Transcript
Speaker: Bonjour and welcome to Sabet, the podcast about psychology, philosophy, and minor grievances which shall not stand.
Speaker: I'm Greg.
Speaker: This is Sophia.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And if this is not your first time listening to the show, you may be saying to yourself, this doesn't seem correct.
Speaker: Yes, today, up is down, left is right, cats and dogs living together.
Speaker: Every week, Sophia brings a new topic to the table, and I'm usually riding second chair, but today we are flipping that script and
Speaker: I will be doing the emotional labor of driving this here conversation.
Speaker: And Sophia will be the level-headed Watson to my heroin addict homes.
Speaker: It's the Greg show.
Speaker: This may be a one-off thing.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: Maybe we'll trade back and forth from time to time.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: We're going to throw that spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks.
Speaker: Sophia, how are you doing?
Speaker: How are you feeling about all this?
Speaker: I'm doing great.
Speaker: I'm excited to see how this turns out.
Speaker: I'm kind of scared to be playing second chair, even though I'm very used to this in my normal life.
Speaker: It's like now I have to like come up with questions.
Speaker: I feel like you're very good at like analyzing what I say and coming up with questions.
Speaker: So I'll do my best.
Speaker: But I'm excited to see how you can.
Speaker: Well, if you need to wrestle control away from me at any point, I will not be offended.
Speaker: Just keep it on the rails.
Speaker: No, you got this.
Speaker: I'll do my best to play on the back.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So, well, let's let this freak flag fly and let's get down to rant.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: So one of the things we do at the end of every show is we recommend an activity, a movie, a show, a band, a book.
Speaker: Um, I love giving people ideas on that stuff and I love it when someone gives me ideas on that stuff.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And one of the great joys in life is sharing the things that you love with other people.
Speaker: I think as humans, the act of sharing is something that addresses a couple of psychological needs.
Speaker: One, it connects us to another human.
Speaker: It says, you know, I know and respect you enough to put myself out there and let you in on this thing that I think is special.
Speaker: And that's the first half of that interaction.
Speaker: The second half and
Speaker: I think the Venn diagram between this and the first half might not overlap too often for everyone is that person takes our advice and does or watches or listens or reads the thing.
Speaker: And then they come back to us and they tell us what they thought.
Speaker: And they continue the conversation and they validate our recommendation.
Speaker: And then maybe they give us the opportunity to unpack all the thoughts and feelings we've had about that thing.
Speaker: And then the jackpot situation in that is when you get to experience something novel with another person in that same moment.
Speaker: So like it have that shared experience.
Speaker: The close second to that is when you've, for example, seen a really great movie and you get to sit with someone who you just know is going to love it as much as you did.
Speaker: And you get to watch them experience that for the first time and you get to anticipate their reaction to the scary part or the twist or whatever.
Speaker: Sophia, I'm going to put you on the spot.
Speaker: Is there a concert or a movie that like a core part of that memory is tied to the person that was there with you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, recently I watched Squid Game, the challenge four times with four different groups of people because I knew they would enjoy it or I like wanted to see their reaction to something so weird.
Speaker: So yes, I would say there are definitely things that I do just in relation to other people.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So with, so this is interesting.
Speaker: So with four different groups of people, were there four wildly different reactions?
Speaker: I would say they were all pretty similar, I think.
Speaker: But yeah, I think they were pretty similar.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: I just like wanted to share it with different people to see their reactions.
Speaker: Were, did their reactions jive with your reactions?
Speaker: Like, were you like,
Speaker: anticipating what they were going to see and then like that was coming to fruition each time or were you surprised at all with something that you thought was going to be off-putting or exciting or something and they were like you know out of sorts about it or they they laughed when you cringed like that sort of stuff I think for the most part they reacted in the way that I reacted but I feel like that's kind of like a production thing where you know the producers want us to react a certain way and we fell for it so I don't know
Speaker: In seeing them react, do you feel like that changed?
Speaker: Did you get the same feeling each time?
Speaker: Or having seen it time and time and time again, did you react differently?
Speaker: Did it change how you were watching it?
Speaker: I think it did change how I was watching it because I knew what would happen, obviously, after the first watch.
Speaker: But seeing the other person's reaction made it more...
Speaker: rewarding for me.
Speaker: Like it was more about the other person than it was about like me watching it.
Speaker: Although because I knew more about it, I could have more commentary about what was happening.
Speaker: So in a way I was like that annoying person who knew what was going to happen and trying not to spoil it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if that answers your question.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: I mean, that's, and that's, I like that.
Speaker: I, I,
Speaker: I like being the person that knows and just like trying to keep that to myself, but then, you know, anticipating what that what that person is going to think.
Speaker: One thing when I was thinking about this, I was thinking about when I was in high school and an example of that for me that is way less recent than than Squid Game is.
Speaker: When I was in high school, my friend Lauren and I went to a concert.
Speaker: We went to a Yellow Card and Something Corporate concert.
Speaker: And Something Corporate was my friend Lauren's favorite band.
Speaker: And I like concerts in general, so I went along.
Speaker: And it was this two-hour drive to get to the show from Iowa to St.
Speaker: Peter, Minnesota.
Speaker: And we're nerdy teenagers, right?
Speaker: And we didn't want to miss anything.
Speaker: So we got there so early.
Speaker: like first ones in the door and like ran to the barricades in front of the stage.
Speaker: And there is an opening band that started like right after doors opened.
Speaker: And by the time the headliners went on, it was a full house.
Speaker: But when the opener was on, the room was maybe like a quarter full, like barely, like feel sorry for them.
Speaker: But they were a band called The Format and they started their first song.
Speaker: And my friend and I looked at each other as this was happening, we're like, wait,
Speaker: this is really good.
Speaker: And then they played a couple more songs and the whole time we're like looking at each other and looking around this barely full room.
Speaker: And I turned to her at some point and I'm like, this might be my new favorite band.
Speaker: And she was like, yeah, me too.
Speaker: And like objectively, I,
Speaker: I understand that there are better, more important bands and there have for sure been better concerts than whatever, 2003 semi-rural Minnesota third opening slot show.
Speaker: But I will always have that super specific time that my friend and I found our favorite band at the same time.
Speaker: And like, you know, we ran back to the merch table and bought the CD and like went home and tried to convert all of our friends, which so then with that,
Speaker: My next question for you is, is there a song or a band that you play them for someone else for the first time?
Speaker: And it's like a low key game changer for how you're going to get along with that person.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: I mean, like in general, when I share like a song that I like with someone and wait, let me backtrack.
Speaker: Like when I share a song with someone and then they don't like it, I feel like that kind of takes the enjoyment that I find from that song out.
Speaker: Like I don't like it anymore.
Speaker: And I'm just like, oh, why did I share that part of myself with this person?
Speaker: And I like cringe at myself.
Speaker: But also, yeah.
Speaker: The act of sharing, kind of like what you said, like sharing the songs that I like with someone kind of shows the trust or the ability to be vulnerable with this person.
Speaker: And I'm hoping that they like it as much as I do or that they understand why I like it that much.
Speaker: But obviously, why I like it is going to be different from why someone else likes it.
Speaker: So in a way, it's a very interesting place to be in because...
Speaker: when you share something with someone, they can either take it in a good way or they can also take it in a way that you're not expecting, which isn't necessarily bad.
Speaker: But also for me, I'm just like, oh man, I was hoping you would like this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like for me with the format, I have friends who could not care less and that's fine.
Speaker: But there have also been people who were like acquaintances at best.
Speaker: And I like put a song on in the car or they like saw a poster at my house and there was this like
Speaker: eyes locking recognition of like, oh, you know who this is, and I know who this is.
Speaker: And now we're friends.
Speaker: And I feel like that's kind of the special validation that you get from something like that.
Speaker: And you can only get from an interaction like that.
