Big clap for all of us. [clap] Pow.
OK, Josh, what the hell are we doing? What are we doing here?
-[Josh] Well, I'm bored, and... -[Gerald chuckling]
[Josh] And I have zero time on my hands these days,
-so it's a mixture of, like-- -How does that make sense?
That's the opposite of each other, isn't it?
-Bored and having-- -No. No. That's your life.
Once you have a kid, you have basically a lot of time at home,
but then you have zero of your own time to do your own things.
So you want to be creative, but you can't.
I want to be creative. I just don't--
like, I have this major block right now,
'cause everything that I touch
normally takes two or three weeks.
-Right. -And I just don't--
I no longer have two or three weeks.
-[Gerald] And I've been-- -I have, like, two days.
I've been... I don't know, yelling at you for, what,
probably like a year or two now?
Like, "You've got to make quicker turnaround videos."
You got to make more videos or whatever, so this is like--
I... it's just this-- You're right.
It's just not interesting at all to me.
Uh, I think-- I don't know, maybe it's like that
imposter syndrome that Casey was talking about, you know?
-Right. -Maybe if you have
a YouTube channel, you are some sort of psychopath,
-because... -I don't know. Maybe.
[chuckling]
Like, the level of stuff that we do,
that we put ourselves through, the gruelling amount of work
that it takes... like, something's definitely wrong.
I think that if you don't have some sense of that,
that's a bigger indication that something's wrong,
because I think that means you're way too confident.
Do you wonder if the thrill of the game,
or maybe, like, the hunger of not knowing what you're doing
is, like, slowly dissipating? Like, you know that expression,
"fat cats"? Right? What is that expression?
-Like, lazy... -[Windows shutdown jingle]
Never ask me to give you the proper form of an expression.
I'm terrible at them. Neither one of us are rocking
ten million sub-channels or whatever, but we have achieved
a certain level of success that I know that a great number
of smaller channels that are starting out
would love to achieve. So it sounds bad to be in our position
-and then, like-- -Right.
I know you feel the same way. You feel bad saying anything
-negative about where you are-- -Exactly. Well, 'cause--
'Cause you're still-- it's luck. I mean, we were lucky.
We worked hard, but there's also quite a bit of luck.
I know I feel fortunate. Anyway, you know, like...
-Dude, you're 100% right. -Yeah.
When I was trying to be an actor for, like, ten years,
I always thought to myself, "when am I gonna make it?"
Like, "When am I gonna make it?" Right? One day I realized,
I was like, "how will I even know if I make it?"
Like, once I make it, then what? Like, then what?
-Yeah. -You still have to have
things to do. You still have to have goals.
You still have to, like-- Having a certain amount of
followers or money in the bank is not gonna, like,
suddenly make every day waking up be like,
"Oh, I'm complete. I don't have to do anything."
Like, you still have to have stuff to do,
-you know what I mean? -Absolutely.
I think that's the trap a lot of these creators fall into.
I mean, it's definitely something I fell into,
which is like, "Oh, maybe if I had 100,000 subscribers,
maybe I'd be happy," you know?
-Then the number keeps going up. -Yep.
Mine was just, "Could I make a living doing this?"
Could I just be my own boss, pay for my own stuff, and, like,
you know, have my own-- like, order the most expensive thing,
or maybe not the most expensive thing,
but order, like, the steak on the menu--
You've always told me that.
You went from chicken to steak. That was your, like--
Dude, for the longest time, I was always the guy that
ordered the cheapest item on the menu.
It just was, like, the default position.
It was, like, I get the chicken. [laughing]
You know you made it when you can get
the steak or whatever without--
Yeah. Give me that-- let me get that surf and turf, you know?
[laughing] We're going all out!
A lot of what we're experiencing is like the struggle that actors
experience in Hollywood, where they do, like--
you know, they'll do their art house films,
they'll do the ones that they're really passionate about,
and then they gotta do the studio films.
-Right. -And then they get locked into
a Marvel contract. They gotta do nine Marvel films
and they want to jump off the bridge, you know what I mean?
