This Technicality Q and A episode is brought to you by Dashlane.
“I can’t tell if ur 12 or 20?”
Me neither, honestly.
♪ I'm gonna take my horse to the Old Town Road, I'm gonna ride til I can't no more.
I got the horses in the back.
Horse tack is attached ♪
Ladies and gentlemen, I have what is quite possibly the most amazing news I’ve ever
encountered.
It’s definitely the greatest thing to humans in our lifetime, nay our millennium.
I now have a page on FamousBirthdays.com.
*Alex laughs hysterically*
I’ve peaked.
I’ve officially peaked at age 17.
And you know how I know that?
Because it says I’m 17 on FamousBirthdays.com.
*Even more laughing*
I like the photo of me they used, but lemme just say I went to Disneyland recently and
got some quality pics.
This one’s called the eternalpain.png.
This one’s the “mom come pick me up.”
This one’s the “wait, where am I?
How did I get here?”
And finally, this one’s the “yeehaw
In F Minor"
Aight we just hit 50k subscribers, which is insane,
thank you so much, uhh so, today, I wanted to answer some questions.
I asked people to submit some questions on my Instagram Story, which, by the way, totally
shameless plug, follow me on Instagram, @alexunickel.
What are these hand gestures?
Anyways, my friend Koosha submitted “What drives you to produce unique content?”
And that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
Back in April, I went on a class trip to Alaska, and it was pretty amazing.
Alaska is beautiful, and I’m a big outdoorsman, so I really loved it.
Whilst hiking one day, my good friend Billy came up to me and said (kinda outta
the blue) “Hey Alex, what’s Technicality’s purpose?”
I was kinda confused for a second, and then I told him the usual elevator pitch I tell
everyone.
“Technicality takes a closer look at our awesome universe” But he’s like “No, no, no
That’s your mission.
What’s your purpose?
Why do you do what you do?”
I didn’t have a good answer for him at the time, but fast forward a month.
I was asked to give a TEDx Talk at the Woodside Priory School, which was incredible.
I talked about science communication and Technicality and whatnot, and there, I actually had an
answer for Billy.
So many educational creators on YouTube have made me a better learner.
They instilled a love of learning in me and made me an endlessly curious person.
>> TEDx Talk: That’s my purpose for Technicality; to try to make
other people love learning as much as these people have made me.
That’s what drives me to produce unique content.
Speaking of which, if you wanna watch the TEDx Talk yourself, it’s live on the TEDx
YouTube channel right now; you can click the i or the link in the description to check
it out.
Joel asks, “What subject is the most elusive that you haven’t figured out a way to cover
it yet?”
Joel, I’m so glad you asked this because I have an answer and it’s been bugging me
for a while.
See, last semester in my US History class, I wrote this paper.
It’s called “The Lost Generation Revisited: How Industrialization Impacted Interwar American
Culture and Art”, and it’s massive.
The paper itself is 9-pages, but the whole thing, with the indices and works cited and
whatnot, is 18.
Here’s the gist of the paper: people who lived in America in the interwar period, or
the period between World War One and Two, are commonly known as the Lost Generation.
The archetypal member of the Lost Generation was thought to be lonely, unhappy, and hopeless
as a result of the brutality of World War One.
I think there are two things wrong with this assessment.
One, while Americans in the interwar period did feel isolated and melancholic, they didn’t
feel hopeless, and the root cause of these emotions was not merely the brutality of World
War One, but really industrialization.
We don’t need to prove this point using facts and logic, but, instead, we can look
toward art made produced during the interwar period, specifically, the paintings of Edward
Hopper and the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I am so proud of this paper.
This, and, like, my compost video are my favourite pieces of academic work I’ve ever produced.
But for the life of my I have no idea how to turn this into a video.
And to add salt to the wound, I think this is a really important thing to talk about.
Mundanity, loneliness, and monotony were major themes in art produced in the interwar period,
and those themes are once again relevant today.
