A Brutally Honest Conversation with Smosh

28:03Was there any connection to like, like I remember the most unhinged stuff on TV at the time was kind of like a celebrity death match on MTV. There was that which was - South Park. Beefson Butthead, South Park. Yeah, there was some stuff that kind of resembled it, We were definitely influenced by a lot of that stuff, South Park especially. Interesting. To go back to the humor and where we were and where we are now, I think Anthony and I, when we were talking about, when we were thinking about him coming back and then us acquiring Smosh again, we talked about the humor and how it seems like this style of humor has made a return.

28:50Because towards the end of Anthony being at Smosh the first time when he left in 2017, I was feeling a little burnt out on the style of humor. It didn't seem to be clicking the same way. Food Battle, that was an annual series. We started in 2006 with this super ridiculous over-the-top humor. Was feeling just out of place. but it but like nowadays like it feels like that humor is kind of like made a return like it's almost this kind of like cyclical thing like I remember uh getting tagged in some like popular tiktoks that people have made and like the comments were like this is a smosh video and I was like watching I was like yeah I guess it is like you know not to take credit for their work but but it's like the same style of humor so like when Anthony and I started talking about making videos again, making sketch comedy again.

29:47It was like, yeah, I feel like now is the time for that. How much do you guys take performance into account? Because there's like the creative excitement of making the sketch. But it has been, that era was like left behind by YouTube for a long time. And even you saying people are tagging you on TikTok. Yeah. Like that's potentially the new home for this type of humor in a shorter amount of time. But yet you guys are doing it on YouTube. How much does performance of the sketch impact you now? Oh, like in terms of how well it performs? Yeah, like how much does that play into the equation? Because obviously in the beginning, it's just we like making this.

30:22That's it. I think, well, we wanted to make sure that we could actually afford to make sketch comedy again. Yeah. So we were, because we knew like making a four minute long video isn't going to get us the kind of ad revenue that we need to support a sketch comedy channel. So we were very clear with our viewers like, hey, we're bringing this back, but in order for it to succeed, it needs to be member supported. And in order, you know, by having it be member supported, we could be a little bit more free with the kind of content we're making and like less worried about like we have to make this as like PG as possible.

30:59It allows us to focus on the content itself rather than looking at the number first. You know, it is a little bit more about how satisfying is this for the person that is a fan and wants to consume this kind of content. Of course, you have to kind of consider performance as well because you can't just make something only for your audience. You know, your videos would not, you would not be able to sustain even with a very strong member supported backend. So for me, it's really about having a little bit of that balance of creating it just for the people who are fans of this stuff while also trying to do little things within the video to draw in a new audience at the same time.

31:42One of our first goals when we came back was let's show the audience that this is what they remember. So kind of doing some things that were more like what people remember and then slowly introduce, like, this is who we are now. It's just kind of like, you know, sort of that balance. I do find it interesting that, you know, know, performance, whether through money or viewership or whatever, I guess all combined. When you, when you root back to like your early days, there was a pretty radical simplification of producing the content, right? Meaning like it was just you guys shooting those sketches.

32:26Oh, right. Like it's, it's interesting as we grow as creatives and media companies, you add a lot more to the equation, which then creates a whole new dynamic of coming up with a creative idea. For sure. Right. When you have staff and rent and revenue, money becomes a creative partner in your decision making. That's true. Yeah, when we first got started, we were just living at home with each of our parents. And money wasn't really an issue. We got to just focus strictly on the content itself. But yeah, as you grow, you want to be able to make more stuff. You want to be able to make better stuff.

33:01You start having bills to pay and people that rely on you, their livelihood. uh you know we have over 30 employees over at smosh so that's something you have to take into account too you can't just make stuff that doesn't perform that's just for you and a very small group of people you have to always find a way to draw new audiences because if you're not drawing in a new audience then the audience that you have is slowly drying up you have to always bring in a new audience and that's just the way that youtube works yeah unfortunately you know we have three different or four different channels uh that are you know on their own sort of objective so it's not it's not fully dependent on on us to um you know kill it every single upload on the main channel in order for the business to survive yeah it allows us to be more experimental with with the the sketches because we have the other channels to lean on there was this thing that happened for us when our company got acquired, where we went from coming up with ideas in settings like, I don't know, sitting at a coffee shop or just talking to each other, to then coming up with ideas in a conference room.

34:13And I'm curious if you can talk about, because after three years there, I remember thinking to myself, I wrote down this term, conference room creative. And I was like, I don't want to be a conference room creative. Yeah. Well, we write the sketches at our houses. Got it. And so we kind of, we also realize like the vibe is just not the same in a, in a, like sometimes we'll have to, we'll have to do some writing sessions like at the, at the studio, but we really try to block out like a whole day that we can just like hang out at one of our places and, and just kind of take the time that we need to, to talk creative.

34:52When it comes to like the other channels that is all done in the course. at the studio. I don't want to vilify that process. I don't think that's a... Because today you're here in our studio, we got a conference room upstairs, we're sitting there and come up with ideas. I don't want to vilify it, but I think there's a concept to... What I mean by conference room creative is sometimes you sit in there and you're like, okay, we have this brand opportunity or this revenue opportunity. Can we fit some creative into that? And then all of a sudden your impetus starts to change from like, hey, I got this idea to, hey, we need to do this.

35:26And I feel like that's where a lot of the pushback comes from when audiences can tell this is revenue backed creative. You know, not only did you just put a brand deal in it, it seems like it only exists because of the brand. That's the biggest thing. And I feel that as a creator, like there are times where we have done stuff like that, whether it's across network or whatnot. And you just feel it. You're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that is an important distinction, and that probably is the reason for some of that vitriol that we got in the early days because, yeah, like Carl's Jr. would come to us and be like, hey, make a video with the new$6 burger, and we'd be like, sure, we'll make a music video called I Heart Burgers, and it's going to be this ridiculous video.

36:14and yeah, the reason for making that video was entirely because it was a sponsor. Yeah, it's like we already had this idea and then we're like, you know what? Those would work perfect. But that's also what we do. You know, like that is the business of what we do is sometimes it's going to be that where your impetus is going to be an opportunity. I will say it's kind of fun sometimes to have limitations. In fact, I'd say, I was saying this the other day, the only reason that Ian and I, I feel we're able to focus so much on the creative in those earliest days and hone in on what made Smosh so special was because we had so many limitations.

36:45We had no money. We only had a webcam that was attached by a wire. Like we couldn't leave the room. We had to focus entirely on the idea carrying the product. The nice thing about that era of when you're first starting out as a creative is that there's nothing else to think about. You know, like stress and comedy don't really mix. And as you grow a business with 30 employees, all of a sudden you go from being comedic to being in like a Zoom call with your lawyer, you know? And it's, that context switching is really hard. I think you could tell as a viewer too, when someone is stressed while they're trying to make comedy.

37:22Yeah, yeah. Like, did you guys experience that? As I'm sure you have, obviously, in your 20 year career, but like stress and comedy, just how do you do that when you have to context switch? Compartmentalization, a lot of that. Derealization. I'm really good at it. You're good at that. Are you good at that? Dissociating. Yeah, I'm really good at like, And I think that's just because I always viewed that as like, oh, I'm a professional. This is what I need to do. I'm going to be in this horrible meeting about something that really sucks. And then I'm going to be needed for this silly, unscripted improv thing in 30 minutes.

38:02So I'll do this horrible conference call with a lawyer or whoever. And then I'm like, hey, everybody, let's do this thing. and it's like, you know, yeah. Is it healthy? No. But does it keep things going? Yeah. Because if I show up on camera and it's clear that like, because the viewers aren't stupid, like if they see it on your face, they're like, there's something going on. I try my best, but I feel like even when I go in and I try to do that, I can feel it. I feel like I have other things on my mind. I feel like the audience, they can sense it without knowing, like they can't put a word on what it is, but something's off.

38:38Yeah, you can tell. I think I can't hide it. Presence gets much harder over time in this career. Yeah. It's a really interesting challenge. I'm actually in improv class now to work on my presence. Yeah. Because I find that in the early days, like I think about us making videos, it was just like the whole day was around just making that video. And it's pretty uncommon now for an entire day to just be around making a video. Now you're like structuring it. So you're like, we get the whole month's worth of shoots done in a week or something. A lot of people will do that because then they have the other time carved out for the creative or giving themselves an opportunity to get bored so that they can have the creative ideas just spark naturally.

39:17But it's hard when it's so segmented. Giving yourself an opportunity to get bored is so interesting. That's so impossible now. Yeah. I find that to be impossible. There's like a trend on TikTok right now, which is so ironic and it's almost comical, but it's called a no phone walk. But the hilarious thing is people are filming themselves to do it. And I'm like, guys, this concept doesn't make sense. If you're filming yourself on the no phone walk with your phone, it doesn't make sense. But that is like a thing that's going around. It's like, try this out, guys. It's called a no phone walk. Go on a walk without your phone.

39:52And I was like, oh my God, that's crazy. There's going to be so many of those counterculture type trends. Yeah, that's counterculture now. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, give it like a year and there's going to be like, there's going to be like a, you know, a no phone walk guru. These influencers are going to be paying this guy like 200 bucks a walk. This is so amazing. We do this thing where we talk to each other. Meadow really showed me the world. Meadow is so his name. Oh, one million percent. That's really good. how did the um the like scripting writing because like i actually don't know how sketch comedy comes together it all feels very easeful and seamless um no matter if it's like smosh today or smosh from back then it still feels like very like there's like ease to it but i imagine that it's the intricacies of a four-minute sketch is like they kind of have to be fully mapped out prior to filming.

