The Internet Kinda Sucks Right Now | Trash Taste #7
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- What's up you eccentric, edgy enthusiast. Welcome back to another episode of the Trash Test Podcast. - I'm so sorry. - I'm so sorry. - I'm so sorry. - Look, there's gonna be a thing from now on, okay? You guys have to just brace yourselves every three episodes 'cause I'm always gonna open with something like that, okay? Maylene.

- Our producers stop making noise. Jesus Christ. - This is a professional production. - You ruined my intro. God damn it. - Excuse me, Meilyne. I thought we were, we have professionalism. - Trash production on this Trash Taste podcast. Jesus Christ. Well, welcome to another episode of Trash Taste where we talk about a trash taste in anime and everything else in the world. I'm your host, Joey. - Wait, is that our intro now? - I guess. - My God, that was like, that went from what the fuck are you saying to, man, this is a smooth ass intro.

- We didn't agree on any of this. - I'm a professional after all. I'm your host for today, Joey. And as always joining me are the boys, Garnt and Connor. - Hey guys. - No nickname? - No. - Okay. - Okay. - We're gonna roll now. - I'm the hinty kid and this is gig UK, Arizona and the 93%. - All right. - You guys on the subreddit have just been going crazy with those memes right now. - I mean, we don't pick the nicknames. They pick the nicknames.

- Exactly. - At the end of the day, right? - Exactly. So yeah, guys, what are we gonna talk about today? Oh wait, you were thinking about something, all right? - I watched- - You were thinking something spicy to talk about? - Yeah. - We can talk about YouTube, but I think before we do that, I watched Perfect Blue recently.

- You broke your Satoshi Kon virginity. - I'm proud of you, I'm proud of you. - Unlike "Gone", right? Where if we bring up a show that you're like, yeah, you should watch it. "Gone" is gonna be like, woof. You know what I mean? - I actually started watching "Dottohead", Dotto. - Do you actually? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Everyone's breaking the cherry.

- Because of the Fullmetal Alchemist curse. - They're not gonna know that because that was on the episode where we recorded an episode and then the audio just wasn't recording apparently. - It's the lost episode you'll never get to see. - Did like a 10 minute speech on why Dora the Hedgehog is good and you should watch it.

- But no, yeah. Perfect blue, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did you find it? - It was amazing. Like, okay, I knew it was gonna be good, right? Like everything I've seen of it and the amount of works that it inspires, obviously it was gonna be good. - Yeah, yeah. - But yeah, I was kinda not ready for what I was gonna watch. - No, no one knew if they wanted to watch it. - It was a lot. Like it was a lot. Some of the scenes were pretty, oof.

- Yeah, like how do you feel watching it today? Like, because this came out in I think 1995? - Something like that. - Or something like that. Which, 1995, 1997, it came out in the 90s. - It's at least 20 years old. - Yeah. How do you feel it is now, watching it for the first time in today's climate? - It's really creepy being like an online personality watching a story about how an online personality is like. - And that's what's scary about it, right? Is that the themes in that are just as prevalent today as it was back then.

- Yeah. - It's not worse, I feel. - No, no, I feel like it's more relevant today over 20 years later than it was when it came out. Do you wanna explain quickly what the story is? 'Cause like, it's been a while since I watched it. - Oh my God, I mean, that's hard. It's a mind fuck, it's horror, but it's essentially there's this girl who is an idol. She then quits becoming an idol to pursue a career in film acting. But then that's also like a side plot, I guess, really. But there's a guy who is obsessed with her.

And the whole point of the story is that he is obsessed with the image of the celebrity, not the actual personality of the celebrity. And then it's kind of a story about how much as an online personality or a celebrity, how much of your public persona do you own and how much of that do you have control over? - Yeah, is it actually you? Who is the real you?

Is it who you perceive yourself as online or is it who you are as a person? And the fact that this came out in the 90s where- - It's way ahead of its time. - Like what the fuck, right? It predicted so much about how social media would work and our perceptions of like online celebrities and how people are viewed online and- - Just like Satoshi Kon's like cinematography is just,

- Yeah. - So out of this world. I love that scene. The one scene I vividly remember is like when the stalker guy is at like the main character's like concert and he just holds his hand up. - Yeah. - That was such a good shot. - And I was like, that is just so, so, because it's just such good imagery. - Yeah. - He was ugly as fuck.

- He looked like a human beetle. I was like, oh, so he's the bad guy. - This boy was the OG ugly bastard. Every ugly bastard was based off that guy. - No kidding. It was amazing. Like it was, I feel like it's again, like you said, it's so relevant this time. And I think anyone,

I think it's more relevant now than it was almost when it came out. - And the way he pulled it off as well, 'cause it wasn't just a simple story. It was weaved in with just pure top class filmmaking. Like there was a point when you don't notice the transition, but it transitions into, okay, what's real? What's like her imagination? What's part of the film? Because one of the genius parts of this story

is that because she's like an actress as well. - They use the world of the acting. - Yeah, they use the world of the acting and like the filmmaking to like blend into her real life. So you don't know which scenes are like really happening and which scenes are just being acted. And it's, it fucks with your mind so much. - Yeah, it's just like three worlds, right? 'Cause there's the real world, the acting world, and then the stiff that she's seeing in her head. And it's so hard trying to like unwind all that and trying to figure out what's what.

almost a certain extent you're not supposed to. You're supposed to just be confused. - Yeah, it's the fact that it's so blurry is what's like showing you why this whole thing is so scary because you don't even know watching what is real and what is not real. And I feel a lot of that kind of like theming in Satoshi Kon's movies really transitioned over to his latest stuff. Like, did you ever watch Paprika? - Yeah, I did. - Because Paprika, I mean, for those of you who don't know, it's literally anime inception.

- I mean, it's totally different because it's like "Inception" is like a heist movie in a dream. "Satoshi" like "Paprika" is like on a base level, yeah, they're both about dreams, but "Paprika" is like 10 times more imaginative in like how it approaches its visuals when like they're in the dream world. - Right, and how he shows the dream world versus the real world is very much like in "Perfect Blue" where you don't realize, oh, we're in a dream world now, or oh, we're back to reality.

And he does that so seamlessly through his scenes. It's really incredible. - Yeah, I think "Perfect Blue" is my favorite Satoshi Kon movie. Close second is "Millennium Actress." - "Millennium Actress," yeah. - I saw a lot of people who said that it was his best work. - Yeah, because I think he took a lot of elements from "Perfect Blue" in terms of like, so "Millennium Actress" isn't a mind fuck, but it basically tells the story of this girl through film, basically. So they, I think she was, yeah,

- The name's Millennium Actress, she's an actress. - She's an actress. - I was like, was she an actress? I'm just like, wait a minute, of course she was. - Damn. - Millennium Farmer. She was a farmer. - Yeah, but like they show this,

this woman's whole life story just through various films that she shot or maybe she didn't shoot them. But it's just such, again, such a seamless transition between real life or the canon real life of the movie and a movie in a movie, if that makes sense. - It's good 'cause I mean, I also feel like because the position we're in, it was like a weird uncomfortable

- It was the uncanny valley, right? - Some parts were a little bit too close. - Yeah. - Yeah. - 'Cause obviously there's the personality that we show in our videos, right? And then there's our own personality.

Like I don't have to deal with it too much 'cause I feel like I'm pretty close to what I am in real life. - I think all three of us are. - Yeah. - But I definitely have some friends who are YouTubers who like are very, very different to how they're perceived. I'm sure Emily won't mind me saying. Emma Riccio, she's like a story time animator, right? Very like this image of like pure, right?

Everyone thinks that she's like a Disney character. - Right. - Yeah. - But like you hang out with her, she's a normal person, right? - I mean, if you follow her on Twitter, you will see. - Yeah, right, right. And that's the thing, right? Is that I know she gets stressed out with it more than most and she's told me a few times that she's like, "I wish people would just stop treating me like a Disney character."

- Yeah. - Like people won't let her say things. 'Cause when she says things like, oh, you know, that are a little crude maybe, she gets a lot of comments being like, this is not how you're supposed to act. - That's not you. - People literally tell her, you shouldn't act this way. This is not how you're supposed to act. And it's weird 'cause it's like,

I don't have to deal with that. If I do whatever the fuck I want and people like, ha ha funny, you know, tee hee. But like, it's really creepy seeing people force this thing onto her. - Yeah, it was really weird for me because I met Emily IRL before I saw any of her YouTube stuff. So it was when me watching her videos, it was kind of a reverse shock for me. I was like, wow, you're so pure.

- Not to say that Emily is like crazy or anything. - She's just a normal person. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I haven't met her personally, but- - People are more dimensional than a Disney persona. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - She doesn't even try and put that on herself, right? That's just because- - That's just how the audience perceives. It's funny because Sydney or Sitsnap, yeah. She has like the opposite problem where people come to me and they're like, "Why is Sydney acting so hyperactive and so loud in her videos?" And I'm like,

- The big difference between Sydney in her videos and Sydney in real life is that Sydney in her videos has a volume button. - It's true. - I can physically turn her down when she's in a video. I can't physically turn her down in real life. - You can put like a normalized ocean on her voice. Can't do that in real life. That shit peaks. - You can't put a liquor on her voice.

- Yeah, and it's just, it was really uncomfortable. Like I said, it was uncomfortable at times. It's really like unnerving. And again, like if you take away anything from this, you should watch "Perfect Blue." If you consume any form of online content. - Did you watch "Requiem for a Dream?" Have you seen that movie? - No, I haven't, no. - Or "Black Swan?" - Or "Black Swan?" - I saw a bit of "Black Swan." I got really bored and I turned it off. - Yeah, a lot of, I mean, both of those movies are heavily, heavily influenced by- - Yeah, yeah, I saw that "Black Swan" was heavily inspired. - It's funny that you fell asleep during that one 'cause "Black Swan" is basically the same,

- I think I was on a plane and you know, sometimes you're in a mood where you're like, I wanna watch a movie, but what else can I do? And I think I put black swan on. I was like, it was not the right environment to watch black swan. - Very dark room. - A 10 inch LCD, those shitty packed nuts. - I have this genre I like to call plane movies, where it's like movies you would never ever watch. But when you're in a plane, you're like,

- Every Jason Statham movie. - Yeah, exactly. Every Mission Impossible. - I'm pretty sure his career and The Rock's career are solely being funded by planes. Why else would you watch that fucking shark movie that Jason Statham was in? - What shark movie? - The whole movie was him fighting a shark.

- What? - What was the movie called? - Are you serious? Is this a movie? - It's on the screen right now. - "Sharknado 4." - It's just a movie and I can't describe any of it to you. It's just the whole thing was just this really cheesy- - Jason Statham versus the shark. - It's like imagine Jaws on steroids and that was like the whole movie. It was so bad. - Oh, was it called "Megalon"?

- That was like mega something. - No. - Mega Chad. - Jason Statham is mega Chad. - Yeah, there's just too much fucking, oh my God, so many movies, but yeah, Jason Statham movies.

