Speaker 1: Who Zone media. What if I told you that at
Speaker 1: one point in time, Warner Brothers was paying young comedians
Speaker 1: to lock themselves in a room on a live stream
Speaker 1: for twelve hours, take so many edibles they ended up
Speaker 1: in the hospital, and get colonics on screen, all in
Speaker 1: the pursuit of creating a viral video. Because, my friends,
Speaker 1: that was true. I was there. I was the girl
Speaker 1: that got the kolonic. Because for as long as videos
Speaker 1: have existed on the Internet, even before the very first
Speaker 1: YouTube video.
Speaker 2: All right, so here we are one of the elephants.
Speaker 1: And cool thing what these guys is that they have really, really,
Speaker 1: really long promises. Shout out to the cinematic classic me
Speaker 1: at the Zoo. Since the dawn of the online video,
Speaker 1: there has been cursed video content, and every era of
Speaker 1: cursed video content has its own flavor. The time I'm
Speaker 1: talking my trash is from the late twenty tens, a
Speaker 1: little after BuzzFeed pioneered the underpay a twenty something comedian
Speaker 1: to react to something on screen. This is the tried
Speaker 1: and true Disney Princess reaction format. I know that it's
Speaker 1: pretty ridiculous to blame Disney for people's body image issues,
Speaker 1: but when you think about it, it isn't that crazy.
Speaker 1: And my time came shortly after Vine, the six second
Speaker 1: video app that becomes extremely relevant in today's episode extremely soon.
Speaker 1: The late twenty tens curse content comes shortly before the
Speaker 1: true explosion of TikTok. These few years of videos were
Speaker 1: often bankrolled by huge companies in a too late attempt
Speaker 1: to meaningfully get in on the money to be had
Speaker 1: in online video, specifically on YouTube and weird as it
Speaker 1: might sound now, video on Facebook. These videos were professionally
Speaker 1: shot and edited, but were so low budget and made
Speaker 1: with mostly untested talent that they sort of looked like
Speaker 1: diet versions of content that existed on TV already, if
Speaker 1: you only cooked a TV show in the microwave halfway.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of models like this. There were
Speaker 1: companies like Mike and Weiss, which funded short documentaries that
Speaker 1: boiled down to, Hey, this person don't belong in this place,
Speaker 1: no shade. I did a million things like this, And
Speaker 1: there were places like where I worked at a vertical
Speaker 1: called super Deluxe, where I co hosted a show called Upgraded,
Speaker 1: where my co host and I would get the most
Speaker 1: disgusting and controversial beauty treatments in la on screen and
Speaker 1: just see if they killed us, And they almost did.
Speaker 1: I once had to tape a diaper to my torso
Speaker 1: for three days while waiting for my blood to clot
Speaker 1: after a woman who was not a doctor put leeches
Speaker 1: all over my body in a basement in Brentwood. I
Speaker 1: was paid seventy five dollars to do this before taxes.
Speaker 1: How many leeches are in my bellet button right now?
Speaker 1: Only one? Just one. They're going to town.
Speaker 2: They will improve circulation to the tissue.
Speaker 1: But it was fun, it was messy. It was just
Speaker 1: professional enough to make it clear that there was a crew,
Speaker 1: but not professional enough to make it feel like it
Speaker 1: belonged anywhere except on the Internet. It's not every day
Speaker 1: that you're discovered eating dog food on stage at a
Speaker 1: stand up show. And I then offered a job making
Speaker 1: videos that got millions of views, except okay, did they
Speaker 1: get millions of views? The jury's kind of out on that, because,
Speaker 1: at least on Facebook, the answer was absolutely not. The
Speaker 1: view numbers on this and most videos turned out to
Speaker 1: be pretty fake. But by the time that information became
Speaker 1: public knowledge, it was already too late. We had already
Speaker 1: and I can feel the throats of thousands of laid
Speaker 1: off millennial journalists catching we had already pivoted to video.
Speaker 2: Hey, I have an idea, Yeah, hit me with it, Tony,
Speaker 2: how about.
Speaker 1: If we pivot to video? That was Tony Hawk For
Speaker 1: some reason, the pivot to video. God balk, the pivot
Speaker 1: to video. Anyone working in media during this stretch of
Speaker 1: years was furious at the pivot to video. CenTra reviled
Speaker 1: era of the Internet that it has its own Wikipedia page.
Speaker 1: The pivot to video is expanded on in gruesome detail
Speaker 1: in front of the show Max Fisher's book The Chaos Machine,
Speaker 1: But it boils down to this. In twenty fifteen, Facebook
Speaker 1: made the claim that video was the future and that
Speaker 1: the majority of content that did well on the site
Speaker 1: were no longer the linked pieces and photos that the
Speaker 1: platform was known for at the time. Advertisers being advertisers
Speaker 1: and the media landscape being on pretty thin ice, people listened.
Speaker 1: So by twenty sixteen, every Facebook executive was leading with
Speaker 1: video that spring college pervert turned adult milk cart and
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg told BuzzFeed News the following.
Speaker 3: We're entering this new golden age of video. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be surprised if you fast forward five years, and most
Speaker 3: of the content that people see on Facebook and are
Speaker 3: sharing on a day to day basis is video.
Speaker 1: And particularly at this time, Facebook is the biggest game
Speaker 1: in town. So advertisers took this very serio, and it
Speaker 1: led to big media companies like Vice, Mashable, and Mike
Speaker 1: to lay off journalists and their editors to make way
Speaker 1: for this pivot to video right at a moment when
Speaker 1: reliable journalism was needed on social media the most. Maybe
Speaker 1: you remember there was an election in twenty sixteen that
Speaker 1: really could have used some reliable journalism. And what's worse,
Speaker 1: all of these journalists lost their job for no reason
Speaker 1: because drumroll please, the pivot to video was based on
Speaker 1: a lie. What Mark Zuckerberg was saying there was not true.
Speaker 1: Facebook was lying. Can you believe it? But at this
Speaker 1: time Facebook lying was a bit of a shock to
Speaker 1: the average user. In twenty sixteen, a lot of people
Speaker 1: still thought that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were cool.
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing, but I refuse to let my generation forget.
Speaker 1: So the year after, Zuckerberg says everyone's watching video. Five
Speaker 1: years until we're only doing video Suzan Bronica at The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had been overestimating their
Speaker 1: video numbers for the better part of two years, and
Speaker 1: Facebook was forced to fess up to this. They admitted
Speaker 1: in a public post from Vice president of Business and
Speaker 1: Marketing David Fisher that they'd been lying about viewership times
Speaker 1: by as much as sixty to eighty percent. But okay,
Speaker 1: they admitted it. Problems solved right, Well, no, because even
Speaker 1: in their admission, Facebook is still lying. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Facebook says oops are bad and the media doesn't really
Speaker 1: panic in the way you might expect. So the pivot
Speaker 1: to video chugs along through twenty seventeen. Because advertisers were
Speaker 1: assured the glitch was fixed. Major publishers like The Washington Post,
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair, and Sports Illustrated all start foregoing articles and
Speaker 1: turning them into cheap video content instead. Some were as
Speaker 1: basic as animated slide shows that summarized more detailed reporting.
Speaker 1: Fox Sports and MTV News nuked their entire writing teams,
Speaker 1: and this was an extension of the slow and painful
Speaker 1: decline of well funded American journalism, a problem that has
Speaker 1: only continued to grow. Works. I'm sorry Amazon owns your
Speaker 1: unbiased newspaper. You're listening to a show on iHeartRadio. But
Speaker 1: nothing really reaches ahead until twenty eighteen, when evidence is
Speaker 1: released in court that all but confirms that Facebook was
Speaker 1: knowingly lying to advertisers, impacting the state of journalism online
Speaker 1: on purpose. Now the public gets mad. The video viewership
Speaker 1: numbers were juiced, and the pivot to video served no
Speaker 1: one including Facebook, and so my era of trash videos online,
Speaker 1: this corporate sponsored video starts to go away as it
Speaker 1: slowly becomes clear that Facebook hadn't just found out about
Speaker 1: this problem, but likely we're aware of it back when
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg made the original five years to video comments. But
Speaker 1: it's cold comfort. By the time Facebook is caught red handed,
Speaker 1: the newsroom layoffs have already happened. The video revenue streams
Speaker 1: that had been put in their place were forced to
Speaker 1: struggle with the new reality that well, maybe not a
Speaker 1: lot of people were actually watching our videos. Media companies
Speaker 1: started to close. It's overly simplistic to say that this
Speaker 1: lie lost journalists their jobs so that I could get
Speaker 1: paid seventy five dollars to have bull seam and squeezed
Speaker 1: on my face to see if it hurt, but unfortunately
Speaker 1: it's pretty close to the truth. The video vertical I
Speaker 1: worked at was shut down after a corporate merger between
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers and AT and T. But what pivot to
Speaker 1: video came to mean was a company's last ditch effort
Speaker 1: at survival based on faulty Silicon Valley info before leaning
Speaker 1: into layoffs. It was over whatever it was, and during
Speaker 1: this same strange post vine pre COVID era of video,
Speaker 1: one of the most successful flash in the pan video
Speaker 1: apps rose and fell. I'm talking about HQ Trivia. Now
Speaker 1: you either just gasped in recognition or were like, huh,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. I truly have not encountered
Speaker 1: an in between reaction to HQ Trivia. If you didn't know,
Speaker 1: HQ Trivia was an interactive video trivia game made by
Speaker 1: the guys who founded and subsequently fumbled Fine, an app
Speaker 1: that caused millions of users to stop what they were
Speaker 1: doing and watch as host Scott Ragowski, who called himself
Speaker 1: quiz Daddy, ask five questions.