Speaker: So that said, the problem for me, at least nowadays, as I've gotten older, in the friend group that I've relied on to talk about this stuff with has
Speaker: moved across the country or had kids or realize that I'm just a big old dummy.
Speaker: And I think I'm not alone in that.
Speaker: It gets harder and harder to find that connection on a regular basis.
Speaker: So there is a type of online content that tends to get kind of ridiculed.
Speaker: And people call it trash.
Speaker: They say it's pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Speaker: But
Speaker: it's the asynchronous parasocial version of what we were just talking about.
Speaker: And it's a solution to that problem of mine.
Speaker: And it is the lowly react video.
Speaker: And like, I get it.
Speaker: If you compare someone who makes react videos to a channel like, um,
Speaker: answer in progress or folding ideas or one of those like awesome top tier channels that spends a month or six months researching and writing and building these high production value videos.
Speaker: And then some kid turns on a shitty webcam and records teenager listens to rage against the machine for the first time.
Speaker: And it gets 50 bazillion views.
Speaker: I don't disagree that there is a huge gulf in craftsmanship between those two types of creators.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But I also think we have to recognize the value behind what reactors are doing and the content and the relationship voids they're filling for the people who enjoy them.
Speaker: Like for the people who like Rage Against the Machine, there was that first time that you heard Killing in the Name of and that switch flipped in your soul and you were like, I think I'm a revolutionary.
Speaker: And it's dumb.
Speaker: It's a bet.
Speaker: But when you watch someone have that same visceral reaction and they get excited, you get excited.
Speaker: And I think there's like a pure joy in that.
Speaker: One of the other things that I personally have turned to ReactTube for, one of the things that got me interested in film and why I went to film school is...
Speaker: DVDs used to come with multiple film commentary tracks and there'd be the director talking about the movie.
Speaker: There'd be the main actors.
Speaker: You'd get like someone like Robert Rodriguez who would basically, you know, turn a watch through of their movie into a free how to make movies class.
Speaker: And sometimes it'd be Chuck Palahniuk explaining the themes behind Fight Club.
Speaker: Sometimes it'd be.
Speaker: Kevin Smith making dick jokes, but I used to watch them all.
Speaker: And I'm sure there are a couple of movies I've seen the commentary track version more than I've seen the actual movie.
Speaker: But that's one of those things that you rarely get anymore when you buy a digital movie and definitely not on streaming.
Speaker: But some of the better movie reactors, you can do a full watch along with them.
Speaker: And that gets me to kind of the next thing that these reactors are doing.
Speaker: So if you watch a video you've seen before next to someone else or like Squid Game, right?
Speaker: You kind of get to see it through their eyes.
Speaker: And sometimes that's good.
Speaker: Like, you know, I watched Back to the Future, Jurassic Park with my six-year-old and I get to watch him freak out about the same parts that I did when I was six.
Speaker: And sometimes you watch a movie that you used to think was great and you see the cracks you didn't see before.
Speaker: And then the other part that I was thinking about is I remember in AP lit in high school, apparently this ran about 2003.
Speaker: Anyway, our teacher handed us out cliff notes.
Speaker: And if you don't know what those are, they're like spark notes, lit charts, shmoop, whatever.
Speaker: They're little chapter by chapter summaries of the books you're supposed to read.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Anyway, she'd hand out like Dracula or Canterbury Tales or whatever, and she'd hand us the cliff notes to go along with it.
Speaker: And up to that point, we'd always kind of been told that people who use cliff notes are the people who are trying to pass the test without actually reading the book.
Speaker: But the way that she explained it and the way that kind of always stuck with me is those things aren't meant to get you out of reading the book.
Speaker: What they do is they help you get the plot comprehension part of the book out of the way so you're not struggling to keep that self straight.
Speaker: And then when you read the actual text, you're focusing on the craft, you're focusing on the word choice, you're focusing on the stuff that makes the book special.
Speaker: And when you watch or listen to a piece of media next to someone else, it highlights what makes that thing special.
Speaker: So like watching teenager listens to Rage Against the Machine, you know the song.
Speaker: You know when it's going to crescendo.
Speaker: You know when the tension release stuff happens.
Speaker: But now you're thinking about what that song is going to do to this kid.
Speaker: You get the chance to think more deeply about this thing that you've heard a thousand times.
Speaker: And you have the chance to appreciate something that you love in a totally different way.
Speaker: So I think people should give reactive people a break.
Speaker: I think we should recognize it as the public service that it is.
Speaker: And I think we should listen to more of them.
Speaker: I think you'll be a better watcher of things, a better listener of things.
Speaker: And it can kind of fill the gap in your life that maybe you don't have with your friends.
Speaker: Or maybe you're Safiya and you have four sets of friends that you can watch the same thing with over and over again.
Speaker: And all of a sudden, you're a Squid Game expert.
Speaker: That's beautiful.
Speaker: I haven't thought about react videos for a really long time until you talked about this.
Speaker: And it's kind of funny because I actually watched them for the same reason that you were talking about in your rant.
Speaker: Like literally when I was really big into K-pop in high school and I thought this was like before K-pop was like really popular.
Speaker: This was like when BTS was just like breaking into like the worldwide industry.
Speaker: And I felt like I was the only person in my friend group or in my school really who even knew who BTS was.
Speaker: But I thought they were great.
Speaker: Like I was the person who was like, this group is revolutionary.
Speaker: Like they're doing things that no one else has ever done before.
Speaker: No one understands.
Speaker: So whenever I would watch like the react videos that I would watch were like, I remember there was this channel called musicians react to something.
Speaker: And I think someone like recommended them like BTS or like K-pop songs to listen to.
Speaker: And I would watch those videos.
Speaker: And I really liked them because, first of all, I consider this person, like these people, to be experts in their field.
Speaker: Like, obviously, I think they were like Juilliard students or... What was that school in Boston?
Speaker: Musicians React, if it's the one I'm thinking of, it's the people that are part of Patreon.
Speaker: So it's like the Pomplamoose and... Yeah, they're like super well-versed musicians that...
Speaker: Yes, pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah, like they know their stuff.
Speaker: So like listening to someone like that watch or like watching someone like that listen to a song or a band that I really liked for the first time and really liking it and being like, oh, this is what they did in this moment or like breaking it down musically in a way that even I could understand.
Speaker: And I could be like, oh, so this is what they do.
Speaker: This is why I like what they do.
Speaker: I feel like that gave me a sense of validation because, like I said, I didn't really know anyone who liked it.
Speaker: And I was like, why am I the only person that I feel likes this stuff?
Speaker: But when I went to that medium, the React video, to get that validation, I'd be like, okay, this person who I should probably respect and admire likes this.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: I should be more, you know, forward about it or like I should, you know, feel less weird about liking it.
Speaker: It's hard to explain, but it's kind of like what you were saying.
Speaker: It's two sides of the coin, right?
Speaker: Because you get a channel like Musicians React where they're coming at it from a production and a craft standpoint and they can speak intelligently about what makes that great or what makes it listenable or what causes them to emote from a kind of an academic standpoint.
Speaker: And then you could probably find someone who's reacting to a K-pop song that's just like the whole video is just them like bobbing their head and freaking out, right?
Speaker: And like I think those two things are valid and for different reasons.
Speaker: Like there's the validation of like, oh, this person is like me and they're appreciating it on a visceral level.
Speaker: And then there's the part where you're learning more from someone who has a different perspective than you.
Speaker: And you get to bring that back.
Speaker: You know, you could go to school the next day or to your friends the next day.
Speaker: And you have a whole new set of perspectives, a whole new set of information that you can share with them and, I don't know, maybe win them over.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I can cite my sources for reasons to like BTS.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker: I feel like they both fill a parasocial role of either companionship, I guess, of seeing someone.
Speaker: who you would see as a peer liking it and like also seeing an expert like it.
Speaker: Like, kind of like I mentioned before, I haven't really seen a React video in a really long time, but I have recently...