40:51Oh yeah. Yeah. What is that? Like, and when you're making original music or, you know, there's, there's a lot that goes into that. Yeah. I mean, in terms of the process, is that, yeah, I would say like, well, there's, yeah, I mean, there's, there's multiple stages. So there's like the writing stage. So I'd say that we need like a day to write a sketch, sometimes like a day and a half. Um, and then, uh, then it goes into pre-production. So then I have to get together. I get together with, um, with a few people and talk shot list. So we figure out like, oh, where are we going to shoot this? You know, do we need two cameras?

41:29Like what are the angles? What are the rooms we need? Then we go to a pre-production with, with our crew and talk, um, you know, art comes to the table and they say like, okay, so you said you need, um, a tree. What does that mean? Like, is it like a small tree, big tree? And we just go through the whole script that's probably like a like an hour long well i mean like we go through all videos um so that's probably like a 15 minute conversation then art goes off to do their magic and then there's a second pre-pro to just kind of like check up on everything and then uh then there's the shoot day so there's sometimes a load-in day for for a crew um and then we shoot for 10 hours and then it goes into post.

42:20Is that how your mind kind of works? Like are you the producer mindset? Hell no. No you're not. No. But he does handle a lot more of the pre-production with approving the looks and ideas for kind of what we were thinking while writing it. Yeah I try to because Anthony's got like a whole different channel that he's also working on so I'm trying to handle like more generally like trying to handle more of like the shot listing. but I got my hands deep in post production because that's when we first started making the videos Ian was handling a little bit more of pre-production I was handling more posts and we kind of just fell into that naturally again because I'm obsessed with editing and I love it I was an editor on all the Smosh videos myself for like 10 years or something and I hate editing so because I did it for so long myself I feel like I have a grasp about how to communicate ideas in that sense so yeah he's more pre-production I'm more post-production but then even for the video writing process itself um that feels a lot more 50 50 between us and yeah it's like we have an idea then we'll kind of shoot out ideas and outline it and then we'll start to kind of structure beginning middle and end and then once we figure out the ending if there's like a twist then we start we go back and we seed it throughout and i kind of view the the outlining process as like having all these little bullet points that can be rearranged in any order and seeding in ideas and the punchlines.

43:47And like it, to me, there's a rhythm to it. It almost feels, especially because the, the length of a sketch is similar to a length of a song. I like to look at it in terms of like the rhythm and the flow as if it almost is a song in some sense, especially if there's going to be a really big moment, you want the, the calm before that moment, for example. Yeah. It is all about like the contrast between different moments. And sometimes like if we have like a good idea for like an ending, but like maybe like three quarters of the way through, there's like, we're not really sure. Well, maybe we'll throw like a placeholder in there and go like, we could probably come up with something better, but like, let's just put it in there for now just to like get an idea of it and then punch it up later.

44:27Yeah. We've learned not to dwell on one little tiny detail for too long. Cause usually you, you put it off for a day, you come back and you have a completely different point of view and you could work on that segment. So it's like knock out all the things that we are feeling creatively inclined to at this moment and then come back and pick up all those little pieces. So over the past, you know, like, I guess two decades, how did this process evolve through things that you learned that defy? And some of it, how you're describing actually reminds me a lot of Rhett and Link and Mythical. or was it all like is this just a more amplified version of what you guys did when you first started or was it learned through these infrastructures that you were a part of um i think just like different pieces were picked up along the way because you know the way that we started making sketches was wildly inefficient um because we were just two guys and like we didn't have like a specific like cadence of uploads we're like yeah like like let's go to denny's like i'm kind of stuck on this part of the video do you want to go to denny's and we'd be in the middle of shooting it and then take a break you know and it was just like so inefficient and then when we got a producer that definitely kind of helped like you know structure things a little better start taking a little more seriously um and i mean yeah i think some of some of our production process um is similar to to retin links because when retin link acquired smosh after the defy collapse uh they did give a lot of insight on their production schedule and like the way that they block shoots and yeah and so the block shooting i think definitely came yeah from there Yeah, they've developed a real modern studio there.

46:17And I feel like there's not that many roadmaps. You guys are one of the few that from that early of an... I mean, you were one of the first YouTube channels, right? Within the first nine months of YouTube existing. Sure, yeah. Yeah, we created the channel in November and I think the first video was at the zoo, something at the zoo. What was that for? Me at the zoo. Yeah, that was May of that year. Wow. That's crazy. So six months later. It's crazy to think YouTube started with a dick joke. It was? Tell me more. What was it? Oh, because the thing that he says, the thing that Jawed, is that his name?

46:53Javed. We said it incorrectly in a video one time. Thank you. Got roasted. He's like pointing at an elephant. He's like, see, the thing about elephants is they got really, really long trunks. I didn't even get that was a joke. I think his delivery is so dry. He's an engineer. He's not a comedian. He's got to work on his timing a little bit. Yeah, nobody even knew that was a joke, I guess. YouTube started off with a dick joke. We're just carrying the torch. We knew it was the place for you guys. Yeah, exactly. What does it feel like that so many creators cite you guys as the inspo to get involved in YouTube and upload?

47:40we were just in the place at that time I feel like everybody's got somebody that they first saw I don't know it's cool to know that all of our experimentation resulted in some people being inspired or picking up on certain things that we did and refining it for their own process but yeah I mean for us it was so insular we weren't thinking about the impact or the way that it would affect anything. We were just so in our little box of let's create one, a fun thing. And then it was just that over and over and over again. Cause I actually, and I know we talked about this at the beginning of the show, but I actually think as I learned more about your guys defy deal, that it was probably used as a comp in our deal.

48:27Really? Yeah. I just think that like there weren't many comps to selling a YouTube channel. And I would assume that when our company was bought and our channel was bought, They were like, well, what did that Smosh deal look like? Interesting. You know? And I actually, I assume that it was probably somewhat based on that. And so I think like I'm fascinated by the people who have laid so much groundwork for the creator economy. Well, Matt Pat told me that in selling game theory and those series of channels, they looked at the DeFi deal. Of course. And they're like, don't do that. Whatever that is, don't do that.

49:04Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's changed so much because with MatPat, that's like a VC firm, right? Yeah. I think so, yeah. What were some of the positives of working within Defy? Because I can also look at our experience and I can cite so many positives from our experience of what we learned about this career. It was like grad school. Yeah, it felt like we were in school, like we were learning about how to monetize internet video and how to have more efficient production cycles and and how to speak to an agency that's looking to like we learned so much from that experience that I'm curious some of the positives of of the Defy relationship.

49:42I think it's easy to get caught up in all the negatives in those types of deals, especially when you're like, oh, I didn't make the money I thought I was going to make. And people are like, that was a stupid idea. And you're like, I know. But yeah, there were a ton of positives that came out of it. Even from the earliest days of here's what it looks like to have resources and a team behind you. Here's what it looks like for you to be able to focus on the creative and connect with an audience and just do what you do best. I think that's when we learned that we could hone in on doing what we do best and what excites us most and find other people to pick up and do the things that we didn't like doing as much.

50:17because in the earliest days we were doing everything ourselves even you know because we couldn't make money uh on with ads on youtube because they didn't exist we were you know taking shirt orders and going to the to the guy the weird guy in the warehouse behind the grocery store and getting the screen printing and then taking those and you know shipping them out ourselves like everything was on us so to have the freedom to really focus on what we did best was was eye opening yeah i wonder i also wonder if like like on the business side of things if it helped grant us some legitimacy by being part of like a digital media company yeah so it's like because a lot of like advertisers at that time uh just had this idea of what a youtuber was and was like this is just a guy in a room recording a video right like so yeah i mean we got we got some pretty big like brand deals to them.

51:15I mean, they had their own, they had an entire, they had an entire like sales force. Yeah. Like they had an entire floor in a Manhattan office building that was all sales. So crazy. We had the exact same thing. Really? Exactly. An entire floor of salespeople. And it opened up similar types of opportunities in terms of legitimacy because the company that bought us was working with the NBA. They were working with the NFL. Gatorade would come. Right. Interested in Nike. not lacrosse. But then they're like, give the lacrosse guys 15 minutes at the end of the meeting and just see what happens. And then we were able to get Gatorade to invest in our channel and do branded content with us.

51:55And otherwise that would have never happened if it was like, here's these three guys in LA in like a dirty warehouse. Come on, Gatorade. Like, what do you think? It would have never happened. Yeah, it's so similar. And that like learning the commercial side of the business, then it teaches you how to do this sustainably for a long time. Yeah. And I talk a lot of shit about how Defy, how just doing so many things at once, which is why I was creatively drained and completely burnt out. But I can look at a lot of the things that they pushed us to do that ended up being successful that were either really fun experiments that someone needed to experiment with or things that I'm really proud of or things that I'm sure we even take into account when we're creating stuff today.

52:36And they pushed us to take a lot of really big risks, trying out a lot of really interesting, bizarre things. A lot of it did not work, but I'm really happy that they pushed us to experiment with a lot of those things, including the movie. Smosh the movie. Including putting on. Were you guys the first YouTubers to make a feature? No, no, no. Because there's like Grace Helbig. Oh, right, right, right. You guys paved the path for airplane mode. For Logan Paul's airplane mode. Have you seen that? I haven't seen it. I've never seen it, but I can only imagine. It is an abomination. Yeah. I think the whole like Coming from Smosh the movie creator The whole movie industry had to take like a beat after that one You know and be like We should take a pause real quick And I think that movie like sat on the shelves for like a couple years So it was like really like out of date It was really out of date It came out in like 2016 or something And it was shot in like 2014 Yeah But yeah I remember you guys being like very early to doing some of those things And making at least for us at that time Recognizing like oh YouTube's a path to this, it's a path to Hollywood.