Speaker 2: Is this your first time stepping into the ring with
Speaker 2: us at HQ? I want to be a good, clean fight,
Speaker 2: all right, nothing below the belt. Also, wash your hands seriously.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go over the rules. I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: twelve questions for you. You have three options for each question.
Speaker 2: You have ten seconds to answer the question after I
Speaker 2: start reading the question. If you get that question right,
Speaker 2: you one in the next round. Make it to the end.
Speaker 2: Answering all questions correctly, you win or split the prize.
Speaker 1: And if you got them right, you could win an
Speaker 1: actual cash prize, though that prize was usually pretty small.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about the money. It was the rare piece
Speaker 1: of video content that was actually interactive and fun. People
Speaker 1: freaked out over this. Here's a video of a woman
Speaker 1: winning eleven dollars on HQ Trivia in January twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: This young woman is going bananas. Thirty two year old
Speaker 1: Lawn Nay just won a trivia game on her iPhone
Speaker 1: and HQ is often lumped in with this era of
Speaker 1: fancily bankrolled, semi professional looking video entertainment in the back
Speaker 1: half of the twenty tens. It was massively popular, and
Speaker 1: like most of the other video efforts, I described that
Speaker 1: Crater during the pivot to video had sputtered into oblivion
Speaker 1: by the time COVID Lockdown began in the spring of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. But is it really fair to lump in
Speaker 1: HQ Trivia with this? Were they really a casualty of
Speaker 1: things like the algorithm, massive corporate shakedowns, and the fleeting
Speaker 1: interests of Internet users. Honestly, it's far messier than that.
Speaker 1: When you peel back the layers, HQ Trivia was run chaotically,
Speaker 1: had a strop fickly badly, leaving employees and fans to
Speaker 1: mourn what many of them still think could have been
Speaker 1: the twenty first centuries Jeopardy. And no one feels this
Speaker 1: more strongly than quiz Daddy himself, Scott Gragowski, HQ Trivia
Speaker 1: and the quiz Daddy. Your sixteenth minute starts now six
Speaker 1: All right, ancient Internet users, we did it. We found
Speaker 1: a way to talk about Vine, an app that burned
Speaker 1: so briefly and beautifully that most people still remember it fondly.
Speaker 1: It never even had a chance to get evil. To
Speaker 1: this day, when I'm having a shitty day, I will
Speaker 1: sometimes turn on an old Vine compilation at my apartment.
Speaker 1: It's like a millennial yule log. And like any video platform,
Speaker 1: Vine became a home for some of the most rancid
Speaker 1: video comedy you can think of. But it was also
Speaker 1: the home of some of my favorite clips of all time,
Speaker 1: stories I want to cover on this show. And they
Speaker 1: were roommates.
Speaker 2: My god, they were roommates.
Speaker 1: Dream episode. Please dm me. Vine was around for almost
Speaker 1: exactly four years, twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen, and the
Speaker 1: app where users posted six second video clips, ended up
Speaker 1: launching social media personalities and genuine crossover successes who are
Speaker 1: well known today whether we like it or not. On
Speaker 1: the chaotic evil side, Vine launched the Paul Brothers and
Speaker 1: David Dobrick, and on the fun side, my friend Demia Diguebay,
Speaker 1: one of the funniest people on the planet. Vine launched
Speaker 1: now iconic YouTubers whose work I love like Drew Gooden,
Speaker 1: Danny Gonzalez, Liza Koshi. Also, Sean Mendez got his start
Speaker 1: on Vine. I feel like he wants us to forget that,
Speaker 1: but we can't. But one of the things Vin didn't
Speaker 1: do well is make their most famous users loyal to
Speaker 1: the app. In fact, as a chapter of Taylor Lorenzo's
Speaker 1: Extremely Online Gets Into Vine was often openly hostile to
Speaker 1: its biggest creators, and so many found it a no
Speaker 1: brainer to jump ship to platforms more willing to embrace
Speaker 1: and fairly compensate them. And the story of Vine is
Speaker 1: worthy of its own episode of sixteenth Minute because even
Speaker 1: though it was only around for four years, it has
Speaker 1: a massive impact on what social media looks like right now.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't have TikTok without Vine, we wouldn't have Reels
Speaker 1: without Vine. But for the purposes of this episode, here's
Speaker 1: what you need to know. Vine launch huge personalities who
Speaker 1: went on to have more success on other platforms, and
Speaker 1: Vine was only around for such a short time because
Speaker 1: its founders, a guy named Dom Hoffman and the two
Speaker 1: guys who would go on to found HQ, russ Usopov
Speaker 1: and Colin Kroll, had sold the app to Twitter before
Speaker 1: its launch, and Twitter ran it into the ground through
Speaker 1: a bunch of terrible, short sighted management choices, and the
Speaker 1: founders of Vin were pissed about this. Yusupov posted on
Speaker 1: Twitter in October twenty sixteen after Vine was announced to
Speaker 1: be shutting.
Speaker 3: Down, don't sell your company.
Speaker 1: Not bad advice, But the thing is, no one really
Speaker 1: knows who russ Usupov is. The founders of Vine have
Speaker 1: made this wildly successful social media platform and they fit
Speaker 1: the bill of the Silicon Valley prototype. They're white, they're young,
Speaker 1: they allegedly harassed women at work, but they don't get
Speaker 1: the Zuckerberg jobs or Jack Dorsey treatment. Hell, they don't
Speaker 1: even get the Tom from MySpace treatment. What people remembered
Speaker 1: about Vine were the celebrity users, not the founder. So
Speaker 1: when Vine ended, it was a sad day on the Internet.
Speaker 1: But its biggest stars didn't really need Vine by then,
Speaker 1: and they certainly didn't need to be associated with the
Speaker 1: likes of Yusupov and Kroll. So what are we gonna
Speaker 1: do next? Enter HQ trivia. Come with me if you
Speaker 1: will to twenty seventeen. Twenty seventeen the year Russian bots
Speaker 1: are revealed to have helped elect an American fascist, the
Speaker 1: year the Me Too movement began, the year I embarrassingly
Speaker 1: have sex with two mics and two Joshes. And it's
Speaker 1: the year that HQ Trivia becomes a global sensation. And
Speaker 1: for this section, I just want to quickly shout out
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty podcast Boombust from the ringer and reporter
Speaker 1: Alyssa Beresnak, who covered the rise and fall of HQ
Speaker 1: in extreme detail. After Vine folds, the founders move on.
Speaker 1: Tom Hoffman goes off to start a new video app
Speaker 1: called BTE, and Russ Usopov and Colin Kroll decide to
Speaker 1: stick together and found HQ Trivia in August twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: a few months before Vine is abruptly killed off and
Speaker 1: HQ is initially launched as a spinoff of an interactive
Speaker 1: video platform the two had made called Hype. Interactive Trivia
Speaker 1: had become popular among Hype users, and Russ Usopov was
Speaker 1: the original host. When they decided to pivot to trivia entirely,
Speaker 1: Russ was out and they hired a professional. Remember that,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of memorable tech Bro partnerships, Usopov
Speaker 1: and Kroll were opposites in personality. Usopov was the charmer,
Speaker 1: the guy who talks, and Kroll was the tech wizard
Speaker 1: less concerned with the spotlight. The first game of HQ
Speaker 1: went into beta a few months after Vine's demise. They
Speaker 1: were shot live in New York and were hosted by
Speaker 1: I'm Your.
Speaker 2: Host, Doctor Quiz Medicine Woman, The Quizard of Waverley Place,
Speaker 2: Scott Ragowski.
Speaker 1: Scott Rogowski. From day one, Scott was a stand up
Speaker 1: in New York who was far from a household name,
Speaker 1: meaning that when you thought of Scott, you thought of
Speaker 1: HQ trivia. There were always a lot of rotating hosts
Speaker 1: like Sarah Pribus, Sharon Carpenter, Matt Richards, and Lauren Gambino,
Speaker 1: but from moment one, Scott was the HQ guy. Broadcasts
Speaker 1: were around fifteen minutes at nine every night, and outside
Speaker 1: of the trivia questions, the host would completely improvise, and
Speaker 1: when you were watching Scott, the puns were coming hard
Speaker 1: and fast. My God, the puns.
Speaker 2: I'm your host with the toasted raviolis. Shout out to
Speaker 2: my Saint Ludatics, Regis Trilban, Pat Slayjack, the Woke Woolery,
Speaker 2: the Musugar of Martindale, Rich Homie Dawson, Host Malone, the
Speaker 2: Bad and Boogie Barker, The Trap, Trebek, Scott Ragowski.
Speaker 1: People loved the app and in the fall of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the audience grew very quickly. By early twenty eighteen, over
Speaker 1: a million people were watching on any given night. It
Speaker 1: was becoming a cultural force. I remember people watching it.
Speaker 1: Everyone would stop everything to play HQ. I brought my
Speaker 1: friend's birthday party to a screeching halt to have people
Speaker 1: will recall I don't know if I would set an
Speaker 1: alarm for six o'clock or if we would just be like.
Speaker 2: Watching work and everyone would get kind of quiet.
Speaker 1: The one time that the answer was burg nest soup,
Speaker 1: because then the next day they were going to get
Speaker 1: referencing and now I know how that's old. And the
Speaker 1: community aspect was part of what made HQ unique. It
Speaker 1: was the rare app that actually brought people physically together.