Speaker: like with Taylor Swift guitar videos, I think she's a very good acoustic guitar player.
Speaker: And sometimes I feel like people downplay that because she's a woman, all of the misogyny in the music industry, you know, she's a very popular pop artist, but she's also really good at guitar.
Speaker: So sometimes when I want to get that validation and I don't specifically like know like the audience or like the person I'm trying to win over, like in this case, usually it's like some acoustic guitar player dude who wouldn't normally listen to Taylor Swift.
Speaker: but for some reason does react videos on YouTube.
Speaker: So I'll like watch it and be like, does this person like, will he like this video of Taylor Swift playing Cornelia street acoustically in Paris?
Speaker: Because I think that's one of her best performances.
Speaker: And I want someone else to validate that who like, isn't a Taylor Swift fan, like isn't someone I know who's a Taylor Swift fan.
Speaker: So I'll watch that.
Speaker: I'll be like,
Speaker: look at him like Taylor Swift.
Speaker: I don't know why it makes me feel good.
Speaker: I'm not even the person who he's trying to win over.
Speaker: Like if anything, like Taylor Swift should feel good about that.
Speaker: But for some reason, watching someone who seems like they wouldn't like it, like the thing that you like also feels validating.
Speaker: So I don't know what purpose that serves, but it's another reason.
Speaker: Well, like you said, I mean, it is parasocial and I think we have to be clear about
Speaker: I guess I'm not saying that it's a substitute for enjoying something with your friends or enjoying something with somebody that you know.
Speaker: But absent that opportunity, it's like maybe not the next best thing, but I think it's one of the next best things that is available.
Speaker: And because it is...
Speaker: easy to access, right?
Speaker: Like you can, it's just, it's on YouTube.
Speaker: It's out there.
Speaker: Maybe only 30,000 people watch it, but that's 30,000 more people than, you know, that have talked about something.
Speaker: Um, and so it's like being able to find community or being able to find a niche, right?
Speaker: And that's the promise of the internet, right?
Speaker: It's like connecting people with like, like interests and, and expanding ideas and mindsets.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think overall it's just, it's a good thing and we need to recognize that it's a good thing.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: I feel like it's kind of just like understanding the limits of the medium.
Speaker: Like obviously it's not going to replace like a video essay or like
Speaker: a deeply well thought out research documentary.
Speaker: Like it is what it is.
Speaker: It is still a person just like putting a video of someone else in the corner and putting themselves in a ginormous frame.
Speaker: Like if anything, it is, I mean, I wouldn't say it's low effort to be honest, because you have to have the personality to be able to like retain viewers.
Speaker: In any YouTube, I guess, video, but also especially in React videos because that's the only thing you have going for you is just your personality and how you react to things.
Speaker: It's a different skill set for sure.
Speaker: I mean, when I say effort, I mean time costs, really.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: They didn't take six months to get this video together.
Speaker: Ideally, I think the most satisfying React videos is a cold viewing.
Speaker: And that's same with in real life.
Speaker: If you're going to watch something with somebody...
Speaker: and it's their first time, that's a different experience than it is if, okay, we've both seen this movie a bunch, and let's pop it on and hang out.
Speaker: The value of that is just different.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: I mean, everything has value.
Speaker: Even the thing that you watch that you put on in the background, so you have something in the background while you do something else.
Speaker: I mean, we do that in my apartment all the time.
Speaker: No one's really watching what's on the TV, but it's just there as background noise.
Speaker: But I feel like that's still...
Speaker: in a different way than like watching something for the first time.
Speaker: That's just like a different situation.
Speaker: Like there's situations for different things and to be, to look down upon something just because it doesn't have the same perceived effort.
Speaker: as something else.
Speaker: Just like understanding the different contexts in which you can enjoy things.
Speaker: Like sometimes you just want to enjoy things that are bad.
Speaker: I mean, not like bad, but you know, I think maybe it's, I mean, granted we're talking about YouTube videos and that sort of thing.
Speaker: We're talking about analysis in different levels, but if you're talking about written or, or filmed works too, you know, it's people will look down upon,
Speaker: romance novels or detective novels or genre fiction as being lesser than a generalized high concept book might be.
Speaker: But there's value to working within a genre because you can explore things in a specific way and get to ideas in a different way because you have that shorthand to get past kind of setting things up in a world.
Speaker: And you can focus on ideas that would take a long time or be less accessible in another way.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, it's like Taylor Swift.
Speaker: Going back to Taylor Swift, people always criticize her.
Speaker: It always goes back to Taylor Swift.
Speaker: It always goes back to Taylor Swift with me.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: But people criticize her for playing the same four chords or the same strolling patterns in every song.
Speaker: And she does play...
Speaker: so on so easy chords, but she also, I think, is a very good storyteller and the way that she's able to switch up those chords in every song or every album and tell a story and the lyricism that she's able to provide with them, I feel like that's her niche.
Speaker: That's her talent is that she's a guitar player, but also a song... I was going to say a songstress.
Speaker: A songstress.
Speaker: Yes, a songwriter.
Speaker: Yes, a songstress.
Speaker: And I think people forget that when they just look at her as a guitar player or just look at a romance writer as a romance writer and compare that to a fantasy Game of Thrones kind of novel.
Speaker: There's two separate things going on right here.
Speaker: You can't really put them against each other.
Speaker: It's just liking what you like, but understanding why other things exist.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: To that same kind of
Speaker: kind of idea that you have with Taylor Swift, kind of having her box of tools and using it in so many different ways.
Speaker: A musician that I really like is Mike Doty.
Speaker: And he had a band in the 90s called Soul Coughing.
Speaker: And when that band broke up and he went out on his own, there was an interview at some point.
Speaker: And somebody brought up that listening to his albums one after another
Speaker: every album has the same four songs on it, just remixed in different ways.
Speaker: Um, and his response to that was, well, yeah, but they're my four favorite songs.
Speaker: So I, I want to write them every time.
Speaker: And I want to explore what that song can be.
Speaker: If you add different lyrics or different instrumentation or stuff like that, there's value in having that baseline, having that platform and expanding on it.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And clearly he does well for himself because he sells a lot of albums.
Speaker: He tours all the time.
Speaker: He has a lot of fans.
Speaker: And if you listen to his stuff one after another, yeah, it's an E and an A chord over and over again.
Speaker: But you can do a lot with an E and an A chord.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Or if you're Taylor Swift, you can do a lot with a GCD.
Speaker: and write billion selling pop songs.
Speaker: I feel like that's the struggle of any artist, any musician, anyone who tries to create something original.
Speaker: There's always like criticism about, at least the artists that I follow, everyone's like, why does this sound like your last album?
Speaker: Or like, I see like them deviating from the style of their first album.
Speaker: And I'm like, did they want to do this?
Speaker: Or did they feel like they had to do this to stay relevant or like be seen as like creative?
Speaker: I don't know, you know?
Speaker: I feel like it'd be very hard to distinguish what you want versus what you think your audience wants.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I've never been famous.
Speaker: Speaking to Taylor Swift some more, that's why there's the heiress to her, right?
Speaker: Like she's kind of in her whole career has been like in three album cycles where if you take her first three albums, they sound really similar.
Speaker: And then there's a very clear shift in the next three.
Speaker: And then the latest three, there's a very clear shift.
Speaker: And I feel like, and maybe this is,
Speaker: again, this is just anecdotal, but I feel like as you watch artists grow and change, that's pretty common where you have like a three or four album cycle where they all are kind of iterating on the first idea that they had and they kind of get to their final form of that.
Speaker: And then they either do the ACDC thing where then they just make that same album forever and they have 25 albums that all have
Speaker: that are all exactly the same, like sit down to, they haven't even changed their guitars since they started.
Speaker: Or you have that artist that they have their group of fans that were with them for that first three.
Speaker: And then they almost have to, they have, you know, a subsection of that group will follow them wherever they go.
