The putt-putt champions of the internet
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Welcome to the verge cast the flagship p cast of making this pot right now. I'm a friend there with peers and I playing mini golf. I am at the east patch ic mini golf course in I don't know what I got an island between Virginia and dc.

There's really fun golf course over there. But the real fun is this. My goal, of course, and the key is if you get out here early enough in the morning, a, nobody notices your missing work.

And b, there's nobody is here. So I just get out cross the ma teen. We're going to go anyway. The reason i'm doing this here and right now is because the episode we're about to do is actually all about mini golf. This is the first episode in a two part many series that we're doing that we've been calling how to make IT in the future.

And basically, the ideas we want to talk to people and tell stories about different ways people are trying to, will make IT different kinds of creators, different kinds of businesses, different kinds of strategies on how to be successful in this world we live in. And for these two episodes, what we're going to talk about especially is content. People whose businesses make content and people for whom that content becomes their business.

And then how do you figure out how to make all of that make sense in a way that feels good and works well for you for a long time? Today's story, believe IT or not, is about mini golf. So I figured this is work today. 鸡巴 周。 right? We're got a lot to get to, but first working and take a cook break, then it's many golf time.

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That striped out com to learn more right, make progress. Welcome back. I'm sorry to say I did not make the second put, but alas, we Carry on into IT our story today. IT starts on september fourth of last year, also at the minute, of course.

doing our first ever many golf turntable, ent eighteen holes and hero holes one through three.

This is the beginning of a two minute and forty three second tiktok video of three dudes playing mini golf. The three are Stephen and dani sync. I and their friend Matthew.

Stephen and danny are twins. They are competitive golfers. And at the time they had just recently graduated from the university of wisconsin parkside, they all step up to the first hole is a pretty simple one.

One of those ones, that's a little waive. But if you just hit IT down the middle, you'll be fine like the perfect first mini golf hole. Just to get you warmed up, Stephen steps up and goes first.

nearly with a hole and one on the first hole. Then it's Matthews, turn Matthews tea shot off the wall to good bounds, but not enough speed.

And then it's .

danny ipod to take the weed on a good line lips out.

At the top of the screen the whole time they are playing, there's a neon blue line of text that just says mini golf Turnery underneath IT in like microsoft paint level graphics IT as each of the guy's names and updates the score underneath IT after every hall. It's so low budget, it's kind of delightful. Honestly, all the names are in different funds and colors.

They're not aligned at all. Danny score in the middle is smaller on the screen for some reason, but there's something about IT that just kind of works and it's kind of visiting on the second hall. Danny steps up and calls his shot that he's gonna get a hole in one, and then he doesn't.

The first two holes are both pretty straight forward mini gold holes, but then the guys play a third hole at this course underneath a waterfall. And with a few posts in the way, like, imagine playing many golf underneath a deck, that kind of what this one looks like. And every time somebody hit their first shot, the camera, clearly, a smart phone camera, just does that a rut.

Zoom to follow the ball. The camera is always behind the person in the tea box and then just sort of wolf zoos to follow the ball towards the hole. None of IT is, you would say, well shot or beautifully produced. And as you can hear, danny commentary isn't exactly like high production value.

Have some work like that, Steve IT, or math, you here off the wall, the shot rules out.

But IT works, right? IT really works for me. I really enjoy the video. But more importantly, IT worked. After the guys played the round, danny added, all those crude scores overlaid the commentary in one take, basically just by watching the video and talking about IT and posted at the next day.

And we kind like I was kind of lame, like I don't know how that's gonna do, but i'll posted anyways. I posted in the first turn ament. We posted at six point eight million views on tiktok and we are like, are right. Well, let's go film another one.

That's Steven, by the way, as we're talking, he's sitting at his computer right next to danny and they both look and sound a lot of like it's confusing, but we're going to get through IT. Their twins is complicated. Oh, I should also mention, by the way, that six point eight million number, he says it's not just that one video that got six point million views.

Dani actually posted six videos from that round over the next few days. They shot the whole round, three holes per video, all in a row. Ultimately, danny went around pretty handy.

calling an early Victory missed IT like Scotty shephard at the masters were going to tap this in here to secure the Victory. I shot forty, math, forty two, seven and forty eight. thanks. We're flow along next turn ament coming soon.

It's really funny to watch those six videos in order. Now danny edited them all back to back, but you can literally see him getting Better as he goes by the six video, all the score cards are even in the same color. And danny had stopped making scoring mistakes like he did.