53:42You know, and that was, there was like hard ways to understand what it was. What was this that if you got popular on YouTube or got good at making YouTube videos, what did that mean? What was next? You know, there was like, you know, Lilly Singh was a roadmap at a time, you know, and like you guys making the movie, I think was like, oh, so you can make a movie? Yeah. Yeah, well, we saw, I mean, there were other creators that had opportunities pretty early in YouTube. I mean, well, Lonely Island were already kind of doing stuff. But, I mean, Bratz and Beretta, they got a TV pilot in like 2007 or something like that.

54:26Oh, Epic Mealtime too. Didn't they have a TV show? But that was later. That was a little later. But, you know, we saw that, you know, a lot of these people that got these, I mean, God, Brookers. Do you remember that name? Okay, so that's like super duper early. Like she got like a development deal with like Jimmy Kimmel? Carson. Carson? What's his full name? Daly? Yeah, Carson Daly. Oh, it's Carson Daly. You're right, you're right. TRL, come on. She got like a development deal with him. So there's all these people that like, they got this sort of like early stuff where like the traditional media was like, what is this YouTube thing?

54:58But the problem was like, they would like leave YouTube for a moment to try to like develop this thing or there's even like, I think there's a couple people that left for like Mad TV and they would like leave their YouTube channel to do this traditional media thing. And then if they were to come back, like the audience was kind of like gone. Also the landscape was evolving so quickly that when you took six months away at that time, you'd come back to a completely different world on YouTube. So we saw all that stuff and we're like, okay, if we're going to do anything that's like traditional, if we're ever going to go into that area, we have to still maintain the core, which is the YouTube channel.

55:39Right. But those are hard. It's hard to scale your creative. Like, I think that's one of the hardest things to do. Conceptually, someone with a business hat on is like, okay, great. Let's take Smosh and let's make it all these different things. But there's a DNA to that. That's actually just you guys sitting in a house coming up with ideas. Yep. And I'm curious if we could talk a bit about scaling your creative voice, because we're at a point in the creator economy where people are doing that. They're building companies of hundreds of people and attempting to scale something. What are the trade-offs when you go from this thing to, hey, can we do a movie and a book?

56:18And can we launch more channels? And can we get other creators on this channel to represent Smosh? Yeah, I think the biggest thing is being able to identify the people because there's going to be a team that helps you accomplish this or else you're going to completely abandon in the thing that got you footing in the first place, which is dangerous. So we, you know, when we started thinking about doing things like the movie and all these other big projects, we would hire or have people brought in to help us develop these things. I'd say, I wish that I would have spent a little bit more time vetting and making sure that we had the same tone of voice and all these things.

56:53But we were so busy doing the weekly sketches that we almost couldn't. We just had to have other people come in and be like, this is the person you're working with. This is the person you're working with. So I think the biggest thing is really taking the time at the front to make sure that the people that you bring in completely understand your voice and can help guide a new project in a similar path that you would. And then at that point, you have to completely be hands off and let them take it once you can confirm that they can handle that. Because for me back in the day, and the reason that I felt so split with my time that it completely destroyed me was because, yeah, we didn't have the time to make sure that the people that we started working with completely understood our voice.

57:35So by the time we were kind of deep in the process, I'd be like, oh, this isn't right. And then I'd be trying to do all this stuff while still doing this and then having this side project too. And it was like, I was constantly trying to keep this house of cards built while at any moment, every card was about to fall. And I was kind of just like juggling everything. So, you know, as you start to scale up, it's about finding the right people and then allowing them to do their thing. Did your guys' relationship with the Smosh brand sort of evolve at different rates post-acquisition? Because I feel like it's an interesting thing.

58:09The moment your channel and your brand is acquired, it's actually somewhat of a declaration that maybe I won't be there one day. I was in denial that they had that kind of freedom now. They could make that choice if they wanted. I was in denial that that was even a possibility. Yeah, I mean, I kind of always felt like we were going to be a part of it. And that was the plan, you know, to kind of, if you were to look at Smosh as like the Saturday Night Live of the internet, you know, Lorne Michaels is still the head of Saturday Night Live 50 years later, almost 50 years later. and so you know why couldn't we be the Lord Michaels of Smosh but yeah I mean I think our relationship to Smosh did definitely change like it was different like towards the end of you being at Smosh obviously but yeah I think for him he was like he was like I need to be involved in everything and like we need I need to like, you know, we had this like mobile game that, uh, that he was like very into and like testing and like making sure it was good.

59:23And I was like, just focused on the, the, the sketches. I felt like every single thing that we put out had to be something that I was really proud of that our audience would feel like still had that homegrown flavor to it. That still felt like it was something that we would put our stamp of approval on. I never wanted to put out something that felt like it was made by someone else. So yeah, I mean, as all these other projects started being presented to us, I mean, A, it kind of felt like we couldn't say no, especially if they had some kind of funding set up for it or some kind of sponsor set up for it.

59:59So I would just kind of be put in this position where I'd have to say yes, or I wouldn't even be given the opportunity to say no. And then I would have this new project to work on that I was giving all of myself to. So yeah, I mean, that really started to burn me out while Ian kept a distance from, I mean, he still was involved. I might have to beg him to be like, please look at this thing. Is it good? He's like, God, this other thing, man, we're doing so many things. I've turned to a lot of people to ask advice around this, actually, around as you grow a platform and a brand in this space, similar to actors as well, immediately you get diversification opportunities.

1:00:37and your mind goes like, we should diversify because that's what you hear that feels like the right thing to do. Also, these opportunities are exciting. And I've recognized in our own attempts, successful and unsuccessful at diversifying, launching new projects, that there's kind of two decisions or like two paths you can go. One is like radically simplifying and say, we make a great show. That's what we do. We make a show, right? And that's it. That's it. That's a thing. And that has worked in a lot of different places. Like you even look at podcasting. And I think about a great comp is like, call her daddy.

1:01:15Alex Cooper made a great show. That show then had a really big outcome in a$60 million deal with Spotify. Right. And that she just made that show. Now she's starting to do a few different things, but they're still connected to the show, going on tour and doing the show in front of people. But she's making the show. And you can either make the show or you can expand out and make all these other properties and take the audience and say, well, what if I create a buffet of offerings for this audience? Right. Right. And I've asked advice to people around like, how do you know which one you should do?

1:01:51And I've gotten two really good pieces of advice. One was that you cannot do it unless you have someone you trust with such depth that's typically sometimes like a family member or someone so close to you that will never cross you or will never just kind of go against whatever you're trying to do. And you also have to trust someone creatively. And then the other piece of advice is if you're to diversify, you have to start caring less. And that is really hard as a creative. And that's what I think like when I think about you and even today, you know, La Crosse Network still exists. And I look at it sometimes and I still care if the creative is good or not.

1:02:43You know, I still deeply care about it. And it's been acquired again since it was acquired. So you are so removed from it. We're removed from it, but we know that the people who own it are good friends of ours now. But I look at every piece and I'm like, to the point where Colin sometimes will make decks to send to them. Or I'm like, here's what the thumbnails should look like, guys. Because I'm so connected to it. We're so deeply connected. And when I got those two pieces of advice, that's when I took a step back and said, is it a bad thing to just make the show? Do we look at this as a bad thing in the creator economy today of just being like, we like making this show.

1:03:23Should we just make the show? Yeah. And it's really hard to look at that. And you look at all the successful creators. They're expanding. They're launching new channels. They're platforming other talent. They're launching other businesses. They're launching a food product or something. And you're like, I think that's what I'm supposed to do. Yeah. But not everyone is supposed to do that. That's true. certain things become the precedent for what it means to be a creator. And then people just start doing that without really thinking, is this the right move for me? And also like, we don't know what's going behind the scenes with, with those people.

1:03:54And then like, you know, Jimmy launched, launched Mr. Beast Burger and then pulled back on it. Right. So it's like, you know, expansion isn't always the answer and expansion doesn't always work. Even if it is as successful as Mr. Beast Burger, I assume, was. Yeah, but we don't, we only know what we know. Right. You know, like, you really don't know what's, like, it's, there's, like, a story, and, you know, but then there's just stuff you don't know. Yeah. Just have a new idea. Also, maybe working sometimes is finding out it doesn't work. Like, I find often for us, it's like, I have to do that thing.

1:04:32Yeah. I know. If it's something that, like, you're, like, inspired by and you're like driven to try, like you should absolutely try it. Yeah. And I think if your viewers are excited by you being excited, you know. why not give it a shot? I think there's a lot of value to trying out things and being okay with it failing. I think a lot of times because everything is so public facing, people are like, I don't really want to try that thing because it's not going to be that great or it's going to fail. And even when you launch something new, sometimes you need to continue refining it over the course of months or years before it becomes something bigger.

1:05:17Yeah. Well, I mean, you know this exactly with your channel because Anthony launched a show on his channel that doesn't include him. Yeah. Yeah. I launched a new show, a spinoff of. So my interviews on my show right now is either it's one on one or it'll be three guests that we're cutting between. But it's always a one on one, but then interspersed with other conversations. I've been wondering, A, how can I launch a new show that doesn't take up more of my time because I'm already giving so much of my time. But also there's been a lot of instances where I'm like, I really wish I would have seen what the guests in the video would have said to each other rather than to me.

1:05:54Oh, so we're doing an experiment right now and I'm really confident with it. But we are we just launched a new show that has the three guests that we might normally see me speaking to all speaking with each other. And it gets very different conversations. It's very, it feels even more unfiltered because they feel like they're in a room with someone, with others who have lived those same experiences. I like that. Yeah. That's really cool. And while the numbers, you know, if I was to focus on that, I might be like, oh, it's not the same as the other show that's established. When I first started the show that is established, the numbers were very, very low as well.

1:06:29So you have to be comfortable sticking to your guns sometimes and just saying, we're going to keep trying this. For long periods of time. We're going to get better at it. We're going to keep refining it. There's going to be an audience for it. Let's just find it. You guys are real format makers. You know, like when I think about what you're talking about, you guys are talking about developing long lasting formats. I think the reason partially is because the main Smosh channel sketches are not formulaic. They're hit the drawing board every single time, start from scratch. So it feels like we need an outlet that is more formulaic.