- Yeah, no, I agree with the airplane movies thing. I've seen more movies on planes than I think I have in like cinemas and my own room. - I feel bad for anything I watch on a plane. 'Cause I feel like it automatically loses two points out of 10 just because I watched it on a plane. - No, no, no. - Like I never have a positive memory of binge watching a series. - Sometimes I just wanna fucking watch some shitty thing. Like have you ever had like before plane, like you download something you actually wanna watch

- Like an anime or a series of manga. And you're like, I don't really feel like watching it. Let me watch this shitty five out of 10 show that's or movie that I would never watch under any other circumstances. - Mine's even worse because I go on a plane being like, okay, I can work on a script 'cause I have my laptop. - You can work on a plane? - No. - Okay. - I plan to every single time. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna like work on a script or I'm gonna play this game. I'm gonna finish it while I'm on this 10 hour flight to the US. But instead, no, I'm gonna watch this really crap,

about this topic that I just do not care about, but because you're forced to watch it. By the end of it, I'm just like, "That was very informative. I learned a lot. I'm glad I watched that." - People who can work on planes, I don't know how they can do it. - I can do it on domestic flights. - Oh, I can't. - You're a fucking madman. - I think you have to be a sociopath. - Oh, sorry. I guess I'm a sociopath. - I think so. - It's weird, right? Because with airplane movies, as you said,

- As you said, it's always like two points lower than if you were to watch it in the cinema. - 'Cause it's not a comfortable viewing experience. - No, it's not. - Which is all the more reason why I wanna rewatch "Machia" because I watched "Machia" on a flight. - The fuck is "Machia"? - I would never watch an anime film that I wanna watch on a flight. I remember hearing people watching "Your Name" when it was like out in theaters and the only chance they had to watch it was on the flight. And I'm just like, oh, I feel so sorry for you. - I know.

And like, that's the exact same experience I had with "Machia" because I missed it in the cinemas before I went to the US, but it was on my flight to the US. So I was like, perfect, I can finally watch it. But in my head I was like, oh no, I have to watch it on this tiny screen with these crappy ass headphones that I had because I didn't bring my proper headphones. But I watched it on the flight, man, I cried like a fucking...

- Oh my God. Which makes me more, like it makes me more inclined to go watch it on like a big screen. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Because I know if I watched it on the big screen, I would be crying even more like a bitch. - You just get a text on like row three, I see that's like why are you crying so damn loud? Like that meme template, you know? - But yeah, if you don't know, do you know "Machia"? - Yeah, I know, I know. - So "Machia" is this movie that was, it wasn't advertised anywhere.

- No, no, no, it was very under the radar. I think it was like PA, was it by PA works? No. - It's not PA works, it was written and directed by Okada Mari. - Yeah. - What is it about? - She did "Anahana". - Oh, okay. - Yeah. - She's basically known as the anime writer who is known for like all those series that you cry. - Making you cry. - Yeah, she's like the master of making you cry.

And "Makia" was the movie that, it was a first directing debut. But the thing is, it wasn't advertised anywhere. Like even in Japan, it wasn't advertised anywhere. And I only found out about it because my friend, Nabi, let me know about it. But he let me know like two days before it was gone from the cinema. So I was like, "Cool, I guess I can't watch that." But then it was on the flight and yeah. But that's the thing, right? Like when you watch something that's really funny or that very emotional on a plane, you can't just,

- Yeah, you can. Just fucking cry. - I can't do that. - I can't do that. - I've cried on a plane. - So I was literally doing like this, like trying to hold in my teeth. - But I know you want chicken or beef. - And I didn't want this like white guy sitting next to me to think like, what the fuck? This guy's crying like a cartoon. - Yeah. - What's wrong with you? But yeah. - What's like the riskiest thing you've ever watched in the flight?

- What do you mean risky? - I saw a guy on a plane watching porn one time. I thought that was impressive. - I remember the first time I like watched prison school on a flight. That was like- - How the fuck did you do that? - I was just like, okay, I really wanna watch prison school. I downloaded it. - You should probably explain how bad prison school is. - Okay, prison school is like,

- Before there was interspecies reviewers, basically, there was like prison school. - It's one step away from hentai. - For like how far you could push ecchi. I mean, there's a scene where like, I think the girl, a girl pisses on a guy accidentally, you know. - As you do. - As you do, as you do. - I hate it when that happens. - It's hilarious though, it's hilarious. It's like one of the funniest ecchi anime that I have seen like

but it was out like a few years ago, wasn't it? How old was it when it came out? - 2017, 2018. - Yeah, 'cause I was a big fan of the manga. It was one of the few manga that literally had me like crying, laughing when I was reading it. So I was like, I gotta watch this when it was out. - Except it has a very unfortunate ending. - Yeah, yeah. I haven't actually read to the ending yet. - Don't spoil for me. - It's a bit unfortunate. - Yeah, yeah. - Because I was the same. I read the manga and I thought this is one of the funniest things I've ever read. And then just,

- I don't want to say too much about the ending, but it's not that great. - How the hell though did you watch that on a plane? - Okay, so, 'cause I felt ashamed watching it. - Wait, wait, wait, hold up. Where were you sitting? - Okay, I was sitting on the end, right? And had an iPad. - Wait, so the whole, everyone who walks gets to see it? - I mean, I don't care about them, right? I care about the people sitting next to me. - Why? Why do you not care about them? - And the person sitting next to me was like a little kid.

- You're like, you're gonna love this movie. - So at the beginning, right? I was like, okay, I was trying to be discreet about it, right?

'Cause I was like, it was on iPad. So I was trying to watch it as close to my face as possible. You know, like trying to be discreet. - Putting blinders on this thing. - Exactly. And then it was like a 10 hour flight. So my arms are gonna get tired. And then about like an hour in, I was like, I don't fucking give a shit anymore. And you know, if the kid wants to look over, you know, there's some culture in his life. - You wanna be a Chad kid, watch this.

because it wasn't the only thing I watched as well. I watched, 'cause the new season of Game of Thrones as well. So I thought, you know what? I've already watched Prison School. - Finish it off with a process video. Why not? - I mean, they can't blame me that time because it was on their selection, right? So yeah.

- You know, I'm sorry kid or you're welcome kid. - He's probably a massive fan of the show now. He's like, thank you for opening me up to the world. - Do you get to the point on a long ass flight, it's like a flight that's over like eight hours, right? Where you have one hour left

and you need to pick something to watch. And that one hour of content is like the worst watching. - Oh, I don't even bother with that kind of stuff. If there's less than two hours remaining on a flight, I just don't even bother starting anything. - What do you do? - I either read a book or sleep. - What the fuck?

- Yeah, it's just like that Twilight Zone. - It's awful, I hate that one. - I hate it 'cause it's the same when I know I have to do something in an hour and I'm like, I could squeeze in an anime episode in this time. - It's like, yeah, I'll watch a random Family Guy episode, I guess, 'cause I hate myself. Big Bang Theory episode right after, why not? - Nah, Big Bang Theory is never good.

- No, no, no, no. - When I see people watching that on a plane for like six hours straight, I'm like, what's wrong with you? What went wrong where this is the pig? - I couldn't escape from the Big Bang Theory thing, right? Because of my surname. - Bazinga. - So many people were like, oh, look,

- Shut the fuck up. - Already hate the show before you say it. - First of all, it's pronounced Billsinger. God damn it. - That's gonna be on the Reddit now. - I remember seeing you tweet the other day that you don't realize how much porn is on Twitter until you see it in public. There's like, apart from what you like as well,

We've already touched on that topic. But you know, when you're sitting at home on your couch, you're like, you're just quite a part of it. - Yeah, you're just like- - You're like immune to this shit. When you're sitting in like a crowded train, and there's like a grandma to your left, like another little kid to your right, and you're like, man, there's just a girl sucking dick right on my timeline. And it's just out there in the open. - Wait, like IRL?

- Like real life? - No, hentai, of course. - Oh yeah, I was gonna say. I'm like, what accounts are you following? Jesus, I thought I was bad, goddamn. - The reason I tweeted that was the other day I was just on the train and like there was, you know, it's the worst, right? Where the images crop. - No, I was about to say, I was about to. - And you're like, oh, what's this? And you open it and it's just like, 'cause what it was was two people, right? And it was like two people dressed as cowboys.

- Yeah. - Like on the top. - Yeah. - Right? So I opened it and then they were naked from the bottom down, riding each other like anime characters. And because I was asleep, it took me like four seconds to realize what I was looking at. But like I was holding my phone like here. So the two women who were sitting next to me definitely saw. And I was like, oh yeah, I should like not show this. But okay, when I moved to Japan the first week or so, I was like, oh God, I shouldn't show what I'm looking at on my phone. But now I'm just like, whatever.

- How do you think I find the time to like all the hentai? - You have to. - 'Cause there's always that picture where you're like, "Hmm, this is a 50/50. "Am I gonna see titty or is this just an edgy picture?" You know what I mean? Am I gonna see...

- Where it's just like, it gets cut at the top of the page. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, like that, right? - And like the facial expression isn't like, it isn't like, ah hey girl. - It's like neutral, right? - It's just like a slightly blushing picture. - I know exactly what you're talking about. - It's like a slightly blushing picture. So you're like, hmm, this could be just a really nice piece of artwork or it could just be someone getting dicked from behind. I don't know. I have to click to find out, right? - It's like red and pippy-pippy.

- Do you remember that time? Can we tell that story? - Yeah, you can tell the story.

- So, Garnt had liked this photo of like a woman who was in a Naruto cosplay, right? And it was heavily cropped. So all you could see was like her shoulder. - It was Tsunade. 'Cause how I found it was Revel House D, D-Cydia, had liked it. And I thought, I saw the top half and I thought, oh, that's a good cosplay. - You look like a wholesome cosplayer. - Yeah, I'll like that one.

- We were all sitting in the living room, right? - Yeah. - Then Sydney barges in and is like, "God, what the fuck have you like?" And we're all like, "Wow, what's going on?" So we go and we expand this image and like 70% of it is her with her ass, like full bare ass. - So the exact pose she was doing, it was like top half was like this, but then the bottom half was just.

- The bottom half was just like this. - He was like, wait, what? So he goes and opens it. He's like, oh shit. And we all went to it to Twitter it alone. 'Cause there's like six of us in a living room. And we all went to go and see it. We all started fucking pissing ourselves off. 'Cause Connor just basically retweeted this.

- Oh my God. - It was so funny. Holy shit, I nearly fucking lost it. I was laughing about that for like a week. I'm gonna find the photo and send it to Drew Dan. - Speaking of weird stuff on Twitter, you've been watching some weird stuff on YouTube? - Speaking of stuff on Twitter, stuff has been happening on Twitter.

- Jesus Christ. - I mean, yeah, every single YouTube community seems to be on fire. We're doing pretty well though, Anime YouTube, right? - Surprisingly. - So far. - Surprisingly. - I mean, yeah, it's kind of wild right now. I mean, I don't really want to get into the specifics of all of it. - No, no. - It's all speculation. - I'm sure you guys have a Twitter account. You know what's been happening. - Basically the whole of YouTube's on fire and-

- Every day you log in on Twitter, it's just- - Twitter's just adding the fuel to the fire. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just, at this point it's just like exhausting, right? - It's so hard to keep up with. And like, I obviously don't wanna sit here and be like, you know, fuck the victims or whatever. I'm not trying to say that. What I'm trying to say is that it's so exhausting. - As like, as I don't know,

is shall I say consumer or just person on the internet? There's just too much information for me to be able to keep up with everything that's going on now. - Yeah, there's only so many twit long as I can read in a day before I just start to, the big sigh starts to kick in. - I wanna care, right? I wanna support all these people who are coming out with all the statements, but I also don't wanna like,

a situation that I don't understand anything about. - Yeah, exactly. - And then also there's just too many. Like it feels like our brains are being like DDoS right now by information. 'Cause like not only is the world ending with coronavirus, which we've just forgot about, like, you know, we've got to deal with all this shit and figure that out. And it's just, oh my God.

