H.I. No. 117: Bandersnatch

"HI #117: Bandersnatch" is the 117th episode of Hello Internet, released on January 30, 2019.
==Website description==
"Grey & Brady discuss: the total number of gifts in the Twelve Days of Christmas, floating yodas, how Twitter works, Brexit and the worst of all worlds, YouTube deletes all annotations and as God is my witness I will never forgive this treachery, Black Mirror Bandersnatch, Christmas card corner."
You're watching, say, Pitch Perfect 3. A suspicious amount of this movie takes place on a military base. Hey, Brady. On your podcast, I was excited to hear from someone else email you about Sinistasia and ask for a list of words to say. I want to describe what Listening to Hello Internet is like for me as well. Your voice tone gives a fruity taste, when happy, similar to a sugary cereal, but a more somber tone gives an earthy, mild tea-like taste. Both are very pleasant, and I have to say your voice does taste good. Grey's voice gives more of a smell impression. It's much more mild and much stranger. Grey's usual talking voice smells like glass windows or screens. And when he talks in a more excited voice, it's similar to a fresh paper or cardstock. And sometimes like a freshly opened pack of trading cards. That was a letter. That was from JD. Is JD a stenic summer yay of voices? Is that what was going on there? I'm not even going to try to repeat that. I'm very impressed by your pronunciation. I have to say I'm a bit jealous because now I think about it. There's no smell like from my childhood that I've carried through to now that gives me more excitement than the smell of freshly opened pack of trading cards. I love that smell. Opening a new pack of cricket cards and saying who you've got. I mean, when you say trading cards in particular, I'm thinking, yes, I did open many a pack of magic, the gathering trading cards as a child. I'm not sure that they smelled the same way that sports cards did. And they don't actually have a smell memory in my brain as opposed to just like a regular deck of cards, like poker cards. That smell, I know immediately. Is that what trading cards smell like? Well, it depends if it's trading cards that have also got gum in them. Oh, is the gum the important thing? No, no, both have their own smell and both are equally important and valid. Okay, well then I can pull out a childhood memory that some people will respond very strongly to and most people will be confused by. But my card that smell like gum memory is then associated with dinosaurs attack, which was a collectible trading card. I don't know what when I was a child, but you would buy a little pack of cards that had pictures of dinosaurs attacking people. And I'm pretty sure they came with gum. Attacking humans. Yeah, it was like Brontosaurus's destroy Washington DC. All right. So it's in modern times they were in a techie people back in their times. They'd come to our times to do the attacking. There was a whole story about like a scientist opened up a rift in time and now Triceratops can storm across the Kremlin, you know, like whatever. And what these are for little kids to look at while chewing gum, like watching humans get destroyed by dinosaurs. Like I guess, I mean sports trading cards and collectible cards somehow seem like a natural element in the world, like a thing that just exists. And I don't question why do they exist. They seem to make sense. But I guess I never really thought about like was this a genre of thing like cards that weren't a game. They're not sports. They were just like installments in a little story, but not really. I don't know what the hell it was in retrospect. I don't know how it came into existence in the world. It was just gruesome art of dinosaurs attacking people. And I'm sure it would never fly in today's world. But I totally loved it as a kid and they smelled like gum. I've so many memories associated with collector cards. Like return of the Jedi cards were like probably the fondest memory. I also remember various seasons of cricket. How do you like that description of your voice? I think you got the better one. I think it's supposed to read like mine got the better one, but I like yours trading cards. Like yours is like a stationary shop. That's what I want to be. No, so you focus on the stationary. I'm completely sold by window glass. It's like, oh yes, I can go along with that very well. I'm very happy that someone out there listened to the sound of my voice and it makes them think of window glass. That works perfectly for me. It's been a long time since we've spoken to each other Brady. It has been a long time actually. So the last time we did speak we did the 12 days of Christmas obviously, the 12 days of Hello Internet. Sorry. Get it straight Brady. One thing I'm not clear about. Yeah. And I know everyone seems to have a firm opinion on this, but I don't know. This is what I'm thinking. When you see the 12 days of Christmas and each verse you repeat all the things again, you know, do do do do. Does that mean you'll be given all those presents again as duplicates or as each verse just a recap of what you previously got? Like are you ending up with 12 partridges in a poetry or do you just get a new present each day and then for the sake of the song? You just reminisce about the other things you received on the other days. You're asking, what is the canonical number of gifts given in the song as intended by the songwriter? Well, that's what everyone likes to talk about. And trust me, there've been plenty of reddit comments about that since we did the episode. Oh, you end up with 12 of these and 24 of these. But I don't think that's what's happening in the song. I don't think you are being given all those things. I think you just get one partridge in a poetry and each day when you get new presents, you then reminisce about what you received on the previous days. Here's my take on it. Hmm. If we're going to factor in authorial intent, you don't think really matters. But I'd imagine the authorial intent was you're getting the gift on each day. The song was written whatever it is a thousand years ago. And it passed down through oral tradition. And you have to have people remember all the previous verses. And like that's why you're singing it. And then it's just fun. So is the authorial intent reminiscent, like I just said, or you're getting this compounding present that you get more and more of each time? I think authorial intent is that you're just repeating what the earlier days were. Yeah. It does not imply that you're getting more birds. Yes. Thank you. I don't think it implies that. Good. But in any media representation of this thing, it's way more hilarious to show it as an increasing pile of goods. And I feel like in my mind, my brain is tugging at some kind of Sesame Street version of this song that I saw as a kid. You know, where like Oscar is getting piled on by a whole bunch of birds and is really annoyed. So I'm pretty sure that if you're ever going to show it in media, particularly children's media, there's an obvious funny way to go. And I think that's why everybody ends up doing the whole thing about like how many birds do you get? How many golden rings do you get? How many drummers drumming do you get? I think that's why that happens. It's just funnier that way. I just feel like everyone's taking crazy pills and everyone's like, oh, you end up with all this stuff. I'm like, come on, man. Who you seriously thinks that you're all a bunch of idiots, but like is everyone in on the joke? Or do people seriously think that's the intent of the song? I don't know. Here's the thing. I agree with you, Brady. I'm on your side with this. Of how is it supposed to be? Now you're making me wonder. I feel like it's a bit of everybody's in on the joke. That this is the funnier way. Okay. But never underestimate internet commenter's abilities to take things literally beyond literal. Right. So I'm willing to believe that there are many true proponents of the, no, you get all the gifts every day, school of thought. I miss it too. No, well, let me know in the reddit where you stand on this and have a discussion. And I'll bring it back to the table in the next episode. But I want to know what people think. Also in a recent episode, no, it wasn't recent. It was a million years ago. In an episode a million years ago, we were talking about Trafalgar Square. And you talked about, did you call them floating yodas? What was the name you go to those people who stand on a post and it creates the illusion that Yoda is just floating in the air with a walking stick or something? Yeah, I use floating yodas because I have some picture in my photo library. Yeah. Three different floating yodas, not 10 meters apart from each other in front of Trafalgar Square in this one spot. So obviously these things are like, they're not going anywhere. These floating yodas, they're just more and more of them everywhere. It's just become the thing to do now. The pox upon the world is what they are. They've become such a thing and such like a mainstream thing like pigeons or an annoyance of Trafalgar Square. I read an article today in the Times because the National Portrait Gallery, which at the moment sort of faces away from Trafalgar Square and for such a poor place, it has quite an obscure little entrance. Yeah, it's an easily missed but well worth visiting museum. Like it's right behind the National Gallery and I actually, I think it's the more interesting of the two. I agree with you. I always recommend people go there. Anyway, they're giving it this big 35 million pound revamp and it's going to involve having a more public facing entrance. But one of the big problems is, and this was the headline in the Times this morning, Portrait Gallery turns to face floating yodas in 35 million pound revamp. And one of the big concerns about this revamp is that it's going to create this new place that all the floating yodas are going to congregate to and they actually identify floating yodas as their problem. So like this fictional Jedi Master has become this huge problem now in London and whenever you create some new public space, your number one concern, you know, above security and pigeons and public health is what are we going to do about the yodas that are inevitably going to come here? For anyone who is unfamiliar with the plague of yodas upon us, I'm going to make a thousand air quotes around this word. They're performers, right there. Public performers on the street, you know, like buskers, you know, this kind of thing, except that they just wear a mask and literally sit in a chair that just creates the mildest of optical illusions until you think about it for two seconds. It is kind of effective, it is kind of effective on your brain. Anyway, when I saw this slide headline, I did think to myself, how are they going to explain what a floating yoda is in the article itself? Because if you've never seen one, it probably sounds really weird. So this is how the journalists who wrote the article did it and I thought they did a pretty good job. The levitating living statues in quotes in personating the Jedi guru that are often street artists hoping to earn a few coins from passes by. I'm