- God! This (beep) is not fair, man!
What does that mean?
- I don't know what it means!
- Okay, so like,
please put that down.
(laughing)
Thank you.
These videos are taking years off my life.
I'm John, I'm a private investigator.
Today I've been asked by Buzzfeed
for some reason, to figure out which one
of these subjects is the boss.
How about you? Would you join me?
- Yeah.
I'm Aidan.
- Aidan?
- Yeah, nice to meet you.
- That's my first question. Where are you from?
- I'm from Connecticut originally.
- Where do you live now?
- I live in LA, Silver Lake.
- What do you do?
- I work at Buzzfeed.
- What do you do?
- I work in media management, I'm the lead there.
- Media management, that sounds kinda vague.
- So I actually work with Stanley here,
we each have one person under us.
We do a lot of archiving and then,
like, redistribution of videos.
- So does stuff come off of, for example, like,
eventually get pulled off the social channels
but you guys have to back it up on drives?
- Yeah, like, glorified librarians.
- Okay, right on. Who's your boss?
- Me.
- You're the boss?
- I'm within post-production. But, yeah,
I'm a lead.
- Do you have employees that report to you
or that are, like, under you?
- Yeah, there's three.
- You're a lead, you said?
- Yeah.
- Okay. What's your football team?
- 49ers.
I'm not like Jets, Giants,
I don't subscribe to those teams.
- Okay.
- Are you an East Coast guy?
You seem offended.
- No, I like talking sports,
I find it interesting more than anything,
but no.
- Are you Tom Brady's brother?
- I'm not personally affronted,
no I'm not.
You said you do work with Stanley, right?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, so what's his role?
- He does more like the archiving side
of things, I do like the redistribution side of things.
- How'd you get the job?
- Through a friend of mine actually.
- Were there any sort of like cloak
and dagger behind closed doors,
turning people against him,
kind of plotting his downfall,
anything Shakespearean going on there?
- Yeah, Big time.
- Okay, so that would indicate your more
of like a team effort,
not necessarily the boss.
So how long have you been working at BuzzFeed?
- Bout a year and a half.
- All right, well I think I'm good for now Aidan.
Why don't you join me please.
- Hello
- What's your name?
- Destiny.
- What do you do here Destiny?
- Video producer and manager.
- What does that really mean?
- I kinda just help facilitate,
making sure all the needs are met for production,
look over the videos,
leave notes.
- What does that mean, making sure the needs are met?
- I guess if they have any questions about
like production or like the shoots that we have
or like just working with the editors
or just making sure everyone is cool.
- Yeah, but what does that mean?
- I don't know what it means.
- Okay, so like use this as an example,
this is one of the producers ideas
to shoot this video,
he needs a place to shoot it,
he has to book this room,
and schedule it right?
- Right.
- Does that run through you at all?
- Nah we have like a production team
with like coordinators who kinda handle that.
- Do they have anything to do with you?
- I mean I talk to them sometimes,
but not really.
- Okay well what is something
that your subordinates would need
that they would come to you asking for help with?
- Honestly, I have a lot of meetings.
I don't think their like, oh I need,
Destiny needs to approve this or see this.
It's more of like.
- Sounds easy
- Just there, It is.
- Most bosses don't really do any work so.
- True that.
- How are you?
- I'm good, how are you?
- I'm a little down,
I got my last one of these videos wrong so.
- I'm sorry.
- Kinda really hit my ego harder than I thought.
(buzzer)
- All right you got me!
I was close, but.
- You can't win 'em all.
- Yeah but I had a good run there for a while.
Also, I really have no idea what
the point of this video is,
I don't even know why I'm here really.
Sort of an existential thing I'm going through.
I just don't even know what questions
to ask you so I'm just kinda making small talk.
- Okay, that's fine.
- Have you seen any movies lately?
- I haven't.
- Really?
- Really, not lately.
- I've seen 3 this weekend
and I'm like dying to talk about movies,
but how long have you worked here?
- 7 months.
- So who's your boss?
- Well, I'm the boss.
It's weird even bosses here have bosses,
like it doesn't just stop,
like it you know.
- Am I supposed to figure out who three
of these people work for the fourth one, is that it?