It's impossible to get out. - I don't even know how the drama channels are keeping up with all the stuff that's coming out. - They're just frothing at the mouth, aren't they? All this content. I mean, I made a joke on Twitter saying like the only people benefiting from 2020 are the drama and news channels, but it really does seem that's the case, you know? Because everybody else is just,

so sick of what's happening. And I feel bad saying that, right? Because as you said like- - I just wish it didn't happen. - Right, right. - It's tragic that the bar for being a somewhat decent content creator is just not touching kids now. - It's just keeping your genitals in your pants. - Yeah, it's just not, you know, it's sad that it's come to that, you know?

- Right. - It's just, all right, I guess we're just making content is not even a thing anymore. - Because remember like five years ago when it was controversial to have a sponsor in your video and now it's kind of controversial if you do something really weird with kids. It's just like, what's...

I don't know what's happening. - I mean, YouTube's changed and evolved so much. I mean, thinking about just like going on like a content perspective. I mean, there's always this kind of like YouTube matter about the content you should make. 'Cause I remember like commentary channels or drama channels didn't really exist like five,

five years ago because what, like, I don't know. 'Cause I remember thinking why would anyone be interested in YouTubers talking about other YouTubers? - I guess it's like the way that, you know, the reason why TMZ exists, right? Like it gets to a point, right? Where YouTube got so big and you can only like that people, I mean, I basically only watch YouTube at this point. I watch anime, I watch Netflix, but it's like 80% YouTube, right? What I watch.

it would make sense that then a market would appear for being able to just talk about YouTubers and YouTuber drama and dumb shit that YouTubers do. 'Cause my God, do they do some dumb shit? - Yeah, and a lot of them unfortunately get away with a lot of it as well. - And I think it's just because there was not as many eyes on just what YouTubers were doing back then. 'Cause it was just like, why are you talking about YouTuber? They're not a celebrity. They don't have any power. - As much as all these YouTubers like and wish they're a celebrity.

Smart 12-year-old can do it.

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And it works on pretty much every device, phones, laptops, tablets, pretty much anything you have. So you can always stay protected on the go. And it's also rated number one by tech reviews like CNET and The Verge. I'm traveling around the world right now and especially VPN has genuinely been saving my ass. I like watching TV shows and it's very annoying that I have accounts in Japan and when I travel, it does not like it. So being able to just spoof that I'm in Japan or in any other country to watch any kind of content

But we're mainstream. Yeah, but I don't know, like...

Twitter has just been, I've always enjoyed Twitter because I've always said to people, it's kind of a nice in-between of social and business, at least in terms of like as a YouTuber using Twitter. - I don't understand what,

like a regular person would need Twitter for. I think it's a cesspit. - I never used Twitter before I started. I never cared about Twitter or anything like that. But I think as a YouTuber, it's kind of- - You have no choice. - It's almost required at this point next to a YouTube channel. - I mean, I doubt many, we would be friends, right? If we didn't all have Twitter and socialize with each other. - To me, Twitter is just basically Facebook for,

for influencers online, I guess. Like I get to follow what everyone else is doing, not just in my own circles, but in like other circles as well. Because that's basically the only reason I go on Twitter apart from lewds and memes. You know what I mean? - Porn and you know. - The rest of Twitter just makes me,

- Yeah. - Sometimes. - Do you know what I mean? - I totally get it. - 'Cause you can't debate anything really on Twitter. - No, no. - And people aren't interested in having like their opinions changed. - The moment you join in on an argument, you've already lost. - That's why like, obviously we're all human, we all have opinions on things. But I think the reason why most of us just don't comment on anything, 'cause it's like, if you comment, you lose. Like if you get involved, you lose. - We can't be fucked to join in on this losing battle, right?

It's just a waste of energy. - It's like, if I wanted to get involved, I don't think Twitter is the right platform to get involved for a lot of things. Like some things, yeah, definitely. But I feel like there are other platforms or other means that can,

that you could use to get involved. - And it's just like, it's crazy how even the most agreeable statements can become controversial on Twitter. Like I saw someone who was just like, yeah, just like don't fuck kids. And there was somehow people in the comments. - How dare you? - Somehow there was someone commenting like, you know, as a playing devil's advocate. It's like, what?

- This is just like drink water. I thought this was like, you know, a thing that everyone was just understood was the thing to do. - Unfortunately common sense nowadays is not as common as we'd like to think it is. - Which is why I just, again, like even if I think me commenting on something or like, you know, getting involved with a drama is like a slam dunk. I'm like, it's not worth it. 'Cause it's gonna be like four people who are like, I don't know though.

- Like you could say, you got to drink water to survive. And people would be like, but I like drinking Coke. Can I not? Are you telling me that I can't drink Coke? - You fucking right wing. - Coke was once water, right? - I hate it so much.

- Yeah, it's unfortunate. - That's kinda why I just kinda like switch off and post my occasional memes to Twitter and get on with my YouTube. - I feel for me, it's been like that for the past couple of years and it's just kinda gradually gotten worse and worse until today. I mean, before I wouldn't hesitate to post an opinion about something regardless of how controversial it was. - Yeah, I noticed you don't really post your opinions much anymore. - No, because every time I do, there's always some group of people who's just so quick to coming on to me like, oh,

- No, you're a terrible person for saying this very personal opinion.

- Yeah, apparently, according to the internet I am. And now I just, I don't know. There's so much, as you said, there's so much I wanna say, but I guess that's the double-edged sword of having a big following. - Yeah, yeah. - And a quote-unquote influence on the internet. - Yeah, exactly. - I think I've become content with not having to say my opinion. I mean, you look at like JK Rowling and you're like, please stop. Please stop saying your opinion, right? But like, this is the thing, right? You get famous or whatever and you think, my opinion deserves to be heard.

- Yeah. - It's a right for it to be heard. And it's like, shut the fuck, no one gives a fuck what you think. - Sometimes no one gives a shit. - I think like that's the biggest reality check as a YouTuber is like just learning that no one gives a fuck what you think.

Just make videos for me. - 'Cause I mean like for me, I see myself the same way as I did like 10 years ago. Like we're all just fucking normal guys who had like the same fucking life as most other people watching this. And I went through fucking university. No one gave a shit about my opinion back then. Why would people give a shit about my opinion now because I have shitty opinions in anime? Like that just doesn't make sense to me. - I just don't think my opinion is better than anyone's. I think my opinion is just as shitty as,

- And isn't it hilarious how so many people who are against like channels like us, who are so quick to be like, oh, he thinks that his opinion is so much more grander than everybody else's because he has a large following, he has influence on the internet. And yet we never say or mean that ever. Like they're putting words in our mouth. - I mean, it happens. I just kind of accepted that stuff happens like that. I don't get too beat up about it.

- Yeah, I mean, it's part of like you said, the double-edged sword of having a very large audience. Like we could not talk to this large an audience if they were like in real person, they're in real life. And you're gonna get like something you're gonna say is gonna inevitably get misconstrued or something like that. And some people are just not gonna like you. We talked about this last time. - It's a hard thing to learn that you just,

gonna have to accept that you're not gonna be universally liked. - Yeah. - It's weird. But you know what's a one good example is that I remember when you first started uploading videos, when you got that first dislike and you were like, "Whom's dislike this? Tell me my name." You know, you're like, you wanna find out why they disliked it. And then like, if you're looking like down here right now, you can see like, put it like 120 or like 300 or a thousand, I don't know how many views we had, right? You just accept really quickly that you're gonna have like,

200 dislikes straight away. And you don't know why. I don't know why 30 people dislike my video when it goes live, but it happens to everyone. And I wanna know why, but it's something that as a YouTuber, you just come to accept. But I guarantee if any of you start,

a YouTube channel, you'll know when you get that first dislike, 'cause it's gonna sting and you're gonna be like, ah. - But I've always said to people who, because so many people, when I go to panels or conventions or whatnot, the question that I'm sure all three of us get asked is how do you start a YouTube channel? Like what tips do you have for a beginning YouTube channel? And I've always said to people that the moment you start getting dislikes in your video is when you know you've made it.

- Because it's true. - It's actually true. - Or you fucked up. - Or you fucked up really bad. But if your video starts to get maybe like one or two dislikes to like, you know, maybe 10 times the amount of likes, right? Then that means, you know, you've made it because now you're reaching a wide enough audience that you won't be able to please everybody. And that's the end goal really for content creators, right? Because I think it's kind of futile

there are some content creators out there who are just really desperate to try and please everybody. And I always just want to tell those people, dude, it's not going to work. Like you just have to accept that if you're on the internet,

People are gonna hate you for no reason and you just have to accept that. - Yeah, like it's, I mean, you read the comments, right? And you see that some people make really odd conclusions from your behavior. Like that are really odd in general. And someone, no matter what you do and what kind of personality you show, one person is gonna perceive it in a bad way. It's just gonna happen. - Like if we were just to take all the videos where we've collaborated, apparently Connor's like manically depressed

- I just have a face where like naturally, I always get this in person. People think I'm mad at them, but I just have a face naturally that's just like. - You just have a resting bitch face. - I've always had that since I was like a kid. - There's always that one comment when it's just like, why is Connor so depressed? - It's got like a thousand up votes, right? - Is he just not happy to be there? - It was on like your Ingrish video where it's like, okay, people are like, yo, Connor's not like super energetic. It's like, it's not my fault.

I don't want to be that asshole who's like, "It's about me." It's like if I'm on Joey's channel, right? Joey's doing his intro. I'm not gonna try and interject. It's his fucking intro. - You're not gonna be like, "Whoa, guys." - I'm not so self-centered where I think that I'm on someone else's video that I have to be the center of attention. I'm there to be on Joey's channel, right? I don't see it as like, "I need to entertain." - Yeah, we're not all like Guy Fieri every episode.

I'll contribute when I can join in, but I'm not gonna cut you off. It's your channel, right? 'Cause it would piss me off if someone was like trying to really show me up on my own channel. I'm like, bro, come on, we're collabing. Just be normal. - This is my channel, all right? - 'Cause wouldn't it be weird, right? If you're doing a video with someone, let's say you're a new YouTuber and your friend comes over, you're like, let's make a video. And your friend is like his normal self. The moment that camera turns on, he's like, yo, what's up? You're like.

- What the fuck man? What are you up to? That would be weird, right? 'Cause obviously I'm not like that all the time. So yeah, it's just something that's like, I don't know, man. Okay, question for you. I get this every single time I do, like you said, like a panel at a convention. I get the question that is, how do you deal with hate? 'Cause I'm of the philosophy, you never deal with it, you just come to accept it. You just learn to just,

Get over it. Do you remember how you- - No, that's like a very, I feel very passionate about this because I feel like there's no right answer for this. And I feel like the right answer is that we just basically got to check ourselves online and just don't be a fucking dick. Because it's unfortunate, right? Because I get asked the question a lot as well. And every creator I've talked to,

there's no solution, right? You just get used to it, right? You just gotta ignore it, right? And to me, that's fucking insane 'cause that's not a solution. That's a coping mechanism. You know what I mean? But that's the only thing we can do when we have to deal with hate. - I'm sure she won't mind if I share this, but Jessica Neary, a really good friend of mine,

- Is that a flex? - I asked this question to her because when she blew up, she was getting noticed by everybody. But at the same time, when you blow up in that sense, you also gain a lot of haters on. That's just how it works. And so I remember, I think Aki asked her the question of how did you get through that? Because we all saw as a third person, just how brutal her hate is. - She got a lot of hate. - She got a lot of hate in her prime time.