going to give that description a B. That's probably about right, okay? How would you have done it if you were writing the article? You've got to do it in a sentence. What's a floating yoda? The weakness there is the living statue part. That's the one part that's in quotes marks as well. Okay, if that's in quotes marks, yeah. Living statues in quotes marks. Like, could I describe it in one sentence? No, because I would not be able to do anything other than write an op-ed just railing against the existence of these things and wondering why a why can't the police just sweep them off the streets? But I like how a year's gone by would have been like people on a unicycle or a jugular or a painter or something like that. Someone who would do your caricature and now the go to annoying busco is a floating yoda. I do wonder because I don't know. I have a suspicion, let's put it this way, that I think these things are. Those aren't individuals. I feel like this is a coordinated group. Really? Do you think they're licensed by Lucasfilm? No, I don't. I don't think they're licensed by Lucasfilm. Then I'm surprised they haven't been swept off the streets yet. They're normally pretty red hot, aren't they? I reckon maybe they are licensed. I would be shocked to know if they're licensed by Disney. But I also had to do the split second thing of I was going to make the joke about I'm going to try to get in touch with George Lucas because he's a total control freak and let him know that these yodas are earning money that he's not getting anything from. Then I realized, oh, wait, no, we live in the world now we're Disney-owned star wars. And I forgot for a moment. And I'm almost briefly nostalgic for the crazy figurehead of George Lucas to rail against versus just the mouse, like the mouse who no one can defeat. So I assume that they're the licensed buskers. They have to be. But I hate them. And I'm glad to see that they're getting national attention as being a problem. And a total eyesore in the center part of London, just such a major tourist attraction. Oh, look, there's no Suns column, the national gallery. Oh, I can see Big Ben. And there are five men painted gold pretending to be Yoda from the Star Wars movies. What? Yeah, it's like, look, we have enough whimsy already interfogger square with the fourth plinth, like that statue that rotates and is usually some terrible artwork. That's all we need. A little bit of like, okay, the modern world is here. And that's enough. The Yoda's are too far. We don't need them. And I still don't understand how we made this trade off of like, pigeons know Yoda's yes. Because totally backwards. We talked recently about pilots introducing themselves over the intercom. Hello, this is John Smith, your pilot speaking. We're going to be doing X, Y, Z. You said this was completely pointless. Yeah. People have been responding to this. Okay. What's the feedback? A few people have said this is the official reason. Okay. So I'll just encapsulate what they're saying. You sound dubious already. They say I don't want my fingerprints on this one. They say apparently the reason this happens is to build some kind of knowledge or rapport with the pilot so that if things go pear-shaped and the pilot comes on later on with instructions, you're more likely to follow and be obedient. So if they say everyone you've got to do this quickly, we'll do it because we're familiar with the pilot. That sounds completely like post-hug reasoning. That's ridiculous. Yeah. It's not like you're going to be the pilot's going to come on and you're going to be in this free foe and the pilot's going to say everyone moved to the left and I'm going to be, no, who's this person speaking? I don't know. Oh, I'm not sure. You didn't introduce yourself earlier. I think I'm just going to do the exact opposite. No, that's total post-hug reasoning. And also, can I see the studies? Can I see your AB testing on this? Even if that is your supposed reason, do you have anything to indicate that it's remotely effective? How effective? How many additional oxygen masks are put on when people have heard the pilot previously? It only has to save one life, right? Yeah, it only has to save one life before you're going to hear a thousand idiots tell you that it only has to save one life to matter. That's the rest of that sentence that nobody says. I'm going to say like, anything that the cabin crew does is going to matter a million times more than whatever the pilot says in terms of getting people in the aircraft to do something. Seriously, if it's an emergency, I'd do what the person next to me told me to do. Someone could walk in a clown suit and say, everyone go to the back of the plane right now and I'd be like, all right. Oh, I see what you're saying. You're just very open to suggestion in that moment. That's what you're saying. Anything help. I got no idea what to do. Oh, poor Brady. Someone just emailed me a bit earlier though and wrote, it's a brilliant opportunity because when they come on and they say, this is your captain, John Smith, you can say, oh, no, not him again. I can't believe they're letting him fly after what happened last time. And I put a bit of panic through the plane. Oh, that was a terrible, terrible joke. That's like the dad Joker isn't as is there to it, yeah. That's really brutal. So I know you're not on Twitter at the moment, but you obviously are still familiar with how the platform works. I'm familiar with Twitter, yeah. I'm aware of its existence. So the aftertaste. Wait, can I just stop you here though? You know you're making this joke, but one little observation I've had in my life, low these past months, is almost every time I'm with someone in person who knows about me not being on the internet, in the course of almost any conversation, they want to show me something that's on the internet. And so I do have people showing me their phone, we're like, oh, there was this really funny thing on Twitter. Like, this is what Twitter is. Like, take a look. It's like everyone of your friends has become a human Twitter. Honestly, that's a little bit what the feeling is. And I don't mind because at this bandwidth rate, it's perfectly fine. But I think it's funny because even when I tell people, it's like, it's fine to tell me things that happen on the internet. I haven't lost my mind here. There's something about this way that everyone shows me their phone, that it's sort of like hesitant, but it makes it seem almost reverent. This very common pattern of people hold the phone up for me. Like, I'm not supposed to touch it and become unpure. They don't want to break your streak, right? Because, you know, they probably think if you break the streak, you'll feel bad about it, you know? I do weirdly appreciate it, but it has given this funny feeling of everyone is like, low cast your eyes upon the Instagram, but for a moment for me to show you this cute picture. Right? It's very weird. They should show it to you in like the reflection of a mirror or something. So yes, I'm aware of Twitter. I know that it exists. I'm familiar with the platform. So the other day, someone, I think, followed me and they were like a verified user of some sort. So I was like, oh, that's good that they're following me. Interesting that they will give me an opportunity to influence them. I wonder how many other people they follow? And I went and looked and they were following 50,000 people. I get slightly annoyed by people who are following more than 50,000 people on Twitter. Because that says to me, you're not using Twitter properly. You're being very cynical and you're obviously just following people so that they'll follow you. Yeah. So you want them to follow you, but you're clearly not following them. Because if you follow 50,000 people, I assume you don't even look at your timeline. What do you think about people following 50,000 people on Twitter? This activity, I think, should totally be banned. It's bait, isn't it? They're baiting you. Yeah, it's a kind of Twitter spam. So for those, I'm familiar with Twitter. The thing that Brady's talking about here is what some accounts do. And what I find really crass is a lot of celebrities do this. Yeah. And I'm going to point to you like, musicians as being particularly bad about this. Musicians will have accounts where they're following 50,000 or 100,000 or 2000. I've seen them in the millions where they have been following me. Where they have Twitter accounts following millions of people. And all they're doing is what happened to you, giving your random Twitter normies a moment to feel excited that popular musician has followed them. Even if they know it can't possibly be real, it causes that moment of making them look. Like a politician kissing a baby almost. Yeah, that's what it is. And it causes them to look and then maybe follow them back. And you threw this loyalty to them forever because I'm going to keep following Bill the Catarose. Can you believe it? Bill the Catarose follows me. No, Bill the Catarose doesn't follow you. Of the many behaviors on the internet that people may want to police and ban and prevent. This one seems like a no-brainer because it's also really easy to track. Like, hey, is there a Twitter account that's following tens of thousands of people a day? Maybe don't let them do that. Like maybe that is illegitimate behavior on the system. I find it really annoying, particularly because the thing that I still feel now and that I think is one of Twitter's best features, is its ability to be a little bit of an informal point of contact between people? Like Twitter can be really useful that way. And this sort of behavior, it's noise, it's spam in that value. Like, oh, when someone follows you, it's a little bit like a door is open that if you mutually follow each other, oh, you can send messages. You know, you might not ever. But it's a little bit of a door is open for a communication channel. And so yeah, I find that stuff incredibly annoying. And it seems like a no-brainer behavior that Twitter should just totally ban. And I don't go. Why they think it means anything to have accounts that have millions of follow-ys, except just it's a million spam invitations that have been sent out across their platform. You know, I found myself interested in card games quite a lot lately. It's not just the reminiscing over the dinosaur attack cards from my childhood. No, I found myself thinking about new games like Magic and traditional games like Poker. And one of the books that I have read, or should I say listened to, was Thinking in Betts by Annie Duke. Now, of course, there's only one place I'm going to listen to audio books, and that's with the amazing audible listening to audio books in your spare time can make you a better, more informed person. And I particularly liked Thinking in Betts because it's a book written by a professional poker player talking about how to make decisions, how to make better decisions, especially when you don't always have all of the information at hand. You can pick up Thinking with Betts at Audible by going to audible.com slash Hello Internet, or texting code Hello Internet to 500-500. Using that URL or offer code will get you a 30-day trial and let Audible