WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.200 --> 00:00:16.200
[on-hold music] This week's episode of "The Rebooting Show" is brought to you by Beehiiv, the platform trusted by enterprise publishers like Newsweek and Time.

2
00:00:16.379 --> 00:00:24.460
Newsweek is in the midst of an exciting transformation. With AI disrupting search traffic, they're building direct relationships with their audience through newsletters.

3
00:00:24.640 --> 00:00:35.240
Bharat Krish, Newsweek's Chief Product Officer, spoke about why they chose Beehiiv, and he said that Beehiiv's consumer-first, tech-driven DNA was exactly what they were looking for.

4
00:00:35.580 --> 00:00:46.390
That B2C background ended up growing their tool into being enterprise-ready. Newsweek has aggressive newsletter plans designed around adding new audiences and launching new products.

5
00:00:47.160 --> 00:00:58.580
With more industry leaders like Newsweek migrating to Beehiiv and Twenty Twenty-Six planning in full effect, now is the time to see how Beehiiv can take your content to the next level.

6
00:00:59.360 --> 00:01:16.340
If you wanna see what your next stage of growth could look like, go to beehiiv.com/trb. That is spelled B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com/trb, and meet with Beehiiv's team of growth and newsletter experts today.

7
00:01:16.540 --> 00:01:26.600
Thank you so much to Beehiiv for their support. Welcome to "The Rebooting Show." I am Brian Morrissey. I am joined this week by Darren Cross. Darren is a longtime digital entertainment executive.

8
00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:40.500
He is the author of "Nobody Planned This: How Platforms Rewired Entertainment," Darren ran strategy at Maker Studios. If you don't remember Maker, Maker was, was one of the, one of the original really MCNs.

9
00:01:40.960 --> 00:01:43.060
It was the biggest. Yeah. Yeah.

10
00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:55.320
Like, you know, and, and the MCN was a, it was an interesting period of time, and I think I wanna spin this forward into what's going on in the creator economy, because I know, Darren, you have an interesting viewpoint on that.

11
00:01:55.440 --> 00:02:06.300
So welcome, glad you took the time. Oh, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. All right, so w- walk us through a little bit, like, I mean, so you ran strategy at, at Maker.

12
00:02:06.720 --> 00:02:15.400
I think at the time it had, like, 80,000 creators on the network. Now, the creator economy at the time, I don't even think it was called the creator economy. Was it? No.

13
00:02:15.720 --> 00:02:25.280
That is actually a phrase that's evolved since, right? It kind of... And, and I don't mean this negatively, but it kind of elevates the profession a bit, right? Creator has a very, very nice tone to it, right?

14
00:02:25.480 --> 00:02:37.400
Biblical even. But y-yeah, it wasn't as big. And, and in certain ways that was a virtue. In, in what ways? It allowed more native niche content. It allowed more personality.

15
00:02:37.850 --> 00:02:51.240
It's back when the label authentic really meant more authentic. It really was more personality driven. It really was exploring more less mainstream themes than current creator economy does.

16
00:02:51.340 --> 00:03:00.930
Less replication, less copying than you see now in the, in the- Yeah... influencer creator space. It was, it was less optimized, I think. Right? It's like- Like, I mean, like- I mean, I think of it like music, right?

17
00:03:01.100 --> 00:03:10.820
I think of it, like, before Chuck Berry, there wasn't a Chuck Berry, so Chuck Berry got to be Chuck Berry, right? And before punk rock and before rap, a lot of these musics,

18
00:03:11.820 --> 00:03:20.320
they had to find an access where they could compete because they didn't have all the things that the previous access had, like resources and super skilled players and all that.

19
00:03:20.620 --> 00:03:30.900
You, you get in a different weapons race, where it's more about ideas and difference and cultural relevance. Yeah. And this is as... I mean, really, YouTube. Let's, like, z-zero in on YouTube, right? Yeah.

20
00:03:30.920 --> 00:03:40.850
Like, so, you know, YouTube now is, it's like TV. It's, it's now, like, a meme to, to say, "YouTube is now TV." Yeah. But at the time, you know, YouTube was, was much smaller.

21
00:03:40.920 --> 00:03:51.600
I remember, you know, as a reporter writing about YouTube in its, in its earliest days, and it was- Mm-hmm... like a thrilling thing, and there was these, there were these people who were developing,

22
00:03:52.520 --> 00:04:03.020
they were messing around on, on YouTube. This... And it, it did have a feel. It was kind of exciting. There was Rhett and Link and there was, you know, iJustine- Smosh... and I remember- There was a bunch. Yeah... Smosh.

23
00:04:03.160 --> 00:04:12.350
I did- Mm-hmm. I would do, like, roundups, like, the YouTubers you need to know, like, for, for brands and marketers, and it would be- Yes. Yes... you know, Michelle F- what is it?

24
00:04:12.380 --> 00:04:20.880
Michelle Phan, the, the makeup, the early, like- Yes. Absolutely... certain makeup person. Ipsy. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. [chuckles] S- so, you know, there was like... It was a different...

25
00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:31.620
It was, it was definitely a different, different era, and I feel like just as, as the platforms got bigger- Mm-hmm... you know, this, this field changed a lot.

26
00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:42.020
So what do you, what is, what, what is the current state of the sort of creator economy at- Oh... centered on YouTube? Well, I mean, that's a big question.

27
00:04:42.500 --> 00:04:54.560
So in the old system, traditional media, the locus of power stood, was with the studios, right? Mm-hmm. Because they had a... Scarcity always drives things. Scarcity determines power in my mind.

28
00:04:54.680 --> 00:05:00.900
So the studios had scarcity, so they were the funds, they were the source of talent, they were the facilities.

29
00:05:00.930 --> 00:05:10.660
So they really, with that, they earned the role of gatekeeper, and they also became the, the entity who placed the bets on what would be, would hit in, in mainstream culture, right?

30
00:05:11.420 --> 00:05:15.040
And that was a very useful model right up through "MASH", I think, right?

31
00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:26.060
But beyond that, cable started to dif- to fray that a bit, but the creator economy frays it more where the locus of power really comes to the, it's not really purely distribution, but it's like distribution.

32
00:05:26.150 --> 00:05:33.360
It's the platforms. Right. So the platforms have a different idea. They're not gating for letting only a few select people in and placing big bets on them.

33
00:05:33.680 --> 00:05:42.960
They're letting everybody in, placing no bets on them, and then optimizing iteratively. Right. So- Yeah. And, and that changes- They don't care who wins... things completely. You know? And that's why- Yeah...

34
00:05:42.980 --> 00:05:54.190
they, they, the, the platforms love creators. They, they do to a degree. I mean, they love the notion of creators because who wants to negotiate with a couple of people when you've got, like, millions?

35
00:05:54.320 --> 00:05:59.540
Like, nobody has leverage. Bingo. Bingo, right? To a, to a certain degree, watch time is watch time.

36
00:05:59.580 --> 00:06:16.560
Now, we can debate what quality entertainment gets what premium for adver- inventory, but basically, they'd rather not negotiate with millions of creators and f- and have the outliers show up regularly like they do, as opposed to negotiating with a hundred MrBeasts across t- twenty-five dis- different genres, right?

37
00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:28.158
Because they don't needTo be having competitors bid for their time, for their attention, for exclusivity. They, they like the disproportionate bargaining power implicitly And the way the sort of creator kind...

38
00:06:28.198 --> 00:06:38.048
I mean, there's obviously millions of creators, right? Oh, yeah. But it's developed into, like, being a power wall, law, like, to a large extent, right? Oh, yeah. And it is a wall, right? I mean, so

39
00:06:38.988 --> 00:06:49.808
it used to be talent and, and being early or being brave was a differentiator ten years ago or so, and it still is to a certain degree, but now there's more brute force, right?

