ► many times it's one in a million.

00:50:20 ◼   ► I was like, oh, this is delightful.

00:50:23 ◼   ► Now, of course, fast forward to where this was an absolute complete nightmare to make

00:50:27 ◼   ► and the worst part of the project because it's just too many videos.

00:50:31 ◼   ► And I was like cursing the fact that I had ever thought of this concept of anti-luck,

00:50:35 ◼   ► but yeah, so that's what the top of this is trying to show is all of those videos where

00:50:40 ◼   ► you lose or fail every single time and you get through the entire game without ever winning

00:50:47 ◼   ► and end up as a one in a million anti-lucky winner.

00:50:50 ◼   ► - How did you ensure the linking in the YouTube system?

00:50:55 ◼   ► Like this map is great, but like this is not how YouTube looks.

00:50:59 ◼   ► Like how did you correctly assign the linkages to make sure that it was done correctly?

00:51:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, so this was a severely not fun part of the project.

00:51:11 ◼   ► After everything's recorded, after all of the videos are made, after everything is exported

00:51:18 ◼   ► and we've gone through the different versions, it all needed to get uploaded to YouTube and

00:51:23 ◼   ► there's no way around it.

00:51:24 ◼   ► This was just pure misery.

00:51:25 ◼   ► This was an absolutely miserable time in my life putting all of these videos up.

00:51:30 ◼   ► So the thing that I worked out to answer your basic question is that I developed a code

00:51:38 ◼   ► to name all of the videos uniquely with a little bit of information that tells me where

00:51:46 ◼   ► in this map does this exist?

00:51:49 ◼   ► So again, on the screenshots, you can see that the videos all have names like R1H0

00:51:55 ◼   ► 3W.

00:51:56 ◼   ► And so that means to me, it's like run one.

00:51:59 ◼   ► This is the first game where you could win one in a million.

00:52:03 ◼   ► It's hand three.

00:52:04 ◼   ► And then W means this is the video for the win state.

00:52:09 ◼   ► You know, so it's like, oh, R1H3L is like round one, hand three, but the losing state.

00:52:17 ◼   ► So all the videos had unique names.

00:52:20 ◼   ► I duplicated all of those names in Final Cut so that when I exported these videos, the

00:52:27 ◼   ► file name would be the same unique name as the script.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Uploaded them to YouTube.

00:52:33 ◼   ► We will shortcut the like unbelievable amount of work it took to just even get them uploaded

00:52:39 ◼   ► to YouTube.

00:52:40 ◼   ► But once they were there, I could then use the naming system to be able to find which

00:52:47 ◼   ► two end cards need to match up with this video.

00:52:51 ◼   ► So that's how that worked.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And if someone is clicking through on the videos now, those file names are still in

00:52:57 ◼   ► the descriptions of all of the videos as just a way for me to have a record of like which

00:53:02 ◼   ► script was this, which video was this, because when I was done, I didn't want them to have

00:53:08 ◼   ► these titles because I think it would just be distracting to people and they would be

00:53:11 ◼   ► trying to guess.

00:53:12 ◼   ► So I went back and then renamed all of them just with like a red or orange emoji for the

00:53:18 ◼   ► win state or the losing state.

00:53:20 ◼   ► On the YouTube back end, I now have pages and pages of videos that have no names.

00:53:26 ◼   ► They just have red and orange dots on the YouTube back end.

00:53:31 ◼   ► So that's how it worked.

00:53:31 ◼   ► The answer is a unique code for each script.

00:53:35 ◼   ► Use that to refer to the map to put the end cards correctly so that each video is linked

00:53:41 ◼   ► to where I have it in this map in Obsidian.

00:53:43 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Fitbud.

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00:55:50 ◼   ► Are your analytics ruined forever?

00:55:52 ◼   ► I guess also separate question because I saw a lot of people talking about this.

00:56:00 ◼   ► How do you feel like the algorithm feels about you?

00:56:03 ◼   ► Oh, the algorithm obviously does not like this video.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Okay.

00:56:07 ◼   ► It's another reason why like this project was just a lot of work.

00:56:11 ◼   ► It was also kind of crushing to work on because I was just constantly worried about this is

00:56:17 ◼   ► not what the algorithm wants.

00:56:19 ◼   ► The YouTube algorithm does not want the thing where a YouTube channel that uploads like

00:56:25 ◼   ► four to six videos in a year suddenly uploads more than a hundred, all of which are unlisted

00:56:33 ◼   ► except for one extremely short video at the beginning.