know that you came from us. And if you haven't already, you really should give Audible a try. They have one of the largest selection of audio books you're going to find anywhere, and they're also producing their own new audible originals. And as an audible member, you can choose three titles every month, one audio book and two of their audible originals that you won't be able to hear anywhere else. I really like Audible. I've been using them for forever. Audio books sink just everywhere, including on my Kindle, which will play audio books and synchronize it with the actual text of the book if you have the Kindle copy. It's just great. So why not join Audible today? Find a book to help improve yourself, like perhaps thinking in bets, and go to audible.com slash Hello Internet, or text Hello Internet to 500-500. Things to Audible for supporting the show. Speaking of advertising and things, just a really quick thing that I saw, and also speaking of Twitter, a cool thing I saw just in the last week or two. I'm not going to be particularly political about it, but it's been related to Brexit. Oh yeah, what's going on with Brexit? Oh, let's not go there. Brady, you have to tell me. You have to tell me. Because look, all I know is an economist showed up in my house the other day, and it has a picture of Parliament being ripped in half. And it's something like the worst thing that could ever possibly happen. And I saw the cover, and I thought, I'm not going to read that, because Brady, we've established now. Brady can tell me what's going on with Brexit. So I didn't want spoilers. We'll come to that in a minute. But the thing that's been going on is, because Brexit's obviously full of lots of politicians who said lots of things during the campaign before the vote. Right. And those things either turned out to not be true, or very often, the politicians are now saying something, which is the exact opposite, hoping that people forgot what they said before. I don't know who's behind it, but what the people have started doing is getting their old tweets that the politicians made during the campaign, blown up to the size of billboards, and buying billboard advertising space, and just putting these people's tweets up. Okay, so it's like Theresa May, who used to be against Brexit. And now, you know, before she became Miss, Brexit means Brexit. Okay. I didn't see one of hers, but it would be like, yeah, at Theresa May, I think Brexit's a terrible idea, and no one should do it. And it's there with the profile picture, and the, it's an actual, you know, like a screen grab of a tweet, but blown up to this enormous size. Why an interesting idea? And I think that's a really powerful thing. I saw some pictures of it in the paper, and I thought, yeah, there's no spin here. There's no editorializing. This is just a tweet that this person made. You know, there it is. They said it. What do you think? I thought it was a really interesting thing to do. I'd be curious to know what group is behind it. Obviously, I'm just imagining it in my head. I presume it looks like Twitter, right? Like they're replicating a tweet. It looks just like a screen grab, yeah. Right. Okay. That's a simple and powerful idea to show hypocrisy. Now that I'm going to feel bad for politicians, but politicians are particularly vulnerable to hypocrisy, because like their job is to be with those in the wind, and they're always going to be open to that. But I feel like that seems like a very effective attack, where you're just letting them speak for themselves. I just sent you one just then. And it is a Theresa May tweet, actually, from 25th of April 2016, where at Theresa May tweeted, remaining a member of the European Union means it will be more secure from crime and terrorism. Now she's saying that we're going to be less secure. I think that's the natural conclusion to draw from that. Anyway, I like it. So what's going on, Brady? You got to tell me. I need my Brexit bin. What's the situation? I'll try and put it as simply as possible. Was there a general election? Not yet. Okay. So the prime minister Theresa May, who leads the Conservative party, has brooked this deal that all the 27 other countries in Europe agreed to. So she said, okay, now I'll take this deal to my parliament and get them to ratify it. And this will be the conditions under which we leave the EU. Okay. It went before the parliament. It lost. And it was the biggest loss in the history of the UK parliament for the governing party to have lost a vote by, they lost by like over 200 votes. So it was rejected by like, you know, pretty much all the opposition and most of her party as well, or something like, you know, it went down in flames. So then the leader of the opposition, the Labour party here, Garko Jeremy Corbyn, did a motion of no confidence against the prime minister, saying, you know, you've lost the confidence of the parliament. And if she lost that, that would have sent the country to a general election. Right. But she didn't lose that because obviously all the people in her own party then voted to support her. And the funny thing was all these Conservative politicians voted to support her and say the prime minister has her confidence. But a whole bunch of them voted against her when they had their own internal confidence motion against her at week or two before. Right. So obviously everyone is voted for her to keep their own jobs. You mean a political vote was determined by self-interest? I'm shocked. It's shocking really. Indeed. Indeed. Indeed. So anyway, she won that. But there was this rule that she had to come back to the parliament. A motion had been passed that she was going to have to come back to the parliament within three days to tell them what her plan B is. What she's going to do now. So she's come back. And she's basically just sticking to her guns, saying, oh, no, I think my deal is the best. I'm going to, you know, tinker with it a little bit and then bring it back again for another vote, which no one thinks will pass. So I think the deadline next week, I mean, I feel like we're really running out of time here. It's about a month or two. And if we reach the deadline without being granted an extension by Europe and say, hey, can we have a bit longer to sort ourselves out then we get this so-called, you know, hard Brexit, just crashing out where there were no deals and nothing. And everyone thinks it'll be catastrophic, or most people think it will be catastrophic for the country. Basically, you've just got a few people that think that's what we should do. Just leave Europe hard and be on our own and make new deals. Some people think Theresa May's deals are right. Some people think we should, you know, renegotiate with Europe. The Labour Party seem to want a general election because they get a sniff of getting into power years earlier than they should have. But like if a general election happens no matter what the result, as far as I can say, all the same problems will be in place. It's not like a new Prime Minister is going to get a much better deal from Europe. There's increasing call for another referendum. Now the people have a better idea of what Brexit actually means as opposed to all the lies that were told during the referendum. Maybe there should be another vote so people can have a second say, the people's vote. Lots of parliamentarians want it, but neither of the leaders are willing to say they want it because that's so seemingly undemocratic to go against a vote decision that's already been made. And it would certainly be a very divisive thing for the country if it weren't to a vote again because the people who voted for Brexit would feel like they're having their win snatched away from them by the establishment. I can't see a solution. I know what I personally want, but in terms of... Would you say what you personally want? Well, I personally want there to not be Brexit. So I want whatever it takes for that to not happen. And I think the only way where that would happen is another vote because I don't think the politicians can just decide there's not going to be a Brexit. I think they would need a mandate so they'd have to do another referendum. So the only way to get what I personally would like is another referendum, but I can't conceive of how another referendum can happen without the country tearing itself to pieces. And if there is another referendum, I'm not also sure what way it would go. I might just go the same way. I know it was give you a hard time about tell me about Brexit. And there's many examples of me doing that on the cutting room floor where you didn't tell me about Brexit. It's just because this to me is the most astounding example of a news story that has gone on for what? Two years? I mean, is that an over exaggeration? But I feel like it was two years ago. Yeah, yeah. I think it might have even been just over two years ago, maybe. Like the way I mentally place it is I know I was at VidCon when I found out about the results. I remember where I was sitting in like the lobby of one of the hotels where it came across probably on Twitter about the Brexit results. It was June 26th, then. Like there was this huge wave of feedback where people wanted me to make some video about Brexit and for a long time I didn't. And then because nothing happened, I ended up making that video about like, oh, the situation is who knows? And it is hilarious to me that that video is still relevant. Like I totally adjust the odds now. But it's like I can't believe that a news story and something as important as this can be in suspended animation for so long. I think a big problem with this is like, well, it's not the reason this is such a problem. Is that it doesn't split down partisan lines? That's an interesting point. That's a really interesting point. You have two massive arguments going on, right? Like you've got all the parties themselves are split. The Labour Party and the Conservative Party are split about how they should deal with it. You can't just brute force it through Parliament as to reason they showed catastrophically. But also if you started thinking, okay, what other coalitions could be formed? Could be form a coalition of conservatives and Labour people who support this method and get them to vote together to push it through. But if you tried to do that, people would straight away start running back to their partisan corners and say, you know, the Labour is still saying, no, this is a chance for us to bring down the government and get power for ourselves. So we can't form coalitions and negotiate with them because, you know, this is our big chance. And likewise, the Conservatives will be saying, no, we can't do deals and sit down and be cooperative with the Labour Party because that will make them look prime ministerial and be taking the lead and we have to be opposed to them. So people are still opposed in a partisan way, but they're also opposed to each other on this particular issue. So it's just caused this fracturing that can't be stuck together. Maybe I'm missing something, but surely for the Labour Party to win, like if they're scheming that they want to get back in power. In a general election, wouldn't they have to be against the idea