Speaker 1: If you were playing HQ and a work friend was
Speaker 1: sitting next to you, all of a sudden they were
Speaker 1: playing HQ. The word of mouth moved very quickly and
Speaker 1: Scott quickly becomes a major part of the app's appeal,
Speaker 1: along with the intermittent tech glitches that were very annoying,
Speaker 1: but also supported this idea that this was a scrappy
Speaker 1: app on the come up, and so of course people
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to Scott. If there was ever a
Speaker 1: person to write a puff piece on, it was this guy.
Speaker 1: And so who does friend of the show and character
Speaker 1: in just about every story we've covered so far, Taylor Lorenz.
Speaker 1: She reaches out to Scott in November twenty seventeen to
Speaker 1: see if she could write a short piece about his
Speaker 1: background and feelings on the success of the app, and
Speaker 1: he said yes. They did the interview, Taylor sent russ
Speaker 1: Usapov a few follow up questions, and then things get
Speaker 1: really fucking weird because the title of Taylor's piece isn't
Speaker 1: local comic becomes household name. The title of the piece.
Speaker 3: Is CEO of HQ, the hottest app going. If you
Speaker 3: run this profile, we'll fire our host.
Speaker 1: Okay. So this is where, by most accounts, russ Yusupov's
Speaker 1: ego enters the chat in a major way. In Boombust,
Speaker 1: as well as the twenty twenty three documentary by Selena
Speaker 1: Coroma called Glitch The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia,
Speaker 1: many former HQ employees imply or just say that russ
Speaker 1: was jealous of Scott Ragowski's centering in this narrative and
Speaker 1: speculate that he regretted ever having given up the hosting
Speaker 1: gig himself. After all, this is the guy whose last
Speaker 1: successful app made a lot of users household names. Employees
Speaker 1: have implied that he was determined to not let this
Speaker 1: happen with Scott. Well, let's just read from the article.
Speaker 3: Usopov, the CEO of HQ, called the reporter's cell phone
Speaker 3: and immediately raised his voice. He said that we were
Speaker 3: quote completely unauthorized end quote to write about Scott or
Speaker 3: HQ without his approval, and that if we wrote any
Speaker 3: type of piece about Scott, he would lose his job.
Speaker 3: Usopov continued to threaten Scott's job even after The Daily
Speaker 3: Beast explained that the story was framed around Scott's daily
Speaker 3: life and that he revealed no corporate information. Quote you're
Speaker 3: putting Scott's job in jeopardy? Is that what you want?
Speaker 3: Scott could lose his job.
Speaker 1: I cannot trace the logic of why he would do this.
Speaker 1: In my mind, it has to be an ego thing,
Speaker 1: because what are you doing. You can't do that. You
Speaker 1: don't own the Daily Beast. They'll just publish that man,
Speaker 1: But for some reason, he does. And it gets more
Speaker 1: bizarre from there.
Speaker 3: From the article, when the Daily Beast read Usopov a
Speaker 3: quote from Ragowski saying, quote, I can make people happy
Speaker 3: and give them the trivia they so desperately love and want.
Speaker 3: It's been so great to build this community end quote.
Speaker 3: Yusopov implored the reporter to take that out. Asked for clarification,
Speaker 3: yusopop replied that Ragowski was absolutely not allowed to say
Speaker 3: that he quote enjoys making people happy and giving them
Speaker 3: the trivia they want end quote, and.
Speaker 1: At the time everyone's favorite moment in this unhinged.
Speaker 3: Interview, Yusupov's objections began with the line quote Scott said
Speaker 3: that despite the attention, he's still able to walk down
Speaker 3: the street and order his favorite salad from Sweet Green.
Speaker 2: Without being accosted end quote.
Speaker 3: He cannot say that, Usupov shouted, we do not have
Speaker 3: a brand deal with Sweet Green. Under no circumstances can
Speaker 3: he say that.
Speaker 1: You won't believe this, but this article was pretty bad
Speaker 1: for HQ's public image because whether russ Usopov liked it
Speaker 1: or not, HQ players, we're very attached to Scott Ragowski
Speaker 1: and we're now worried that he was hosting with a
Speaker 1: gun to his head. He wasn't allowed to say he
Speaker 1: liked salad or his job. This story went viral and
Speaker 1: caused a lot of internal discord and a need for
Speaker 1: pr cleanup at HQ. Hashtag free Scott began taking off
Speaker 1: on Twitter as parasocial. Scott fans asked is he good,
Speaker 1: particularly because Taylor Lorenzo's piece ends with a follow up
Speaker 1: comment from Russuzopov after he is informed that his threats
Speaker 1: would be included in the article.
Speaker 3: Well, my feeling was that it was unethical and that
Speaker 3: you were compromising the app Yusupov said to Gragowski while
Speaker 3: on the phone with The Daily Beast. Now they want
Speaker 3: to reframe the story. Is me threatening to fire you?
Speaker 3: Do you think that's a good idea?
Speaker 1: This puts additional pressure on Scott to perform in order
Speaker 1: to keep his job. It is a weird day online,
Speaker 1: but as always, Scott goes live on HQ Trivia the
Speaker 1: night The article set the Internet on fire back in
Speaker 1: November twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Technical difficulties about sums things up and I mean everything.
Speaker 2: But here I am hello, Hi Scott. Nice to be
Speaker 2: here having a totally normal Tuesday, completely average day, nothing
Speaker 2: going on. Look, we are all good here at HQHQ.
Speaker 2: How are things in your neck of the woods? Name
Speaker 2: of the way? Huh?
Speaker 1: But HQ gets out of this unscathed and they semi
Speaker 1: successfully manage this PR crisis. Yuzubov apologizes to Taylor Lorenz
Speaker 1: talking it up to being stressed. He tweets at.
Speaker 3: Her question, who's a cliche stressed out startup founder? Answer me,
Speaker 3: sorry for being a jerk lunch sometime.
Speaker 1: Yuck, I hate it. Yuzubov also takes a selfie of
Speaker 1: him and Scott Ragowski at a sweet Green, but the
Speaker 1: hostage vibes have already been established. But none of this
Speaker 1: slows HQ down even a mid tech issues. The app
Speaker 1: continues to grow along with Scott Rogowski's profile. At the
Speaker 1: end of the year, around half a million people played
Speaker 1: a massively successful, massively glitchy New Year's Eve game, and
Speaker 1: while employee treatment was a question, Scott seemed to be
Speaker 1: having a great time. When Yusupov and Kroll approved. He
Speaker 1: did media appearances like New Year's Rock and Eve and
Speaker 1: co hosted HQ with celebrity guests including Dwayne Johnson.
Speaker 3: Scott, Hey, man, I'm trying to do the thing here.
Speaker 2: Hold on, yeah, listen, it's great to have you here.
Speaker 2: But we're live. Yeah, we're live. Y know. H is live.
Speaker 2: HQ is always live, no takes, no redos. Look, I
Speaker 2: get it, you're not.
Speaker 1: Used to this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, this is like my regular gig. So maybe
Speaker 2: I gave you some pointers?
Speaker 1: How about that?
Speaker 2: Okay, I would love some pointers. Yes.
Speaker 1: The success of HQ rolls into twenty eighteen, with more
Speaker 1: and more ad partnerships and international verticals being launched. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there's HQ Australia, HQUK, HQ Germany, as
Speaker 1: well as addition programs on the app. HQ after Dark
Speaker 1: aired later and you could swear there was HQ Sports,
Speaker 1: HQ Words, HQ jokes, partnerships with big companies like Nike, Wendy's,
Speaker 1: and the crimes of Grindle Walt I don't know. It
Speaker 1: was twenty eighteen and the app peaked in March, when
Speaker 1: nearly two and a half million players were on at once,
Speaker 1: But the problems that haunted HQ from the beginning remained
Speaker 1: even with the huge popularity of the app. Money flow
Speaker 1: remained an issue as player numbers increased, and there were
Speaker 1: frequent controversies with payouts. HQ was having trouble raising additional
Speaker 1: money from venture capitalists, and this confused tech writer Kurt Wagner.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't vcs want in on one of the fastest
Speaker 1: growing apps in the world. After doing some digging, the
Speaker 1: answer appeared to be russ Yusupov and Colin Kroll's reputations
Speaker 1: as the Sweet Green incident betrayed. Yusupov had an ego
Speaker 1: and Kroll had been accused of sexual harassment while working
Speaker 1: for Twitter. Kurt Wagner published piece expanding on this in Recode,
Speaker 1: and Colin Kroll became the liability. He assured his coworkers
Speaker 1: that these allegations were not true and issued a public
Speaker 1: statement apologizing to his former Twitter coworkers. But it affected
Speaker 1: how he was perceived in the workplace, and it affected
Speaker 1: his partnership with usupof And while this rift between the
Speaker 1: founders would remain, HQ did eventually get additional funding from
Speaker 1: Peter Teel Awesome so two and a half million players
Speaker 1: in March twenty eighteen. After this peak of viewership, in March,
Speaker 1: HQ numbers start to decline a little. People were getting
Speaker 1: burnt out, the novelty of the broadcasts were wearing thin,
Speaker 1: and frustrations about payout issues caused many users to bail.
Speaker 1: And while Colin Kroll's reputation was a problem, investors mainly
Speaker 1: blamed this on the CEO leadership of russ yusopof whose
Speaker 1: view of h Q Trivia strongly resisted change or collaboration. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the boy voted that Yusupov would need to step down
Speaker 1: as CEO and be replaced by Colin Kroll, and Yusupov
Speaker 1: was hissed. He pitched literally anyone else for this job
Speaker 1: besides Colin Kroll. He was even said to have pitched
Speaker 1: Scott Bragowski at one point and said they could make
Speaker 1: a reality show about Scott as CEO while he learned
Speaker 1: how to do the job in real time. After much
Speaker 1: foot dragging, though, Colin Kroll is made the CEO and
Speaker 1: launches a number of new programs as numbers continue to decline.