00:56:36 ◼   ► Like none of this is going to fit into whatever machine learning system has been devised to

00:56:43 ◼   ► figure out like what is happening here.

00:56:46 ◼   ► It was just interesting to see, but like, you know, YouTube provides you with all of

00:56:50 ◼   ► this information about impressions and I could see just straight away and I can still see

00:56:56 ◼   ► it that YouTube is just not interested in showing this video to people like it's so

00:57:04 ◼   ► clear the impressions data is the worst thing in a very long time that I have uploaded and

00:57:11 ◼   ► I can't say that I'm surprised by that.

00:57:13 ◼   ► It does create this really weird phenomenon though where again, like people will ask why

00:57:20 ◼   ► am I so happy with this video and like one of the reasons is the amount of positive feedback

00:57:26 ◼   ► I have gotten from people is just incredible.

00:57:29 ◼   ► It's like an order of magnitude more positive feedback than any project in a long time I

00:57:37 ◼   ► can think of because people who like this love this, but I also know that there's a

00:57:46 ◼   ► huge number of people who bounce off of this just immediately.

00:57:49 ◼   ► So I do just want to signpost here like my feeling is not even, oh, the algorithm should

00:57:56 ◼   ► have promoted this more.

00:57:57 ◼   ► I think that there's very many ways in which the algorithm may be totally correct in not

00:58:02 ◼   ► showing this to more people because just like the hexagon chess video, that was a video

00:58:09 ◼   ► where I knew talking to people, oh, people either love this or they just don't care at

00:58:13 ◼   ► all and the rock paper scissors one, I could tell it was the same thing.

00:58:17 ◼   ► They would either have a very strong positive reaction like, oh wow, that sounds really

00:58:21 ◼   ► interesting or I would get a reaction that was a bit like, so what?

00:58:26 ◼   ► Why am I playing a game of rock paper scissors against you on the computer?

00:58:30 ◼   ► You're not even here.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Like what are we even talking about?

00:58:32 ◼   ► So to answer the question, the analytics exist in this amazing place.

00:58:38 ◼   ► They are in some sense the worst video has done in a long time and it's also kind of

00:58:47 ◼   ► the best a video has done because roughly speaking, every view on average that is generated

00:58:55 ◼   ► on the first video translates to about 10 views in total from people clicking through.

00:59:02 ◼   ► So as of right now, this is a 14, 15 million view video project.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Right, so there's the video is one thing, but the project.

00:59:19 ◼   ► So like, you know, I was going to ask you, do you think this video is a success?

00:59:24 ◼   ► But I guess the question is, was this project a success?

00:59:27 ◼   ► And those are maybe two different things with wildly different outcomes.

00:59:31 ◼   ► That's the exact way to talk about this.

00:59:35 ◼   ► In some sense, I could like totally make the argument of like, oh, that rock paper scissors

00:59:40 ◼   ► video, total failure, like just very bad, not being recommended by the algorithm.

00:59:46 ◼   ► It's gaining no new audience.

00:59:48 ◼   ► It's also why like the number of comments I've gotten from people who are like, I never

00:59:52 ◼   ► even got recommended this by YouTube.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Also like order of magnitude, more of those comments than I normally get from people.

00:59:58 ◼   ► It's like, I'm not surprised.

00:59:59 ◼   ► So I could easily make the argument of like, oh, that rock paper scissors video.

01:00:04 ◼   ► What a disappointment.

01:00:05 ◼   ► But at the same time, this may be the most viewed thing in aggregate that I ever make.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Like if that 10 to one ratio holds, and if the first video crosses more than 3 million

01:00:23 ◼   ► views eventually, it will be the most viewed thing I've ever made.

01:00:28 ◼   ► It'll be the most like in total popular thing on the channel.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Now, like, does it entirely make sense to think about it that way?

01:00:35 ◼   ► I can easily argue like, no, that's sort of a dumb way to think about it.

01:00:38 ◼   ► But that sound is exactly right.

01:00:40 ◼   ► I view this project as a huge success for these two things.

01:00:46 ◼   ► What I was hoping would happen is happening.

01:00:50 ◼   ► That 10 number is really just an average, right?

01:00:53 ◼   ► What's actually happening is probably more than half of viewers are clicking once or

01:01:01 ◼   ► nunts and then a smaller percentage of viewers are having a freaking blast, like exploring

01:01:09 ◼   ► the maze behind the scenes.

01:01:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:11 ◼   ► And like that was the thing that I'm like, I'm just really hoping like, are there enough

01:01:15 ◼   ► people who just really enjoy going through something like this?

