Do You Ever Feel Guilty About Bad Reviews?

Support for the show comes from retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together, not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need, prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data, and retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with Enterprise Security built in. So go to retool.com slash waveform. We all need to retool how we build software. This usually shocks people. I have run 27 marathons plus a few ultra marathons, all while fueling my body with plants. Yes, I get plenty of protein. I wrap an add son, BPS fitness programming, and head instructor Peloton. And this week on my podcast, Project Swagger, the fundamentals of a plant-based life with nutritional takeaways for you to apply to your own life, no matter what your preferred diet is. Follow Project Swagger, wherever you get your podcasts. You've done kind of an extraordinary job of staying apolitical. Do you ever wish you could break out of that? Why do you hate fun? Do you think AI creators are a threat? Do you ever feel guilty knowing that a bad review might tank a company? Yo, what is up, people of the internet. Welcome back to a very special episode of the Waveform podcast. I'm Michael, and I'm Arches. And look at me. Look at me. Yeah, I'm the captain. I'm a perfect, I apologize. Perfect, I didn't try. I'm Michael Fisher. I'm a tech YouTuber. Also known as Mr. Mobile. I'm a co-founder of Clicks Technology. And I'm a Waveform fan, by the way. I don't know if you knew that. Thank you. I'm a massive podcast listener. Nice. For a long time, I was like, I have to keep, I have to get around to Marques's podcast. And then I finally did. And I was like, hey, this is pretty good. What do you know? Nice. I am not Marques, but I do get to steal his host chair for this episode. And I'm going to tell you what we're doing here. I'm going to ask him a bunch of questions that I've been saving up. Since the last time I got to interview you, which was actually 12 years ago. I was going to say it's been a minute. Yeah, wow. Back at Pocket Now. And you were still in your bedroom, I believe. You still had Honey Nut Cheerios in the back. I sure did. I still have that box. Do you? That very box? I might ask you about that later, but I don't think you're ever going to tell. Have you ever, well, look, we'll figure it out. We'll get there. First, though, we're going to talk about the art of product reviews. We're going to talk about the differences between a review and an ad. We're going to talk about the evolving role of YouTube in the tech world. And of course, we've got to talk about the tech itself. Right, sure. Have you, you sound good? Have you forgiven me for the, for the Captain Joe? No, this is great. I thought it was ideal. Excellent. Well, I want to start light. I don't want to jump right into the heavy stuff. I want to start with some tech questions just to get us, get us loose and happy here. I could not help but notice that you are not daily driving a foldable. Why do you hate fun? The folds, oh, it's a really interesting question. I really like the folds. And every time I test one, I always think, man, it's finally it. I'm finally going to be a fold person. And then I go back to, because I review phones all the time, I'll go back to testing a slab. And then I just end up using the slab anyway. Like I don't, like I don't use the openness enough. For me, it's email, occasional social media, drafting, and like one or two other things. You're talking about the big boy foldables. You're talking about the wide boy. Right. And so you're not even considering the clamshell. You're never going to never keep that away from me. It's fine. Interesting. So yeah, I, I, mostly, I'll have a foldable and I'll mostly use it closed. And the more I use it closed, the more I'm like, well, I should just be using a slab. So I can have more battery and more screen. And you never miss that inside screen, huh? Like, well, I do miss it once in a while, but not enough to fully switch back. OK. You think it'll change when Apple does one next year? I honestly don't think so for me personally. I still think I'm so, I have a tablet that I use for tablet things. Interesting. So for the stuff that I would open my phone for, but not go all the way to the tablet, there's like a very small number of things for me personally, so I'm not dailying a foldable. Do you think that the category will continue to exist? Yeah. And Flourish is not going to go the way of 3D phones then. No, I think it'll continue to exist. I think it's funny. Every time I see a foldable in the wild, I kind of think about like, what type of person is this? I was on a flight recently and the lady next to me had a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. Best place for a foldable. She never once closed it. Open the whole time. Open the whole time. Put it down next to her open, pick it up open, read emails open, never once closed it, and I thought that's a type. That's a type. Yes, it is. We're going to come back to that. I don't want to beat foldable's death right up top. You're one of the few people I know who's as big a phone nerd as I am. If you could take, and I'm sorry that you didn't listen or viewers, Mark has has not heard these questions. The best majority of them, so I'm sorry. You didn't get to prep for this one. If you could take any modern phone and the capabilities of any modern phone. Stuff it into the casing of any old phone. Ooh. What bizarre Frankenstein's monster would you create? I can take only two phones or I can take a bunch of phones. Oh, miss. You can choose as many capabilities of modern phone as you want, but you have to stuff it all into the same casing from the past. Sure. Okay. Now, anytime anyone says old phone, I always have to contextualize. Right. I'm 31. And old phone to me is 10 years old. So not a Galaxy S3. Like that's, you know, something like that. I was going almost that far back. I was going HTC one. Oh, the M7. The M7. The M7. The aluminum block, the boom sound speakers. And back in the day, they had a, yeah. Well, they had a Google Play edition of this phone back in the day and I loved that. Yeah. But I would take like a modern pixel, for example, but also give me a snapdragon 8, general 8 or something like that. And stuff it into that old aluminum wonder. I think that would be a sick phone. That would be a great phone. Would you keep beats by the way? Like, could you retain the beats audio on the boom sound? Doesn't matter too much. I mean, it was kind of nice. I liked the way they sounded. And they were big front facing speakers and I saw who watched his videos on the phone. Awesome. But I think that was a single camera on the back. So I guess just give me the primary pixel camera. Give me a nice black ammo lead. Give me like, yeah, give me all the software. Okay. Yeah, I didn't expect you to go that reason because I think I think old phones and I'm not 31. So yeah, I think a lot of people want to say old phone go way further back than that. Yeah, I'm like, give me a flip phone with a hinge that reverses the display and like put it down and like, yeah, give me a star tech rainbow edition. Okay. Last little warm up question. What is your absolute favorite gadget right now? So to clarify, not a phone, not a car, not a laptop. Yeah, certainly not a tablet. Sure. Hasleblade X2D Mark II. This is a camera. It's unfortunately, it's a $7,000 media format camera. Of course it is. It's extremely unattainable and ridiculous. Right. It's almost absurd. Is that why it's your favorite because it's the absurdity or because it does something. A little bit of both. Like I had used and talked about house-led black cameras in the past being so slow and clunky and immobile that it like forces me to be more intentional with each photo. And you can blast all the smartphone photos that you want. But when you're sitting down and you're taking one photo, you take your time with it with a hassle-blad. And it's partially because it sucks at autofocus. And like the whole thing is just slow to shoot with. You have to take your time. You have to be taking it time. It's not bad. But this new one is the 100 megapixel media format formula, but also with the speed of phase detect autofocus and continuous autofocus and built in HDR. And just all these other things that make it like almost like daily driving a supercar. It's like this weird, crazy, fun thing. So it preserves the intentionality, but doesn't make it hurt as much when you're using it. Yes, yes. It preserves a lot of the intentionality, but like opens a couple more doors. Got it. I was using, I was out of, upstate with my girlfriend this past weekend. She was using Dispo, you ever use that on the app? The app. Oh yeah. Was that David Dobrik's app or something? I believe so. I don't know. It likes mimics. It mimics a disposable camera on your iPhone. And I actually liked that not just for the style, but for what you described just then of this. Like kind of, you're going to take one shot. You're going to set up. You're going to do one. And if it doesn't come out well, I'm sorry. The moment's gone. Exactly. Right. You missed it. I love that. That's good. We might come back to that at the end of that intentionality. Yeah. Let's talk. Let's get serious now. Yeah. On the life and work of a YouTuber. You live in it? I know. Well, you've been living it for 15 years. I've been doing it for almost as long. Do you still feel like you're capable of speaking to the products you review in a way that's relevant to a modern audience? Or do you feel like pressure or concern that the audience is going to get younger and younger and you're going to have a harder and harder time doing that? Oh, interesting. That's how I thought you were going. So yeah, I do think I, it's a skill that you develop as you make pieces of content to share to the masses. You have to understand those masses. Right. And so yeah, as I've made more videos, I've gotten better at talking to the same