That you just heard there's still a lot of jump cutting in rac focusing, but that seems to be part of the look rather than kind of not knowing what you're doing. So yeah, six videos, two days, six point eight million views daily. And Steven, I don't think, realized that this series was going to do numbers, but they did understand pretty quickly what most understand pretty quickly. You gotta just keep posting. They'd been making golf content together for a while, Stephen said, and they had been played for a while to make some kind of career out of IT.

We started about three and half years ago, actually about three years ago now, and we were doing golf simulator stuff um at our school when we were in college. We are kind of interested in social media.

If you've ever seen a golf video on tiktok, you know roughly what those early videos look like. People hit balls into a screen indoors, which simulates where they go on a real course or playing an actual round of golf with the shot tracer and all that good stuff. Golf content is huge all around the internet.

And the cynics s are good golfers, but in like a latour way. So IT certainly seems flaught ble that they could have pulled IT off. Danny even had one video of his regular golf game go slightly viral.

I had posted one video of me golfing in high school that my high school golf coach talk. And I started getting a bunch of views overnight, and I showed Steve and I was like, look at this. And we like, wow, like, what can we do to expand? So we started off and doing our golf stuff.

Did you think of that first video? Like, oh, i'm gna post this in. A lot of people are gonna watch IT, because a lot of people like golf content, like what I I feel like that I would not personally have guessed that like I posted a range video from my high school golf career is like how you launch a social media universe.

But maybe i'm wrong. Like, did you did you have high ambitions when you posted that first video? Well.

I probably posted about twenty five videos before and nothing did that well. So I didn't think anything different of this post, although what is a little bit cooler of a post, there were a lot of people in the background watching. I made a pot, so I didn't think anything was going to do well with IT.

But when I woke up the next morning in the head of bunch of views, I was like, well, maybe we found something, but we didn't have many more eclipse to post from high school because were in college, and so kind of just took off from there. And then we started doing our live streaming, tiktok. And we are kind of thinking we are we enjoyed live streaming, but we want to find a way that we could just be content creators other .

than a couple of those little pops and the sort of consistent live streaming stuff. The gulf content wasn't exactly exploding for the guys. You won't know this if you don't care about golf, but there are a lot of golf creators out there and increasingly, like the pros are becoming creators themselves.

Hey, guys, is rising shambo. And welcome back to my change. That right is bracing to shambo, who is one of the best pros and most famous golfers on earth right now.

And he has used youtube in part to totally rehab his image as a pro. He's actually become hugely popular on youtube and tiktok, playing golf with creators, with other prose, with Donald trump. Honestly, we could do a whole episode about his is a creator and maybe we should have kind of a fun idea.

But anyway, the point is the gulf space is extremely competitive and fall honestly, the mini golf space less so. So maybe it's not surprising that IT was the mini golf videos that first poked for the cynically s but the thing is, after a few years of making videos, trying and trying to find the thing, having a big hit feels pretty great, even when it's not the one you are expected. That first hit also brings up one of the moments that a lot of creators go through.

I think you start up making the kinds of stuff you, anna, make, the things you've been planning and thinking about for forever, then something you make takes off. Sometimes it's exactly what you've always wanted in planning and hope for. Sometimes, Frankly, I think more often it's like a weird thrown away joke or something you just made on a women didn't think about you always making content, you post something because not the internet and the algorithms are unpredictable that way. But then IT happens.

And now you'll left to the question, do you keep doing what you were doing, what you can came here to do? Or do you go with what works? Do you double down? Do you triple down? And if you decide to do that, how do you take this thing for some unknown, maybe unknowable reason, please, the algorithm gods, and turn that thing into your life? And is turning that thing into your life, even what you want are making the sound kind of existence? Al, because I think IT is, and I think very few creators see this moment coming, but always seems to come.

My favorite example of this is all the people who were like video games streamers on youtube. But then during the john y dep. Amber heard trial in twenty twenty two, started putting up daily recap s of the trial.

They didn't do this because they had deep passion for tony deb, Amber hod trial coverage. They did IT because IT worked. You see other people getting views with trial takes.

You do a trial takes. Some subscribers might think it's weird to see IT on your channel views. And so you keep going.

And at some point, you have to look at yourself and say, okay, am I A video game streamer or am I A much more successful court report? It's a tough question to answer because there are big costs and big tradeoffs on both sides of that. To be fair, the cynically ies didn't have to make quite that intense a decision.

They went from regular regulator to mini oh, you know, it's like a much stricter line and they could keep making regular golf content on their channels. And IT would still make sense in context. So in that sense, IT was actually a pretty .

easy transition right after that first tournament. We both looked at each other and like this is IT like, but still and it's fun because this is a form of call when its intense and it's all of our videos kind of revolve around the competition or a chAllenge. So we knew right there that, hey, we're going to enjoy many golf and lets do IT.