of Brexit? Yeah. This is a huge problem. Lots of people say, I'm not being dumb here. I felt like I was missing something for a second. Because Corbin won't go out and say, I'll let there be another vote. Because still saying, I think there should be another vote or no Brexit is still... It's a bit of a third rail that you can't touch. So he can't afford to align himself with that. So what's he going to run as? His only thing he could run as is saying, I will make a better deal with Europe than Theresa Mated. I'm a better deal maker. I'll be able to get it done. I'll be able to get Brexit done the right way. Well, Kenny, I don't know, I doubt it. But he's still going to negotiate with these 27 countries that have a lot more power than the UK. And you're right. What would the election be for on? They just want another election. That's all oppositions do, his wait for elections. And they've got a chance to have one earlier than they thought. Okay, so now admittedly, I'm about to express a very uninformed political opinion because the entirety of my Brexit news has come through you on this podcast. But like, just listening to you talk, I'm thinking it through and I haven't really given it much serious thought. And I'm not really doing that at this very moment. But I suddenly have this real... Sinking concern that we're on a train of inevitability. And that train might be called the worst of all possible worlds. Like, if some kind of negotiation does happen, it feels like surely the only way that happens is you end up with that. Britain is still sort of in the EU in a way that nobody who voted for Brexit wanted. A lot of people will tell you that's exactly what Theresa May's current deal is. It kind of achieves Brexit and we're no longer part of the EU. We're still beholden to them in lots of ways. We've still got some deals with them that are okay, some that are not. We've got no power over them. We've got no voice at the table to change European policy. We've got control by it. People who are opposed to Theresa May's deal, which is most of the parliament and most of the country, think that it's like nothing. And I think it's also probably what will end up happening some form of it. Because I think people sick of it. And I think in the end, people are going to just be like, well, we can't afford to crash out. We don't want an election, a general election. We can't have another vote because it's undemocratic to ignore the first one. Oh, for God's sake, I'm just sick of it being in the news. That's just signed Theresa May's deal and be done with it. I think that's what Theresa May's banking on to some kind of fatigue. Well, again, this may be me being uninformed and also a man who sometimes doesn't mind rolling the dice. But just sitting here in like an isolated black room knowing nothing about the outside world, I almost feel like I would rather roll the dice on maximum Brexit than worst of all possible worlds. Like the worst of everything just seems so terrible to have given up all of the special advantages that the UK had with the European Union to have given it up for nothing. Like it's totally cutting off your nose despite your own face. You are in like probably the smallest of the minorities of people. Okay, good. There are certainly people who think your way. I'm not saying that's a good idea, right? But I'm saying it's like maximum Brexit is the high variance outcome. It could be totally terrible, but has a possibility of being good. Whereas worst of all possible worlds just seem so terrible and stupid and like like my mind reels at the thought of the lost human hours across the globe spent on thinking about and arguing over and negotiating Brexit. All to end up in a situation where the UK just lost all of the advantages but keeps all of the dissu- Like it seems, seems crazy. It's like don't get me wrong. If I could make things happen, my preferred outcome would be to snap my fingers and like undo this whole thing. But it's like, but I have to choose between the worst of everything and maximum Brexit. I don't know. I kind of want to roll the dice. Like how are these the options? These are such terrible, terrible options. And it's like talking about redoing the referendum. I feel like I can make an argument for how democracy is never really settled. And if Brexit's really something people want to do, then you should expect that they would still vote for it if we had another referendum. It's like I can make that argument, but it's unavoidably still feels undemocratic to be like, well, we're going to do it again. It's like such a perfectly bad situation from every angle. I can't believe it. I've also heard the argument, you know, I've heard every argument a million times. I also heard the argument that it's a very democratic for the parliamentarians to say, we've been trying to do what you've asked for. We can't make it work. So we're taking it back to you again. And when you say it that way, suddenly it seems beautifully democratic. It's like you gave us this instruction. We've tried to do it. We can't make it work. We can't figure out exactly what you want. We can't figure out how to make, you know, so just tell us again, let us reframe the question for you. Here's what the Prime Minister is taking to Europe. Or would you prefer this or would you prefer that? Or if you changed your mind, do you want to stay in Europe after all? Now that you've seen what the negotiation looks like. If you put it that way, it seems quite democratic, but that's to spinning it. I think there are a couple of interesting different democratic systems where that's a fundamental idea that actions of the state or actions of the group require the ongoing support of the voting members of that group. It's also how it works in the UK, isn't it? If we have a general election, and they can't form a government, you know, they can't get the numbers or no one can form a government. We have another general election. That's the parliament saying we couldn't form a government based on the vote you just did. Do it again. What I mean is like you can have democratic systems where you have a proposition like where the UK is part of the European Union, and that just requires a constant amount of support in the general public for it to be a thing that is maintained. That's a kind of system that you can have. But the reason why I say it still feels a little undemocratic is because how it was pitched in the beginning matters in the kind of system that currently exists. Even though it was like non-binding nothing thing like it was pitched as we're going to make this decision. And so then I think that's the problem is like an optics problem of the government going back on the thing that it pitched, but it's just I cannot believe this situation. I can't believe that nothing has changed in two years. I can't believe that we're a month away. Yeah. Well, again, keep me informed Brady. I look forward to hearing more. There could be a whole other hello internet between now and Brexit. Apologies to people who follow it closely and are upset by my hamphys to description. And in the inevitable apologies to people who follow it closely and think I sound like a totally uninformed person because on this topic I 100% am. You are. Are you having problems remembering your countless passwords? Are you worried about security? Are you sick of storing your passwords in a notebook, which is full of crossings out and some words which aren't quite legible because you wrote them in a bit of a hurry and now you can't read your handwriting? Look, if you're answering yes to these questions, well, it's quite possible you're me, but it's also possible you'll be interested in today's episode sponsor Dashlane. The simple secure way to remember and auto feel all your passwords. This is a service that's endorsed by esteemed organizations such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Forbes. Dashlane is top rated in the app store with an average score at the time of recording of 4.7, which is pretty darn good. Dashlane encrypts everything so no one accept you, concedure information and it also does the job of generating those secure passwords so you don't have to be the one thinking, oh, have I got a number in there? Is it two capitalized letters? Do they have to be vowels? The prime number of symbols? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Whatever other crazy requirements there are, Dashlane is going to take care of it. Don't get hacked. Don't get phished or scammed or password booted or whatever it is. Get Dashlane. Install their app. It's going to make your life easier and you can finally well throw away that stupid notebook. To find out more, go to dashlane.com slash hello internet. The first 200 people who use the offer code, hello internet will get 10% off Dashlane premium. That's 200 teams getting the discounts. They get in there while you can. Dashlane.com slash hello internet and the offer code is also hello internet. Thanks for supporting this episode. I have bullet points for my corner. YouTube wants to be TV corner. There's always lots of bullet points when you put anything about YouTube in our show notes. I always do these three or four word teasy things. And then you always have this document of bullet points. I don't know if I should even tell you this. But whenever you see a bunch of bullet points on our shared document, I have a private hello internet show notes document that's just for me that has more bullet points. But you don't get to see all the bullet points. Why didn't I get to say that one? It's full of secrets. That's why. But yes, the YouTube wants to be TV corner has many bullet points from me and when we brought it into the world last time. I wanted to talk about a whole bunch of things. But of course the dreadfully delightful YouTube rewind just like it does came as a hurricane that destroyed all other conversation on this topic. And just like a real hurricane like it comes through the YouTube world and it's it's this malstrom of energy and fury and destruction and rage. Then it dissipates and is gone and everyone totally forgets about it until next year. Yeah. When I was clearing up the show notes, I saw the thing about YouTube rewind, which at this point is what six weeks back in the timeline. I was like, oh yeah, I forgot about that thing already. We're just kind of an achievement of like, oh, your corporate thing is both tremendously enraging and completely forgettable. That's pretty much how American politics works these days to you by the way. Sounds like a missing out. There's some new scandal that everyone's like, this is the biggest scandal to rock American politics in a thousand years and it's going to be in patchments and the public's going to fall and then like two weeks later. It's like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. I think there's much for people to learn from that pattern, but we've been running along. The thing that I actually really wanted to talk about last time, and I have to talk about this time is in YouTube wants to be TV corner. YouTube has now officially put in the grave an old and fantastic feature of YouTube, something that took advantage of the internet nature of the video