1:06:59That is a framework. Yeah, that's like SNL. But it's a lot more variable. Yeah, there's a lot more variables there. And we've tried plenty of formats. And I mean, we've had a lot of stinkers too. Especially on the main channel. Sometimes you'll have a format that picks up a lot of speed and an audience that you weren't expecting it to. And then you double down on that and you keep refining that. Now you have the resources that you know you can put behind it and you can make it even better. So yeah, I do think that there is something that excites me about putting a lot of effort on the front end of developing a format.

1:07:35and then having the trust in the people to run it and let it go and continue to grow after I put all of my heart into the front end of it. And I think also when it comes to, when you are, I think with you two, the viewers understand the channel is you two. They're coming for you. No one's here for you guys. if you're here for things you just keep the angle your camera's not even on thank god I don't have makeup on but I think

1:08:17no it's a trust thing like I think you know and I think that's kind of what we've been building on the main channel is that people can trust that every time they're going to come to a video no matter what exactly the video is they're going to laugh and right now our focus is like don't break that trust like just keep working on it i think and i think like it's hard when you are a brand even though you're brand made up of people people don't audiences don't always see you as like people they're like oh it's a brand what did smosh the corporate smosh make now yeah so i feel like you know in in some ways over the years we've like lost some of that trust.

1:09:00And now we're just, you know, we're just building it. I think that was the result of burnout on our end, but also the result of burnout in terms of the people working on certain projects. So we're really, I'd say we're putting a lot of effort into making sure that people feel continuously excited about the projects that they're working on for ourselves, working on the sketches, but also the people that are in charge of each of the new formats that we've launched as well. Yeah, I want to ask you about like platforming new talent or shining a light on other talent underneath the Smosh brand. The Lorne Michaels comp is really interesting and like the concept that Lorne Michaels is a curator.

1:09:35Yeah, yeah. He's a curator of talent and he's a tastemaker. Like he has a taste and he's showing you a show that is his taste. And people respect that. And people respect that. I will come here. If you say this person's worth my time, I'm going to give them my time. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm very intrigued by that and how you've implemented that of like establishing your taste and your curation to the talent that you bring on to Smosh and the concept that Smosh can exist even if you guys are not on camera anymore. Right. Yeah. And I think what's interesting about that is that this was an idea that Ian and I had early on the Lorne Michaels comparison of bringing in new talent, having having a place where it wasn't all on our shoulders.

1:10:18We knew that we were going to need support eventually if we're going to have any longevity in this space. Yeah. We didn't think we were going to be on camera, you know, 10 years later, even like five years later. We were like 30 and too old to be on camera. No way. Really? Well, we didn't know. Like when we got together with our first like business partner, he was like, what's your five-year plan? What's your 10-year plan? Do you still want to be making videos? Do you still want to be on videos? And we were like, oh, I don't know. Because we were like 18 at the time having these conversations.

1:10:43And 30 sounds really old. When you're 18, you're like, you're going to be 30. You're like, oh my God. Yes. And I had never heard of like, we've never had the conversation of a five-year plan or a 10-year plan. So that was insane. so yeah then the conversation became like okay if you guys aren't on camera who is like if if smosh is more than ian and anthony like what is it and does that can you can smosh be you know a comedy brand or can smosh be a style of humor that is filled with a cast of people ourselves included um so that that kind of became that became the mission um it was initially not implemented in the most uh sensitive way because at that time we were with defy and they were like we hired on five cast members and they were like put them in videos now they need to be in everything as much of them in there as possible you need to warm up the audience to them immediately because we have all these ideas for new shows.

1:11:52It's not a slow warm-up though. That's like a scalding hot. It was not a warm-up. And do we hire them? Like you didn't pick them? We were in the casting process, so we did pick them. But in our minds, I think that because I don't know if we communicated enough or if we weren't part of this process enough, but we thought that it was going to be a slow, gradual. Yeah, yeah. But Defy was using the traditional media model of get these people, lock them down for multi-year contracts. And so they were getting paid. They're full-time employees. So Defy's view was they're full-time employees. They're coming into the office every day.

1:12:34Put them in videos. They're like, we're wasting money if they're not working. Get them into a status. And we're like, guys, look, if we put them in all these videos, all of a sudden, viewers are going to freak out. They're going to be like, who the fuck are these people? And, and they did. Yeah. Right. They were like, who are these people? It's like pouring boiling hot water on. It's like being like, here you go. So there was like, definitely, there's definitely like viewer attrition during that time. And like, people are pissed off and, you know, pointing like, Oh, this is like when Smosh started like failing or whatever.

1:13:10Cause the new people, uh, which is funny. Cause like we, we still get those comments of like, referring to the original cast as the new guys, even though they've been with us for eight years now. So those people are still the same people. A lot of them, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. So it did pan out. It did pan out. But it needs to be a slow, gradual thing. And the audience needed to slowly and gradually get accustomed to them. And we found places, you found places where the new cast can shine in their own right and host their own shows and do things that only they can do. and now they each have their own fan bases that love everything that they're in and that they host.

1:13:51And it was always our plan to get it here, but it just happened in a completely different way than we expected. Yeah, it did not happen at the speed that we wanted to. You had the sensibility of how it could happen, which is over a period of time. Yeah, we wouldn't be sensitive to what our audience expected and we wanted to show them, hey, we're curating a group of new people that you're going to really enjoy. We really enjoy them and they're very entertaining, but they didn't have that trust in us yet. This is a nuanced question, but how do you incentivize talent like that? I think about that a lot.

1:14:22To like be there to put their best foot forward, to put time into it. Even just to like, what's the compensation structure of that? Is it like you're an employee or is it like your talent and you, you know what I mean? Like I think in these modern media companies, I look at this a lot. Like there's talent that gets platformed and then they grow an audience of their own. and then all of a sudden they have opportunities as well. Like how do you deal with that dynamic of you're going to come into our organization, we're going to introduce you to this audience, you're going to, you know, if you're good, you're going to do great work and that's also going to put you in a position of leverage.

1:14:57Yeah. Right? I think that like we've always tried to be as fair with our talent and, you know, there were other companies we knew of that were very restrictive on what outside projects they can do. There were some companies that wouldn't even let their talent go on other YouTube channels. Or collabs and stuff. That's interesting. Well, I feel like I also, or we got a firsthand look at what this felt like when we were with Defy around that same era that the new cast was hired. They didn't really want us to do things on outside. like they didn't want us to build our own brands outside of the defy umbrella and things like that a lot of things had to go through them and i felt it on my end of like this feels really restrictive which made me not really quite respect yeah my place there so yeah we're definitely approaching it from let's respect these cast members as much as i i wish that i would have felt like they're allowed to like they're allowed to do their own brand deals on their own interest on their own platforms and we bring them in to brand deals at Smosh and they can get a cut of that.

1:16:13Oh, wow. So it's like we try to be as fair about it as possible or as I interpret it to be. And I think Smosh is just like there's a viewer base there. There is an incentive just to being a cast member and having that connection with our audience. And a lot of what the audience likes is the dynamic that the group has together. So while the individuals pull their own weight, there is a benefit to being in that dynamic on the Smosh panels. Have there been any outcomes or how do you feel about a potential outcome like all the talent from BuzzFeed that then goes on and has their own career, right?

1:16:57Like there could be a outcome like that over time with Smosh, right? Where cast members go and build their own brands. like we've talked about it and like I hope that happens like I think I do I think like as long as that person goes on to do something great and like succeeds on their own that only makes us look good right like to have and and again loops back around to Lorne Michaels and SNL yeah Will Ferrell gets a start on SNL goes off and does a million movies which also Lorne Michaels has a cut in yeah um so So it's kind of, it's like, yeah, like we want people to succeed inside and outside of Smosh.

1:17:37Mutual respect, I feel like it benefits both parties. Yeah. We call that the, it's like, we've called it before the revolving door model, where it's like Smosh can be a revolving door of talent that come through it. But it is super beneficial if that, the like school of Smosh leads you to being a big talent. Yeah, I mean, sometimes I think like, what if this person who is such a star on the Smosh shows right now goes off and does their own thing and has their own audience and becomes big? They're always attached in some way. And then imagine bringing them on as guests every once in a while. And those are huge episodes because people are excited.

1:18:14Like, I think that there's huge benefit to that as well. And also like as a young viewer that's aspiring to be a comedian, like, and if you are an aspiring comedian, you're looking to places like SNL or maybe Smosh and saying like, hey, as a comedian, I want to be there. And you can witness the model and you could see it can just kind of be picked up on through viewing the behaviors of the talent. We don't have to explicitly say, here's what we hope for our cast members. They can just see it and then they start getting inspired. And I think that's what will really set Smosh up for longevity is hopefully we set the precedent that there's a really great mutually beneficial structure that we have here and people get excited and inspired.

1:18:58And then we can start attracting some of the funniest people around the world to be part of this thing with us. I think what's exciting is we're still at such early stages of this happening with creators where we have creators like you who are now at the helm of media companies that are treating the creators at the company with the respect that you wanted. Like V1 was media companies not knowing how to treat creators. Or just straight up shitting on them. Or shitting on them. Perpetual contracts. Yeah, and it has existed in television with SNL, right, where people come back. But it's going to take probably another five to ten years before we see who does emerge from, like, the mythicals and the smoshes of the world and then come back into the pipeline.