And so Aki asked her, she was like, "So how do you deal with it?" And I think Jessica said it in the most perfect way. And she just said,

it's not that you deal with, you do end up dealing with it, but it never stops hurting. - No, no, it will- - And I think that just perfectly sums it up. You learn to deal with it, but it never stops hurting. Every time, if you see that one hate comment, that's just, it just hits you in the worst spot possible. Like you'll learn to deal with it because you've seen so many examples. - But like, no matter how immune you are, there's always that one comment every so often that comes up that you're just like,

- I just ruined my whole day. And I thought I was above this, but you're never above it. - No, you're never. - I'm a person who I'd say I'm not self-conscious about many things. I'd say on average, when people I speak to, there's maybe like one or two things I'm self-conscious about. And it's just like, dude, they can say whatever they want, but if they hit that one thing that I was worrying about that one day, that shit hurts.

- Yeah. - 'Cause I think one story that I've experienced on like a secondhand experience, and I'm sure Sydney's fine with me telling this story, is that she became a meme, okay? This was back when cringe culture was like at its prime. So she made a video when she was a kid that was like, it was kind of like a parody of like,

like yonder rays and just like the anime weeb kind of girl. But it was to the point when, you know people couldn't tell that it was satire. - Cause they don't know the person now. - Yeah, they don't know the person. She wasn't really a YouTuber back then. She was just a girl on the internet. - Girl who uploaded. - Yeah, exactly. And then years later Leafy featured it in a video. - Yeah, I remember that. - And that just fucking blew up. Like she became a meme. And I like, I was on YouTube at this point.

So I know like the right and wrong things that you can do online. But even seeing it from a secondhand perspective, it was like, it was hard, right? Because she'd wake up and she would just get death threats every single day. Like she, I had to just delete Twitter, delete Facebook because it got to the point when people from her school were messaging her about it. That's how widespread it was. And like, I've never talked about this publicly,

but it was fucking hard, right? 'Cause like, I love Sydney and like, I did not know the right way to deal with it. So what I did was I was like, okay, this is the only way I could like,

I could make it a bit better. So I wrote like a parody video for her, which is if you've seen Sydney's video called like how to be tsundere or something along those lines where she basically satirizes it. That was like, that was my way of trying to help her get out of it because you know on the internet, if you say something is bad or if you say you're hurting, that's only gonna make it 10 times worse. - Yeah, yeah.

I tried to deal with it by just trying to make a joke out of it. And to an extent it works, but to this day, like Sydney still, like sometimes she gets notifications on her Facebook or Twitter and it's just,

it affects her, it never went away. - Yeah, I bet. - Because we went through like a whole year period where she was just afraid of social media because she was afraid of opening up a message and then someone new was like mocking her or someone she knew personally was mocking her. And it's like, this is why I like feel really strongly about this because I don't feel like there's a right way you can deal with it.

The only way we can deal with it is just to make sure that we as a community don't act shitty online and just know that there is a person behind the avatar. And it's so easy to forget a lot of the times, even for us, you see a number, we see our view counts and we're just like, that's just a number. But like behind every number, behind every avatar, there is someone there. And especially with what's been going online nowadays,

and some of the stuff that's been happening on Twitter and YouTube recently, I think it's super, super important that we as a community try to

just act better. - Yeah. - Because there's no way to regulate this. So the only way I can think of is just to promote just acting better and being better online. - Since when did it become so hard for people on the internet to just act like a normal fucking human being? - It's weird 'cause the mentality people have is just strange. Like my old housemate used to do like K-pop dance videos.

there'd maybe be like, I don't know, like 20, 30 comments on most videos. And I remember there was one time when someone said that she looked like chubby in one of the dances. And then she replied being like, what the fuck? And then this person replied saying, oh, I never thought you'd see it.

- Yeah, yeah, that's the thing, right? - That's the weird mentality that I think some people have where they think, oh, they're never gonna see this. Like, no, we'll see it. And I think every YouTuber said that time and time again, we see it, we see it. But then a part of me is like, is that like a bad thing to say that we're gonna see it? 'Cause is that gonna make them comment more? I just feel like this is a problem that's never gonna have a solution. - No. - Except that just, you know, maybe if we keep repeating the message of, you know, be a little careful. 'Cause like, you know, I'm not gonna get mega upset about anything. I might get a little bothered

but I'm gonna be fine. But with some of the unfortunate stuff that has happened recently with a lot of online personalities and some taking their own life, it's really, it's pretty terrifying to think that maybe some of my friends might not be able to handle that. - And that's why I think I'm sure we can all agree that we all very strongly advocate for mental health among YouTubers. And there's a reason why so many YouTubers do have mental health issues is because of

- Because we were never like, we like us just as human beings, you know, we, we evolution never taught us how to deal with 50 million people sending you a clown emotes. - You don't learn this shit in school. You just, you just have to learn through trial and error. And unfortunately, a lot of the times some people are just not

psychologically equipped to handle a certain amount of hate or a certain amount of backlash or anything like that. And yeah, I mean, you know. - Did you ever find that we, like, did you ever like do YouTube or like watch YouTube videos to like escape real life sometimes? - Yeah, that's what it was. - But like now sometimes you feel like you have to switch off Twitter and switch off YouTube.

and escape that in real life. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like, isn't that messed up? It's weird 'cause it's so easy to see it. Like going back to Satoshi Kon, right? It is totally like getting sucked into another world. - Oh yeah, it is. - It is a separate world where you exist in that world. And the best way I can describe getting a lot of hate is it just, I don't know why, but it just feels suffocating.

You know what I mean? You could be sitting in your living room, no one's there, but you could just feel like suffocated just like with all these comments being like thrown onto you.

It's really hard and there's no right way to deal with it as a person. - Yeah, because this isn't interesting that we could upload a video and it get 200 dislikes and we think, oh, it's only 200 people. But if you think about it in real life, that's like walking into a fully packed cinema and all those people just immediately turning to you and saying, fuck you.

That's what it feels like. That's what 200 dislikes looks like. And it's so weird how so many YouTubers are just kind of numb to that now. - It's also weird 'cause there are a lot of YouTubers who never got off the ground who I think should have because it really crippled them.

I don't know if she's okay with me talking about it. I'm just gonna fucking do it. It's whatever. So, you know, like the hit or miss girl? - Yeah. - Remember that? That was a thing two years ago. - The one you interviewed? - Yeah. So that was, I mean, I should probably introduce how I actually met her first and then we can go into it. So before she blew up as the hit or miss girl, she met me at a convention 'cause she was a fan.

And one of my friends after she blew up was like, "Yo, on her Instagram, she's got a picture with you." And I'm like, "What the fuck? I don't know this girl." And then I went to an Instagram and sure enough, she had a picture with me. So I DM'd her and we were chatting and I was like, "Yeah, if you need any help with anything." 'Cause normally when I speak to new YouTubers or YouTubers who are blowing up, I'm like, "Hey, if you need any help with negotiating ad deals, you need help dealing with anything,

Let me know, I'll give you advice, I'll help you out, get you all sorted, it's chill. 'Cause it's hard, I wish someone would help me. I wish someone would help me. So yeah, so then she had all these plans and stuff to make,

which I think she should have because she was in a very rare position where she could have gotten a career for, you know, like at least like five, 10 years. The fame that the level of fame that she had at that time. - Oh no, definitely. - It was insane. And if you were around this time, you'll know she was like the thing. - Yeah, yeah. - Right? It was, I mean, my video was garbage and it got a million views. It was a terrible video. - Yeah, right. - Purely based off her face and her name. - Yeah, yeah. - A million views just like that, right? Not even a problem.

And there was compilations of her doing anything with a million plus views on YouTube. - Right. - 'Cause she didn't upload anything. So people wanted it. And I was telling her, you know, we filmed a video for her channel. We are trying to help get her started, but she made a mistake, which I tell the YouTubers, everyone's gonna be like, "What do you mean Connor? 'Cause you did this." Is don't make a fucking Discord server. I think having a Discord server that you're involved in,

like you're actually moderating yourself is the quickest way to get people to start disliking you. It is 'cause if you have to ban someone, they'll be like, "SeaDog banned me. "He banned me for no reason. "Fuck that guy." So she made a Discord server.

And bear in mind, she was already like kind of a target on 4chan. - Yeah. - Right. - 'Cause they wanted to find out information about her. - Yeah. - So this became like a cesspit of a discord. I know she'll probably say that it isn't, but like I've seen a few- - As a third person. - I've been around on the internet. I know a cesspit when I see one. I know a 4chan breeding ground. - Right. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And they were out for blood for her. Like they like doxxed her like multiple times. They were finding out where she was. They found her boyfriend, which she hadn't revealed. And they were making it hell for him and her. They were like threatening that they were gonna come to our house and they would mention their address and stuff. And like, that was a, I reckon her chance of, you know,

having anything was ruined because she was so preoccupied with all this shit and trying to deal with it. - Oh yeah. - Of people just hating on her, finding her address, saying horrible things about her, saying that she was a dude all the time. It was horrible. And many times she would message me really upset about it being like, "What do I do? I don't know what to do, man."

countless horrible stories. I don't know what I can share and what I can't share, so I just won't share anything. But there was just really horrible things that was happening to her left, right and center 'cause she didn't set up the precautions to deal with this. And she didn't know what she was doing. - Yeah. - Yeah. - But even then, there's only so many precautions you can set up. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, the bigger you get, you normally limit ways that people can communicate with you, right?

with you, right? - Yeah. - You normally make it very difficult for people to be able to one-to-one talk with you. - Yeah. Also because it's just very hard to talk to that many people. - 'Cause if I open my DMs on Twitter and I was like, "Hey guys, open DMs." - Yeah. - My DMs would be pretty much unusable within two days. - Yeah. - Right?

And it's just like, it's really tragic 'cause she easily could have had a career. - Oh no, she could have. - And she's probably watching this now thinking, "Wow Connor, you should have told me this." But it's like, how can I tell you to make a career? I did my best to help and push. - If she's not the one acting on it, then there's not much she can do. - But she wanted to, she wanted to. And I don't know if she really did want to or not, but there was definitely opportunity there. And it was just, it was really sad seeing hate. - Like hearing this, I understand how hard

hard it can be, especially in the situation she was in. Because yeah- - That was a rough situation. That doesn't happen, right? - Yeah, it doesn't happen often. But when you get to that point when it's just you're scared to go online, like going back to what I experienced with Sydney, I was like, I had to just uninstall everything. I remember I took the phone off of her and I'm like, okay, just let me go through the hate comments and I'll make sure it's safe for you.

And man, going through the phone on behalf of her, I felt fucking shitty. 'Cause some of the things people can send are fucking horrible, horrible, okay? Especially back then. So I can totally understand being like, dude, I just don't want any involvement in this. 'Cause if you go into that thinking that you can make a career out of this with that kind of toxic environment, I don't know. I think at that point you do yourself more harm than good in the long term.