Speaker 1: By the end of twenty eighteen, HQ was still very
Speaker 1: much a thing, but the founders appeared frustrated by the
Speaker 1: audience reaching critical mass and then tragedy. Colin Kroll was
Speaker 1: discovered dead of an accidental overdose in his apartment in
Speaker 1: December twenty eighteen at age thirty four, completely rocking the
Speaker 1: culture of the small company. The app went live that
Speaker 1: evening as planned, but there was no game, just the
Speaker 1: following message from Scott Rogowski with.
Speaker 2: A heavy heart, I must share some tragic news that
Speaker 2: has befallen the HQ family. Our friend and founder, Colin Kroll,
Speaker 2: passed away unexpectedly early this morning at the age of
Speaker 2: thirty four. Colin, or Ck as we called him, was
Speaker 2: a true visionary who changed the game twice, first with
Speaker 2: Vine and then with this very app that you're hearing
Speaker 2: and seeing me through right now. HQ Trivia, the game
Speaker 2: show that you love so much, would not exist.
Speaker 1: It's hard to overstate the impact of this loss. Most
Speaker 1: employees didn't know that Colin Kroll had struggled with addiction
Speaker 1: and a creative momentum that he'd begun since taking over
Speaker 1: from Yusupov as CEO. Now felt tainted and now there's
Speaker 1: no CEO. So in the middle of navigating the grief
Speaker 1: and magnitude of this loss, russ Yuzapov began to work
Speaker 1: to get the title he had lost back and lingered
Speaker 1: for a long time in the role of interim CEO.
Speaker 1: And at this point Scott Ragowski and many employees at
Speaker 1: HQ were having none of this. As the streams were
Speaker 1: bleeding viewership. They needed someone at the helm that was
Speaker 1: ready to take creative risks, and russ Usopov just wasn't
Speaker 1: Scott Rogowski got so frustrated that at one point he
Speaker 1: attempted to arrange a mutiny and a host strike until
Speaker 1: Yusupov stepped down as CEO. But in the end Yusubov
Speaker 1: prevailed and the now severely burned out staff, who were
Speaker 1: still reeling from Colin Kroll's death, started to leave. Scott
Speaker 1: took a dream gig hosting a baseball show for a
Speaker 1: pivot to video platform called Desown, a job that required
Speaker 1: less days on than the grueling HQ schedule and paid
Speaker 1: him better. He told reus Uapov that he'd like to
Speaker 1: stay on board for one HQ broadcast a week, but
Speaker 1: was told no, he was done. He didn't even get
Speaker 1: a send off show. This was April twenty nineteen. Scott
Speaker 1: Rogowski was out, and stand up Matt Richards, who had
Speaker 1: been a fill in, became the new permanent host. Scott's
Speaker 1: departure was another pr hit for the company, and HQ
Speaker 1: continues into this period of decline. The search for a
Speaker 1: new CEO stalled, and a bunch of last ditch changes
Speaker 1: are made to bail the app out of financial stagnancy.
Speaker 1: Prize money is discontinued in favor of nebulous valueless coins.
Speaker 1: The company experiences its first wave of layoffs, and there's
Speaker 1: an internal directive to wipe Scott Rogowski's existence from their platforms,
Speaker 1: to the point that his name was banned from their
Speaker 1: comments sections. Things were heading south fast, even as the
Speaker 1: core HQ crowd remained loyal, and then February fourteenth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: Kerry Flynn at CNN Business reported that it was game
Speaker 1: over for HQ Trivia and that the last broadcast would
Speaker 1: be that night. And as you may have guessed, the
Speaker 1: employees also found out HQ was folding. The day it happened,
Speaker 1: Good morning, you have no job, and there is infamously
Speaker 1: one last broadcast. HQ host Matt Richards and Anna Rousman
Speaker 1: went live for HQ after dark that night, and it
Speaker 1: was well, listen.
Speaker 4: Come.
Speaker 2: To the of the road, they go, is sun too?
Speaker 1: Not gonna lie?
Speaker 2: This fucking sucks.
Speaker 3: This is the last HQ ever.
Speaker 1: I'm a lot of broom hosts by and this five
Speaker 1: dollars prize is coming out of my own pocket.
Speaker 2: We ran out of money. We just kept giving it away.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah. Not a sober broadcast, but an iconic one
Speaker 1: like Matt Richards is saying there the two are drinking
Speaker 1: from a gigantic champagne bottle that russ Yusupov had bought
Speaker 1: almost two years earlier to be cracked when the broadcast
Speaker 1: reached three million concurrent players, and that never happened, and
Speaker 1: now it was over, and as far as fans were concerned,
Speaker 1: this was it for HQ. Things fluctuated after this. HQ
Speaker 1: would come back for dribs and drabs, but by the
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty two everything had stopped, and it
Speaker 1: was removed from the App Store in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: And it's a real shame, right, I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: help but think how comforting games of HQ might have
Speaker 1: been during the pandemic lockdown if they had had the
Speaker 1: runway and the leadership to keep going. But that just
Speaker 1: never happened. HQ remained firmly in the before times, and
Speaker 1: it's easy to claim that the death of this app
Speaker 1: was due to the state of the Internet at the time,
Speaker 1: because there were a lot of similar, high funded video
Speaker 1: content aimed to look good and go viral. Bigger empires
Speaker 1: have fallen over smaller algorithmic tweaks. But the real answer
Speaker 1: as to why things didn't work out for HQ Trivia
Speaker 1: lies somewhere in between. So how should we remember this?
Speaker 1: Seven years later? I went to the source quiz daddy himself.
Speaker 1: When we come back, my dumb ass takes the bus
Speaker 1: all the way to Venice Beach to talk with Scott
Speaker 1: Ragowski on the floor of his storage unit. Never say
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything for you. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
Speaker 1: Here's my review of Despicable Me four. Why do they
Speaker 1: think I want to see more of Gru's family. There
Speaker 1: is no circumstance where I want to see more of
Speaker 1: Gru's family. You want me to get invested in Gru's
Speaker 1: baby son. I have news for you, pal, Gru has
Speaker 1: thirty thousand sons. They're called the Minions, and today we
Speaker 1: are talking about HQ Trivia. A few weeks ago, I
Speaker 1: took a bus down to Marina del Rey, on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Los Angeles, to meet up with the quiz
Speaker 1: daddy himself, Scott Ragowski. He was in town to host
Speaker 1: a slew of shows at VidCon, the annual Anaheim convention
Speaker 1: where the Internet's biggest star is go to meet fans
Speaker 1: and talk about VID. I don't know, I haven't been,
Speaker 1: but before Scott left town, he wanted to sort out
Speaker 1: and photograph some of his carefully collected vintage T shirt stock.
Speaker 1: Opposed to his online store, Quiz Daddy's Closet. There was
Speaker 1: actually a brick and mortar location in Santa Monica for
Speaker 1: a few years, a time that Scott remembers very fondly.
Speaker 1: But the combined realities of the pandemic and a desire
Speaker 1: to live closer to his family in New York brought
Speaker 1: Scott's business online. So I'm at the gate of this
Speaker 1: storage unit place. I'm sweating my ass off, and I
Speaker 1: realized that I am very starstruck to be meeting Scott.
Speaker 1: But he's so nice. He comes out wearing this very
Speaker 1: on brand vintage T shirt, a purple shirt with snoopy
Speaker 1: dress like a little grandpa, that says the dad. And
Speaker 1: Scott is just as nice and easygoing and punny as
Speaker 1: he always seemed on HQ. He even gave me a shirt.
Speaker 1: He's so nice. And the two of us decide, bucket,
Speaker 1: there's air conditioning here. We're just gonna sit down on
Speaker 1: the floor of this storage unit and do the interview
Speaker 1: right here and for an hour. Scott agreed to return
Speaker 1: to the fever Dream. That was his time with a
Speaker 1: here's our talk, Hi, Scott.
Speaker 2: I'm fantastic. I'm spending this beautiful sunny sunny what is
Speaker 2: it Sunday? Sunday is gorgeous sunny Sunday indoors in my
Speaker 2: stores you can to hear Marina Delray that's wow.
Speaker 1: Really living the Venice Beach Street.
Speaker 2: This is it?
Speaker 1: So yeah, we were at the extra space storage. Let's start.
Speaker 1: Just introduce yourself however you want to.
Speaker 2: I am Scott Ragowski. I am a human m last
Speaker 2: I checked what am I? I'm here because I am
Speaker 2: a main character on the internet.
Speaker 1: I think it was, which is the best way to
Speaker 1: be making it was is way better.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm a main character anymore, but
Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to be these days. Frankly,
Speaker 2: what else can I tell you? I am the current
Speaker 2: proprietor of quiz Daddy's Vintage Clothing business, which now exists
Speaker 2: online at quiz days dot com and Quizdady's dot net. Okay,
Speaker 2: I secured both yours. I used to have a store
Speaker 2: in Santa Monica for two years, closed it. It now
Speaker 2: lives behind me in the storage unit so I was
Speaker 2: a vintage freak from like back high school days.
Speaker 1: Okay, where did you go? Where did you grow up?
Speaker 2: As I grew up, I went to a school called
Speaker 2: horse Man in Riverdale, Bronx, New York. I grew up
Speaker 2: in Harrison, New York, west Chester County, New York. And
Speaker 2: my dad's closet is where I first discovered vintage, which
Speaker 2: I think if you ask people, yeah, that's mostly where
Speaker 2: they first discovered it, like their parents close.