Philip, who runs the excellent YouTube channel Volksgeist, asks, “Favourite musical artist?”
and mine is Tyler, the Creator, in part because one of his albums, Flower Boy, explores these
very themes.
While the 20th Century had F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edward Hopper, the 21st Century has Tyler,
the Creator and songs like Boredom and 911/Mr. Lonely, both of which are on this LP.
I feel like the next question has got to be one of the most asked in the
past couple months.
Why did you cut your hair?
I used to look like this and now I look like this.
The haircut got a lot of reactions.
Mostly positive.
Some negative.
Thank you guys very cool.
Well at least now I don’t look like Carl, so people can stop commenting that all the time.
And go back to commenting “wow your voice dropped hoooooow wacky.”
The story of why I cut my hair is really a story of personal growth, and it starts in
6th grade.
This is gonna get kinda personal for a hot second, so brace yourself, please be kind,
here we go.
>> TEDx Talk: So when I was in 6th grade, uh, thank you.
I heard a mix of laughs and awws, so cool.
In 6th grade, I spent all of my lunches in the science classrooms watching science YouTubers.
I know right, my social life was poppin.
Yeah, that was a bit of an upbeat oversimplification.
When I was in middle school, I had a tendency to sorta isolate myself because I really prefered
doing my own thing.
Mix in plenty of social awkwardness, and I wasn’t a super pleasant person to befriend.
Admittedly, I’m probably more critical of myself in hindsight, but it’s not that far
from the truth.
It was around the end of 8th grade when I realized some of the errors in my ways, and
just imagine you’re a little eighth grader, and you’re suddenly overcome with regret
for how you’ve acted for the past 3 years.
That was... an experience.
The whole process inspired a lot of reflection, and, going into freshman year of high school,
I was pretty happy with the improvements I made.
But, at the end of freshman year, I kinda found myself in a similar situation.
I was happy with how things were going for a while, but then I kinda regretted how I
acted.
In a moment of deja vu, I underwent the exact same process, a process I now like to call
“the cycle of growth.”
This cycle is how I learn from my experiences to become a more mature person.
Basically, it starts with me just living my life, and then I realize that the way I’ve
been living my life is seriously flawed and I’ve wasted my time and oh God oh frick
I regret everything *quicc pause* and then I realize I can learn from my mistakes, so
I congratulate myself on being so much of a better person than before, and then I go
back to living my life and the cycle continues and continues.
It’s like a bunch of mini life crises that all work together to help me grow into the
person I want to be.
Like, like a bunch of quarter life crises.
Well, actually, according to FamousBirthdays.com, I’m 17, so it’s probably closer to like
a 21/100th life crisis but you know that doesn’t really roll off the tongue.
As I continued to go through high school, I continued to undergo cycles of growth.
And then, last fall, my friend Elise (pictured here holding a bird) cut my hair.
Yes, my friend, who I later learned didn’t have as much hair cutting experience as I
thought she did.
*calling Elise*
So how much hair cutting experience did you have before you cut my hair?
>> Elise: Before the Mountain School, I, like, cut my dog's hair once.
So, why did I do it?
This might not be that satisfying, but I just kinda wanted to.
Maybe, the haircut is kinda just a side-effect of my growth.
A symbol that things change.
So, what do I think is the next step in terms of how I’ll continue to develop as a person?
Well, I’ve got one more year of high school, and, in it, I hope to continue to complete
as many cycles of growth as possible.
And, then there’s college.
Oh, a bunch of people have asked me about college; it was probably the most asked question
for this Q and A.
I am very excited to go to college.
I was recently chatting with John Green (which I’m pretty sure is the coolest way I’ve
ever started a sentence), and we were discussing the trend of YouTubers dropping out of or
not going to college to pursue YouTube.
While I of course have nothing negative to say about people who do drop out to be a YouTuber,
I just don’t think that’s the path for me.
As you can probably tell from my channel, I love learning.
I value an education.