40
00:06:49.908 --> 00:07:00.628
So when somebody like MrBeast reaches his scale, he has a lot- Yeah... of more momentum behind him. He has investors, he has a team, he has, he has ability to make...

41
00:07:00.668 --> 00:07:12.268
I'm not saying he's making subpar content, but he can make a lot of content that doesn't have to be a hit because it's gonna be a hit because it's gonna be in storefronts around the world, and somebody's gonna walk by and gawk at it long enough to drive an ad impression.

42
00:07:12.988 --> 00:07:22.428
Right. And then once you have that distribution, you know, you can, you can make a lot of, you can make a lot of mistakes, basically. You can go a lot of different directions, you have optionality.

43
00:07:22.908 --> 00:07:34.988
And MrBeast is building an entertainment company. Like, I'm not sure- Yeah... like, it's a different type of entertainment company because it, it has a, quote-unquote, "creator" at, at, at the, at the front of it.

44
00:07:35.248 --> 00:07:44.988
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm But at the end of the day, it starts to look a lot like a regular entertainment company, right? Yeah, it is. Like, it's a bit of cosplay, right? It's, it- he's a creator,

45
00:07:46.208 --> 00:07:54.418
but, but he's ki- he was a creator. He's still a creator, but he's really an organization now. MrBeast is an organization, a- and MrBeast is a brand, right?

46
00:07:54.968 --> 00:08:04.688
So he, he's not coming at it in the old-fashioned way where established artist star would then create something, like their own, you know, Desilu, right?

47
00:08:04.728 --> 00:08:22.038
He's coming from the other way, where he came up from nothing, reverse engineering how YouTube rewarded creators doing things like, you know, counting to a hundred, and underwater, and, you know, all the things he did early on were just very, very simple, but they were riveting in their own way, and he's built from that.

48
00:08:22.068 --> 00:08:32.557
So he's come from a creator background to a place that's really... He does television better than television in many ways now. Well, he did a, he did the Super Bowl ad for Salesforce. Yeah.

49
00:08:32.588 --> 00:08:41.288
I'm not saying it was one of the best ads I've ever seen, but I don't think I'm, like, in the, the, the Jimmy Donaldson- Well, yeah. [chuckles]... audience target. So- Yeah...

50
00:08:41.348 --> 00:08:50.408
I don't know, but then again, I'm not sure Salesforce, I have no idea why it made sense for Salesforce to have MrBeast, who is, like, I guess his core constituency is children. I don't know.

51
00:08:50.448 --> 00:08:59.028
Maybe children are using B2B software. I don't know. You know, and, and- Everyone needs, everyone needs a CRM... yeah. I mean, could be, right? I mean, I don't know.

52
00:08:59.068 --> 00:09:08.148
I mean, I, I think it's not as bad as it was when I was at Maker, but there's still a little bit of my son knows this creator, they're big. Yeah.

53
00:09:08.208 --> 00:09:17.168
Okay In, in the, in the, in the suite that, that makes these big money decisions for advertising, right? Yeah. They're not natives. They're visitors to this land. Right.

54
00:09:17.708 --> 00:09:27.508
But, like, it seems like the, the, th- the middle class did not develop and won't necessarily develop. Is that fair? That's my thesis, right?

55
00:09:27.548 --> 00:09:36.608
I mean, in the same way that there's no real middle class in traditional entertainment, right? It's just not necessary for the most part, especially in front of the camera, right?

56
00:09:36.648 --> 00:09:42.668
So what YouTube wants and needs is they need a few bright and shiny tentpoles, that's MrBeast.

57
00:09:43.228 --> 00:09:54.388
Then they need an endless flow of content, which up till now has been provided for free, mostly, by millions of creators around the world. And they just wait and see what pops, and then pushes it.

58
00:09:54.468 --> 00:10:06.908
So they really become an optimization engine around routing, right? That's their play. And that works, but ultimately, they don't, they, they don't not care there's a bunch of stars.

59
00:10:06.968 --> 00:10:14.247
I mean, they kind of, in a perfect world, they kinda like fungibility, and at a certain level, it does become a little bit of a price differentiator as a human.

60
00:10:15.028 --> 00:10:20.848
So they are kind of heading towards Spotify, which has a lot of AI-driven stuff that pays no one. Mm-hmm. Right?

61
00:10:21.548 --> 00:10:32.028
But until then, they don't really need to 'cause there's so many creators creating quality content for free. So there, I mean, ultimat- ultimately it is a differentiator, but at, we're not to that point yet for video.

62
00:10:32.888 --> 00:10:44.367
Yeah. I was just talking about this AI-generated account out of, out of India that has billions of views. Yeah. And, you know, the cost of, like, 60 bucks to c- produce these videos.

63
00:10:44.428 --> 00:10:51.468
It's like an AI monkey that's in various situations. Yeah. Uh-huh. Great business. Well, that's the irony, right? That's the irony- Yeah... because India,

64
00:10:52.408 --> 00:10:57.788
up until very recently, was the low-cost production locus for people. Yeah.

65
00:10:57.808 --> 00:11:04.448
Which w- you know, I mean, going, I mean, I go back 20 years, I was at ClickStar, which is an Intel-funded venture with Morgan Freeman, and when...

66
00:11:04.468 --> 00:11:12.888
This is when encoding was, like, a black art, and it was done literally in Burbank, and you paid a lot to get video content encoded. Yeah.

67
00:11:12.908 --> 00:11:22.708
But very shortly, it became something that was, that was price competitive, done for pennies in a place far, far away, and now you don't even need it, move it to a place far, far away.

68
00:11:22.748 --> 00:11:34.228
It's just a machine that does it, so it's, there's really no human advantage by putting it in India anymore, really. It's just a- Yeah. I mean, this account is-... next level network content... is, is Bandar Apna Dost.

69
00:11:34.648 --> 00:11:45.128
It has 3.13 million subscribers. All AI created. I've probably seen, we've probably all seen some. So is that, like, sort of where these platforms will end up going?

70
00:11:45.288 --> 00:11:54.578
I, 'cause I think the, the, the question I have as- Hmm. Mm-hmm... inevitably 99% of content is gonna be synthetic, and the weight,

71
00:11:55.588 --> 00:12:10.668
usually the, you know, trying to separate what's human from, from what is AI, first of all, it's like, is that spam? Not necessarily. People obviously really like this AI monkey- Mm-hmm... w- from Bandar Apna Dost.

72
00:12:11.388 --> 00:12:17.927
And, you know, so I don't think necessarily the platforms are going to just say, "AI content bad, human content good."

73
00:12:18.008 --> 00:12:27.458
You, you see, you know, like-On Spotify, like, yeah, I don't know, to, to go to sleep, there's lots of different, like, there's lots of different things you can do with AI. Like I don't- Yeah...

74
00:12:27.488 --> 00:12:35.608
I don't necessarily think human y- I think it should just probably be on the quality of the content as judged by the audience.

75
00:12:36.108 --> 00:12:49.228
But is that the sort of direction that y- you see these platforms, and particularly YouTube, going? And then how are they gonna deal with the inevitable flood of limitless AI content? Or does it not matter? Yes.

76
00:12:49.608 --> 00:12:58.708
Well, y- I, I, yes, but let me qualify a little bit. First of all, I don't think ninety-nine percent is probably the number. It's gonna be a lot, but I don't know what the number is, but so

77
00:12:59.728 --> 00:13:05.768
right now, we've got a very rich competitive floor for content creation that's all human, for the most part, on video, right?

78
00:13:05.868 --> 00:13:14.568
It's been very effective at keeping the, the incremental cost of a new video pretty much at zero. But eventually, AI will set the new floor for cost, right?

