Hello and welcome to the 300th episode of Half as Interesting, or as one commenter called
us “Half as Shut The F*** Up.”
We’re not gonna do that, but we appreciate the feedback.
As a reward for reaching 300 videos, I gave my writers a special treat: I forced them
to painstakingly comb through all 124,882 of the topic suggestions we’ve gotten since
we started this channel four and a half years ago, and pick out the worst ones.
Because what better way to thank you, the audience, for supporting this channel through
300 episodes than by publicly dunking on you for trying to help us and make our jobs easier.
Now, the good news for my writers is that of those 124,882 suggestions, over 105,000
are just asking me to make a video about bricks, mostly from somebody identified only as “Robert,”
who built a bot that spammed our suggestions form so that suggestions 18,470 through 118,563
are almost all just the word “BRICKS.”
It took the bot about 18 hours to do that, which means a few real topic suggestions did
get slipped in, although—and this is absolutely true—the majority of those were other people
also asking for a bricks video.
Since I’m a weak-willed content monkey willing to dance for clicks, I ultimately caved and
made not one, but two bricks videos, so instead of rehashing those wacky rectangles, we’re
gonna start off with suggestion 4,896: “Is it possible to drive from England to Australia?”
Here we go.
Hello and welcome to Half as Interesting, the show that answers the question: “What
if Vox was worse?”
Today we’re answering another age-old question: is it possible to drive from England to Australia?
The answer is, no, it is not.
There’s an ocean in the way.
Thanks for watching and remember to smash that subscribe button.
Alright, next up, suggestion 844, “what is the worst wii game?”
Let’s do it.
Hello and welcome to Half as Interesting, a show about the number one video game console
among people who hate video games: the Nintendo Wii.
Now, there are a number of lists of the worst Wii game ever, and on nearly all of them,
about half the list is comprised of games from the same British company, Data Design
Interactive, whose games mainly target the demographic of grandparents who got confused
about which game you asked for for Christmas.
DDI’s two worst Wii atrocities are usually agreed to be Ninjabread Man, and Anubis II—which
is the sequel to a game that literally does not exist—and which incidentally is just
a reskin of Ninjabread Man, with identical music, gameplay, level layout, and the same
insane choice to base gameplay around nunchuk movement despite the fact that the nunchuck
doesn’t have a gyroscope in it.
But, if you go to the review aggregator Metacritic, ignoring the WiiWare stuff because it doesn’t
really count, one game sinks below even those: Balls of Fury, a ping-pong game based on the
2007 movie that Christopher Walken somehow didn’t get cancelled for, and which Nintendo
Gamer called “a shrine to gaming incompetence.”
Thanks for watching; be sure to punch that subscribe button straight in the teeth.
Next, suggestion 122,405: What state is the Statue of Liberty in?
Welcome back to Half as Interesting, the show that’s really relieved that Wikipedia is
free.
The Statue of Liberty, for anyone who didn’t know, is in New York.
Thanks for watching, don’t forget to spank that subscribe button like it’s been a naughty,
naughty boy.
Next, is my writer’s personal favorite, suggestion 10,474: “On the moon what is
the most a animal can lift.”
As a source, they list “Wikepida.”
Hello and welcome to Half as Interesting, the show that’s run out of clever introductions.
Today we’ve delved into the depths of Wikepida to answer the long-debated question: “On
the moon what is the most a animal can lift.”
Now, the strongest animal in absolute terms is the blue whale, mostly because it’s by
far the largest animal—but, how much could a blue whale lift on the moon?
Seeing as blue whales are still banned from international weightlifting competitions due
to a 1983 doping scandal, there’s no way to know—or I should say, there’s no way
to know expect by reading a 2015 paper in the Journal of Marine Mammal Science called
“Estimating maximal force output of cetaceans using axial locomotor muscle morphology.”
That catchily-named paper estimated that blue whales can exert a maximum of 62,000 Newtons
of force, which is about 6,322 kgf, or kilogram force.
Kilogram force, though, is based on Earth’s gravitational pull, so on the moon, where
gravity is about one sixth as strong, a whale could lift approximately 37,932 kilograms,
or 83,625 pounds—that is, before it ran out of oxygen and/or froze to death and/or
exploded.
Thanks for watching, and as always, curb-stomp that subscribe button straight into the pavement.
Okay, I’m running out of time, so let’s just speed run the rest.
Suggestion 470: Why do so many people live in Greenland?
They don’t.
Greenland is the least densely populated place in the world.
Suggestion 9,318: what if all animals went extinct?
Well, the stock market would probably crash.
Suggestion 4,709: Is South Dakota really that good a place to live?
Umm…
I dunno, it’s not bad.
US World and News ranks it #15 out of 50 states based on an aggregate of 71 metrics.
It’s #2 in fiscal stability, and #1 in number of Mount Rushmores.
Suggestion 10,174: What if a Desert was full of solar panels?
So, my writers pulled this as one of the worst topic suggestions ever, but then it turned
out that Real Life Lore did a video on exactly this, and it has 6 million views.
So… joke’s on us, I guess.
And finally, suggestion 124,750: Suejsjiwiwisisimxmaiaom?
The answer to this one is simple: Yes, but only if you have good insurance.
And that’s that!
Thanks for getting us through 300 episodes everybody; don’t forget to pulverize that
subscribe button into a fine, snortable powder.
Look, if you watch these videos, let’s face it: you like knowing stuff.
I, personally, have even been called a know-it-all, which, I know, is shocking.
But for a while, I found that in the mornings, when I wanted to be knowing stuff, I was aimlessly
scrolling through twitter, and instead of learning what was happening in the world,
I was getting angry at an algorithm designed to make me angry.
But then I began starting my days with Morning Brew.
Morning Brew is a free newsletter that goes out every Monday through Sunday that fills
you in on everything happening in tech, business, and finance in only about five minutes.
And it’s fun to read!
Witty, smart, informative—basically the opposite of our channel.
Just this week I learned about the implications of the Fed raising interest rates, and found
out more about how the sanctions against Russia actually work.
Click the button on-screen or the link in the description to subscribe to Morning Brew
for free, today.
I mean, come on.
Why not?
It’s free!
You don’t even have to watch ads… you know, like this one.