And I value not just the academic, but also social growth that comes from college.
I mean, you’re in a completely new environment, and, in my experience, that’s when you grow
the most as a person.
John Green also endorsed college, by the way.
It was incredibly surreal to hear my childhood hero say, “Oh, you’ll
get into a good college; don’t even worry about that.”
Knowing that, I guess the next question to ask is, “how long is this channel gonna
be around?”.
And the answer to that is quite a while; trust me, I ain’t going away anytime soon.
I’m not looking to go viral tomorrow.
I’m not looking to be famous.
I’m proud of the community we have created, and, sure, I’d love millions of subscribers
(that’d be awesome), but that’s also not the goal.
The goal is not for me to churn out videos, optimizing for quantity over quality just
to appease some algorithm.
The goal is for me to go to sleep at night knowing that I’ve put absolutely everything
I’ve got into a video and that I made the best possible video I could.
The goal is for me to strive to make content that you find valuable and enriching and worth
your time.
The goal is for me, in 60 years, (when I’ll be 77 according to FamousBirthdays.com), to
look back on my life and think that I made content that I’m proud that I’m proud
to show my kids and my grandkids.
I can picture it all quite vividly.
My wife and I own an apple orchard.
It’s close enough to a big city that we could spend our time there, but far away enough
so that we’re surrounded in nature, with an endless amount of scents for my dog to
smell.
It doesn’t have to be a big orchard or anything, maybe a couple rows.
Just enough so I could pick apples to my heart’s content.
And every winter, all of my kids and their spouses and all of their kids would gather
there.
And, then, I can recount various tales of my life.
I’ll tell my grandkids about the cycles of growth I went through when I was their
age, and I’ll listen to the cycles of growth they’re going through themselves.
I’ll show them my videos.
I’ll give them a window into my life.
And I will sit back.
And I’ll be proud.
And I’ll be happy.
That’s the goal.
So yeah, that’s my little goal.
My little dream, and I want to take a moment and say thank you, because you have supported
me through all of this.
It’s been a pretty surreal 5+ years, and I can’t wait to make content for you for
years and years to come.
Uh, I also wanna thank Dashlane for helping make all of my Technicality ambitions possible.
If you’re like me and concerned about your online safety, Dashlane is the essential tool
for you because it’s a password manager, a VPN, and security monitor all in one, and
it’s way cheaper than if you were to get all of these tools separately.
Signing into websites and online accounts is painless with Dashlane because it’ll
auto-sign you into your accounts when you visit websites, it’ll work on every platform
and every device, and it’ll generate super secure passwords for you when you sign up
for new accounts.
I honestly couldn’t imagine my life without Dashlane — this tool is a life saver — so
if you wanna support the channel and get Dashlane for free today, you can sign up at Dashlane.com/Technicality.
Plus, if you wanna upgrade to the premium plan, you can use the code “Technicality”
for 10% off.
My goal for the rest of 2019 is to make an upload schedule.
Those of you who listen to the podcast Cortex with CGP Grey and Myke Hurley know they like
to set a one-word theme for the year each year, and, back in January, I set a word too:
build.
So, I think a very fitting goal for the “Year of Build” is to build a robust upload schedule.
Like I said, I’m gonna be a senior this year, so college apps are gonna take up a
lot of my time, and that’s on top of me now working for Education.com which is really cool, and being the
chair of my city’s Youth Commission, and finalizing my book (what?
Coming out this October? What? What?)
Needless to say, my plate is very very full, so we’re gonna try a 1-video-every-5-weeks
schedule for the rest of 2019 and go from there.
Thanks to my patrons at Patreon.com/Technicality, especially these awesome people on screen
right now.
Thank you for watching, DFTBA, see you on September 30th, and explore on.
>> Alex: Say "Subscribe to Technicality" to the channel
>> Elise: To the channel? Subscribe to Technicality!
>> Alex: There we go! I'm not paying her to say that too
>> Elise: What?
>> Alex: What?