79
00:13:14.968 --> 00:13:25.188
And it's also very quick to pick up trends and emulate, which YouTube, as it's matured, has become more of, where it's an emulation factory, right? So a, um, a format hits, and all of a sudden everybody's doing it.

80
00:13:25.688 --> 00:13:39.748
So YouTube is already moving that way because they've seen the success of TikTok and Instagram at, at making creators' personality in less important. They don't have followings as much, right?

81
00:13:39.788 --> 00:13:48.988
The, the, the fungibility of creators is more prominent on those platforms, and it certainly is more prominent on YouTube with YouTube Shorts. So they have no...

82
00:13:49.048 --> 00:14:00.027
If they're not longing for it, they at least have no aversion to it, right? So going forward, there'll be more of that, and you start to weave AI-generated content into the mix, much the way you see on Spotify.

83
00:14:00.428 --> 00:14:12.848
And if you're just somebody who wants something easy listening that sounds like Kenny G, you can get two hours of it, and maybe some of it is Kenny G, some of it's people, some of it's just AI riffing on smooth jazz, right?

84
00:14:12.948 --> 00:14:23.408
Who knows? But so that is a future. B- but at the same time, I mean, I see this in my son and other kids. I had this conversation with a colleague the other day. My son has a visceral reaction to AI.

85
00:14:23.548 --> 00:14:30.517
We went and s- we went to see Avatar. I kind of pushed to see it. And it was really kind of funny, 'cause I, after, it's a long film, right?

86
00:14:30.528 --> 00:14:40.688
And you're sitting in the theater, after a while, the scenes that are filmed, like in the lab, where it's really people and less AI-generated stuff, feel jarring. Like, like they're two different worlds, really.

87
00:14:40.728 --> 00:14:47.888
You know what I mean? Doesn't feel the same. And I felt discomfort. And my son started talking about it afterwards, how much AI was there and how much is it AI.

88
00:14:47.948 --> 00:15:00.148
And, "Well, it's AI, it's machines," and we went through this discussion. But he has an AI, a visceral AI reaction where he connotes some AI c- a lot of AI, AI content, similar to the way he jibes at Facebook content.

89
00:15:00.188 --> 00:15:05.698
It's for the olds, right? It's for- What? AI content is for old people? A lot of it, 'cause he thinks it's...

90
00:15:05.758 --> 00:15:14.468
He, he pejor- pejoratively talks about AI content as the stuff that old people mistakenly share because they think it's real. Oh, well, that's reassuring then. Yeah. And it, it is nice, right? And I have a...

91
00:15:14.478 --> 00:15:27.108
And I was saying this to another friend, a former colleague at Maker, and he talked about his nineteen-year-old son, and he said, "Yeah, it's really funny, 'cause just last week, my son, who's been a longtime Orange Fanta drinker, came to me and said, 'Dad, from now on, buy Orange Crush.'"

92
00:15:27.728 --> 00:15:33.568
And he's like, "Why?" He goes, "That Coca-Cola AI commercial." Oh, yeah. And that's a pretty strong reaction, right?

93
00:15:33.988 --> 00:15:43.488
And I, I, in my mind, I line that up with the resurgence of the adoption and interest in formal r- formalized religion in younger generations in the United States the last four or five years.

94
00:15:44.128 --> 00:15:53.708
There's, there's a need to belong, inclusiveness, especially younger people, where content is identity, right? There's a lot of things tied up in that. So I think those pockets remain.

95
00:15:53.748 --> 00:16:05.048
That's why I think niches and genres will still matter, and that's where AI is weakest. Then ironically, I also think for traditional media, there's a lot of rights. There's a lot of stuff that people riff off of, right?

96
00:16:06.088 --> 00:16:14.168
So those things in a, in a weird way, will become even more valuable because you're gonna want to secure those rights to not get sued for the things you're riffing on with AI.

97
00:16:14.888 --> 00:16:24.248
So what does YouTube look like then in, like, three years? Is it that different or is it, you know, fairly similar dynamics? I think my gut is it feels a lot like now.

98
00:16:24.928 --> 00:16:36.988
It's just you have less certainty about, certainty about how something's made and by who. Right. Right. Was that really a creator or was it a company? Was it a company using a real person or was it AI?

99
00:16:37.128 --> 00:16:43.008
I mean, there's a, there's a bunch of different breadcrumbs along the way to figure out what you're actually consuming. I mean, I assume that they will label it, right?

100
00:16:43.128 --> 00:16:51.908
Like, I mean, if, if, if, like y- I think- If they have to... YouTube, you, well, YouTube- If they have to... s- yeah. I mean- Right... I think have to. Have to is interesting.

101
00:16:51.948 --> 00:17:02.508
Like, I mean, because the, the, it, it's either they have to because of the market or they have to because of, of the, the government or regulations of some kind, right? Like, and- I think it'll be both. Yeah.

102
00:17:02.608 --> 00:17:07.388
I think I can see pressure. And, and they've been down this road before. Mm-hmm. Right?

103
00:17:07.428 --> 00:17:17.188
Like n- they didn't, they would not have an advertising business if did they not figure out how to find copyrighted music and if they weren't able to find nipples.

104
00:17:17.268 --> 00:17:27.768
Like, I mean, nothing concentrates the mind, and they were able to do that. That's why anytime these companies say, "Oh, it would be impossible for us," I'm like, "Well, gee, when you had like, you know- Yeah. Yeah...

105
00:17:27.948 --> 00:17:35.728
billions on the line, you were able to figure out, you know, the, the nipple technology. So don't tell me you can't figure this out- Yeah... 'cause of enough money." You know, I talked about this in...

106
00:17:36.568 --> 00:17:44.008
Yeah, I talked about this in my book. Where they're like, with AI, it's like, we can't figure out where the content came from. I'm like, "Trust me." Yeah. "You, you can figure this out."

107
00:17:44.068 --> 00:17:50.378
There's a structural schizophrenia with the platforms. It's a split personality that's, it's k- kind of intentional.

108
00:17:50.748 --> 00:17:59.668
'Cause they will, if you're an advertiser, they will tell you in great granularity and great confidence how they know your audience and how they can target your audience and how valuable that audience is.

109
00:18:00.168 --> 00:18:06.648
So they have great, great knowledge on behavior and activity and all this kind of exhaust trail that every user leaves when they watch.

110
00:18:06.668 --> 00:18:15.648
But if you go back to them and say, like, "You know, how many of those audience members do you think are 12 or nine?" And they're like, "We have no way of knowing. How could we possibly know?" Yeah.

111
00:18:15.878 --> 00:18:23.168
[chuckles] And, and that's not true, but, but they're not gonna stand in front of that on imprints, even if they could, because it's a lot of liability on imprints.

112
00:18:23.188 --> 00:18:31.756
But also, it kind of craters their business, and that's going back to your question about where Y- YouTube looks like in three years.YouTube has, uh, morphed quite a bit over ten years.

113
00:18:31.796 --> 00:18:39.076
When I said it was freer and more adventurous, more experimental ten years ago, that's partly because of the audience. The audience was young, and they were along for that ride.

114
00:18:39.836 --> 00:18:50.156
Now, the audience now, on average, is much older when you aggregate them all, and they're- Mm... watching on a oftentimes a communal device and not a individual device. So those two dynamics

115
00:18:51.096 --> 00:18:54.096
make it very different kind of content that's coming out of it.

116
00:18:54.216 --> 00:19:05.236
And then when you raise the stakes that all the money's being put into this by brands and private equity and everybody else, all the decisions matter way more than they did when PewDiePie was posting his first one hundred videos.

117
00:19:05.316 --> 00:19:17.596
Yeah. And so what determines now, like, what- whether something takes off on, on YouTube? Is it, is it almost, like, too late to establish? 'Cause we always see people come too late to, like, every party, right?

