Speaker 1: The coin Bureau Podcast is a production of My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: The metas should be a social experience, So if people
Speaker 1: can't come and join in when we're doing stuff, then
Speaker 1: it kind of falls down. If it's just a recording
Speaker 1: of an event, No, well it's okay, But like we
Speaker 1: need to do events where people can be part of it, participate,
Speaker 1: win prizes, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So we have to figure out a lot. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: quite hard work, it sounds it. Welcome everyone to the
Speaker 1: coin Bureau Podcast. My name is Guy and I have
Speaker 1: a very special guest with me today. Now you may
Speaker 1: have heard me in the past mentioned one of my
Speaker 1: favorite YouTube channels of all, the Defiant, and we are
Speaker 1: very lucky to have today Robin Schmidt, the man, the
Speaker 1: face behind the Defiant. Robin is a content creator extraordinaire.
Speaker 1: The work that he has done not only with The
Speaker 1: Defiant but is now moving on to do elsewhere is
Speaker 1: just incredible and very lucky to have him on the
Speaker 1: line today. So Robin, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a very very kind I mean, you probably
Speaker 1: the face behind in front of something, but really taught you.
Speaker 1: I'm the Assine which which I'm also fine because I
Speaker 1: really did mess about and everything else. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I would like to say that, um, from one content
Speaker 1: credit to another, like what you've managed to accomplish with
Speaker 1: Combia is impressive. I couldn't do what you do and
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it the way that you do it. UM,
Speaker 1: So you know, admiration is mutually my friend. Thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean right back at you as well, because I
Speaker 1: remember we've we're we're all big fans of of of
Speaker 1: the work that you do here. And I remember we've
Speaker 1: watched so many of your videos and just gone, how
Speaker 1: are they doing that? That's extraordinary? And you know obviously
Speaker 1: because I think, well we'll talk about this in a
Speaker 1: moment hopefully, but you have, UM, you have a filmmaking background.
Speaker 1: That's been your Is it safe to say that's been
Speaker 1: your whole career? Yeah, no, that's very safe to say.
Speaker 1: For twenty three years. I think film has been the
Speaker 1: love of my life. It was the thing I grew
Speaker 1: up on and it was the thing that I thought
Speaker 1: wasn't for me when I was growing up because I
Speaker 1: was a musician. Originally I played the violin, the piano,
Speaker 1: I led orchestras, and I was a singer of chorister
Speaker 1: in Westminster Cathedral, one of the foremost boys choirs in
Speaker 1: the world. So that was the training that I had.
Speaker 1: And then around about the age of sixteen seventeen, I
Speaker 1: realized that I just had enough of it. I've been
Speaker 1: performing in front of audiences up until that point, and
Speaker 1: I just hadn't ever met a girl, and I hadn't
Speaker 1: done sports and all these things that were just like,
Speaker 1: I want to do that. And I also realized that
Speaker 1: like the world of classical music was just not where
Speaker 1: I wanted to go, and the film just seemed completely remote.
Speaker 1: It seemed the thing that other people did, very expensive,
Speaker 1: very difficult to break into. But it just the thing
Speaker 1: that I was determined I was going to get into.
Speaker 1: And basically I became a content creator using the same
Speaker 1: tools and things that people use now. Just back in
Speaker 1: the days when it was Mac cos nine and you
Speaker 1: had a little DV camcorder that you plug into an
Speaker 1: iMac and that was how you record video. But fast
Speaker 1: forward to where we are now, and yeah, I've spent
Speaker 1: a long time looking at stuff through a lens and
Speaker 1: then editing it in such a way as to make
Speaker 1: it entertaining, so you pick up a few tricks along
Speaker 1: the way, that's for sure. Yeah, and and so how
Speaker 1: did you how did you kind of make the move
Speaker 1: from from filmmaking, How did you how did you discover crypto?
Speaker 1: How did you get to the defiance as it were?
Speaker 1: It's a really sad story, right. There's there's this phrase
Speaker 1: which is nothing is more destructive than mediocrity. And I
Speaker 1: know it's kind of a weird thing to say, but
Speaker 1: like I was moderately successful for most of my career.
Speaker 1: You get these little moments where you're like, I'm about
Speaker 1: to break out and I'm about to be successful. And
Speaker 1: I never maximized those moments for various different reasons. I
Speaker 1: think one of it was a little bit to do
Speaker 1: with fear not trusting that I was good enough because
Speaker 1: the thing, like I said, I think I'm really really
Speaker 1: good at his music, but I don't do music. And
Speaker 1: it's weird because that's the thing that I naturally am
Speaker 1: the best at, but I don't do it. I do
Speaker 1: film instead. So there's always been this feeling of imposter
Speaker 1: syndrome when it comes to film, that it's someone else
Speaker 1: is much better than me, and I'm simply meaning on
Speaker 1: this thing that I had and using it for film.
Speaker 1: And so all these little kind of periods in my
Speaker 1: life where I won awards and I started to get openings,
Speaker 1: you know, into bigger productions everything else, I kind of
Speaker 1: fudged them. The last one I had was about ten
Speaker 1: years ago where we suddenly blew up went viral and
Speaker 1: we were making silly music video skits around the plot
Speaker 1: of east Enders. So we take the plot of east
Speaker 1: Enders that week and then in like turn into a
Speaker 1: rap song, shoot the rap video, but do it like
Speaker 1: to make it look like the original, so we do
Speaker 1: like pop it like it's heart and it'd be and
Speaker 1: why being a studio and like, but it was the
Speaker 1: plot of EastEnders, and we got featured on radio while
Speaker 1: we got featured on Fern Cotton if you know Fern Cotton,
Speaker 1: Ferns the one um. But playing music videos on the
Speaker 1: radio is so bizarre. And Saturday of this blew up.
Speaker 1: But I just had my first child. I'd also just
Speaker 1: shot a feature film, and so my wife was like,
Speaker 1: it's time for you to kind of be a dad
Speaker 1: and a husband and like probably be at home. So
Speaker 1: I just kind of stopped and I moved to Holland
Speaker 1: with my wife, and I was doing really well as
Speaker 1: a commercials director. But I was shooting vacuum cleaners and
Speaker 1: coffee cups and like plenty of budget everything else. But
Speaker 1: I was just so bored and starting to really get
Speaker 1: to that point where like you reached a certain age
Speaker 1: and like I should be more successful than this. I
Speaker 1: believe I'm better than this. What has gone wrong? And
Speaker 1: I was just poor, broke and just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what to do in my life. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what I need to do is I need to completely
Speaker 1: reinvent myself and shoot a completely new bunch of work
Speaker 1: because the word that I've done but previously doesn't represent me.
Speaker 1: It's not honest, and I need to show what I
Speaker 1: can do. But problem is, filmmaking is expensive. So I
Speaker 1: thought I need to find a way to solve the
Speaker 1: problem of money, because I thought not having any money
Speaker 1: was my problem. What I have come to realize through
Speaker 1: crypto is that money itself is the problem. But that's
Speaker 1: a whole other story. But it was just a random
Speaker 1: discussion with my boss on the way down to a
Speaker 1: shoot in Belgium where he was talking about this cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: the board. He was like, oh my god, look it's gone.
Speaker 1: Whoa Jesus. I was like, cryptocurrency? What is that? And
Speaker 1: then then that was early two thousand and seventeen, that
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency was eight and he was basically able to pay
Speaker 1: off his entire mortgage. And I was like, well that
Speaker 1: sounds like fun. Let's see what this is all about.
Speaker 1: Fell down the rabbit hole of that and just kind
Speaker 1: of looked at it and said this, this entire industry
Speaker 1: is It is about storytelling. Everything is a story that
Speaker 1: one person tells another in this very kind of linear fashion.
Speaker 1: It's oral storytelling. Someone on Twitter says, oh, this is
Speaker 1: going to go up, this is going to do this,
Speaker 1: and everyone just buys it or figures out their own
Speaker 1: version of that story, or they tell themselves the story,
Speaker 1: which is I have done a good thing here. I
Speaker 1: have bought this token and it will make me rich,
Speaker 1: or I'm absolutely sure that this is a good investment
Speaker 1: because this guy told me so, or you know, I
Speaker 1: have done my homework because I have learned how to
Speaker 1: be an analyst, and therefore this is a good investment.
Speaker 1: We're all just telling stories. The Friends Center, So, well,
Speaker 1: what I was also really kind of kind of I
Speaker 1: found really weird was that no projects were any good
Speaker 1: at telling their own story, and that's probably because they
Speaker 1: didn't even know what that story was. If you're a
Speaker 1: layer one, you literally are everything. You're just a blank
Speaker 1: piece of paper essentially on which you can do anything with.
Speaker 1: So how do you tell that story? So it's very,
Speaker 1: very slowly I started to get to a position was like, well,
Speaker 1: I know enough about this space where maybe there's a
Speaker 1: room for someone like me to tell these kinds of stories.
Speaker 1: And the rest was who would I do it with?
Speaker 1: Where would I do it? So I was still working
Speaker 1: shooting commercials at this point and just just having all
Speaker 1: the creativity just bled out of me because like it's
Speaker 1: particularly in bene Lux, like bene Lux's Belgium, Holland Luxembourg,
Speaker 1: it's just boring. Everything is like we have to run
Speaker 1: this decision via the team in Germany. I actually know
Speaker 1: we have to run this decision by the team in China.
Speaker 1: It's like why, like why why why can people in
Speaker 1: China not see trees out of their windows? Well, because
Speaker 1: there are no trees in China, but that's not true.
Speaker 1: There are cheese. But this is an air filter product.
Speaker 1: So you're imagine someone living in a fifty you know,
Speaker 1: fifty story high block of flats. They don't see trees,
Speaker 1: so they cannot be trees outside the window. I was like, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: so there's the kind of battleity fighting it, and that's
Speaker 1: that's why I was just like, I need to do
Speaker 1: something different. And this opportunity came up to go and
Speaker 1: meet the team at Harmony because I had invested in
Speaker 1: them and had a chance to go through a syndicate
Speaker 1: to invest in them. And I went to meet them
Speaker 1: just on a whim, paying my flights out there, and
Speaker 1: then pitched them an idea for a documentary, which is
Speaker 1: to essentially take what is good about blockchain and get
Speaker 1: it in front of an audience that didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about blockchain. This is two thousand and eighteen. I pitched
Speaker 1: this and it was It was basically one of those
Speaker 1: crazy ideas where I wanted to see if we expose
Speaker 1: the ideas of blockchain through pop culture through doing something insane.