And I think there, I mean, there is, you know, there's always a time when you can make a career online, but I think there is a healthy way to go about it. - Absolutely. - And the less healthy way to go about it. - I mean, I think there was definitely room for her to do it. - Yeah.

- Oh no, I think that was. - Okay, I'm not trying to compare, but you know, like it's like a similar situation with the Niko Lol Girl. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - She became a huge streamer now. And I think at the peak of the hit or miss thing, it was bigger than the Niko Lol Girl. - Oh yeah. - So I think it was easy, but she just,

didn't do anything and her parents were also pretty much like against anything. Didn't take any of the stuff seriously. - 'Cause the thing is, if you wanna make a career out of it, you do need like a very good understanding of the internet. - Yeah, which is why- - And how it operates. - Which is why I was trying to help her out. And I was like, hey, and you know, there was also like a ton of like, you know, opportunistic YouTubers coming out of the woodwork to try and get that piece of the pie, if you will. 'Cause she would tell me about all the stuff that some of these YouTubers were saying. And I was like, oh my God,

oh, some of these dudes are slimy, bro. - Yeah, yeah. - It's just, I don't even know. - Internet's a scary place, man. - It is, which is like, I'm so glad I didn't just blow up. I'm so glad I got the slow climb. - The slow, yeah, yeah, yeah. - 'Cause I got to make every mistake. I got to make all the fuck ups. I got to learn everything myself before,

I actually had to learn all that. So I can deal with it now 'cause I learned it all. But a lot of people who blow up, it's like, how the fuck do you, how do you learn how to negotiate and add deal? How do you learn how to deal with like a hundred plus hate comments? - Yeah, yeah. - No one tells you how to deal with this. - I don't get much hate, but everyone gets a little bit. - This episode of Trash Taste is sponsored by Book Walker. Have you guys heard of Book Walker? - Oh no.

- Oh no. - Never heard of Book Walker. - Daddy Book Walker? - Daddy Book Walker. - The boys who got us our visas. - If you guys don't know, Book Walker right now is doing a summer anime kickoff event where you can get 10 to 30% coin back on the following series such as Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out. Have you seen that one that's about to be animated? - What about this next one? Sword Art Online Alicization. - I've never heard of that one. - You know I'm gonna be watching that. I'm gonna be watching that one. - We also have Rent a Girlfriend as well, which is a pretty popular manga series that's

about to get an anime adaptation. - At the time of recording, we haven't watched the anime yet, but I'm so hyped for this one. I feel like this is gonna be the next big, you know, harem kind of best girl kind of show. - It's gonna be, as the name suggests, the trashiest. - I was gonna say, it kinda sounds a little trashy. - It is a little bit, but here's one that's not trashy, Re:Zero. - Okay, I'm hyped, I'm hyped. As my waifu, Rem, I'm hyped. - Are you fucking serious?

- I mean, look, I'm gonna be the 1% to flaunt over Beatrice, okay? I'm sorry. - Yes, oh my God, I thought I was the only one. - This is like the two pedophiles. - I thought I was the only one, yes. Beatrice, best girl. - But not only that, we also have Neon Genesis Evangelion, the manga series, or if you want some

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Back to the video. So I mean like, here's a question for you guys then. Like what do you think of the state of anime YouTube right now? And do you think it's in like a healthy spot? - Well, I mean, I guess compared to what's happening on other communities right now, compared to the Smash community, anytube is like the version Mary. - Nintendo is probably thinking, "Holy fuck, we dodged a bullet from being a channel." - Super Smash Brothers is for good boys and girls. Remember kids?

- I mean, like there was a point, I will admit there was a point where I would look at the Antichube community and I was like, man, fuck this community. Like legitimately, like there was just like some people and just like some fan bases as well, especially just some groups of people where I was just like, man,

we don't need this kind of mentality in here, but what can you do, right? The AniTube community, or at least the anime community online was, especially in the last five years or so, has been growing so much more rapidly, right? Like five years ago, it was still very, very much a niche, right? But nowadays it's gotten to the point now where other communities are starting to recognize the size and power of the anime and AniTube community. So obviously with that is gonna come a lot of,

slimy behavior from a group of people, right? - Yeah, I mean, like for me, it's been weird seeing the AniTube community grow as much as it has, because I remember there was a point when you could just point to a group of people and be like, this is the AniTube community, this is the anime YouTube community. And then everyone kind of like tried to get along together because the group was small enough.

where you'd know everyone in the community. So you'd like try to network and everything like that. - I mean, and we all tried to do that at one point. - Oh no, no, no. And then it got to a point when the community grew too big for it to be like under one banner. And there were too many different personalities for like everyone to be able to mix.

And I feel like that happens, I think like three, four years ago. And now I feel like with anime YouTube, it's a lot of different small communities that are like groups under one general banner, I guess. - It's like the gaming community, right? Like when it first started, I'm sure all these small creators would come together and ban. But now that there are just so many of these groups, it's like,

small groups within small groups. - Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I bet the Fortnite streamers don't talk to the CS:GO streamers. - Right, right. - You know what I mean? It's like, it's different. And it's the same with anime, right? Like, dude, I don't know any fucking Dragon Ball YouTubers, but I know they are, and like the Naruto YouTubers, they all keep to themselves.

and stuff. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's weird. - But it's weird because it used to be a point when if you made anime content, you were an anime YouTuber. And now there's people like Critical making anime content, like other people outside making anime content as well. And it's just become a bit more widespread and it's less- - Everyone talks about anime now.

- It's more general now. You don't necessarily have to advocate as an anime YouTuber for you to make anime content now. Everybody can make anime content. - I always felt like, on the opposite end of view where you were, I've always been like a core of it. 'Cause you're one of the first, you're always one of the biggest, you've grown with it. I felt like I was always on the outskirts of it where like, I was never friends with anyone in it really. - 93%. - Well, I mean, you know,

- The only friend I did have, turned out to do some really fucked up shit. - Oh yeah. - Oh wow. - Should I tell the story? I mean, I've mentioned it. - I mean, I know the story. - Yeah, go for it. - So fuck it, I'm gonna say it. So when I first started making Black Butler content, which if you don't know what Black Butler is, it's a Victorian era anime about a servant and a butler. - It's 93% the anime. - It's very targeted towards a female audience.

When I started doing it, I would do the voice of Sebastian. So I, Sebastian. - Sebastian. - I would do prank calls, you know, and I would call people up and I would tell them, oh my goodness, my refrigerator's running, blah, blah, blah. - There's a group of people watching this right now who are just like frothing from the nostalgia. They're like, he did the Sebastian voice. - I'm simply one hell of a butler. That line, remember? Right, so I would do a lot of Sebastian content, right? And so in the show, there's a Sebastian and there's a CL.

So I thought to myself, I need to find someone who sounds exactly like this guy 'cause I sound exactly like this guy. And I found a person who,

who insisted on being called CL. That's how into this character they were. - Right, right. - And at the time, you know, they had a big following and we were known together and everyone just thought we were like best mates, but like, I was sure they were really fucking weird. First of all, I used to just do the Sebastian thing. And the moment the camera turned off, I was like, I'm gonna go play games. I'm done pretending to be a British guy. I mean, I'm a British guy, but I'm done pretending to be a butler. But for them, it was like,

- They were living in that. - They never turned off the persona. - Right. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You couldn't like not call them that because they would be like, "What the fuck? I'm called CL. You call me CL." And bear in mind this person's like, I don't know, they were like 26, 27. Like they, you know, they should have, it was weird. - Right, yeah. - A 27 year old should not be like living with their parent only, you know. - I'm not Dave, I'm CL. - Right, so.

- You know, it was weird. And one time they came to London and then we hung out and it was really, really, really weird. - Oh, so you met him in person? - I met him once in person 'cause I kind of felt like they'd helped me out 'cause we did a lot of Black Butler content but then they started being really shitty and they used to like flake on me and then, okay. Also one thing they did that was really sus is that when we collab together, you don't ask for money.

We're not laughing. We both had YouTube channels. When they were on my channel, they would ask me to pay them. And I used to be like, that's not how YouTube works. When you collab, it's a mutual interest. But they were like, no, we wanna get paid 'cause my videos are doing better. I'm like, well, that means that your channel will get a huge...

So that was also really frustrating to me. So I met them once in person after about a year and a half of not speaking to them. 'Cause they were like, "I'm in London, I lived in London." They were like, "Wanna hang out?" I was like, "Fine, we'll meet up for afternoon tea as you do." - Afternoon tea. - And then like, these like Americans, filthy American, I'm joking. So they turned up and there was like two other people there who looked very, very young. - Okay.

I asked one of them, I was like, "How old are you?" 'Cause it was really weird as well 'cause they were like attached to them. And I thought that's really weird. Like they wouldn't, they would take it in turns holding onto the person. I thought, "Wow, that's really sus." And I just thought, okay, this is, you know, Americans do American things. 'Cause as a British person, right? I don't understand things that Americans do that are weird or fucked up.

'Cause Americans are just quirky. Some Americans just do their own thing. - We all have like our own con stories about people doing weird things. - That one weird American. - I remember asking one of these kids, I was like, "How old are you?" And they were like, "18." And I remember thinking in my back of my head, "You don't look 18, you look like 16."

I was like, is your parent okay with you coming here alone? And they were like, yeah, it's okay. And I was like, all right, whatever. I was really weird. I went home. I never spoke to them again because I was really creeped out. I left early 'cause I made an excuse that I had to go. It was just weird. There was just like kids basically with him. I was like, I didn't sign up for this. I thought we were gonna have an awkward conversation for like two hours alone.

And then I'd go home. I thought that was what it was. And then two, three months later, it must've been, no, no, no, it was like eight months later, I get a DM on Discord of, "Hey, you should see this." And it was a link to a local police report. And I thought, "What the fuck?" So I click on it and it's like two counts of molestation and one count of felony molestation. Oh no, aggravated molestation, which I think is under 14 years old. - Yeah.

Now, yeah. And they were...

- Yeah, I mean, I'm, it's a mess. - I mean, I guess your hunch was correct in that sense. - Yeah, yeah. - And it's one of those things where it's like, fuck man, like I collabed with this person like a lot. Like I think I, the moment I found out that they were being charged with all this stuff, you know, even if, you know, you won't, you know, you won't be able to get away with it. You know, you won't be able to get away with it. - Yeah. - But I think that's one of the things that I think is really important.

innocent until proven guilty. But I just didn't sit right with me leaving that stuff up. I was like, even if it's a chance, I don't wanna leave it up. So I took all the videos down, which is like 40 or 50. If you go to my social blade, you'll see like views, views, minus 9 million views, views, views, views. And as I took them down, I still got comments being like, where are the videos? And I'm like, I don't wanna break this bubble here.

- I guess I did now. And it was just like, oh God, it was terrible. And you think back, you're like, fuck, why? Why did you have to do that? What's wrong with you? And then I felt really guilty for ages. 'Cause I was like, fuck, did I help them? Did I help them? Did I facilitate this by giving them more of a platform? It was just fucked up.

Everyone I knew who was close to him also was really weird. And it was just like, it was a thing of like, just record this one thing, then please leave me alone all the time before. 'Cause they were so weird. And I should have listened to my gut. I don't know why I did. And I regret.