118
00:19:17.656 --> 00:19:26.416
And like- Yeah... there was so many advantages to having built a, an audience and having that distribution early on w- and- Mm-hmm... with YouTube.

119
00:19:26.516 --> 00:19:31.996
Is it still, and I still see people, like, there's like, "Oh, now we're g- now we're, we're going big into our YouTube strategy."

120
00:19:32.556 --> 00:19:38.806
Is it still practical to be able to build, to be able to build, like, a, a really strong YouTube channel starting now?

121
00:19:39.716 --> 00:19:50.216
What I, you know, for a big, big company that wants to, and to develop IP and produce content tr- in a traditional way, I think that's a real tough bite to take, right?

122
00:19:50.856 --> 00:19:56.876
But, I mean, the other side of this coin is at, it's always been this way to get into music, to get into sports.

123
00:19:56.896 --> 00:20:09.516
There's a certain part of society that's young and ambitious and without resources that takes a, takes a swing, right? And you... And the luxury here is you get millions of swings. So somebody's voice is gonna stand out.

124
00:20:09.536 --> 00:20:19.356
So it's really an incredible experimentation layer at the bottom of the creator economy- Mm... as it is with any medium. Like with punk m- punk rock or rap music, there was, it was not being driven by labels.

125
00:20:19.416 --> 00:20:31.516
It was not being driven by the audience even. It was somebody had a voice, couldn't see their way through the current system and had to find an audience a different way. And- Yeah...

126
00:20:31.536 --> 00:20:38.826
that's a lot of what YouTube is, and someone will. I don't know who, I don't know how, but something will at all times. But, and when you talk about punk rock, like, I mean, it- Mm-hmm...

127
00:20:38.826 --> 00:20:50.416
that runs, that runs completely counter to YouTube being so mass and being where old people are. Like, wouldn't... I mean, we're seeing new kinds of, I don't even know- Well-... if these are creators or influencers.

128
00:20:50.476 --> 00:21:00.456
Yeah. I, I have to bring up, like- Mm-hmm... the clavicular guy. Like, I wish I didn't know clavic-clavicular, but, like, I do know clavicular. Yes. But, like, no, but streaming, like, has become- Mm-hmm...

129
00:21:00.476 --> 00:21:10.296
Kai Cenat and the, like, streaming, like, it's slightly different. Like, I, I think, uh, I don't know, m- I think about it as, as slightly different than YouTube. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, if I s- if I...

130
00:21:10.576 --> 00:21:18.206
For me, I, maybe I'm, and maybe this is peculiar to me, but I abstract back. So I, when I think about- Yeah... the music business, I think about selling records. Mm-hmm.

131
00:21:18.206 --> 00:21:19.796
And they're selling records to all kinds of people.

132
00:21:20.396 --> 00:21:29.476
So if you're an up-and-coming 18-year-old who has some musical talent, maybe you don't have access to formalized musical education, but you've got taste and you've got s-some, some native talent.

133
00:21:29.876 --> 00:21:41.416
So you don't have the hours or the resources to learn how to play the guitar at the level of Jeff Beck. But you know what? If you could sample and you can narrate and you can find a new medium to express yourself,

134
00:21:42.316 --> 00:21:49.836
you don't need those skills. You need a different set of skills. So you change the access on what competition and what good means, right? And that's what YouTube did originally.

135
00:21:49.876 --> 00:21:57.576
They, they changed the access of what, what quality was. It was no longer production quality and writing and lighting and everything else.

136
00:21:57.656 --> 00:22:08.256
It was a metric that was more kind of hard to put your finger on of, of, of authenticity, which when that, when that word really still meant something in the creator space. And so that is, like, fading, right?

137
00:22:08.536 --> 00:22:16.345
Like, is, is the authenticity- Mm... bit fade, and as you start to... To me, the, like, the, the the middle is always me, right? Like, I mean- Yeah...

138
00:22:16.345 --> 00:22:27.266
we, we saw during the pandemic, like, you know, production quality go down on, like, broadcasts. They were, like, just doing Zooms. And I was like- Yeah... "Oh, we can do video now if you're, if it's Zoom." Yeah.

139
00:22:27.276 --> 00:22:40.986
But then, you know, you look at what a lot of, a lot of YouTubers are putting a lot of money into production. I mean, like, it's not like they're the selfie stick people anymore. No. I mean, it can be. No.

140
00:22:41.076 --> 00:22:48.676
Depends on the content. Yeah. But, like- Mm-hmm... that, that doesn't seem like, uh, uh, like much of a differentiator. Agreed. Here's what I would say about that.

141
00:22:48.736 --> 00:22:53.656
So yes, for those people that are do- at that level now, they are very much television, right?

142
00:22:53.666 --> 00:23:01.856
And you'll see that they're distributing their content to numerous places, Netflix and Amazon, and, you know, they have a, they're, they're basically television.

143
00:23:01.916 --> 00:23:15.856
I mean, that was, that, MrBeast is, has transcended YouTube. But there are still tons of YouTubers, and what will come next, new formats, new genres, new expression will not come from people emulating MrBeast, right?

144
00:23:16.576 --> 00:23:16.696
Yeah.

145
00:23:17.256 --> 00:23:28.896
It's much bigger, so it's harder to find this needle in the haystack, but the beauty of is it, it is, is it will show up as it starts to get trends, and those trends are different than they were 10 years ago because inter- YouTube is so much more international than it was 10 years ago.

146
00:23:28.936 --> 00:23:41.156
Mm-hmm. But I mean, maybe I'm naive, but I believe they will surface, and that is one of the virtues of YouTube is this vast R&D, this vast experimental layer, that it's low cost, low friction to get it up.

147
00:23:41.376 --> 00:23:52.356
And then if it somehow catches fire in the algorithm, then that becomes, once it becomes a hit, then everybody does it, right? I mean, and that's a, well, it's both a blessing and a curse for the space.

148
00:23:52.376 --> 00:24:01.956
But if a trend takes off, I mean, what, what MrBeast does now or what he did five years ago wasn't what YouTubers did five years before that. Right.

149
00:24:01.996 --> 00:24:10.516
So there will be an evolution, and something will work, something will change, and it could be a very small tweak. I mean, honestly, some of the stuff that MrBeast did early on was kinda cringey for me.

150
00:24:11.076 --> 00:24:19.436
Some of his stuff was like, you know, like, like the, the Ed McMahon giveaway type stuff, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, oh, you know? Well, I find MrBeast a very difficult character.

151
00:24:19.576 --> 00:24:25.836
Maybe it's my, me as, like, a middle-aged guy, but, like- Yeah... I don't find it really, like, an inspiring story.

152
00:24:25.916 --> 00:24:32.906
Like, I don't, like, I mean, he's, like, it's, it's all this optimization and all of these, like, these weird stunts, and the- Mm-hmm...

153
00:24:32.926 --> 00:24:43.582
the stunts have to get bigger, and I'm not sure what exactly-The value is of any of this stuff, and now I'm really sound- sounding old. I, I, personally, it doesn't, like, appeal to me. Yeah.

154
00:24:43.672 --> 00:24:52.882
I'm, like, shocked that, like Uh-huh... that this person is that, that successful. And I think it's just the... You know, I think it was when I saw, like, what he does with the thumbnails. Yeah.

155
00:24:52.892 --> 00:25:06.582
And I think one of my struggles with YouTube is how over-optimized it is. Mm-hmm. And I think about what people are doing with open, with OpenClaw and all this agentic AI, and I'm like- Yeah...

156
00:25:06.592 --> 00:25:13.012
oh yeah, MrBeast was, like, testing, like, a thousand thumbnail variations. Everyone's gonna be testing 10,000.