1:19:40Like, it's so early, actually, to YouTube and the internet. Yeah, and I think it's like, you know, I think it's so important to try to be as fair as possible to people that are developing an audience because if you fuck them over, what are they going to do? They're going to go on their channel and talk shit. there's a reason why the why I left BuzzFeed thing is kind of seen as a thing because yeah their system was maybe not great for some people imagine the system was really good for them they leave, they do their own thing, they're inspired or they inspire other people they talk about how great of an experience they had at BuzzFeed more people come into BuzzFeed, do the same cycle and it's a respect they definitely knew how to find talent because they had the opportunity and they had the storytelling dna there that they taught but yeah they just they treated talent what was it i think it was the treatment of talent i really do i think it was that they didn't recognize the value of of talent i think they saw um those people as video makers producers producers right and like implementing the structures and the dna that they taught, but the reality was these were all like, we got mixed at that era of we are the writers, the developers, the producers, and the talent, but you were seen more as like the producer where it's like, I, you know, when we talked to the Try Guys, they were brought in and said like, it's really inefficient that there's four of you making one video, you know?

1:21:18And it's like, wait, do you not understand that's the thing? Yeah. Is that efficiency that matters or is that creativity? But why can't you be tri-guy? Well, yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting how all that could have been so different if the mutual respect was there. But you also have to have people who know what makes something good. And then you also have to be careful what financial pressures you put on yourselves. Yeah. Because once you add that financial pressure, then you do start going, should there be four of you doing this? Or can each of you make a video? I mean, I guess there's some people that just wouldn't work in a system like BuzzFeed anyway.

1:21:58Michelle Carey would have never been able to do what she does now in BuzzFeed because she wouldn't be able to go to BuzzFeed and say, hey, actually, I'm going to take three months to become a circus performer. And they're like, so that's one video? No. Absolutely not. So it works in her system, but there's no way it could work in BuzzFeed. I think BuzzFeed had, and a lot of companies at that time, had such a zoomed in lens of like, we need to be hitting these numbers. We need our profits to be this by this day. And it's so zoomed in when if you really, really zoom out, you can see that there's so much benefit to just giving people the ease and respect to do their thing in the way that they're going to do it.

1:22:42With what's happened at BuzzFeed, seeing what happened at Defy, What gave the two of you the confidence? Okay, let's do our own version after all of that sort of turbulence. What gave you the confidence that you could do it? It's about having been there ourselves kind of on the other end of having a company, overseeing everything you're doing, making a lot of the rules, then us feeling that from the inside of what this feels like. I feel like we're able to approach it now having been there ourselves. What about having the confidence in your personal relationship? No, because that's also something that over the years has changed a lot.

1:23:20Yeah, because when Anthony left, I mean, so Anthony and I, we've been friends since the sixth grade. And as Smosh started becoming a business, we became more business partners and the friendship kind of stagnated. So by the time Anthony left Smosh, there wasn't really much of a friendship left. so we didn't really talk that much for a few years several years I guess like five years like no nothing extreme it would be like a text it's like happy birthday or here's this joke that reminds me of something we used to laugh about when we were younger but really few and far between very much like an ex that's communication with an ex so it was like yeah we're both super busy with our own projects and our own lives.

1:24:14So we didn't really stay in touch that much. And the feeling was that we became different people and we were just different. Yeah. The idea, I think, for me was that we've grown too far apart and there is no way for us to ever relate to each other, really. What was the experience of watching each other's content at that time? I looked at you because I don't think he's ever answered this. I mean, I watched it in the beginning when he first split off because I wanted to keep eyes on what he was doing. You're watching me crash and burn. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, there was a resentment there, but also this feeling of competitiveness.

1:25:03Like, oh, fuck, he's doing good. That must have been after the crash and burn. No, because when you first launched after Smosh, you had good views. Yeah, millions of views for a second. And it was like, whoa, shit, okay. He's doing it. And then, yeah, I didn't watch a whole lot. I just didn't watch a whole lot. But I also am kind of selective with what I watch on YouTube. It's probably better off if you didn't watch it, honestly. I would occasionally tune in. I would occasionally tune in. I just, I bring it up because it would be a conversation around an ex. I think about like when I went through a breakup and it was during the Facebook era and I would be like, log into Facebook and be like, oh my God, I don't want to see what's on their wall.

1:25:50You know, it's like, if there's like a party shot of her having a great time, I was like, oh, I'm so depressed. Yeah. And I imagine like if Colin and I split, it would be really hard for me to watch whatever creative work he was making. And there's probably a level of, there's a term called schadenfreude. schadenfreude are you familiar with this term yeah wait tell me it's like a pleasure in watching someone else's failure and i imagine that that's really what you want during that there were definitely periods of that i wouldn't say it was like so aggressive like i destroy everything but but there was definitely just because we had the resentment with each other to a certain degree just so much unspoken stuff between us but also i was really frustrated about the era of defy i felt like I had ownership of Smosh that I had completely lost because like even down to seeing the logo and I was like, I made that when I was 14 years old before it was even a video thing with just my little dumb website.

1:26:47And I felt this sense of loss of this thing that I had devoted my entire life to, you know, from age 14 to 29, I had devoted my entire self to the Smosh brand. And Smosh was in all of my usernames. It was my email address I use for everything. Like when I left Smosh, I had to sign up for everything again. And I had no access to, and I didn't know who to ask. I felt weird saying, can I have access to my Smosh email address? I don't know. It was like, I felt like I had lost everything that had become so much ingrained into part of my identity that I was really resentful of the Smosh brand for a while.

1:27:28So I didn't want to necessarily see it crash and burn because I didn't want to see the thing that I'd put so much of my heart and soul into just disappear and dry up. Right. But I think that there was a part of me that maybe wanted validation that I was important there. Yeah. So. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Like the, you're going to miss me when I'm gone kind of thing. Yeah. Not so much like the X, not so much like a revenge aspect, but I wanted to feel like this thing that I had built wasn't just a fluke kind of thing. I had seen a lot of comments that were like, Smosh is better off without you or, you know, things like that.

1:28:09So I kind of want to be like, but I put so much of my blood, sweat and tears into this thing. It had value because I cared so much about it. So I think I was scared to see it do better without me. Yeah, I feel like we were both on like different sides trying to justify the value that we had in our content. You trying to prove all those people wrong that said you're nothing without Smosh and me trying to prove to the viewers that Smosh was Ian and Anthony and with Anthony gone, Smosh is nothing. So I feel like we were working both ends of that, trying to prove people wrong. And maybe that drove us both a little bit.

1:28:55I'd say more so just like, it just pissed me off. Yeah, it wasn't a good feeling. It was something that I'm like, wow, I miss those days. It was great to create from that place. Yeah, I mean, so I feel like when I kind of, when I started going to therapy, learning about myself, learning where these insecurities came from, learning where that frustration was actually coming from and it was my own insecurity, my own desire to have validation and my own sense of self-worth attached to this thing. When I learned all those things, I started to kind of let that stuff go. Ian had his own personal journey as well, but we each kind of had to have our own journeys apart, accepting what had happened, accepting where we were now.

1:29:40When we finally did end up meeting up, one of Ian's friends, you mentioned this before, you were talking to them, kind of mentioning me, and they were like, why don't you just meet up? Yeah, Diana? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so we, we ended up meeting up over lunch and because we didn't hold onto that resentment anymore at that point, we were able to just really just genuinely connect. I felt him like listening to me in a way that I felt like the past, like the, the final, like five years of me being there kind of had disappeared. I was genuinely interested. We were just like, had this genuine interest in each other.

1:30:17We were cracking little jokes and we were laughing just like we always had. I had learned a lot also with my own show and how to communicate better, how to listen better, how to have conversations about things that I'm genuinely interested in. And every single thing, every single thing that we had done apart, I feel like culminated in this moment of us together and reconnecting and realizing that we really were at the core, still the friends that we'd always been. Yeah. I mean, it's a, first I want to address self-worth. I think self-worth is like a conversation that comes up with almost every creative we talk to.

1:30:50I think they go hand in hand, like struggling to see your self-worth and being a creative. And maybe it's just a human thing. Like it's challenging to see your own self-worth. But I think it gets amplified as a creative because you have this mirror of your creative work that you watch back and then you evaluate and you root yourself work in that. Sometimes the numbers and the comments also are a mirror. So then you get a quantifiable metric next to your worth, both through viewership and as well as money and business. And all of a sudden it's quantified. And that gets really challenging and it's not an easy thing to deal with.

1:31:29And then when you're working in tandem with someone, that also then you're evaluating your worth against that person too and your value to this thing. Especially when the comments are constantly comparing us. Yeah, right, right. Of course. Yeah. And I'm just curious, like, did, like, you're talking about coming back together and feeling like you were able to communicate in a healthy way. Were there times as the business was growing that you were just, like, you deprioritized open communication? For sure. That was the first thing to go, I think. That was the first thing to go. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is naturally the first thing to go.

1:32:07Yeah. I mean, for myself, I was just so terrified of messing up a good thing. And so my priority was just try not to rock the boat. And with that came not having any kind of confrontation about any sort of thing. Well, you didn't want to rock the boat with us, but also even with the company too. I remember coming to Ian being like, there's this thing, they're screwing us over with this, and they're doing this completely different. And you would say like, well, what would we have done anyway? This is a really great thing. And you would really try to focus on the positive, which is great to focus on the positive.

1:32:45But I mean, I was too far the opposite of focusing on the negative. But I think there is a middle ground where you can kind of stand up for yourself while so appreciating. Yeah, yeah. I felt like sometimes I was like almost like the mediator between like you and Defy. Yeah. I would constantly just spill all of my frustrations on it. I'd be like, I don't know. Like it's not that bad. But then because of that, I felt like we couldn't really communicate because there wasn't like a back and forth there. You would just kind of brush off all of my concerns. Right. So then I didn't feel comfortable getting in because that was because he wasn't hearing you.