Speaker 1: So you got into drifting as a teenager, and then
Speaker 1: how does that passion sort of develop over time?
Speaker 2: Well, I kind of like started hoarding stuff, right. I
Speaker 2: would buy things that I would see, you know, school
Speaker 2: stuff didn't even fit me, and I would say, well,
Speaker 2: I can't leave this on the rack for fifty cents.
Speaker 2: So I'd buy the terry cloth, you know, tracksuit or
Speaker 2: whatever it was, and these would just start accumulating very quickly,
Speaker 2: to the point where in two thousand and three I
Speaker 2: decided I'm going to get into e commerce because there
Speaker 2: was a there was a website called Vintage Vantage, which
Speaker 2: I was, you know, I shopped from like once or
Speaker 2: twice just to kind of sample see how they package
Speaker 2: their things and I was taking inspiration from these, like
Speaker 2: there's a group of people out in San Diego. I
Speaker 2: think they look so cool on their website. They were
Speaker 2: like just hanging out by the beach selling vintage clothing.
Speaker 2: Like this sounds like a career. And I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to build a website. But my buddy Scott Bula
Speaker 2: did shout out Scott, so he built the site. I
Speaker 2: started loading things up, taking using my sister and her
Speaker 2: friends and my friends as models. We take photos, put
Speaker 2: them on the put them on the website.
Speaker 1: The coolest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but nobody bought anything because this was two thousand
Speaker 2: and three and I didn't know how to market a website. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that was a short lived experiment that quickly failed.
Speaker 2: But I went to college and I brought my stuff
Speaker 2: with me and I sold my vintage on the quad
Speaker 2: and I kept it going all through and kept buying, buying, buying,
Speaker 2: and then you know, life kind of got in the way.
Speaker 2: But I've always been buying, always collecting, to the point
Speaker 2: where I had like four thousand pieces when I moved
Speaker 2: to LA and I decided in twenty twenty two after
Speaker 2: something fell through where I had some like escrom, I
Speaker 2: was going to try to buy a place and it
Speaker 2: fell through. I had my escrow money come back, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, what am I gonna do with this? I
Speaker 2: already budgeted away. I'm like, let me just put it
Speaker 2: towards the store, and I just I use that as
Speaker 2: the town payment for rent. That rocks and that was
Speaker 2: that was it, And I ended up being like so
Speaker 2: much more fun than owning a crappy condo that I
Speaker 2: almost bought. That would have been a disaster. Frankly, now
Speaker 2: that I look back on it, it was the best,
Speaker 2: so much fun. I miss it. I hope to do
Speaker 2: it again. But my clientele was geez. Everyone from Ethan
Speaker 2: Cohen of the Cohen Brothers to Ali McGraw of a
Speaker 2: Love Story to Geena Davis bought a T shirt. Am
Speaker 2: I allowed to say this? Am I like outing my
Speaker 2: celebrity clientele? But just a lot of regular people from
Speaker 2: Santa Monica and West Side and people would come from
Speaker 2: all all parts of LA. And then the international clientele
Speaker 2: was really cool Germans and Finnish people and South America
Speaker 2: and everywhere. I mean it was. I met so many
Speaker 2: great people. I made a lot of friends. My buddy
Speaker 2: Tim Melville, I became very good friends with Tim, and
Speaker 2: my employees started out as just customers, oh cool, almost
Speaker 2: like Hyphadeli. They would just like hanging around the shop,
Speaker 2: and they came and need some help. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: actually I could use some help right here. So I,
Speaker 2: you know, got some people working for me with me,
Speaker 2: and I don't know it. It became like a real
Speaker 2: kind of community hub.
Speaker 1: It felt like, okay, So going back a little bit again,
Speaker 1: what else were you passionate about as a kid.
Speaker 2: Oh? God, My problem was I had too many passions
Speaker 2: baseball sports, but baseball primarily baseball cards, sports cards. I
Speaker 2: like players, I like the game. I like to watch
Speaker 2: the boys play the game.
Speaker 1: I like to watch the boys hit the ball.
Speaker 2: The boys hit the ball, they catch the ball to
Speaker 2: throw the ball, they run.
Speaker 1: And you're cheering.
Speaker 2: I'm cheering, you're cheering and your loving.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so you're you're here right now, but you're
Speaker 1: you move back to New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I moved back January.
Speaker 1: How's that feeling.
Speaker 2: It feels good. It feels a little unsettling, though, because
Speaker 2: I don't really have a place there either. I'm staying
Speaker 2: with my partner and it's her place. And uh, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to respect that, not like fully moving my stuff in. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's like I'm kind of, you know, split between coasts.
Speaker 2: But I also don't have like, you know, a solid
Speaker 2: place of my own and either. But it's nice. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'd love being back in New York with her, my friends,
Speaker 2: my parents, my dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's a good life. I'm very happy to be
Speaker 2: where I am. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, Jamie.
Speaker 1: It's true, that's what they say. So how do how
Speaker 1: do you get into comedy originally? When does that become
Speaker 1: a part of your life?
Speaker 2: That was like a kind of a I guess started
Speaker 2: in high school again, where I was a student body
Speaker 2: president my senior year. It was my proto stand up.
Speaker 2: Was was delivering these speeches at my school assemblies, which
Speaker 2: made me realize, like, well, I even the fact that
Speaker 2: I won was on the basis of my speeches, which
Speaker 2: were just funny speeches. I had zero governing experience, no
Speaker 2: interest to student governance. Like I beat all these career
Speaker 2: school of politicians, which I felt a little bad about,
Speaker 2: but you know, I had the funnier speech and that's all.
Speaker 2: That's all. You needed. You won on Rizzz and then
Speaker 2: you know you think about, like again, this was twenty
Speaker 2: something years ago, but you think like, oh, is this
Speaker 2: like a proto trumpion approach? Even like he had zero
Speaker 2: experience too, and he just won on.
Speaker 1: His He won on his version of his version of.
Speaker 2: It got So I don't know if it was like
Speaker 2: a good precedent to set frankly, because like, no, seriously,
Speaker 2: every student by president was like the most serious minded.
Speaker 2: They all went to Harvard. They're all like, you know,
Speaker 2: student president, class presidents, blah. And I just came in.
Speaker 2: I mean I actually loved it and I was all
Speaker 2: about I was like, I had this whole recycling initiative,
Speaker 2: and I hired a whole booze free initiative as well.
Speaker 2: Temperance movement I tried to start that wasn't very successful,
Speaker 2: but I was like, guys, it's against the law. We're
Speaker 2: not twenty in jail. That wasn't that wasn't my most
Speaker 2: popular platform, but but the recycling was cool. I ended
Speaker 2: up doing it myself, mostly because this is there's like
Speaker 2: a couples where Bloomberg suspended New York City recycling. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: And this was like when I. Yeah, it was just
Speaker 2: as I was taking office. So I said, guys, I
Speaker 2: live in Westchester. We still recycle up there, y'all. Put
Speaker 2: your cans and bottles in the I brought like my
Speaker 2: own recycling mins to school and then I would bring
Speaker 2: them home to Westchester.
Speaker 1: It's so nice.
Speaker 2: Put them in the machine and get a nickel for
Speaker 2: each one. And I made them at like three hundred
Speaker 2: bucks over the course of the year. Well, I think
Speaker 2: that that is I think I deserved it at that point.
Speaker 1: That's more than Trump has done.
Speaker 2: I think that that's actually yeah, like thousands of cans
Speaker 2: and bottles from my school. Yeah, funny speeches. And then
Speaker 2: I went to college and then I took a course
Speaker 2: to get a couple of credits in like this optional
Speaker 2: winter semester and it was a stand up comedy class.
Speaker 2: The first one this guy taught us. A grad student
Speaker 2: taught it. And the final project was like five minutes
Speaker 2: of original material. And I got up there and there
Speaker 2: are like twenty people in the class. I was the
Speaker 2: last one on stage. And when I say I headlined
Speaker 2: my first thing, they put me. He threw me at
Speaker 2: the end and it was crush City. Yeah. People are
Speaker 2: like coming out to be stranger. It's like, have you
Speaker 2: done this before? I go, no, Like you should do this,
Speaker 2: You're good. I was like, really, all that external validation,
Speaker 2: it was just the greatest surge through my body. So yeah.
Speaker 2: Two weeks later, I did the same set at an
Speaker 2: open mic in DC the Soho Coffee House Soho Tea
Speaker 2: and Coffee in DuPont Circle, and it was a bomb
Speaker 2: because no one was paying attention. It's like the same
Speaker 2: material there. It was like, wait a minute. It was
Speaker 2: a very early lesson I learned. Okay, so the same
Speaker 2: exact jokes in front of two hundred students going nuts
Speaker 2: in front of like fifty apathetic coffee drinkers on their laptops.
Speaker 2: Right's who are don't want comedy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took me a long long time to accept that.
Speaker 1: You're like, no, this is I am doing this against
Speaker 1: their will. Yeah, it's okay if they don't like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Forcible comedy is never a good idea. So
Speaker 2: that was But anyway, I still enjoyed it, so I stepped.
Speaker 2: I just kept kind of doing it slowly and moved
Speaker 2: to the city for two summer of two thousand and
Speaker 2: six and did a whole like comedy boot camp for myself,
Speaker 2: hosting open mics, going open mics, meeting people, seeing, invite
Speaker 2: them up, seeing, you know, going to raffife, being lucky
Speaker 2: enough to do a couple of really cool shows like
Speaker 2: oh Hello with Nick and John in two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: That's refife. Yeah yeah, but uh, I haven't heard from
Speaker 2: them since. No, No, they're great, love them, love everyone,
Speaker 2: and I love my life. And how are you, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Loftus, I'm good. I'm good. I've had similar comedy moments
Speaker 1: where you're like, well, if this is as good as
Speaker 1: it gets, great.