Speaker 1: And the idea was, how could we incentivize people to
Speaker 1: not use Facebook and WhatsApp for an entire weekend and
Speaker 1: how can we then pay them back the money they
Speaker 1: would have made for you know, in terms of the
Speaker 1: data they would have generated for the platforms. We will
Speaker 1: return that value to them through Harmony tokens and then
Speaker 1: maybe they can stay those tokens, maybe they can exchange them,
Speaker 1: but at least get them into people's hands in a
Speaker 1: way that was kind of positive. And then it was like, well,
Speaker 1: if we're getting people just to step off Facebook for
Speaker 1: a weekend, what does that time look like? What are
Speaker 1: they going to do with that time? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: can we put on a festival? Those kind of things.
Speaker 1: That was sort of the idea, and it was going
Speaker 1: to be this big, kind of tilted a windmill to
Speaker 1: see if we can make something happen. We weren't able
Speaker 1: to make that happen. But what it did do is
Speaker 1: it got me a job with Harmony as their creative director.
Speaker 1: And even then I wasn't making films, it wasn't making videos.
Speaker 1: And about four months into that job, I realized that
Speaker 1: I missed making films so much that I was like,
Speaker 1: I need to offer this up to Harmony as a
Speaker 1: thing I can do in my role as credive director
Speaker 1: and start telling their story. And then that's how we
Speaker 1: sort of got into making YouTube videos for Harmony as
Speaker 1: a really tough time. Oh my god, it was. It
Speaker 1: was tough because making videos for a project is tough anyway,
Speaker 1: because things moved quite slowly, but the audiences expectations move
Speaker 1: very quickly, so they always want something new, and if
Speaker 1: there isn't anything new, then you're kind of fidgeting around
Speaker 1: trying to tell the story of maybe there's a project
Speaker 1: that's building on it, maybe there's a new kind of
Speaker 1: piece of tech. But on these remote layer ones like
Speaker 1: Harmony was, there's not a lot being built, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to get excited about a little bot, but we
Speaker 1: tried to make it fun and creative. The other problem
Speaker 1: was that Harmony had launched on Binance. It was one
Speaker 1: of the first Binance I e O s that went
Speaker 1: on the Binance decks, and there was just such a
Speaker 1: bad smell about all of it. A lot of investors
Speaker 1: got very badly burned by the performance of that token
Speaker 1: and the promises that were made by that token, and
Speaker 1: it just looked bad. And then we just got slaughtered
Speaker 1: by the community and fighting our way back from that.
Speaker 1: We're super tough because like everything you did was just
Speaker 1: like no, you guys are scammers. Your scammers, your scammers,
Speaker 1: you scamras, scamras, scamras, scammeras, and like whatever you try
Speaker 1: to do, put the CEO in front of the camera,
Speaker 1: try and tell the positive story. Yeah, it didn't didn't work.
Speaker 1: So um, we guysally got to the kind of Defy
Speaker 1: summer phase of things, and I realized that Harmony probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have enough to kind of attract this kind of
Speaker 1: Defy that was out there. But DeFi was the big story,
Speaker 1: as you remember, So I thought, instead of us having
Speaker 1: a product, maybe we could tell the story ourselves and
Speaker 1: tell it in a really interesting and weird way. So
Speaker 1: I reached out to the two defined us that is
Speaker 1: that I knew, which was Bankless and the Defiant, and
Speaker 1: they already interviewed Camilla away back and I went down
Speaker 1: a certain way with Ryan Shawn Adams and then he
Speaker 1: ghosted me. So I and well, you know, maybe we
Speaker 1: should just shoot some videos with the Definer because that
Speaker 1: seems to be a more positive place. Kamilla said yes,
Speaker 1: So then we did this co production. Then we started
Speaker 1: doing a weekly video where we would just tell the
Speaker 1: story of Defy. What's going on Wifie all these different things,
Speaker 1: um and that was a weekly thing and it did
Speaker 1: really well, and then she offered me a job and
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, maybe this is what I should
Speaker 1: be doing. And that's when we started building the defined
Speaker 1: YouTube channel and grew it too. I think a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventeen thousand subscribers in about fifteen months, so not
Speaker 1: too shabby, not too shabby at all. It was. It's
Speaker 1: an extraordinary channel. And I mean, just just going back
Speaker 1: to what you were saying about this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: feeling kind of creatively upper cul de sac, I guess
Speaker 1: when not being able to show a Chinese audience trees.
Speaker 1: I mean watching thinking back to thinking back to so
Speaker 1: many of the videos that you made with a defiance
Speaker 1: that that just seems the whole thing just seems to
Speaker 1: be like this massive release of creative energy. And it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just ticks. It just does so many
Speaker 1: things so brilliantly. And I mean I think the best
Speaker 1: of your videos were, you know, slightly just an archic
Speaker 1: in a way, like you know, you could you could
Speaker 1: see like the the ideas Department had just gone just
Speaker 1: been allowed to go absolutely insane, and so you had
Speaker 1: this kind of anarchism. You had this just boldness of
Speaker 1: what you would what you would try. Obviously that the
Speaker 1: skills that you and Alp as well just you know,
Speaker 1: brought to the table in terms of in terms of
Speaker 1: what you're able to do with a with a camera,
Speaker 1: and then on top of it all, it would be
Speaker 1: this incredibly like informative and often like brilliantly opinionated thing
Speaker 1: as well. It was, it was absolutely it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of those videos are just just extraordinary. UM And
Speaker 1: I should say for the audience, I'm for those listening
Speaker 1: and and watching, I'll I'll leave some links if that's
Speaker 1: okay with you, Robin to to to some of my
Speaker 1: favorite UM of you know, some of my favorites that
Speaker 1: you you did with the Defined and in particular I
Speaker 1: think that the work you did on n f T
Speaker 1: S um the greatest n f T film ever made.
Speaker 1: And then just this extraordinary light mic drop that you
Speaker 1: did with um Why Gamers Hate n f T S
Speaker 1: the two part, which I watched again the other day
Speaker 1: whilst I was, you know, whilst I was kind of
Speaker 1: gearing up for this is extraordinary, Like what you were
Speaker 1: able to, what you're able to achieve and I remember
Speaker 1: sort of me and my a lot of my colleagues
Speaker 1: here at you know, coinbea just sitting around and going, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: uh so the bar has the bar has been raised
Speaker 1: quite quite high. And it really and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's from from from my point of view,
Speaker 1: was kind of exhilarating and also a bit scary at
Speaker 1: the same time, because you you suddenly see the bar
Speaker 1: being raised this high and you're like, wow, this this
Speaker 1: has come such a long way since a guy, you know,
Speaker 1: since dudes just with a webcam kind of mounted awkwardly
Speaker 1: on top of their monitor, just kind of yelling into
Speaker 1: that with half their face showing. And suddenly here we
Speaker 1: are with these really you know, amazingly kind of high
Speaker 1: concept movies in a way. But yeah, it's that's it
Speaker 1: was just such a such a such a glorious thing
Speaker 1: to watch. But also, you know, crucially, and I go
Speaker 1: back to what I said about, you know, the informative
Speaker 1: nature of it, Like you seem to you seem to
Speaker 1: be able to not lose sight of the fact that, okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is great entertainment. But you've got it,
Speaker 1: as you say, you've got to tell a story. You've
Speaker 1: got to you've got to shed light on this project.
Speaker 1: And and of course defy itself is such as such
Speaker 1: a dense topic. I mean, it's one of the ones
Speaker 1: that it's one of the Narlie Yeah, it is. And
Speaker 1: to try and try and explain that to you know,
Speaker 1: someone who who might be coming to it for the
Speaker 1: first time is is so tricky. It really it really
Speaker 1: keeps you on your toes. Did you, I mean, how
Speaker 1: how easy was what was the I guess what was
Speaker 1: the easiest part of all that for you? No, what's
Speaker 1: the easiest part. But I think probably what we should
Speaker 1: say here is that my background. Yes, I'm a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: but I'm also I've always been a multi hyphen it
Speaker 1: so I was always picking up a camera, trying to
Speaker 1: understand how to use it, learning about lenses, learning about
Speaker 1: specifics of you know, lighting has actually been one of
Speaker 1: the latest skills that I learned. But I was always
Speaker 1: shooting my own stuff and editing my own stuff and
Speaker 1: then writing on top of that. But I also you know,
Speaker 1: I read English at university and a lot of that
Speaker 1: is to do with like just hardcore research. You just
Speaker 1: read a lot, so I sort of had these background
Speaker 1: skill sets that were setting me up for that. That's
Speaker 1: that's sort of sitting in the background. And I've done
Speaker 1: a lot of filming and lots of different types of situations,
Speaker 1: particularly music videos or I've directed a feature film, so
Speaker 1: I kind of understand the different ways that you can
Speaker 1: tell a story and lenses can do certain things to
Speaker 1: be you know, we're shooting this on seventy at the moment,
Speaker 1: but it's like it's quite tight, it's quite photographic and nice,
Speaker 1: but you can shoot things on wide lenses and suddenly
Speaker 1: they become more cartoony in with There's a lot of
Speaker 1: versatility in terms of what a camera can do that
Speaker 1: people don't really exploit when they're shooting beautube videos, and
Speaker 1: that's a shame because it's a storytelling tool at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. So you learn all these tricks.
Speaker 1: You know, how to tell a story in a different way,
Speaker 1: why you use handheld, why you'd use a moving camera.
Speaker 1: And we've done a lot of kind of tabletop product
Speaker 1: photography type stuff where it just looks really expensive, but
Speaker 1: like it's just a thing on a mirror with a
Speaker 1: couple of nice lights, and that's it. It's very very
Speaker 1: simple to do. But that's that all feeds into it.