1:33:17It was business. And we were we were still able to talk about business stuff. But when we couldn't even talk about business stuff with, you know, with open ears, I felt like, how could I even get into personal stuff? And I think to a degree, it also just felt like out of our hands, you know, like, it was like, well, what are we going to do? Leave Smosh? Well, you have to actually understand in your own mind if that is a reality or not, right? If your mind can go, it sounds like your mind couldn't go, I'm going to leave Smosh, but your mind could. And that existence of expansion of reality, it changes the dynamic of what you're trying to do.

1:33:59You're trying to preserve this thing, right? Because you're like, I don't have that thought in my head of leaving this. And you're like, that thought's creeping in. So, dude, this stuff's not feeling right. Like I could leave whether or not those are the words you're exchanging. Right. And we had, and we had had like a conversation with, with our agent and he was, they were kind of like laying out like what we could do if we left Smosh, if him and I left Smosh and just started like a new sketch channel. And we thought about it. And we thought about it, but like it legitimately did not make financial sense at all.

1:34:38like the thing that supported the main channel so much at that time was the library like smosh was getting it was like 80 million views a month something like that a lot of that a lot of that was library yeah yeah yeah and it was just this strong library because people were just constantly watching the older content so and we had certain formats that would like kind of lead into like you watching multiple videos. So it had this strong library and it was like, well, if we start a whole new channel, we don't have that library. And we're not going to be getting these kinds of views month over month to support a sketch channel.

1:35:19So for me, that's what I couldn't see. I couldn't see Anthony and I going off, leaving this property, just starting a new property and doing the same thing. That was unattractive to me. Yeah. It could take like 10 years to just to have 10 % of that library. Right. Yeah. That's daunting. I do think that also frustrated me too, was that the channel was only alive because of the time and energy that I'd put into the content that was still the library content that was getting the views. I was like, and then I was struggling on my own to create. So I didn't have my own library. I was like, if I had the support of the library of all the time that I'd put in, but also I just had to accept the fact that it was my choice to start over.

1:35:59So the experience then, And, you know, Defy shuts down in your guys's I spent a day with episode. You describe this like Project X kind of chaotic moment in the office of like smashing mugs with a baseball bat because you were informed by an email that that Defy had shut down. I was so glad I was out of there by the time that happened. I understood. Like when I heard that, I was like, yeah, that would piss me off, man. Like that is that that is terrible. but you know the result of that was was Rhett and Link stepping in and buying the company yeah and that wasn't immediate Ian had to really struggle to hold on to what Smosh was in the contents of Smosh because it was kind of this I'm sure Defy was getting picked apart as like a distressed asset of purchasing different bits of it and Smosh was probably the best asset inside of DeFi.

1:36:51Yeah, Smosh was definitely one of the top sort of pieces in there. And I had actually tried to pull together investment to take it out myself. But the third party that was selling all the assets, like DeFi went defunct in, I think it was October or September, and they wanted everything sold off in like December. So it was this insanely short timeline. And so I was scrambling around with David, my advisor. Were you trying to like lower the price? Were you like, no, it's actually not that valuable. This amount will do. I mean, they were just going to take highest bidder. So there was a couple companies that were looking at it.

1:37:36And there was some like just weird, sketchy companies. And if they were going to get it, then I wasn't going to be a part of it. but then run link reached out and, and they're like, I think we could do something with that. Um, so we basically gave them all of this sort of stuff, all the work that we had done, like all the homework on like the asset purchase list and everything. Uh, we basically like handed to them. We're like, here it is. Like, this is what you need. Um, and so, yeah, then they acquired it along with, uh, some very silly domains that, that defy it owned that we had found. in their asset purchase list.

1:38:15Dickipedia.com. Smosh owns Dickipedia.com. Wait, but that's Elon Musk. Which is what Elon tweeted at. We already owned that. And Elon tweeted at Wikipedia. I was hoping he would buy it from us. Wait, is he? You own that? That's recent. We own that, yeah. We had owned that, or Smosh had owned that through Defy for, I don't know, five, ten years. Out of context, someone just watched us react to you saying you own Dickipedia. And we were like, wow that's a great I was just thinking about in another context what is this show why are they so excited about Dickopedia I was really hoping that Elon would come through and drop 5 million is that not still an option I think he's over it he's on to the next meme maybe one day hopefully but when Rhett and Link purchased Smosh they wanted Ian to be a part of it They weren't going to say they wanted to take a piece.

1:39:13They only bought it. They only wanted to take a piece of stuff. Take a piece.

1:39:24That was a moment though that I realized the size of Rhett and Link. Right. When I remember when that article came out, I was like wait. They're purchasing brands? Rhett and Link have what? How much money? I think that was when a lot of people realized. The headline was, Rhett and Link buy Smosh for$10 million. Yeah. I mean, yeah, understood. You know, but I'm saying the headline, Rhett and Link buy Smosh for$10 million. And you're like, what? Rhett and Link? I remember just the understanding of the values of all of these things at that moment for me was like, wait a second. You know, so Rhett and Link can buy this thing that's worth this much.

1:40:07And I was, it was just very fascinating to me. Yeah. I mean, I think they get it. And that's what made me so confident in going with them on this sort of journey. Because I think that as far as the creator economy goes, they're one of the people that understand it and have shown that they have lasting power. Yeah. And it's a very similar kind of story to Smosh as well. So it's like, I totally got it. They didn't want to buy it unless I was part of it. Of course. Even that there is a deep understanding of what this is. Right. Like it is you and your brain. And if you're not involved, then it's a completely different asset.

1:40:56Right. And how are you feeling emotionally at that time of like, okay, here we go again into a new home? I was overwhelmed. I, I, I also like didn't want like a leadership position. Like I, I don't really, I'm not really, I don't think I'm like hardwired for like being a leader. So when I came back through the red and link acquisition, I took on the role of president and I didn't really know what that meant. And I didn't really have like a, an idea of like what my accountability was there. So I was like, okay, I'm president. So I have to like be the first one in and the last one out every, every day at, at the office.

1:41:39And it was just like, there was no like understanding of like what I was supposed to be doing day in, day out there. So I felt very, I felt lost and just kind of overwhelmed. And it was just, it was just a weird, it was just a weird time for me, But I always stuck with it because I always believed that Smosh still had all this potential. I feel like Smosh is just also in this like kind of crazy place right now where like Gen Z is like coming up and establishing themselves. And then we find out like, you know, we saw a clip from Hassan Piker's stream, Young Gravy and Baby No Money talking about Smosh.

1:42:23Yeah. And we're like, wait, hold on, what? it. So it's just like, I think, I think Smosh just has this like cachet that, I mean, you can't really like put a price on it. I think like now with like we, us buying Smosh back, like this is such like an exciting time and exciting generation for Smosh. It feels like a new sort of like stage. I hope you feel the, and get the credit for sticking it out and believing in it. Because belief, I think, is a undervalued component of these creative businesses. Because you have to work through times where either in the beginning, when you have so much belief, because like no one's watching, like you were talking about launching a new format.

1:43:12It's like, you got to believe that this thing is going to work and your creative is good. And for you, like the belief through these tumultuous years that Smosh was so important and it was, it had a good storytelling DNA and it was a good comedy brand. Like, uh, as it's going through the, the, the, this, this turbulence, that's hard. Yeah. I definitely lost my belief. Of course it's easier to go, forget it, man. People are commenting, what are you doing? And you're like, I don't know. I don't know. but I can't tell you that. I felt so slighted by Defy that I completely lost hope in what Smosh was.

1:43:56So yeah, I mean, the fact that you stuck through it, even though I didn't see it, a lot of people didn't quite see it. I mean, I feel pretty validated now. At the time, I'm sitting here. Okay, got it. Good, good. Because y 'all weren't calling last year. Look, we met at the Creator Summit. You guys were not eager to set up an interview with Smosh. Actually, you know what's interesting? Just to actually talk about that. I don't think I felt yet that we were a show that you guys would come on. That's funny. Oh, that's funny. That's funny. Stop. No, for real. But mostly because I was like, yeah, what is Smosh now?

1:44:37I get it. I get it. Move on. You guys have, yeah. Make room for Rhett and Link. Yeah. yeah I mean we were talking about one of our editors Tyga who's 22 and you know we were talking about Smosh I asked him I was like did you like deeply grow up on Smosh and he was like yeah man I watched every video and then we were talking and you were like well he was gen 2 Smosh like and this I do feel which means like he came in later when you guys were evolved but I do feel like we're in the era of nostalgia right now I guess we always are in the era of nostalgia and it's weird that you guys are a nostalgic brand.

1:45:14Yeah. That's kind of a weird thing to think about that. It is, yeah. Like in the same way that I feel like Blink-182 and their new album where they're together, they're back reunited. It's not so different from the emotional experience of Smosh being reunited, right? That's true. I think it's interesting because we're serving different generations at this point. There's people that grew up on Anthony and I and you know as of recording this tomorrow we're launching Food Battle which is this like yearly thing that we had that people like grew up on it's the thing that people most like mention when we run into them in public they're like oh food wars I watched that thing and you're like yeah yeah so it's like I love when people mispronounce whatever your thing is more often than not they call it food wars I was the biggest fan of food wars I watched every episode man.

1:46:09Like, yeah, food battle. Yeah. But, but it's interesting because like coming back, like with that, like Anthony and I are serving that audience, but that's not the only audience that's watching our content. Like there's people that don't even know who Anthony is that are watching our other channels. Or they're like, wait, what's the guy from I spend a day with doing here? 100 % that happens. Like there was, yeah, there's definitely been people that have seen that kind of comment. Well, and we've been out in public and people don't know us as Smosh. They will just be like, hey, Anthony, I love your show.