So were you like mini golfers anyway? Like, I feel like every golf plays mini golf, right? It's like, I like, I like mini golf. I just played the tiger woods mini golf thing for the first time. That was bananas. Uh, but like, is this like a thing you guys would Normally do? Or do you like wake up one day and like, let's go make a video mini .

golf and see, yeah, I would say we weren't two in the mini golf prior starting a film. And then we started to figure out all the courses in the area, all the good courses around the country. And but now I was just more of a thing we'd maybe do once a year, twice a year.

It's like a vacation thing. I feel like you like go you play many you're like on family vacations and that's kind of IT.

okay. So yeah no, that wasn't what we thought, but we wanted to try something new because so is nice to give your viewers something fresh or something new. So we tried IT and IT turned out to be our niche.

And it's also more competitive than golf. I would say some of the people that we play many golf with. Don't really have a chance against us gulf. But in mini golf, it's a lot more competitive than anybody can win.

So yeah, they pretty quickly decided to go hard on mini golf content. They did and do still make a lot of regular golf content too, but they knew immediately that people loved watching many gov. So they filmed another round, posted IT got views.

Film another posted IT got views. Theory proven kind of. But then this is another moment you get to as a creator, where you have to figure out not just whether to keep doing the thing that got views, but why I got views in the first place.

That requires understanding at a deep and specific level and a replicable level, for that matter, what makes something work on the internet? And that is really, really hard to do. Like if you were to trying to .

explain why this video R E A T.

T became the hottest thing on the internet in many years, and tried to back that into a formula that you could repeat again. I bet you couldn't do IT. I really do. I don't think you could do IT. I mean, the video is funny, but there are a lot of funny things out there. And would you have guessed, Frankly, the first time that you saw this video, the hilly watched the hawk to a girl herself, would now have a giant hit podcast and still be famous all these months later, if you would have call me, I have lots of questions for you. The difference between getting IT right and getting IT wrong in those moments when you're taking off is the difference between being a mean forever and being a celebrity forever.

People either know you as the name of your meme, like you're the cum bags to heve guy or the computer girl or the mean just becomes part of the story of how you became like little nox IT can go one way or the other and there's not that much wago room between but figuring out why people like to your videos is hard even when it's just three guys playing mini golf. IT can be tempting in a lot of ways to not think about IT and just kind of keep doing what you're doing, interest that look keep working. But eventually you do have to try and sit down and figure out what are we doing that works. I ask the guys about this. And danny city has a theory.

I think, that just like how the video was produced, IT couldn't just spend a video of us mini golfing with no voice over anything on top of IT just just hitting a ball. But I think what added to IT was that the voice covers kind of making you feel like you're there like someone is on the line. This is super intense um just IT really adds a lot to the videos so I don't know hundred percent what I was.

I mean, IT wasn't anything crazy. IT wasn't a special tournament. Nothing insane happened. But I think just the voice over kind of brings people in and really makes them stay. And what's kind of going on in the videos and also having every shot recorded, clearly, you see every pot where IT ends up. So it's not like, oh, he's may be treating or this isn't legit. So I think just the way that he was produced and kena edited with clear scores on top and to see where everybody stands and who's gonna win was to viewers.

Stephen also has a theory right now.

I would say our bracket style tournaments, sort of our best performing, I think, had to had matches, are something that a lot of viewers like. So we try to post those that the start of a month in hopes that they perform the best.

And DNA actually has another theory.

If someone makes a whole and one at the start of a video in someone else, this ball is into on the screen, i'll try to put that first. Maybe I like to think that a hole in ones sometimes brings the viewers in a little bit more and might help the algorithm. So just kind of experimenting with different claims.

And sometimes people get mad like he wasn't supposed to go first there. But I mix the clipsed up when replying. It's all right. But sometimes when I edit, things get a little mixed around whatever .

IT wasn't that video, whether IT was the way I was produced, or the way the turning that was put together, or the way the score board looked IT worked. So the guys kept doing IT more and more and more of IT all the time, and I kept working. We ll talk about what that looks like.

And I also have a theory on why at all worked as well as I did. But first we have to take a break. 不 认识。

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Here's my theory about why mini gal works on social media. The voice over is certainly part of IT. The celts, sure.

But I am also convinced, convinced that many golf is like the perfect spectator sport for the social media world. It's game most people have played and its not super difficult. So you're immediately watching someone else do something that you can kind of do to which makes IT more related able.