masses. But then the masses grow and include new groups of people that I have to also think about younger people, for example, or even in the specific case of reviewing tech products, the people that make the product. Like there's a lot of consideration when it comes to like all the parts of the audience. But I think so. I think that's one of the skills I've developed. Yeah. Do you think you'll be able to consistently hone that skill? Because I mean, people, you know, the audience will continue being replenished at the low end to get really dark. It'll keep, you know, it's abriving at the high end. That was true. Yeah. And I mean, at what point? Because I'm putting myself into this question because I feel like I've already, I decided at some point that I was going to not focus on the youths. Yeah. And I think that's a trap that YouTubers can fall into is to see the available, like the eyeballs of like the younger audience and to try to cater towards them. And when you are a young person, it makes sense. Like when I started as a 14 year old, I was making videos believe it or not for other 14 year olds who were in the tech. As a 31 year old, it feels a little less natural to make videos for 14 year olds. And it will continue to feel less and less natural. So I think the idea basically is to continue to talk to audiences that are similar to me in some way at the expense of maybe some of the youth eyeballs. And I think that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Cool. And also it prevents you from falling into the trap of like patronizing or, you know, like talking about. I do think that. Yeah. It kind of feels, yeah, bad. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about the stuff we're covering. I mean, since we last spoke, the smartphone world has settled into this like really dull predictability in my opinion, even the foldables, even the exotic categories, especially in the US. Yeah. And China's still doing really fun stuff, but we can't get a lot of them here. So have you found ways of keeping phones interesting to you or have you had to or have you not had to? Like I've had to find new ways of keeping myself interested in the job. Totally. The part that keeps it interesting to me is the stories. The stories behind why certain things change. The stories behind the releases or the hype or the failed features or whatever. There's always a story behind it. So even if like we're reviewing the OnePlus 15 this week, which is another phone. We are indeed. Right. There are so many ways that this could be just a boring video of like, yeah, it's got the new chip and it's got the new RAM and the new software and it's another slab paint job. Yeah. But finding a theme or finding a reason why they did something that you didn't expect them to do or went backwards a little bit and trying to wrap that all into a video. The storytelling part keeps it interesting to me. Even if I'm not sitting there going, wow, what a phone. It's the behind the scenes of the production of telling that story. Yeah. That is the interesting part to me. Does that hold true for phones that you like, I mean the OnePlus 15 maybe is an example of this. I know for me, I'm not going to name them. But I know for me every time a phone, a particular phone comes out every year there are two or three where I'm like, I would not, given the choice, I would not cover this. But it's two news, where I have to cover it. Yeah. What is the ratio of that to you? Like if you had to mix them down, if you had to say like, all right, here's a video I really want to do about a product I'm really interested in versus. Here's the thing that I have to do because if I don't, I can't support the channel. I get there, you have to make money. We have to stay relevant. We have to preserve the authority. Such a good question. I think it's almost 100% videos I want to make. No, there are maybe, Oh, really? And I'll tell you why, because there are two or three or four that come to mind or five that are like content strategy decisions like a new color way for a phone that already exists or an unboxing for a phone where we already know it comes in the box, right? But I am such a content strategy nerd that the fact that the tech is that interesting and outweighs what's in the content is interesting to me. It's a weird thing. We're like, yeah, 97% of the videos, I'm excited about it and I can't wait to make this video. And then it's the new red iPhone color way. For example, right? Yeah. I know you didn't want to say a name of a phone, but like, that's one of them. Sure, yeah, that's one of them. It's like, okay, that's a video where I ordinarily would not cover it and there's so many other examples of that. But I know that when this video publishes it's going to get three and a half million views for some reason. Why? That's interesting to me. Yeah. And so I'll make the video and I'll acknowledge it in the video. You guys are already commenting that this is a useless video, but I just want you to keep scrolling down a little bit and you see the view count. That's why this video exists and it's supporting other videos on the channel. And that's interesting to me. So there's a lot going on. Obviously the new phone is not interesting. That is a broad use of the word interesting, but I'll take note. Yeah, the content strategy. And I've... The tactic itself, the strategy itself. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And I think I've told the octopus and allergy a million times, but I've distilled one of my functions in this studio environment as the content strategist. So I pay a lot of attention to that. Is that an army you're ever going to cut off? That's one of the hearts I'm never cutting out. Okay. Yeah. Got it. One of the ways I've found of keeping this fresh, because it's funny. I don't have that same perspective. And I think it's a really useful one. I've had to change the videos themselves to keep myself interested. Too often times to the detriment of the videos. You remember an ASUS did that space addition laptop a couple years ago? It was like a NASA addition. It had an OLED on the cover. It was all gray. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a spatial equipment. Yeah. I was like, this is cool enough on its own, but I'm going to take it to Kennedy Space Center and review it there and watch a rocket launch, right? And then I just crossed an ocean and to break a record nobody knows about, because I couldn't bear to do another smart watch review in the same way. But there's a sacrifice there. Because in that example, ocean liner nerds are going to love half the video and they're going to not care about the watches and vice versa. The space one is just ridiculous. So you don't do a lot of those often, but you did one recently, the top five sports tech. That was, it was really fun. And one of the most upvoted comments there was like, it's really fun to see Mark has like get excited about. Now that you're, not that you don't get excited about tech, but like you felt like you were showing us a part of yourself that we don't get to see very often. Sure. But you know, first of all, would you like to do more of those or can we expect for you to do more of those or not? Was that just a? Definitely, yes. It is exciting specifically because it is a challenge that I don't get a lot of reps at. I get a lot of reps at new smartphone is coming out. You have an audience interested in tech. How do you tell this tech story to this audience? I do not have a lot of reps at new sports tech is available. That's specifically better for your recovery between workouts and a thing that you do on the side that nobody hears about very often. How do you tell that story or share that in a way that's interesting to these people? Yeah. Absolutely. And you're just a different challenge. Right. So for me, that keeps me energized in the process. But you had the same issue, I noticed. Like that video underperformed compared to your usual format. Does that bother you at all? Or is it just an example of like, no, sometimes I got to make a video for me? Yeah. No, it's, it's a, you've heard so many times the one for me, one for them type thing. Yeah. That was one for me. There was also a content strategy part of my brain that's looking at the area under the curve where like I know that people are not going to watch the iPhone 15 review two years later. Like tech when it's timely has this really big spike at the beginning and then an incredibly short tail. Oh, right. You know about that. Super short tail. Yeah. But these more evergreen, as we call them videos, because they are not extremely timely. And it's just a sports tech video, super small initial curve, but a way longer tail in a way that the area under the curve in five years will probably be better than an old gadget review. So I don't mind the underperforming now. Makes sense. And YouTube gives you that bone off and then the analytics will be like, not fewer people are choosing to watch this video, but they're watching for longer. Exactly. That's a good indicator for when I check back in five years. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, good call. This is a weird question, because it's one I've been thinking about for myself recently. Do you have a preference for how people watch your videos? By which I mean, like if you can envision the ideal scenario for someone who is consuming an MKBHD video, like is it someone on a tablet, on a commute, or on a couch on a big screen TV, or like on a phone on a toilet? Like what? What? Where do you want people to be to watching MKBHD? I'm hoping phone on the toilet. No, 100%. I think phone on the shower is a real move. Yeah, that's a, I've never been asked that before. And when you started saying that, what I pictured was how often I watch videos, which is on a desktop in a browser, switching to 4K, full screening, and kicking back a little bit. OK. And like really watching the video. Yeah. Maybe that's how I watch it, because I make videos. And so that's just a unique behavior. Yeah. But I do hope that there's some version of like appreciating the small details. Well, they're, I hope they replay stuff once in a while just to catch something that they might have missed. Sure. But yeah, I mean, we upload these videos in 4K for reasons. So hopefully a few people are watching in the highest resolution. Like I'm trying to. Yeah, of course. Yeah. For me, it's, I like, I would like it if people watched YouTube, like I watch YouTube, which is on a big screen TV on my couch. I can't. You're one of the TV viewers. I'm one of the TV guests. I hear about these TV viewers. And unlike it, dude, it's a lifestyle man. So so you open the TV app. Yeah. And you scroll. Are you home page? And you're just seeing what pops up. I am home page. And my algorithm is really well tuned. Now I got a lot of info sterled content this year. It's got to be because if your subscription box is one place, but the home feed, the more you use it, the more it's tuned. The trouble with the subscription box on the TV is it shows you shorts. Not trying to watch shorts on a TV. It does. And it plays them. Yeah, it's annoying. Is it a carousel when you open a short? I don't know. I've never done it. Okay. Good. Yeah. Don't find out. I won't. I'm giving it that signal that I approve. It's funny. The videos 15 years ago, a long tech video was seven minutes long. I know. Yeah. Now a short tech video, a seven minutes long. A hundred percent. Yeah. And I think that's correlated pretty directly with a lot more TV viewers. And YouTube talks about this all the time and I've noticed it. And I'm happy that you're one of the TV viewers. Yeah. It's really interesting. Thank you for the pandemic lockdown. I think that's what did it. Sure. Yeah. We're talking about it already. I just want to touch on it. Long form is obviously your bread and butter. Because I don't watch short form, I don't know the answer to this question. What about short form? Like how important is it to your strategy and end and end. And more interesting to me. Is it something you do because you have to or is it exciting to you in any way? It's changed. So I love context strategy questions. This is right at my alley. I've thought a lot about this. Yes. Long form is my bread and butter. Always has men. Probably always will be. But you see the proliferation of shorts. They're everywhere and they're exploding in popularity. And you go to one of these YouTube creator summits and all they're talking about is short form. And it kind of feels like I have to be in short form. So that was the beginning. I did a short channel separately. I was like, my audience doesn't want this. But let me see how it does. I'm actually find a way to bring it to the main channel and mix shorts in. But as I'm making these shorts, I'm learning a lot about how to make shorts, how I think about what a short vertical video is and maybe how it can drive viewership to the long videos as well. Right. Yeah. And it slowly became more and more of I want to be good at this and speak this language and make it also my bread and butter. My shorts went from every single one being 59 and a half seconds because I suck it compressing this stuff into shorts. Into like, wow, we just made one that was 25 seconds and it was the best one that we've made. And it's cool. It's become a very conscious part of the content strategy. It's the top of the funnel. It'll just go out and take viewers and the funnel and people will find a long form. Yeah. That's the right way to think about it. This is not a question. This is a compliment. Because it's the opposite of how I do it. In some ways, I'm an old man, right? And actually, in a lot of ways, I'm an old man. And I remember getting pushed real hard by an agent at one point who wanted to rep me who was like, listen, you got to be on, you got to be on TikTok. And I said, I really don't want to be. And he's like, you got to skate to where you got to go to where the people are. Like, I get that. Also, if I wanted to spend every day doing something I didn't want to do, I would just get a regular job. And that's been okay for me. But I think the move is instead to say, this is difficult. This is something I'm not used to. Let me do it. Let me get good at it. Now do you like doing it? I like it. Yeah. And I kind of view, I've changed, again, the lens through like, dang, we should do a short every single day. I've had to think about like, okay, what is a good short? How do I measure the success of a short? What do I think is a good idea versus a maybe okay idea for a short? And all these new, different, interesting questions. So yeah, now I enjoy making them. I enjoy it. Because this is a new challenge. Yeah. And the challenge of like, I think we just had this set we were talking about on waveform that's 700,000 watch hours of shorts in the past three months. Which is like a crazy number. Yeah. But the fact that those people just swiped and it was just served to them, that is some person that may find the channel that wouldn't have. It may. Do you find that that is the case? Because I think that's one of my things about short from that I don't like is like, it seems like it's this fire hose. My friend, David Cogan pointed this out to me. He's like, this isn't for like no one is noticing who's making the content. They're just watching it. If they like it, they're swiping out of the next one. You don't. Yeah. Very valid. Yeah. I think you have to do your shorts in a way that makes the character presenting very quickly memorable. Like if you're a Mr. Beast, you don't have to do that. Like the second I see your face, they know you're Mr. Beast. Right. But if I'm scrolling shorts and I see like a person like handing like showing me a product, to me that feels a little like an ad. Yes. And I'm not thinking I want to watch that. Right. But if I get like a nice hook and then a person, maybe it's not an ad. Maybe now it's just a really interesting thing this person found and that's a little more appealing. So I'm that, you know, there's no science to it yet. This is just like random things and like spewing out. But like, there are, yeah, there are certain things that seem to work better as far as like getting your character to appear in shorts, which helps people remember that they've seen the character before and maybe subscribe more quickly than if they hadn't remembered it. Got it. Yeah. I should be taking notes on this. You know, listen to this episode later. I'm going to have to do shorts. Yeah. Do you think, um, I mean, I feel like I know the answer to this question, but do you feel like short form is a threat to long form? But will it always be a compliment to it? I think it's a compliment. Yeah. At first it was like, is this taking out of the pie? Right. It's just a whole new pie, which doesn't happen very often. No. True. But like TikTok made a whole new pie and then YouTube came along added shorts and it's like long form of your trip is doing better than ever. But clearly there's a whole new pie. Yeah. Yeah. I think AI creators are a threat to us. Like is it is a fake, not necessarily a fake mark, it's just like, yeah, it's a fake army of unreal people going to unseat us. Intrinsically no, because I have this belief with no founding evidence that people want to watch people. But there is evidence of successful AI creators. There are. And I think I just believe that they are successful because of the novelty of a successful AI creator. Yeah. And I think if it's all lowest common denominator AI slop, then it's all bottom feeders slop and it's not like standing out. Right. And people will have a lot of a spike and then people will be like, no, you know what, I'd rather have a real person. A person. Yeah. I still believe that to be true, although I can't really prove it yet. And now neither can I. And I did. It's funny. If there were any wood in this room, I would knock on it. Yeah. It's all fake wouldn't I, I'm in it. Like a mesh and metal. It's all very nice, though. I like it. That's clean. It's clean. One more on the creator economy that I want to ask you another question. It's a, it's a fickle thing. The creator economy. I mean, in our specific corner of it, we're almost entirely dependent on external factors. Companies have to release products that we can review. Sponsors have to continue finding our content worthwhile or worth paying for. Do you ever feel like, as I do, every day, that it could collapse at any moment? Oh, wow. Like a bubble? Not like a bubble because there's actual value here. Yeah. Yeah, we've moved on from AI. Yeah. Because I think when you say collapse, it almost implies that it's being held up by something flimsy like it could collapse. Right. And I don't feel like that, but I feel like there, I've heard people speculate. And I've heard people try to track, you know, the downward trend in sponsor spends. Because, you know, obviously the creator space is getting more full with more creators every day. Influencers are, you know, it feels like there's a million introduced to the flow every minute. Totally. It's getting diluted. Yeah. And maybe if it doesn't collapse overnight, maybe if it helps, don't visualize that. But do you feel like it, this could all go away with, with very short notice? So, so like for an individual channel, maybe yes. And I think that's just because there's more competition. There's more parity than ever before. So if this new device comes out and 60 videos come out about it, why watch mine? Like that makes that to an extent makes it feel like I'm just one of the dots, you know? But I think once you've built up, which I think you have, some sort of a base of people who are interested in what you have to say, which, and that comes with a lot of reps and a lot of proving yourself and being honest and trustworthy, people care about what you have to say. Sure. And I think that that is enough of like a nucleus to keep it alive, whether there's more or less around you. Yeah, I've always said that if you have something, when people come to, as