We Replaced Doug | Ep. 085 Lemonade Stand🍋

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More than 1,000 businesses join InGen every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at InGen.com slash Vox. Welcome back, everybody, to the Lemonade Stand. It's me, Doug. Doug. My God, Doug. Doug, you look so young and you have a head full of hair. You look so much better than usual. A head full of hair. Your hair is much improved. Yep. We're in the New York edition of Lemonade Stand where we're getting closer to our true hosts. Once we get rid of you. It's going to be, well, I've been guest starring for a long time. Yeah. And Gavin did hit us up this week and he'll be rotating me out. I think he's going to take me out and we're dropping you and it's just going to be. Me and Gavin. Me and Gavin. Just him and Gavin? That was what Lemonade Stand was always meant to be. That's the goal. Well, I pitched the show at first. So it's interesting. You guys have come a long way. Yeah, we did steal it from you in there. You pitched it and then you talked about it at Chili's and then somehow. It's a long running road. Ladies and gentlemen, Anthpo, welcome to Lemonade Stand. Thank you for coming on the show. We are in New York this week at a special event. We're going to be on Steve Eisman's show, I think. And so we had the opportunity to have you come on the show and I appreciate that. It's really cool. And what's interesting is. Every other guest we've had, it's like pulling teeth, dude. We have to write the questions. We have to like ask them things and interview them. Can I come on the show to be interviewed? And I say, what are you talking about? I have to prep? And then we ask Anthpo to come on the show and he watches Lemonade Stand. So he prepared topics. He has slides. He's done more preparation than Aiden. And for the people, there are people in the comments. They'll be like, don't really fuck with the guests, really like the general nature of the show and like what I've come to expect. And as this is the guest episode for you, apparently, I was given an exciting. You texted me at like midnight last night. I woke up, I looked and I was like, wait, you have a presentation. And you're like, yeah, I have three topics. I have a politics one, a marketing one, and a one about batteries. Yeah, I was like, what do you mean, what do you mean you have three prep topics? Anthpo's brought batteries discussion? Yeah, well, no, I didn't. I'm not talking about batteries. I brought them to eat. I'm filling the role. No, my goal is to speed run. I want to be the most hated guest. Okay. Oh, if there's going to be a couple that you're there's a competition. There was a certain Canadian executive who might be in the running. Great. So but anyway, we're excited to have you. I think this will be fun. And we all brought it. It's like a normal episode. Anthpo is coming in as a real guest host. I'm like, oh, I'm going to be a guest host. Great. But anyway, we're excited to have you. And we all brought our time. This is like a normal episode. Anthro is coming in as a real guest host. And by the way, I found out today that you're only 24, which is insane. Oh, 25, but. 25. Yeah. Not to. Old and chopped. I was going to say you can replace Aiden. I'm trying to like shove him out the door. I'm the youngest on the show. Yeah, but you're too old. Well, how old are you? 29. Well, I'm 25, so. He's 30. No, let's not talk about my age. Whoa, all right. Yeah, by the way, this is ageist. So, we're doing a real show. We have real things to talk about. Now, I don't know what we want to start with. I really haven't thought of the order, but we have a lot of actual topics. The world's news is pretty insane in the past week. I think. So, it's lucky that we can. It would be messed up if the guest started with his topic. So, you should probably go with Anthony's. Okay. Oh, right. No, of course. Yeah. Should I say who I am? Actually, for what it's worth, you probably should introduce yourself. And I'm curious how you introduce yourself now, because you do so many things. My name is Anthony Poe. I'm a creator, performance artist, and media company owner. And I try to make the internet a more fun place. That was pretty good. He's mogging both of us, but it's definitely you. No, that's a very corporate answer. That's what I'll give to like business people. But yeah, I don't know. I'm a YouTuber. I own a media company. I'm in a group channel called Bunch of Friends. Well, okay. Let me ask you real questions here. Because the context through which I've known you is as a YouTuber. I've seen you make content. And then after that, you sort of pivoted into it's YouTube adjacent, but it's like almost like viral marketing. You're able to get internet attention on things in ways that people haven't fully understood yet. You did the thing, the viral cheese ball man stunt you did. A couple of things that people probably have heard of, even if they didn't even know it was you. And then you told me in private that you are now like doing consulting for people that want to understand how to use the Internet better, like political campaigns and things like that. It's a lot to be doing at 24. So I'm just trying to like what where's your focus at right now or where are you? Yeah, it's probably divided in three. So like I show up in a bunch of friends. We just we're going to hit a million today, probably on YouTube. So we started that a year ago. I also started a media company a year ago as a way to just, like, I had tons of inbound because brands were, like, I thought it was funny to, like, make anonymous accounts and, like, eat a jar of cheese balls in front of people. But it's since turned into this, like, marketing thing, which I don't necessarily care for, but it's been a really cool way for me to pay creative people. So, you know, the company is, like, an extension of my brand. And the last third is, like, weird artsy things, political consulting, the whole nine yards. Just anybody who's, like, got something fun and exciting, creators come to me for, like, positioning stuff. And I just, I don't know, like, because I'm going to charge brands money, but sometimes creators who I, like, admire are asking for. Right. And then your last fourth, I think. Sometimes they ask for, like, free presentations for their podcast. Yeah, yeah. Really rude shit. Yeah, you're doing, like, Palantir's public relations. Yeah, I've been doing Palantir. It's a big part of your day. Do you guys know Grok? Yeah, Grok. I've been running Grok social media. Wow, you do all the Grok tweets? I do all the Grok tweets, yeah, yeah, yeah. Big fan of Grok. Every time you ask Grok, it's Anthem. Yeah, it's me. I'm just hammering home those keys. Dude, you're fucking busy, dude. Thank you. Are you guys familiar with Project 2025? Yeah, that was you. You're looking at the author. That was big. That was big. That's big for us in the show. Thank you so much. I thought it was more of like a Clarence Thomas. It was Anthem, bro. more of an old I had an older feel to it yeah no me like earnestly describing my political like consultancy work and then like immediately saying I wrote project 2025 that'll be good for inbound oh yeah yeah great no I've had some evil actually I'll bring it up I had uh are you familiar with Eric Adams yeah yeah his campaign reached out to me at one point and was like name a price we want you to run his social media Eric Adams was cheeseball man Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was, um, it was all him. He was actually, Eric Adams was actually all five winners of the Timothee Chalamet lookalike contest. Yeah, it was impressive, and I'm surprised he didn't win, because I put so much effort. But yeah, it's certainly, it's opened my eyes to, like, the money that is in attention. Oh, yeah. Which is really sad, but I'm here to brighten the mood. Yeah, I mean, you used it for good. Your power is for good. I would say, having a background in marketing, the ability to do what you do is very, very rare, even in the marketing field. People don't understand it. They don't have any capability of it. The internet has caught a lot of these people off guard, and they throw lots of money at the problem. They don't really know how to, like, make something go viral or what captures attention. And so the fact that you haven't used it for evil yet, TBD, wait for the paycheck, is actually really cool because I'm sure a lot of people would pay you to do that. I'm sure Raytheon would love a new missile campaign. Oh, yeah. I could do some great work for Raytheon. Crazy. Yeah, we've had – I've definitely – I've slipped up maybe twice, primarily on the consulting side where I've kind of given the sauce to people that I regret. Nothing like deeply evil, like nothing in politics, but like sometimes I'll kind of open my playbook and then I'll kind of get screwed over. Well, we would never do that over here at the Lemonade Stand. Yeah, I was curious because you guys asked me for a bunch of information and I signed a bunch of NDAs before this So we would never do that. And honestly tax preparation is people's own business It doesn't what you do with it is not our business. We don't get involved So and what's equity you guys I signed a thing that said you guys have equity in my business. Oh, yeah That's not for the show. I remember when we went over that like talking more so you don't okay I shouldn't say Google that or no, it's probably not Have you slides now and - First topic. - You were hurting me earlier too, should I talk about that too? Okay. - First topic. - Okay, yeah, yeah, I prepared slides. I've seen a good chunk of episodes of your guys' show. It's okay. - Okay. - Okay. That's what Doug would say, too. That's honestly. You and the rest of the commenters that are like, not happy Aiden's on again. There's Gavin. I just want to apologize. If anybody doesn't like this flavor, there's always the next episode. Yeah, it'll always bounce back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, did you just say some shit? Okay. So this is a professional presentation. Always a good start. I feel like you don't believe me. Level setting. No, I believe you. Boom! Highs and lows by Anthony Poe. Today, I prepared a bunch of good conversations and a bunch of not-so-good conversations for all of you lovely people at home. Is this a character, this fish? Is this a. I'm sorry, I don't know. He gave me a look! Yeah, no, you're not doing great going around. I'm sorry. Highs and lows. Sounds like wins and fails. Oh, yeah, it's like wins and fails. But it's better because it's more vibes-based. So we're going to start with a high. Thought we'd start things off great here with a funny video. Okay. Yeah? I love funny videos. Free water unpatched. It's going somewhere. Yo, is it cool if I swap this with the liquid death? Yeah, that's fine. Appreciate it. Come