01:01:20 ◼   ► It's like, I know I would enjoy going through something like this.

01:01:23 ◼   ► So I hope other people are.

01:01:24 ◼   ► And that that has totally happened.

01:01:26 ◼   ► So again, I'm sort of going to talk about this at the end, but like this has been by

01:01:31 ◼   ► far one of the weirdest years of my life.

01:01:33 ◼   ► It's got to be the weirdest project I will ever do.

01:01:37 ◼   ► Like I just, I can't conceive that if I work on YouTube for another 10 years that I will

01:01:42 ◼   ► ever do anything as weird as this again, because it's just such an insane outlier.

01:01:49 ◼   ► It's kind of hard to know exactly how to think about this, but I can definitely tell

01:01:54 ◼   ► you like my YouTube backend is not easy to work with anymore at the very least.

01:02:00 ◼   ► Like I'm really used to being able to like scroll down that one page and see videos from

01:02:06 ◼   ► the past several years.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And now it's like, Oh no, no, no, dude, before you did this, you had like 200 videos in

01:02:15 ◼   ► total ever uploaded to the channel.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And you increase that by 113 in the space of two weeks.

01:02:22 ◼   ► So it's like, no, this is brutal.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:24 ◼   ► You sound about this being like maybe the weirdest thing.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Like I always say this to you, but this is one of those times where people in my life,

01:02:32 ◼   ► like kind of like our mutual friends are like, what is he doing?

01:02:35 ◼   ► You know, like when people see it, it's like, wait, what?

01:02:39 ◼   ► I'm like, yeah, man, it is what it is.

01:02:43 ◼   ► He's done it.

01:02:43 ◼   ► He's gone and done it.

01:02:44 ◼   ► You know, you saying about the recommendation.

01:02:47 ◼   ► When you told me about this video, I was so excited about it.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Right.

01:02:51 ◼   ► And I was convinced it was going to be a success because it's weird and people will like it.

01:02:57 ◼   ► And I thought that it would get some element of word of mouth, like that.

01:03:01 ◼   ► It felt like a perfect word of mouth video.

01:03:03 ◼   ► And like, I saw it, you know, like in a bunch of blogs that I follow, we're posting about

01:03:07 ◼   ► it and, you know, on like various social channels and stuff.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Like in the relay FM members discord, everyone was having a great time when the video came

01:03:16 ◼   ► out.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:17 ◼   ► Like it had that kind of feeling to it.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Oh, great.

01:03:19 ◼   ► But the thing that I was worried about for you, the fracturing of the social media landscape

01:03:25 ◼   ► that exists today felt like it did the video a disservice.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Like if this video came out in 2021 or something, and like all of the potential audience is

01:03:39 ◼   ► still using Twitter the way that they were, I think that this video would have maybe had

01:03:44 ◼   ► a, not massively, but a different trajectory.

01:03:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:47 ◼   ► I mean, maybe.

01:03:48 ◼   ► I'm not sure about the impact of this yet.

01:03:51 ◼   ► I don't think really any creator is like now that the social followings have kind of fractured

01:03:57 ◼   ► a little bit and conversations aren't like in one place as they were.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Like, I just wonder if it may have gone a little bit differently, if there was more

01:04:05 ◼   ► of a focal point around where people were spending their time online.

01:04:10 ◼   ► I'll just say for now, I have some thoughts around that that I kind of want to save for

01:04:13 ◼   ► the theme episodes.

01:04:16 ◼   ► But yeah, like there is something to that.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Ultimately, there's no way we can know this, but it's just a gut feeling that I have, right?

01:04:24 ◼   ► And this is something that I think at some point, I mean, if we don't end up talking

01:04:27 ◼   ► about it in themes, I don't know what's coming up, that I would maybe want to touch on at

01:04:31 ◼   ► some point of like how social media for a content creator now is so different, just

01:04:37 ◼   ► like structurally.

01:04:38 ◼   ► I'll say this as a preview.

01:04:40 ◼   ► I think you are right, but I disagree with you on the reason.

01:04:46 ◼   ► We'll leave that for next time.

01:04:47 ◼   ► Yes, next time, which is themes, but we're doing yearly themes next in case people are

01:04:51 ◼   ► wondering.

01:04:52 ◼   ► We moved episodes around this year.

01:04:54 ◼   ► I was seeing some people be like, "Oh, State of the Apps, that means themes is next."

01:04:57 ◼   ► And I'm like, "No, it doesn't."