157
00:25:13.112 --> 00:25:23.952
The agents are gonna be doing that overnight, and they're gonna be auto-optimizing, and it, it just, it feels like it's going... And MrBeast has always had a little bit of dystopian vibes to me.

158
00:25:24.052 --> 00:25:36.992
[laughs] I could be wrong. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, I mean, I mean- Some- something I can't put my finger on there, but, like, you know, his success feels overly engineered. Well said. So here's what I would...

159
00:25:37.812 --> 00:25:45.992
I'll be honest. He's not for me, right? Okay. He's not my kind of stuff. But, you know- This is not a MrBeast fan club... that said, 99% of cable television wasn't for me, right? That's true.

160
00:25:46.032 --> 00:25:55.472
So I mean, I have never seen Real Housewives of anything. I don't know... I can't even name all the cities that C- C-CSI belongs to, right? I, I don't know, don't care. It's not me.

161
00:25:55.532 --> 00:26:04.532
Yeah, and, and MrBeast does have this weird Stepford wife kind of vacancy in his eyes when he's on screen, for me at least. It does seem super manufactured.

162
00:26:04.592 --> 00:26:07.882
I wouldn't be surprised at all if he was actually just AI generated.

163
00:26:08.562 --> 00:26:18.402
He talked about going to these- That's my- Like, he's like, "I don't like to go, like, expensive, you know, have expensive meals," like a $20,000 golden pizza. Yeah. I'm like, do you think that that's, like, [laughs]

164
00:26:18.652 --> 00:26:24.952
like a really good restaurant? You know what I- Of some viral food? I don't... Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's all he's... Remember who he's speak- remember who he's speaking to.

165
00:26:25.172 --> 00:26:32.942
I like, I was like, I didn't think he's, like, failing my CAPTCHA test, to put that forward. Well, you know, he, yeah, mentioning the French Laundry is not gonna resonate with nine-year-olds, so you gotta- That's true.

166
00:26:32.972 --> 00:26:41.282
You gotta speak to your audience, right? That's true. Okay, that's fair. Especially if they live in Bangalore, right? So you gotta keep the references. He's like a, he's, he's similar to- That's true...

167
00:26:41.492 --> 00:26:51.672
big action movies for Hollywood, right? Keep the plot simple, keep the dialogue simple, and make it lots of, you know, pyrotechnics, and that thing will go well around the world, right?

168
00:26:51.712 --> 00:26:55.932
But we're not gonna have- He's the great-... like, an array of MrBeasts. You're gonna... I mean,

169
00:26:56.912 --> 00:27:08.392
I think you're gonna have always that layer because it used to be when you were able to afford a team like MrBeast did, first he got discipline, and he took it l- really serious like a business, which differentiated him from a lot of creators.

170
00:27:08.432 --> 00:27:14.212
But Markiplier and PewDiePie and a lot of others did that too. But then he started to build a real team, like a business.

171
00:27:14.882 --> 00:27:24.522
And he, and what I, what I do admire about him is he spends, like, every dollar making the next thing, you know what I mean? He's not buying a yacht for himself. He's about, like, I wanna up it. I wanna up it.

172
00:27:24.532 --> 00:27:30.722
So what I admire is his ambition, right? And I may not like what he makes, but I do respect the game, right?

173
00:27:31.272 --> 00:27:42.452
So there'll be more of that because now with AI and all this, this is kind of going back to my argument about different genres of music because it used to be really hard to make an album if you were, like, in the 1960s.

174
00:27:42.492 --> 00:27:45.272
You had to get resources, or '70s, even '80s. You had to get resources behind you.

175
00:27:45.312 --> 00:27:53.632
You had to convince somebody to bet on you so you could have access to a real studio, and then you could get the distribution channels and the marketing money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

176
00:27:54.122 --> 00:28:04.632
You don't, don't need that anymore. You can make music in your bedroom with really high-end tools and become as big a hit as any of that. And that is coming, is already coming.

177
00:28:04.712 --> 00:28:12.152
It's already here with video to a certain degree, but it's coming even more with AI. So what it does is it raises the bar for what the middle tier is, what the middle class has to do.

178
00:28:12.192 --> 00:28:22.972
So if an old middle, [chuckles] I say old, a prior middle-class YouTuber, the few that there are, was gonna say, "Well, you know, now I'm gonna level up by getting myself a team for production, for back office, for marketing," da, da, da, da, da.

179
00:28:22.982 --> 00:28:33.992
Now, a lot of that can be done with tools that are cheap. AI, like all those thumbnails you just discussed. So what's the next level that require people that's expensive?

180
00:28:34.532 --> 00:28:40.012
And that's where that layer of MrBeast-type creators can afford, and they keep elevating themselves above the rest.

181
00:28:40.102 --> 00:28:47.992
And that's why the, there's a n- the, an ever-growing yawning gap between the very top and the huge bottom. It's not a pyramid. It's a spire.

182
00:28:48.292 --> 00:28:58.912
It looks a lot like traditional entertainment back when Tom Cruise at its, was at the height of his powers. Right. You mentioned, like, PewDiePie. Yeah. Is he, like, in, like, semi-retirement in Japan now?

183
00:28:59.492 --> 00:29:07.392
Do I have that right? [chuckles] I believe that's the case. I mean, he had some- This is like a young man's game. Like, I mean, he's like, he's like a retired YouTuber.

184
00:29:07.432 --> 00:29:18.772
Well, I mean, part of the problem with, especially with PewDiePie, because, and, and earlier YouTubers, a lot of it indexed more towards personality, right? Yeah. And influencers have this problem a lot too.

185
00:29:19.472 --> 00:29:26.502
So 'cause, 'cause you can't- He's got a big controversy section, that's for sure. Yeah, he does. Wikipedia. We made some mistakes. We made some big mistakes.

186
00:29:26.552 --> 00:29:29.672
If you're an early YouTuber, your controversy section's gonna be big.

187
00:29:29.692 --> 00:29:39.192
[laughs] 'Cause you, you know, and, and let's be honest, these guys aren't trained professionally the way professional, traditional media people are with coaches and PR people that help them avoid landmines.

188
00:29:39.232 --> 00:29:43.532
They're on their own, so they make mistakes, and he's a young guy, and I'm, I'm not here to defend him. He's done some weird stuff.

189
00:29:44.132 --> 00:29:54.682
But when you're that leveraged to personality, it's hard to keep reinventing yourself, right? When a big part of your attraction is that you are novel, you are new, and you are different, and then the next...

190
00:29:54.712 --> 00:30:01.252
And generations now are not as long as they used to be. I don't care what, what traditional- Yeah... or tr- [laughs] you know, studies say.

191
00:30:01.762 --> 00:30:08.292
To, for me now, a generation is, like, five or six years because everything seems to flip within half a, half a decade.

192
00:30:08.352 --> 00:30:19.971
Yeah, it just seems like, I mean, like, for those that can, like, get to MrBeast's level, and obviously there's very few of them, they can hire teams and whatnot, like, keeping up the pace as, like, a creator...

193
00:30:20.392 --> 00:30:26.412
And now, you know, I remember I would always, like, roll my eyes at, like, creator burnout, but then I'm like, that's, like, real. Like, to be able to- It is real...

194
00:30:26.432 --> 00:30:43.272
always be on like that is, it's different than, than the, the analog entertainment world- Mm-hmm... I feel like. And having that kind of staying power when things come and go is difficult for creators.Y-yeah.

195
00:30:43.952 --> 00:30:55.252
Even the feedback cycle is j-super... It wears on people. It's super hard to, to carry that burden. Used to be in the old, old media, you release a movie on Friday, and you find out numbers on Monday, right?