Speaker: But then they almost have to find a new group of fans every time they reinvent themselves.
Speaker: But if they don't do that, then they break up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's, and that's the option.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I was looking up that band.
Speaker: This might be a tangent, but I was looking up the band that you were talking about earlier, the format, because I was like, I feel like I've heard of them.
Speaker: And it's the guy from Fun, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Or is it the different?
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: So the story, I mean, to get geeky about it.
Speaker: So yeah, the format was a group out of Arizona.
Speaker: They got signed by the guy who is the Jimmy part of Jimmy Eat World.
Speaker: And so they were a duo.
Speaker: They got a band.
Speaker: They started touring.
Speaker: They put out two albums that were
Speaker: you know, it was their kind of indie darling type things they had.
Speaker: They had a pretty good following.
Speaker: And then they broke up midway through their third album, like recording their third album.
Speaker: And so they toured a lot with a band called Steel Train, which is Jack Antonoff's band from that era.
Speaker: And so Nate Roos, the lead singer from the format and from fun said, Hey, I've got all these songs that are half finished.
Speaker: And since they'd been touring with Steel Train, Jack came over, helped them finish the songs and put out the first fun album.
Speaker: And the reason it was called fun was it was supposed to be like a fun side project to finish these ideas.
Speaker: And then that started doing well.
Speaker: So then they recorded their second album, which is the big one that won Grammys and stuff.
Speaker: But like in to talk about fun, that was kind of all the further they could go because the band was built upon
Speaker: finishing some ideas and doing a side project.
Speaker: It was never meant to be a sustainable thing.
Speaker: And so then Nate went off to do Broadway and Jack went off to write Taylor Swift albums.
Speaker: But yeah, before all that, the format was and is emotionally my favorite band.
Speaker: They're very Beatle-y.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: Django pop.
Speaker: I'll have to listen to them.
Speaker: Although I think I have because the name really sounds familiar to me.
Speaker: But it might be like one of those early 2000s bands where like they have that like one phrase for their name or like one word for their name.
Speaker: Like Soundgarden or something.
Speaker: Well, that's 80s and 90s.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: My bad.
Speaker: They're that MySpace era band where it's all lowercase with a period at the end.
Speaker: Their first single was called The First Single.
Speaker: Their first album was called Album.
Speaker: Like it was very tongue in cheek what they were doing.
Speaker: And then their second album kind of has like a pet sounds, like lots of instrumentation, kind of proto fun.
Speaker: But really good.
Speaker: It's a good one to have on in the background when you're doing other things.
Speaker: I will keep that in mind.
Speaker: I like to listen to them, actually listen to them when I first listen.
Speaker: But if you're saying it's good elevator music, maybe I'll do that too.
Speaker: I mean, it's close listening to like he's he's a pretty clever songwriter.
Speaker: There's there's fun wordplay and there's stories that are going that are like common threads throughout the albums where you can basically see the the deterioration of his relationship with his girlfriend at the time, like in a in a way that's both sad and also like, oh, I see where this is going.
Speaker: It's a story.
Speaker: And I like that.
Speaker: I like that, too.
Speaker: I mean, that's like the essence of all Taylor Swift albums.
Speaker: And all the artists that I like, I feel like they write from personal experience, which I enjoy.
Speaker: But the whole tangent, the reason for the tangent.
Speaker: Well, I guess now there's two reasons because you mentioned that emotionally they're your favorite band.
Speaker: And also, but first of all, the reason why I mentioned that was because I feel like artists...
Speaker: I mean, this is just, like, what I feel.
Speaker: I have no idea if it's actually true, but, like, I feel like there's a certain point where you get, like, famous or, like, you do enough of a sound in your music and then, like, your audience either starts expecting that of you or they expect something different from you, but you don't want to do whatever they expect from you.
Speaker: And then you have to deviate.
Speaker: Like, you can't be in the same band anymore.
Speaker: Like, you either have to, like, start a new one or, like, start a solo project, you know, which I think...
Speaker: At least for fun, I know Jack Antonoff has like 10 different bands in his life.
Speaker: And Nate Roos, I don't really follow him as much.
Speaker: But I didn't know he was in this band until he joined Fun.
Speaker: So I feel like maybe they had the same situation.
Speaker: Once I read that, I was like, oh, maybe they had a whole creative fallout situation with their audience or each other.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's all speculation.
Speaker: But that's always a thing that I think people might run into when they're creative.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, I mean, with them getting back to the parasocial thing, like as a removed party from the situation, like there's lots, you can go down rabbit holes of rumors and speculation and stuff.
Speaker: And yeah, it sounds like they probably had some creative differences and all that stuff, but, um, but it's still fun to, to read about it and react to.
Speaker: And listen to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of the, uh,
Speaker: One of the case studies that just thinking about what I just said that I was thinking about is I really, and this is going to, again, out me as kind of a lame person, but I really liked Jack Johnson, the singer-songwriter, when he first came out.
Speaker: That first album came out and I had it in my car and it just was a perfect summer album.
Speaker: And so then I was following message boards and stuff like that.
Speaker: Um, and I think he's a perfect example of someone who the fan base that he grew with his first three albums were all, all three of his first albums are basically the same thing because they're all songs that were written in the same period and then basically parceled out.
Speaker: Like, you know, from the time he was 19 to the time he was 25, he had all these songs that he wrote and then, you know, did 10 on one album and 10 on another and 10 on another.
Speaker: And then by the time that well ran dry, his reputation was he's a musician who just writes the same album every time, which is true because they were all written in the same period.
Speaker: They all have the same point of view.
Speaker: But then his fourth album came out and it was a relatively large departure from those three.
Speaker: And if you go to a show
Speaker: everybody's there to hear the songs from the first three albums and like 75% of the set is that first, those first three, but he has 10 albums.
Speaker: And I like, that's probably true of a lot of legacy bands, right?
Speaker: Like bands that are even bands that are from the seventies, the stuff that they're famous for is the first three to five albums.
Speaker: And this is getting way far away from reacting.
Speaker: So, but this is what we do.
Speaker: I, I don't know.
Speaker: It's rare to bring it back to Taylor Swift to have a sustained career that what you're known for based on where you're standing in the crowd could be entirely different.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, bringing it back to your thesis kind of almost, at least you mentioned it when you were ranting.
Speaker: But also bringing it back to Taylor Swift, because I was thinking about what you said, where you go to a concert, and there's always the few songs or the section of a concert where people don't know the lyrics, or they're like, why are they playing these songs?
Speaker: I mean, I felt that in the Taylor Swift era's tour, because with her newest album, Midnight's, the energy was not there.
Speaker: Everyone else was very hyped for every other era, but for her newest era...
Speaker: either because it was like the last like part of a three hour concert and everyone was just tired at that point or people just like don't identify with those songs as much because they're newer.
Speaker: It would just, it didn't have, it kind of have that energy of like, people were like, what is this song?
Speaker: Why are we, why is she playing this song?
Speaker: Go back to, you know, Red or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's interesting because her newest album is both my daughter's who's four and my wife's
Speaker: favorite favorite Taylor Swift album.
Speaker: Like that's the one if we if we're in the car and we try to put on red my daughter's like no do not that one do something else.
Speaker: That's so interesting.
Speaker: So again I think every person is different.
Speaker: I also but I also think the most recent album is probably the one that lends itself least to a stadium show because it is down well
Speaker: Her last three are a little more downbeat and a little bit more kind of vibey.
Speaker: I feel like her energy is different than like a straight up three minute pop song type of thing.
Speaker: So I could see where that would start to drag after a while.
Speaker: Yeah, that's probably also true.
Speaker: I mean, a lot of them are slower, a lot more reverb.
Speaker: So there's not a lot you can do with that.
Speaker: Like looking at the videos afterwards or like listening to the songs afterwards, after I listened to them in the concert, I liked them more than when I first heard the album.