01:04:59 ◼   ► No, thanks to our content calendar, we have actually planned ahead to not have two absolutely

01:05:06 ◼   ► backbreaking episodes right next to each other.

01:05:09 ◼   ► We have instead, Gray talks about his completely life destroying project in the middle of the

01:05:15 ◼   ► two biggest episodes of Cortez here.

01:05:17 ◼   ► But isn't that better though?

01:05:18 ◼   ► Because we were really brushing up against the start of State of the Apps when you were

01:05:24 ◼   ► finishing this.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Which was like a worry, like we had to keep moving it and I'm like, "Oh, it is the most

01:05:31 ◼   ► listened to episode of the year and it takes maybe the most preparation."

01:05:35 ◼   ► I feel like I am just constantly causing my stress and problems in a bunch of different

01:05:41 ◼   ► ways.

01:05:42 ◼   ► But this is one of them, but this was also, I think you could sense that there was something

01:05:48 ◼   ► different from me because as I was trying to close down this project, just like when

01:05:53 ◼   ► I was creating the map while I was on the graycation, it's like I had to keep all of

01:05:57 ◼   ► this in my head.

01:05:58 ◼   ► The moment I started putting this stuff up on YouTube, I was extremely aware of, I cannot

01:06:06 ◼   ► stop.

01:06:08 ◼   ► I have to, now that I have begun, roll through and do just this all at once because the moment

01:06:18 ◼   ► I take a break from it and try to come back, it's like I will have dropped these hundred

01:06:22 ◼   ► plates that I'm trying to carry from one place to another.

01:06:25 ◼   ► So this is why I was like, "We do need to move things back and this is not an option

01:06:31 ◼   ► because if I take a break from this, I will have to start over from the beginning."

01:06:37 ◼   ► And yeah, that was part of what made it really brutal.

01:06:41 ◼   ► - There was one thing, I don't remember what it was, but it was if I needed something from

01:06:46 ◼   ► you, I don't remember.

01:06:47 ◼   ► I think it might have been the edit, something to do with the edit.

01:06:50 ◼   ► I don't remember.

01:06:51 ◼   ► But I remember feeling frustrated that we weren't moving it forward and there was a

01:06:56 ◼   ► moment where I was like, "I know this feeling.

01:07:00 ◼   ► I have not had this feeling for a really long time."

01:07:03 ◼   ► And then I was like, "Ah."

01:07:06 ◼   ► It clicked for me of like, "This one's different."

01:07:10 ◼   ► And I knew the project.

01:07:13 ◼   ► I didn't understand the scale of the project.

01:07:16 ◼   ► I feel like, honestly, until I saw that map, you need to see that to understand how big

01:07:23 ◼   ► it was.

01:07:23 ◼   ► But yeah, you are not constantly causing me problems.

01:07:26 ◼   ► You used to constantly cause me problems, but you don't anymore.

01:07:31 ◼   ► - Oh, good.

01:07:32 ◼   ► I'm glad to hear I've improved.

01:07:33 ◼   ► - But this one, it just had a different feeling in its scope and size.

01:07:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:07:39 ◼   ► What you said there is also why I'm very happy for you to put this behind the scenes stuff

01:07:43 ◼   ► in the show notes, because I think even the people who have clicked around, it's difficult

01:07:48 ◼   ► to understand the scope of the project until you see a map of it.

01:07:53 ◼   ► Also, one of the other things that was just absolutely delightful from my perspective

01:07:59 ◼   ► and was a real confirmation of how people were really just loving it is the number of

01:08:06 ◼   ► people who made their own versions of this map was just crazy high.

01:08:13 ◼   ► The number of people I saw either manually trying to draw it out, people who were making

01:08:19 ◼   ► maps of like, where does this click over here?

01:08:21 ◼   ► There were so many different versions of that.

01:08:23 ◼   ► My absolute favorite one was someone who just took a ton of pieces of paper and by hand

01:08:31 ◼   ► with pencil tried to draw out the entire thing.

01:08:34 ◼   ► - Oh my God, they did the Always Sunny meme.

01:08:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:08:38 ◼   ► - They were that person.

01:08:40 ◼   ► - Again, whenever you make anything and you put it on the internet, you're

01:08:42 ◼   ► always kind of vulnerable to this.

01:08:44 ◼   ► How are people going to react?