It's also really easy to capture in a compelling way, which I think is really important. You just stand behind the tea box, and you can almost always see the hall, the twists and turns and walls, and everything is all right there in frame. Every shot is dramatic because every shot on the mini GLE course, in theory, has a chance of going in. Mini golf is both endlessly repeatable and never exactly the same way twice.

I honestly think if you are going to create a sport in a lab that is perfect for tiktok and vertical phone screens and quick scrolling and three minutes at a time, I think you'd come up with something shockingly close to mini golf, especially mining off the way the cynics play IT at big puts, which is their local course in Green field, was concerned. Every hole there seems to be visual in an unusual way. On one, you have to hit the ball through a half pipe with skateboards in the middle as obstacles.

There's another one where there's a loop that you have to smash the all through. And that loop is made that of a huge truck tire, which is really cool. One hole makes you hit the ball through.

Two different sets of bullying pin obstacles in the hall is in the middle of all the bullying pins. I've never played a course like that, or that course for that matter, but it's really fun to watch this course. And I find myself sitting thinking about where I would hit the ball to trying get the angle just right, sound like the N, B, A or the N F.

L. You know, where you're essentially watching another species play the game. I can play any golf.

I can totally get a hole one. I could beat those guys. That last part, by the way, I think matters a lot.

Both ny and Stephen told me that they get a lot of comments from people basically trash talking about how they could beat them on, of course, which is part of what keeps IT fun and exciting. People being two good at things might be bad content. The more I think about IT and the more I watch, the more actually doesn't surprise me at all.

I fit work on social IT is fundamentally a vertical screen game. Anyway, that's not really easy for me to say in retrospect, having watched a year of this content now, right when the cynically Y S. First posted their many of tournament to tiktok, they definitely didn't think IT was going to be huge.

The best evidence I have for that, by the way, is that they posted IT on danny's personnel channel, not there more official twin tour golf channel, but also maybe because they assumed IT wasn't gonna do well, and they didn't want to cause any problems for the main channel. Uploading videos that don't work is death, but IT did do well. And suddenly the at danny cynic's account became synonymous with twin togolese. And with this huge increase in views from many golf, Stephen swears he's not jealous that it's dand his name on the channel, but I don't think I believe him anyway. At first, I was just danny tiktok doing all these mini golf numbers, but the guys took this whole thing cross platform .

pretty fast. So when we saw dan's account kind of taking off, um we were like, wow and then we weren't posting that i'm instagram, youtube, facebook, we weren't posting that right away. And i'd say IT was about three weeks after that first tournament when we were like we got got to start putting this on all the other platforms to help those grow as well.

So then we started putting IT on the instagram, doing long form videos on youtube, and then we started to get monitise ed on youtube. And bit really is started to pick up. So just pushing our content under all platforms was our next step. After about three weeks have seen the numbers at danny, tiktok was still in.

Now Stephen says the goal is to post roughly twenty videos a day across all platforms. They aim for three tiktok a day, lots of posts on instagram, facebook and the rest, and twenty eight long form youtube videos a month, twenty eight. And in putting out all of this stuff, they've sort of, by accident, built a whole system for trying new things, seeing what works, testing algorithms and relentlessly optimizing their whole content Operation all the time.

What's so fun about our youtube page is people watch whatever content we put on there. So just kind of experimenting with some new chAllenges, some new style of video um but continuing the mini golf seasons and everything on tiktok, short form content and just being able to experiment with new ideas.

And we also have Stevens page for if we want to implement new chAllenges, mini golf chAllenges, we can post them on his account without getting in the way of all the mini golf tournaments. We just seen too much success with IT change IT up. So it's nice to have multiple accounts on my account, just continuing to be the tournaments and then experimenting another plant.

And then also this winter, unfortunately, in which contain IT gets cold and courses close, so will travel. It's like what we did last year, we found spots where we could go many golf, so will definitely be doing some travel. We have some courses that we want to head and like murder beaches, like the mini golf capital. So just traveling around and ue to get our content over the winter. And then we always have the indoor course by us as a back, up and up course that i'm sure will be a quite a bit this winter .

that such an interesting description of the whole social media world isn't. Youtube is the place where people are able to most closely connect with the channel state lake. So if you're a creator, you have fans and we'll see and watch the things that you publish.