- But you always have that first kind of experience where, you know, meeting people on the internet might not be the best idea sometimes or people are just really weird on the internet. - Some people are, some people are. - And you don't always get that until you actually hang out in real life and it's not like in a discord call. - I mean, my early YouTube career was definitely that because when I was still doing gaming stuff,

Naturally, I would also bond together with other gaming YouTubers that are also trying to grow. So I think this was back when I had like less than 10,000 subs. I had this huge group of like friends that I used to collab with. And a lot of them I never met in real life until much, much later. And when you do, you just, you really get, as you said, like you finally get a sense of who this person actually is. And unfortunately sometimes they're just composed

- It's completely different. It's scary how much some people can just fake that shit until they think they can get away with it, right? - It's really like made me listen to my gut when I have a bad feeling about someone. And now I don't even try and like humor them. I'm just like- - 'Cause like right now it's made like, my experiences has made me like a lot more careful when I meet people in real life because you just have to be, you know, I wanna be, you know, when you started out, you were trying to be friendly to everyone and I wanna be friendly to everyone

because I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But when there's just this many people that you just gotta be careful sometimes and you gotta have that barrier up. - Also over experience, I feel like you get a much more of a keener eye on stuff like that. You know if someone's doing something for like sauce reasons. - It just makes me so sad the sheer amount of people who do fucked up shit like this. And it's just like, I don't understand it.

my head is not even remotely wired like that. So to me, it's so foreign that people could do this shit. And it's so confusing that so many people do shit like this. - Yeah, yeah. - And it's like, why? Why the fuck do you? Don't fuck kids. How hard is it to not fuck kids? I don't understand. - I know, I know. - Excuse me? Are you telling me? - That's the thing, right? I say that and then someone will find that controversial. - How do you argue about that? It's not even an argument. - It's just like, I don't,

- It's like also side notes, if I ever do meet you in real life and you're like an online personality that I might not know, please introduce yourself as like your internet handle. I've had so many times when- - Oh my God.

- You're like, someone introduces them to you and they're just like, oh yeah, I'm like Matt or something. And it's just like, okay, do I know you? - Fans do that too. They're like, do you remember me? And I'm like, who? And they're like, oh, I'm like X girl with this avatar. And then I opened up their profile and they've changed it. And I'm like, wait, how the fuck is it that you just don't know who you are? You don't even show your face. What do you want? - Especially the people who don't show their face. - Yeah, what the fuck? - I'm like, I'm Jacob.

- I know like 70, which one of the 70 are you? - I know, right? So yeah. - Should I go back on topic? - No, just like, yeah. Just introduce yourself by your internet handle. Just like- - I feel like I get it because it's weird. Like I feel weird being like, yeah, hi, I'm Giguk. You know what I mean? Like I get it. - I just say, hi, I'm Connor, see dog online. - Yeah. - That's what I say. - Yeah. Just like introduce yourself with that in mind. So we know because we don't,

Nowadays people know each other by their internet handles a lot of times. - More people know you for Gigguk than Garnt, right? Probably. - Yeah. - That's 'cause I mean, that's how it is. - I mean, that's fine by me because like Gigguk, I don't know how you guys got your names, but I mean,

I don't know the origin story with the anime man. I don't know how the fuck you thought of that name. - It's all that SEO bro. That's all it is baby. - One of the get his views and they recommended. - But like for me, Gigguk has always just been, it was like a family nickname that my dad thought up when I was born. So like, I'm just used to it. Like if someone calls me Gig or Garnt, like my family to this day still call me Gig. So like I'm used to hearing that.

- I'm completely comfortable with just people calling me gig or- - If my parents call me anime man, I would think I was like disowned or something. - If you call me the anime zone on the other hand, now we got a problem. Now we got a fucking problem. - I do that sometimes just to fuck with Garnt. - We do it. We like to joke around on this podcast.

- Yeah, I know, it's just, yeah. That's the one thing I guess I, it's really weird, right?

I've never been used to introducing myself as like, "Hi, I'm the anime man." Because before all of this, it was just so natural for me. And I'm sure it is for with a lot of people to just be like, "Hi, I'm Joey." Because I just want you to get to know me as a person. But it's weird now how it's gotten to that point where if you just say, "Hi, I'm Joey." Or some people are just like, "What the fuck is that?" - Do I know you? - Do I know you? Which Joey are you?

- Do you have a game? - Yeah. - You even verified bro? If not, don't talk to me. - Yeah, it's scary man. Like numbers on the internet, man. Scary shit. It really scarily changes the perception of how you see someone even if you don't mean it that way. - I think we touched on that roughly on episode one, right? How we met each other and how the numbers played in the factor. Going back to what I was saying earlier with the, how I felt like I was always on the outskirts of the community.

I think that experience that I did have very much solidified to me. Like I'm okay with not making friends. Like I'm gonna keep to myself, but obviously I'm, you know. - I mean, I very quickly came to the realization that again, you can't please everybody. - Oh no, no. - So it's just best to just find that however many group of people that you know are cool from here till now and just stay.

Stick around with them. - One thing that I always found weird about the anime YouTube community specifically, and this was very much as an outsider looking in this. I mean, I was in the community, right? Like I made content, but I never participated in anything and I didn't make the videos that they would typically consider anime content.

- Know what the community does this? Where they try and like rank who's the best in their mind with content, which I find really odd. Like you never see the meme channels being like, here's the tier list of the best meme channels. You know what I mean? You never get like, oh yeah, no, Dolan Dark is better than Grandad. You know what I mean? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - No one gives a fuck.

Everyone's just like, I like grande. I like this. It's like, no one does this weird thing, but for some reason in the anime community, they are obsessed with like ranking each other and seeing who has the best content. - I only just noticed it's only the anime community. - No other community does this. And it's so weird. - Is it the gaming community?

- No, I've never seen that. - No one does teal. And it's weird how like, on the outside looking in, I was like, wow, they really just normalize this amongst themselves. They really just love stroking each other's egos. And it's weird 'cause no other content, no other community really does this where they like,

all they do is like compliment each other. They're like, damn, that was a good video. It's like that business meme, you know, where like, yes, we did business. - Very good business. - Great business, great videos. - Business executed. - It's weird. As someone who didn't do the type of content, the anime content that they considered. - You weren't like officially recognized. - As somebody, I'm sure a lot of you are like, know nothing about the anime community, right?

So I'll break it down real quick to you how the anime community works as an outsider. And you can tell me if my understanding is wrong. So I made anime content that was very entertainment based. I would take characters and do weird stuff with them like pranking them. The anime community has two types of videos that they consider anime content.

If you see a tier list, likely anything else that is not this will be ranked lower and that's reviews or analytical videos, right? And what I mean by that is obviously reviews of shows. If you review shows that- - Or episodes. - Or episodes or manga, whatever. And analytical videos where you do that shit that you did in English class where you break down why the curtains are blue. - You basically write an essay about it. - Yeah, you write a 20 minute video on why Deku fists

in the appropriate way that he does, right? It's how Deku mastered his fisting technique. 20 minute video, red circles, right? Like it's that type of content where they like, or like the logic of-

Haruhi Suzumiya, it'll have a title like that, right? - Basically you gotta talk about a specific show or you gotta talk about anime shows in general. - And it's a really strange obsession where amongst themselves, all these like small YouTubers or like I'd say between 10 and 100K, they are obsessed with doing these videos and who can do the best of these videos and ranking. And it's so odd looking from the outside in,

It's just like, it's weird watching them fight over this. And it's like, what's happening? Like this has gone beyond like criticizing each other's work to a point of like extremes, I think. Like it's gotten really strange. - It's just become a giant circle. - Yeah, it's a giant circle. - It's a circle jerk, right? - And they don't really recognize any other type of content. And I'm okay with that 'cause I think what it comes down to most is that most people who make videos, I'd say most YouTubers make it to

or to make up content for the audience. These YouTubers in the anime community make content for each other and to be appraised by each other and have their content like, if Giga gives me the A plus on my video, that's all I ever wanted, right? - I passed this semester. - It's strange 'cause obviously I wanna be validated by my peers, who doesn't, right? But that's not the only thing I wanted when I was starting to make content. - For these AniTubers, it's the be all end all, right?

- I could be wrong and I'm sure a lot of them would disagree, but from the outside looking at it seems like that is- - I actually totally agree with you. And I don't think it's just the anime YouTube scene I've seen it specifically or at least like the attitude community. Because I remember I had a very similar experience when I first started dipping my toes into the abridging community.

- Now this was all the way back in the day when abridging was like the shit. Everyone wanted to be like team four star and everyone was making their own abridged content and everyone had like a lot of different approaches and a lot of them were shit, right?

- Everyone tried and they failed. - You can say that though. - No, no, but a lot of them were shit, right? Because abridging is hard. It's hard. I've done abridging. I can wholeheartedly say it is fucking hard. But what happened is this community formed and there was like these forums that popped up. And what happened is that people would just start to criticize each other's work, each other's writing on comedy, right? - Like they're all experts.

- No, no, no, no, no. 'Cause it did become kind of a circle jerk where people were in the end making content to appeal to each other. You know what I mean? People were literally on these forums reviewing comedy writing in abridging and not to say like- - That's so-

- It sounds so pathetic. - Not to say that comedy can't, there isn't a science behind comedy or there isn't like a framework that you can work off of. But what that did, it just made a lot of abridging so fucking stale and so samey. - Yeah, because everyone's doing this, trying to please each other. So everyone's trying to write the same shit. - Yeah, yeah. - And then I also feel like what happens is that when a big channel say of Team Four Star, right? If they give positive praise to someone who's maybe up and coming, maybe they will think, "Oh, well they were nice to me."

So I'll praise their writing. And then it's like this giant circle jerk of like the people who want to be respected and the new guys who want to be respected, they all just pass around the compliments to each other. 'Cause they're like, this is what we need. We need this respect from each other. - Yeah, exactly. - And I see the exact same thing with a lot of smaller AniTubers now where they try,

they try to make content to appeal to like each other. - Other YouTubers. - Other YouTubers. Which is why whenever I see like an AniTuber that just does something totally different or just, you can tell, right? When an AniTuber makes a video that is completely like, and they don't watch other AniTubers,

- Oh yeah, you can tell straight away. - Because they always make a name for themselves. I remember the first time it happened was with Demolition D. Like you can tell he had a completely new style that no other AniTuber like,

And I remember like, I remember watching one of his videos early on and I remember thinking he's gonna fucking blow up. And that's exactly what happened. And now he was like, he's quit now. He's like the urban legend for us AniTubers. But he's like one of the most respected content creators in AniTube. But like, I remember John, Super Eyepatch Wolf, when he first came out, I knew he didn't watch any other AniTubers. - Oh, you can tell. - He fucking blew up as well.

I'm trying to think of this, if there's anyone recently. Oh, I've got one. I've never talked about him before. There's this guy called Scamboli Reviews.

- Okay, you mentioned him before. - Yeah, yeah, he's like very, I can tell he's very new to the scene and I've seen a lot of opinions about him online within like the AniTube community. And a lot of it is very negative just because the way he phrases it, phrases things and the way he goes about his videos is,

way more like different and some would say like brash and harsh, maybe arrogant. But from like, from myself, from like a content creator perspective, comparing his content to like a lot of the things the other AniTubers are doing, I could say he definitely has a more distinct personality and he definitely stands out. Even if I don't agree with

all of his content or the way he approaches his content. I can see that he approaches it. He just feels different from the rest, even though he's technically also doing like analytical content and he's like grown a lot faster in like a short period of time.