1:46:42Can I get a picture? And I'm like, Ian's right there. They're like, what? Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. Yeah, so I think it's, yeah, we're hitting this nostalgia thing too. We don't want to like totally rely on it. For sure. We want to like prove to people like it's not just like Anthony and I reacquiring Smosh, not just a nostalgia play. Yeah. Like this nostalgia play lasts for, you know, a short while. And, you know, we kind of saw that with like the first few videos that we uploaded on the main channel. Just bangers. We bought Smosh has 10 million views. And it's like old school YouTube.

1:47:18I watched that video of like, and I think about like the update video, you know, like you're like sitting and you're like telling what you're about to make on the channel. That was like old school YouTube. That video felt so vintage YouTube to me. Yeah. And I love that you did it in that style. You know, it wasn't done in any overproduced. It felt real. It felt like you click on a video and there's a little bit of dead air. Yeah. Nice. We thought like the suspense of like sitting in the chair that Anthony's sitting like a second later would just be this kind of like fun moment. It would have been very different if it was Ian and I were like, so we bought Smosh.

1:47:53What's up, YouTube? So today I bought every single Smosh channel. I bought every share of Smosh. So yeah, I think we want to honor the people that watched Smosh back then. We also want to create content for a new generation of Smosh viewers because we have literally gone through a generation of people starting 18 years ago. So there are people that are just like, it's so spread out. Who knows Smosh? And what about Smosh they know? because it's so varied. Yeah, so right now we're definitely leaning into some nostalgic elements and bringing back the old series that they hadn't seen in eight years that people have been begging for and that kind of thing.

1:48:43But it's an interesting time because we are also getting acquainted with what the audience wants, what we like. And there's this kind of period of six months here where we're still kind of getting into the rhythm. As much as we hit the ground running, we're learning so much about the rhythm of what it is that we create and what audience doing this in your mid-30s when you have other stuff going on is so different I got nothing I was going on yeah

1:49:12that's all I got this is all I have please become a member how do you do you have something about being 30 sorry no no I was just gonna say how do you do you have any advice for even how to set this up now knowing that you don't want to be the president, right? Like, did you set it up differently so that you can - Oh, yeah. When we purchased Smosh, we definitely made sure that while we still have leadership roles and we can still guide where the company is going, and I really enjoy that. I believe you do as well. Yeah. This is all he's got. He's in no matter what. But we set it up in a way that we are allowed to have the freedom to play around, you know, which is where we got our footing doing Smosh, was us having fun together.

1:50:01So we wanted to make sure that we had this area where we could experiment with things and just have fun with it and then have the right people in the positions to make the more business decisions and be the day-to-day leader so that we could be kind of a zoomed out lens overall leader trying to see where things are going, but otherwise we get to focus on being creative ourselves. As the nostalgia naturally kind of tapers, how do you then continue to scale the brand? And how does the landscape of where sketch comedy is going fit into that? Like with short form vertical content, TikTok, how do you think about the future of Smosh?

1:50:44Yeah, I feel like we're kind of at this crossroads now where it has been kind of like, let's do what we did best but then now we're looking at it like what can we do best next you know like there there is a shift that has to happen here so we're we're looking at experimenting with a lot of new formats and having our team uh help us think of some creative ideas that are kind of little boxes that we can have that we can play around in um and looking at new ways to say like is this a broad appeal concept i think when we first started doing sketches again we were looking at a little bit more of niche appeal.

1:51:20Like here, this is for people who grew up with Smosh that were really nostalgic about Smosh, that were begging for us to make one more video kind of thing. While now we're really leaning into how can we appeal to brand new audiences who have never heard of Smosh, who want something fresh. How do you do that? Like what's a broad appeal concept that you feel like could hit it? I think it's about playing into new trends, getting younger people in who are really really deeply ingrained with modern internet culture in to kind of help with early ideation yeah and things like that also because we do have access to work and collab with a lot of people that grew up watching smosh that are are bigger names now it's it's a really cool opportunity where we can reach out and potentially work on stuff together and get new audiences by doing what these people do best and doing what we do best and putting it together.

1:52:18So that's where we're at right now. Interesting. And I wanted to talk about the memberships because memberships seem like a big part of your business model. I'm curious specifically around like YouTube versus Patreon and how you guys made that decision because I think a lot of creators go through that. And YouTube memberships, there's a much larger cut that's taken from those. Yeah. But why, yeah, why YouTube and why not developing a Patreon or even like what, you know, Rhett and Link have done with Mythical Society and having memberships live on a separate platform. Why do it on YouTube? We considered, and this is actually like a conversation that we were having before Anthony, before we ever like acquired it.

1:53:02We were considering memberships. We had conversations with Patreon and we had conversations with YouTube and the estimations that Patreon were giving us were like way lower, like as far as like how many users they thought we could convert. Bring over. Yeah. And YouTube was like, we think you can get this amount. And we're like, oh, okay. So you get less money per user, the cut's greater, but it's really just like the conversion is much better by not having that person click off of the page. Yeah, keeping people on the same platform. It's a lot easier for people to imagine going through the process of signing up or something if they're not having to go somewhere else.

1:53:50And a lot of our member-only content is served just by them opening up the YouTube app and they see it and it's there rather than getting the email and then going and checking it out separately. So it's just like a part of their natural viewing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it just, to me, it kind of felt right because we had gotten our start on YouTube and took so many risks in continuing to create content on YouTube. I mean, I remember, so we were one of the first 10 YouTube channels to be brought into the partner program. And we had MySpace coming to us saying, hey, exclusively create content for us.

1:54:28We'll pay you X amount. And it was higher than what YouTube came to us offering. but we were like YouTube is our home. YouTube is where people already are. That's where our audience is. And it kind of felt similar with this. It was like Patreon might be able to offer us more of the cut but our audience is here and I feel like I just have so much confidence in where YouTube has been. YouTube's been around for 18 years and it continues to grow in a way that while they do have missteps here and there it really does feel like they are in a place where they really do want to do they really want to create the best user experience.

1:55:00Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's really no other platform that will compensate an online creator the way that YouTube does. I know. It's crazy that nobody else has been able to keep up in the same way. It's frustrating. Yeah. Because I think we, I mean, obviously it can be better. But like, it's like, you look at other platforms, you're like, come on, guys. Like, YouTube's doing it. Why can't you? YouTube's been creating the revenue split model with creators since 2007. Right. While a lot of these other platforms were around for a long time and they're like, well, there's competition now. We better figure out something to keep people around.

1:55:36I do think attribution's way harder though on like a TikTok. Were you the one who led to this person watching this ad or was it the three TikToks they watched after? Yeah, especially if they're scrolling in the ad It's the long fact that YouTube has the viewing habit of someone may sit down for 10, 20, 30 minutes. YouTube and podcasting are much easier to attribute to. And I feel like TikTok just kind of like it pays people an exposure. For sure. To then launch a YouTube channel. They're just like, we don't need to pay you. We're making you famous. Right. Love you. Like, it just kind of, I don't know, that's the feeling that I get because there's like, you know, we'll just make you famous.

1:56:15Yeah. That may be the short form monetization model forever. Yeah. It might be just you can't see how there is monetization from Instagram and shorts and TikTok. That just may be the model truly. It's just like, we'll make you famous every once in a while. Get your footing on those platforms and then go somewhere else or do ad deals with people. You guys have seen the evolution of the entire creator economy, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. What do you think about the current state of what we're seeing in this world of online independent creators? And even specifically YouTube, like the health of the creativity and what's being put out on YouTube right now.

1:56:54I think there is, due to the Mr. Beastification of content, there is this very heavy desire for people to really get caught up in the stats and the average view duration and those types of things that Mr. Beast talks about in which how he thinks about creating content. and I think that's great and it really works for him but I think that there are a lot of copycats out there who just want to do that too because like that's a successful person I want to be successful so when we're at events like VidCon a lot of times people will will come up to us and they'll be like oh my god Smosh look at my views I created a channel too and it's like about the views or they talk about how much money they made and it's about that very icky when in the earlier days it was about the the creative passion and excitement so i've seen that shift where people really do think it's more about the numbers that will get them the respect rather than just having the passion to create the the content itself so it's actually your business model with memberships suggests that like i the more i think about that the more i'm recognizing like your your primary primary client, let's say, as a creative, is your audience, right?

1:58:12But it can feel like it's actually the platform or the algorithm. And when you are in like an ad-backed revenue model, it kind of is. You need mass distribution to make money. But when you have a membership model or a direct relationship with the audience who's saying, I like this. I'll pay to watch it. Now you actually need less people to love it, right? I mean, it's the dropout. Like, I mean, dropout TV. Is that what it's called? Dropout TV? I've never heard it. I don't know. Oh, College Humor? College Humor, yeah. Dropout was like a paid streaming service that spun off of College Humor. Oh, I didn't know that.

1:58:51We get mistaken for Jake and Amir all the time. Oh, no. Yeah. All the time. Okay. All right. Yeah. Damn. I know. I know. Yeah. But you have Jake's hair. Right. But the back half of my name is Amir. Yeah. Confusing. Listen. Yeah. But no, Dropout is fully supported by members. And then they put like cut downs and stuff on YouTube as like a promotion thing. But they have a ton of paying members and they have really high quality comedy shows on their platform. How much of the Smosh business is membership versus ad-based? It's still more ad-based. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's generally for sure. Yeah, I mean, the memberships is really just there to support the production of the sketch comedy.

1:59:49And it allows us to take a risk in creating content that isn't the hour long type content that has 20 ads in it model. Yeah. It allows us to take a risk making something shorter where you're only getting one ad. And the ad revenue is way lower. So it's supplemental and it helps fund these things being created in the first place. Yeah. How important and impactful is the library? What does 20 years worth of uploading to YouTube look like? Well, at this point, I feel like the library content isn't popping off. It's not as lucrative. Yeah, it's not popping off as much as... The funny thing is we got the most views for a few months when Defy collapsed.