01:08:46 ◼   ► And this one in particular, I was really hoping, I just want some portion of the audience to

01:08:53 ◼   ► absolutely love it.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And that was the confirmation for me of seeing, people are spending hours and hours building

01:09:01 ◼   ► a custom website to try to list out what are all of the videos and you can click on any

01:09:05 ◼   ► of them to see the different things.

01:09:07 ◼   ► So drawing by hand and rearranging on paper, where do all of these videos connect to?

01:09:12 ◼   ► That to me was just the ultimate confirmation of people just love this.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Some of those people will know, I was removing some of those from the subreddit, but just

01:09:21 ◼   ► on the very first few days, it's like, I don't want spoilers.

01:09:25 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:09:26 ◼   ► - And this was basically like the ultimate spoiler.

01:09:28 ◼   ► So those are getting approved now, but anyone who made one of those things, like I did take

01:09:34 ◼   ► them off the first few days and I was trying to send messages to people like, hey, I totally

01:09:39 ◼   ► love that you did this, I just want to try to keep spoilers off for a little bit.

01:09:43 ◼   ► - I've got to assume people understand that.

01:09:46 ◼   ► - Everyone was on board with that.

01:09:47 ◼   ► Like I did just feel kind of bad because it's like, oh, this is such an outpouring of enthusiasm.

01:09:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:09:52 ◼   ► - But also like, you know, again, like I'm trying to give people a certain kind of feeling

01:09:56 ◼   ► with this and the fun is the exploration.

01:10:01 ◼   ► And so if you just see the map, it kind of pops that fun instantly.

01:10:06 ◼   ► - Yes, because you shouldn't know.

01:10:08 ◼   ► - You shouldn't know how big it is.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the whole thing.

01:10:12 ◼   ► - You shouldn't know that there's a whole second run.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Like you shouldn't know these things.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Oh, which by the way, I guess spoiler alert if you haven't done it, but like, I feel like

01:10:23 ◼   ► if you're this far into the episode, you've at least paused the podcast and gone and watched

01:10:28 ◼   ► the video, right?

01:10:29 ◼   ► Like I'm just going to have to naturally make that assumption about the listener.

01:10:33 ◼   ► - I mean, you know, look, we always find the outliers, but I feel like surely,

01:10:37 ◼   ► almost everyone who's listening to this podcast has played the game.

01:10:41 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, even if they hadn't, at least 20 minutes into this episode, they're like,

01:10:46 ◼   ► you know what?

01:10:46 ◼   ► I should probably go and watch this video so I know what they're talking about.

01:10:50 ◼   ► I now look forward to the comments of the people who said they didn't do that.

01:10:54 ◼   ► But tip of the hat to those people, because I do this, right?

01:10:57 ◼   ► Like I will listen to a podcast about a movie that I've never seen.

01:11:01 ◼   ► You know, I do it.

01:11:02 ◼   ► So like we all do it.

01:11:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Everybody does this kind of thing.

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01:13:00 ◼   ► I want to talk about audience, right?

01:13:03 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Because I assume that there's a bunch of things going on here too.

01:13:07 ◼   ► So obviously, spoilers, you wanted to try and avoid those as much as possible.

01:13:12 ◼   ► Did you do any like pruning at the comments?

01:13:16 ◼   ► I actually didn't need to do as much of that as I thought.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Like there was-

01:13:20 ◼   ► You'd locked them to start, right?

01:13:22 ◼   ► I think was the-

01:13:23 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Which was the right call, I think.

01:13:25 ◼   ► I don't think this really affected people, but I was so annoyed because there used to be an option

01:13:32 ◼   ► on YouTube to hide the view count of a video.

01:13:36 ◼   ► And I wanted to have all of the secret videos have no view count.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Because I thought that that is a different kind of experience for the viewer to just-

01:13:49 ◼   ► to not know how many other people have seen this thing.

01:13:54 ◼   ► And it's like, that used to be a thing you could do.

01:13:56 ◼   ► I don't know when they took it away.

01:13:58 ◼   ► But I think in my head, I always thought it was there because I knew there's the option to

01:14:03 ◼   ► close the comments.

01:14:05 ◼   ► And what's also now like, basically ridiculous is the option to hide the like number, which is

01:14:11 ◼   ► like, what an appendix of an option now that they've gotten rid of the dislike button.

01:14:16 ◼   ► #NeverForget.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Like I can't conceive of why anyone would want to do that.

01:14:19 ◼   ► It's like, I want to keep the views, but I gotta hide the likes.

01:14:22 ◼   ► I don't want people to think that anyone liked this video.

01:14:25 ◼   ► It's totally bizarre.