on, shuffle! Oh! Bang! Appreciate it, brother! Okay, I'm sensing some confusion. I'm sensing some confusion from the whole room. Are you confused back there? Thumbs up. Okay. Uh-oh! Surprise low. This is an undisclosed gambling ad. Oh! Topic! We thought we were joking around here! Wait a minute. Let's get serious. I thought it was. I thought it was a joke. I was a goof. Yeah, wait. You guys did notice this, right? I noticed him open that up, and I was a little confused why he was doing that in the middle of the free water method. Free water method. Okay, so this is one thing that really pisses me off. My company, it's called Pufferfish. We hire young creatives, and we do campaigns. Speaking of undisclosed ads. So, you hire young creatives. We hire young creatives, and we play by the rules. We break them in the sense of emotions, and comedy, but we play by the-- You know, you gotta disclose ads. Gambling websites are targeting children without disclosure, and are getting away with it, like, in an insane degree right now. Part of my job, and people at the companies' jobs, is to be addicted to social media, and without our lovely lady, Lena Kahn, people are running rampant right now. Yeah. Don't believe me. Oh, shit. My bad, bruh. These are all undisclosed gambling-- Oh, my god. They have the same-- --viral hook here. What? Is that what-- Why do they all start with liquids being poured in cars? Free tomato juice, free coffee method, free Gatorade method. Audio listeners, we are watching a consistent swiping through different videos of a guy in the front of a car spilling different liquids as the intro to an apparent gambling ad. Yeah, and-- It is a good hook. These were the only ones I could find-- I'm lying. There are literally, like, thousands of these, and it's all, like, rain bet, steak, they all do it, and they do it by contracting out agencies, so they, like, wipe their hands clean, and then they contract out primarily comedy creators who are really-- like, all of these people are incredible at making videos and, like, understand what people consume, and then they get paid a pretty decent bag, anywhere from, like, a grand to 30 grand a month to put undisclosed gambling ads in these videos. And what are you going to do? Like, nobody is, like, hammering down on this. Nobody's enforcing. Nobody. Well, we just started talking last week about how your ability to enforce this. Like, you were-- it was about the scale of creator ads in general, not necessarily gambling ads, but how everybody is going the embedded route. You know, somebody doing their get ready more routine, and they just, like, quickly flash the bottle of, like, the cream they put on their face, and there's nothing disclosing that that is a pay down. But how can you-- you know, it's hard to track, it's hard to enforce, it's-- Yeah. Yeah, I think for me, right, like, when people do undisclosed ads for, like, what's a random company? What's the one you guys just did, like, 30 seconds ago? Huawei. Huawei, sure. They have paid us a huge amount of money for that logo. Wait, I was going to say, is that-- that's authentic. Yeah, it's real. The Huawei logo. Yes, sir. I imported this. Yeah, like, it's one thing if it's Huawei, but these are, like, gambling ads, clearly targeting a younger demographic. And so it's deeply upsetting. Those are the only ones I could find. Of course, I'm joking. Some of these, like, this has, I don't know which one of these. This has almost a million likes. But yeah, these have millions and millions and millions of likes. And, like, there's kind of nothing we're doing to enforce this, which is deeply upsetting. In Australia, they are a little bit. I found two articles that weren't that big of a deal, but they gave, like, a couple people fines. If Australia is beating us in enforcing gambling, that's a problem, because they are the most gambling-addicted country I've ever-- Yeah, the highest amount of gambling per capita. Right. Yeah. Right. Well, they're not trying to get the kids addicted, which is good. But yeah, this was, like, deeply upsetting. And it's something that I've noticed for so long, and I have noticed, like, a couple comedy videos that are, like, oh, comedy creators introducing Rainbet ads. But I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it, so. Wait, so you're in a situation where you're in the space where people might approach you to do the same thing. Yeah, yeah, all the time. Have you literally had, like, gambling companies approach you to do this already? All the time, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they won't, like, they won't reveal their hand until, like, you're in the door. Yeah. Like, they're not going to say, like, oh, post undisclosed ads. They're going to say, like, hey, do you want to do one ad? And then from there, like, obviously, the videos are going to perform better if they're undisclosed. Yeah. And that's, like, obviously in favor of the algorithm, which is deeply upsetting. I was also invited to, like, a creator Discord. And then, like, it was, like, a bunch of Instagram comedians, and, like, in the chat, they're, like, they got a Rainbet plug. Oh, really? Yeah. So it's. I mean, it's probably the quickest way for people to monetize, right? And the highest paying right now, right? Relative to other products. I assume. Yeah. So, I mean, that's the crux of it is, like, I think. This is my next slide. Oh, yeah. So anyways. Oh. The Gorgias Queen. I wish she would come back and do something about it. But I guess I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts. For me, it's, like, I can't blame these, like, 18, 19, 20-year-olds who are, like, trying to make a living off this thing. It's the gambling companies who should be under more scrutiny, Instagram and TikTok, because they. Like, their algorithms scan videos front to back. Like, they could probably identify these videos and not push them, and then, obviously, the FTC and current administration. So anyways, that's a low. I mean. That is a low. Outside of the administration enforcement, because I feel like we don't exist in a regulatory environment where this is gonna be taken seriously at the moment, I mean, I guess I don't know how you get to this part without some, like, downward pressure from government, but I feel like the enforcement has to be on the. The platforms. So there's. My understanding is there's a law that protects social media platforms from the legal liability of a lot of the type of content that are posted on their sites, to a degree. There's, like, lines. There's certain lines that came across, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The safe harbor stuff. And in this case, I feel like ads in general, but especially ads around, like, activity that we agree is problematic. So we can use, like. Always, like, tobacco maybe is something that already is banned in advertising in so many ways, right? You need to be able to find the platforms for, like, not policing the content appropriately. I wish it didn't have to be done that way, and maybe I'm just wrong, but I don't feel like at the scale that the US is and, like, the social environment. The social media environment exists at, that it's possible to have, like, a government agency. That polices it on their own. And manage. Because the output of these things is absolutely insane. And you need somebody internal at the company that has access to tooling in order to effectively monitor it. So you have to hold the platforms accountable, in my opinion, in order to effectively handle this. It's kind of what China does with their censorship. So obviously, they're taking it to a way further degree, right? But what we learned while we were there is, it's not necessarily like some government sitting at a computer, like, taking down posts. One, there's, like, a layer of automation that does this at the companies. But then there's also people working at social media companies in China that are responsible for takedowns of content that they think need to be censored. And the reason that that is effective is the Chinese government can take action against the companies if they don't effectively moderate it. Obviously, that's at, like, a scale that's way further than, like, what I would want in terms of censorship. But that's how they roll it out in a place of, like, a billion and a half people. Yeah. Are you, like, so, you know, I'm, like, fucking old dinosaur now. Like, working, when I worked in marketing, everyone was way more afraid of getting caught red-handed on FTC violations. And they would, you know, make sure to push to all the influencers to put #ad, yada, yada, yada. Everyone has sort of realized now that that is not the way to get the maximum engagement. Everyone knows it. Even the dumb brands know it. Yeah. And so it's just weird because they're all incentivized to say it in the right way where in trouble but they want you to do it this way yeah and i wonder i wonder how to stop that i mean it's just it just is better we all know it's better everyone knows it's better the the influencer knows it's better i don't know that it's a weird situation to be in like i guess you could try to punish the platforms but i don't know how they tag it how do you know the difference between like we didn't get paid to drink this do you know i'm saying if i just drink this is that a payment is that flagged are we getting taken down yeah i think the automated the automated policing of it is gonna have its own problem five million dollars by the way i was gonna say you probably didn't get paid though right you didn't get paid i didn't cut you in but i did get paid for that plug uh that is just a weird thing i think we can agree though that whether or not the challenge is solvable it's really bad when it's rain bad or whatever it's like when it's gambling for kids um and it clearly must be working like they're me oh yeah they've been talking about it for a long time and they've been talking about it for a long time and they've been jumping so this has been a while now wait this is my other question do you actually think not to say that this is completely ineffective or something but is showing is flashing the game on screen for like two seconds in a otherwise like 30 plus second video actually that effective at converting users for sure it's like um you know when you throw enough things at the wall it's like an awareness campaign right like they're yeah they've i sincerely doubt they're doing less than like a billion in views a month just like in showing people using it and when it becomes normalized like that it just snowballs um so definitely i mean again like they've been doing this for better part of like a year and a half and i thought it would end and it's like only ramping up um yeah they would have wound it down if it wasn't working at this point no it's like they're they're you see more of these all the time yeah it's literally