Everything else, everywhere else is mostly just about playing the games of the algorithm. But if you play the games and lose them on your main channel, you could end up in real trouble. So you have to build a whole pipeline that eventually lends the best stuff, and only the best stuff on your most important platform. And for the cynically, is that most important platform, at least when IT comes to the mini gov. Is tiktok .

really everything just gets posted a tiktok first and then steam will take IT from tiktok throat on the instagram and then when we do posted on youtube, it's a fresh voice over is a new voice over. So it's pretty similar but maybe a few different talking points um for youtube viewers. But really I just kindly gets posted all the same to all different platforms and it's interesting to see how each one grows. Sometimes a video on instagram will go viral, but IT won't go viral on tiktok. But sometimes, usually we see the same thing as the video does well on tiktok, most likely perform as well on instagram and that youtube is just pretty consistent um just were continuing to grow our youtube page and we're starting to see more success with IT as we go.

okay. Have you have you developed a pretty good theory of what's gonna and what doesn't like when you post something? Can you usually predict whether it's gonna hit bigger? Not .

yeah, I would say. So although right now on instagram there's a match between Stephen and Carter, there is two videos with a bunch views like eight hundred thousand and three hundred thousand in on tick tack in didn't perform as well as that at. So it's all kind of a gamble. And I sometimes I like to think I know, but then i'm like, maybe I don't know.

Carter is another new entrant to the twin tour universe. He won a tournament the guys through. For some fans who wanted to play with the twins tour, guys like I said, people like talk in trash receive an endanger and telling them they're Better.

So they gave me a chance to be Better. The tournament went great and they want to do more of them. Both is a way to make money and is a way to generate even more content to put on their channels. Because as I said, the only thing that is always true about every content platform is that there is no such thing as too much content.

Over the course of the last year, Stephen and danny have really started to think more strategically about what they're doing, not just making mini golf content and putting IT out, not even just making lots of mini gold content, putting IT down, but really trying to set this thing up to succeed in a much bigger way for a much longer time. Because really, in any moment when you, as a creator, are having that first viral hit moment, you can kind of pick two things. You can either do one or the other.

You can keep the thing going as long as possible, knowing that nothing on the internet last forever. Or you can try and leverage that moment of reality to build something more sustainable. Steven and andy tried to do both pretty quickly. They decided to make their golf content their full time jobs, and they started to structure their lives in a way that could make that work.

Yeah so typically monday through wednesday will want a film. Are you at least the youtube video? Um and we shoot for A A few regular season tournaments early in the weeks and then kind of the schedule of everyone that plays with us, they have jobs, they have things going on.

So we typically try to film after work or on a weekend. If it's a big, major or a bracket style tournament where we have eight players in the field, will try to do those on the weekend. But other than that, so we try to find times that work for everyone. And then when we're not filming, we're always editing or doing voice servers and uploading all the content.

This all sounds like a lot of work to me. I tried a bunch of different times in our interview to get the cynics twins to tell me how growling and terrible this job is, but they just wouldn't do IT. I genuinely think they're having a good time, but they did acknowledge how helpful IT is to have each other and that they found a pretty good two man baLance to get all of this done.

So we've figured out day to day, so danny only edit the mini golf tournaments and post them on his page, and then he'll do all the long form mini golf voice covers for youtube. And then i'll take everything in pod amena, instagram, youtube shorts, and then all do my golf content and all record and edit all that. So we found time in what takes standing at the same time that IT takes me to do my work. So we fly IT pretty much well, we think fifty, fifty to continue to upload content that make sense.

which is easier to shoot mini golf or .

regular golf, probably mini golf because it's so quick, a luck quicker than golf content. And then golf when we're recording, if waiting on a group in front of us or the course is super busy and what kind of I go like, let's go a somewhat gets stressful. But that's why we always find times when it's not gonna busy. So we always film during the week when we can, especially golf content will never film on a weekend when everyone's out there.

DNA is really the one in charge of the mink off tiktok, which are currently the center piece of the whole Operation in over the last year, he and Stephen has been thinking a lot about how to improve the way they film the tournament too.

So every clip we've filmed since september fourth of last year has been done by either Daniel. We film all the mini golf tournaments, passing the phone back and forth to record.

Is that why you're hardly ever playing at the same time? Yes, I was wondering about this.

okay. And then people think, danny, I are the same person because you never see the other person behind, right? So but now we we know how we want the camera to look the angles, and we always have to leave some room at the top for the score board. So just making sure everything is recorded. How we want IT.

How do you want IT like sort of described as as you can, what you want that?

yeah. So you always, we want the ball in the middle, the screen when it's rolling in, never too far down. So the scoreboard covers the hall and you can see a shot or something. So and always, yeah, we just have our angles. And we know from playing courses what angle to start the whole on if you are behind the hole, behind the player, the halfway point at the whole, just so we don't miss anything at all. So and also just make sure the ball never goes out of frame yet.