01:14:26 ◼   ► But I think because I saw those two options there, and because the hide the like is incredibly

01:14:32 ◼   ► dumb now, like I was photoshopping in the hide view count option, which used to be there,

01:14:38 ◼   ► but they got rid of it.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And I only discovered that I'd done a bunch of tests to make sure all of this could work

01:14:43 ◼   ► beforehand.

01:14:44 ◼   ► But I hadn't tested hide the view count.

01:14:47 ◼   ► I mean, look, this is one of these things where it is probably best that I didn't discover

01:14:53 ◼   ► that during the testing phase, because I actually would have rewritten a bunch of the videos

01:14:58 ◼   ► knowing that that was the case and instantly doubled the workload.

01:15:02 ◼   ► So I didn't realize until everything was exporting.

01:15:06 ◼   ► I was so frustrated at that point in time, but it was like, whatever, I just have to

01:15:11 ◼   ► deal with this.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Because I guess what you're saying is if you would have known that you would have maybe

01:15:17 ◼   ► written things in the idea of knowing that people know that there are people that are

01:15:22 ◼   ► actually doing the run through who are not being honest, which is obvious.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Like I would have written it in a way that sort of acknowledges what's happening with

01:15:30 ◼   ► the view count, but whatever, like it's, I'm not going to rework 113 videos.

01:15:35 ◼   ► So it's like, again, I'm kind of glad I didn't discover earlier in the process.

01:15:40 ◼   ► But yeah, so one of the other things I was really worried about is spoilers.

01:15:44 ◼   ► So that's why like the comments are just hidden on a ton of these videos, because logistically,

01:15:50 ◼   ► it's just impossible to try to keep track and make sure no one is spoiling what the

01:15:54 ◼   ► correct answer is at each step.

01:15:57 ◼   ► So it's like, there's comments on the first video.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And then there's comments on all of the endings, except for one.

01:16:06 ◼   ► I did turn off comments on that final video where I talk about the end of the human race.

01:16:12 ◼   ► And I know that people are frustrated with that, because people are like, oh, like I

01:16:18 ◼   ► got to the end.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Like I want to leave a comment.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I want to talk about it.

01:16:21 ◼   ► But this is me being the arty creator, right?

01:16:24 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, I want to force you to just sit with that thought for a little bit

01:16:31 ◼   ► and have nowhere to express it.

01:16:34 ◼   ► This again is kind of the thing.

01:16:35 ◼   ► I think when people watch something, there's a way they can pop their own bubble of thought

01:16:42 ◼   ► by just immediately reading the comments and then leaving a comment themselves.

01:16:46 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, no, just for that final ending, the important video, I've turned off

01:16:52 ◼   ► the comments because I want you to just have to think what you think about that without

01:17:00 ◼   ► being able to just read everybody's take on existential threats and humanity.

01:17:06 ◼   ► So yeah, so there's comments enabled in different spots.

01:17:09 ◼   ► It's mostly like having comments for a big part of the run would have ruined it.

01:17:15 ◼   ► I had to worry about spoilers.

01:17:18 ◼   ► And also I think telling people now that like I was planning that no one would even know

01:17:24 ◼   ► the view counts also explains why it's like I was going to have no comments, no views.

01:17:29 ◼   ► I guess this is the only case actually of suddenly realizing where I actually would

01:17:33 ◼   ► have wanted to click the no likes button because I would want to hide that too.

01:17:37 ◼   ► So you'd have no information.

01:17:39 ◼   ► So yeah, in case people leave breadcrumbs, you know, they've been here.

01:17:43 ◼   ► I wish I could have hidden the views.

01:17:48 ◼   ► God damn it, YouTube.

01:17:50 ◼   ► This is, you don't get to control it, right?

01:17:52 ◼   ► They do whatever they want.

01:17:53 ◼   ► Yeah, you got to work within the system.

01:17:55 ◼   ► The system still let me make this crazy thing.

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01:19:49 ◼   ► Something that I saw in a bunch of places that was very confusing to me to why people

01:19:55 ◼   ► were reacting this way was the question of what do I do if I draw?

01:20:01 ◼   ► When it was so obvious, like to me, like this is maybe one of those things where like, if

01:20:08 ◼   ► it's obvious to you, you don't know why people don't understand it.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly what's happening.

01:20:12 ◼   ► It was on the screen.

01:20:13 ◼   ► You would show the hand movements.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Win was this, and lose was the other two.

01:20:19 ◼   ► And I guess in a perfect world, you'd have three end cards so you could have draw, right?