they're doubling down and then every uh you know viral kick streamer has stake sponsorships on their clips and like it's everywhere so it's working and they're making a you know adding their watermark no one ever discloses that that's paid sometimes it's like why is the steak thing like steak is like a normalized word now they just they've spent like a billion dollars on just like it's obvious i know yeah not disclosing that it's paid is like are you putting it you know what's funny though things have happened where it becomes part of the culture to the point where someone adds it to feel like their clip is cooler like i don't think stakes the example that's happened with different things people people add that stuff to want to feel like they're part of the culture and they're like oh my god i don't know what's going on with it well for this episode i recommend you guys put steak um water oh yeah we do anyway because we're they're actually a major partner they don't even pay us i'm just a no i'm just a fan i just love i guess i've lost so much money that i owe them ad space wait so do you have more highs and lows yeah yeah yeah i could i mean you clearly that wasn't well i do need a high okay i fucked with it don't get me wrong okay you guys you have to balance out my sadness okay do you want i yeah okay no you're right um okay are these tickling segment i'm sorry are these all gonna turn into lows well they're all gonna get tickled low low okay i'm sorry wait your high was a tickling wait the high was the tickling segment i didn't even get a good tickle okay okay uh okay so now what's the low i can tickle you uh the low i refer him let's talk about the newest uh development in battery technology and energy infrastructure but wait why was this is this a low uh well it's just boring uh we could skip it but um let me refer to my notes here battery energy storage system you guys know about bess so i've got a friend named kieran who works in batteries and engineering he's a very smart guy and he was explaining this to me he said that you guys had previously mentioned that there's been no battery updates and he said that that it upset him um we're sorry kieran first of all we didn't know about bess and i would love to hear about best what is the update in battery technology that kieran wanted to share with us so you guys know how in texas um they have blackouts yeah very often regularly you can time it by when ted cruz is in cancun um there's been a new development in batteries usually uh they are made with lithium okay but now uh they've cracked the code okay and uh oftentimes they're going to be made with sodium in the future oh i heard about this way i did hear about this you did hear about this yeah yeah yeah okay great so you can't explain no i can't explain i didn't hear that there was a sodium breakthrough in batteries yeah exactly so um the there's a lot of um boring uh tech that goes into this this is a lot of china though right china's like way ahead on this they're way ahead but um he's a part of a so what this means for us is that there's going to be less blackouts because what these basically you know are what's the advantage of sodium or lithium um the i mean technically they they conserve less uh energy so they won't be used in things like um evs okay nevertheless um the like dilution of only being lithium batteries is going to put less pressure on uh energy infrastructure but in addition to that um is it cheaper is it you think it holds less energy but it's just it's way cheaper sodium is everywhere right like lithium is like a it's a harder to get mineral okay yeah yeah um and so these are being rolled out as opposed to like when there's a big surge um or a storm these bests will essentially be like a backup it's essentially like a generator um but it's not it's not like fossil fuels it's all um batteries so during like um you know nighttime when there's less people using um our infrastructure we'll be charging these bests and that way when there's a blackout um we'll be saved wait and your friend works at this company that is developing them in america he makes like all the like he does the plans for energy all across like the northeast um what i heard is that um the one of the big limiters on green energy is battery technology which is that like you can have a ton of solar panels you can have a ton of wind but if the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining you have this weird mismatch on demand but if you have large cheap batteries you are able to stabilize the demand and that's been the big limiter in both they're expensive and you can't get a bunch of them yeah so the sodium is supposed to be like the big breakthrough that is like this is going to make it cheaper or cost effective that you can add a ton of batteries and then solar is much more effective wait this is this sounds great this sounds great this is a low this is our low well it's just boring yeah yeah yeah yeah do you guys we can go back to the table okay if you guys change your mind i guess i think there's like a not to villain share this by any means but if you're rolling this out in a place like texas i don't know what texas is split on like green energy production is versus fossil fuel energy production uh i think obviously for both there is like a there yeah this is you can store the energy regardless i'm sure there's like a scale of like efficiency you're accessing regardless you get to like weather blackouts or like uh critical periods regardless but you still need to make sure that you have policy that airs on the side of producing the electricity in like a renewable fashion uh but this seems like really sick especially since every update i get about improvements about battery technology pretty much comes back to china it's like all centered in one place yeah it's good that we're having it here i am worried this is a big worry of mine is that uh i like salt on my food and so is there going to be a shortage yeah no more salt do you think if we sorry is this going to be a big thing where sodium is taken up by these wasteful and i'm not going to pretend like i at least like i really know the consequences or answers here but i do feel like i there's we got a lot of water with salt in it but i i feel like you know that episode where i was like don't we have a lot of helium isn't the sun just making it oh you said that yeah that's so embarrassing we know better we do know better and i feel the same way here where i'm like don't we have a bunch of water with salt in it like but but i'm probably i'm probably missing i'm picturing a big plant where they're pulling the salt out of the water turning it into batteries and we're all drinking fresh water it's like this is beautiful well you know that it's called desalinate but i don't know if that doesn't the brine i don't know if the brine can be used in the battery i don't know anything about that i'm not going to pretend ask your friend yeah we'll get the bob yeah we'll get them okay all right this is a good piece of news is there any more than on the best um i guess other than like what did you what did your friend say he's your challenges with this yeah i mean the challenges are like um it's going to be slow to integrate china's obviously way ahead um one of the other challenges he wrote uh the chemistry is obviously not like fully developed yet but it's it's there enough to where they're developing it um here in the u.s um and that's pretty much the only other challenge or like downside in general is that um we skipped best tickling time too much because it doesn't really feel like every episode actually but uh one day we'll get there uh we have fun um i mean i get the part where i'm like oh my god i'm gonna get so we've done some stuff on rare earth minerals on this show and it's just like 98 percent of most of them are refined in china and when they want they can cut it off or squeeze it at a moment's notice so building a supply chain where you're using sodium for a lot and that's just a smart idea it just makes sense this seems cool i don't see i don't see this as a low other than you said it's not as fun as tickling but i think this is actually pretty cool i guess we have to see how it works out support for this show comes from shopify black friday is approaching that means it might be time to fly out your business. 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And now like he's, he's the, he's the big shit in politics. You guys can't curse on this thing, right? You'll beat that. We'll beat that. Um, yeah, I got to go to his event as well. Like last month and AOC was there and it gave me as a young person hope for the first time in a while. Um, dangerous thing to have dangerous. What was the event at the time? Like he's running for Michigan Senate. What, but this event was in New York. Yeah. What was the, what was like the purpose or behind the, behind the event? Just like, uh, networking and fundraising. It was just like a room full of people in and around, um, media and entertainment and politics. Um, and yeah, I can always tell when like a politician or even company is like on the right track when they are kind of like doing the whole sliding scale of demographics. Like when they're reaching me and they're also like asking for older folks, like they're really like, trying to reach all of their constituents. Right. The message is breaking through more than just a little sliver of people. Do you think you're more like, because of your work, I feel like you must be so much more conscious of where people running or dropping the ball. Like they're like, you see this guy who's like outside for who's succeeding, but what are like big areas that people are just completely whiffing on? Well, it's interesting because I, I feel like a lot of the people that are taking big, big swings, um, in short form socials, which is a lot of them now, um, are oftentimes like completely forgetting about traditional paid, which like now traditional paid actually is a lot cheaper, right? Like we have like full pivoted into organic in a way that like, I actually, this is my, you know, I, I always try to feel like a little bit ahead of culture. I think like YouTube pre-roll ads, like no one's making good YouTube pre-roll ads, um, like for a younger demographic. Like I felt the same way about posters like two and a half years ago. I felt the same way about posters like two and a half years ago. I felt the same way about undercover accounts like a year and a half ago. Um, now I feel that way about just paid ads. Like no one's doing paid ads. Good. Um, that's the one area I, I, I see a lot of even companies that reach out to us. I feel like nobody's doing them. I guess you're not doing them well. They're spending like crazy this election cycle. Everyone's yeah. I think there's still, okay. So something that's stuck with me cause we, you know, we