platform. That is YouTube annotations. YouTube as of the 15th has deleted all of the annotations across all of the videos. Everybody who ever spent hours fiddling with the annoying editor trying to get a square to be exactly where you wanted to be on the screen and to appear at the right moment and disappear at the other moment. All of those hours of human labor YouTube has satellite to and it is dust in the past and exists no more. Also, Gray, that's not just setting a lot to those hours we spent fiddling with like placing them on the screen, but a lot of the times we like made our videos with annotations in mind, you know, click here to go to part two or you could create a choose your own adventure or like you actually integrated it into your creation. I think it's a real betrayal what they've done. Like first of all, they gave us this system to work with and then they said we're not letting a user anymore, but we're going to keep the old ones because we know how much work went into it. Don't worry. And now they've gone back on that as well. Like I'm not like particularly passionate about it, but I do think it's a total betrayal. I don't think that's an exaggeration and I was thinking a lot about annotations because I really do think they were while clunky. They were a thing that took advantage of the internet nature of the video platform. And again, I constantly have this feeling that YouTube does not leverage what its unique advantages are. And one of those unique advantages is it's a really internet video platform and annotations allowing you to put links to anywhere on the screen at any point in the video. That was internet it was hyperlinks for videos. And like you said, many people made interesting things around that. Like I remember Hank had his like truth or fail game show that was based around the concept of annotations. You could do a thing where there was like an invisible annotation. So someone would only know there was a clickable region if they like happened to put their mouse in the right spot the right time. And that was a thing that I loved doing on the old videos. It was like a fun game of people being able to find something that was like a further rinse of a joke by clicking an invisible link. And then it's fun for people in the comments to see like, oh, where did he hide these things? Yeah. And the annotations for creators, you know, because YouTube has over the years to some extent talked to creators behind the scenes about stuff like at various conferences and things. And in the earlier days in particular, the annotations were for a lot of people like a real axe to grind because YouTube didn't make them work on mobile when mobile started becoming a thing. And YouTube's like in furiating line was always like annotations don't work on on mobile. Like that's why we can't get them to work on your videos because they don't work, right, which is this circular logic. Yeah. Like and it's so frustrating because it was always like YouTube. They don't work on mobile because you're not making them work on mobile. Like it's not a thing that happened to you. It's a thing that you have decided. And if you want to have interactive video like say something like Bander Snatch, the latest Black Mirror, guess what? It's a thing that you can do on mobile. Like you can make something interactive. But they clearly decided a long time ago that they just wanted to get rid of this. This is how bunch of us now myself included in all these videos from years gone by looking like fools going click here. Press here click on that box there giving people instructions like looking out of the screen at them in good faith. Tell them if you do this, this will happen. And now it doesn't happen anymore. Yeah, it really feels like a like a betrayal because you know when when YouTube originally said they were not going to let us put annotations on anymore. It was always like but don't worry your old annotations will stay. Like no, but they're actually just going to stay for two or three years until you eventually decide you don't want to deal with it anymore. And you're just going to delete them. We need to put that tweet on a billboard. Yeah, tell me the real reason then what's really going on? Well, I think the reason that they're doing it is like the name of the corner. YouTube wants to be TV. And I think from their perspective, they want to encourage the kind of viewing that people do on Netflix that you just like you sit in front of YouTube for a while and you just let them pour it down your throat like the passive consumer that you are. And just sit there and absorb it. And why is that in YouTube's best interest because I can make more advertising money that way. I think it's partly that they make more advertising money that way. I think it's partly just the idea of watch time because annotations could let you go to interesting places that weren't YouTube. And this falls also into the category of like every way that YouTube is able to pull levers that prevent creators from linking outside of YouTube. They are turning up all of those dials. Like the one that really irritates me now is if you click on a link in the description of someone's video, it takes you to like that warning page where it's like, hey, I don't know if you were a guy, but you just clicked on a link that's going to take you outside of YouTube. And they have some like dumb disclaimer like YouTube is not responsible for the scary stuff that's on the internet. Are you sure you want to proceed with this link that you clicked in the description? And what kills me about it is the way they design the interface. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah, I may be seeing it because I'm partly in a beta for some of the new stuff, but the way they design the yes, no dialogue, I believe is intentionally confusing. Because I have to really look at it every time to be like, which is the one that I click so that I go to the link that I clicked on you bastards. So I think we're moving annotations as part of that because you could link to places that weren't YouTube. And then people could heaven forbid leave YouTube and go do something else. So like I think that's part of why they've taken it away. And I'm feeling really particularly irritated by it because just a couple days ago when I knew this was coming, now of course this is a side effect of my tremendous output. But I went through all of my old videos to try as best I could fix everything that was now broken because there were no annotations. And what put the little cards in instead and things like that. Yeah, so it was like I went to the end screens and tried to adjust the cards so that it would look somewhat reasonable. But I have ended up now in what is a double frustration. I've ended up with videos that have the last 20 or 30 seconds are really ugly and nonsensical because there's stuff I've put up on the screen, which doesn't mean anything now because the annotations are gone. And then I have to try to cover it up with the extremely limited card options that YouTube gives you. It's like a double insult. It's extra frustrating. Well, unfortunately for May, I have 3533 videos to worry about at the moment. So I won't be doing that. I think that is probably an excellent decision. But those videos are still active things like people go through your old catalog. And in an ideal world where you could pause time and like go through and fix all of that, you would. Like I am an extreme outlier that I'm a creator who's able to take the time to go back through and like try to make it okay because I only have 20 videos. And the last thing that really kills me and makes me genuinely angry is that YouTube had this little banner when you logged in as a creator for a while that's set up at the top. Hey, just so you know, annotations aren't getting much love from users. So we're going to remove them, you know, next week. Just be prepared. That's the exact wording that you used to. Yeah, that was the exact wording. I took a screenshot of it because it really made me think, you like annotations aren't getting much better. And annotations aren't getting much love from users. Like what an incredibly passive aggressive blame shifting way to phrase it. Like you mean the tool that you haven't updated in four years that you've been trying to kill users haven't been clicking on. So you're going to get rid of. And so I looked at my statistics to see how much to users actually use annotations. And it is crazy to me because now you're talking about videos that are like three years old at this point. But my old videos with annotations would get twice or four times as many click-throughs and pure clicks as the alternative tools that YouTube provided on the new videos that were like brand newly released. It was just infuriating. It's like, again, I know I'm a little bit of an outlier here, but it's like, hey, annotations are interesting. If you do them well, people click on them. People click on them a lot. And your new options are half to a quarter is good before we even factor in that annotations only worked on the desktop. Like everyone using it on a phone couldn't even click on it. Anyway, I wanted to mention it because it makes me really angry and I'm doubly angry that I spent a whole bunch of time trying to fix it. And you can't even really fix it. And it's this total broken promise from YouTube. And again, it's a way that they squander the best resource they have, which is this group of creators and the internetiness of their own platform. And I will take my resentment of YouTube removing annotations to my grave. This for me is a real hashtag never forget moment, the time that YouTube deleted annotations. I feel like I've learned, though. I'm learning that everything they do can be taken away. So I build that into some of my decisions now in the way I design my videos. I'll tell you the thing that I'm afraid of is I am afraid that even the end cards we have, YouTube is going to take away. I'm designing my videos now with that in mind that they'll go away. That is super interesting because I'm in like a beta that lets me see some of the new stuff that YouTube has. And I'm really aware that the end cards are nowhere to be seen in their new stuff. And they've even removed like some links about where to find the end cards. And since they introduced end cards, I don't know whatever it is two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago. They've introduced no new options and no new features with the end cards. So I look at those things and I really wonder like, okay, like my Statue of Liberty video and the Federal Land video, I designed so that at the end there's like a nice frame for where I want to put the end cards. But even when I did that, I thought, am I being an idiot? Like are they just going to take this away to in a year so that this isn't even an option. And if YouTube wants to be TV, that's the direction that they would go. So that is really interesting for me to hear that you're already doing that with your video production. Well, at the end of a lot of videos, like for example, at the end of a number far video, I'll usually have two little boxes on the screen of other videos that I think people might