01:20:24 ◼   ► But then that's probably good because you would have done an extra branch of what if

01:20:28 ◼   ► you draw for one in a million, you draw every round.

01:20:31 ◼   ► So I am actually happy that they don't have three end cards because it would have added

01:20:35 ◼   ► even more work onto your plate.

01:20:38 ◼   ► First, I mean, just conceptually playing a thing, it's sort of easier for the player

01:20:42 ◼   ► to just have two options, but I was aware and I did know I am going to cause confusion

01:20:49 ◼   ► with some number of people over this issue of the draw.

01:20:54 ◼   ► It is also why I'm not surprised that the algorithm is just giving this video far fewer

01:21:02 ◼   ► impressions than other videos, because I do expect that that kind of confusion is something

01:21:07 ◼   ► that like the algorithm can basically derive from the viewers of like what's happening

01:21:13 ◼   ► here, right?

01:21:13 ◼   ► Maybe people are just taking a longer time before they go on to the next video or like

01:21:18 ◼   ► whatever it is, but I fully expect that like the algorithm actually can pull out some kind

01:21:23 ◼   ► of concept like user confusion at location.

01:21:26 ◼   ► So I just like, I just knew that I was going to take a hit on, I can't give people three

01:21:33 ◼   ► options.

01:21:34 ◼   ► I'm going to need to compress it down to two and I'll just, I'm going to take that hit.

01:21:39 ◼   ► But mathematically, the reason why is because if you think about it for a second, the problem

01:21:46 ◼   ► is with the statistics here that if a player draws, well, in rock, paper, scissors, you

01:21:52 ◼   ► go again and see then who wins or who loses.

01:21:55 ◼   ► But you can draw a second time, right?

01:21:59 ◼   ► Like just like you said, you can keep drawing a bunch.

01:22:01 ◼   ► And the answer to if you are going to try to resolve the draw, how many videos do you

01:22:10 ◼   ► need to do that?

01:22:11 ◼   ► The answer is literally an infinite number of videos.

01:22:16 ◼   ► It is not possible to guarantee you can resolve a draw in a finite number of steps.

01:22:23 ◼   ► And so that's why it's like, well, this isn't even a thing I get to make a decision about.

01:22:29 ◼   ► It's literally impossible within the YouTube system of you can only link to pre-made videos

01:22:36 ◼   ► to successfully resolve draws.

01:22:38 ◼   ► So I just, I just had to be like, okay, draws are going to count as losses.

01:22:43 ◼   ► And I did that because it just makes the game shorter than if you count draws as wins.

01:22:47 ◼   ► But in my first version, I actually was writing it as draws or wins.

01:22:51 ◼   ► But I realized it made the project significantly larger and it was just too big.

01:22:56 ◼   ► So I changed it so that draws are losses.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Like what it felt like to me was, and hey, look, if you're one of these people, I'm

01:23:02 ◼   ► sorry if I'm putting you in a bucket.

01:23:03 ◼   ► It felt like to me, people were reacting to a thing before they'd pay attention to it.

01:23:09 ◼   ► I mean, maybe I have a lot of sympathy here for two reasons.

01:23:11 ◼   ► One of which is just in the video itself, I never explicitly say draws count as losses.

01:23:19 ◼   ► Right?

01:23:20 ◼   ► What I actually did is this is one of these things that just happens when you're writing

01:23:24 ◼   ► a script, right?

01:23:24 ◼   ► There are some points in the script where you spend a lot of time trying to select exact

01:23:30 ◼   ► phrasing, but those places are not at all obvious to the viewer.

01:23:35 ◼   ► There's no reason that they should be.

01:23:37 ◼   ► So my, my language around the concept of fail is extremely careful because I'm trying to

01:23:44 ◼   ► be inclusive of loss and draw are both failures to win.

01:23:49 ◼   ► So I spent a lot of time on that, but the viewer doesn't know that, right?

01:23:54 ◼   ► That's a line that just goes by real fast.

01:23:57 ◼   ► So I never explicitly say draws are fails.

01:24:02 ◼   ► That's partly my fault.

01:24:03 ◼   ► Like I had longer versions where I was explaining stuff more and I basically made the decision

01:24:07 ◼   ► of like, this is too boring.

01:24:09 ◼   ► I really wanted to get that first video under three minutes in an ideal world.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I would have gotten it under two, but that was just compressing it too much.

01:24:17 ◼   ► So draws count as fail is part of the thing.