hung out without you a while ago. There's just no reason to say it. You were so fun. It was really good time. You guys had a great time. I mean, and we excluded you. Oh, you did actually. Actually I did remember texting you. Yeah. And I said, don't hang out. This is a joke. I said, don't hang out with Aiden. And then you left me. Yeah, I actually did. I was kind of mean spirited of me cause I wasn't even able to, I just wanted to, you couldn't have even gotten to the thing, but I just didn't want to hang out with you. And he didn't respond until after you'd already hung out with you. But you, you were talking about how the spend, um, like for your agency right now, a strength of your guys's is that you are cheaper to work with than a lot of people. Of others. And something I was thinking about recently, I will not say the company, but they worked with Ludwig and gave him a bunch of money to be in a shoot. And this, uh, to see the scale of like the production they worked at, they, they're still like, they still exist in kind of this like old Hollywood world. I feel like where they have this gigantic crew, they have like meals on site. They had like all these, lights, they have multiple, they have, they have like multiple gaffers setting up the set there. They're there like the whole afternoon. And then the output of that product is so small. Like it was a small piece in a very small video. And I, I was like, dude, this makes the cost structure of this makes no sense for what they made. It just makes no sense. And I feel like it exists in the world that you're talking about. And I feel like it exists in the world that you're talking about where there's like this legacy media world that is still willing to pay like an extraordinary amount of money for things in a way that also still kind of makes sense economically in their world. Like they have enough money to pay for it and they still feel like it has value. But then there's like this new layer of people that are like, I actually just need like three people, a decent light and a phone, and I can do it way cheaper. And that market also exists. And I don't, maybe you can help me understand this. I don't really understand how you, like your version of your company has not completely replaced that like other side of the industry because of the cost difference. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a hard thing to hire for it. That's our hardest thing at the company is like, this is a page that we started for a language learning app. We started a year ago, we've gained half a million followers and it's just me and like two other people. It's mainly them. Again, I'm just kind of like guiding them high level. We're just making like funny videos as this puppet. Um, and they're all in an, oh, we doxed a person. It's like, they're always in and around language. What's the one with Ninja and Ligma? I see that right next to it. Let's see here. But you know, like a company will charge like a bajillion dollars for something to get 22,000 likes. And we're just like having fun. And like, I believe like in order to make people listen, you have to make them laugh or make them feel. Yeah. I, I guess like this stuff like this is really successful. Right. And even I think at Ludwig's company, I even think about the internal economics of like when we do a shoot versus when we see a like contracting shoot company, like pull him out to do something and how I guess, I guess what I'm wondering is like when somebody who has the decision power at a big company, like let's just, let's say Facebook just as a general big company, They don't reach for these effective. attractive cheaper options? And is it because people like you and companies like yours are just too, too few, don't have enough of a presence yet, haven't been around long enough? Like what, what do you think the answer is? Yeah, I think that they're starting to come around. Like we've just signed a bunch of like crazy legacy companies, which has been super cool to see. Yeah. And I, I've seen a bunch of competitors, but they're called like creator led agencies, right? Cause creators are good at getting organic attention. Yeah. I mean, really we're just making funny videos that you know, we'll get views and clicks and attaching brands to it. Um, and yeah, we do it again. Like, you know, we do it pretty expensive now just cause we have a lot of people coming in, knocking on our door. Um, but the cost of doing it isn't crazy that the real thing is, yeah, the real thing is like, again, I'm, I'm like neurotic about like, I just want to make really cool shit like with people who are passionate about it. Um, and so like the real cost comes from like our time and attention, but there are tons of these agencies popping up and they're making great money for like pretty simple stuff. Um, like honestly, even like I'm just doing shit that I would have done before and just calling myself a company and then come like big companies will just pay more cause there's like legitimacy and my co-founder, she does paperwork and all the legal and finance stuff, but you know, I'm just, I'm the vibes guy. Um, but yeah, it is cool. I mean, I love it because I get to pay creative people to do creative things and like, there isn't a lot of money in entertainment right now. So the real reason, uh, you know, one of the reasons they didn't do this before brands is that they're all very risk averse. Like this is like scary. A lot of what you're doing for this on social media requires you to be irreverent or funny or something that they're not like super brand safe. Yeah. So what, what is that? Are they just getting so desperate that they can't get any attention? They're just going to you anyway, or they're, they're updating or younger, younger people were getting promoted in these companies. Like what, what do you think it is? It's like, like turning the corner for them. Yeah. It's a mix of both. I mean, we have a lot of wins under our belt now. Um, both like the unbranded, like we have just a catalog of like, um, fun pages we've launched campaigns we've done. Um, and then also, yeah, it's, it's desperation. Like I know that these traditional agencies charge upwards eight figures sometimes for like, you know, a million views. Um, and so it's like, you know, they bought by the way. Oh, for sure. These big agencies, they take a huge money from like, let's say Ford or whatever. And then they do their branded video that gets no views. And then they pay some of that money to buy views for it. And then they go back and and it's all just this circle jerk for no gain that nobody saw. I mean, the incentive structure, we, we talked about this in a Patreon episode. I feel like the, the layers of like, it's so funny. We're at box recording this right now. I'm not, not like, I think the structure of like marketing agencies and then also like the outside of podcasts in podcasts, it all makes sense in podcasts. It's like, it's rock solid. And it's like, you can't even, you can't even touch spent is a dollar earned. It's perfect. And it's all perfectly effective. But outside of that, but a, I think a better example is like at big corporate companies where like somebody, you have like a chain of people that work in marketing and they report up to, and then they report to an agency who sells a deal to another agency who then all these players in the middle are so vested in the success of like a project. Like their job is way more dependent on this single project being effective and, or at least presenting it as productive. Then it is valuable to actually make a successful project. Yes. So if you're like a cog in this multi-layered machine and say you were doing the marketing for like a meta, you're it, it, it's probably worth it for you to bought the post because in the short term, that's way better for your career. Especially if the people above you are too disconnected to really register, understand how that works. And it's better for them to the people above you want to lie to everybody involved wants to lie except for maybe the CEO. As a, as a goal, like every chain, they want to be like, they don't care. They don't care. Yeah. Yeah. The incentives are so out of whack. Um, and the middleman thing is so annoying too, because like now that I'm, you know, I'm usually the person that brands are coming directly to, and I see their budgets. I'm like, where the hell was this before? Like really? It's just like, there's not three people in the middle of being like, I'm going to take 20% of that. Um, also your arm, please. Thank you. Um, yeah, no, it's, it's messed up, but, um, I think again, brands are coming around to it. Um, and again, it's cool to like, I mean, obviously the hope is that the brand work is in service of bigger and better stuff, but it's really cool to just have a company of young creatives. Are there other trends you're noticing in the social space? Like what are you seeing? You're in there day to day, day in, day out. What is, what is catching your eye lately? What are you thinking is, because here's what I took away from that opening presentation on gambling is that the best hooks right now are just total brain rot. I mean, it's like, it's really about like people, you really have to capture their attention. Why is he pouring orange crush soda on his feet in the tractor? Like, I'm like, but it works. I'm not scrolling away, but like, it does feel like we're, we're getting into that zone. Uh, it's a real race to the more over the top thing, more real world, more physical thing that it's harder to fake, but it's, you know, that, that is a really, they're really pouring it all over a car and causing real damage. Well, what are you, what are you saying? What's uh, or anything that's just caught your eye recently? If, if you're not in high art and I say high art very loosely, but if you're not in high art, it's a race to the bottom. Like that, I believe, like, I think that if you really mean something to people and you show up consistently, um, and you've like developed a community or like trust with your viewer, like that's kind of the thing that gen AI can't hit all these, like, you know, people just making for all intents and purposes, slop content. Like again, the, the guy that made those pouring out videos is funny. Like he's a funny guy, but like, um, he's racing to the bottom because he's getting paid bags to do these gambling things. So the big thing that I've noticed, like, you know, I started to cover things a while ago and they've been doing really well, but now people have like stolen them and turn them into AI influencers. Right. So like if you're in the, if you're just trying to reach people and reach them quick, like it is a race to the bottom. The one thing I've noticed, uh, in bunch of friends is like, I've really, you know, me and the whole cast, like we've really tried to cultivate this community