Speaker 2: Exactly, I love it. That's how I feel. I feel
Speaker 2: so blessed to just have these moments. And then, you know,
Speaker 2: if we want to skip to HQ, it's like then
Speaker 2: HQ comes along, then it's like, shit, yeah, now I
Speaker 2: really feel I could retire.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, I do want to get to HQ
Speaker 1: and ask about So at this point, you've been in
Speaker 1: the city for years, you've been doing stand up.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is like from two thousand so I graduated
Speaker 2: and seven I come back. I moved to Brooklyn and
Speaker 2: fall two thousand and seven. From then to twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: ten years, I'm doing comedy in New York and he
Speaker 2: had a weekly show, right, it wasn't quite weekly, try
Speaker 2: to do it monthly. Maybe it would be every two months, whatever,
Speaker 2: whenever I can get. But yeah, running late with scotridgusscause
Speaker 2: my talk show. I had a show called Twelve Angry
Speaker 2: Mascots before that, which was like a sports comedy talk show.
Speaker 2: And you know, my stand up as it wasn't much,
Speaker 2: but like I kind of transitioned to doing the talk
Speaker 2: shows because I just enjoyed it more, right, and I
Speaker 2: got to do my own like monologue, which was my
Speaker 2: own version of stand up, Like I don't want to
Speaker 2: sit through an hour of other people whatever. I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna do my own thing on my own show. And
Speaker 2: that was that was how I enjoyed doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that then led to I don't know if it
Speaker 2: led to it directly, but I got a call to
Speaker 2: audition for HQ and Bring Up twenty seventeen and I
Speaker 2: got the gig, and then that just changed everything. What
Speaker 2: happened was that the Internet wasn't quite I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think what happened was you had regular people who
Speaker 2: were not writers or comedians. They were just like making
Speaker 2: content on their own. All this UGC stuff that just
Speaker 2: was coming up, coming up. Nobody's paying them to do it,
Speaker 2: nobody's producing it. There's no big company writing a check.
Speaker 2: And that stuff was getting views just as much as,
Speaker 2: if not more than, all the highly produced stuff that
Speaker 2: was very expensive, right, And these companies are like, what
Speaker 2: are we doing this for? Why are we funding all
Speaker 2: these you know, quote unquote funny people who are funny,
Speaker 2: professionally funny sometimes, but there's something about just I guess
Speaker 2: a girl in her room doing a dance that's more
Speaker 2: entertaining for the digital natives, like I still can't figure
Speaker 2: out that.
Speaker 1: Yeh. What was your relationship with the Internet like when
Speaker 1: you started doing HQ's.
Speaker 2: A good question, and I would say it was I
Speaker 2: used it, I didn't abuse it. I didn't love it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't. You know, I was very late. I was
Speaker 2: a late bloomer, late adopter to like everything, Okay, Twitter,
Speaker 2: I didn't even have an Instagram when I started HQ.
Speaker 2: I just didn't. I don't know if I'd cared enough
Speaker 2: or I didn't appreciate the importance of it or whatever,
Speaker 2: but I just I just didn't feel like I'm gonna
Speaker 2: I didn't I want to waste my time engaging so
Speaker 2: heavily online. Like to this day, I don't go on Reddit.
Speaker 2: I really stopped using Twitter, you know, mostly completely for
Speaker 2: a couple of years now. Didn't want to just go
Speaker 2: that deep with this stuff. I don't know, I just
Speaker 2: just never clicked with me, okay, And in fact, I
Speaker 2: kind of looked down on it all because I have
Speaker 2: come from that old school mentality of like, what is
Speaker 2: this worthy snapchat comedians? Like what is this garbage that
Speaker 2: people are calling comedy?
Speaker 1: Now we'll be right back with the rest of my
Speaker 1: interview with Scott Ragowski. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. After
Speaker 1: Scott and I spoke, my boyfriend and I took a
Speaker 1: walk on Venice Beach, and boy does their misogynist peer
Speaker 1: trash still hit down there? I passed and I'm not
Speaker 1: joking booty shorts that read Mike's bitch, John's Property, Phil's pillow,
Speaker 1: and Matt's lunch. Here's the rest of my interview with
Speaker 1: Scott Ragowski. So you go into HQ in twenty seventeen seventeen,
Speaker 1: you're not big on.
Speaker 2: The now disparaging the Internet culture already I'm coming into think.
Speaker 2: I mean, in fact, my first reaction when they said, okay,
Speaker 2: you want audition for this show, it's like a talk shit,
Speaker 2: it's like a game show on your phone. The hell
Speaker 2: is this? I just didn't know where this was gonna
Speaker 2: land me or where it would take my career. And
Speaker 2: I was very much at the time, like I said,
Speaker 2: ten years into a comedy career.
Speaker 1: Right, you're an adult.
Speaker 2: Too, in an adult and I'm wondering to myself, you know,
Speaker 2: where is this going? How much more do I have
Speaker 2: left in the tank? I was moving to LA that
Speaker 2: was the plan. So I was gonna move to LA
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen. I gave him my apartment. When I
Speaker 2: got the HQ audition, I I already decided I'm moving
Speaker 2: out of Brooklyn move in LA. I was gonna take
Speaker 2: my running late talk show here and try to make
Speaker 2: it here with that show. But meanwhile, lo and behold
Speaker 2: this internet show is what did it? I think what
Speaker 2: made it so successful is it was that blend of
Speaker 2: like slightly produced but it was an anonymous host me.
Speaker 2: People don't know who I was, so I was kind
Speaker 2: of like a regular Joe or just a normal Internet person. Right,
Speaker 2: versus like if they plugged the big celebrity in there,
Speaker 2: it probably wouldn't have worked the same way, right, because
Speaker 2: it has that veneer of like, oh, this is corporate
Speaker 2: media trying to control the Internet again you just said,
Speaker 2: so that was a bit of the secret sauce. I
Speaker 2: think they made it worked, Like who's this random guy?
Speaker 2: What is this show? It's interactive, it's live, they're giving
Speaker 2: away money, it's free. Like it was just like the
Speaker 2: perfect mix of ingredients to make it work. We're in
Speaker 2: some small office and soho, you know, we got it
Speaker 2: mostly engineers. I mean, I guess five of the people
Speaker 2: I just you know, of the nine to ten people
Speaker 2: were engineers. And then you your office manager, designer, creative director, producer,
Speaker 2: and me and the engineer sits there quietly and kind
Speaker 2: of do their thing, and it looks pretty quiet office,
Speaker 2: not a whole lot of action. But me and the
Speaker 2: producer Nick, we would kind of like go into the street.
Speaker 2: We're like, let's just try let's interview the hot dog
Speaker 2: vendor and see if he'll ask a trivia question. Let's
Speaker 2: like we were just trying to throw stuff against the
Speaker 2: wall and see what's stuck. And it was super fun
Speaker 2: and it felt like, uh, you know, total freedom to
Speaker 2: do whatever you wanted. There was no manual, no handbook,
Speaker 2: and I got to just go. And then this is
Speaker 2: all in the beta phase, the very early phase of
Speaker 2: kind of trying it all out, and then it's like,
Speaker 2: all right, we're time to go live, let's do it.
Speaker 2: And it was still just like go live, that's it,
Speaker 2: just just be you just start talking, which was super
Speaker 2: which was super again liberating and yeah and fun and exciting.
Speaker 2: And I think all of that made for the success
Speaker 2: of the show because there was no corporate script to
Speaker 2: stick to, no you know, talking points like it was
Speaker 2: just like very organic and natural and fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'm curious, like what capacity were you technically
Speaker 1: working in. You're there as a host, but then you
Speaker 1: also kind of inadvertently become the face of the company.
Speaker 1: What is that. I've talked to a lot of Internet
Speaker 1: main characters who become so against their will, but it's like,
Speaker 1: it's it's part of your job that this is happening.
Speaker 1: How do you like manage that? Mentally?
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't really, I don't know. I never
Speaker 2: like thought of myself in that.
Speaker 1: Way, right, I mean there's no press.
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, and you know, my initial role was
Speaker 2: like you're the host, but in the very beginning, I
Speaker 2: was also writing the questions. I was also just you know,
Speaker 2: in you know, making the show with the producer, and
Speaker 2: we were, like I said, just just trying a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff out. And it was super liberating, super creative.
Speaker 2: And it stayed that way as it got more popular
Speaker 2: and I started making some mistakes with like the oh,
Speaker 2: I guess the capital of Arizona isn't Tucson. They brought
Speaker 2: in writers, they brought in teams of fact checkers and researchers,
Speaker 2: so it definitely got more professionalized. And with every you know,
Speaker 2: new layer of professionalism to the company, the HR person
Speaker 2: comes on board, you know, it started to get a
Speaker 2: little a little less like Wild West. That was the
Speaker 2: question we kept asked, like, what's the model, what's the
Speaker 2: business model? How are you making money? And we weren't.