want to go and watch. So there'll be a little box, little titles under those boxes of what those videos are called. And in those boxes is where I'll put the end cards that people can click on and there's a thumbnail of the video. But underneath the end card, so burned into the video, I actually have the video playing in that box, you know, highlights of that video. So if the end card wasn't there, you would at least have a box on the screen with a little TV in it playing that video that I'm talking to people about. So even if they can't click on it, they could at least click on a card or something I put in the description, or they could see the title and go and find something. But so that if it was completely denuded by YouTube for some reason, it would still look like it made sense. Even if it wasn't clickable and doing me any good, at least it wouldn't look like a big hole. Right. Okay. I see what you're saying. So yeah, you don't look like you just have two holes. You have at least something playing. Yeah, the two things that really make me suspicious that the end cards are going away. One of them is, again, I was digging through all my analytics, which I find very interesting. And then I like I dumped into my own spreadsheets to take a look at. But one of the things I found deeply concerning is so at the end of your video, you can put up a link to a specific video. Or you can put up what YouTube calls best for the viewer where the algorithm bots will pick which video they think people are most likely to click on. And I was looking through my own data to see like what are the click through rates for the like the various different kinds of things that you can put at the end. And when I eliminated videos where I'm linking to somebody else's channel and saying like go over here like for the crossovers that I've done. If I pick what I think is the best video for the viewers to watch, I outperform on average when the YouTube bots trying to pick the best video. And this makes me suspicious. I feel like I shouldn't be able to get a 7% click through when I pick a video. And when I let you to pick a video, I only get a 5% click through. I'm not surprised by that seems completely logical to me. Why? Well, because you have a human understanding of what's just happened and what your audience will want. Whereas the algorithm hasn't even watched the video. It's just kind of guessing a bit. Like I thought you'd outperform but by more than that to be honest, if it's only 7% versus 5%. Yeah. And considering some people might even not even have a recommendation. So they're like, oh, bugger it. Let's just let YouTube decide. Whereas someone like you who's more thoughtful has no, I think this is the right video. Like I'm not surprised. Yeah. See, I feel very confident like YouTube should crush me on this task. YouTube should know much better what people want to click on that I want to click on. No, with such a small sample size of material of your collection, which you know intimately. If they were if you were giving them the whole pool of YouTube videos to send them away to then maybe they'd start having a chance. But yeah, YouTube would totally win in that case. You're 100% right. I still feel like even with my 15 videos, they should be able to pick better than I do. But I don't know. It just made me suspicious. And then the other thing is again, like that they haven't added anything new and it's like YouTube. If you want to make me feel better about end cards, here's my feature request, which seems like the most obvious feature request in the world that you haven't implemented. And I'm even going to give you what you want. I know you want people to stay on YouTube. I want to be able to put a card at the end of the video that picks the best video for the viewer from someone else's channel. Like I think that seems like an obvious card to put at the end. So like for example, if I put up a new video, I can put a card at the end that for the viewer, YouTube tries to pick what's the best episode of Hello Internet to start someone on. Right. Where it's like I wouldn't have any idea. Or like if I'm doing a like a collaboration with somebody else and like we're referencing each other in our other videos, I would like to be able to say like, hey YouTube, you pick the best video to show this person from the other person. Channel, but you customize the channel. So you're not going to send them off to Logan Paul by mistake. Yeah, but like I could say, right. Pick a video of one of 3,000 of number files videos. Yeah. And show that to the viewer in this end card. Yeah. Like don't make me pick one because and you're totally right. Like the bigger the catalog is for sure the worse I'm going to do about picking something. But like I think that would be really beneficial for like non specific crossovers like when YouTubers appear in other YouTubers channels. Yeah. Like I know that the click through rates when you put up the subscribe button for someone else's channel are basically zero. Like that little circle of the other person's channel is garbage and worthless. So it's like let YouTube try to pick if these two vloggers have been in each other's videos. You pick the best of the other channels videos to suggest to the user. Like I think it's such an obvious feature that it's crazy to me they haven't introduced it. And it will be different from user to user as well. Yeah, it'll be different for each person. Yeah. So I don't know. Makes me worried. But I'm upset and I'm grumpy about all of this. To be fair, now that I think about it when I said to you before that I'm surprised you're surprised that YouTube wasn't outperforming you. The thing I didn't take into account was that you could only pick one of your videos for all your audience, whereas YouTube could change it from person to person. So they that would give them bit of a foot up. So yeah, like and it's an interesting thing because I'm always kind of curious like what's YouTube up to. And I sometimes see like when a video goes up, you can see like the algorithm is trying to guess about what should the video be or like doing little testing. Or you can see that it recommends different things if you do different stuff. So that is also why I'm surprised. It's like it's picking for a user. It's not just picking in general what video does it think people should watch. Hello, internet. Now here we are towards the end of January and I'm willing to bet that at the beginning of January, many of you set a new years resolution. A goal to say eat better and be healthier. How's that going? Well, if you're having a hard time sticking with your resolution to be a healthier person, hello fresh is here to help you. Hello fresh is the company that does all the planning, shopping and prepping of your meals so that you can focus on enjoying the new year and more easily be a healthier you. I don't know if you're like me and all, but boy, do I hate going to the supermarket and especially for fiddly things like heads of lettuce or avocado. I don't know how to find the ones that I'm trying to find, but no, with hello fresh, you don't have to worry about that stuff. The ingredients that you need are fresh, they're pre-measured, they're delivered to your door each week in a special insulated box and they come with easy to follow. Six step pictured, that's a real key recipe cards to make it happen. All the meals come together in 30 minutes max need less than two pots and pans and require minimal setup. It's easy, delicious, simple and fast and with hello fresh, you have three plans that you can choose from. They're classic, veggie and family with the option that you can switch between them when your taste change. Hello fresh is America's number one meal kit. Hello fresh gets delivered to one of my offices and we all agree we make it, it's simple, we eat it, it's delicious. To take advantage of hello fresh's special offer for 2019, you'll get a total of $80 off with eight free meals in your first month by going to hello fresh.com slash hello internet 80 and use the promo code hello internet 80. Thanks to hello fresh for supporting the show. Great, you made passing reference to Band of Snatch this new Netflix special. Everyone's talking about it. Have you watched it? I think we're all the kids are talking about. It's not all the kids are talking about. They've been not overwhelming, but a solid number of teams have said, wow, you should talk about this and how the internet because it's a black mirror thing and because it's a bit pioneering. I have a lot of mixed feelings about black mirror now, but one of the feelings that I have is this is the most hipstery I've ever felt is like we talked about black mirror before it was cool. Yeah, I feel like that it's if everyone's jumping on a bit down it's a bit like it's also the thing that a genuinely think that first season was a very different experience before there was a concept of what black mirror is. And so I don't go back and listen to old stuff, but I can only imagine like kind of cringing now to listen to us gushing over black mirror, but I think it really was a different thing when there were just the original three episodes. It was not like we've had four and a half seasons of this thing. But I think they continue to do interesting stuff and I've liked some of the more recent stuff, but band a snatch the most recent of recent. And you can argue the most interesting of interesting in terms of like they've done something interesting. Yeah, so do you want to explain how it works? Someone who isn't familiar with it? Okay, if you used annotations on YouTube, you would know that's right. Bandersnatch is Netflix must have been an enormous pain to do, but making this custom solution so that this episode of black mirror is a choose your own adventure that as you're watching the episode at certain points, there is a decision to be made. And on the screen, it will say, you know, do you want to turn left down the street? Do you want to turn right down the street? Do you want to eat frosted flakes for breakfast or do you want some garbage cereal that you're going to regret? Like it gives you these little choices as the episode goes along. And then the character in the show does the thing you told them to do. Right, the character in the show follows whatever path that you have chosen quite seamlessly. It's quite nicely edited together. You know, it still feels like pretty much like a normal TV program. Like, you know, it's not like everything stops and pauses. It just flows. We're going to slightly disagree with you there, but I will say it was a technical achievement. Yeah, what they did. It's interesting in a technical achievement. Not totally seamless, but it's not like everything grinds to a halt. Yeah, you know, that's what is going on with Bandersnatch and why people are talking about it is because of this ability for you to choose different options. Which then of course, like everybody enjoys discussing which options they found with other people. And it like it makes for a good conversation point. Yeah. So what did you think of the episode, Brady? Let me put a little disclaimer at the start. Okay. And that is I didn't watch all in one go. I think I watched, I