196
00:30:55.892 --> 00:31:03.522
So production logic was you p-place bets, put a lot of effort into it, and it would hit the market, and the market would tell you the truth, right? And but you... It took time.

197
00:31:03.832 --> 00:31:11.972
But for platform logic, you're constantly iterating, creating, evolving in front of the public, and you're doing that with constant feedback.

198
00:31:11.992 --> 00:31:16.572
And it used to be on YouTube 10 years ago, you had a dashboard, and you watched it maybe daily, right?

199
00:31:17.352 --> 00:31:29.672
But with TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts, and all these platforms, they've amped up all that granular data analysis into a, a very fast loop, so it's almost instantaneously. So you're constantly...

200
00:31:29.692 --> 00:31:39.572
It's like you're getting your box office every few minutes. Mm-hmm. And that's... And psychically, that's a huge toll. Yeah, for sure. And, and do you see any other platforms emerging

201
00:31:40.552 --> 00:31:51.962
to even compete with, with YouTube, like, for the power as, as, like, creators? Like, it, it seems like, you know, YouTube is... has, has grown so massive as, like, an ecosystem- Mm-hmm...

202
00:31:52.242 --> 00:32:01.792
that it's ach-ach-achieved some kind of, like, escape veloc-velocity. Yeah, you know, I'm not really good at predicting the future. I'm, I'm kind of good at kind of reading where things are going.

203
00:32:02.512 --> 00:32:14.712
There will be another platform. I don't know what it is. No, I mean, like, right now, do you see, like, anything? Like, I mean, if you're- Mm-hmm... do you see creators no longer just using YouTube as a default?

204
00:32:14.742 --> 00:32:27.102
And that's why I asked about, like, other, like, streaming platforms, like live streaming platforms. You mean outside of TikTok and Instagram? Well, yeah. I mean, like, I mean, like, for the type of YouTube content.

205
00:32:27.152 --> 00:32:35.982
Like, it seems like- Oh... like YouTube has- Yeah... I don't wanna say monopolized the market, but it doesn't have a lot of competition. Like, all roads lead to YouTube. Right now, that's true, right?

206
00:32:36.092 --> 00:32:43.992
So what it used to be called 10 years ago or so, they used to call what YouTube produced, these eight and 10-minute things, they called it short-form. Well, now that's not short-form.

207
00:32:44.052 --> 00:32:53.771
That's long-form in many ways, right? Short-form is the one to two-minute things, and TikTok dominates that. My son's 13, as I mentioned before, and his main go-to is TikTok.

208
00:32:54.341 --> 00:33:01.172
And to be honest, it's not so much for the content, it's for... I, I don't wanna use the community so much. Uh, it's, it's the comments.

209
00:33:01.812 --> 00:33:13.732
So if I'm driving him to school, I'll hear the same loop of music from the same video for 10 minutes because he is rabbit holing down that comment thread. Oh, okay. He's reading it. He's commenting on it.

210
00:33:13.852 --> 00:33:25.752
So, and he does that all the time, and he's not, he's not alone. His friends do as well. So TikTok is super powerful for the audience, and I think in many ways, YouTube has had to, had to counter that with shorts.

211
00:33:25.792 --> 00:33:41.632
And part of that is mercenary on their part because that accelerates the fungibility trend that they'd like to encourage anyway, but part of it was ext-extential because they're competing against Instagram and TikTok, who've really elevated short-form content to an art where it's very monetizable for them.

212
00:33:41.692 --> 00:33:54.212
It doesn't really monetize as well for the creators involved, but it does really monetize well for Meta and, and TikTok's owners. So YouTube is in that game, but it... what comes next, I, I, I don't know.

213
00:33:54.292 --> 00:34:04.072
I have this hunch, I have this hope, I have this bet that, that, that more real and more belonging finds its way somewhere. Twitch has a very fervent following of real-time kind of relationship building, right?

214
00:34:04.592 --> 00:34:12.692
Their audience is very much... They're the closest thing right now that still exists that reminds me of what YouTube was in the early 2010s.

215
00:34:13.172 --> 00:34:24.122
I, I remember going to my first VidCon in 2000, I think it was '11 or '12, and it was literally like a get-together of friends. And fans would walk up to- Oh, yeah...

216
00:34:24.152 --> 00:34:34.692
big creators for that day and talk to them like they had just bumped into them at the s-lockers at high school. There was no pedestal. And what was nice is that the creators talked back to them like there was no...

217
00:34:34.722 --> 00:34:40.352
there was no condescension, either real or, or imagined. It was very organic, and it felt really cool.

218
00:34:40.872 --> 00:34:52.752
And that lasted until about the mid-2010s, and l- I, I've been to, uh, most of the VidCons, including almost all but one of them since COVID, and that vibe isn't there.

219
00:34:52.792 --> 00:35:01.212
It was very much not there the one year that TikTok took over. Mm-hmm. It was the main sponsor. But you see, you mentioned, like a re- a counter-reaction, and I think that's, uh, interesting.

220
00:35:01.372 --> 00:35:13.052
I mean, because again, I- you said something more real, and I think that is what gives me pause of where YouTube has gone is it's become so optimized that it feels fake.

221
00:35:13.072 --> 00:35:23.122
And I think a lot of things in culture are so optimized to feel fake. Mm-hmm. Like fights feel fake. A lot of the interactions online feel fake, whether they are or not. Yeah.

222
00:35:23.122 --> 00:35:31.662
You know, the, the, the dramas of like, you know, right-wing podcasters, fake. Yeah. Like, you know, a lot of stuff just feels fake. Yeah. Yeah And I feel like- Formative... there...

223
00:35:31.692 --> 00:35:44.012
Yes, and there will be some kind of counter-reaction to that. Yeah, I think I'm a big believer in reversion to the means, so I think that in and of itself implies that, but I think there's a hunger for that.

224
00:35:44.052 --> 00:35:52.552
I mean, while going back to Mash and, and, and Lucy, the reason those things were mass phenomenons, because you only had like three choices, right?

225
00:35:52.572 --> 00:36:01.282
It's not that people didn't have their own little niche preferences and interests back in 1957 or 1982. Yeah. It's just that they were really hard to get to. I mean- I know...

226
00:36:01.312 --> 00:36:09.792
being a person who really loved music that wasn't mainstream, it took a lot of work and a lot of experimentation, and half the stuff I bought I didn't like because I couldn't just hear it. You know what I mean?

227
00:36:10.352 --> 00:36:21.472
I had to go take a risk on it and then get rid of it. So, so this now, at this phase, we have a lot easier low-cost experimentation. Yeah. So I think there's a lot of opportunity.

228
00:36:21.572 --> 00:36:32.892
I've, uh, I mean, even on the platforms, even within YouTube, what I'm, if not advocating, at least seeing or hoping for, I don't know what I wanna qualify it as, it has roots already, right?

229
00:36:32.972 --> 00:36:43.912
I mean, like the Sorry Girls is an example I like to talk about, and where they've really definitely consciously chosen to serve their community as opposed to monetizing every opportunity available to them. Yeah.

230
00:36:44.592 --> 00:36:50.290
It's funny how we... I, it just made me think aboutYou know, online video pre-YouTube.

231
00:36:50.350 --> 00:37:00.020
Because we, we think of YouTube as, like, forever, but, you know, the world existed before YouTube, and online video existed before YouTube. It was called, like, webisodes and, and- Yes...

232
00:37:00.100 --> 00:37:05.140
would be on, on, like, AOL and Yahoo! and MSN. Mm-hmm.

233
00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:20.920
And at the time, because everyone just thinks, uses the mental models of the past and they put it on, on, on fa- really fast-changing new environments, it was always this idea of, like, there needs to be an I Love Lucy moment.