and they've like shown up. Like, I didn't know you could sell so much merch. Like we've just like really been intentional about like cultivating, uploading every Friday and like pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into the videos. Um, so that's a big, like, I think somebody like Hank green, who's been around for 13 years is like going to only be more, um, elevated because of things like AI. Um, he's built up this trust. He's proven himself. Um, so I think you want, you want to know what's next up love. Well, I feel cheesy, but I agree. I've heard that trust, like trust is becoming the only currency left on the market. Everything is duplicatable. I wanted to ask your thoughts on AI and follow me into all this, but you kind of mentioned it. I cut you off the way. I was going to say, it's like kind of like a K shaped viewership economy where like the, the authenticity is like more valuable than ever, but it has to compete with like the bottom, like the, the, the bottom of the viewership economy, which is just like the, the slop that like fills in all the gaps that you kind of are just forced to engage with. So all the filler, content doesn't have to be this authentic voice, right? Uh, it's kind of like, I think, uh, who's the CEO of Jack Conti. So, so he talks a lot about how it's like the best time ever to like be a creator obviously has a very vested interest in that. But I think he has a point in that if you are somebody with an authentic following, you can, you have the tools to like monetize and release your work in a more available fashion than any time in like human history. And if you can cultivate the initial community, your ability to succeed and like build something out of that is so it's, uh, there's actually a really good chance of it right now because people are like aching for that authenticity, but it, not everything all the time can be this authentically output stuff. It, it, and it's inevitably filled in with like the dredges, which will only become worse because of the tools available right now. Yeah, I completely agree. And I mean, the unfortunate truth about gen AI is that This is my – this is the real next thing is, like, it's becoming indistinguishable in a way that, like, I can't – like, I remember using Gen AI tools in high school because I went to a film in IT high school. And, like, my teacher would talk about LLMs in a way that, like, oh, they're going to be a thing in, like, 2050. And, like, now they're here. And now I can't even tell, which is crazy. And so something I would always chat about is, like, the metanarrative, right? Like, people will care purely because a human made it, but now you can't even tell that a human made it. And these social media apps, these, you know, tech companies have an incentive to make you not aware because, like, they are all invested in AI. So, yeah, everything's changing. So the one thing that isn't is, like, you guys have a community of people that hate watch you week by week. Yes. And are devoted hate watchers. And so you guys should be proud of that. You guys should be proud that you appreciate it. We really appreciate it. I was going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I felt this recently on YouTube. I'm not going to name any names. I don't want it to be a thing. But there's a huge rise, though, in what I'm calling, like, skinwalkers, which is a person who has a teleprompter and they are reading 100% an AI-generated script. And they add maybe three human jokes or whatever. Like, that's the thing. But it's now, it's, like, it's a gigantic chunk of YouTube. It is teleprompter. And it's taken over. There's so many channels that have turned into this. And it's, like, it's weird. I don't know exactly how to feel about it. about it, I've just soft bit investigating this. I don't know why. It interests me and it kind of spooks me. There's no fall off in viewership. The user doesn't care. And I saw that in, I did a piece on these micro dramas coming out of China, The Verticals. And I've met some people here in Hollywood, or not here in Hollywood, we're in New York, but in LA that work on this stuff. And they get, you know, they have to work fast. It's insane. They have to shoot 20 pages a day. And a lot of them replace with AI and the viewership does not go down. They just replace it completely. - This was coming to mind because the scale at which they were getting filmed, like authentically filmed with real people, was, I don't think, I like that real people, I guess, were getting paid for some sort of work and maybe through a rough period of time in Hollywood. But I think you're kind of kidding yourself if you think the product that was getting chunked out of that process was like significantly more artistic than the AI product that was replacing it. And that's why it's not even a quality like step down. It's just like, unfortunately, removing the last hours of human labor that were getting put to produce the micro dramas before. - It's a race to the bottom. - It's the race to the bottom. - And so like, there's always gonna be a slew of people that care about the human touch. And that's like the high art that I'm talking about. I'm not saying it's like a bunch of friends is a bullshit weekly comedy show, but like we care and there's always gonna be a demographic of people that care, right? I mean, you guys probably talked about this, but like when photography was made, people thought it was the death of painting, right? And a lot of people that, you know, used to consume, art galleries stopped consuming art galleries and consumed the internet, but there's still a huge premium on human made art, right? Like painting, so that's kind of how I feel. - I kind of agree. We actually talked about this on the show like over a year ago. I think, and it's the idea that this, it already exists like bespoke, cool, historic products in any industry, right? Like if you want a cool old type of like chair or piece of clothing or like a authentically made metal sword in the way a blacksmith used to make it, there's like a couple guys who still do it with incredible quality and you pay an incredible price. But the reality is that is a tiny, tiny, tiny part of a market that people don't really engage with on the whole in the like consumer version of the product that goes to 90% of people because 90% of people plus aren't into that bespoke, cool version of it, don't engage with it at all. And I think that's the sad part. - This podcaster showed us Tickle Sash at the old factory, you know what I'm saying? - I'm so glad you said that. - Okay, wait, do you have a question? - No, go for it. - One, this is similar to, similar to a question I asked you on the hike, but I'm super curious as a group of people genuinely that has refused a lot of like gambling sponsorships. And I have like a personal, I think like a personal list of like morals or priorities that I have like held for a long time when agreeing to do sponsors. And we reject a ton of companies to work with because of that. And like we, and me, him and Doug all have, you know, I guess like a standard of like who we wanna work with, right? And, in your position, you're obviously making similar decisions about like gambling companies. What for you is like the code or like the line that you are loosely trying to follow for the people you're willing to work with? - Yeah, the line for us is pretty in the sand. Like at Pufferfish, it's like we don't wanna work with gambling companies. We try to stay away from anything like gen AI. Like, but right, like AI is here to stay. So to the extent that there's like a B2B backend bookkeeping, like AI company, it's always a conversation internally about like anything past the like truly like gambling, alcohol, tobacco, and we try to stay away from politics as a company. It's like, it's really a case by case thing. Again, like I believe in like the human internet, so we never do gen AI, but like every company that has a budget has AI somewhere in their workflow. And also like by me using Instagram and TikTok, and YouTube, I'm complacent in the replacing of human art. - Yeah. - So it's always a give and take. But I think for us, it's like, we have an ability to get people to care and pay attention. And we have to use that wisely. 'Cause like we could eat, like I gave a talk at the Colin Samir event. And afterwards, this guy comes up to me and he was like, he's like, oh, I'm a professor at Penn State. He's like, you remind me of this guy we talk about in my psychology class called Edward Bernays. And I was like, oh, who's that? So I look him up and he is just one of the worst people, like to ever, like legitimately Dr. Evil of Evil Corp. - You remind me of Joseph Goebbels. - It was like, he like invented the term PR. - Oh, okay. - Like, and he's the nephew of this small fry named Sigmund Freud. - Okay. - And he just invented all the, he has a book called "Crystallizing Public Consent." Like, it's like so easy. - You read the book, right? - I read the book, yeah, I read the book. And like, I was like, damn, like, I think like this. But like, I'm like, how do I get people to watch John Chungus? Is kind of like where I'm at. But yeah. - That was the goal when you wrote the book, was to one day get to. - Eventually get to me. But yeah, I mean, he was like, you know, he was responsible for like a lot of the American tobacco company success. But yeah, so I mean, again, like I'm, I've just been doing this for so long. Like I'm not anything special. I've just been making content for so long and I've like intellectualized it and I'm like, maybe a little bit autistic. But I would say like most of the people in our position, like we tried to, everyone at the company, we're trying to like, you know, use it for net good in some capacity, even if it's in like service of some other bullshit. But was that boring? Or do you guys want to go back to Tickle Time? - No, no, no, no, no, no. - That's fascinating. Listen, I think it's really interesting. I just, because I have a lot of viewers that ask about wanting to get into marketing or whatever. And I've told them for years that the way I got into it no longer exists. Like this is what it is now. This is where all the eyeballs and the attention is. And it's a hard, this is the skill you have to learn. And you have, you've become really, really good at it. And obviously your company's doing well and you're getting paid for it. But it is refreshing to have somebody who's good at it, who is not using it in the worst ways it can be used because that is where the real extra money and real demand is. - So, but if you're watching Palantir, would love to make something happen. I think you guys are great. Everything I've said in the past is about you guys actually faking it. - What's your Palantir idea? What is the John Chungus of Palantir? - Peter Palantir. Oh, he'd be great. I'm Peter Palantir. - I'm Peter Palantir. - Do you want to be him? I was thinking kind of-- - You're nuts. - Yes, I will. The thing, okay, so the part I left out earlier is that for a large enough sum of money, I'll leave all of them, all of the points at the door. - Oh, for sure. By the way, everyone has a price. - The thing about the line in the sand is that you can just pat sand over it and make a new line. - Oh. - Oh. - Oh. - Support for the show comes from Injun. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard, but if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Injun is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. And in 2025, Injun customers save more than 300 million dollars on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than a thousand businesses join Injun every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at Injun.com/Vox. - As soon as autumn rolls around and you swap your iced lattes for pumpkin spice, that's your signal to start thinking about the holidays, the decor, the gifts, the shopping lists, but more importantly, the holiday treats, cheesecakes, cookies. Is there anything better? And when the recipe calls for cream cheese, there's only one option. Philadelphia, the original cream cheese, made with fresh milk and real cream. This holiday season, whether you're going all out or keeping it simple, make it really Philly good. Find your favorite holiday recipe at Cream Cheese, and you'll be the first to know when I release a new video. I'll see you next time on Injun.com. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels, and in 2025, Injun customers will save more than $300 million on travel, with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Injun every month. - Anyways, you're right. All right, I'm gonna skip. I'm gonna get through the rest quick. - Okay, let's do it. - Yeah, 'cause we're getting. And yeah, also, the political front. Again, it starts with small steps towards change. So I threw this Timothee Chalamet lookalike competition. The winner, his name is Miles. He mentioned to me that he's interested in political work and wanted to learn social media. So I took him on as an intern. And then there was a candidate in Jersey City who was like, hey, progressive guy, here's who I am. Could you help me run my socials? I was like, I can't. I'm busy. But I can teach this guy miles alongside, you know, trying to help him out, run your page. And we gained this guy like 200,000 followers. And now he's working with Abdul running his campaign and has had a lot of success in like the political space. He's a young guy. He's like 28, 29 or something. So it's a little step. He's a young guy. He's four years older than you. This kid I mentored, he's four years older than me. Yeah, he's like Cocoa Melon. Wait, I do have a question about this. Because a passing thought I've had about. Social media views and in advertising or being able to accumulate a lot of followers like this is the being on top of Internet trends in a way that allows you to like put out, put out a tweet, put out a reel that really pulls on those platforms usually involves capturing some very modern trend. That young people are inherently more tapped into. But. Young people are statistically less impactful in like the money they spend and the amount of voting that they do. And I was wondering. And so in a way, like the the mileage out of each hit on a social media post is like a little lower than it might be on a traditional TV ad or something. I don't have a fully formed thought about this. It's more like what do you think the effectiveness of this guy gets? I don't think that getting 200,000 followers like really does matter for his campaign. I guess I'm not asking you to like undervalue your work or something. I'm just I want to understand it better. No, I mean, you're right. The way I see it is like most people who make decisions kind of just care about optics. And like for him, like he was, you know, he was doing good. Like he's went to Harvard Law School, you know, smart guy. But like he was having his hard time getting his foot in the door. And then once he started getting social media attention, every every floodgate opened up and he started to have bigger events and people started to pay more attention. And so like it's a snowball effect. And it's like, again, that's I was saying this before, where it's like some people will solely focus on like organic and then kind of forget these other channels, which, again, you're right. Like younger people have less purchasing power. They are statistically less likely to go out and vote. But I also think that that's like kind of like our responsibility to help try to try to usher in. And so little wins like this, I think, are good. But I think the idea that like it's young people only on social media is outdated. No, no. So I totally agree with that sentiment. The demographics of social media broadly are changing. But the people who devote the most time to social media and like are on the pulse with like what's funny and what trends are younger. Right. Yeah. Like I, as like an older person who has more to do, might be like less engaged and not understand the like vehicle or meme that like makes these posts popular, if that makes sense. Right. Well, I will say like for him and honestly, most of the undercover pages we've run, the primary demographic is 25 to 34, which is surprising. And in terms of trends, like I actually don't even really. Believe in trends like it's really just like, how do you give somebody an expectation and either like deliver upon that or break it and make them laugh or scare them? So like, I kind of like most of his posts that went crazy Balugu hashtag viral were just like him speaking down the barrel, like I didn't do anything other than like syndicate who he already is, but to a new medium, right? Like it's just him speaking down the barrel and like, I'm trying to make sure that's like fitting with the way that people consume on Instagram and Tik Tok. So that's really all like, and I, and maybe this is me like giving too much credit to people, but like, I think everybody is interesting and like, there is like a, everyone has a compelling story that like people would love to listen to. And so like I approach him in this, in the same way I'd approach like a bunch of friends or any, it's all the same. It's like, what story do we have to tell? And like, how do we make people laugh and giggle or whatever the fuck? Or we can go back to tickle time. You guys seem to be, you seem to be really. I don't want to, I don't want to make any assumptions, but you. It's like tickle, tickle time was great. We were to trace tickle time. It's like, I'm down to do it once and move. Yeah, my bad. Anyways. Okay. I think it's interesting from the point you brought up before too. It's like, okay. So the, the, the posts and like the, the six, the success of his profile is like more, uh, is very effective, but also even the acquisition of like a higher follower number kind of in the same way, like YouTube subscribers. Like it doesn't necessarily impact. Your viewership, but it's like a signal to people and like opportunities in a way that still does matter. It's like, you know, having X follower account, like weirdly opens doors and opportunities that produce like further effective change or videos to ask the thing. It's like, yeah, of course. And comments and, uh, it's also, I'm just thinking like people in my real life, people are learning everything through social media. That's every, everyone of all ages now learns most of their news or who's the interesting. Person or what the story they're talking about with their friends, it all comes through social media. So if you can break through that noise, it's like, it's insanely valuable. It's like, I actually think maybe that's kind of a good, this is something I haven't thought much about at all is like you just described the demographics that like you're largely hitting a demographic of like 25 to 34, but everybody is on social media. There are a lot of people in their fifties and sixties and seventies that are just on their phones, like watching stuff now. And I think all the time about when I get a, like a, I call it like a. Leak sometimes, sometimes I'll get, I remember I got like a short about like a type of fighter jet and all of the comments were full of people that are clearly like in their forties, fifties and up, you know what I mean? And I was like, I don't, I don't see that side of the internet very often. Do you have much thought on like kind of, or, or experience like developing your craft to access that older audience in a way? Yeah. Again, like I. I try to enjoy everything I watch, like even if it's a hate enjoy, but like, I just, I try to put myself in the shoes of like an older person or a younger person. Um, like John Chungus is fan base is like kind of old. Like there's a lot of like older, like literally people who are just like, I like. Guilty. Guilty. Okay. Sorry. I like John Chungus. Well, not like geriatric, but like, um. Oh my gosh. Did I say that out loud? Wait, I mean, um, John Chungus has a, has an older fan base. It's like, it's, it's for all ages. Really. And he's, uh, but I mean, it depends on the post, but like when he's kind of just talking about the outdoors and doing educational content, which we have him doing right now, like it's, it's for all ages type of thing. Um, and honestly it's like, like marginal differences in packaging will get you like massively different demographics. Um, even posting on Facebook, right? Like some of the posts we make, like maybe you get like a hundred K, 200 K on Instagram and then it posts on Facebook and it's like 10 minutes. It's like 40 million views. Yeah. Um, there's tons of people on Facebook and they have no good content on there. Oh yeah. It is dry. No, it's wild. You check out like Darman on there and he's 40 million views of video and it's the, just the sloppiest, I'm thinking career pivot. Come on. What are you guys doing? I know. What are we doing with this little podcast shit? Something I think about all the time is that when I was in New York, like two years ago, I was on the subway and I'm standing up next to a guy that's sitting on like the end of the bench so I can see what he's doing on his phone. And he's watching this. It's like AI video about Obama that just looks so like poorly edited and fucked up. It's on Facebook. And then he leaves a comment in all caps. That's like, love Obama. That was like, we should get him back. My fave Prez. And I was thinking, I actually wrestled with that for a long time because I was like, he's, they're real guys. Sometimes they're real guys out there who are commenting that. And when I see it at home, I'm like, I kind of can't even imagine the guy who is, who's typing it. And it's like, he's a guy in his fifties on the train in New York. Like my