They're like, "Oh, my God!"
I guess the answer, then, for-- if anybody's listening or even
watching this right now-- I don't know what this is.
This is Josh and I having a conversation.
Maybe it'll turn into something.
But it's not a podcast. 100%, it's not a podcast.
We agreed that we would not make a podcast...
-[nuclear alarm] -Even though this is
kind of what this is.
Yeah, I think my wife said it the best.
She's like, "Josh, you really are only happy when you have
some unattainable goal, like when you're going after
something lofty that is very, very challenging
-and very difficult. -Yeah. Exactly the same for me.
"That's when you're in the zone, when you're happy."
And she's like, "you're the most unhappy when
you don't know what that goal is."
And I honestly feel like that's where I'm at right now.
I would bet that resonates with a lot of people, because that
felt like you were talking about me just there.
Is that from this generation of, like, social media,
of where we have to show everything? Or is that just--
-has that always been that way? -I really don't know.
Like, social media is definitely only within the last 15 years.
So there's definitely some crazy things going on
with the human species right now.
Maybe it was always there, but the frequency has increased.
I have this idea in my head-- and it could just be
some made-up version that doesn't exist,
I wasn't alive in the 50's or whatever, so--
but I had this idea where people just went to work
and they did their work and kept their mouths shut,
and that was that. I feel like today, nobody does that.
Everybody's got to have a mission and a purpose.
I remember reading something or watching a video
on hiring millennials-- and obviously this is already dated
because now we're into generation whatever
and we're the millennials-- But it was like, "To hire
a millennial, you need to offer them the following things,"
and it was like, "a sense of purpose
and a sense of making change in the world,"
I thought to myself, "What about all those guys and girls--"
well, I guess it was mostly men a long time ago--
"that just went to the factory and just made a thing?"
They didn't have a sense--
You're happy they gave you a parking spot with, like,
"President" or "CEO" on it, one of those little things.
-I'm not above it. -"Officer."
I'm the same way. Like, the idea of just doing a job
that just-- like, I can't do it.
It doesn't work well in my brain.
I need to be all stimulated and everything.
Social media evolved from something, you know?
Maybe call it, like, reality television, you know?
And then it's gonna evolve into something else.
And my brain hurts when I try to think about, like, what's next.
Like, what is next? Is it just gonna be porn?
-[laughing] -Like, everyone's just
having sex with everybody for free? You can have sex
with porn stars, it's all naked. Like, I don't know--
[laughing] That's the first thing you thought of?
I just think that we as society just so completely unwound.
Like, nobody is interested in process.
They're all interested in product. What's the end product,
-you know what I mean? -Fastest gratification possible.
-Exactly. -Which I suppose leads
your brain to the porn aspect. Sure. I get it.
I guess I'm more interested-- I've always been more interested
in the steps that get there. You know, like, all that
behind the scenes stuff of like, "I tried this, I tried that."
-Like a more detailed process? -Yeah.
"And I hit failure, and then I had an 'aha!' moment."
I'm always after the "aha" moments, I guess.
I guess, then, the answer to this question is that
Josh and I are gonna-- we're gonna try and do conversations
that are not a podcast, but just maybe--
And not porno.
It's not gonna be an OnlyFans or whatever. Um...
[both laughing]
Gerald, when are you starting your OnlyFans, bro?
Here's the big question for you, then:
What should we talk about, then, if this is--
so it's not a podcast.
[chuckling] So what should we talk about?
[Josh] What is your biggest struggle,
or one of your biggest struggles, with making episodes?
Like, how many hours is Gerald just stewing away
at his computer trying to, like-- [groaning]
like, make the ends connect, you know what I mean?
-I guess, like-- -Or do the ends always connect?
What I did in the last couple months is
I tried to get everything done,
and I also refused a lot of product options.
I thought, "I don't want to just be trapped where I'm only
reviewing products, I want to stop doing that a bit
and then see if I have ideas of things I want to do."