Speaker: And that kind of goes back to your point of like experiencing things in a different context and liking them for that context.
Speaker: It's like, I did not like that album at all.
Speaker: But after I watched it with my friends, I liked it.
Speaker: And also, like, the songs that I did enjoy or, like, the songs that I feel like got the most hype at the Taylor Swift concert were the songs that I think people had the most emotional resonance with.
Speaker: Like, the nostalgic songs.
Speaker: Like, You Belong With Me, Love Story.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You can sing along with.
Speaker: And it's almost like a campfire song, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like, objectively, are they her best songs?
Speaker: Honestly, maybe.
Speaker: But also, it's the memory that you have with that song of being like, however old you were.
Speaker: I was like five probably when they came out and just jamming to it or whatever that memory is.
Speaker: I feel like a lot of people with popular songs, popular artists have a memory associated with it and that's why they like it, regardless of whether or not it's objectively good.
Speaker: So, goes back to your thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Two points with that.
Speaker: I would posit that her most recent songs are her best songs, but her most classic songs are the best songs.
Speaker: Like in terms of archetype of song, like they are perfectly crafted songs and her newest stuff is less archetypical and more interesting and, you know, better crafted lyrically, more interestingly crafted lyrically.
Speaker: but they're also not your best archetypical song.
Speaker: Like if you were to point to this is what a song is, you wouldn't use, I don't know, Antihero, for example.
Speaker: Although Antihero is pretty close to an archetypical song.
Speaker: The other thing I was thinking of is, again, going back to how experience shapes what you do and what you like and talking about how you went back and listened to her album later after the concert
Speaker: and you liked it better.
Speaker: I've had the opposite experience where an artist that I wasn't super familiar with.
Speaker: Um, so at the time, um, do you know who Jeff Tweedy is?
Speaker: I don't think so.
Speaker: Uh, he's the lead singer of a band called Wilco.
Speaker: I've heard of Wilco.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: So like I had heard some Wilco songs.
Speaker: Um, when I saw him, he did like a solo acoustic tour.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And so I went to that show knowing, you know, if he was he was going to play for two hours and I think he did 30 songs.
Speaker: I probably knew five of them going in.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it was one of the best shows I've ever seen.
Speaker: Like he had such command of the crowd, like every time he would start playing, everyone would be completely silent, like pin drop silent.
Speaker: And then he would finish the song and it would be this explosion of sound.
Speaker: People were so happy about it.
Speaker: And then immediately like perfect hush to like just hear everything he was saying.
Speaker: And it was like one of those magical shows.
Speaker: So I got the bootleg of the concert, right?
Speaker: And I still have it.
Speaker: I put it on from time to time.
Speaker: But after the show, I was like, okay, you know what?
Speaker: Now I'm a Jeff Tweedy fan.
Speaker: I didn't know I was a Jeff Tweedy fan before.
Speaker: I'm a Jeff Tweedy fan.
Speaker: Go back and listen to
Speaker: the studio versions of the songs that he played.
Speaker: I didn't think they were that great.
Speaker: You know, are they great?
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: If you were to say, you know, if you were to put it on Musicians React, I bet they would break down each song and say why it's great.
Speaker: But like the the crappy like bootleg audio of the concert.
Speaker: is my platonic ideal of a Jeff Tweedy song.
Speaker: And unfortunately, he'll never be able to live up to that in another way for me, which I feel is like the opposite of what you just said about Taylor Swift and going back and hearing your stuff.
Speaker: By the same token, somebody who is super into those studio albums or to like a Wilco, like full band show, probably had no connection to the Jeff Tweedy show the way that I did.
Speaker: Yeah, I have a similar experience, actually, almost word for word, but almost not.
Speaker: When I saw Tamino in concert, it was a very intimate experience.
Speaker: It was just him and a guitar in a very small venue.
Speaker: And I was a Tamino fan before, but kind of like with Jeff Tweedy.
Speaker: It was like I'd never seen just like a fully acoustic set where it's just like his voice carrying the whole concert.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: He'd done tours before, I think, in Europe with a full band.
Speaker: So I think I was expecting that.
Speaker: And I feel like the feel would be completely different had there been a full band.
Speaker: But to experience just him and a guitar just wailing his heart out, I was like, this is amazing.
Speaker: This is the most.
Speaker: It's kind of like when artists have unplugged.
Speaker: concerts or like the whole well I guess like having an acoustic concert in general is supposed to evoke the feel of like you know intimacy or like I don't know have a connection with the audience but when I witnessed that I was like I am a fan in a way that I wasn't a fan before because I wasn't aware that it would be like this like I had an idea but he was even better than I expected him to be so it's yeah I mean it's kind of a similar situation where I like I mean I
Speaker: I liked him before, but seeing it acoustically, seeing it in that intimate venue, the combination of it all just made me like it even more.
Speaker: I don't think I can add to what you just said.
Speaker: Oh, me rapping out by fangirling over Tamino?
Speaker: True, true.
Speaker: I mean, I guess I will say, all that to say that
Speaker: The memories that you tie to something, I think, are the most important thing.
Speaker: Or not the most important thing, but they are a good indicator of things that you should enjoy.
Speaker: And not just what society tells you to enjoy.
Speaker: And experiencing somebody make those memories is a really valuable thing.
Speaker: Being that second chair.
Speaker: Second chair rights, viola, are just as important as violins.
Speaker: We'll make a shirt out of that.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I'm sure all the violas of the world would love to buy it.
Speaker: I think they're more than you think.
Speaker: Spiritually.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: That is true.
Speaker: So let me look at what I've written this week and rant about it.
Speaker: But this is the section of the podcast where we have a smaller rant, a less deep dive rant about something that we have been thinking about recently, something on our minds.
Speaker: I think going with the vein of music...
Speaker: I'm a big fan of a lot of things, actually, but musically, music theory speaking, I've been thinking a lot about when songs switch into halftime.
Speaker: I really enjoy a halftime breakdown is what I realized.
Speaker: And it's something that I haven't
Speaker: I've known listening-wise when there's a breakdown or when they switch into halftime, but I didn't know why or how that was achieved until I started playing drums because my teacher would tell me basically we would run through songs and then there would be a part where it slows down.
Speaker: And I thought they were playing slower for some reason, and I think a lot of people would because technically it sounds slower.
Speaker: But my drum teacher would be like, oh, you're actually playing, I think, if I remember correctly, the downbeats on the two and the four instead of the one and three.
Speaker: And the time signature is the same.
Speaker: Like the tempo of the song is literally the same.
Speaker: But by switching like where you feel like the emphasis on the song to like the middle and the end of like a phrase instead of like the beginning and then the middle just changes the entire feel of it.
Speaker: And I've been listening to, I mean, I always listen to a lot of music, but the songs that I've listened to recently, I've been, like, picking up where they do that.
Speaker: And I feel like I really like songs where they do that, where they, like, switch it up either, you know, through halftime, or they do, like, a key change in the bridge for some reason, or syncopation.
Speaker: Like, something where they do something different to elicit, like, a different feeling or theme in the song, I think is really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, that's my mini rant about music theory.
Speaker: I'm right there with you.
Speaker: I love a good halftime drop.
Speaker: And I think a couple things.
Speaker: One, from a visceral layman standpoint, I think a halftime drop kind of serves the same purpose, at least emotionally, as if you think about dubstep, that anticipation of drop.
Speaker: And like it's that build up, build up, build up.
Speaker: And then it's like that, oh, everything comes apart.
Speaker: And it feels really good.
Speaker: I feel like a halftime drop.
Speaker: And like you said, it's usually in the bridge or like a pre-chorus section, like before you're building up to your finale.
Speaker: It gives you like that a little bit of a groove in a song that was maybe a little bit more tightly wound.
Speaker: And you kind of you kind of feel that tension release and you feel kind of all of the other instruments that are happening around the drums because they have more room to breathe.