Speaker 2: Were just weren't. We were just giving away money doing
Speaker 2: these shows, spending a lot. They were spending a lot
Speaker 2: of money on overhead and servers and everything. But but
Speaker 2: that was the model, right. It's like gain a following,
Speaker 2: get users, and then you can monetize them the whole
Speaker 2: face of a thing, like you know, the boss. My
Speaker 2: bosses were actually very much trying to keep me in
Speaker 2: my place, so to speak. Like, you know, they they
Speaker 2: wanted to be one in particular, I'll say, wanted to
Speaker 2: be the face of it. They founded Vine previously. And
Speaker 2: what I heard through kind of the grape Vine at
Speaker 2: the company is that, you know, they felt a little
Speaker 2: burned by what happened with Vine in the sense that
Speaker 2: they created this platform. They created all these stars, Bill
Speaker 2: Paul Brothers, Sean Nendez, Like, I mean, major, major talent
Speaker 2: was discovered on Vine, right, Like all these viners got
Speaker 2: just super popular, made all this money, got super famous,
Speaker 2: and no one knew who started the company. No one,
Speaker 2: you know, really cared about that. But I guess their
Speaker 2: egos involved and and and these guys wanted to control
Speaker 2: then error little more and not let it get away
Speaker 2: from them in the way that it didn't Vine. This
Speaker 2: is what I was told, and what I heard it
Speaker 2: was a theory, right, So so that was it. I mean,
Speaker 2: there was a meeting in October, early October. I'll never
Speaker 2: forget it because I was feeling like a little bit
Speaker 2: of of the of that creative freedom kind of you know,
Speaker 2: closing up around me a little bit, getting tight getting
Speaker 2: tightened on me. And I just wanted to get in
Speaker 2: the same page with my boss, so I called a
Speaker 2: meeting with him. I said, hey, just like tell me
Speaker 2: what what you want out of this. And I was
Speaker 2: on six week contracts at the time too.
Speaker 1: I also to say, are they paying you? That's that's
Speaker 1: the other thing. Talent just paid dog shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for these like six week deals where it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: six weeks are up, all right, we'll resign you. So
Speaker 2: also like no secure. Already I was applying to other jobs.
Speaker 2: I applied to The Daily Show, to Jordan Klepper's show.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, I want to be a correspondent for
Speaker 2: Jordan Klepper. I'll be a fucking segment producer. I don't care.
Speaker 2: I was literally applying to be segment producer and didn't
Speaker 2: get it.
Speaker 1: That's so, I mean, all, well, getting Huger and Huger.
Speaker 1: You're also kind of being muzzled to even pursue the exposure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly like I was not. I was told no interviews.
Speaker 2: I was told anytime when request comes in, you got
Speaker 2: to send it to me, send it to the boss.
Speaker 2: He's still squash it. And all those early articles, if
Speaker 2: you go back the ones that first started coming out
Speaker 2: of byt HQ in October November of twenty seventeen, my
Speaker 2: name was not in any of them. It was just
Speaker 2: like the two founders, the two founders, the founders, founder founders.
Speaker 2: So I had a meeting with with my boss and
Speaker 2: I just said, like, just tell me the deal. This
Speaker 2: is this HQ with Scott Rigowski? Is this HQ with
Speaker 2: filling the host? Is it the Scott Rigowski Show with trivia?
Speaker 2: You know? I just want to set the expectations for
Speaker 2: both those on the same page, right, And he's just like, no,
Speaker 2: it's very much HQ. The host doesn't matter. In fact,
Speaker 2: we're going to hire Jim Parsons. When this things get
Speaker 2: gets big enough, we'll hire like a big celebrity to
Speaker 2: come host it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, Jim Parsons, And I'm not making
Speaker 2: this up. This was what the name because it wasn't the.
Speaker 1: Big bank theory still on, like whatever, Yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: good luck, Yeah, paying Jim Parsons what he would have
Speaker 1: needed to do that instead of realizing that you have
Speaker 1: a homegrown talent.
Speaker 2: It was becoming popular that you own so cheaply and
Speaker 2: you can support and nurture and make feel good about
Speaker 2: himself and happy at his job. Right, But now that
Speaker 2: wasn't the decision he wanted to go with.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you're managing tech guy, He goes, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the you know, the parasocial sort
Speaker 1: of like blow up if you're going kind of from
Speaker 1: like to a hundred very very quickly. I mean, so
Speaker 1: much of what I remember about that time is in
Speaker 1: his people's parasocial attachment to you. Like they enjoy playing
Speaker 1: the game, maybe they'll get five dollars at some point,
Speaker 1: but like, the parasocial attachment to you is huge. So
Speaker 1: how do you as that starts happening? How do you
Speaker 1: manage that?
Speaker 2: In the beginning, I would like reply to everybody who
Speaker 2: emailed me, who tweeted me, you know, just trying to
Speaker 2: show gratitude for playing, thank you for playing. Was fairly
Speaker 2: early on, so I you know, the volume was at
Speaker 2: a level that I could handle for a while, and
Speaker 2: I was trying to engage because I was genuinely grateful
Speaker 2: for these people who were taking time out of their
Speaker 2: day to join me on this app and play this game.
Speaker 2: It was incredible and I love the community that built
Speaker 2: around it. And then it got so big that I
Speaker 2: would be you know again, I wasn't even on Instagram
Speaker 2: when I started. I finally got Instagram, and then the dms.
Speaker 2: There must have been hundreds a day. I couldn't even like,
Speaker 2: I can't keep track of this. I can't reply to everyone.
Speaker 2: I would play this game my friends like let's do
Speaker 2: let's do let's do rolette DM roulette, and I would
Speaker 2: you know, you'd have to kind of like scroll up
Speaker 2: to them to load. So I'd scroll up up, up low,
Speaker 2: like you know, a thousand of these to load, and
Speaker 2: then I would okay, swipe down and it would go
Speaker 2: ju and let me pause. We hit my finger on
Speaker 2: the screen at one point and boom.
Speaker 1: We'll open that one.
Speaker 2: Because I couldn't figure out a better way to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And a lot of them are just like, hey, love
Speaker 2: the game, love you, but but you know, it was
Speaker 2: you know, but then people then you get the thing
Speaker 2: of people asking for money for a medical thing or
Speaker 2: my friends in the hospital, can you do this or that?
Speaker 2: And then again I want to reply to all those
Speaker 2: people and help all those people. And I ended up,
Speaker 2: you know, meeting a few people who were very legitimate
Speaker 2: and had had you know, legitimate charities and and and
Speaker 2: issues that I could help with and I felt great
Speaker 2: to be able to help with that as well. So
Speaker 2: you know, but I had to just pick and choose
Speaker 2: like a couple of them, like you know, And then
Speaker 2: there's the tinge of feeling bad for the person that
Speaker 2: you don't reply to who gets mad that I have
Speaker 2: cancer too, what the hell?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, I'm sorry, I you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and meanwhile, I feel like there is
Speaker 1: there is again specific to this era, this veneer, that
Speaker 1: like you're probably making a shitload of money, why not
Speaker 1: ask you for money again?
Speaker 2: Once the quiz Daddy's vintage stuff started happening, like that's
Speaker 2: a whole another way to connect with because a lot
Speaker 2: of my customers were initially HQ fans ith qtis, so
Speaker 2: you know, they come on my live streams or and
Speaker 2: it's got I've gotten to know my fans in a
Speaker 2: way that like they've become friends, which is really cool.
Speaker 1: That's really really cool. I mean, like again, just like
Speaker 1: thinking back to PKHQ, it just is we even with
Speaker 1: all the behind the scenes bullshit, like it seemed like
Speaker 1: you were having so much fun.
Speaker 2: I was, I really was. And you know, I mean
Speaker 2: those moments that I'm calling out even like you know,
Speaker 2: like meeting Joe Biden at the Super Bowl in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: What a sentence. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you know, Roger Goodell and all the football
Speaker 2: owners and Mandy Moore and keegl Michael Keats. I just
Speaker 2: remember the Rock Coast, the Rock co hosting, Blake Shelton
Speaker 2: co host and Kelly Clarkson going to the Voice. I mean,
Speaker 2: you have to like remember all the things. Robert De Niro,
Speaker 2: Danny DeVito, Kevin Harr, John Mayer singing Old Man with
Speaker 2: John Mayer to my dad on Father's Day. These are
Speaker 2: things that happened, and it's like almost like if I
Speaker 2: don't conjure them up and remember them, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: I will forget at some point. I don't know. It's
Speaker 2: just there's been so many crazy moments. Yeah, but put
Speaker 2: all that aside, the most exciting and memorable parts to
Speaker 2: me is when I would hear from someone who'd say
Speaker 2: I didn't I haven't talked to my family in years.
Speaker 2: I'm reconnecting my extrange son. Me and my mom never
Speaker 2: bonded the way we did over this game. My girlfriend
Speaker 2: and I started, we started dating and then we started playing.
Speaker 2: I mean, now we became girlfriend, now we're married. It's
Speaker 2: like like the course of whole relationships would come through HQ.
Speaker 2: And then one of the greatest things was Dan Rather
Speaker 2: posting on Facebook Christmas time about playing HQ with his
Speaker 2: daughter and his grandson and the three of them like
Speaker 2: teaming up to win because they all had different generational knowledge.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Chistry, the grandson new Kendrick Lamar answer and Dan Rather
Speaker 2: new but the Watergate answer and like all the things.
Speaker 2: So you know, I ended up meeting Dan and Marty Rather,
Speaker 2: his grandson. They came to my talk show, and then
Speaker 2: Martin came to my store in Santa Monica last year.
Speaker 2: I'm still touching them. So it's just again maintaining those
Speaker 2: relationships and friendships and seeing the community around it.
Speaker 1: I like hearing about the stuff that was good about
Speaker 1: it for you too, because I think that that is
Speaker 1: sort of what made it special was it was sort
Speaker 1: of the rare social media thing that encouraged you to
Speaker 1: be physically with other people, or you could be by yourself.