What do you ever like? Sneaky, really take a shot if you're like, I missed IT that with the camera fast enough like take .

hit out and again, like there's spend a time where you think IT might be record in someone hits a shot and then you realized it's not recording and will go grab the ball. So it's like a IT wouldn't ended up here. It's like, no, we don't know where I would have stopped, but we hardly know that we've been doing IT for over a year run in the many issues.

Would you ever like IT? Is there a next level up like you could you know go out go and get a person with like a fancy camera and a steady cam to be like running after you, you go down the course. Like is that would that help? Is that even a thing you would want to do?

I think for youtube content, possibly for filming horizontal. Um I think maybe someday will upgrade to a camera, but with how much content or pumping out the phone and just be able to add on my phone exported from my phone up to youtube, tiktok, whatever, is just everything so quiet IT saves time. So right now, and I think the iphone camera is unBeatable.

I actually i've also i've started to believe that especially on social, like instagram, tiktok, actually there is such a thing as like, I can look too good and and IT feels weird when you see something that is like clearly professionally shot on technical. Why is this? Why do you try so hard? Like just shooting on your phone? IT will be fine.

Yeah, yeah. So we we did use the camera a little bit before we started mini goal for our long form youtube videos. But now just danny believes in the iphone and he's got me to believe that it's our best option, especially for the short form content. Like you said, with just having a Normal phone video for a tiktok rather than very high quality, something that looks out of place on the short form apps.

daney really does do the whole thing on his fun. All the editing, the voice over, the score boards, IT all just happens in the cap cut APP. And danny has developed a very specific way of doing everything.

especially his commentary. Every voice over is really, at this point. I try to do him in one take, just kind of what kind of keep IT natural what's what i'm thinking, what i'm seeing and not trying to make IT perfect.

Uh, could be there for hours and hours with how much content we post. It's just really I try to do IT in one take. I will Operability myself one ever three, but then i'll just go back on doing something and start from there. So it's fun trying to do him in one take. And I know that DNA does read a lot of a comment so he'll get ideas from what people are commenting or stuff like that to implement in his voice server.

What's one you've added? Do you have like a new catch? Frasier workshopping right now?

I honestly it's there's nothing really turn right now. But before what was pipe lar and still is his baLance pumped up? I I don't know how I thought of out there for she's really SHE doesn't look pumped up, but SHE is pumped up.

Bela, by the way, is Steven Fiona and is one of the main recurring characters in these tournaments. SHE often shows up in scrub, and he seems somewhere between kind of disinterested and entirely annoy about being there, and then frequently just dominate everybody. If you believe the comments and the twin towards merch sales of the bells pumped up t shirts.

SHE is everybody's favorite player for she's definitely my favor player for there are a few other folks who pop up in these videos a lot. There's edi and wolf and Matthew, who was the one in that very first video and now also helps the cynically ies with some of the behind the scenes process. And if you watch long enough, you can actually see in the comments people picking their favorites, and we, each player actually developing their own character in the series like edi love add, edi always starts great and always just collapses at the end.

Wolf is super up and down. Villa is just a quiet killer in the best way. These people are now part of the twin tour golf universe in a way that is, I think, increasingly strategic.

And IT is designed to make sure that this thing can last, making nothing last, by the way, is the whole game. Now more on that coming right after this break when we're right back. Support for this show comes from the aclu. The aclu knows exactly what threats a second Donald trump term presents, and they are ready with the battle tested playback.

The acu took a legal action against the first trumpet administration four hundred and thirty four times, and they will do IT again to protect immigrants rights, defend reproductive freedom, safeguard free speech and fight for all of our fundamental rights and freedoms. Join the aclu today to help stop the extreme project twenty twenty five agenda. Learn more at aclu dot org.

right? We're back. So you can pretty easily imagine how a bunch of mini gal videos would get boring over time, right? Same guys, same course, over and over.

IT eventually just gets old and repetitive. There's a reason you see creators of almost any kind start to do wild chAllenges or bring on celebrity guests or just vivid completely. There are usually only so many ways to do a thing until you need a new thing to do. Daniel and Stephen sync, the twin tour golf guys are only a year into making mini golf content, so maybe they'll eventually have to resort to give a sense, celebrity guest overtime. But for now, their plane is to add a lot of structure to their many golf world in the hopes of turning IT into something that you watch and follow, much more like a sport, and in the hopes, Frankly, that IT becomes a total never end in content machine.

Steve and I um we pretty much play in almost every tournament. But really who's ever available when we're looking to film will film with seven about six to eight regular season tournament. And if you get a win, you get your invite to the major will have a bracket style tournament, which is now called the playoffs before the big major.