So now I'm in that kind of thing where I've cleared up
some time for myself, and now I'm pursuing ideas.
Now I've hit this new obstacle where I feel like
half the ideas I have, like,
"Well, that's no good for my channel. That's not a thing."
And some of them, honestly, are just screwy, absurdist ideas
that-- but I remember back to my early channel, when all I used
to make was weird, absurd videos, and it never did well.
Then I have this kind of notion in the back of my head of,
"if you do that, you're gonna kill your channel." You know?
[maniacal laughter]
You just opened up a large topic, which is, I think,
definitely good for talking about.
What do you think makes a successful channel?
Like, if you were to advise Gerald from three years ago,
who was making these weird videos.
I'd say the most predictable, like, where you can have
the best logical sense of success would be to,
like people say, niche down, choose something that
provides value, answer questions, basically,
that people will be searching for.
-Yeah. -Have a specific niche that
you're known for that feeds the algorithm correctly,
and then just nurture that until it grows into something.
That's eventually what I started doing to get to where I am now.
But I also know there's another avenue that is
harder to predict, harder to do,
which is more of you just market your videos for all of YouTube
based on-- we used to call it years ago
"trying to make a viral video." I don't believe so much in
trying to make a viral video, but more of just making
something kind of on-trend where you focus less on long tail SEO
and more on some sort of catchy title and thumbnail
that markets to people scrolling the website.
I mean, I think that's what TikTok is really good at, right?
Exactly. Whatever kind of trendy--
Whatever's catching. Yeah, exactly.
So pretty much anybody can ride that trend.
It's a different skill set, though,
being able to do that well.
-Yeah. -To know how to, you know,
MrBeast it or whatever, like, to know how to do trends
versus a skill set of, like, niche-ing down
and delivering the same sort of-- it's two different ideas.
-Right. -Both offer positives,
but also negatives, and the negatives over on
the one that I did-- and I guess you did too,
which is the niche-ing down angle-- the negatives are that
if you have something, sometimes it just doesn't fit.
Then you go, "Well, I guess I can't put that up there."
And then sometimes I feel an inertia or some kind of trap
from thinking, "Well, if I can't put up the silly videos
I want to put up, then I don't have any ideas."
Then I kind of get into a funk or something,
and I feel sometimes trapped where it's like, I can only make
these specific Gerald Undone videos that I've--
like, I put myself in that. And that, I guess, goes in
the same acting metaphor you were talking about,
where you get yourself pigeonholed into an idea.
-Well, like-- -But my audience isn't doing it.
That's the thing. It's a fear of some algorithm,
or fear of, like, the audience abandoning you.
Nobody's ever said to me,
"You can't make that video," or "It won't work."
You have this fear that, what?
You're gonna ruin your channel, I guess, right?
I don't know, maybe you're gonna be inauthentic
or you're gonna do something that your viewers
just don't know you for, so it's just not gonna do well,
and then it's gonna tank the views.
So as much as I say I don't really operate by subscribers
or views, there definitely is that pressure that comes in.
This could be kind of like a prologue to a little series
that we do that's not a podcast, but that, uh--
That's what we should call it. "Not A Podcast."
[both chuckling]
That would only make sense if you watch this one.
When people are talking about it, they're like,
"Oh, Josh and Gerald's Not A Podcast."
Maybe what we could do is we could satisfy both of
the problems that we have, you where you need quicker
turnaround content that you can film and do easily
between looking after the baby...
And you with something that's a little bit more--
[Gerald] When I just want to get some stuff off my chest
sometimes or whatever, where I just, like-- you know,
and we can find a way to maybe cut it up and market it
where it's actually related to camera stuff, you know?
[static crackling]
Sony's unleashing the new a7 IV.
Dream camera, what's in it, and would you want 6K30?
-[stammering] -I'm not a greedy man.
Yeah, I'm not gonna be greedy, you know?
'Cause, yeah, the Panasonics do that, right?
Know what? I'm just gonna switch to Panasonic.
That's it. That's the answer.