234
00:37:21.300 --> 00:37:33.029
It's like, what will be the I Love Lucy- Yeah... moment of, of online video? And the idea was e- that it would have to, like, break through and have, like, a major moment- Yeah. Yeah...

235
00:37:33.060 --> 00:37:47.940
with a h- a, a hit that everyone knew, right? Mm-hmm. And I think the way things have developed has been completely contrary to that, you know? And it's not like- Yeah... MrBeast is, is a massive, massive star.

236
00:37:48.080 --> 00:37:57.530
I've never seen one, a full video. It's crazy. Yeah. But most, like, I mean, and it's like never before have so many people been so famous that nobody has heard of. Do you know what I mean? [laughs] You know what?

237
00:37:57.540 --> 00:38:06.320
Like, because we've just become so, it's everything becomes niches. Well, nobody, if you say nobody's heard of, you mean, like, our age group. Uh, yeah. I- that's what I mean. What I mean- But-...

238
00:38:06.330 --> 00:38:12.490
is like, you know what I mean. Like, you know- Yeah, I do. I do. And I see what you mean... when we have a monoculture- Yeah. Yeah... everyone knew every- th- like, everyone knew- Mm-hmm...

239
00:38:12.540 --> 00:38:23.060
about MASH, like what you're saying, like, you know? Yes. And now, I remember our mutual friend Jason Krebs got really mad at me for not, for not knowing PewDiePie [laughs] so long ago.

240
00:38:23.640 --> 00:38:30.440
He was, I was like, "Dude"- Well-... like, what? You got really sensitive about it. He's c- he's claiming that he never gets mad, but- Well-... Jason got mad at me...

241
00:38:30.450 --> 00:38:37.190
no, fun, fun fact, that 19-year-old I mentioned earlier belongs to Jason. So that's a real life story. So, you know, it's, it's funny, right?

242
00:38:37.360 --> 00:38:46.380
I mean, it's kind of like when I was a kid, and probably you too as well, you have this version of America and American sports and how they're the biggest because that's all you know.

243
00:38:46.420 --> 00:38:59.220
Like, football, like, the Super Bowl is the biggest thing ever, and then one day you realize, wait a minute, more people watch the World Cup, right? Soccer. So yes, Lucy was big, and MASH was big in our fishbowl, right?

244
00:38:59.700 --> 00:39:08.680
But there were a lot of things that were, uh, possibly bigger worldwide. I mean, cricket is huge, and I can't understand why, but that's me, right?

245
00:39:09.160 --> 00:39:17.020
If I knew cricket, if I grew up with cricket, I would understand implicitly. So MrBeast and a bunch of folks like him are huge. They're huge worldwide.

246
00:39:17.080 --> 00:39:25.460
They probably have more so- I mean, you see numbers for guys like Cristiano Ronaldo, and they have these vanity numbers for subscribers and all that on YouTube, but they get no views. Right. Right?

247
00:39:26.100 --> 00:39:35.470
So they're, they really don't have social media power the way that MrBeast does. I mean, if MrBeast wants to push something, he can push something. Now, he doesn't have the gear ratio of more au- more

248
00:39:36.400 --> 00:39:46.500
niche pr- creators, and I'll give you an example, so going back to PewDiePie. PewDiePie, I think at the time when I was at Maker, he, he had a then unheard of number of subscribers of, like, 45 million-ish. Mm-hmm.

249
00:39:46.520 --> 00:39:52.049
Right? And we had another early OG creator named Shay Carl, who was actually one of the- Yeah...

250
00:39:52.080 --> 00:39:59.180
people behind Maker Studios when it was developed, and he had, like, maybe 1/10 of that, maybe 1/8 of that audience-wise, right?

251
00:39:59.860 --> 00:40:13.970
But if you ask both of them to say, "Hey, we're gonna sell widget A or T-shirt B, get your audience to buy," not just in percentage, but in raw volume, number of SKUs sold, Shay Carl, right? Over and over again. Yeah.

252
00:40:14.020 --> 00:40:25.350
Because his audience cared. His audience came for him. Whereas most of PewDiePie's audience, they find him in their feed, and they kind of subscribe- Right... just kind of reactively, and it's not really,

253
00:40:26.280 --> 00:40:37.280
it's not, it's like that band you loved as a kid and you always loved them forever, and you're really passionate, and you wear their T-shirt as an adult i- unironically versus bands you can't even recall from the same year.

254
00:40:37.340 --> 00:40:47.160
Yeah. But are still- Yeah... when they come to town, somebody's gonna go see them, right? Right. They're good at getting attention, right? Yeah. And, and, but converting, attention is good for ad impressions.

255
00:40:47.600 --> 00:40:51.730
It's great for YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, that, 'cause that's their business, right? Mm-hmm.

256
00:40:51.760 --> 00:41:02.240
But getting people to take actions and, and whatnot, you know, you need a, you need more of a tie, I think, more of a connection to an audience r- versus just being able to get attention.

257
00:41:02.280 --> 00:41:09.519
Lot, a lot of people can get attention. So in the book, I refer to it as ritual and return, and it's really about habit. It's really about relationship building, right?

258
00:41:09.560 --> 00:41:18.020
So it's really about how often does this person look you up, right? Yeah. To come see what you've published recently, because YouTube's not gonna do that for you.

259
00:41:18.180 --> 00:41:26.780
If you've got 40- But that's the thing, the platforms don't want that, right? They want- Yeah. Yeah, if you- They want everyone feeding, feeding content into the, the slot machine and pulling the, pulling the handle.

260
00:41:27.170 --> 00:41:38.520
Well, if, if you've got a YouTube account and you're following 40 or 50 channels, there's a good chance that you should be getting fresh content every day surfaced to you just from those 40 or 50, but you don't get that.

261
00:41:38.560 --> 00:41:39.810
No one gets that. Right.

262
00:41:39.820 --> 00:41:53.440
And if you've over-indexed in a bunch of news channels, and they might be kinda niche leaning one way or the other, I don't take a side on this, you might see the other side popping up in your feed all the time because, let's say Fox News is a big partner, and they drive a lot of views.

263
00:41:53.760 --> 00:42:03.690
So YouTube, not perniciously, not pushing any agenda other than monetization, they think, "Hey, you're looking for news. Here's some news," right? And you get it. Right.

264
00:42:03.720 --> 00:42:12.580
And, and, and then after a while, if you do watch that stuff, it starts to pollute your feed like the five-year-old watching cartoons on your Netflix, right? You're just gonna get a bunch of garbage suggested for you.

265
00:42:12.680 --> 00:42:23.620
Just a self-enforcing cycle. Right. So, like, I, that to me, like, and that's why I like the optimization of thumbnails, like, I'm obsessed with the fact that everyone- Yeah. Right...

266
00:42:23.640 --> 00:42:29.550
does the same approach to thumbnails. I'm like, it's humiliating. You know, it's, it's so funny though, but- It's honestly, it's humiliating. I know.

267
00:42:29.580 --> 00:42:36.490
Like, the fact that you can be, like, this massive, like, you're talking about- Mm-hmm... being, like, a massive worldwide star- Yep...

268
00:42:36.590 --> 00:42:49.400
and you have to literally do surprise guy face i- in every thumbnail because of some algorithmic dynamics, that's not freedom. Like, you are not a free person. [laughs] Yeah.

269
00:42:49.500 --> 00:42:59.292
You know, I don't, you know, I, I don't, I, yeah, I don't think, and maybe I'm wrong, I don't think of MrBeast as the guy that has a muse.And he's expressing himself. I'd never thought of him that way, right?

270
00:42:59.432 --> 00:43:09.112
I thought of him as a really smart guy who's gaming the system and really nakedly ambitious in a, in a, in a admirable way to a certain degree. The same way I admire Jeff Bezos, I guess, to a certain degree. I figured.