And I feel like we talked about this, you know, making content to appease other YouTubers. And sometimes you can definitely tell that. - Oh yeah. I mean, I think the reason why someone like John "Super Eyepatch Wolf" and yourself are able to get

plus a million views on a video talking about a very specific thing that maybe people aren't interested in, is it because I think you, like the priority is make the video good. - Yeah. - Don't, it's not about trying to appease someone or trying to impress another YouTube. 'Cause I feel like when you do that,

you're just gonna iterate on someone else's idea. It probably wasn't already good to begin with, but you think it's good 'cause that's the, in your mind, that's what you've been told by the whole community, is the golden standard, right? When it should be, just make the good content.

- Just make content you want. 'Cause I remember going back to the bridge thing. The meta game was try to make something better than Team Four Star. It was like, I'm going to make an abridged series and I'm gonna try and make this more respected in this own circle than what the big guys are doing.

And I'm pretty sure like Team Forsythe, they didn't really give a shit. You know what I mean? They were innovating with DBZ Abridged and Helsing Abridged and they were just doing their own stuff and they were doing stuff because they thought it was good. And as someone who's been on YouTube for a very long time, you can definitely feel when someone is making content with a completely unique angle and it's,

- You get a lot of the same reactions 'cause a lot of, sometimes people come up very fast and people are like, "Why is he coming up very fast?" - Yeah, a lot of the small YouTubers get very bitter about that. - Yeah, yeah. - They're very harsh about it. But then when I can look at the content or any of us and we can see exactly why it succeeded, we can break that apart. And like, I mean, talking about Team Four Star, I remember I, as you know, I'm a voice actor, that's what I do a lot. I've voiced a ton of abridges.

And the only time I've ever been laughing while I was recording was during the "Hell Singer Bridge" that I did. And I remember I couldn't get the lines done 'cause I was laughing too much. And I never have that problem with any other bridge. - I mean, Tucker's such an amazing writer. - It was such a good bridge for the time. It was incredible, right? And it's because they didn't give a fuck about trying to copy or trying to,

get the respect of someone else because they were just focused on making the product. - They just made shit that they thought was funny. - Yeah. - And it's just like, not everyone who just makes stuff for themselves makes good stuff. You know what I mean? That's not like, we're not trying to say you can't improve yourself by looking at other people. - Respect doesn't pay your bills as well. - That's a good way to say it. - Respect doesn't pay your bills, right? At the end of the day, you know,

typically with how the YouTube algorithm works, like we all love to shit on it. But at the end of the day, if you make something that people are watching, YouTube will be like, "Hmm, let's recommend it more." If people are watching your videos, you will get views. Like that's just how it works. Like it sucks that it's like that. Yes, there are occasions where YouTube does a little fuckery and drops the ball.

but that doesn't happen to every one of your videos. And there are YouTubers out there and you've seen a bunch of them who are complaining like, "Oh, I've been shadow banned, et cetera." No, your videos are garbage. - That's the harsh truth. - That's just the truth, right? Your videos are bad. And I can say that because my videos were bad at one point. - It's not just that because I've seen many really fucking great YouTubers and anime YouTubers as well who do fucking amazing content. No idea how to market this stuff.

- No idea how to like title and thumbnail their video. They're like some AniTubers who I'm like, this is a fucking great video, but I don't know what like half these words in your title mean. How is anyone gonna click on this video? - It's like, am I clicking on an anime video or am I clicking on a scientific study?

because some of these words, I'm just like, wow, I didn't know these existed in the English language and could be related to anime in such a way. - And it does suck in a way that you have to play to the YouTube meta of just how to title and thumbnail a video because I'm sure we've titled and thumbnail some videos. - We don't wanna clickbait, we're forced to clickbait. - No, no, 'cause you do. There are different levels of clickbait, but sometimes I'm like,

- You know what? It hurts me that I have to title it this way, but it's the only way people will click on it. - No one's gonna watch it otherwise. - Yeah, exactly. And that's just part of being a YouTuber, unfortunately. - Hate the game, hate the player. - Okay, for example, I did an Ark Knight sponsorship recently. Love that game, right? But I titled the video, "I spent $800 on an anime mobile game." It's not an anime, it's anime styled. A more accurate title would have been something like, "Oh, how to play it."

how to play Arknights. - I love Arknights. - Yeah, like that would have been way more accurate, but people aren't gonna click on that 'cause they don't know what Arknights is. If I give them a generic enough title that's interesting enough, they'll click on it.

And it's just trying to strike that balance, right? Between not lying to the audience, but also being honest. - I had the exact same problem with my Gacha game video. 'Cause I put so much fucking work into this Gacha game video. And I'm like, a lot of people would do not know what the fuck Gacha games even are. You know what I mean? Like, how do I get someone who has no idea about Gacha games to give this video a chance?

'Cause I think it's a pretty good introduction to the world of Gacha and everything. Go watch it, I put a lot of time and effort into it. I'm gonna just shout myself out. I put like a month of work into that video. - Is it so responsible giga? - But like it was just really hard for me to figure out how to properly market this to an audience. And that's part of the challenge of being a YouTuber

Like how long do you guys spend on your titles and thumbnails out of curiosity? - Sometimes you just know, and sometimes you spend two hours. - I mean, nowadays, when I think of a video idea, the first thing I think of even before I start writing a script or getting the general idea down is what's the title and thumbnail look like?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I do that like 80% of the time. - Yeah, because if I can't, if no matter what, I can't think of a good enough title or thumbnail for it, I usually just don't even bother doing the video until I can think up of like, okay, with this title, people click on it. And then I can start working on it and try and base my content around that title as much as I can so that it's not like, oh, this is completely clickbait, it's got nothing to do with the content of the video, which is,

- And like annoying because sometimes I have to sacrifice content for the sake of the title. - Yeah. - Which is the worst thing you can do. - Going back to the point I said earlier where I was mentioning

- Making shit content. I've been guilty of making shit content. - I think we all have. - Well, okay. When I was only making Black Butler videos, I remember I couldn't watch my own videos. Is that bad? - No. - Have you been there? - I've always said to people, if you can't watch your old stuff, then that's good. 'Cause that means you're getting not only more pressure on your own content, but now you know how to improve your content. Just don't make that shit.

- Do you ever feel like you've like, even right after you've made it, you're like, this is bad, but I'm gonna upload anyway. 'Cause I feel like you wouldn't do that. - Oh, I don't get to that stage. - I do have like a bar of quality where like I have, I've literally, there's been one video recently where it's been, I've recorded it, I scripted it, recorded it, edited it. And no matter how much I tried to jig around with it, it just didn't work. I just scrapped it. And that was like a good two weeks of work as well.

It hurt, but like for me, if I'm not like, I don't always have to be like, this is the best shit ever. This is like 10 out of 10 banger every fucking time. - Just good enough. - Yeah. - Sometimes it's like, okay, this is good enough. And even that hurts me to release sometimes. Just like good enough. But like, okay, question to you guys. Have there been any videos that you've ever regretted or like you just can't? - Dude, like my first early part of YouTube. - Yeah, my first four years.

- I'm gonna say this, but I know it's not true. Looking back, I feel like I hated it, but I know I didn't. I enjoyed what I used to make, but it was never what I wanted to make. I made one or two things that I did wanna make, and then I made more of that until I got stuck,

making only black butler stuff. - Right. - Yeah. - Right. And that was a nightmare to get out of. - Yeah. - 'Cause like anything I made that wasn't black butler, no one watched it. No one. And I remember, I remember I moved to London and I was making like 1500 pounds a month, right? - Yeah. - Which in London, this is before tax, before tax. - Scraping by, just scraping by. - I was basically scraping by. And I remember this is, for some reason I was adamant. I'm like, I'm not fucking making these black butler stuff.

I was still making them, but I'm not making them all the fucking time. And all of them bombed, like straight up, all of them just bombed. I was getting like one third of the views I was normally getting and I'm like, I'm gonna go homeless. I'm gonna have to go back to my parents and be like, I fucked up. But you know, I was persistent. I was like, no, I'm gonna make this fucking work. They're funny. I think they're better than my old stuff. And eventually it did take off. But I remember like, 'cause the reason why I,

I realized I had to change was 'cause someone told me they were like, "Oh, that's weird that you can't watch your own videos at all." Like even reviewing it. I couldn't review them. I had to get someone else to review them for me. 'Cause it was like, I would cringe too much watching it. 'Cause I didn't like it. - I get exactly the same feeling sometimes. - Yeah, but like now when I make a good video, I'm like, "I fucking love this part."

- I love that guy's hilarious. - I watch is like you watch it like two or three times before it goes. - Here comes the joke. I killed that joke. I killed that joke. You know what I mean? Like I'm so happy with what I'm making right now. It feels like a whole, like I've just been like unchanged. You know what I mean? But it's hard. And I see a lot of YouTubers

And I remember 'cause I used to help out with a lot of comic dubbers who would dub like Undertale comics. I don't know if you remember that when that was a thing. - Oh yeah, of course. Home stock comics. - All of these people who would dub comics, it was so easy to get hundreds of thousands of views, right? 'Cause these had huge fan dubs. They would get to like 200K subs. They would wanna start branching out.

boom, none of the videos would get views. And I was like, I was trying to help them, but a lot of people, when they get one or two videos that do bad or perform poorly, they're immediately put off trying to try anything else. 'Cause they're like, it just doesn't do well. It just doesn't do well. They don't wanna figure out how to make it work. 'Cause it is basically starting from zero. There's a little bit of an advantage. But you basically do have to kind of get rid of all your old audience and get a new one. - It's probably less,

starting from zero because at least from zero, there's no way to- - You have nothing to lose. - Which is why my number one piece of advice from the get go is make what you want. Don't make what gets views. - No, no, exactly. - And I fucked myself over. I'm lucky 'cause I think I'm like one out of a hundred, right? Who managed to change the content and get away from it. 'Cause I was persistent. I did not stop. - I was kind of in a similar situation. Not to the extent of you with Black Butler, but I was kind of there when I did a lot of Corpse Party stuff.

- Right, I remember that. - Yeah, because I originally blew up playing, I think it was Corpse Party 2, which was like the new Corpse Party game that just come out. It was only in Japanese. So the first Let's Play, that was the first Let's Play I ever did as well, I remember. It was like my,

my eighth video or something. And it just immediately blew up because it was a corpse party. 'Cause I didn't know how dedicated the Corpse Party fan base was back then. And it got to the point where I would do Corpse Party 2, it would just get insane amount of views, like way, way more than any of my anime content. And then I found a Corpse Party spinoff visual novel, which no one also did because it was only in Japanese. I did like 30 episodes of that. All the episodes fucking killed it. - Yeah.

It got to the point where any other video I did during that period, I'd say like over 90% of the comments were filled with Corpse Party RPs. - Yeah. - Oh really? - Just like replying to each other's comments as Corpse Party characters. And I looked at that and I was like, okay.