Speaker 1: So when you're asking me what's the easiest part of it, Honestly,
Speaker 1: making films is the easiest part for me because like
Speaker 1: that's what I've done my whole life. And I sort
Speaker 1: of funny for me hearing you looking to go, oh,
Speaker 1: ship the bar is raised. But like in the world
Speaker 1: that I come from, that's normal. That's just the way
Speaker 1: we do things. Um. But I realized then that I've
Speaker 1: spent a long time just making that normal and getting
Speaker 1: my ten thos in so that I can pick up,
Speaker 1: you know, put something in the script and know that
Speaker 1: even if you've only got two hours to shoot it,
Speaker 1: we can still get it done because we know what
Speaker 1: the solution is. Whereas for a lot of people like
Speaker 1: just figuring out, oh, you need to put the light
Speaker 1: here or that won't work because of this, like you
Speaker 1: just kind of know that already. That's the easy bit.
Speaker 1: The harbit for me in terms of all of this
Speaker 1: is well, the couple of bits. One, like you said,
Speaker 1: understanding defy and understanding where all the information was in
Speaker 1: defy was a thing. But again, if you're in the
Speaker 1: right telegram groups through in the right disco groups, you
Speaker 1: can get that information that The next bit was just
Speaker 1: probably trying to figure out like when enough goofing around
Speaker 1: was enough. I was always right, just I wanted to
Speaker 1: make stuff that I wanted to make, and like we'd
Speaker 1: always come up with a story for the week, and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, well, this is the story, and maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna use tomatoes this week. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: tell them like I did the video on the Merge.
Speaker 1: I was just like, I just had this vision in
Speaker 1: my head of tomatoes, and I think it's because the
Speaker 1: merge in my head was these two things squashing together.
Speaker 1: I was like, that feels like tomatoes soup. It's like
Speaker 1: blending tomatoes soups. So like, why don't we just use
Speaker 1: tomatoes as a metaphor for all this? And that's a
Speaker 1: really important point because, as you know full well, the
Speaker 1: only visuals you get when talking about this business our websites.
Speaker 1: So you do screen grabs of websites, and you do
Speaker 1: screen grabs of Twitter accounts. That's it, and I get
Speaker 1: so stale so quickly, So trying to find other ways
Speaker 1: of telling these stories and maybe I'll do a music
Speaker 1: video this week or maybe I'll do something else like.
Speaker 1: That's how I kept it interesting for me. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to find these weird visual gags and that. You know,
Speaker 1: it got to a point when we were producing six
Speaker 1: or seven videos a week where I could only put
Speaker 1: that into like the first minute of the video. But
Speaker 1: that first minute was always the most worthwhile bit, and
Speaker 1: it gave you the springboard to make, you know, the
Speaker 1: twenty five minute video that followed something at least um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that that that was some of the gold.
Speaker 1: Particularly difficult when we'll be putting a video out on Monday, Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday to on Thursday, live stream on Thursday, as well
Speaker 1: as one on Friday. Yeah, that was a lot. That
Speaker 1: was a lot. Yeah, And and that's that was That
Speaker 1: was something I wanted to ask you as well, because
Speaker 1: obviously from you know, from a filmmaking background, you're you're
Speaker 1: used to, I guess to deadlines, You're used to things,
Speaker 1: you know, being you used to having to run a
Speaker 1: kind of tight ship to get things done on time
Speaker 1: and keep things within budget and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Did but I mean, how did you how did you
Speaker 1: cope with that sort of that kind of growing demand,
Speaker 1: because I guess, I guess because as we've you know,
Speaker 1: as as as me and the guys here have sort
Speaker 1: of gone along with coin beer. I mean, for instance,
Speaker 1: I remember reading reading a comment ages ago, now is
Speaker 1: when we were still you know, when we were still
Speaker 1: like in the maybe tens of thousands of subscribers, and
Speaker 1: we couldn't get a video out on our kind of
Speaker 1: regular day because either I'd had the either I'd been ill,
Speaker 1: or I think actually it might have been just everything
Speaker 1: had gone wrong because none of us were none of
Speaker 1: us were filmmakers here, So the the the amount of
Speaker 1: footage that just sort of never got recorded because the
Speaker 1: camera was the camera battery had run out half an
Speaker 1: hour ago or something like that. But I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure this is all stuff that you went through many
Speaker 1: many years ago. But I remember just reading this comment.
Speaker 1: We eventually got the video out like twenty four hours later,
Speaker 1: and it was it was fine, like you know, everything
Speaker 1: was everything was cool. But I remember reading this comment
Speaker 1: from someone um and seeing a couple more like it
Speaker 1: along the lines of like, oh hey guy, UM, great
Speaker 1: to see, great to see you got your got the video.
Speaker 1: I'd wonder, I wondered where you've got to yesterday, and
Speaker 1: I just remember thinking, it's, oh my god, who just
Speaker 1: we're just kind of locked in this now, you know,
Speaker 1: And and it's it's great, it's it's it's amazing, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's the best job in the world. But
Speaker 1: it's still it. Suddenly you have that you feel that
Speaker 1: responsibility you have you know, you have to keep pushing forward.
Speaker 1: And YouTube is all about it's all about growth, it's
Speaker 1: all about eyeballs, it's a it's about you know, you
Speaker 1: can't stand still. Did I mean did that kind of
Speaker 1: did that take you by surprise at all? Or was
Speaker 1: it was it something you were kind of already familiar
Speaker 1: with from from making films outside of YouTube. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so much time pack there's I mean, the financial reality
Speaker 1: of it was one was the year that you signed
Speaker 1: sponsors and you rent the sponsorship money as much as
Speaker 1: you could because people were cash rich and ready to spend,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to spend on a niche channel within
Speaker 1: a niche industry, which was what we were. So we
Speaker 1: just put out more videos and attached more sponsorship to them.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's basically the way it work. Way it worked.
Speaker 1: And also because the La Chryptim moves so quickly. The
Speaker 1: story changes every twenty four hours. So if you can
Speaker 1: stay on that and become a kind of regular habit
Speaker 1: for people, it's quite important. The problem is then that
Speaker 1: you and then a regular habit for people, and if
Speaker 1: you don't show up, it's problematic. We never didn't show up,
Speaker 1: but that's something I'm really proud of. We always put
Speaker 1: a video out and you should see some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that we had to do. Like we would get
Speaker 1: to Friday a lunchtime having shot, you know, a thirty
Speaker 1: minute video, and then we'd have to deliver it at
Speaker 1: five o'clock, and we did because we had to output
Speaker 1: take half of it. I would take the other half.
Speaker 1: We would just blitz it. And it's amazing what you
Speaker 1: can accomplish if that time pressure is there. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I was very very clear about was
Speaker 1: if for whatever reason, then the imperative to deliver forces
Speaker 1: us to work beyond the normal working hours of the day,
Speaker 1: it's over because you do that once it becomes twice,
Speaker 1: becomes three times, and then your capacity to absorb all
Speaker 1: of that it goes away. You're it's it's never gonna last.
Speaker 1: So I was always very clear that working hours and
Speaker 1: working hours, and if we cannot deliver the video within
Speaker 1: working hours, and something's gone wrong and we need to
Speaker 1: do a better job. So it was always delivered within
Speaker 1: those parameters. And then go home and sleep and rest
Speaker 1: and and make it, you know, make it not become
Speaker 1: a thing where you're resenting it because you're working late,
Speaker 1: and then like the comments, you know there we we
Speaker 1: should spare moments to talk about the comments. I I
Speaker 1: think from probably February last year, maybe March, until I
Speaker 1: left the defined didn't read the comments anymore. I just
Speaker 1: stopped um because I realized that I was starting to
Speaker 1: become that thing where you're trying to make the content
Speaker 1: for your audience, and I don't think that's the way
Speaker 1: you've got to do it. There was a reason you're
Speaker 1: audience stuck around, particularly during the bear market, and if
Speaker 1: you change that, then it's gone wrong. So but it
Speaker 1: was also the comments got really nasty at a certain point,
Speaker 1: and it's we're and how like I am? Now I'm
Speaker 1: now dealing with someone who's trolling me on on Twitter,
Speaker 1: who seems to have a real problem for me and
Speaker 1: seems to know not only where I live, but also
Speaker 1: where my kids go to school. It's a problem. Geez, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a problem. So I'm like yeah, so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm like what. There's a part of me that's like,
Speaker 1: why do I want to go back into this pit
Speaker 1: and do this again? Because I left for like, I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty mentally strong person. I can deal with a lot.
Speaker 1: I can I can put up with a lot. But
Speaker 1: this got me, and it got me because we um
Speaker 1: that film a lot of the line goes up by
Speaker 1: Dan Olson that came out last year, massive kind of
Speaker 1: excoriating diet tribe against n f t s in which
Speaker 1: there were many good points, but one of the things
Speaker 1: he he did was he made us pointed out my
Speaker 1: boss Camillariso and quarter of Feil journalist and called her
Speaker 1: book an abortion of a book. And I was like,
Speaker 1: we can't let that stand. So I wrote, I made
Speaker 1: a video and it was a bit of a hot take,
Speaker 1: released it, posted it on his channel in response, and
Speaker 1: then and then they came brandishing their pitchforks and I
Speaker 1: was like, WHOA, what's happened here? And then for the
Speaker 1: next three months they were just like they were they
Speaker 1: were there, and that was that was rough. And then
Speaker 1: like the worst thing was in the middle of all
Speaker 1: of this, our sponsor was next, so and next, so
Speaker 1: I cannot say anything about next. So other than that,
Speaker 1: for most people, that's problematic. And so I was saying
Speaker 1: these sponsorship messages and like, you know, that's sitting there
Speaker 1: in amongst all this other stuff, and like, ah, the optics,
Speaker 1: the optics. So so that that was problematic. So I
Speaker 1: just stopped reading the comments at a certain point and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I gu said, I'm still dealing with someone who keeps
Speaker 1: saying karma is a bit karma is a bit like
Speaker 1: karma for what what did I do? It's this extraordinary thing,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It's like, you know, you become you become
Speaker 1: the focal point for people, and they project, they project
Speaker 1: any sort of disappointments that they may feel or anger,
Speaker 1: you know. And obviously at times like this, when when
Speaker 1: crypto is is a tough place to be at the
Speaker 1: best of times, you know, there's just so much going on.