So how many people win is how many people are going to be in the major. And um then we also added player the year points. So you'll get two player the year points. If you win a bracket style turn ament in the playoffs, you'll get three if you win the major two for second, one for third and then we pile up all the player the year points for the whole year um which runs from september to september now. So where through one year danny was player the year in year, one year at the most points .

and that feels cheating. Give yourself I know .

now IT all reset and we just are in our first season of the new year.

There's a really delicate content baLance in there. They're trying to both keep viewers hooked and make them to watch the next one, but also to get new viewers interested on tiktok in particular. You're not gonna land on the first one of these. You're just going to find a random three holes of a random tournament, and that has to be captivating to so for the twins or guys, the whole system resets every month and they're always looking to add new players to fresh on things up. But there is still that big and you will pay off, which genuinely does feel like a real cap stone.

If you've been watching all their videos all year, the guys didn't want to tell me exactly how much money they're making from all the software posting now except to say that IT is working as their full time job, most of the money that they are making comes from monitise ing directly on the platform. That means ads, but on youtube create funds on tiktok, that sort of thing. That works to a point.

But as you get bigger, and I think especially as you realized how finnic those platforms can be, have dangerous IT can be to depend on them for your entire livelihood, everybody ends up pointing to diversify. So far, one of the coolest things that i've seen from the torg golf guys is that they found one very clever way to bring some new money in. They started asking people to vent more than money to contribute to a prize for each .

tournament winner. IT kind of IT happened last winter. Uh, we were traveling a lot and I was getting expensive. And IT was kind of, I thought that came by. If we do a full season, we're putting in hard work.

And if you win and if you're a viewer and you enjoy the content, maybe you've watched the entire season so far, you're like, wow, thanks for the entertainment. I appreciate you guys. You guys helped me on my lunch break.

You guys get me through my day, whatever IT is, they send the money in and a kind of gives us something to play for, but also rewards those that play well and helps cover costs of travel for these people at come with us and what not. So it's really kind of just a tip like a thank you for the entertainment. And then IT also helps and IT does and IT puts a lot of pressure on IT knowing, hey, i'm playing for this and five play well, it's mine or five don't play well. It's kind of gna hurt.

just kind of a lot of money for a round of mini golf .

in in some of oh, it's tty good and kind of wanted IT to make IT feel like a true tour like the P. G. A tour. They have all the money for the players. So kind just making IT a tour feel and competitive and symptoms on the line.

It's a good way to get the players paid. And since dane and Stephen win a lot, IT gets them paid too. But IT also feels different than them just being like pay five dollars months to access all of our content.

IT makes fans feel involved like their sponsors of the event, and IT makes them feel like they're directly contributing to the game itself and not just to some business entity somewhere. So far, it's not a lot of money. I've seen the first so far as highs like seventeen hundred bux, which is not pro athlete money, but to be fair, is kind of a lot to win for a round of mini gov.

The fan tournament and the venues will help. But ultimately, the twin tour guys do want to do the typical brand deals, but those are easier to do in regular golf than in mini golf. Like every golf career eventually get sponsored by a big golf grand.

There's a whole path there, but i'm not sure who the big name in mini goal is. You know plus at some point, every sufficiently big creator becomes a product person. You put your name on a makeup line or an energy drink or a weird lunch, able competitor or gadget accessories or your own golf bag. I'm not sure what that thing is here, but I do have some ideas. Is the next step like the the twin tour mini golf putters.

there would be pretty cool. I I feel like a lot of people, if you go mini golf, you're just using the potters there. So maybe a custom potter for people, but we hadn't really thought much about IT yet.

Would you ever would you want to a design, a course?

We have talked about that and deep pots, the course that we play has talked about opening up another location, so potentially partnering with them, and they've given us freedom. The design holes and from all the courses we've played, figure out what we like, what hold we would wanted see there.

But I would be a fun thing to set up our own mini golf course some day in, have IT somewhere we can film content, whatever is not just filming contempt, promoting our own business, our own course. So it's definite something we've been thinking about. And maybe someday we will do what?

What is the like ideal hall for great content mini golf, as much as you get a concern like what does IT need, what has to happen.

I think for performance and social media, I think, is something that can take some time to get down to the whole while also having a smooth Green. So something that kind of takes maybe about eight seconds to see whether or not it's gonna online, if IT has a chance to go in for a hole in one so little longer hole with this suspence, you have five, eight seconds of, like all this could go in, this might not go, you still don't know.