got like partway through. And then I had other things to tend to and I didn't finish it until the second night. So I watched over two nights. And I don't know what people have been saying because I haven't been reading reviews. And because it's so popular and everyone's talking about it, I'm guessing everybody has been quite liking it. And if that's the case, I think it's overrated. And if everyone hates it, then I think they're being unfair because it was all right. But if everyone's saying it's good and cool, I definitely don't agree with that either. I didn't enjoy it that much. And I'm not eager for the next incarnation of this. It wasn't an experience I particularly enjoyed. And I have more criticisms than compliments. What about you? Yeah. It's funny because it didn't occur to me that like I don't actually know what people are saying about the episode. But still the word I was going to say is overrated. I don't have any concept, but it's like I just assumed that the internet totally loved this. And I never even really reflected on that assumption that like, oh, I could be wrong and people hate it. It's rotten tomato score is 73. So not overwhelming. Okay. Well, maybe then that's appropriately rated. Maybe I can take overrated back and feel like 76. Like seven out of 10 feels like. Okay. Yeah. But my feeling of this. Okay. Well, I mean, there's an elephant in the room that we need to talk about, which is one real problem with this episode that I just I could not get past. And it shows up very early in the episode. And it's that fat moron from the British Airlines safety video is in this episode. And it's like, he goes, oh, hey mate, how are you doing? Like, oh, no, like what is this guy? What is he doing here? Like this is my black mirror nightmare. This guy who thinks he's funny and is like, maybe funny if you were like the broadest of chocolate dites. And the best he can make you mildly chuckle. Like, here he is, like, showing up in your TV show and like clearly not belonging with the other actors who were outclassing it. It's like, God, yeah, man, he was so distracting. Yeah. It was awful. And it's like, it's funny because I get I just was on a plane yesterday when I was delayed. And I was watching him in what I swear is the fourth incantation of this British Airways safety video. We're now like they're bringing in like the poor woman from absolutely fabulous and making her say like they're dragging everybody in. But the video is becoming more and more about him. It's like every iteration he's in it even more. And I just I look at this kind of like this British Airways video is the worst decision you've ever made. Because you're printing yourself in the minds of hundreds of millions of people as this thing. Like you'll never not be this thing guy. And that is like my one tiny piece of feeling like I get revenge on him for like all of the hours of having to watch him explain safety to me. It's like you'll never escape this. You'll never outlive this. But so anyway, he's in the episode and I didn't like him. But more interestingly, I think the whole concept of choose your own adventure. It sounds like it's a good idea. But it really isn't. I think it's a fundamentally flawed medium to do the choose your own adventure stuff. I've like I've seen it in books. I've seen games try to do it. But it's like the choose your own adventure stuff. I just fundamentally I feel like it encourages the user to get bored with what's occurring. And it ends up becoming like a slog through finding what the different interesting endings are. I can't enjoy any of those things as the thing they're supposed to be. A choose your own adventure book is less enjoyable than a book that someone just thought out. And it's choose your own adventure episode. It's like, okay, it's an interesting novelty kind of. But it's it's just not a good TV show. Like it's just it's just not a good episode of TV. That's my feeling on this is like people try to do this. And I've basically never seen it done successfully. Yeah. I mean, can you think of like a really great example of something that was a choose your own adventure medium? I mean, I liked the books when I was a kid. Right. You know, and you did all the usual things having your fingers stuck in 19 different pages so you could go back steps. Yeah, I did that too. Yeah, I think when you're young and you're just learning to read and you're just like your brain's more malleable and it's just more interested. And I don't know, like it worked as a kid. I kind of mentioned reading one now as an adult though. I'm not just counting those as children's books, but I view them exactly as what you said. They're not really books. They're actually tools to get children to read. Yeah. Yeah. Again, when I was a kid, I didn't mind those computer games, which it was you know, you were to fork in the road, turn left and turn right. But that's because you didn't have many other options of the computer games in those days. And you know, the fact you're even playing a computer game completely blew your mind. But in terms of this TV show, obviously I haven't experienced it on a TV show before because of the technology hasn't existed. But my problem was when I watched something on Netflix and a TV show, I want to watch something. I kind of want to be a bit more passive. And not only did I have to make decisions all the time, but I always wondered when I was going to have to make another decision. Like every single little thing that happened, I was thinking, oh, he's going to walk through the door. Am I going to get to choose the door? Oh, no, he chose the door. Oh, am I going to get to, oh, no, he got to decide, oh, now I get to make a decision. And this kind of little thing on my shoulder saying, are you going to get to decide this or not? Like really distracted me from just like enjoying this thing that was made. Also, most of my Netflix watching is with my wife. Right. So who's going to make the decisions? And we're talking about the decisions. And no, no, I think we should do that. I don't know. Oh, let's choose yours. Oh, you got us killed. You ruined it. So it took the communal watching thing. I don't know. It kind of did, it added to it a bit because we were joking about what to choose. But it didn't work for me in that way. And my other problem was it was meta to the like point of pain, wasn't it? It was a choose your own adventure thing about a guy making a choose your own adventure computer game based on a choose your own adventure book. And it became so meta that he then realizes that he's being controlled by someone outside, i.e. you and me. And it did all these meta things that you would do with a new technology in the first outing of the technology. Like the idea of all these funny things to do like, let's make a choose your own adventure TV show. But let's make this one about a choose your own adventure maker. Or let's have him realize he's been controlled. So these feel like something you would do with a technology several years in, you know, it's the new twist. But they kind of did every little meta in joke wink wink thing you could do with the technology. The first time I ever got to use the technology. And that kind of ruined it in a way. Why not make the first choose your own adventure TV show just legitimately a story. And he never realizes he's been controlled. And he's not making a choose your own adventure show himself. It felt like they just went all in on the first hand. And it was way too many choose your own adventures levels. It really felt like, hey guys, you could just pick one of these. Right? Like it could be a story about someone who is writing a choose your own adventure book. And we can leave it at that. And that's, you know, that's why we are also choosing as we're watching. You could do a very interesting episode about like the concept of free will. And that could be the reason that you're doing this as a shoot. Like what does picking add to this media experience? There should be something in the narrative that reflects it. But yeah, I completely agree. It's like they had a writer's room meeting thinking of everything that could possibly work in this medium. And they did it all at once. And the part for me, which was really like, I can't deal with this is when they start talking about Netflix in one of the endings. That's when they jumped its own shark of choose your own adventureness and metaness wasn't that right, you know? Yeah, it was too much. It's like guys, I'm barely along with you here. And now that you're also making this a choose your own adventure about Netflix. It's just like it was just too much. It was just too much. I also, and this just could be the paths that I took. And obviously the first thing I did after watching it was Google to see the people who'd made the flow chart map. So I could see, you know, all paths. And when you look at that, it looks kind of interesting. But it felt surprisingly linear. Like I felt like any time I made a decision they didn't want me to make. They slapped me back onto the path they wanted me on pretty quick. Oh, you dad, go back three steps. I felt like I was being railroaded. I think there was a very poor choice made in the show. And that is in the beginning of the episode, you know, you're trying to make this video game and you're just a guy working on your own and then you manage to get, you manage to get an interview with a company with a guy who is like your hero. And you go into the office and they give you the choices like, do you want to work for the company or don't you want to work for the company? And this is clearly the first actual choice that they're giving you. Like there's a couple of little things. As opposed to just music choices and things about it. Yeah, there's two previous choices. It's music and it's the serial, which are obviously just like, get used to, we're going to ask you questions. They're not real choices. This is the first real thing that they give you. And I don't know what this looks like on the actual flow chart, but it seems very clearly like everyone's going to pick work for the company. It's the obvious thing to do. That's what I picked. Yeah. But they set it up in the story and I think this was an intentional decision that that's the losing option immediately. You just lose and then they start you over. And I feel like that was a bad call because then it does, it sets up the feeling of like, am I just getting railroaded this whole time? I agree. Like you're, I agree. It makes every single question feel like you're just going to railroad me and it makes the dead ends feel much more obvious. Like I think that was a really poor choice to make the thing everyone is going to pick be an immediate loss. It was not good for the rest of the experience. The first branch should have branched a bit more. Yeah, it needed to do something so that you felt like something was actually occurring. Now, the thing I will give them credit for is at some point Netflix just booted me out of the show. And I presume that's like, oh, I found all the endings or all the endings they care to show me. Like I spent an evening just like keep clicking. And then Netflix was eventually like, okay, you're done with