Speaker 1: Obviously we're talking today on a on a day when
Speaker 1: lots of people are you know, speculating about f t
Speaker 1: X and the markets are going heywire and all this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, and it just seems that you're Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes it seems that you know, your friendly neighborhood content
Speaker 1: creator is now is now just the target for for
Speaker 1: all sorts of all sorts of vitriol. It's like, how
Speaker 1: do you you know? How well you you and I
Speaker 1: are both grifters. That's that's been adjudicated in the court
Speaker 1: of public opinion. Were grifters? Yeah, plain and simple, just
Speaker 1: gotta we just got to own it, haven't we, Robbin,
Speaker 1: There's there's no choice. We're just grifters, you know, I know.
Speaker 1: But but but how how how is it that the
Speaker 1: things that are positive about this space are so rapidly
Speaker 1: and easily overlooked easily because yeah, yeah, and easily forgotten.
Speaker 1: And then it's just like, oh, no, you're a grifters, Like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I can have an opinion about a thing and and
Speaker 1: be concerned about the state of well everything and where
Speaker 1: it's going, and you know, be curious about the world.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's I mean, I think that's something that
Speaker 1: people understand, and um, the mental health side of this,
Speaker 1: I've never really been that challenged by it, and that
Speaker 1: there's a very simple reason for that, which is I
Speaker 1: could leave this space anytime I wanted and go back
Speaker 1: to the world that I was in and have a
Speaker 1: career and glad to be fine. I'm just too curious
Speaker 1: about what's here and too interested in it to to
Speaker 1: do that. And honestly, it boils down to this, I
Speaker 1: can I can be a big fish in a small
Speaker 1: pond or a small fish in a big pond, and
Speaker 1: like the opportunity to to create in the world where
Speaker 1: there's no rules yet, when nothing has been set yet,
Speaker 1: where you get to really explore and you can't really
Speaker 1: fail either in the in the world that any of
Speaker 1: this because no one really has the answers yet. That's
Speaker 1: just way more appealing, to be honest. So I'll put
Speaker 1: up with the haters and the you know, the the
Speaker 1: grift abuse, because fundamentally I think there is something interesting here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes with the territory, isn't it. It's an occupation
Speaker 1: or hazard of of doing, of working in a space
Speaker 1: that's you know that there seems to be you know,
Speaker 1: there are there are no rules. It seems a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. You know, you you you have to
Speaker 1: kind of you know, you have to adapt so quickly
Speaker 1: the space itself as you say is changing all the time.
Speaker 1: There are there are just so many that the parameters
Speaker 1: just aren't even clear. So yeah, I mean it makes it,
Speaker 1: It makes it an exhilarating place to work in. But
Speaker 1: as you say, there's there's this dark side lurking underneath,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately times like this it seems to it seems
Speaker 1: to rear its head a lot more. What are you
Speaker 1: working on now? What's what's the next what's the next
Speaker 1: step for you? So I was I was thinking about
Speaker 1: where I would go next for some time, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't because the Define was going badly. It was more
Speaker 1: if we were going to grow the Defined and I
Speaker 1: would kind of develop a new things like what would
Speaker 1: I want to be doing for the next five years,
Speaker 1: and how would we then bring new people onto the
Speaker 1: team to manage what we had been doing, and then
Speaker 1: I could develop this new thing. And where I was,
Speaker 1: where I was leaning was like, you've sort of pointed
Speaker 1: out the fact that I overproduced the videos that we
Speaker 1: put out on YouTube and do all sorts of crazy things.
Speaker 1: I wanted to carry on doing that and and do
Speaker 1: more kind of store rework in and around that, and
Speaker 1: just sort of as it happened during the pandemic, I
Speaker 1: kind of landed on this thing called virtual production, and
Speaker 1: that's basically if you saw the Mandalorian and you saw
Speaker 1: they use unreal engine screens everything else behind, you know,
Speaker 1: to make the bad drops. That's really interesting. And then
Speaker 1: you have these PRPs that grew up, and those could
Speaker 1: also be three D characters and they could live in
Speaker 1: their own worlds. What you're getting too is the metaverse,
Speaker 1: and so there are these two worlds colliding. My interest
Speaker 1: in virtual production using undreun engine to to create worlds
Speaker 1: that I couldn't go and visit or were too expensive
Speaker 1: to go and visit myself. That was really exciting. And
Speaker 1: then just this growing narrative around the metaverse and what
Speaker 1: it was, and so that was kind of where my
Speaker 1: head was at. And then, you know, when the time
Speaker 1: came to move on from the define, it was really
Speaker 1: about what what would I do next? If I was
Speaker 1: going to do YouTube, what would that YouTube channel be about.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of reasons why I wanted to focus
Speaker 1: on the metaverse, and the first one is it's in
Speaker 1: my opinion, going to be the biggest story and technology
Speaker 1: in the next ten years. It's sort of inevitable now.
Speaker 1: I think the the really fun thing about it is
Speaker 1: that it sort of touches everything if you think about it,
Speaker 1: is the new version of the Internet. It has a
Speaker 1: place in gaming, of course, it has a place in
Speaker 1: VR A r AI, actually everything like. And I look
Speaker 1: up with the way my kids play roadblocks and see
Speaker 1: them interacting with other people, thinking about economies, the way
Speaker 1: they want to present themselves in the world, and it
Speaker 1: feels like they're very much ready for the metaverse in
Speaker 1: ways that more grown ups, more grown up people are not.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of the pushback on the METAVERSEI
Speaker 1: people who simply don't think like a ten year old kid,
Speaker 1: and I think more of us should because then we'll
Speaker 1: start to understand, I think, where technology is going and
Speaker 1: where the world is going in that sense. Also, just
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about an iPhone. An iPhone is fundamentally
Speaker 1: a horrific thing for the human being because if you
Speaker 1: think about it, you're hunched over like this, and apparently,
Speaker 1: like the fourth and fifth vertebrae in in young people
Speaker 1: now is so messed up because of just being hunched
Speaker 1: over a phone. The entire anatomy of the species is
Speaker 1: being changed by this piece of technology. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a bad thing, Like we need to get
Speaker 1: away from that as soon as possible. So I'm sort
Speaker 1: of fascinating the technological side of it because I think
Speaker 1: this piece of technology, the the iPhone format is on
Speaker 1: its way out, So what's going to replace it? And
Speaker 1: you start to get into glasses and all these kind
Speaker 1: of things and wearables, and that's again that plays into
Speaker 1: this story of the metaverse. But your nose. I haven't
Speaker 1: mentioned Crypto or web three at any point in this.
Speaker 1: That's also very important to me because, as you know,
Speaker 1: when you're in the cycle, you go up, you go down,
Speaker 1: and then you're down for a really long time, and
Speaker 1: you're apologizing for and defending Crypto in a way because
Speaker 1: you have to. I don't really want to be doing that,
Speaker 1: Like I I still love Crypto, Web three, n f
Speaker 1: t S, and I'm there's still going to be part
Speaker 1: of what I'm doing. But the opportunity to tell our
Speaker 1: larger story that isn't wedded to that, that can be
Speaker 1: connected to something very much universal, which is what is
Speaker 1: a human being in a world that is virtual? That's
Speaker 1: a really big question and gives you lots of interesting
Speaker 1: stories to tell. So the other thought of it is
Speaker 1: that I probably I am an extremely vain person. I
Speaker 1: saw the size of the audience that we were able
Speaker 1: to grow with the defined and I loved it, but
Speaker 1: it's very niche, and I want to see how big
Speaker 1: of an audience I can build outside of that, because
Speaker 1: I think with a big audience you can start to
Speaker 1: really do some interesting things and start to do a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that I think website and energies
Speaker 1: have hinted at and promised that but have been unable
Speaker 1: to do because they can't scale up in the right way.
Speaker 1: So I'm sort of trying to trojan Horse in some
Speaker 1: ideas about n f t s and by what I
Speaker 1: want to do with enerties, but through I guess through
Speaker 1: content and telling stories in the metaverse. So that is
Speaker 1: that's basically what basset af is going to be. It's
Speaker 1: going to be a metaverse content monster, that's what we
Speaker 1: call it. And the style of film we're going to
Speaker 1: make is going to be not educational. That's very odd
Speaker 1: for people because they've seen me educate them in all
Speaker 1: sorts of weird ways. But no, I'm just going to entertain. Um.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do essentially what Mr Beast would do, which
Speaker 1: is take the most ridiculous idea we can think of,
Speaker 1: wrap it around something to do with the metaverse, and
Speaker 1: then just push it as humanly far as possible. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I say humanly far as possible, that's very,
Speaker 1: very important because I think there's this vision of the
Speaker 1: metaverse that it's like the end of Wally when you
Speaker 1: see all these fat human beings in the spaceship and
Speaker 1: there's just being whizzed around all over the place, fed
Speaker 1: stuff and given everything. There's a real danger that we
Speaker 1: could go that direction. So thinking about the human at
Speaker 1: the center of the metaverse experience, thinking about identity, and
Speaker 1: trying to make what we shoot in the metaverse as
Speaker 1: physical as possible and give it that physical component, that
Speaker 1: human component. That's how I think the metaverse, sorry, will
Speaker 1: get really interesting. If it's just about technology or a
Speaker 1: platform like the Other Side or decentral Land, it's dehumanized
Speaker 1: and we need to rehumanize that side of things. Um
Speaker 1: and it you know, it sort of helps and doesn't help.