271
00:43:09.122 --> 00:43:18.942
I, I wouldn't wanna be him, but I, I get it and, right? But so there's, there is that to it, but look, I mean, remember the '90s? I do. Well, you'd, you'd, you'd get a lot of movie trailers.

272
00:43:18.992 --> 00:43:27.262
I mean, not all of them, but like [laughs] I know, but you'd, you'd, you'd- Some years are a little fuzzier than others. There'd be so many trailers where it start out, start out with, "In a world..." Right?

273
00:43:27.552 --> 00:43:35.842
Yeah [laughs] All the time. And there's one guy here in LA that was getting driven around from recording studio to recording studio with a chauffeur. Literally, there's a book about this guy. Oh, really?

274
00:43:35.852 --> 00:43:47.192
And he had made bank 'cause everybody wanted their movie to have his voiceover because that was like somehow, that was the thumbnail of their day. So it's, it's, it's the same game. And now he's just in...

275
00:43:47.672 --> 00:43:56.372
And now he, he just does the- I don't think he's alive anymore, but I don't know... Dreamforce. He just does Dreamforce. Yeah. And then [laughs] that's the only gig he's got. You know, but, but you know what I'm saying?

276
00:43:56.552 --> 00:44:05.072
So like, so and then, then, like, there was a time, like, in the early 2000, like, you have these commercials on radio like, "Monster, monster, monster." Like, like with the reverberation, you know?

277
00:44:05.312 --> 00:44:12.472
So everybody finds something that works, and they have the, the other 90 people that have no imagination, or they just wanna succeed, they'll do anything.

278
00:44:12.512 --> 00:44:18.752
They just copy the person who broke the ground, and that's what happened on YouTube, but it happens on YouTube at such scale. You know what I mean?

279
00:44:19.372 --> 00:44:27.072
Next thing you know, if you like Dude Perfect, you can find 15 other people that kinda do the trick shot stuff, right? If you like MrBeast, you can find people like...

280
00:44:27.432 --> 00:44:35.832
If you like, if you like PrestonPlayz, you can find people like him. There's dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. There's verticals, there's genres. It happened before in radio. It happened in television.

281
00:44:35.952 --> 00:44:46.942
It just happens at such more obvious scale on YouTube- Yeah... that it's so much harder to ignore. What kind of risk factors does YouTube have? I mean, it's, it's ubiquitous, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

282
00:44:47.092 --> 00:44:56.792
Like, but, like, does it have any risk of, I mean, simply becoming uncool to young people? I think it's already there, right? It's already, it's already, it's already rubbing up against that risk.

283
00:44:56.892 --> 00:45:06.382
My son, like, for being- Like Facebook w- Facebook quickly became uncool. It's hard for m- me to remember that far back. [laughs] I stopped thinking about Facebook before the first Trump presidency.

284
00:45:06.382 --> 00:45:13.132
MySpace became uncool. Before the first Trump presidency. Uh, that, and that's not correlated, but I just... It became a place where I'd see people.

285
00:45:13.252 --> 00:45:20.932
It's kinda like, it's kinda like LinkedIn now, where I see people that are supposed to be in my connections, but I don't really know them. So I was seeing- LinkedIn's still cool. Oh, okay. Well, there you go.

286
00:45:21.222 --> 00:45:31.692
[laughs] Um, but maybe. I don't know. I love LinkedIn, but y- so Y- YouTube is already up against that, and that is a natural problem that anything that gets super successful gets.

287
00:45:32.152 --> 00:45:37.972
So if you were an early fan of any band, whether it's the Ramones or whatever, right?

288
00:45:38.952 --> 00:45:48.072
And you're early, and especially when you're young and idealistic, and you're part of the group that gets it, and now all of a sudden, all the great unwashed likes it, it's hard to accept that.

289
00:45:48.552 --> 00:45:51.352
They're either sellouts or whatever. So...

290
00:45:51.401 --> 00:46:03.822
And YouTube is in that phase now, where they're putting up a lot of content, and it's a very wide audience, so doesn't surprise me that my son finds the comments section to be pointless or sterile- Right...

291
00:46:03.892 --> 00:46:17.232
which drives him to g- spend his time on TikTok. And short-form is the... Hyper short-form is what he likes to consume. He's a soccer head, but he hasn't watched a 90-minute game all the way through in how long?

292
00:46:17.312 --> 00:46:25.792
I can't remember when. But he watches all the highlights, and the same for e- and, and all these sports leagues have this problem with the younger generation, right? They're consuming a lot of highlights.

293
00:46:26.322 --> 00:46:37.512
They're not consuming a lot of full game viewing. Right. That's why the NFL's average age audience member is, like, 56 or 57 now. It's crazy. So it's hard to monetize clips. Yeah.

294
00:46:38.452 --> 00:46:48.772
That's interesting because, like, I, I wonder, like, how... With the shortened attention spans, like, that would seem to be working against YouTube. Now, I know they have a shorts product, right? Mm-hmm.

295
00:46:48.782 --> 00:46:55.672
But, like, the essence of YouTube was a longer f- quote, unquote, "longer form." I don't know what the average length of it.

296
00:46:56.032 --> 00:47:07.772
But, like, you know, so I, I wonder, you know, if the next generation of creators are, are, are gonna be either... It's funny, 'cause, like, things either go super long, like an always-on stream- Mm-hmm...

297
00:47:07.892 --> 00:47:21.012
or it's unbelievably fast. Yeah, the super longs, like the... My son used to watch a lot of these when he was early into gaming. He would spend a lot of time on YouTube, but he'd watch really long, right, gameplay.

298
00:47:21.652 --> 00:47:30.472
And that's what, that was his stage, right? And then after that, he got into shorter stuff, and then he started watching more of these game, these gamers for their memes and comedy stuff than their actual gameplay.

299
00:47:31.132 --> 00:47:32.772
And then he started watching a lot of other video.

300
00:47:32.832 --> 00:47:41.452
So m- my son's progression's been from watching animals pooping on YouTube Kids when he was, like, little, little, to where he is now, where he's watching, you know, a, you know,

301
00:47:42.432 --> 00:47:45.892
a lot of TikTok, which is qualitatively at times not too different.

302
00:47:46.212 --> 00:48:04.392
There's a meme right now where there's a correcting kind of format now, where creators or influencers who feel they were the first to do a certain format or a certain thing will seek out another follow-on creator/influencer who's doing the same thing and then correct them on video.

303
00:48:04.432 --> 00:48:16.392
And the audience watches it in a weird way, the same way I think, like, his mother might watch, like, not that my wife does, but that generation would watch Housewives of, you know, Atlanta just for the catfights, right?

304
00:48:16.432 --> 00:48:23.772
You just- Oh, it's like a clap back. You... Yeah, yeah. Kind of. [laughs] You're, you know, or, or you're a NASCAR watcher, and you're just waiting for the crashes, right?

305
00:48:23.832 --> 00:48:36.032
I mean, it's a weird thing, but I, I see him, I lis- I hear. I, I'm like, I'm, like, constantly auditory monitoring everything he's listening to. Well, it's c- for professional purposes, but also just because he's 13.

306
00:48:36.052 --> 00:48:44.932
I'm like, "What is that?" [laughs] But- Yeah. There's- So that stuff evolves, and it, you... And no one would go this... There's nobody would say, "Hey, you know what we should do?

307
00:48:44.952 --> 00:48:55.212
This is a format we should create and bank on it." Nobody would do that, but it, it ar- it arose on these platforms, and now it's bigger, and who knows where it'll go. All right. I'm waiting for MrBeast to do it.

308
00:48:55.572 --> 00:49:11.032
That's what I want. It'll happen. All right, Darren. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for breaking this all down. My pleasure. Good to see you. [outro music]