And then you see IT mr. Go in the hole. So I just like the holes that are typically a little bit longer and courses that have a little quicker Greens, I feel tend to perform well. That's .

interesting. I thought you were onna say like cool looking obstacles and weird stuff. That's hard for people to figure out, but the time actually makes sense.

And there's the I forgit where I was, but there's the one course you guys played a bunch times or IT has like the three tear Green. I feel like that's like exactly what you're talking about. Like IT takes forever to figure out if they had a good shot or not in a way that IT is actually pretty compelling.

yes. And we've noticed with like obstacles, if there's a widman in the middle, the whole it's just kind of harder record because IT goes through, IT disappears for a little bit and then comes back out. So kind of when they have those interesting designs on a hole where it's just like a straight hole with an obsta in the middle, they just don't tend to perform as well. Is a clear hole with some slow bond in the ball had in towards the hole. I've been watching the .

twin tour mini golf stuff for almost as long as the cynics is have been making IT. And I really do love watching strangers play mini goff way more than I expected. And Frankly, i'm sad to know i'm not the only one, but i've also really enjoyed over the course the last year seeing the twin tour golf guys go through kind of the whole creator journey, one video and three holes at a time.

The videos get a little more polished than never too polished. There are more hashtags over time. The graphic s skip at our promotional merch starts to appear. They're now tagging the courses in the description and actually both cynically s say that they're starting to drive new people to courses all over the place.

There are new players that show up and then those players get their own tiktok and their own branches of the story that starting in to push people to youtube because I think youtube is just the most stable of these platforms for a lot of reasons. But one thing I really like is that the videos, the videos are still pretty much the same. Here's that, that sounded .

like a year ago I shot to test Steven on one role. Did IT that still some work? What got IT all tied through one? And here's what IT sounds .

like now at the most recent tournament, the same first hall, almost exactly a year after that first video number.

once spot in the player the yesterday and try to keep IT that way. And it's happened IT for his two. Steven in for two at you.

Thank you to everyone that contributed to this. Major's purse means a lot to us, a lot on the line, I thought. Got IT for my two and mellow for all tours on the first hole, roles all tied to you.

I love about that. If anything, that sounds worse. But in general, for all of the changes that they're making around these videos, the point is they're not messing with what made this video work the first time.

Even down the things as simple as the music, you may have noticed it's the same song. IT is the same song just about every time. Is literally attract called epic music, which is Glorias.

It's been used one hundred and fifty eight thousand times on tiktok and a lot of them or golf lips. Pretty sure you can blame the two guys at some point though I do wonder how long this one thing can keep going. There's not a ton of other minc of content out there right now.

Both Daniel Stephen actually said they're surprised they don't have more competition, especially given how much golf content there is on the internet. But there will be competitors eventually, especially if i'm right that IT is like the perfect internet spectator sport. And maybe tiktok algorithm will like those Better.

Maybe tiktok algorithms on't always like mini golf. Will tiktok even be around long enough first to find out this is what I mean, this stuff is fragile. I don't know the answers those questions and neither nations, which is the thing that struck me the most actually about what they are doing.

They don't really seem to be super tired to the idea that they are like mini golf content guys. They're really invested in doing this as long as IT works. But I got the sense over and over that this is all just an excuse to play goal with their friends.

And honest, I kind of love that we talk a lot on this show and everywhere about the biggest creators on the internet, the ones starting giant production companies and hiring tons of people and making millions of dollars and becoming a less celebrities. But the twin tour guys seem to be happy just being a small business like a lifestyle business. Instead of a uniform start up.

They're playing a sport. They're they're hanging with their friends and they're paying the bills in the process. They have some plans to grow and expand and do more stuff, but maybe that's enough. The one thing I do wonder is if turning golf in the content is making them worse, golfers and IT. Turns out Stephen wonders .

about that too. The other day we went out and gulf and played really well. And then the yesterday we went and played record IT, and we didn't do too well compare to the time when we weren't record in.

But then he thought about, he said, he figured it's probably OK missing stupid puts is pretty good content, right? That's IT for the verge cast today.

Thank you to Steven and amy for being on the show and thank you as always listening as always, if you've thought feelings, questions or seek any of courses that we should go to for official version business, you can always email us at verge cast to the first shot come or call the hotline eight, six, six. Verge one one we love hearing from you. Send the other thoughts, questions this shows produced the m.

James wilpon and eric go as the verge cast is a verge production in part of the box media podcast network. Be back with our regularly scheduled verge casts on tuesday and friday. We have a really fun show coming up on tuesday. And also so much new scheme on friday will see you then back all.

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