Bander's match. And they did have a lot of different places for you to go and things that like there were branches within it. But I feel like the way they set that first thing up will make you feel like they're fewer than they really are. But it's a delicate thing. And one of the reasons why I feel like the choose your own adventure medium is flawed is perhaps one of the best examples I've ever seen. If I have to pick like what's the greatest example of this is a video game called Firewatch, which I can genuinely recommend to everyone, even if you're not a video game player. Because it's just a beautiful game where you spend most of your time walking through the woods. And there is like a choose your own adventure element and things happen. But it's like going to a national park for an afternoon. And it's a really good story in the hip professional voice actors. And I absolutely loved it. And I thought, man, that is just like a seamless experience tremendous a plus recommend everyone spoilers. And of course, then I go right back to the start. And I'm like, I want to play this again. I want to see what the other options are. And the reason it felt like such a seamless experience the first time is because all of your choices are totally meaningless. And they're just going to move like they're carefully moving you down the one path. So it's like, oh, this was all just a lie. Like I wasn't making any choices. And I feel like that's a problem intrinsic to this medium that like it's very hard to branch and keep it a story. But if you have a very good story, it can't branch. And so you're always having to pick like one of these two things. And if you have a very good story, like, why don't you just make it a story? Why don't you just make it an episode instead? There's also a real FOMO problem where if you do make good branches with good stories, when you're doing it, you're always worried, oh, I wish I'd taken the other choice. So what's the ending I didn't see? You come to the end. There's this real feeling of, you're not satisfied. And I don't want to sit there and have to, you know, spend a whole evening on it like you didn't try every single branch to see every possible ending. But my personality means I probably will do that. And I don't think that's a good thing to have created. Like, you know, when I watch my Netflix at the end of the night, I don't want to go to sleep and think, oh, what if I chose on that and have what have I missed? Is there a way better ending that everyone else was watching? It's not good. A place where I will give it its technical achievement that I thought was handled really well is when you start over the decision to just flash little sections of everything that you've done to like, catch you back up to where you are. Yeah, that was good. Like, that was good. It was a great decision that could have easily gone wrong. They could have done that the wrong way. And I'm pretty sure I could have to watch more closely than I cared to. But I'm pretty sure that they changed some of those little flashes so they were slightly different as well. Like, it felt more interesting to watch those flashes sometimes. Again, it was an interesting technical achievement. But I can't feel like like a good episode of Black Mirror leaves you thinking about something. It leaves an idea in your head, you know, nose dive as an episode is like, oh, this detolitarian nightmare is slowly coming true every day. Like, it's a thing that you think about. And Bander's match as a story was just so all over the place. Yeah, I can't even say like, what is the idea of this? Was the idea that we have no free will like not really like it. There's nothing here. Like, there's just a big mess of ideas and none of them really stands out. And it makes for a really poor narrative. I was so preoccupied with whether they could do it. I didn't stop to think if they should. That's very true, Brady. So like, I don't regret the evening that I spent. I don't regret it, but I wouldn't recommend it. I feel like I would recommend it as a circus curiosity. I feel like I would recommend it, but as an interesting one off. Do you think this is the start? I mean, obviously Netflix have built the capability now. Surely they did just build that capability for one show. Are we going to see a whole rash of programs like this now? Here's my prediction. I think there will be at most no more than three shows like this ever produced on that flick. And maybe only one more. Because I think it works as a circus freak. I don't think it works as a genre. Do you think they know that? And they've built it just to give themself a little subscriber spike for a month or two? Possibly. I can easily imagine that they think it's a good idea because being able to choose your own adventure sounds like a good idea, but I just don't think it is. I tell you what, they're also harvesting a lot of data from it. I've already seen like newspaper articles saying, you know, English people love tea more because they were less likely to pour the tea over their computer keyboard than American viewers and stuff like that. So maybe this is just going to be a big data harvesting thing about all our preferences and they're going to start reading our minds. Yeah, but again, you need people to use it. I think this would grow really tiresome as a repeated viewing experience. I don't think people are going to go for it. I think it's a total gimmick. I don't know if Netflix knows that or not. But I wouldn't be surprised if there are very, very few things on Netflix that are ever made like this. I would even give it like pretty good odds that there's no more than three at most, including Bander's match. Big Co, big Co. This episode is going to come back to haunt you if there's like a thousand episodes of it and people are posting to you with your big boat prediction there. Yeah, I like, I could totally be wrong. Like, you know, I'm maybe taking the temperature of the people wrongly because I haven't listened to the people at all. So I'm just imposing my thoughts upon them. I think it's a circus freak. So there's only going to be one. So yeah, this could totally come back to bite me in the ass. We'll see. So I recommend it. Brady doesn't. Just thought maybe we should end the show with a new corner. Yeah. This is going to be Christmas card corner because obviously we received a lot of Christmas cards with questions and topics that people want us to cover. We only got through a tiny fraction of them with our 12 days of Hello Internet. Since you left Grey, we've received that many cards again at the post box. So the amount of cards we've got has doubled since you were here. Right. So you saw how big that box was. You can double that in your head. I'd rather not. That was a lot of cards. So if you go to podcastpostcards.com, which is the site where I occasionally upload postcards from our flag referendum, that website for a while has been taken over by Christmas cards. And I'm going to be putting Christmas cards on this so you can see what people sent in. Read some of their questions and letters. At the moment, I've been putting ones on there that we've already discussed. Just because I thought people would want to see what they look like. So at the moment, you're probably going to be seeing ones that seem familiar because we talked about them. But later on, I'm going to start putting someone there that haven't made it onto the show. But because we've also got all of these questions from teams. And the only way you can ask great questions at the moment is through these cards because of project cyclops. I thought maybe occasionally we could do a Christmas card corner and work our way through some more of those questions that have come in. Okay. You have a Christmas card for us. Yeah, I've got one here. This one came from Sandra, who sent a lovely card, which I love even more because inside she drew a little portrait of Audrey and Lulu, which is really cute. And a question that Sandra asked, I thought we could discuss to end the show, is which actors would play you in a movie? Maybe you can choose for each other, then yourselves and see if they match. What character to play you in a movie or what character to play me in a movie, Gray? I actually know who I want to play you. I'm going to look up his name. Who's going to play me, Gray? I swear, Brady. I'm not trying to inflate you or anything here. But there's something about that looks wise, who would be movie Brady? And I can't get Brad Pitt out of my head. Oh, dude. End the show right now. I'm rushing dad's stairs and telling my wife that. Not like just to take you down a tiny bit. Closer like World War Z Brad Pitt than say fight club Brad Pitt. But it's like, I don't know. It seems kind of right in my head for the look. Brad Pitt doesn't strike me as matching you very personality wise, but he is a pretty good actor when he wants to be. I feel like this actor thing is really like a discussion point that people like. But rarely do I meet someone who I feel like, oh, this person obviously has like some actor who would represent them. I'm so happy. I almost don't know if I should tell you who's going to play you in the movie now. So you don't have to. So hello internet the movie is going to be starring Brad Pitt as Brady Harron. And in the role of CGP Gray, I am going to cast the actor Michael Shannon. Michael Shannon. I don't know who Michael Shannon is. He looked him up. Yeah, I'll find out the truth here. I mean, he doesn't bear a striking resemblance to you, but you know, put a pair of glasses on him and change his hair to a bit and it'll do. But I also think he would play you really well because he's an actor who I think plays kind of. He could play that kind of hyper rational, almost robotic, slightly likeable as well, but in that kind of cold way. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen this guy in a movie. He's in one of the Superman movies as the villain. I've seen bits of that, but the villain was really bland. And so I like didn't really stand out. But here's the thing. I know who Michael Shannon is. And when you said the name, I'm like, I know this name from somewhere. I haven't seen him in any movies. But what I know him from is this amazing YouTube video where he reads this letter from the head of a sorority to her pledges about how they're supposed to act on like a party night. And how they really need to like get together this night and show like what Delta Gamma Kai is like. And he's doing it sort of dry and then he gets increasingly angry as time goes on. And it's amazing. I've probably watched it like 10 times because there's something about it which is just fantastic. If people want to know the performance that got him the role of CGP Gray in my opinion, is his performance in boardwalk empire. I haven't seen that as on my list. I haven't seen all of that, but I have seen him in it and I really liked him in it. And that was the role that made me think, okay, he could take on the daunting role of CGP Gray in the Halloween, to net movie. Okay, here we go. Halloween, to net the movie starring Brad Pitt and Becca from Delta Gamma sorority.
== References ==
Category:Hello Internet Episode
Category:Article
__NOTOC__