dad, he's scrolling like AI generated reels and my dad doesn't bother him. It doesn't bother him. So, uh, wait, is there another slide? Oh yeah. I'll, I'll wrap this up here. Um, uh, okay. We're going to end out on a low. That's cool with you guys. Yeah. I thought we'd end out on a love ended on a law. So hi, I would like to pitch, and this is very important. This is very brief. This is very brief. All right. Very brief. It's very brief and incredible, an incredible new technology. Okay. Have you guys ever wondered what you would look like as studio Ghibli characters? Because I have got it. I have got it. This is just what I was thinking. I, I've cracked the code. I want to introduce you guys to something that I've found recently. Holy cinema. This is what my mom sends me. My mom will send me these. Yeah. Um, so we'll take a selfie later. We'll take a selfie. We'll make one from Facebook. The thumbnail for this episode is like, we got a new host and it's the three of us. Um, that's it. And I have thought starters in case nothing was going right, but none of these are that cool. Damn. I, sorry. My, my tickling took up so much time. That was probably like, if you're watching, we cut out like 20 minutes of tickling. Uh, okay. Wait, because of the structure of that, I'm going to change what we had. Cause we had both Alex, but I have a topic that is relevant that I wanted to like slide it in here and your thoughts. Yes. Would love that. The thing I was thinking about is, I don't know if you guys know Netflix as a company media Titan, one of the biggest revenues in media. Just did a bunch of layoffs. And it wasn't just regular people, it was executives. They did a big reorg in layoffs recently, in the past week. And when asked why, they basically said, in not so many words, that they are reorging to try and fight YouTube. Because YouTube has just been eating their lunch, just destroying them. And so I got the stats, and it's like 14% of TV viewership is now YouTube. And Netflix is like seven. It's like half. So it's like they're completely crushed. I didn't know it was so dominant. And so I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on the changing media environment and how it seems like creators, in aggregate, it's unstoppable. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like because you can get exactly what slop you want in the flavor of slop you want it, they can't keep up. No matter how talented. Even if Netflix got Scorsese to make 100 picks, you just cannot make it at the scale and speed. As someone living through it, I was wondering, this is more of an open question. I'm lobbing it up. But I just think it's, I thought that was an interesting thing that Netflix admitted so openly. Because they're not doing bad. Netflix is making money. They're the most profitable streamer. But they just said, hey, this is, the direction it's going, we're not going to win. And one thing they did change is that they're adding like a TikTok feed, like a vertical scrolling Netflix feed. Oh, thank God. My mind can feel safe. And can I air, play the video to my TV? Can I airplay Emily in Paris to my TV and scroll the Netflix feed at the same time? Yes, I'm not even kidding. They want to add, like, if you were on Netflix on TV, you can scroll through vertical slice clips of like Emily in Paris or whatever. So you find what you, this is where we're going, bro. I could cry. I'm so happy. Yeah, I want to hear what you had to say about it. You know what's funny? It's going to come for you too, though. He's 24 right now. He's tapped in. He's 25. He's 25. You're already 25. You're already getting fucking old. And you're locked in and you are the guy that really understands the current media environment. But you're going to flash forward and they're going to be on VR headsets, doing something and you're going to be like, I don't get it. For sure. No, I agree. I know. That's why I'm trying to rush this. You're trying to rush. I'm trying to be like, I got to make the money, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, no, I, I know I'm not going to get it, but I realized that the solution that all the best artists throughout history have always done is they always bring in young, new talent to like work with them. That's a big hack. Every, every successful person that's still around always like hires a new talent. There's a young, hungry 23 year old to like help run their operation. Anyways. Um, but yeah, I'm going to be chunk one day. Um, chopped. Unk. Yeah. No, thank you. He thinks I'm actually Trump. Cause he called, he didn't explain it to me. No, I know. That's actually the age. Cause I knew it. I knew what chunk was. I knew it as well. But he thought he had to explain it to me. You don't need to lie to impress. You're over 30. You're over 30. It's embarrassing. You knew what chunk was. It's a lose. Lose. Oh no. Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that YouTube has an incredible model, um, where I don't have to, and by the way, um, we're going through a lot of conversations with streamers right now. Everybody, everybody wants a bunch of friends on, on streaming platforms. We have such an incredible community of people that we get to reach weekly without any notes. It's just us, like our awesome internal team. And we get to put out videos and laugh. Like why would we add the bureaucracy and go through all these rounds? Like even for a budget, it's like also like we have more ownership. And our IP, usually if we, um, work with YouTube, um, so the model is outdated and you're right. Like there's tons of just like, like a relevant little details, right? Like, you know, most people, sorry to say, don't care about like a colorist, right? Like they don't care if the, the, the reds are perfect and the blues are perfect. But like on a Hollywood set, that's going to cost like $30,000. Right. Right. And so like we make a bunch of friends videos for like, um, I mean, we, we've never paid an intern or, um, we don't play our employees. Right. Right. Right. You have that model where you just don't pay them. Yeah. We pay them in exposure. Um, usually. My editors have not been paid in years and it's very profitable for me. That's why Adish does the podcast. Cause we do. The podcast pays them. I know. Um, but yeah, no, like, I mean, it's, we're in a position right now on YouTube where like, you know, we make good money in ad revenue. We get to pay our whole team and like, why would we switch and add this like scary layer? Um, nevertheless, YouTube is starting to realize that streamers are coming for YouTube. YouTubers and are starting to pay YouTubers exclusive fees to stay on YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. Yeah. It's very interesting. I, I, I mean, I've seen the, the rumor mill has told me that these conversations are happening. You have a friend or I know some YouTubers, I mean, I can't confirm or deny, but if I were to make up a story about how they're definitely having these conversations, I think we could make a good show. Dare I say it. Yeah. Maybe just the two of us though. Right? Well, yeah. I didn't, I didn't want to like cut him out, but like definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was at a, uh, there's a YouTuber. I'm just going to say that. I think they're fine with saying it dead meat. They do like a horror, uh, reviews and stuff like that. They leaned into this and did a fan submitted. You make your own horror short and then they, they put them together, stitched 13 of them together. It made a movie premiered it. And then a ton of like Hollywood. Yeah. Hollywood agents or studios were like, can we option one of those, you know, like they're reaching out to them about like, maybe that that's, you know, that is just not a thing that would happen 10 years ago. It's like, so we turn a short into a movie, like, let's say you made a horror short. That's like six minutes long. That's like a really cool idea. Like, oh, that could be a movie that's like obsession was a big hit. Let's do this. So they're reaching out. It's like a really interesting time. Yeah. Everyone is looking for Mr. Obsession too. Yeah. Like every, like everybody. Everybody, like, we take a bajillion of these, like, interested studio execs who are like, so, have you ever heard of Obsession? I'm like, no, I haven't. Yeah, it's a- We're an iron lung. Can you do a markiplier for us? Yes. Can you, yeah. We could. Yeah, we, yeah, between the two of us, we're one markiplier. Yeah. Which is, I don't know, fine. And not that we think your creative input isn't good. No, I think it's a negative. No, I was- I don't think it's not good. I think it's like an- I was trying to be nice, but yeah, it's cool too. Me and Gavin will do our show. You two do your show, me and Gavin Doosan will do our show. Hey, wouldn't that be a good show though? Like an amazing race style thing where you and me- Gavin, what? And Gavin and Aiden have to, like, compete to get more views. It's new Try Guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. It's new Try Guys. Gavin will cheat on his wife. Does he have a wife? I think she cheated on him. Oh, that's not getting into it. No, that was his other wife. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. I'll have to review that one. We'll get to the bottom. Yeah, we'll talk to our people. Before we- Okay, wait. I want to keep things going. This is a fun conversation for me. And you have a thing on your thought stars I wanted to ask. You said, why- This is going to get political for a second. All right? We never get political on this show. You wrote, as a possible thought starter question, why does it seem like Republicans can't make art? And that brings me to a question that's more relevant to right now that I want to ask. I think people have been saying that forever. You know, maybe some of them have. Here's the thing I want to ask. There is a rising trend of um gen- AI-related memes. I'm going to give an example. I don't know if you've heard of this Malfoyd, where it's like- Yeah. Female Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter. And that has become like a right-wing leaning meme. It has like leaned into it. It's like- And there was this question that was posed, which is, it seems like the culture is trending toward- Because of the ability to make these that are almost indistinguishable. Especially like the anime one I saw. It looked like- It looked like a polished anime. I could not see the flaws. And, uh- There's a worry I saw that if, um- Uh, like people that are left-leaning start standing out from gen-AI stuff, they're going to get left behind on this cultural trend that will lead to a lot of- And then- And then right after I saw that question, I saw, um, someone was making essentially like short eight to ten minute South Park episodes skewering news that happened that day. And they were generating it out. And they were