Speaker: And it, like you said, it totally changes up the feel of the song and just gives it something that's different, gives it something that is dynamic.
Speaker: I think it's a really great trick that you can pull.
Speaker: I also like going the other way.
Speaker: And it's even better if it's in the same song where you have your time signature, you have a halftime drop in the middle, and then your climax is double time.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I'm trying to think of a song that does that, but I feel like it's very common.
Speaker: That does all three?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You see it in punk a lot now.
Speaker: So I'm thinking there's a band called We Were Sharks.
Speaker: There's another one called Four Years Strong that does that a lot where they'll have kind of a melodic hardcore breakdown and then they'll go into a straight pop punk.
Speaker: I can see that.
Speaker: All the ones and threes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I really like that.
Speaker: Feels good.
Speaker: I think anything where they like, not like, well, yeah, when they like switch it up, where they make it like a little more interesting to listen to and you're not expecting it, especially.
Speaker: I like that kind of stuff.
Speaker: Two things that spring to mind.
Speaker: Two more things that spring to mind.
Speaker: One, there is a YouTuber called, his name is Alex Melton.
Speaker: And he does a bunch of genre bending stuff.
Speaker: Like he has a whole series of songs where he takes pop punk songs and turns them into country ballads.
Speaker: And then he has some stuff the other way where he takes like classic rock and country songs and turns them into like upbeat pop punk stuff.
Speaker: He's really interesting.
Speaker: But he also has a whole series where he takes classic 90s songs that are in standard like one and four or one and three songs.
Speaker: drum signature time and he turns them into halftime songs.
Speaker: So he plays, he he'll do halftime drums and then reorchestrate the song around that.
Speaker: And it just makes it sound.
Speaker: I don't know, modern, I guess, like it makes it feel like a. A contemporary emo song, even though it's like one 82 or whatever, but really interesting.
Speaker: And he's a really good drummer, so he's he's fun to watch for that.
Speaker: The other thing I was thinking of is this is way more corporate, but there's a channel called Drumeo where they like their whole thing is they interview drummers behind kits and have them play stuff.
Speaker: But they do one where they will have the drummer listen to a song without like they'll pull the drums out of it.
Speaker: So all they can hear is the instrumentation and the like the groove of the song through all the other instruments.
Speaker: And then they make they have them play it cold.
Speaker: and try to figure out what the drum part is after they've heard it one time.
Speaker: And there's a couple that, I can't think of the drummers right now, but where they hear a song that was a straight ahead rock song, but for whatever reason, whatever mind space they're in, they'll play it with a totally different groove.
Speaker: And having heard the normal song, because the listener hears the song with regular drums first, and then you get to see how they interpreted it.
Speaker: It's really cool how changing stuff up like that can make it totally feel different.
Speaker: I love that stuff.
Speaker: That's really interesting.
Speaker: Everyone has a different way of playing.
Speaker: It's really fun when you're drumming.
Speaker: I mean, like I said, it's the only time I've ever realized what you actually do when you do halftime, but it's really fun when you're really grooving into...
Speaker: a normal time signature and all of a sudden you just like switch up the downbeat like you can just switch something up that easily and it's a whole different route like you said and i don't know if it if it plays this way for you but your internal clock doesn't change like the way that you're counting it in your head still feels fast when you know like when you know that that's what you're doing yeah there is a oh sorry no no no go ahead
Speaker: I was just going to say, but you have to tell yourself because you're so used to playing that way for the whole song and then you have to tell yourself to not do that.
Speaker: I feel like that's hard.
Speaker: What I was going to say is there's a drummer who in whatever drum circles, I guess you would say, is relatively well known as a pretty impressive drummer.
Speaker: His name is Dave King.
Speaker: And he's in a jazz band called the bad plus another one called happy apple.
Speaker: But in the early two thousands, he was in two bands.
Speaker: One was kind of an indie pop group called love cars.
Speaker: And then that group of musicians did a side project called Halloween, Alaska.
Speaker: And what Halloween, Alaska did was that was when like,
Speaker: Dntl and Postal Service were like, there's kind of a movement of like glitch pop and like taking indie kind of songwriting and making it electronic, like making EDM.
Speaker: And they decided that they are going to do it entirely live.
Speaker: So no, no computers at all, but kind of the trappings of an EDM song.
Speaker: And so when you go to watch, and now Halloween Alaska has been the band that out of all those projects has been the one that is actually still playing.
Speaker: Like they just kind of found their groove.
Speaker: But as a drummer, when you go to watch Halloween Alaska and you watch Dave King play, you can tell that the metronome in his head is going at like, you know, 180 beats per minute.
Speaker: So, you know, and you can see his, uh,
Speaker: his right hand when he's playing, if it's not hitting a drum or hitting a cymbal, it's constantly tapping on his leg, but he's maybe playing at 60 beats per minute, right?
Speaker: So he is playing like quarter time.
Speaker: And so there's all this stuff going on around him.
Speaker: And if you close your eyes, it's it's that downbeat end of the heiress tour feeling in the room.
Speaker: Like it's super like chuggy and slow and kind of floaty.
Speaker: But if you watch him, like if you weren't listening, you would think he was playing a punk song because his hands are moving so fast because he has to keep that that feel in his head so that when the song does pick up, he doesn't lose it.
Speaker: And when he's playing so slow, he doesn't like drift off the beat.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That's hard.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Anyway, if you want, if you ever want to watch videos of a drummer who's, who knows how to do that, he's really fun to watch.
Speaker: And he's interesting.
Speaker: And I like the music.
Speaker: Three for three.
Speaker: Three for three.
Speaker: That is one of the hardest parts of drumming, at least for me.
Speaker: I always try to go too fast.
Speaker: Like being able to keep a time signature in your head, even if it's like faster also, then you're expecting it to be.
Speaker: That is insanely hard.
Speaker: So props.
Speaker: But I'm sure he's been playing for a really long time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, at this point, he's an old guy.
Speaker: He's like 50.
Speaker: But it's like muscle memory at this point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it's I mean, that's what playing music in general.
Speaker: The it's.
Speaker: really tempting to push the tempo if you're playing a fast song especially if you're the drummer i have respect for the drummer now that i play drums i'm like wow they are really keeping the beat for the entire band my rant is kind of a retraction from last week um last week i ranted about the uh
Speaker: The idea that there's no such thing as a dedicated MP3 player anymore.
Speaker: That was a stupid rant.
Speaker: I'm an idiot.
Speaker: Of course there's a whole vast market and subculture of high-end dedicated MP3 players.
Speaker: And after I made that rant last week, I did what I should have done before I talked and I Googled it.
Speaker: And now I'm super down the rabbit hole and there's such cool stuff out there, like cool design stuff that looks like it's, you know, brutalist from the 1930s looking MP3 players and stuff that is basically a fully functional phone but gets 200 hours of battery life or whatever.
Speaker: stuff that has analog tubes in it to make it sound like you're playing.
Speaker: There's all sorts of cool stuff.
Speaker: And this is a short rant because, well, maybe it's not a short rant.
Speaker: Maybe we'll go off on a tangent.
Speaker: But I'm going to get one, and it's going to be cool, and I'll talk about it when I get it.
Speaker: But yeah, if you listened to my rant last week, disregard.
Speaker: There's lots of cool stuff out there.
Speaker: And it's just that
Speaker: Up to I put my foot in my mouth, I was not curious enough to go look at it.
Speaker: So the thesis of my rant this week is be curious and test your hypothesis before you put it out into the world because you can be a blowhard and you can stand firm in your opinions, but you should probably make sure that your opinions hold water.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That w as a very deep extraction from a rant, your rant.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: I feel like...
Speaker: I mean, I've seen, like, flip phones coming back.
Speaker: Like, there's very sophisticated flip phones out there now.
Speaker: Like, I feel like there's kind of, like...