I'm sure they do, you have hundreds by the day, what is your advice for an up and coming creator? And I always say, if you have something different to say or a different way of saying it, then it's worth doing. Sure. Totally. Yeah. Just for a fun thought experiment. If it did end tomorrow, okay? And if we assume for the purposes of this question that you've somehow managed to save $0 over the past 15 years, what would you do for money? What would you do for a job? You know, it's funny initially. So my channel goes away, but the economy still exists. Yeah. So initially, it's funny. It's funny. Well, what I went to school for and what I went to college thinking that I was going to do was that I was going to work in marketing for a tech company that works with creators. Huh? I thought I would be on the other side of that email chain that I'm on now. Interesting. Okay. So, you know, world where tech company here needs a campaign for a new product. They have a marketing manager that organizes it. You know, decides they want to work with creators. Does that whole thing? Right. I thought that would be me. Okay. And I think I still have that skill because I've seen it. Yeah. I think I would probably do that. I guess. It's just so interesting because you wouldn't leave the world like you would just be on the other side of it. I have the baseline of knowledge useful to be valuable in that world still. I think. See, that's fun. It's a smart answer. I wouldn't look at, you'd never find me with a camera in my hand again. I would be a tour bus driver at Kennedy Space Center. Oh, specifically. Yeah. That's sick. I mean, I would love to have a much more interesting like a novel answer where I like, I mean, obviously I play a sport that I really like, but that's not really a full-time job. Right. I kind of don't have anything like that. Like, it would be cool. It would, yeah. Full-time ultimate first-by-professional. It would. That wouldn't really work. Wouldn't it? I don't know. See, that's, that's a shame because, you know, you're great at it. Yeah. All right. Let's pivot. We're going to talk about making things. I love that. Yeah. Mark has the maker. I am a co-founder of an accessory company called Clix Technology. It's a physical keyboard for smartphones. And you are now the chief creative partner at Ridge. Yes. Neither of which was true when we last spoke. So this is a fun new chapter for us both. I'm going to ask you what everyone now asks me. Okay. World's most predictable question. How does being the builder of a product change the way you cover products? Oh, yeah. Do you have the urge that I had to suppress for a minute to use a softer touch because now you know how hard it is to make something? Right. Yeah. I think actually part of why I enjoy being on the maker side more is I have so much more exposure to and more knowledge about like how hard it is and what types of challenges and decisions go into making things. Yeah. So I think you could argue that it has impacted my coverage just in that I consider more of these things. And sometimes it probably sounds like I'm defending some more things that seem uncomfortable on the surface. Right. But I think yeah, like I said earlier, like I know that the people who are about to buy the product are watching it. I also know that the people who just worked for years on making the product are also watching this. And so it would be naive to not include that perspective in my coverage. So I think there is a fair amount of like understanding that side of it. Yeah. I don't think it makes it softer. I just think it's better to understand why decisions went into making the thing. Same. Yeah. I remember like I'll look at some of my old reviews and I'll criticize the selection of a component. And it's like, so okay, fair criticism. But it's so much better when you can say like I get why they had like the yields weren't there. Yeah. You know, you can't buy, for example, I don't know what silicon carbon you can't buy it in these in these right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's a good example. There's all I'll notice myself using phrases like it seems like they yeah or you know what I think they were thinking like that sort of thing. What maybe they were up against which again is good for storytelling. Yeah. Like if I just go and think, you know, I'm very black and white like this good, this bad I can't believe they did that. That's a little boring. But I think if you go like tell the story of the person making the product in the product that's way more interesting. What you're describing is almost the inverse of something that I've found like this law that I have yet to name. But it is my theory that on social media or Reddit, any response from somebody that starts with the phrase or a variation of the phrase, why didn't they just doesn't have enough understanding of how things are made valid, right? That needs a name. Yeah, it does. Yeah, let's come up with it. Yeah. Support for this show comes from Monarch. 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The episodes out now, search for and follow the long game wherever you get your podcasts. You do remember when Blackberry did the Blackberry 10 launch? Yes. The chief creative officer or whatever was Alicia Keys. Yes. Yes. In what ways are you not the Alicia Keys of Ridge? Oh, valid. Yeah. Because I get asked this a click. Is it like, are you just the hype man? I'm like, no, I'm just working the product. I do this with other stuff. But yes, I'm the most visible face attached to it. Yeah. Okay. So with all due respect to the goat, Alicia Keys. Of course. Sorry. I'm just a speck. I apologize. Big fan. Yeah. Appreciate you. For sure. What I can say is that Ridge was like the perfect partner for me personally because I had so many ideas for products I wanted to work on and things that I wanted to change in the like everyday carry space, which is where they were primo like positioned like they did while it's already, but there's so much everyday carry stuff. Yeah. They're not new watch bands and all that stuff. Exactly. Power banks, a little bit of technology stuff too. And we're working on more stuff that I'll try not to accidentally say out loud. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, But the idea is that like I, there are small enough company that I have some input in steering and creating and innovating, but they're a big enough company that they can actually do it. Right. So like I could have worked with insert smaller company here who also has ambitions to making the cool thing. And I suggest a power bank with MagSafe and these cables and this material and they go great idea. We can't get supply enough to make that like five years. We can do it. Exactly. Yeah. And then we can do it like Nike or something where I'm like, I have all these ideas for product and they're like, cool, but we're Nike. So we're going to make you the thing and we're going to hand it to you and you're going to put your name on it and that's the end of the story. Right. Yeah. So thankfully they're right in the middle and it's been really awesome so far. Do you get people on social like miss perceiving or misunderstanding your role? You know, I'm heavy into product design, product championing and all that stuff, but people come to me on social media for like everything from shipping delays to product like feed back support. Yeah. How do you even handle that? Because I can't. Here's the thing. I've ignored it. You get a lot more inbound than I do. But if I ignore it, I feel like I'm ignoring a customer. That doesn't feel good. I have to hand off everybody to people who can actually do things in the office because I'm sitting there being like, no, I'm busy deciding whether a space bar should be a millimeter shorter. Yeah. That's probably a valid way of handling it. I mean, I feel like I don't know if anyone thinks I'm running tech support at Ridge, but it's like, if I was in your position, obviously you make it very clear what you work on and the end with that you have and like the decisions that you make that go into the vinyl thing, you can point at those things. But yeah, it's like this is a company with a lot of other people who work on a lot of other parts of this and someone is inevitably closer to that than I am. So take it away. Right. I think that's the probably the best way to handle it. Yeah. Can you see a world where you flip the script and go from full time reviewer and part time product maker to the exact opposite? I enjoy making videos too much. But actually now that I think about your phrasing, yes. I think like full time maker, part time reviewer is probably more sustainable. Yeah. Like the treadmill isn't as fast. There's not as much work. You get off the hamster wheel, which is nice. Yeah, we're on a hamster. We sure are. Whether we like it or not, like we stop driving this Uber, it stops making money, right? Exactly. So I think, yeah, the goal is to build something that can exist without your daily input. And then that allows you to take the foot off the gas for the thing that's like the passion project, which maybe you'd make a few less videos, but you'd still make videos. Right. I think I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be a cooler balance at some point. Yeah. Let's get back to reviewing. That's good. That's my favorite thing bouncing around you. I like it. I want to talk about a scourge that has visited our segment. I'm not going to call it any names. Some of them are my friends. But I've seen this thing happening. I wonder if you've seen it too. People who are doing phone reviews, carrying the phone that they're reviewing without their personal sim inside of it, or without any sim inside of it. And while they have their main iPhone and the other pocket. I see this a lot. Yeah. Do you swap into every phone review? You've got your primary sim in whatever you're reviewing. Yes. And this is why I overreacted the E-Sim. Hmm. So I'm an AT&T person. Oh, interesting. And did you try to put AT&T on the RunPlus 15? I'm a team mobile guy and I'm a Verizon guy for review sim. Okay. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Because I tried to put my AT&T sim in OnePlus 15 and it wasn't approved for that work yet. They had this whole long approval process. So I could have put my main sim in it. Yeah. And I'm going to OnePlus about it. They shipped me a T-Mobile Sim blah, blah, blah. It is annoying, but yes, I do main the device. Because you learn way more about it by meaning it. Absolutely. You're forced to use it. Exactly. And to live through. It's not only lived through its flaws, but then find potential workarounds for its flaws. Because if I... You can keep doing your thing. Exactly. If I run into a flaw, not meaning it, I swap to the other phone and solve the problem. But if I'm meaning that phone, I find a flaw. I get around it. And I figure out that, okay, you can still use this phone despite this flaw. Right. I learn way more that way. Yes. But it is so annoying sometimes. Absolutely. Yeah. Here's the thing. In the States, we have the blue bubble, green bubble thing. Does that introduce problems into your personal life? Do you have to tell... So I... And I famously carry two phones. Good to see him. Basically for this exact reason. Yeah. It's not in my username, but it's like... It's not just a Twitter handle. It's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle, exactly. Yeah. So yes. Are notoriously things that I just do on the iPhone because they are better to do on the iPhone? Sure. When I am main a phone, my iPhone use goes down a bit. Like my screen on time is like an hour, day or less or whatever. Yeah. But yeah, when I'm testing iPhones, then my Android use goes down. But the iPhone is like twice a year or whatever, so it's not that hard. True. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. I've always got the iPhone. My backpack is a B-roll camera. I'm sure that's... Nice. Probably the case for you too. I got two pockets. I got two pockets. Well, yeah. What's your just saying you're not a backpack man? No, I have a backpack, but I got two Sims. Oh, well, yeah. So I have my main Sim in the Android phone. I have my second Sim in the iPhone. Okay. And then I also have a backpack full of crap. Yeah. She is probably not healthy with it. The way it goes, no. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about reviews of non-phones for a second. You got famously some backlash on your reviews of the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI pen, which is confusing me because they're both unquestionably great products. Yeah. That's what I was about saying. Do you think that people... I think everyone knows what the backlash was, but it was like there was this criticism that you were, you know, perhaps being glib flippant or not forgiving enough of these new companies and one of them failed as a business. And then Fiskir, we've had these a lot of these exact examples. Do you think people would have responded so negatively a decade ago, given the same products, or has something changed about the way people view or understand reviews recently, or semi-recently? I think that's a really good question. I think it actually is in the scale of what we do a little bit more. People love punching up and hate punching down. And I think five, ten years ago when we had smaller channels and it was seemingly less impactful on the product to give it a negative... Mirror, you would say something bad about it. What I said. It didn't matter. It was what it was. The company was going to do its thing. It's punching up. And I think people, for whatever reason, saw the balance tipping and finally it was me with X subscribers and startup, felt like punching down. Like bullying. And they didn't like that as much. My perspective didn't change. My methodology didn't change. I'm still reviewing it as like, should you buy this or not? Clearly no. This is actually one of the worst things I've ever reviewed. But because it felt like punching down, there was a bit more of that pushback in reaction, which is understandable. Yes. Now do you think that I have a pet theory? I think that the recent change that is relevant here is that influencer coverage of products has multiplied like 11 million fold in the past decade. And that is almost universally positive coverage. It's not review content on the whole. It's almost always like, I'm here at this very exciting thing and look at seeing now it's blue or whatever. And I feel like that has changed the expectation broadly for like, oh, I'm watching product focus content. It's probably going to be good. And when it's negative, people maybe get bumped by that. It's like, this guy sure doesn't know how to like a new thing. Interesting. Yeah. It's a theory. I have my data to back it up. I think, well, I'll give you one of my theories. Please. Well, that's not a theory. I'm a reservation, which is basically that when I started 15 years ago in order to stand out in YouTube's landscape, being a tech channel was enough. It's like, oh, I make tech videos. Oh, that's the kind of channel you are. God, it's like a niche. Yeah. Yeah. And a few years later, it was like, oh, I make software tutorials, which is a part of tech, but you know, you can make gadget videos or whatever. So that was a segment of it. And then now, you know, go to Fast Forwarded 2020, 2025, there is the tech channel, but there's also the unboxing channel. There is the unboxing and destroy it channel. There is the review channel. There's the only reviews Apple products channel. There's the only positively reviews Apple products channel. There's the only negatively reviews Apple's competitors channel. Like there's everyone has a tiny slot that they live in to stand out and be a little bit different. So I saw way more negative sentiment as a way of standing out. And so now there's way more videos of whatever comes out, I got something negative to say about it. Sure. And that was kind of like a weird byproduct of like the niche being more saturated. Yeah. That's interesting. There is like a flip side to my example, right? Yeah. Oh, God, but then there's that that pressure exists to counter whatever is out there. Right. And with what people kind of talk about, which is like how early you are in the wave of like a product comes out and there's the initial wave, the cycle is like, okay, everyone who's on day one. And then if you're not on day one, you're late. So now how do you stand out from all the day one stuff people are really watched? The truth. I got to say something different. Right. I got to imply everyone on day one was wrong. Of course. And if it was a good product and everyone on day one said nice things, guess what I'm saying. Yeah. So that's not helpful. Sure. Yeah. I do not like surfacing this question because I feel strongly about my own answer to it, but it's a good question. So I'll ask it. Sure. Do you ever feel guilty knowing that a bad review might tank a company? No. Yeah. I also feel that way. Yeah. There is a famous quote. I'm trying to remember who said it. But I'm pretty sure it goes, I don't give a f*** about your stock price. Oh, was it Walt Mossberg? It was Walt Mossberg. Was it Mossberg? Yeah. That, you know, he's writing for the journal or the Times or whatever it is. And he's very impactful and he'll give a negative review. And he got asked about it. And it's literally, I literally couldn't care less about the stock price of the company. And if it's a startup, it's less about the stock price and more about can they afford to make it to the next product or not? Sure. And so yeah, maybe you feel a little guilt in knowing that they won't make it to the next product, but I'm not accelerating that. I'm not causing your product to be bad. I think you said that in your two do bad reviews, kill companies video. You were like, no bad products, kill companies. If I can paraphrase your, your, your, your theme. And I think that's, that's true. Whatever you, whatever review you make is going to accelerate a trend that was already existing. Exactly. Right. I am not causing the trend, but I, you could argue that I would accelerate it. Sure. But also think about this. A product is terrible. Everyone is saying it's terrible. Someone like big comes out and says it's great. Does that help anything? Yeah. And more people buy it and find out it's terrible and then get even more negative feedback. It's so funny. I was, I was like a midsize pocket nowadays, like pretty small and everyone else hated. You mentioned it before, the red hydrogen one. Oh yeah. I remember that. And I also thought it was a problem, but by the time I got around to it, I was like, you know, this isn't as bad as everybody's saying. And I did my review, which was much more, more moderate. I think I still came way with it. Don't buy it. Yeah, but there's a lot to like here. And the comments just roasted me. How dare you give this any points at all. They wanted to see pile on. Exactly. That's crazy, which is, you know, a very human thing. It's unfortunate. It's speaking of unfortunate. If we can get deep for a second. When we started, I think it would be my argument that tech was a relatively frivolous thing. You know, you could tell people you made videos about technology and then we'd be like, oh, oh, fun. That's cool. Wow. It's become so intertwined with everything in the world that's like, you know, so much of the world is not great. Do you ever feel disenchanted by it all? Like, I mean, as we as a society and as reviewers had it better back when everything was just kind of a fancy toy. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think to an extent, everything is tech has always been kind of true. Like there's, you know, whether it's high tech or super impactful, like obviously there's very, very put a politically intertwined like technologies that people are talking a lot about now and you kind of feel like that is taking over tech. And that's what people think of as tech. But everything has always been tech. So I don't feel that differently about it now. Really? I don't, I, because I do cover some of this stuff. Yeah. And I think what I'm still trying to answer is, is this good? Should you use it? Should you buy it? But I'm not, and maybe this is bad. Maybe this is something I should adjust. And I'm not really thinking as much about, but what are the political ramifications of you using a product made in this country or like the way it's made or how are cycle but like all these other things that people are talking more about now? Yeah. And it feels like almost like that wouldn't fit on your main channel because your mission there is unchanged. Like if this good or is this bad, what's it like to use this? But it's almost like a whole other channel could be spun up to cover exactly. Oh, totally. And I actually have like a sort of a template like bullet point list of things I want to make sure I talk about when I review certain products and I added sustainability, for example, to that list. And I realize that I don't talk about it with every product because it's not really a part of the story with every product, but for certain products, it is very much a part of the story. I just talked to Apple about the way they 3D print the titanium for the Apple watches to use to have less leftover waste material. It's like, that's kind of sick. I'd probably mention that. Right. And then another phone comes out and I don't talk about how they didn't put the charger in the box because none of them did. It's not really interesting for the story. It's not just where they anymore are right. So I don't know. It's something I could do better is to try to weave that into the story in some way if it makes sense. I think I could do it better. I think we all could. But what is nice is that I think there's a lot of pressure to do that. There's increasing pressure to do that from certain corners of the audience. And I think I thought for a couple of years ago that that was like kind of a greenwashing trend that would collapse. And I'm glad it really hasn't. So I'm glad people are still care about it. Yeah. I mean, these are the biggest companies in the world shipping the most volume of the most stuff. So if they can make little changes and then they make a big deal about it that seems like greenwashing, but you look behind the scenes at the numbers and it's like, well, it is helping. Actually look in volume. Yeah. Kind of not against showing a little bit of a light on that stuff. That's fine. Yeah. That related news. You've done kind of an extraordinary job of staying a political. Sure. Even as it seems everything has become political. Do you ever wish you could break out of that and address like a polarizing or a frot topic? Or are you happy not to have all of the accompanying negative attention that come from taking a stand? I think products are one of those things where kind of everyone can agree if it's good or bad, no matter where you stand in this like political spectrum. I do have a video I'm working on right now that kind of feels like it is maybe the most political. It's a video about the Xiaomi SU7 and it's a Chinese electric car. It's a car, yes. And we've reviewed Chinese smartphones forever, but you can't get these Chinese electric cars here in the US. And the question that I always see about this car is if it was in the US, would it crush? And it's a question I want to answer so bad, but the real answer is the only reason you can't get it here is politics. Right. It's being actively prevented from coming here. Like I can't answer this question, this really interesting tech story question without going politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, geopolitics, politics. So yeah, I don't know. I still want to answer the question. I'm still working on like writing this video and it is more of a challenge for that reason. But it is still a tech story. I don't feel guilty about like including politics if it's interesting. Yeah. Well good. No, and I didn't mean to suggest that you should feel guilty about it, but I think there are times that I want to weigh in on something and it don't because look, because it annoys me as a consumer of say entertainment when an actor I otherwise enjoy decides to be vocal about an opinion I don't agree with. And now I can't watch, you know, my 90s sitcom anymore. Yeah. Or I can't, but I can't watch it without thinking about that. I'm thinking about it. Why did you ruin this? And that's what I feel like. I'm like, look, I've got a little phone review channel here. Like you come for my opinions on volume rockers. That's fair. I think though if you feel strongly enough about something that you should feel free to express it and it's always to me going to be through the lens of tech probably in some way. Like I'm not out here talking about like whose war is to end? Like it's basically I'm only talking about tech and my interest here. Right. And sometimes sports and sometimes other interests I have. But like if I have an interest, I would say if you have an interest that you feel really strongly about, you feel strongly about it for a reason. You shouldn't feel like you should holster that and muzzle yourself. And the other thing and I see so many people like diving way into the politics is like if if you have an audience member who would stop watching you because of this thing that you feel really strongly about, do you really need to keep that audience on? Do you want that audience member to remain? Yeah. Like if you really strongly believe in it's like, okay, that is probably not the worst thing to lose that part of the audience. Yeah. The world moves fast. You work day, even faster, pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 co-pilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use. Helping you quickly right, analyze, create and summarize. So you can cut through clutter and clear path to your best work. Learn more at Microsoft.com slash M365 co-pilot. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel served as President Obama's Chief of Staff in administration that had to deal with its fair share of global conflicts. He dealt directly with Israel's Prime Minister and thought plenty about the threat from Iran. But Emanuel told me that the pace of action from this President in the Middle East is giving him whiplash. In 15 months, this President has taken military action against eight countries. I just, just in 15, now we got three more years to go. In 15 months, Iran twice, but you have Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Venezuela. I'm losing Nigeria. Today explained in your feed every weekday and on Saturdays too. This week on version history, our chat show about the most interesting and important products in the history of technology, we're talking about the hottest toy from 1998. That's right, of course, I mean the Furby. The little thing that sat on your desk and didn't have an off button and didn't speak English and annoyed everyone you knew, but you loved it to pieces anyway. Turns out there is a fascinating technology and even AI story behind what happened with Furby and why it took off. That's the story this week on version history, wherever you get podcasts. Wave we have one more category. Okay. That's not true. We have two more, but one of them is very short. We'll talk about sponsored content. We'll talk about making money. Yeah. Okay. I feel about the current moment regarding sponsored content and people's reaction to it. I feel like people are talking less about it than they did maybe five years ago when we last talked about it. Last time I was on the show, we talked about ethics like exclusively. Oh yeah. I feel like it's not as big a conversation anymore. Like, have audiences and creators reach this kind of broad understanding about paid versus non-paid or am I misreading that? Yeah. There's so many facets to that. I think the audience understanding part kind of comes in waves. If that makes sense. You find it's variable. Yeah. I guess like early days YouTube, like super early days YouTube when there was no partner program and like Smosh gets a Wendy's sponsorship or something. I feel like those are the days where it was like congrats for that. You made it. Like that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And then it became like a little bit too much like they'd like see that it worked and then they'd sponsor 10 of the biggest channels and then it'd be like, I didn't think you would take the Wendy's sponsor money. And so it goes down and then it comes back up and then everyone understands it and then it's back down. I think it depends on who you're watching on YouTube. I think there are a lot of channels that have endless sponsored content and it's fine. And I think there are a lot of channels that have almost no sponsored content and the second they do one, it is it's like poison. Right. They hate it. Right. Yeah. I think the reaction kind of comes from your audience's expectation. And if you said an audience's expectation of I do tons of sponsored content, then eventually that's what they expect. That's right. It's fine for them. I did some unintentional Reddit research on this. I was reading Reddit last night and the R-slash-Opo subreddit popped to the top of my feed for some reason. So I was reading it. And I think the thread was something like, why aren't people, why aren't reviewers as interested in whatever, the Find X9 Pro or something? And I'm like, okay. And you were quoted specifically or not quoted, but you were cited specifically. Why isn't Mark has looking at this phone? And these responses jumped right out to me and they confused me. Yeah. Because this response, one of these, because the two reviewers you mentioned, you being one of them, aren't as impartial as they used to be. Not saying I blame them as they get good money for it and we'd all be the same. Yeah. I do, because writing writing writing writing writing writing writing writing writing writing brands. And I'm like, okay, we see sure there are sponsorships that exist. Yeah. Right. But like, but they're like painting this character that's like, Oh, I'm the one that takes money to say this about American brands and this about Chinese brands. Right. And it's like these background deals are happening where it's like, no. So I also, I feel like that's that can be a whole separate thing. But I think that undermines my my thought that I had coming into this before I read that last night. It's like, haven't we all I think everyone understands now, right? Like where's the difference? Like the FTC, I got to say, when it was being very aggressive about mandating disclosures, like that was a big help and things. You know, suddenly people had to say they were paid. Yeah. But one thing that hasn't changed is that, and I think this is probably an impediment to understanding is that the ethics of our world still exist in this big gray area. Yeah. Because it's not like a traditional journalism world. I was hoping you'd bring that a firewall. Yeah. Right. Like just famously, the vert just always out in front of this is like our ad people who make the money are completely separate from our editorial people. The editorial people don't read the ad spots and all this kind of stuff. But it's not like that in the creator world. Yeah. Everyone in the audience has to say has to make their decisions based on individual creators policies. Yep. And that it's like that is an opaque world. You have to do a lot of work. We understand that. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, my ethics policy, I don't think I've changed the wording of since we talked five years ago, I should change it. I think there's like maybe one or two things that have changed. But like, where do you draw your lines these days? What money do you say yes to? What do you say no to? Oh, yeah. How do you decide those boundaries? Yeah. I mean, so at the end of the day, I still just want to keep the focus on making good videos. So I'm keeping the main thing the main thing. So if there are sponsored opportunities that arise, the number one question I ask is does this like work with what we're doing? Does this supplement what we're doing or is this a distraction or is this like trying to shoehorn something and then doesn't work? Yeah. Because as you can imagine, we get endless inquiries about things we could do or make all the time. So and you're saying no to like what 80% 90% 99 and a half percent. I just want to put it out there and be like, Hey, here's all the stuff we said no to today. Yeah, which is why did a video on saying yes to everything for a while, which was not even sponsored stuff. It was just reviews. Right. But even that is like crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I think I put in the slack the other day, which is like, I got a, I got an email whose subject line was like, can you, I don't want to miscode it, but I think it was like, can you do a video about AI something in Dubai, something something? It was like all the worst headline, like email subject line words possible. Either way, no, I think the idea is if you feel something is a good fit and that your audience would enjoy it and then you would like to cover it anyway, then it's a good fit for working with the company. And then there are lots of things that are like on the gray area that you can decide to not do just to keep it clean basically. Yeah. But yeah, there is like do you do you have category blockoffs? Because like, I don't take, I don't want to take money from a smart phone manufacturer. Right. But I feel like that's a little too restrictive. Because what if I never cover a real me phone, for example, organically? Sure. And real me wants to pay me to do it. I still, I don't do it, but I'm like, I don't know. Sure. And my firewall is even a different place. Like I will do like Google makes smartphones, but sometimes Google is advertising an ad feature or a YouTube feature. And I will work with them. Yeah. So it's a different part of Google. It almost feels like a different company sometimes. Sure. It's very, very talk to you. Yeah. The Pixel Division is its own thing. Yeah. Sure. So like I will never do a sponsored content for a product that I would review. Yeah. But there's also like, there's even like people do like showcases, which is one version of a sponsored thing. And then there are people who do sponsored reviews, which is insane. It's like a contradiction in terms. It's weird that that exists. And the fact that that exists ruins it for everyone else. It does. Because then you make ones the trust in the whole review. Exactly. Everyone who's making reviews, who is honest about it and properly discloses every time will read Reddit comments about how they're bought and be like, no, no, that's not how this works. But it kind of is how some people work. So it ruins it. Right. So yeah, I get it. It's frustrating. But all you can do is have a public policy like you do. Yeah. And ideally, if if people call it in a question, then you can at least say something about it. Point to that thing. Here it is. Yeah. Especially you can do. Yeah. Yeah. I could talk about that forever. But let me ask you because I recently figured out what my favorite way to make money is. Okay. What's your favorite way to make money? Integration. Like in terms of integration, full-length sponsor videos. My favorite way to make, well, I mean, add sense is the best. Add sense is the best. You don't have to do anything. You don't touch it. It just YouTube puts. So among the like potential integrations in a video, for example. Yeah. Or just your different formats because I'll tell you mine. Okay. Licensing. Oh, well, easy. It's the best. I love licensing. So this is when you've already published your review. And maybe there's a quote in there that Samsung, for example, wants to use in their marketing material. Yeah. They pay for that privilege. I don't know that a lot of people know that. I didn't know that before I got to notice. I've even noticed that is gray though. What do you mean? At least to me, some companies ask. Oh, and some companies just use it, which is crazy. I had my a quote from God. Okay. This is insane that this even happened. Like I get quoted without my permission all the time. And I've I've accepted it because there are some versions of it where it's like, look, I said this publicly. It's out there. Fine. Apple quoted me in a keynote. They didn't tell me about that. It didn't pay me. They just did it. Whatever. But I had a quote appear. I was on a website that someone sent me for an AI standalone AI product already read flag. Yeah. I scroll down. And there's a couple quotes about people who loved it. And then there's one of a quote from me. And I had never reviewed this product or made a video about it. And it said, like, this is a very interesting something, something I tweeted about this. Okay. And I was like, when did I say that? Did I say that? And I scrolled back. And what I found was me quote tweeting. A product announcement tweet with a gif of an NBA player saying that quote. And they took that. It was Russell Westbrook going, that's interesting. Sarcastically. Oh, and they took those words and put it next to my name as me saying that the product was interesting on their website next to other positive, like quotes. There's like five layers of what to that. Like that is clearly over the line. Yeah. But the line is so gray. Like, where is the line? Yeah. I did say the thing that Apple put in the keynote. That's publicly available. Right. I did technically post the player with the gif that said the words about the yeah, but that's not like that's in no court of law with that. Yeah, exactly. In no court of law. So the court of law could find a place for that line. But like, where is the line? I have no idea. It's crazy. Yeah, I think for if you're going to use my name and logo and do the quote on a website and it's like going to be against a phone, like trying to sell a phone, like, no, you just come on. We have to have a typically good etiquette is if you're going to use the quote in paid marketing, then you're paying the creator who said the thing. And I like it. It's my favorite thing because I already said the thing and I didn't do it to get that licensing is such an occasional thing at least for me that it's nice when it comes in. And you're such a way with words that your quotes are beautiful for like on screen quotes, you know. Thank you. The last time a quote of mine was used from marketing purposes. It was me making a joke about the product. What did I was at a pickle festival? I was reviewing the flip seven at a regional pickle festival. As one is. And I said something like this is a really big deal or something. And that's the quote they wanted to use. So I was like, if you don't use that quote out of account, you please. I did say that. That's hilarious. Yeah. Okay. We happy on ethics. We feel like we've got into the bottom of that. Yeah. I think we nailed it all down. Good. I think that's it. Problem solved. Yeah. Lightning round. Then we're out of here. Okay. Okay. What's your favorite failure in mobile tech? Mobile tech. Favorite failure. What an oxymoron. My favorite failure in mobile tech is. It's one of two things. The Apple Vision Pro. Just not that that's not what I was expecting. It's hope to oh my god. I just said the first I mean there's so many failures that were interesting. That I mean is your favorite failure? It's probably on my favorite failure. But that's a really interesting. It is. Very high tech, very impressive piece of technology that clearly failed that's at meeting its goals. Yes. But it's still sick. It's wild. I don't know what to do with it as my same. It's gathering dust. Yeah. But like every six months when I do do the software update and I'm I put it on my face and I can damn. Yeah. This is really good. They may have gotten me to put it on tonight. They have a new fighter jet like movie and Apple TV plus a documentary that I think you're supposed to watch. That's how they get your content