I shouldn't get stuck in this rabbit hole. This is bad. - I gotta get out of here. - I gotta get out of here, dude. I gotta get the fuck out. - And one thing I tell other YouTubers who are like maybe at like 10 to 50,000 who are stuck in a content where they can't get out of it. And it's the only content that gets views by doing a certain amount of thing over and over again. Like a pet almost, right? Like do the thing you did, but differently slightly. I always tell them like, think of it this way. Like maybe if you changed your videos up entirely,

the 50,000 subscribers that you're so desperately clinging onto right now could be a million.

don't worry about the subscribers you have. 'Cause most of them probably only care about that one thing, right? And if you wanna change, you don't need this. - Subscribers change all the time. They always recycle. - Subscribers don't really mean much in terms of view counts nowadays because it's all about recommended and what- - I mean, look at this channel. - Yeah, no, exactly. We're at 300K and we're like breaking over 500K. I'm like, how is that happening? - And it's like, YouTube used to be able to show you how people unsub from your channel. They removed it.

that used to show you. And I remember at like 600K, it was like plus 600,000 subscribers minus 80,000. You will siphon out people in a good way. You'll lose the audience that you don't want and that's okay. But it's hard to teach people that because YouTube is hard. - Because all they see is that minus 80,000. They think, oh, I could be at 680,000. - Oh no, exactly right. - Because like for me, part of the reason I feel like I've been able to

be on this platform for so long is that I always like try to change my content. It's always like a conscious effort at this point. Like if I look at my content last year and I'm making exactly the same content, like not like I don't feel like you have to do like a big fucking change straight away. But if you like gradually change over the years, it'll be totally fucking different. 'Cause like if you look at my content five years ago,

It's totally different from what I do now. But the way you implement that is you do things a little bit at a time. So how I see it is if I'm doing exactly the same content as I'm doing last year, to me, I failed. I've personally failed myself. Like I remember last year I was like, it was probably like my best,

in terms of views on my channel. And I was actually like, I was really unhappy with my channel. 'Cause I'm like, this is exactly the same stuff I've been making last year for an entire year. And it hurt me, it like hurt me, but like, I didn't know what I wanted to do next. So it took me like a little bit longer to figure out, okay, I wanna try something different in this way and that way. But it's,

It's part of the secret of like being able to survive on YouTube for so long. - Oh, evolving. It's like you have to constantly be looking for that evolution. - Well, that's the scariest thing, right? Is that there's nothing scarier than YouTube viewers losing interest in a YouTube channel than the actual YouTuber losing interest in their YouTube channel.

Like I feel like you've really upped your game in like the past year. - Oh no, you have. - I definitely have. I mean, I think like late 2019, like 2019 for me was a weird year because at the beginning of 2019, I was kind of in the same boat where I just kind of looked at my channel. I thought this is the same shit I've been doing since I moved to Japan. - Yeah. - Just like a little bit better editing. - Yeah. - So yeah, I mean, I think late 2019 was where I was like, you know what?

- Kind of slow down on the analytical stuff. Like do way less scripted shit and kind of just do more fun entertainment based stuff. I don't have to always be like the big brain boy of anime. - I feel like we all rubbed off on each other almost. - I think so. I think definitely moving here, I've like seeing how you guys work has like given me like a different perspective about how content can be made and like different approaches. 'Cause I feel like,

A lot of people when they think about making their content better, they're like, okay, like maybe getting better equipment or maybe- - There's definitely a factor of that. - Yeah, yeah. And there is a factor of that or like sometimes it's like, oh, I gotta increase, make my writing better and do this. But sometimes it's just, what if you just try approaching your content in a completely different way

in a completely different way. You know what I mean? Like going back to AniTube where everyone tries to make content to appeal to each other as they, what I see is content being approached exactly the same way. - Oh yeah. - Like five different perspectives. - It's all the same. It's just an iteration upon each other. Like they don't do anything different. - Which is why it,

I find it weird about the tier list because yeah, I can definitely see how you might find X contents better. But to me it's like, okay, well you're still like approaching it in the same way. Someone might have better editing or better writing or just better idea or more interesting ideas, but it's still kind of like in the same niche. - It's the same shit. - Yeah, it's the same shit. - They'll sit here and talk about, you know, like I remember like, I don't know which YouTuber it was. They're like, yeah, his clip selection was poor. And I'm like, who the fuck gives a shit about his clip selection?

Who cares about his clip? Who watches a video of an anime review and is like, "This clip selection is rather disappointing." You don't think that. If the video is at that point where you're nitpicking that much, I feel like that- - The content is stale at that point. - Unless it's that egregious, right? Where the clip selection is that poor, right? It shouldn't be a factor. It's not what, when you're talking about anime, picking the right clips doesn't fucking matter. It's what you're talking about. - As long as the clip's not in 240p, no one gives a shit. - Which is why, I don't know,

- Personally, the thing that I've tried to improve the most on is like how comfortable I am on camera. I'm always trying to like up it. Like I wanna make it feel like it's just like my best friend in the room. How you doing? - I've always been trying to figure that out for like the past year or so. Even with scripted content, how do I make scripted content not look like scripted content?

A year ago, you could tell if a video of mine was scripted. It was very, very obvious. - I never scripted. - From the way I presented it and the way I talked. But now recently I've slowly kind of getting to, I've put more effort into actually remembering my scripts rather than reading a little bit of it and then using my short term gold

for your brain memory to be like, recite these words in a natural way, please. - I don't know how you can like, I did a script recently for the first time and I hated it. I hated it so much. - You get used to it. I hated it at first too. - I love just being a crackhead, just saying shit and then we're like, all right, we'll piece it together. We'll figure something out. - I'm like completely opposite. I love making a script. Like I was that kid, like it's weird 'cause I was that kid who was just sitting in school and I'd just be sitting in silence and I'd just like laugh at myself. I'd just be like,

- People thought I was like fucking crazy. - I would. - Yeah, but like it was because I just had all these like funny ideas and funny jokes that I couldn't like- - 13 year old guy, I'm a comical genius. I'm a comical mastermind. - There's no way I can explain his funny thought or funny joke I have in my head. But like as soon as I started making YouTube videos, I'm like,

- That's a funny thing. Let's make this into a funny meme. And then like, I can actually visualize all the crazy shit going on in my head. I'm not crazy, I swear to God. - Out of context, it sounds slightly autistic. - It's just a little warring. - Well, it sounds kinda Rain Man. - Yeah, it is a little Rain Man, Eli. - A little God will hunting. Comedy good will hunting.

in the classroom. - Yeah, I don't know though, because I started with doing absolutely zero scripts. I would maybe jot down bullet points, but I found myself finding, just running into that situation where I would just be like, "Uh, way too much in between," while I was trying to think of something. So in the end, a video where I'm trying to convince you that you should think about an anime in this certain way, just ended up being this crack and ramble that just was,

not convincing whatsoever. So I was like, okay, I think I'm gonna start organizing my shit. - I was just laughing to myself. I had the exact moment where I was just laughing to myself because I thought of a funny joke. - God damn it, enemy zone. I am so fine. - It just happened live on screen. I was like, God fucking dammit. - Can we get a repeat of that as at the moment? - 'Cause I wasn't laughing at what you were saying. I just thought of a funny joke. - Yeah, you're not funny, Joe. Fuck you, Joe.

- I'm sorry, I was derailing. What were you talking about Joey? I was totally intently listening. - I'm too in the moment. I like don't find things funny if I think about them too much. - Yeah. - Unless I do a really good joke then the next day I'm like that was a good joke. - Sometimes you have that joke where you just like, the more you think about it, just the funnier it gets sometimes. - Oh yeah, no, I have those jokes, but it doesn't come to the point where I'm just sitting there laughing like. - I don't think I'm funny enough to make those kinds of jokes. I'm like, damn, I'm funny. Damn, I'm good.

- I don't think like sometimes I don't think like I'm funny enough to like think on my feet a lot of the times, but no, I'm not- - That's all I do. I can't like, if I think about a joke too much, I hate it. - I'm that type of guy who's just like spends 30 minutes in the shower slam dunking people with like witty remarks that I didn't make at the exact time. - You don't know this bro, but I totally fucking just-

- I just destroyed you in my head. - And then everyone clapped and cheered. - It's like the ending of Evangelion. - How often do you need to do this Garth when you think about this in the shower? Are you thinking back to childhood traumas where you're like,

- Sydney sometimes wonders why like I take 30 to 40 minutes in the fucking shower on the fucking toilet. And most of the time it's just me thinking about different, like that's my most creative zone. - It's like that meme where it's like, he's probably thinking about other girls. Meanwhile Garnt, kill you, I destroyed you in my head.

- Most of my video ideas come when I'm shitting or in the shower. I don't know why. It's just my special place. - It's the Zen, man. - It's the Zen mode. - I feel like I'm on my phone when I'm shitting. When I'm in the shower, I just, yeah, I'm also on my phone. I have a little thing. I watch YouTube videos. - All of my ideas come,

I'm sure this is common, but it's right before I go to bed. Or I'm just about to drift off to bed. I'm just, I'm like entering that REM state. And then all of a sudden I just wake up. I was like, I gotta write that down. - Have you ever had a like really funny dream or really great dream that you wake up in the dream, you're like, this will make an amazing dream.

- Oh yeah. - And then you make notes about it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And then you read it in the morning and you're like, what the fuck was I saying? - Oh my God, that's like- - I have never experienced this, what do you mean? - Half of my videos come from that. Where I'm drifting off into that REM sleep and then I wake up, I'm like, this would make a fucking hilarious video. And just half-eyed, I write it down on my phone and I go to sleep. Next morning, I go to open it up, I'm just like,

- I've never experienced that in my life. - Have you never? - I've texted in my sleep and woke up and been like, the fuck did I? But I never had that. - 'Cause like I've written some like mad gibberish that I read on my notes on the next day. I'm like, I remember thinking when I wake up from the dream, this was like a slam dunk idea. This is like a million dollar idea. And then I wake up and there was like, Evangelion, Indian service call.

- What the fuck is that? - Is that a real thing? Is that a real idea? - I remember something like that. And I'm just like, wait, what was I thinking? - This man, this man. - Oh, crazy. - Yeah, so yeah, that's...

- I don't know. - The crackhead life of a YouTuber. - The crackhead life of a YouTuber. - We don't have to do drugs, man. YouTube is the drug. - Is it interesting to you as the audience to hear these weird stories and quarrels that we have as YouTubers in everyday life, struggles? Is it interesting to the audience? - I've always wondered that, right? As a non-YouTuber, is hearing that kind of stuff even interesting? - I don't know. I mean, we'll find out with how many views this video has.

I hope it's interesting to you guys. Let us know if you want to hear more about that. - Yeah, definitely. But in the meantime, let's give a warm shout out to our lovely patrons who are- - Look at these guys. - Beautiful names right now. If you would like your beautiful name on the screen as well, then make sure to go over to our Patreon where it'll help us fund the show and make hopefully, you know, this show even bigger and better in the future. - Yes. - Shout out to today's sponsors as well.

- Those guys. - Those guys. - We'll just leave it at the shout out. - We'll just leave it at that, right? - Just leave it at the shout out to the sponsors. - Yeah, also check out our Twitter and our subreddits if you wanna send us more memes or just tweet us to say whatever. - If you'd like to tweet us your AniTuber tier list, then send it to us. - If I'm not number one.

- I know that after this episode. - Everyone's gonna make a fucking tier list now. - All those smaller energy was just. - Everyone watching this is just gonna be like, okay tier. - Trash taste, F tier. - Tier list. - Fuck these guys. - The power is that I don't give a fuck. And so it doesn't matter.

- It's amazing. - Please put me in the S tier at least. - I don't care, but I would like to be S tier. - Yeah guys, hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Thanks for tuning in as always. I've been your host Joey with my co-hosts Gant and Connor as always. And we'll see you guys in the next episode. Bye. - Bye.