Speaker: Everyone is kind of looking for something that's not like a computer and a phone.
Speaker: Well, not everyone, but there's a small movement, maybe not small anymore.
Speaker: There's a movement of people who don't want a smartphone anymore.
Speaker: So I feel like that's why MP3 players and flip phones and stuff are coming back.
Speaker: And it's kind of cool.
Speaker: I was tempted to get a flip phone.
Speaker: So maybe I'll also get an MP3 player, depending on what your review is.
Speaker: By the same token, I'm a creature of convenience.
Speaker: And I will say...
Speaker: It's really nice to have one thing that does everything.
Speaker: But I think in general, because we have that, now we're seeing the value in having a unitasker from time to time and having something that focuses us.
Speaker: I guess the temptation is always spending too much time on your phone because it does everything.
Speaker: People don't want that anymore.
Speaker: Hence a flip phone.
Speaker: But flip phones kind of do the same thing because I've seen the ones that are like modern and they have all the apps.
Speaker: Like you can still do things.
Speaker: It's not antiquated at all.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I guess to go the other way on this rant, sometimes the unit tasker is really stupid.
Speaker: So probably because of the things that I look up in the podcast that I listen to and stuff, I have been getting targeted ads for
Speaker: like writing devices.
Speaker: So they're like, they look like a laptop or a typewriter.
Speaker: And the whole idea is that you type on it.
Speaker: And the only thing that you can do is type on it.
Speaker: So like, you know, it's keeping, it's like a, basically like a modern looking old school word processor where the only thing it can do is, is write.
Speaker: And it's, you know, it's like $500 for this cool looking thing that barely does anything at all.
Speaker: And on the one hand, aesthetically, I get it.
Speaker: When you look at what it does, it's almost like too far.
Speaker: Like there are some things that were affordances for a reason.
Speaker: There's some things that we've engineered past that are actually helpful.
Speaker: you know, whether it's being, you know, for a phone, like one thing that a lot of MP3 players don't have is you can't stream on them, but that's whatever you figured that out.
Speaker: Um, but at least you can download stuff onto them.
Speaker: This would be like, if you got an MP3 player, that the only way you could put music on it is to put a cassette tape in.
Speaker: And so I feel like if you are a,
Speaker: a designer, if you are an industrial designer and you're listening to the show for some odd reason, you need to like check yourself and like simpler can be better, but don't go too far.
Speaker: Like we still want these modern affordances that we have evolved and we have invented to make life better.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: There's no way that some things could make life worse.
Speaker: So just recognize what those things are.
Speaker: Don't be dumb.
Speaker: I'm just surprised it's $500.
Speaker: Some of them are even more than that.
Speaker: And I mean, it was like a solid chunk of titanium and it's like an art piece, right?
Speaker: Like it looks sweet.
Speaker: But then it's like, well, you only have...
Speaker: 700 kilobytes of space on it which is enough for one novel and then you have to like print it out because there's no way to put discs in it and there's no way to oh you know it's like okay this is just a toy at this point it's like a flash drive yeah it's like a really shitty flash drive that didn't you know if you were getting that much memory on a flash drive it would cost you 14 but th is is a thousand dollars oh
Speaker: At that point, just turn your laptop on airplane mode.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: There's apps for that, I'm sure.
Speaker: Literally.
Speaker: Well, the whole world of, what is it?
Speaker: Unitools?
Speaker: Things that only do one thing.
Speaker: Unitaskers?
Speaker: Unitaskers that I was not even aware of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The rabbit hole is there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And sometimes unitaskers are the result of stupid engineering, like...
Speaker: Did you ever watch the cooking show Good Eats?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He like rails against unitaskers all the time.
Speaker: Like there are tools in the kitchen that like you should be able to do stuff with.
Speaker: If you have like five tools in the kitchen, maybe not five, but say there's a dozen tools that you could have that do everything.
Speaker: But then people will buy like...
Speaker: a French fry cutter or like a whatever, like a thing that is only feasibly good for one very specific task.
Speaker: And like I could see if you were a restaurant and like your whole thing is you make this one thing 9,000 times a day.
Speaker: But what happens so often is, you know, somebody gets the French fry cutter as a Christmas gift and then it like takes up a big space on the counter.
Speaker: And the only thing that it does is that and you eat French fries like six times a year.
Speaker: And the rest of the time it just is collecting dust and being stupid.
Speaker: But when it is useful, it's really useful.
Speaker: Like you don't have to cut your French fries.
Speaker: But if you're only doing it like six times a year, you can just cut the potatoes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I see what his and your argument is.
Speaker: It's kind of funny because I've been in many kitchens where there's like those things.
Speaker: But it's like I don't think of that like being something that I needed until I have it.
Speaker: And then like when I have it, it's really convenient for me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: Ignorance is bliss sometimes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And again, I have issues with some of his workarounds for some of that.
Speaker: Like I remember one, it was it was an episode about popcorn.
Speaker: And he's like, you don't need a popcorn popper.
Speaker: You take a metal salad bowl and you put the stuff in there and you put tinfoil over the top and then you have to hold it with tongs because it's hot.
Speaker: But it will pop your popcorn.
Speaker: It's like, no.
Speaker: I will spend $10 on a stovetop popcorn popper and I will not burn my hands and I will live with it.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's such a process.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was like this.
Speaker: Again, it goes back to sometimes you engineer the actual good things out of a solution in the name of being simple.
Speaker: And there are a few that he has come up with where it's like, no, you're working way too hard here.
Speaker: It's like using a knife instead of a can opener.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Can opener is a great unit tool that we should use more of.
Speaker: I remember when I was in college, it was a night where we didn't have money to go out and we couldn't find...
Speaker: a can opener.
Speaker: And so we were like trying to figure out how to open cans in our pantry with our hands and knives.
Speaker: And it's awful.
Speaker: It's so dangerous.
Speaker: No one has a can opener like as a young adult.
Speaker: It's like not something you think of buying until you need it.
Speaker: You can't get it at Ikea.
Speaker: You can't?
Speaker: I mean, maybe you can.
Speaker: As shorthand, when I got my first big kid apartment and it was like, okay, I have things that I've inherited, but now I'm going to go fill everything out in the cheapest way that I can.
Speaker: So it's like, go to Ikea.
Speaker: It's like, okay, I need a salad bowl.
Speaker: I need a pot.
Speaker: I need a ladle.
Speaker: And then you get it all home and it's like, if you're that...
Speaker: poor and like you're trying to cut corners of course you're gonna buy stuff in cans but i know you have to but then you have to go and you have to buy can opener
Speaker: I know you really don't think of the things that you need and that are so convenient in a fully stocked kitchen until you're in one.
Speaker: Because I was surviving in college.
Speaker: I didn't even have like a pasta strainer, which is fine.
Speaker: You can just like pour the boiling water out and then use like a ladle to keep the pasta in the pot.
Speaker: Like I was doing that for years, but then I got a strainer.
Speaker: Life change.
Speaker: So sometimes it's okay to make your life more convenient.
Speaker: There's lots of things like that, like a rice cooker.
Speaker: Rice cookers are so good.
Speaker: I love, yes.
Speaker: It's awful to cook rice any other way.
Speaker: It's more time consuming.
Speaker: It's just bad.
Speaker: You have to babysit it.
Speaker: You just pour the water in and you put the rice in and you close the lid and it sings at you when it's done and it's done right every time.
Speaker: Genius.
Speaker: It's good for Asian rice.
Speaker: Perfect invention.
Speaker: Good for any rice.
Speaker: Fair, fair.
Speaker: It doesn't matter if it's a rice-based thing.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: I mean, until recently, I've been a rice cooker girl, but I have seen other methods of cooking rice, which are really good, where you fry it first, and then you put it in a pot and steam it, and I'm like... Okay, that's fair enough.
Speaker: That's like if you're in the mood to do something so labor-intensive.
Speaker: But for the most part, if you're just cooking for a weekday, use a rice cooker.