2:00:38and I think everybody like they heard like Smosh is like done it's like over because Defy collapsed it's no more and I think a bunch of people went to like watch old Smosh videos so there was a few months when the Smosh channel had over a hundred thousand views sorry it had over a hundred million views per month oh my god yeah it like it like hit like over that yeah it was like a watch it while you can exactly yeah yeah there was almost this thing of like, it's over now. We have to watch this. Oh, you should threaten to delete the channel. Yeah. The fucked up thing about it is that because it was in this limbo period, none of that was monetized.

2:01:20Were there just no ads on the channel at that time? No, I don't think so. It was either that or it was going to the bank. But then when we acquired it and it was like, Smosh is back. Views went. It was like, come on, guys. What happened with a hundred million views? Bring that back. Wow. Plus, I mean, I feel like videos that only have one ad in it just don't really provide that much, even if you get a lot, a lot of views. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. What's been your relationship with money throughout this whole experience? You know, you mentioned that there was a time where you're like, I don't know if we'll be hosting at this time.

2:01:59Did you have a sense that you'd be like, quote unquote, retired or would have made it from a money perspective? Has that ever been a calculation in your head? I mean, I think for a short period of time, we thought after the DeFi acquisition, at some point it would sell to a major media company. We would get X amount of millions of dollars and then would be able to retire. Because of the DeFi stock. Yes. Got it. So that was kind of like the, that was the retirement plan for me at least. I had a vision that the brand would continue to make money and I would somehow be taking a cut of that. That comes from watching Forrest Gump.

2:02:42Remember in Forrest Gump, he was getting like royalty checks. And he just got to retire. Yeah, we got to figure out how to Bubba Gumpify our Smosh process. I watched that movie at a young age and I was like, I need to do that. I don't know why that got into my head. I don't know if that got into my head too, but I really thought that I'd put all this work and effort up in the front and then I would be able to just kind of retire while money kept coming in. Maybe that was also like TV, knowing that actors got like residuals. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I had that thought too. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes us push past the delusional state that we're in of like how many hours of work we're putting in at the front of something.

2:03:19Yeah. But are you like, do you feel satiated by the monetization that you've created? Or is there like, what is the relationship of how you're thinking about how much money you want to make from this career? I saved a lot. So I grew up without really much money. So it wasn't hard for me to do a lot of saving in those, those, uh, those defy days where we were receiving a salary, I would save a lot of it. And I built a big enough cushion that I feel like I don't really have to stress out about it. If I had no job for years, I'd really start stressing, but I don't have to worry about it right now.

2:03:53And that's the most, that's the best place that I can be in. I think like a pretty, a pretty good like level to get at is to like go to a restaurant and then like not have to worry right about what you're ordering yeah like not like take a double look at the check when it comes and like as long as i'm comfortable enough to to do that like i don't i don't need anything crazy that's the goal just don't go to erwan don't go to don't go to erwan that's because That's a joke for you LA peeps. Yeah, it's a niche joke. Yeah, no, I'm okay. How do you guys ensure that you don't split up again? How do you think about that now?

2:04:37Obviously, you're at a different maturity level. But we're also, we started the conversation talking about creative partnerships. We're in a creative partnership. For other people who are doing this together, what have you learned from your journey and how do you take that into the future? I learned that our biggest issue was lack of communication. I was thinking all these things and getting frustrated about things, but never just outright saying it. Also, I think there was a period of time at the end where we just completely stopped saying, how are you? You know, what's going on in your world?

2:05:05Then we stopped just hanging out for the sake of hanging out. It was only because we were working so much and we were probably spending like 40 hours a week together, but we were just working, working, working the whole time. So for me, it's about just having this space where it's not about work, where it's about connecting, where it's about understanding. It's like, how are you? How are things going? What did you think about the way things went today? I think even that feels like it's enough. And also, I've been doing a lot of work on myself through therapy to understand where certain things and feelings start coming from.

2:05:36So I'm not quite as often feeling like it's external things in my life that are upsetting me. And I realize that it really is something that I need to work on myself that's upsetting me. so that's helped and I think we just have like a healthier approach to the process when we are working together like when it comes to writing we're not we're not trying to put this like insane crunch on us we're like okay we need to just get to work right now and we have to write a script by 12pm or else we're gonna be like we try to lay a whole day out so it's like I show up to his place and We hang out. We talk for a little bit.

2:06:15We don't get right into it if we don't have to. It kind of feels like it's necessary now to have those breaths. So it's just for us, it's just finding a flow rather than feeling the stress that we sometimes do feel if we are constrained by time. Then it stops being fun. Sometimes you do need that. You do need a little bit of a motivation. to prod it. Or else you're just like hanging out all day. Yeah, exactly. There is still like a mission to like - We're guilty of that. If we don't rein each other in, like we're just hanging out. Yeah. But efficiency does get in the way of the human connection piece of a creative partnership, for sure.

2:06:59I mean, I think there's been many years and times where it's like, we're together, but it's like, let's not waste time connecting. Let's talk about the task at hand. Especially if you have deadlines that are coming up. Yeah, you take on a lot of things. And again, you're progressing towards a goal together. So it's like... The list can become overwhelming. Whereas in the beginning, again, it's just like, let's just see what we want to make and then make it. And it's also like, don't tell me how you're doing in the off chance that you're not doing well and then we have to spend time on that. Oh, yeah.

2:07:28I want to work. I don't want to talk about your feelings. Or on the off chance you're doing so well and I'm not doing well and yet we're doing the same thing together. Yeah. It's an interesting emotional dynamic. Yeah. Because I want to say like when And so we carved out an entire weekend. We were like, okay, we're going to treat this like a writing retreat for when we wrote Food Battle. But the first, I think, half of the day, we were dealing with personal issues, and we just talked through that. And you were saying that part of you was like, okay, but we got to work. Yeah, I mean, yeah, but also it's like, let's get right.

2:08:07And obviously, we had things that were going on. And I think it's important for us to show up as friends first. From an overarching brand perspective, I feel like within the creator economy, within the industry, so much of the brand story is like, okay, Smosh has been here since the beginning. And then there's this acquisition thing. There's Defy, there's Mythical. Now they're on their own. That's so much of the industry story. When you think about what you're building in the future, is there a brand story that you would want to be known for in the industry of what you're building? For me, it would be about creating a place where I'm just creating a really, really great environment for people to work and be creative and have fun and share laughs and create comedy.

2:08:58I would love for people to look at Smosh as a brand as something that still carries the root of Ian and my friendship that it was built on with it. Recently, we had a watch party for a new show that everyone at the company put a lot of time and energy into. The cast and people who were hosting the show, they had a really great time. And then everyone sat down and watched it. And there was this shared laughter and people looked really, really proud of their work. And you could see them kind of looking around at each other during the funny moments that they knew that they had put something extra into.

2:09:33And there is this shared feeling in the room. And I want to continue to foster that and have the brand be more about those feelings than anything else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it still just goes back to one of our initial missions, which was just to become the place that funny people would want to be a part of. Yeah. I feel like we talk a lot about creating video, but part of what we are trying to create all of us is like a space, right? Like we're all trying to create a space that we enjoy and that other people who come in feel validated and that it's fun. Like we chose to do a creative career, which is meant to be fun.

2:10:16And you can lose sight of that sometimes that like the process of making is the part that's supposed to be fun. It's not just about the outcome of what you created. It's the process of making needs to be fun. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd hope that the brand and how long it's been around and how it's been through so many ups and downs, like one of the original founders leaving and then the acquisition and the collapse of another company and all these things. I, I would, I hope that the, the story that lasts with Smosh is how at the root of it it it really is this homegrown creator driven brand that really respects the people that are part of it respects the audience and can hopefully build into this highly respected brand in and of itself and i think that the history that it had kind of even helps you know as difficult as it was as much as i hated those things going on the moment i hope that it helps elevate the brand and show what the brand is about and how it could really handle anything Yeah.

2:11:15The story of like resilience through those eras. And also, again, being funny during that. No, right. Yeah, it's true. You're at the core of it. It's so hard, man, to be funny through that is so challenging. There really are so many parallels to SNL of like, there was a time when there was a change in ownership. Yeah. Or change of leadership, at least. There's a lot of times when like, they have to be funny through difficult times. And it is about like the ensemble through the years, not necessarily who's there like right now. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's cool. And it's great working with such a funny cast of people because, yeah, there are certain days, even since I've been back, where I've been just like super down, going through whatever is going on in my personal life, kind of depressed.

2:11:55But I get to lean on the other people who are there to carry, and then I get to bounce off of them. It's a really nice environment to know that you don't always have to be completely dissociated from your real life. You can lean on other people to help you be funny. Did you carry any resentment during like the rise of the creator economy for feeling like maybe Smosh wasn't a part of the conversation? Like in like the Rolling Stone creators issue and like Smosh is not a part of the conversation there. How many years ago was this? I mean, it's probably in the past five years. Okay. Yeah, that's five years.

2:12:35I don't think so. I think I almost like harbor more resentment when I see like a creator get like a big brand deal and totally fumble it. And I'm like Smosh could have done that better. Why isn't that money coming to Smosh? That's interesting. Yeah. I feel like I've always been so focused on creating stuff that I enjoy and am passionate about. I haven't really thought about that element of it. Like why aren't we getting the recognition? I feel like if you create stuff that people want to be part of and are excited about, it will eventually happen no matter what. Yeah. Interesting. Although, I mean, come on, Vogue.

2:13:16Have us host the Met Gala. Yeah, of course. Come on. Yeah, that's the logical next step. Yeah, where's the Smosh call? This is where my career is going. To be honest, I thought that was our logical next step. We might have a little competition here. That's interesting. You guys could do that. Why not? Oh, great. Met Gala? I could see that. Right? Yeah. Anna, you watching? Great. okay cool well great yeah yeah all right well thanks for coming on guys yeah thank you yeah this is awesome