Speaker 1: The Mark Zuckerberg presents like the most advanced Android you've
Speaker 1: ever seen, but at the same time, you know underneath
Speaker 1: it all there is. I guess what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: I'm teams Auck. I may not be Team Facebook, but
Speaker 1: I am teams Uck. And I think, having listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of what he's had to say, he may
Speaker 1: be very awkward in expressing it. I kind of see
Speaker 1: where he's going with it. I've also got a quest
Speaker 1: pro now we need it for the first film that
Speaker 1: we're doing. Okay, uh, you know, I can't tell any
Speaker 1: much about that or why because it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a secret moment, but like we need it and we're
Speaker 1: gonna push that thing as far as it goes. But
Speaker 1: you put it on and you start playing around and
Speaker 1: it's like it's not the future, it's the now, but
Speaker 1: it points the way towards the future, and you can
Speaker 1: kind of see it now. You can kind of see
Speaker 1: it with that device. It's like oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like get rid of this, this is gone and
Speaker 1: you're just there and like it's goofy as hell and
Speaker 1: the battery runs out, but you get yeah, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. Wow. So, I mean, I guess, going
Speaker 1: back to what you're saying about about, you know, telling
Speaker 1: sort of human stories, I guess putting a human angle
Speaker 1: on the metaverse, because this seems to be I think
Speaker 1: the stumbling block that that so many people have, and
Speaker 1: I must admit like i've I've I've kind of struggled
Speaker 1: with with the metaverse idea as well from from the
Speaker 1: kind of tech perspective, because it's so I don't know,
Speaker 1: it feels sometimes so hard to envision what exactly it's
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be, and I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know about EU robe and I guess I I guess
Speaker 1: the answer to that question is it's not it's not
Speaker 1: yet supposed to be anything. It's it's we're in the
Speaker 1: you know, we're in the process of building it. It's
Speaker 1: still very much, uh an intangible thing, you know. It's
Speaker 1: it's going to be what we make it. But I
Speaker 1: guess it's it's going to be so important for for
Speaker 1: people to be able to to visualize it, to to
Speaker 1: kind of to see it from a human angle. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it is is it not just going to be you know,
Speaker 1: guys wandering around with with VR goggles on. Yeah, Well
Speaker 1: that's the fact that you think about it. And the
Speaker 1: one of the thing about having a channel that's devoted
Speaker 1: to the meta verse is that we don't have to
Speaker 1: have the answer to that. We can test stuff out
Speaker 1: and if it's BS, well, we'll say it's BS. And
Speaker 1: if it's goofy, will say it's goofy. What I think
Speaker 1: nobody has really done yet is try to explore the
Speaker 1: metaverse from the inside out. There is a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot of chat about the meta verse. Is
Speaker 1: this you know, ten trillion dollar opportunity from vcs who
Speaker 1: are investing in pumping their bags and all this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, And they're sort of right, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of money being invested in it, in the infrastructure
Speaker 1: to be able to render three D through a web
Speaker 1: browser or through goggles or through whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: But you've got this kind of confluence of all sorts
Speaker 1: of different things technologically that have been promised for like
Speaker 1: the last fifty years. But they're sort of finally kind
Speaker 1: of there, a little bit sketchy, but they are kind
Speaker 1: of there. On Facebook's pumping so much money into the
Speaker 1: middle accelerate. Again, that doesn't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: human beings. The technology is the bit that gets in
Speaker 1: the way. What again, you have to do is go
Speaker 1: back and look at ten year old to play video games.
Speaker 1: Look at the way that they their their brains think
Speaker 1: and the way they observe and navigate these worlds. I
Speaker 1: give a shit about any of that stuff. It's all
Speaker 1: about social presence, about being with your mates in a
Speaker 1: space that you completely controlled and have ownership of, and
Speaker 1: none of the other stuff matters. Will get so obsessed
Speaker 1: over owning land and um, you know, I'm close to
Speaker 1: the center of this land. Kids don't care, they don't
Speaker 1: care about any of that stuff. It's just a social
Speaker 1: presence device. And the technology enables you to be in
Speaker 1: a different place from where you are in a way
Speaker 1: that is delightful. That sensorial. It's multisensory, and it will
Speaker 1: be because you'll be able to smell things, It'll it
Speaker 1: will have all of those experiences built in, and it
Speaker 1: will be a secondary layer. It's basically the Internet in
Speaker 1: three D. And that's really again, it's pretty hard to
Speaker 1: kind of wrap your head around even what that means.
Speaker 1: But that's because we're so god damn early But like
Speaker 1: I said, with the Quest proyer, you put it on
Speaker 1: your like I start to get there, I start to
Speaker 1: get there, I start to feel like, this is not
Speaker 1: a restrictive device that I'm tethered to a computer. And
Speaker 1: even with the quest too, it's in black and white.
Speaker 1: When you look at past through, it's still like it's
Speaker 1: a thing on your face. Crest Pro doesn't sit on
Speaker 1: your face and sits on your head. It's more like glasses,
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, I can, I can sort of
Speaker 1: get there. And again I I don't have all the
Speaker 1: answers to all this, but what I do know is
Speaker 1: that there are certain things that I'm asking myself, certain
Speaker 1: questions I'm asking myself that I'm signed to use as
Speaker 1: kind of springboards for videos we might make, for instance,
Speaker 1: like what does taste manifest as in the most verse
Speaker 1: because it's one of those senses that cannot be kind
Speaker 1: of delivered virtually or through a computer screen at the moment.
Speaker 1: But you're gonna want it. Guarantee you that you're gonna
Speaker 1: want that piece of it, and someone's going to build it,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be toxic and it's probably going
Speaker 1: to cause some accidents, but it's gonna be amazing and
Speaker 1: when they figure it out, like yes, Mr Beasts Virtual
Speaker 1: Burgers in the metaverse, you can actually eat and taste.
Speaker 1: I'm down for that. Like I I am that kid
Speaker 1: that like used to just just absorb as much about
Speaker 1: new fangled tech as I possibly could. And I remember
Speaker 1: the old days when I was when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: Like my friends, like one of them might go to
Speaker 1: Hong Kong and they would come back and they would
Speaker 1: have come back with this swag bag full of the
Speaker 1: most insane technology I've ever seen. It would be like
Speaker 1: a TV on your wrist and you and like, I
Speaker 1: never thought that's crap and the areas are gonna work,
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a crap signal. I just thought, there's
Speaker 1: a bloody TV on your watch. Obviously, in this day
Speaker 1: and age, that's not very remarkable, but back then that
Speaker 1: was insane. And so that's kind of where we're at,
Speaker 1: which is sort of busting through this wild technological phase.
Speaker 1: At the moment, we're going to have holographic displays, Like
Speaker 1: trust me, if it's been in a in a film,
Speaker 1: in some kind of science fiction film, someone's building it
Speaker 1: because that's where we get all our best ideas from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love all that stuff. I can't help it. It's
Speaker 1: so it's so refreshing to hear to hear you sort
Speaker 1: of talk about it like that, Robin, because I think
Speaker 1: so much of so much of the talk around the metaverse. Now,
Speaker 1: you know that the D word comes up all the time,
Speaker 1: doesn't it This this idea of it just being some
Speaker 1: dystopian place, you know something I guess, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess kind of Blade Runner ish and and well, you know,
Speaker 1: snow like snow Crash for those who for those who
Speaker 1: have read it, um, snow Crash isn't even that dystopian.
Speaker 1: Weirdly enough, it's it's and I mean it's just it's
Speaker 1: just mad. Yeah, it's mad, and it paints it pends
Speaker 1: a pretty you know, even like how how long is
Speaker 1: it now? Like thirty years on from when he wrote it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty on point, But it doesn't it doesn't present
Speaker 1: dysturb because they love the world they're in. Like the
Speaker 1: main characters, like this fourteen year old skater kid career,
Speaker 1: she loves the world she's in. It's just fun for
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean, but I take your point. The
Speaker 1: dysopient part of it is is is always there and
Speaker 1: like we are rightly concerned about the role of technology
Speaker 1: in our lives, but at the same time, unless we
Speaker 1: unless we look at it from a different perspective and
Speaker 1: take a contrarian view, which is like, what if this
Speaker 1: is actually going to be really awesome? What if this
Speaker 1: is actually enables breakthroughs in medicine and enables breakthroughs in
Speaker 1: education and mental health, which all of those three I
Speaker 1: think really can be helped. I mean, the military is
Speaker 1: basically where the metaverse comes from, and so let's not
Speaker 1: talk about that. But you know, fundamentally, yes, that those
Speaker 1: three things for starters could be really amazing. And again,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what it's going to be,
Speaker 1: but what I do know is that we've started a
Speaker 1: company whose sole focus is the metaverse, so we need
Speaker 1: to get really good at understanding what it is. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you me everybody, there's
Speaker 1: a massive gap between what we think the metaverse is
Speaker 1: and maybe what it is right now as a storyteller.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. And what this is sort of coincided with
Speaker 1: is like this new phase of YouTube where it's becoming
Speaker 1: we're sort of moving out of the Mr. Beast phase
Speaker 1: where it was just like everyone was copying him and
Speaker 1: taking suitcases for the cash and throwing them at an
Speaker 1: idea and then suddenly that was that was success. Um
Speaker 1: a Mr. Beast is a very different animal from everyone
Speaker 1: who copied him. But that model where you just scream
Speaker 1: and shout and then like here's the prize, a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars um or like the weirdest, wackiest thing you
Speaker 1: can possibly think of. Um, we're started moving away from
Speaker 1: that into more storytelling based. I think the ideas are
Speaker 1: still going to be wild, and when we come up
Speaker 1: with our ideas, they have to meet that criteria, like
Speaker 1: the the thumbnail has to be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what did they do? And like that's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to hold ourselves too. But do you mean, Robin,
Speaker 1: do you mean that you're not You're not going to
Speaker 1: go for the for the orgasm face on the thumb? Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do it. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to do it. I mean, there are there are
Speaker 1: mirrors in the office, and when I look at them
Speaker 1: and I see that, and I am forced to confront
Speaker 1: sex face. Robin, it's not going to work. So we
Speaker 1: have to come up with some other stuff to do that.
Speaker 1: But yes, it never to be. You've done it. I know.
Speaker 1: I know. I'm yeah, it's it's it's a really interesting conversation.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting conversation to have. Way around it. People go,
Speaker 1: you've got to put your face on the thumb mel Man,
Speaker 1: because I don't be your face and thumber. How good
Speaker 1: are people going to know to be excited? It's like
Speaker 1: that is that? What is that? Where we are exactly?