Speaker: It's going to be okay.
Speaker: The rice cooker is the MP3 player of my product, my
Speaker: lines that I am thinking about.
Speaker: What rice cooker is to kitchen, mp3 player is to pocket device.
Speaker: Is to human.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's a good, that's a good way of putting it.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: This is the part of the show where we come forward with our parting gifts.
Speaker: Parting gifts are a thing to tide you over until the next time we are together.
Speaker: So whether it's a thing to do, like I said at the beginning of this when I talked about what made me think of my rant.
Speaker: It's a book, it's a movie, it's an activity.
Speaker: It's something that can get you through to the next time we're together.
Speaker: I'm going to go first.
Speaker: My parting gift is tying into my rant.
Speaker: I'm going to recommend two movie reactor YouTubers.
Speaker: They are kind of in the same vein.
Speaker: you might say that they pretty much do exactly the same thing, but that's why they're a good pairing.
Speaker: You can put them together and you can go through their whole catalog and you feel like you got a solid movie watching experience.
Speaker: The first one is Natalie Gold.
Speaker: And the second one is Ashley Ippolito.
Speaker: She goes by the internet handle, your internet mom, Ash.
Speaker: And they, so Natalie kind of,
Speaker: targets kind of big budget blockbuster type movies that she hasn't seen before, like kind of classic Hollywood, like fun popcorn stuff.
Speaker: Um, she's one of those people that I think if you were in a movie theater next to her, she might not be your favorite person in the world, but if you're watching her as a, uh,
Speaker: as a form of entertainment in and of herself.
Speaker: She's her reactions are really genuine.
Speaker: She's a smart person that understands some basic film theory and acting theory.
Speaker: So when she's saying opinions as the movie is going on, they feel relatively well informed.
Speaker: but also they're just genuine, like fun reactions that you would get from your favorite movie watching friend that if you're, you know, like the person that you want to sit next to when you've already seen the movie and you want to see how they're going to react, she always delivers.
Speaker: Ashley at Pulido tends to go a little bit more toward, um, animated stuff.
Speaker: So like Disney movies, um, kind of, kind of your, your family friendly stuff, but she's also done like everything everywhere all at once.
Speaker: Like everybody has or, or,
Speaker: knives out you know stuff like that um and she is a little bit more like um i don't feel a little bit more irreverent she um tends to be really loud and boisterous um and it's just a really entertaining person to watch watch a film
Speaker: In both cases, their YouTube channel kind of cuts stuff down.
Speaker: So it's like a nice little 20 minute like highlights of the thing that you remember really well and getting to see like their best reactions to stuff.
Speaker: But then you can whatever the cost to be on their Patreon, you can get full movie watch alongs where you like sync up their reactions to you watching the movie yourself.
Speaker: And it's like a really solid director commentary track where they're going through and
Speaker: saying movie facts while they're doing it and and laughing along and overall it's just a really good way to watch a movie that you've seen before and like I said appreciate it in an entirely different way and see somebody who appreciates films appreciate them in a really entertaining way I it's kind of funny but when you said your internet mom Ashley I thought you were talking about one of my favorite youtubers and
Speaker: called your mom Ashley.
Speaker: And I was like, wait, she does film reactions.
Speaker: But I think it's completely different.
Speaker: But the fact that they have a very similar name is like, how, how did both of them think of this at the same time?
Speaker: Probably they're both their names are Ashley.
Speaker: So that probably helps.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: I don't know about the internet mom thing.
Speaker: I guess there's two internet moms named Ashley.
Speaker: But interesting.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I guess I'll do my recommendation.
Speaker: Although I will say I've never really watched film YouTubers.
Speaker: I think because I've never really been into film that much.
Speaker: But looking at these, I love it.
Speaker: I mean, they're like reviewing Ratatouille.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And for the most part, maybe somebody will watch it and be like, oh, their reactions are totally different than mine.
Speaker: But I feel like their reactions are...
Speaker: really amped up distillations of my reactions where it's kind of like a like a bias confirmation yeah it's fun to have somebody who's entertaining be like yeah yeah i like that too take skill to be a reactor i'm saying give them more credit
Speaker: Well, I will move on to mine, which is also in a similar vein to what I've been talking to the entire past hour, which is music.
Speaker: And I'm just going to recommend an artist.
Speaker: He's not a new artist.
Speaker: He's been around for a really long time.
Speaker: And I've liked him for a really long time.
Speaker: But this week...
Speaker: He was just like on my shuffle for some reason.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, I really like his music.
Speaker: So I'm recommending the artist Still Woozy for reasons that I mentioned before, because I feel like his music is very unpredictable.
Speaker: You never know what's going to happen.
Speaker: His time signatures are crazy.
Speaker: He's always syncopating his beats.
Speaker: So like, I feel like it's very common for him to have like off beats as the down beats instead of like the down beats.
Speaker: So all of his music just sounds very disjointed.
Speaker: And it gives like fever dream, like Alt-J, Tame Impala kind of vibes and also lo-fi, if any of that makes sense.
Speaker: But I really enjoy his music and especially there's a song called Vacation that I really enjoy and it has all of the things that I like in a song.
Speaker: It's just weird, but also interesting to listen to.
Speaker: So in the vein of liking weird things, I guess.
Speaker: Still woozy.
Speaker: I mean, he's not weird, but it's different.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: I'm going to have to listen to still woozy.
Speaker: I have not, which maybe again speaks to, am I out of touch?
Speaker: Know what the children are.
Speaker: But all of the buzzwords that you just used to describe are all things that I like.
Speaker: Well, you might like still woozy.
Speaker: Hopefully.
Speaker: No hard feelings if you do not like him, but he has very catchy feelings.
Speaker: earworm inducing songs but also if I don't it might influence your opinion of me as a person no I think it influences my opinion of the things that I like more because then I'm like man I can never listen to the song in the same way ever again that's the hard thing right I think it always has to be the other way around you have to stand by what you like and that's hard because sometimes you like deep down you know that you like silly things
Speaker: But not to say that still woozy is silly.
Speaker: Maybe they are.
Speaker: I guess we'll find out.
Speaker: But I don't know.
Speaker: You have to like what you like.
Speaker: And don't be afraid of it.
Speaker: I think we've talked about this before.
Speaker: You got to be genuine to yourself and like genuine things.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: To be cringe is to be free.
Speaker: And it's not even cringe to like things, but...
Speaker: You know, it's always hard, but it'll be okay.
Speaker: Even if you don't like this music, it will be okay for me and for you.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I think that's a good pep talk to take us into the end of the show.
Speaker: And that was the end of our episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening for the past hour and 15 minutes or so.
Speaker: Hopefully you were able to extract some meaning out of things that might not necessarily seem like they have meaning and to enjoy what you like.
Speaker: But if you want more, if you have any opinions on what we said, our email is sabetpodcast.gmail.com.
Speaker: Feel free to send opinions, recommendations, share as we encourage you.
Speaker: we would appreciate it.
Speaker: And we also have our social media.
Speaker: We have an Instagram called SabetPod.
Speaker: And I'm working on getting a YouTube feed up.
Speaker: So in the similar vein of YouTube videos, hopefully I will have a YouTube feed up once I figure that out.
Speaker: So look forward to that.
Speaker: Inside baseball, before we go, I could probably say this offline, but I'll just say it now.
Speaker: YouTube is changing the way that they aggregate
Speaker: podcast so I I know that I was supposed to get you some login stuff to to make that happen it's a little I the way I set it up is like depreciated and so I actually have I have to set it up a little bit differently before I give you the keys but we'll figure that out offline we will but eventually one day there'll be an announcement that there's a YouTube account
Speaker: So look forward to that.
Speaker: But until then, h ave a good week.
Speaker: Have a good day.
Speaker: Have a good life.
Speaker: And au revoir.
Speaker: Au revoir.