01:24:21 ◼   ► So right there, since I have not verbally said it, I immediately give a huge pass to

01:24:28 ◼   ► a large number of people for being confused at the end.

01:24:32 ◼   ► And then secondly, it is a very hard earned lesson from being a teacher that no matter

01:24:40 ◼   ► how clear you think instructions are, they could always be clearer.

01:24:45 ◼   ► And I don't think I did an amazingly clear job of explaining the concept that draws are

01:24:50 ◼   ► failures in the end.

01:24:51 ◼   ► Okay.

01:24:52 ◼   ► I will take back on my criticism of people.

01:24:55 ◼   ► Like it was clear to me, but it is fair to say like it's not necessarily something is

01:24:59 ◼   ► clear to everyone.

01:24:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:59 ◼   ► But here's the thing, like, I also feel like, no, but it is very clear, right?

01:25:03 ◼   ► The thing to me that is funny that you could miss something and then you go to like a social

01:25:10 ◼   ► media, like you have to write it or something to say like, what do I do?

01:25:13 ◼   ► It's like, you've spent so much energy to go and do the other thing.

01:25:19 ◼   ► Like it's the answer is there, but Hey, you know, I can't understand everyone.

01:25:24 ◼   ► That was kind of sad, but also expected.

01:25:26 ◼   ► And again, that's also why I was like, Ooh, there's a bunch of things that are just working

01:25:30 ◼   ► against this video.

01:25:31 ◼   ► And that is one of them.

01:25:32 ◼   ► But let me Mike, let me tell you what is my real heartbreaker about this video, right?

01:25:36 ◼   ► Just that, like I go, Oh, I never would have expected it.

01:25:41 ◼   ► I could not have predicted it in a million years, but it just kills me.

01:25:47 ◼   ► What ended up being the most work and the hardest part of this video is what I mentioned

01:25:54 ◼   ► before doing this anti-lucky streak.

01:25:57 ◼   ► What happens if you keep failing?

01:26:00 ◼   ► And there were some points where I was seriously considering cutting that whole part, but I

01:26:05 ◼   ► thought, no, no, no, no.

01:26:06 ◼   ► Like this is interesting.

01:26:07 ◼   ► You got to do it, man.

01:26:08 ◼   ► Like sometimes stuff is just hard and you need to push through.

01:26:11 ◼   ► And I'm really pleased with the way it came out and it makes me want to cry.

01:26:18 ◼   ► How many people had the experience of they lost and they just stopped.

01:26:25 ◼   ► They didn't click the lose button.

01:26:27 ◼   ► And I was like, Oh, right.

01:26:30 ◼   ► Because it's like, guys, no, no, no.

01:26:32 ◼   ► You don't understand.

01:26:33 ◼   ► I've given you so many chances, right?

01:26:36 ◼   ► Like there's a whole world to be explored here.

01:26:39 ◼   ► You just have to click the button.

01:26:43 ◼   ► But people were like, Oh, I never would think to do that.

01:26:47 ◼   ► Like I got comments where people were like, Oh, I lost.

01:26:50 ◼   ► So it was just over.

01:26:51 ◼   ► It's like, no, click the lose button.

01:26:54 ◼   ► Like, dude, I'm here for you, right?

01:26:57 ◼   ► I've, I've made so many interesting things for you.

01:27:00 ◼   ► We have a whole maze to explore, but you don't know if you just haven't clicked the like,

01:27:07 ◼   ► what happened button.

01:27:08 ◼   ► So keep in mind, rock, paper, scissors.

01:27:11 ◼   ► There's three things that can happen.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Two thirds of the people who watched that first video should click the fail button.

01:27:22 ◼   ► And I'm, I think maybe half of them just stopped because they thought the game was over

01:27:29 ◼   ► and they had just lost.

01:27:32 ◼   ► And that to me was the sound of my heart breaking into a thousand pieces.

01:27:36 ◼   ► But like, I guess this is one of those things where like,

01:27:40 ◼   ► You just can't know.

01:27:41 ◼   ► You just can't know.

01:27:41 ◼   ► No, but like people were so different because like to me, I'm like, I want to see what this

01:27:47 ◼   ► video is because like, I know there's another video there.

01:27:49 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:50 ◼   ► And so like, I'm just interested in like, what's he going to tell me?

01:27:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:54 ◼   ► You know, but I see the thinking I would never have assumed it, but I see the thinking of

01:28:00 ◼   ► well, it's over, right?

01:28:03 ◼   ► But it's not over.

01:28:04 ◼   ► There's so much more.