Speaker 1: That's what you've got. You're scrolling through, you scrolling through
Speaker 1: like this going oh look, that's really really wound up
Speaker 1: about to jizz. Let's watch that video. I hope no one.
Speaker 1: I hope no one's looking over my shoulder whilst I
Speaker 1: scroll through all this. Oh no, that's terrible. But that's
Speaker 1: kind of the game you have to play. So that
Speaker 1: that whole YouTube algorithm bating thing is you know, the
Speaker 1: click through rate. It's like nobody's watching your video if
Speaker 1: they didn't decide to click on it. So you've got
Speaker 1: to get the click right. Um, So we we're sort
Speaker 1: of engineering all of that out at the moment. But
Speaker 1: when people do land on the video, there is there's
Speaker 1: a lot of attention retention tactic stuff that you can
Speaker 1: put in and a lot of it's very immature, which
Speaker 1: is just keep talking. I mean something that quick, that's well, wow,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work. It's gonna work, it's not gonna wait.
Speaker 1: Now that the returns every tip and you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: that was ten minutes of my life, I won't get
Speaker 1: but now I'm deaf. But at least they but at
Speaker 1: least they're still watching. Yeah, but le's just a watching.
Speaker 1: But my fundamental belief is that if you tell a
Speaker 1: good story, you don't need to do any of that.
Speaker 1: Like if you are, if you doing proper set ups
Speaker 1: and payoffs, if you are, if your concepts good, and
Speaker 1: if you have a if a really good ending and
Speaker 1: you know what that ending is, you can design it
Speaker 1: in such a way that it builds and rises and
Speaker 1: falls in succession. Um to keep people hooked eat any
Speaker 1: of any of that stuff, But that's just a harder task.
Speaker 1: And I think the first film that we're making, we
Speaker 1: have been working on the script NonStop for about two
Speaker 1: and a half months now. We're still not finished, just refining, refining. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's a pilot, so it has to be good. But
Speaker 1: that that's the that's the bit that I think we'll
Speaker 1: hopefully keep people coming back because they know that our
Speaker 1: stories are nuts. They would just not go where you
Speaker 1: think they're going to go. And I love, I'm going
Speaker 1: to really enjoy seeing whether that works, whether that tactic
Speaker 1: is valid um, and if it's not, well adjust But
Speaker 1: that's the hell I'm going to die on, at least
Speaker 1: for now, storytelling. It sounds I mean, it sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: And you've also I mean, I guess you've got this
Speaker 1: kind of blank canvas in a way, because going back
Speaker 1: to what you were saying about the metaverse, you know
Speaker 1: that it's we're still figuring it out. So you've got this,
Speaker 1: You've got this kind of blank canvas to work with,
Speaker 1: which I guess is must be really kind of must
Speaker 1: be really liberating and also kind of daunting at the
Speaker 1: same time. But I mean, you don't strike me as
Speaker 1: you don't strike me as being at all phased by that.
Speaker 1: That that seems to be, That seems to be like
Speaker 1: just a kind of a red rag to a bull
Speaker 1: for you. Well, it kind of was. It kind of was.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we raised some money from vcs to
Speaker 1: get this going, and they believed in me enough. I
Speaker 1: guess they saw that I was fearless enough to take
Speaker 1: this on there is. There's an increasing level of technological
Speaker 1: competence required in all of this, and it's not just
Speaker 1: the filmmaking. For instance, if you want to inhabit the
Speaker 1: body of a digital character, there's a few different ways
Speaker 1: you can do it. You can go and be our chat.
Speaker 1: It's pretty limited the expressiveness that you can put in there,
Speaker 1: but that's also kind of part of its charm and
Speaker 1: that's fun. But if, for instance, you know, we see
Speaker 1: the Other Side trailer, Okay, so that the Other Side
Speaker 1: trailer was amazing and it's a glorious piece of animation.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful put together. So much work, so much
Speaker 1: post production, so much effort to get that onto the screen.
Speaker 1: You know, that's very labor intensive, and you can't just
Speaker 1: jump into the body of that character and perform as
Speaker 1: that character. So we're looking very carefully into motion capture
Speaker 1: so suits that you can put on that you can
Speaker 1: then pilot a character with. Because as much as it's
Speaker 1: nice for me to present a story and it be
Speaker 1: an in real life story with the metaverse, comes in
Speaker 1: expectation that some of it will look like it comes
Speaker 1: from the metaverse, and it has to be beholden to
Speaker 1: rules that are metaverse rules, whatever those are. So you
Speaker 1: have to kind of start thinking about what does this
Speaker 1: virtual life production look like? How do we shoot in
Speaker 1: the metaverse? Um? And like really quickly, any platform you
Speaker 1: go onto it's just sucks. You can't You've got no control,
Speaker 1: no subtlety, and it's really takes a long time to
Speaker 1: shoot anything in there, so you just end up with
Speaker 1: this very goofy kind of proxy of stuff. So for us,
Speaker 1: the logical conclusion was look at the suits. The suits
Speaker 1: again a little bit limited. They have inertial sensors in them,
Speaker 1: like an iPhone um, and so the sensors can kind
Speaker 1: of know where you are in relation to other sensors,
Speaker 1: but they don't really have an understanding of where you are. Specifically.
Speaker 1: They're getting a lot better, but they lose kind of
Speaker 1: contact with the ground, so you end up then sitting
Speaker 1: in a chair, and again that's pretty limited. And then
Speaker 1: they sort of lose touch with the coordinates that you've
Speaker 1: programmed into them, so that you have to reset them
Speaker 1: halfway through. So I wanted to stream as a character, um,
Speaker 1: something weird might happen. Then you have to have a
Speaker 1: helmet on and a phone and all these kind of things,
Speaker 1: and facial motion captures particularly difficult. Um So a long
Speaker 1: story shot, where we ended up was we basically built
Speaker 1: the system that they used for Avatar Wow, which is
Speaker 1: which is nuts. So we were sort of on on
Speaker 1: its way being built the moment, but we put together
Speaker 1: they're a an optical motion capture system, which is so
Speaker 1: we've got twenty viscon cameras, which are these infrared kind
Speaker 1: of cap motion capture cameras. You put twenty of them
Speaker 1: around the room and then at any time they can
Speaker 1: triangulate your position. You wear a suit with pink pong
Speaker 1: balls on it, still have to wear a helmet with
Speaker 1: a phone on it, and we still need to figure
Speaker 1: out how to do the facial motion capture. But with
Speaker 1: that system, basically what it means that we can have
Speaker 1: more than one person in the room at the same time.
Speaker 1: We can trap props. So I could have this bottle
Speaker 1: and I could throw it to someone else and it
Speaker 1: would track perfectly, pretty much in real time. And that
Speaker 1: means that we can then live stream as those characters.
Speaker 1: We could just do a variety show, we do a
Speaker 1: chat show, and it would just be a question of
Speaker 1: putting the suit on, stepping into the volume we call
Speaker 1: it the Holiday deck, and then spinning up the environment
Speaker 1: that we want to be in, so it could be
Speaker 1: anything we choose. So that level of technical proficiency is
Speaker 1: is it's it's taking a bit of time. And then
Speaker 1: just like we want to build stuff in the metaverse,
Speaker 1: and you end up then needed to do custom Unity
Speaker 1: builds a customs script, and those custom scripts are incredibly
Speaker 1: problematic when it comes to UM plugging in metal mask,
Speaker 1: So anything that has a metal mask wile it component
Speaker 1: and an external script big no, No, okay, as you
Speaker 1: as you can probably understand, So you know, figuring out
Speaker 1: what platforms to use and how to use them and
Speaker 1: then make them safe for people to use, because you know,
Speaker 1: the meta should be a social experience. So if people
Speaker 1: can't come and join in when we're doing stuff, then
Speaker 1: it kind of falls down. If it's just a recording
Speaker 1: of an event, no, well it's okay, but like we
Speaker 1: need to do events where people can be part of it, participate,
Speaker 1: win prizes, you know all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So we have to figure out a lot. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: quite hard work. It sounds it. It sounds it, and
Speaker 1: I mean going back to what you were saying about
Speaker 1: you know that the meta verse has to be a
Speaker 1: social space and stuff. Do you do you feel that obviously,
Speaker 1: the Internet came along and no one was adequately prepared
Speaker 1: for it, and it's morphed into this amazing and at
Speaker 1: the same time terrifying thing. There is. There is so
Speaker 1: much that's good about it, there's so much that is deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply wrong about it. And do you think that with
Speaker 1: the metaverse, this is this is a chance for us
Speaker 1: to you know, to to to build it, to make
Speaker 1: a better Internet. Do you think that the lessons of internet,
Speaker 1: you know, the first age of the Internet, if you like,
Speaker 1: do you think those can be learned? Do you do
Speaker 1: you think we have do you think people like yourselves
Speaker 1: and others sort of building in the metaverse? Are you
Speaker 1: going to have the opportunity do you think to shape it?