getting a lot of views. And it was like, in that style, but it was like talking about, I don't know, news that just happened, like Paris rides or whatever. And I was like, dang, this is, that is, that seems very relevant. So I'm wondering, I, I, I, I wonder your thoughts on that. And then, yeah, yeah. I mean, well, it's crazy. I've answered this exact question before. Oh, really? Like six months ago, um, I was giving a talk with Anthony Demiry who helped, uh, run Zoran Socials. Um, so it was me and him. We had a long conversation about, you know, how to show up and, and also, the room was filled with all, the whole political spectrum. but somebody at the end, um, asked a crazy, like intense question about like, cause I spoke about how like, you know, people off at the time, especially maybe not as much now, but people had an aversion to Gen AI content. Um, as do I, cause I, I, it feels yucky, but like he was like, how could you, um, encourage people in this room to stay away from Gen AI content if the goal is to reach people and get them to care about stuff. And it happens to be like an official, efficient way to do that. Um, and it's true, right? Like the output, um, that a lot of these like Twitter hecklers and edgy people have on Gen AI content is crazy. Like they're incredible. Right. Um, and this is, this is my like theory on like how things are playing out right now is like, uh, the left, you know, progressives and such have this like empathy and therefore they see like data centers and like all these bad, things that come about through gen AI, losing human connection, blah, blah, blah. they won't go there, they won't touch it. It is a tool that reaches people efficiently, especially those who don't really care about how a thing was made, right? And so people on the right, a lot of these trolls and Gen AI experts are steamrolling in this attention economy where people don't care. And I don't really have an answer because frankly, I don't want to go there on Gen AI content. Nevertheless, and this is something I was talking to my company about, where do we draw the line, right? If our goal was to create human art and Claude can properly cut up and compile a YouTube video for us, wouldn't that give us more time to do the art? No, it's a real good question. Yeah. So I mean, it's something that I feel like I'm struggling with right now and we're going to have to come to terms with once the entire internet is Gen AI content, we're getting awesome fruit AI love island all the time. It feels like everyone is struggling with it in the past six months, because before six months ago, it was pretty easy to be like, it's just not good enough. It's just not good enough. But then recently it got really good and it's making a lot of companies, like I know a lot of gaming companies are just, the guy from Xbox, there was an Xbox community manager, someone higher up that tweeted yesterday, he said, everyone in gaming is using it, whether they say it or not. I'm going to be the guy that tells you they might fire me for this. He's like, everyone. I mean, Mark Merrill said the same thing. Yeah, essentially. So it's a weird question. I, but I've been wrestling with it more this year as I see it happening on YouTube a lot. I want to show you guys, you guys know that, this is kind of above your guys' pay grade. You guys know what an agent is, an AI agent? No, tell me, tell me more. I'm going to kill him. Tell me more on that. That's your co-host, by the way, that's your new co-host. You're going to, I'm threatening to kill your guest. Wow. Not my guest, you're my co-host. Sorry, co-host, real classy. This video. Uh. Should I play that out loud or should I mute it? I think you can play it out loud, yeah. It was at 200,000 kilometers per second. But you're going to have to give us the link. It is carrying a photo that your mom just sent. From the moment your mom's thumb hit the send to the moment that your phone lights up, only 200 millisecond passes. Now, let's slow down that 200 millisecond 750 times so we can see everything that happens to the photo. At zero millisecond, the phone doesn't recognize the photo. It only knows ones and zeros. The phone converts that photo into 16 million ones and zero and encrypts this data. To anyone that tries to intercept this data, all they see is random numbers. We don't have to watch the whole thing. AI. Yeah. Claude did this entire thing. Yeah. And like, also people that like this, I know are like against AI content, like some of my peers and such. Yeah. So I got this kid on the phone. I like, I DMed him. Oh, interesting. I was like, I want to talk to you. Yeah. Also, he's gained like 60,000 followers since then, which is crazy. The problem is it's a genuinely interesting video. Like that, it's hard to, it's hard to wag your finger at it. When it added value. Yeah. It added value. And you couldn't have made it otherwise. So is the, it's all the animation work is the AI part? Yeah. So he made a video on like how he did it. Yeah. Um, and it like, I, he's like, yeah, I've never really made a video before. I'm just kind of figuring this thing out. I was like, we're fucked. Isn't that crazy? We're screwed. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. But I, it's, it's really interesting. It's, it's upsetting, but it's also like, where do I draw the, like a lot of the stuff that, um, I used to run this educational page with my friend Billy called Big Weird World. We would do, um, like weekly. Weekly animations on Tik Tok and we would just talk about. Dude, you've done so much. This is crazy. I know. You, you, you're too busy. Yeah. Do you ever like smoke weed and scroll? No, I've been getting into cigarettes. You guys want a cigarette? No. Um. I smoke cigarettes as well. That's good for you. Um, like the goal, our thesis were like, we want to teach more people about like history, science, whatever. Sure. And it's like, if that's the outcome we're going for, then wouldn't. These are not AI? No, we would draw these and they were like silly and goofy. Oh wow. That's crazy. Because even if I saw them, I'd be like, that's AI. Right. And that's the problem. We would post and we'd be like, bro, AI stuff. We're like, bro, like we just animated this whole thing. I'm just being honest. If I saw that, I would scroll past it. That's AI. It's unfortunate. That's funny. That's crazy. Ah, it's so weird. What a weird time. Yeah. We would draw these cute like animations and I don't know. It's upsetting. I, yeah. I'm having a hard time even gathering an opinion, you know, it feels like such a storm. I don't know. I don't write it. It's lucky we have the best politicians in charge right now to handle it because we can't figure it out. But thank God the best and the brightest are thinking every day about how to adapt to this. Yeah. Like so many, dude, just the, just the oldest people imaginable trying to like contend with. You guys have all seen the clip of the secretary of education saying A1. Oh my God. That's one of my all time favorites. I do think it's really interesting. I do think it's really interesting with where you sit in your work and also how young you are. And that feels weird to say, cause I, I, I feel like I've been the young, I feel like I was the young guy in so many rooms for so long and, uh, bullied for not, you know, for being dumb and stupid and naive. Yeah. I'm there too. I feel you. Yeah. When do you have like an end of the work? Imagine. When do you, when are you like done or satisfied or is there like a broader goal that you have or is it just getting to do something with creative people and friends for as long as you can? Like, how does this, how does this wind down? And it's a weird question to ask when you obviously could be doing this for 30 years. But we're so young. Yeah. You could do this for 10 years and it wouldn't be. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Um, I guess for me it's like, um, I do feel like I have somewhat of an obligation to, you know. I mean, if I have the opportunity to, to pay young creative people, if I have the opportunity to, you know, make people giggle week by week, whether through, you know, a bunch of friends or a short form, I feel obligated to do it in a way. Um, so as long as it's like keeping me, uh, motivated, I guess, um, I will continue to do so. Um, I have lots of fun projects that I have cooking up. Um, but I think for me it's like, as long as it's, as long as I feel like I have an obligation and it's not like, you know, killing me. Then I'll probably continue to do it. Um, also, I mean, we've been talking about replacing you. So as for, um. Yeah, he's, oh yeah, we should probably, we're going a different direction on the show. And, uh, Anthpo here is going to be the new, uh, I don't know how to deal with this. This is one of the problems with the. You're joking. Yeah. Doug's coming back. It's, it's really just. Yeah. I thought we were, I thought we were replaced. No. And also please don't cry in the pod. That's. Yeah. It's bad form. And also I'm leaving. So it's actually just going to be Anthony's show. Oh. We just literally had to kick you so that he could take full. Okay. I, I actually wasn't aware of this one. Yeah. I just didn't feel like I wanted to do it with a guy that calls me chunk. Oh, we're funny. I didn't feel like I wanted to do it. I didn't know assholes were allowed on podcasts. Oh yeah. Yeah. I didn't think I wanted to do it with a guy that calls me chunk. Oh, we're funny. I didn't think so. Oh, we're being funny. We're being funny. Oh, now he's pushing me. Oh, it's interesting. Now you're going to want me back. And I'm actually, you know what I'm. Oh yeah. Yeah. Tough guy. Yeah. He's so tall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anthony. Thank you so much for watching the worst episode of the Lemonade Stand. If you want an extra hour, be sure, be sure, be sure to go to the Lemonade Stand Patreon. Not me, but the other people do an extra hour and it's cheap. Is that true? Is it cheap? I actually. It was horrible. What the horrible read? All right, fine. Whatever. You do it. Support for the show comes from Injun. Injun is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country. Built specifically for businesses like yours. And in 2025, Injun customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. Famous Footwear is the perfect friend date. There's gifts for everyone on my list, me included. I bet shoes will fit in my stocking. You do your own stocking? Doesn't every mom? Yeah. Ooh, Timberland, Jordan, Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, Skechers. What do I pick? Pick two. BOGO, half off. Yes. I love choices. Right now, it's BOGO. Buy one, get one half off at Famous Footwear. Plus, join Famous Rewards to get our best benefits, like free shipping at Famous.com. Some exclusions apply. 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