Speaker 1: But I feel like so much of the social media
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with right now encourages you to be alone.
Speaker 1: And it seemed like HQ was better enjoyed people around you.
Speaker 2: Yes, and then the offices, the co work. I mean again,
Speaker 2: you just see that the group, the group environments where
Speaker 2: people got together and play. It was so cool and look,
Speaker 2: I mean there was it was unfortunate how things ended
Speaker 2: there with my time there. I wish it ended differently,
Speaker 2: but you know, it is what it is. I've I've
Speaker 2: gotten past, you know, any any feelings around bitterness or
Speaker 2: regret or anything. It's just I was very invested in
Speaker 2: in that company, but you know, personally because it was
Speaker 2: so it was so frustrating to realize we had such
Speaker 2: an amazing thing here. And I really reject the narrative
Speaker 2: the coarterity. Well, this is things run their course. It's
Speaker 2: a hits business, you know, flash in the pit. You
Speaker 2: know that is simply it's just simply covering up what
Speaker 2: was a very solid, what could have been an extremely
Speaker 2: solid and profitable and years long business had the right
Speaker 2: people been in charge, the right decision has been made.
Speaker 2: You know that we could have had five shows coming
Speaker 2: out within that first year that were as big as HQ.
Speaker 2: Why was there just one triviat one show being offered right?
Speaker 2: Like what was going on there? I mean, there was
Speaker 2: just we could have built this this this business that
Speaker 2: lasted to this day, and you know, I'd still be there. Frankly,
Speaker 2: people would ask me, like, what's next for you? What's next?
Speaker 2: And I would say, what do you mean, what's next?
Speaker 2: This is what's next, Like, I'm where i want to be.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm hosting the show which is getting more
Speaker 2: views than all these other TV shows and everything, and
Speaker 2: it's it's changing the world in the sense of like
Speaker 2: how people interact. This is where I want to be.
Speaker 2: I'll be here for twenty years if this, if the
Speaker 2: thing lasts this long. Yeah, but it didn't, and you
Speaker 2: kind of bless them, you know, We're all moving on
Speaker 2: to other things. And my trust is I trust that
Speaker 2: some other company will figure it out, someone will get
Speaker 2: it going, and whether I'm involved with or not, I
Speaker 2: just hope that, like for the sake of our culture,
Speaker 2: because like you said, it is nice to have a
Speaker 2: positive force like that that brings people together, that creates
Speaker 2: real community and that brings joy to people's lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, actual connective social media is still like it's unbelievably rare,
Speaker 1: and you were such a big part of it. I
Speaker 1: didn't know you were almost the CEO for a second.
Speaker 2: Like it was weird.
Speaker 1: So you went from having no interest in tech and
Speaker 1: then less than what like eighteen months later, you were
Speaker 1: almost a CEO for a second. Yeah, wild, wild, wild.
Speaker 2: Wild, And again I mean, who knows, who knows what
Speaker 2: would have happened, and that felt the other way, but
Speaker 2: yeah's it would have been an interesting experience then the
Speaker 2: less my feelings may may not be sure by everybody,
Speaker 2: but I firmly believe that that that there's no reason
Speaker 2: why there should have just been a flash in the pan, Like,
Speaker 2: like the concepts was so solid, you know, the tech
Speaker 2: was difficult to maintain and to build, but the engineers
Speaker 2: were doing a hell of a job keeping it together.
Speaker 2: And it was just other factors in the business, other
Speaker 2: other leadership decisions and non decisions that ultimately sunk it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you decide to leave when.
Speaker 2: When exactly was I March or twenty nineteen March twenty six,
Speaker 2: Gilbert Godfried, my co host, and the final show rest
Speaker 2: in Power incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you didn't, but you didn't get your
Speaker 1: send off show. No, which is bullshit.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is what it is, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's it's unfortunate, it's just whatever. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't even think about these things anymore. But but you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's the crazy thing about like stuff
Speaker 1: like this show, where it's like we're talking about less
Speaker 1: than a year and a half or like a year
Speaker 1: and a.
Speaker 2: Half of your life year and a half.
Speaker 1: So when you leave, is there a sense of relief
Speaker 1: and you you went to host a show about baseball?
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, it was there was there was a
Speaker 2: huge sense of relief to have this other job offer
Speaker 2: come in. The timing was kind of perfect.
Speaker 1: Did they offer you actual human money for nice No?
Speaker 2: I mean it paid almost twice what HQ was paying
Speaker 2: me for for half the year. That rocks, because it
Speaker 2: was like a six month job. Yeah, So I was like,
Speaker 2: how could I not do this?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean and again, had HQ been rocking and rolling
Speaker 2: on all cylinders and everything's great, I would have turned
Speaker 2: it down. But it was Unfortunately HQ was going down
Speaker 2: the toilet right, nothing to do with me. It wasn't
Speaker 2: my you know, And I was like, unfortunately, riding this
Speaker 2: sinking ship and I had this, this this parashote. I
Speaker 2: was able this amazing. Again, the timing could not have
Speaker 2: been better. Just thank the universe, thank spirit for bringing
Speaker 2: this to me when it did, and I was able
Speaker 2: to move on, and it was heartbreaking to watch the
Speaker 2: ship fully sink less than a year later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, did you keep watching.
Speaker 2: Well, not not so much watching, but just you know,
Speaker 2: keeping tabs. I mean, so many people left the company
Speaker 2: around the same time I did. People were getting fired
Speaker 2: or leaving, and you know, so I would stay in
Speaker 2: touch with the former employees, and you know, you just
Speaker 2: hear things. You hear now there's like fifty thousand people playing.
Speaker 2: It's like, really, how could there be so few people?
Speaker 2: We had millions, you know, you just swatching the numbers
Speaker 2: go down. But again it's I remember getting the news
Speaker 2: that it finally went bankrupt on Valentine's Day twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I was sitting in traffic going through the Holland Tunnel
Speaker 2: and it was like the holiday weekend and to have
Speaker 2: to hear that the employees were let go and just
Speaker 2: told that zero notice, like that's it. Zero, Company's done.
Speaker 2: It was basically four o'clock on that Friday on Valentine's Day. Hey,
Speaker 2: you're all out a job. There's no money left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, brutal, god miser I mean it's.
Speaker 2: No severance either, they initially there was no severance offered.
Speaker 1: No severance. I cannot like conceive of how poorly money
Speaker 1: was managed, oh my god, or how little money existed
Speaker 1: unclear to me. Yeah, but so I mean in retrospect,
Speaker 1: you got out when you needed to.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and that Baseball Show was a dream job.
Speaker 2: And I made a friend for life at nan verk
Speaker 2: my co host there, and so many of the great
Speaker 2: people at that at that company MLB Network. And then
Speaker 2: you know, the COVID came and cancel that I was supposed
Speaker 2: to do. I was signed for three years, god, and
Speaker 2: then COVID killed the show in year two. So you know, whatever,
Speaker 2: it's again, it's just I found the next thing. I've
Speaker 2: always been able to find the next thing, thankfully. And
Speaker 2: there's there's there's still Like I met a guy a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago. I had a meeting with him
Speaker 2: about some Web three show that could be big, and
Speaker 2: there's always opportunities. There's so many smart, inspired people out
Speaker 2: there creating new platforms, new show ideas, and thankfully they
Speaker 2: remember me and they they come calling. So I've had
Speaker 2: plenty of gigs, worked at some really amazing companies, consulting,
Speaker 2: doing you know, production, doing hosting in the sportscard space
Speaker 2: as well, which has been near and dear to me
Speaker 2: from since when I was a kid, and you know,
Speaker 2: some trivia companies and some other types of live streaming.
Speaker 2: It's just there's a whole there's still a lot to
Speaker 2: be tackled here, and I'm just as excited as you are,
Speaker 2: as the listeners probably are to see where this all goes.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you know, if an HQ type thing can
Speaker 2: come back, I believe again. I still believe again.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Scott for being so generous
Speaker 1: with his time and welcoming me to the floor of
Speaker 1: his storage unit. And just to be clear, Scott's story
Speaker 1: is just one perspective on what happened at HQ Trivia.
Speaker 1: You can check out Boombust, Glitch and host Sarah Prebus,
Speaker 1: who worked at HQ since the beta phase all the
Speaker 1: way through the million viewer Mark, who made her own
Speaker 1: tiktocumentary about her perspective on the toxic nature of the workplace.
Speaker 1: I'll link all of this in the description, But as
Speaker 1: far as the main character in the year long HQ
Speaker 1: Trivia saga, undoubtedly the quiz Daddy Scott Ragowski, and so
Speaker 1: HQ Trivia your sixteenth minute ends now. Moment of fun
Speaker 1: this week. Okay, since we are in cursed internet video territory,
Speaker 1: here's a clip of me putting a jade egg in
Speaker 1: my vagina on camera. See you next week. What's up, Gang,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start fingering myself, Jill say, you know.
Speaker 4: Put the egg at the base of your labia with
Speaker 4: really gentle pressure, slowly push with your finger the egg inside,
Speaker 4: and then once the egg is fully inside, okay, stop pressing.
Speaker 1: It's honestly going way better than I thought it would.
Speaker 1: Is the egg all the way in? I think we're
Speaker 1: getting there. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media and Iheartradia. It is written, posted, and produced by
Speaker 1: me Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. Pretty amazing. Ian Johnson is our supervising producer
Speaker 1: and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen
Speaker 1: and Pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my
Speaker 1: Cat's Flee and Casper, and by pet Rockbert who will
Speaker 1: outlive us all. Bye.