Speaker 1: Or do you think it's going to be something that's
Speaker 1: just gonna, like the original Internet, just kind of become
Speaker 1: so organic that it kind of gets a little out
Speaker 1: of control. Well, that's a big question. So you have
Speaker 1: to look at it this way. There is there's a
Speaker 1: hardware interface version of this, and that's that's hard because
Speaker 1: Apple has basically exerted such an iron grip over everything, Yeah,
Speaker 1: taking its cut over everything that it's like, we need
Speaker 1: to get off that as soon as possible. And I
Speaker 1: you know, I have a lot of love for Apple
Speaker 1: products and always have done, but like the iPhone is
Speaker 1: is bad news. And then you look at the Quest
Speaker 1: pro and the Quest platform and it's like, are we
Speaker 1: just repeating the same thing again? And Zuck is making
Speaker 1: a lot of noise about embracing you know, decentralization full
Speaker 1: short of Web three and everything else. But that's understandable,
Speaker 1: but you know, where does that really sit and what
Speaker 1: Once you kind of dig back into the history of
Speaker 1: the Internet and the open source standards, the drive it like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I there, these things need to work at scale, right,
Speaker 1: they need to be delivered at scale, and everyone's sort
Speaker 1: of fighting for their piece of the pie that they
Speaker 1: can control and ring fence. And you know, it would
Speaker 1: be weird if all of our websites were served up
Speaker 1: by private servers and it wasn't an open source standard
Speaker 1: and you had you could only if you had an
Speaker 1: IBM subscription, you could only access a certain chunk of
Speaker 1: the Internet. That would just be so weird. But that's
Speaker 1: kind of where it was heading at one point. So
Speaker 1: we do need these open source standards and that when
Speaker 1: you dig into the what's needed to deliver a fully
Speaker 1: fleshed out metaverse, there's a bunch of stuff that's like
Speaker 1: it's really hard to do. And it's not just interoperability,
Speaker 1: which is just such a misduding term anyway, but it's like,
Speaker 1: what does the economy look like? How do we make
Speaker 1: payment rails that don't go via Apple for instance, or
Speaker 1: Android or one of these other platforms that are just
Speaker 1: there and just work. Um, it's really tough. I I
Speaker 1: think we can play a role in shaping it. I
Speaker 1: think I guess where I sat with all of this
Speaker 1: is that there are there are going to be a
Speaker 1: bunch of really interesting people who might not take a
Speaker 1: look at this space. But if I can make the
Speaker 1: story about the metaphors really fun and entertaining and not
Speaker 1: this top down twenty training dollar opportunity, we should invest
Speaker 1: or here by this land and it's going to go
Speaker 1: up a thousand decks next month. Um. But it's just like,
Speaker 1: here's a really interesting question about the metaverse. What's the
Speaker 1: weirdest way we can tell that story? Um? That might
Speaker 1: get somewhere, that might get somewhere, but I just don't
Speaker 1: know what what I what I fundamentally believe though, is
Speaker 1: that the growth potential for anything that's sort of around
Speaker 1: the metaverse is off the charts. So I'm I'm keen
Speaker 1: to kind of plant my flag here and see see
Speaker 1: what we can do with it. Yeah, it's so exciting,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's interesting too. It's interesting to hear
Speaker 1: you as well talking earlier about how your how your
Speaker 1: team's up, because I mean what you say makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. I guess I think, you know, the
Speaker 1: fact that the fact that Facebook now meta has has
Speaker 1: has made such a strong play for this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it just seems, I think to so many people,
Speaker 1: myself included in to a large extent, it just seems
Speaker 1: like such a kind of power grab, you know, in
Speaker 1: the same way that in the same way that Bezos
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk and Richard Branson all seemed to be,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of trying to grab a chunk of
Speaker 1: space before everyone else. It's, you know it, I think
Speaker 1: there is still this deep unease that people have with
Speaker 1: the fact that, oh, you know, web web two, that
Speaker 1: the facebooks and the Google's and and everyone else are
Speaker 1: already kind of you know, they're already trying to get there.
Speaker 1: They're already ahead of us in so many ways. But
Speaker 1: but do you think you get more of an impression
Speaker 1: that he's I don't know, it's kind of more in
Speaker 1: it for the tech do you think or is it
Speaker 1: kind of perhaps perhaps has better motivations than we than
Speaker 1: we give him credit for. Well, I wouldn't presume to
Speaker 1: know what what I what I do feel is like
Speaker 1: I I kind of get his philosophy around the metaverse,
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to things like it's physical, it
Speaker 1: makes you move, it makes you think. There is a
Speaker 1: sort of element of creativity that jumps out of all
Speaker 1: of this. Obviously, if the way that we experience it
Speaker 1: is through one single company and their vision of it
Speaker 1: and there gatekeeping processes, then yeah, that's problematic. But again
Speaker 1: that's meta and not Zack like the Zark sort of
Speaker 1: vision of all of this, and he takes a lot
Speaker 1: of crap for it. That's kind of where I say,
Speaker 1: beyond that, Mom, I'm not going to say I support
Speaker 1: all of what they're about, because yes, that is that
Speaker 1: is a problem. Yeah, if there's too many yeah, there
Speaker 1: are shades of gray, of course, And I mean where
Speaker 1: the message with where we are, with where we're at
Speaker 1: with the metaverse now, you know, it's it's so it's
Speaker 1: so easy to kind of for people to sort of
Speaker 1: pile onto it, especially especially at a time when you
Speaker 1: know the kind of where the whole kind of where
Speaker 1: Web through to some people is just you know, almost
Speaker 1: a taboo subject. And n f T s are you know,
Speaker 1: just said with you know, people almost spit when they
Speaker 1: say that, when they say the phrase, now, oh, I
Speaker 1: know this, this whole this whole Reddit thing where Reddit
Speaker 1: released n f T s but they didn't mention the
Speaker 1: word n f T and everyone was like, Wow, that's
Speaker 1: how you do. I'm like, grow a pair. Just call
Speaker 1: it what it is. It's an n f T. Like
Speaker 1: that's fine. It is an n f T. It's a
Speaker 1: piece of technology. Like all the other crap that comes
Speaker 1: around in TASE, Yes, problematic, but the thing itself, it's
Speaker 1: like getting angry at a JPEG or PDF. It's like
Speaker 1: it's so dumb, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: fight that fight because I've I've said that in publicly
Speaker 1: before and got crucified for it. But it's so so
Speaker 1: ridicuous if you're gonna release n f t s, call
Speaker 1: them what they are, own that ship. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean, before I'm rubbing, I'm I'm conscious that I'm
Speaker 1: taking up a lot of your time here, But I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask as well, I mean, do you think
Speaker 1: do you think we're we're in a good place with
Speaker 1: the metaverse in terms of you know, when you consider
Speaker 1: and I think it was it was Matthew ball in
Speaker 1: In in his article and he was talking about it
Speaker 1: in Time magazine recently. You know, he made the point
Speaker 1: that that the way the Internet is set up is,
Speaker 1: you know, it can't handle what we're what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do with it at the moment, you know, which
Speaker 1: which is why it's it's so difficult to make to
Speaker 1: make a voice call and all these sorts of things.
Speaker 1: You know, do you think, with with the tech that
Speaker 1: we have and the understanding that we have, do you
Speaker 1: think we're in a good place with the metaverse? Or
Speaker 1: are you do you think we've kind of do you
Speaker 1: think we could could be could have done better by
Speaker 1: this stage? Well, that's a difficult question to answer because firstly,
Speaker 1: I don't have the answers to it. What I do
Speaker 1: know is that there's a lot of money being spent
Speaker 1: by a lot of different companies on it. The most
Speaker 1: knows to being better, of course, and they are. If
Speaker 1: they're not developing it, they're buying the companies that are
Speaker 1: developing specific pieces of technology. And again, try the the
Speaker 1: quest pro and you can see the fruits of those labors.
Speaker 1: But it just takes a long time to get a
Speaker 1: device like that into production and then through testing and
Speaker 1: everything else. So in terms of that, no, But then
Speaker 1: I look at what Adobe is doing and the way
Speaker 1: that they're sort of setting up these open source standards
Speaker 1: for three D rendering all these kind of things. It's
Speaker 1: on its way. It's happening, whether we call it the
Speaker 1: metaverse or not. That vision of things is inevitable, I think,
Speaker 1: in terms of whether they're in a good place for it.
Speaker 1: But it comes bring the Internet crashing down, probably, there's
Speaker 1: the answer. Probably, you know, um, but then you you know,
Speaker 1: you just build more capacity and some tycoon will get
Speaker 1: incredibly rich building the chips that we need all the
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, well that's but that's another fascinating thing,
Speaker 1: like the the race to create silicon, you know, transistors
Speaker 1: that are one nanometer one name, that's like one atom.
Speaker 1: Like there's been this arms race between Intel and TSNC,
Speaker 1: the Taiwanese chip manufacturer, and this is a whole crazy story, right,
Speaker 1: and we should probably cover it on base. But like
Speaker 1: seven nanimeies used to be like really like a lot
Speaker 1: that was that was that was hard to pull off.
Speaker 1: And then it became five, and then it became three.
Speaker 1: And they the rumors that TSMC are about to build
Speaker 1: a factory that can do one. And that means you
Speaker 1: can make these tiny, tiny, tiny tiny chips because it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to make them faster because they just melt
Speaker 1: if they get to a certain point. So you can
Speaker 1: make them smaller, and like, how can you make something
Speaker 1: smaller than an atom? I mean wild stuff? This is
Speaker 1: what this is what I get to nerd out on.
Speaker 1: How are un animator? Good? Lord? It's um you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so exciting too. I mean, it's so exciting to
Speaker 1: to hear your you know, to hear your kind of
Speaker 1: I guess just enthusiasm for it, Robin. And you know,
Speaker 1: as I said that it comes in the metaverse and
Speaker 1: web three and you know, crypto, the wider world of crypto.
Speaker 1: There's there's so much, there's so much negativity around it
Speaker 1: at the moment, and to hear someone like yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: you've gone from you've gone from this amazing thing that
Speaker 1: you've built with the Defiant and now it seems like
Speaker 1: you're you're, you're, you're, you're just times in that by
Speaker 1: a hundred, you know, to to to make to start
Speaker 1: this new crazy project which is going to I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I personally can't wait to you know,
Speaker 1: to see what you guys come up with. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm also just I'm also just intrigued not only to
Speaker 1: kind of watch what you're going to produce, but actually
Speaker 1: you know, just see what it is, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? And it's it's so I think everybody
Speaker 1: is well that we we were doing and a prep drob,
Speaker 1: oh god, oh no he's doing but like we we
Speaker 1: are and there's a very specific reason why we're doing that.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, there's there's this idea that there's
Speaker 1: like nine percent of your audience is really the valuable
Speaker 1: bit and like your super fans, and we wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of reward them with the thing that represented them
Speaker 1: and that gave them sort of passport to be a participant.