drip. That's what I want. Yeah. Okay. Top feature from an older phone that you want a modern manufacturer to bring back. Boom sound. Oh come on. Just give me front-facing speakers. Just just okay. Before you get one you get the overdriven earpiece. Well, because everyone's obsessed with the bezels now. I know. And no one does the good front-facing speakers. I know. Yeah. I want good. But the speakers back. Beep-ee. Boom sound. I thought you were going to say notification LED. I'm a little dissafe. Oh. I'm changing my answer. Yeah. Notification LED. So I can flip my phone like this and go, oh that's just Twitter. I want to check it. Right. Just the light blue. Now I don't need that. Please. That's so easy too. Yeah. Agreed. They can bring that back. I look. Well, let's let's make that a number one request list for every phone going for you. Which of favorite thing you ever got right? Oh. Hmm. Let me think about this one. There's so many told you so moments. Yeah. Okay. So there's one that's not quite over. But I'm going to be right. So I'm just going to say it. We have a lot of confidence in the room. I like it. Okay. I said that. So I was at Tesla's Robotaxi event. Yeah. A couple not even that. Not even a year ago. And I'm pretty sure Elon got on stage and said that they were going to ship that Robotaxi. As it existed, no steering wheel, no pedals, no nothing. They're going to ship it for. I want to get this right. I think $27,000 or less before the end of 2026. Yeah. Instantly I was like, well, no, you're not. No. And I said, I would shave my head if it happened. So I'm that confident. Okay. So I got about 13 months left to be proven wrong. But I'm that is going to be my favorite. I think you're yeah. That's going to be my favorite. I think your hair is going to stay where it is. What's the biggest thing you ever got wrong? The biggest thing I ever got wrong. Yeah. There is a quote circulating on Twitter this week where I forgot I did this in a video. I bet a million dollars. So I clearly was confident. And it was from a year ago, I bet a million dollars that Apple would not get rid of the mute switch in any of the next five years of iPhones. It's too integral to the design of the iPhone. And technically they did change it to a button. That does. Now it's the action button, which could be a mute switch, but it's not really a mute switch anymore. And that, I got a, I don't know who I give the million dollars to. Who gets the million? Someone I have to give it to Mal. I'll just give it to you. I was going to say, best interview you've had today. Surfacing the derbs it. Yeah. But yeah, no, I did. I must have been super confident in that. And like literally the next iPhone was like, yeah, we're getting rid of it. Right before the 15, then yeah. So that was wrong. And now as a bonus, we have it on one plus phones too. Yeah. They added the same exact button. Yeah. They also, I guess the Oppo Find X9 added camera control, which is insane. They caught looking for it on this. Dude, bar for bar. Like I accidentally swiped just like on the iPhone and accidentally zoomed in just like on the iPhone. It was crazy. Excellent. Yeah. Would you ever, I'm going to save that for last. Do you still do Easter eggs in any of your videos? All the time. Are they all secret? So some are more cryptic and some are more obvious. Yeah. I'll put an object behind me. That's pretty obvious. But some are more like like one layer deep, which is very exciting because people find Easter eggs that are like four layers deep. Yeah. I didn't plan. Right. But I'll accept the credit because they're so good. 100%. So yes, the more Easter eggs you hide, the more they find. Do you still have you stop doing Cheerios all together? Cheerios, I stopped doing, but I have the box still. I can tell you the origin story if you want. Have you heard the origin story? No. Okay. I thought this was a secret. No, it feels like a, it should have been like some coded secret. Yeah. It was really simple. Okay. I was making videos in my college dorm for that one year where there was a microwave behind me. And the little LED on the microwave was like out of sync with the camera shutter was strobing super distracting. It does, it looks weird on camera. It does. And for like weeks, that was the only thing anyone commented about. Dude, the microwave is driving me. I can't look away from that thing. I was like, it's, it's my microwave. I can't move it. Right. So I just put like a Cheerios box in front of it just to stop people from commenting about it. To mask it. And obviously the first wave of people seeing the box in front of the microwave was like, I know what's behind that Cheerios box. But eventually it was just people talking about the Cheerios box. Of course. And I move on to my new spot and I keep the Cheerios box behind me. There's no microwave back there. I just keep the Cheerios box around. So that was how that started happening. Do you ever do like little shout outs to like, like this special person in your life? Like I've, I've been known to do a single frame heart somewhere in a heart emoji. That's a good idea. I've had teammates on Frisbee teams ask for shout outs. Like in the middle of a video, can you just like click a pen twice and we'll know what it means? Yeah. And I've think I've done it once. Oh cool. Once or twice since college, someone he has in college to do it. And I did it. It's really hard though. It's tough to remember to do it. And not make it distracted and not make it weird. Right. Right. Yeah. That's fun. It's hard. Yeah. Oh my god. That's cool. Now I want to figure out what I need to ask you for. Two more. What would you ever actually try digital detox with with with a dumb phone, a light phone or like not like long caps. Yeah. Let's say long term a week. Okay. Not long term, but you know, two weeks. Not with the time out apps, not with brick. Yeah. With like a real dumb phone. I'm not going to rule that out. Part of the ultimate Frisbee experience for me is switching this part of my brain completely off and flipping over to the competitive, like totally different side of my brain. Yeah. And I'm often offline for two straight days for Frisbee tournament. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. And as two days and it's fine and I come back on Monday and I'm ready to get back to it. But these international tournaments are like a week and a half long. And I think that is, you know, it would be hard to be offline. It does. It's very hard. Yeah. I won't rule it out. I think that's something I could do. Can I recommend it? I had such I learned so much in my two weeks with the with the light phone. You know, you don't have to use the light phone, but whatever. That's what gave me the excuse to do it. Yeah. It's really fun even when it's really frustrating. And I'm still I'm holding onto stuff from that like lessons I learned this summer from it. Like it's great. Let's learn about yourself. Yes. Interesting. And I've learned how to manage myself better. I'm like, I'm a better phone user now. That is the best possible encouragement I could hear to try to do that. Try it. Just for the personal growth. Even if you don't do a video, just try it. Okay. Yeah. All right. And finally, what was your favorite instance of being recognized in public? Mm. There's a couple there's a couple fun ones. People are generally very respectful and very excited to talk tech, which is super cool. A recent one that comes to mind. So we often use music in our videos. Yeah. Oftentimes just like, well, license something or we'll or leave something from an artist and give them a shout out. Sure. And I was at Newark Airport a couple months ago. And I was like sitting, I don't think I was just like waiting for my bag or something. And I generally came up to me and he said, Hey, just want to say, I love your videos. Appreciate what you do. You've used some of our music in our videos. I sing for a band called Wolfpeck. Good to meet you. No. And walked away. And I like, as he walked away, I was like, oh my god. His voice like, of course. And I like, hey, well, I do. Thank you so much for the music. Like I was super excited about that. Yeah. But just the fact that like he's just like another guy in the airport, just like, oh, yeah, that little connection. That was that was a fun one. Yeah. That is no. That's a fantastic one. Yeah. Do you want to know mine? Oh, yes. I do. Please. I was having a really bad end of the week. And I was really fried. And I was in Williamsburg, just kind of like absorbing the sun and trying to breathe and trying to let the week go. Photosynthesizing. Exactly. Yeah. The guy drives by in a car that's kind of really loud exhaust system in real sense when he was like, hey, hey, I'm like, what? You, dude, I love your stuff. And it really, you know, it changed my whole day around. I was like, dude, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. And he keeps kind of keeps pointing at me. He's like, Mr. Who's the boss? I said, yep, you got it, man. Have a good day. That's incredible. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Fun, weird life. We've got it. It is a small world. He's not fully wrong. No, this is. He got Mr. and Mr. Mr. We got it. That's all you need. Yeah. That's amazing. Dude, thank you. This has been a blast. This was fun. I appreciate the time. We should do it again sometime. I would love that. Perfect. If I start one of these, you should come on and interview me. It would be fun. Deal. My studio will be less fancy, but you know, we got sound effects. What's going to say? That's how we book it. We'll sound effects. Perfect. Thanks, man. Hey, thanks for watching this bonus episode. If you enjoyed, get subscribed because we're back to your regular schedule programming on Friday. We're from us produced by Rufus, Adam, and Ellis this week. Our intro after music is by Vain Syl and we're a part of the Box Media Podcast Network. Yo, what is up people of the internet? I am going to take that again because that's not what I say next.