Speaker 1: I'm going to fall short of saying the word owner,
Speaker 1: but have some form of ownership over a YouTube channel
Speaker 1: in its inception and the rate that we are kind
Speaker 1: of hoping to grow shouldn't make that fairly meaningful over
Speaker 1: the course of a couple of years or so. And
Speaker 1: so that that's launching probably the beginning of December. Stuff
Speaker 1: is going to get really weird around me and around
Speaker 1: what we're doing in the run up to that, because
Speaker 1: we don't believe in doing things the normal way. So
Speaker 1: that's something of a clue. And then the first film
Speaker 1: we're doing is going to go out, um, just before Christmas.
Speaker 1: That's sort of our pilot. So we we thought, basically,
Speaker 1: do one film before Christmas and then we start production
Speaker 1: next year. But um, it's so balls out this first film.
Speaker 1: I'm actually a little scared, to be honest. Yeah, it's personally.
Speaker 1: It's going to put me through some stuff that I
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm physically or mentally prepared for. Um,
Speaker 1: So we shall see if I if I survive what's
Speaker 1: coming for me, because it's it's gonna be nuts it's
Speaker 1: almost it almost sounds like a kind of meta metaphor
Speaker 1: for the metaverse itself, like be prepared to just to
Speaker 1: just experience some completely wild chip because you just no
Speaker 1: one is no one is ready. Well, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1: So this is where the rubber hits the road, because
Speaker 1: if you think about really Play one and snow Crash,
Speaker 1: you have these fully fleshed out, gory, glorious, three D
Speaker 1: rendered versions of everything, and we're not there. We're basically
Speaker 1: you know, it's the wild West. It is. It's basically garbage.
Speaker 1: That's the metaphor that we're leading into trash land. It's
Speaker 1: it's a kind of repository for a bunch of really
Speaker 1: terrible ideas, and somewhere in the middle of all of
Speaker 1: that crab is something good. And that's a much more
Speaker 1: apt metaphor because actually, out of garbage you can create
Speaker 1: an awful lot. You can recycle it, you can you
Speaker 1: can do wonderful things with it. But if you start
Speaker 1: from that position that that shiny version of things, that
Speaker 1: kind of glossy you know, isn't as beautiful, isn't this
Speaker 1: render amazing? That's not it. It is going to be
Speaker 1: scrappy and slimy and a bit weird. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of something that I am looking forward to. It's primordial
Speaker 1: sup in a sense, a new beginning. It's um, it's
Speaker 1: so exciting new hope. But war with Guy and Robbin
Speaker 1: the metaverse. They didn't think two English accents on the
Speaker 1: same podcast could good work, but it did. They thought
Speaker 1: the air waves would explode. Gosh yeah yeah, I um yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure what people are going
Speaker 1: to make it this Robin to to English crypto bros.
Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't sound it doesn't work. It doesn't
Speaker 1: sound quite right, does it. I could I could just
Speaker 1: go California for you. So I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I was buying with half brow. I was like, anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not there. People get angry with me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't. You've got to. You've got to. You've got
Speaker 1: to keep keep these people happy. It's um, it's that
Speaker 1: extraordinary thing, isn't it about just just to just to
Speaker 1: touch on this idea of communities which are obviously so
Speaker 1: important in crypto and web three and they're going to
Speaker 1: be I think a massive part of the messaverse as well.
Speaker 1: But it's yeah, it's this. It's this amazing thing of
Speaker 1: you know, you have these groups of people, but they
Speaker 1: can be such a toxic entity as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think we've all kind of fallen foul of one
Speaker 1: or other sort of crypto community in our time. It's
Speaker 1: um Again, it's the kind of thing that you hope,
Speaker 1: I guess that we can move away from in in
Speaker 1: the metaverse, but perhaps perhaps not. No, there's this, there's
Speaker 1: this sense of entitlement that communities have, and it boils
Speaker 1: down to one simple things. People in your community think
Speaker 1: they're working harder than you are, which I find insane,
Speaker 1: but that's that's basically where it's at. They think, oh,
Speaker 1: we're working really hard to kind of find stuff, and
Speaker 1: we've given you our time and and you're not working hard,
Speaker 1: and you're like, dude. So one of the challenges that
Speaker 1: we have is to prove beyond a shadow of a
Speaker 1: doubt that we are indeed working extremely hard. I think
Speaker 1: one of the advantages that we have is a lot
Speaker 1: of energy projects in particular, find it really hard to
Speaker 1: have that second album. So they you know, they launch
Speaker 1: and they have the art and that's great, but then
Speaker 1: what follows it up whereas whereas we we are not
Speaker 1: an n f T project, we are a YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: and so our cadence is going to be weekly. There's
Speaker 1: always going to be probably the other short form content
Speaker 1: coming out. You're not gonna be bored. You'll see stuff
Speaker 1: coming out, and there's always going to be something new
Speaker 1: to show you what we've been up to. So I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that that will kind of mitigate that to a degree.
Speaker 1: But I'm not naive enough to think that we won't
Speaker 1: trip up and getting you know, get our community angry
Speaker 1: with us at certain points, because unfortunately, that's just the
Speaker 1: that's just the world we're in. It comes with the territory,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. It does. Yeah, well, Robin, I mean I
Speaker 1: think you know, here we are, we're staring we're staring
Speaker 1: down the barrel of of of a bear market that
Speaker 1: is that is going to last for god knows how long.
Speaker 1: But I really feel that we've you know, with what
Speaker 1: you're doing with with bassed af. You know, it ain't
Speaker 1: gonna be all bad. There's gonna be there's gonna there's
Speaker 1: still cool stuff happening. And I mean I hear, I
Speaker 1: hear anecdotally just in the crypto space in general about
Speaker 1: all the building going on and you know, all the
Speaker 1: crazy stuff that's happening behind the scenes. And I try
Speaker 1: to you know, I try to tell people that, I
Speaker 1: try to let people know that it's it's hard because
Speaker 1: there's so there's often so little in the way of
Speaker 1: tangible results, and you do sort of feel it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you're just you know, you're just gonna have to wait
Speaker 1: to see what these projects are doing. But I think
Speaker 1: I think based a f is going to it's just
Speaker 1: gonna you know, just put it out there and and
Speaker 1: provent and let us see some let us see some
Speaker 1: building and some experimentation just just happen in real time.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's going to make make the
Speaker 1: bear market that that much more bearable. Well, I hope.
Speaker 1: So we're we're definitely not leaving anything on the table
Speaker 1: when it comes to this, because we can't you know,
Speaker 1: the name Basically, it's the demands that we that we
Speaker 1: go there and we push things for the max um.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of why I wanted to do this.
Speaker 1: I wanted to, you know, go out with a bang.
Speaker 1: What can I see myself doing for the next ten
Speaker 1: years and like try and build something that that had
Speaker 1: my stamp on it, because I think, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of the work that I've produced over the
Speaker 1: last years was dishonest. If I'm honest, huh is it
Speaker 1: was just me past teaching other people or you know,
Speaker 1: trying to punch in a certain weight class and so
Speaker 1: presenting word that I thought would do that. Whereas now
Speaker 1: I don't give it monkeys anymore. I'm just like, what
Speaker 1: I want to do? How am I going to do it?
Speaker 1: I've learned all this stuff, I know how to do this,
Speaker 1: Like where where am I going to find the creative
Speaker 1: satisfaction of just pushing the boundaries? And I'm going into
Speaker 1: places that just no one's ever been to before? Okay,
Speaker 1: well here it is so knowing that it kind of
Speaker 1: gives you a lot of confidence that you you can't
Speaker 1: really fail. Um, you just got to be bold enough
Speaker 1: and brave enough to to make those decisions that are
Speaker 1: going to scare you a little bit. But again, why
Speaker 1: else do it? There's no point unless you're going to
Speaker 1: really commit. Yeah, there's no And there's no point unless
Speaker 1: you're going to to enjoy the journey, enjoy the ride.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and what a rat it's going to be
Speaker 1: let stay tuned. Yeah, absolutely, Oh it's brilliant. Well, thank Robin.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you taking the time to to to
Speaker 1: talk to me today about this because it's it's just
Speaker 1: great too. It's just great to cover something you know,
Speaker 1: so positive and exciting and just mad. I've got to
Speaker 1: say it. It's it's bad. There's method in the madness.
Speaker 1: Trust me, I'm sure it's sometimes I'm like, why, why
Speaker 1: why did we decide to do this? It's funny. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just great to hear that, you know, after after
Speaker 1: all the the amazing work that you did with the
Speaker 1: Defined and I should say as well that the Defined
Speaker 1: is still you know, a great and amazing channel that
Speaker 1: I recommend to anyone. But it's it's great Robin that
Speaker 1: you're going to be back doing this, doing this mad
Speaker 1: stuff on our screens very soon. I really can't wait.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I really appreciate you, you know, coming to
Speaker 1: coming to tell me about it today. Um so where
Speaker 1: can people where can listeners follow you that there? Listen
Speaker 1: They've listened to this and gone that sounds insane? How
Speaker 1: do I get more of this? How do they? How
Speaker 1: do find you? Okay? So The best thing you can
Speaker 1: do is just follow me on Twitter. We are doing act,
Speaker 1: we're just just not doing it in the normal way.
Speaker 1: So just follow me on Twitter. I am supermassive one
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's probably the best thing to do. It'll
Speaker 1: it'll become clear, it'll all make sense into your course. Exactly. Excellent, Robin,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. This has been great, Um, and
Speaker 1: thank you everyone for listening to this week's episode of
Speaker 1: the coin Bureau podcast. Myself and Mike possibly will be
Speaker 1: back very soon, so stay tuned. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening to the coin Bureau podcast. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to learn more about cryptocurrency, you can visit our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel at YouTube dot com forward slash coin Bureau. You
Speaker 1: can also go to coin bureau dot com for loads
Speaker 1: more information about all things crypto. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at coin burea or one word, and I'm
Speaker 1: also active on TikTok and Instagram as well. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's not thank you for listening, you're welcome for great contact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is free and they're learning about a fairly
Speaker 1: great topic in a non boring way. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to visit me and hear more about me go to
Speaker 1: mooch about m o O c h A b o
Speaker 1: U T or else. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
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