So their all telling me their managers.
- There's really no way of you knowing.
I hope you know that.
- I don't really need that right now.
All right well that makes sense cause you can't
really seem to explain to me what a manager does.
- Yeah.
- So maybe you don't know anything about it.
- Maybe I don't.
- What's your biggest strength?
- I think communication.
- What do you think is a weakness that you may need
to work on?
Professionally.
- Time management.
- You keep getting pulled away
to these videos so.
- I mean.
- Maybe you could speak to your boss about that.
Thanks Destiny, I think I'm okay for now.
- Okay.
- You can head on back to the wall if you want.
- Great.
- Will you join me?
- Sure.
- Hello.
- What's up?
- What do you do here?
- I actually lead a team for
the archiving department of this company.
- How big is your team?
- It's like 4 people.
- Can you take me through like a day
or like a week with the archive department?
Cause God's honest truth it's all digital,
so like how hands on is an archiving process even?
- You can kind of get away
with doing a lot of nothing,
but there's a ton of videos we've made here,
and then we distribute it to our team,
then they have to like upload it to a cloud.
We otherwise have like these hard drives
but they're archaic and it's something we're phasing out,
that's technical stuff.
- As a matter of principle I don't trust clouds.
I mean I trust drives.
- Damn.
- I gotta be able to run into my burning house
and like grab something and run out with it.
- But if it's on the cloud you don't even have
to go into the burning house to begin with.
- Yeah but eventually the cloud is gonna
be the burning house.
- I'm gonna have to talk to my.
- Boss?
- Subordinates about that one.
- Subordinates?
- I mean you know it's a big company,
everyone's got a boss here.
- How long have you worked here?
- Going on like a year.
- How'd you get the job?
- My former roommate just kinda like plugged me in,
I didn't even have to interview.
How about that?
- You just showed up one day?
- Technically, yeah.
Nepotism is a hell of a thing.
- Did you go to college?
- Went to the University of New Orleans,
it was otherwise known as
the University of no opportunity
but you know here I am.
- Okay, so 4 people under you,
and what do they do?
- They have to like make sure everything's there
and then they have to like put it up in the cloud.
While everyone is like editing projects
but nobody knows what they're doing,
so they'll give us these projects
but they won't realize like half
the stuff in the actual video is like on their desktop.
- So you think all of the editors at BuzzFeed,
are kind of hacks and they're not good at what they do?
- Well I mean some of them are some of them aren't,
I can pinpoint some,
probably not the best idea.
(techno noise)
- I can too.
- There's 2 pens here.
- Please put that down.
(laughing)
Thank you, Stanley,
thanks for now I think I'm done.
Perhaps we'll chat later.
Will you join me?
What's your name?
- Becky.
- What do you do?
- I'm an attorney here at BuzzFeed.
- So what do you do on a daily basis?
- I do a lot of rights
and clearances reviews,
I confirm with our media management team
to make sure that all necessary releases
for people who are not BuzzFeed employees are signed,
and archived, and properly put with the videos.
I negotiate contracts,
both talent for internal and external people.
Production releases, location agreements
(echoes)
See this is why I don't get invited to parties,
I swear I'm fun.
- What's your title?
- Staff attorney.
- Do you have people that report to you?
- 1 directly and then I help out some folks in New York.
Do you wanna know if I've seen any movies?
I never get the fun questions.
- Yeah I guess you're right.
- I'm more than a set of law books, you know.
- All right, well I think I'm done for now Becky,
thanks.
Well this is just impossible to figure out without
just taking a wild guess.
It's almost like these videos have nothing
to do with being a private investigator at all.
Becky talks the talk,
she's obviously a lawyer,
but eventually I just kinda snapped out of it
and realized my brain had shut off
cause she had just kept talking about it.
Destiny, I'm pretty sure I know for a fact,
is a figure of some kind of authority here at BuzzFeed.
I kept asking her to describe what she does
and it really doesn't sound like she has a job at all.
Aidan, I've never seen before,
so maybe he's so important he usually can't be bothered
to come down here and shoot these things,
also referred to his job position as glorified librarians,
also he talked (bleep) to me in the green room.
Stanley, was talking a lot about what it means
to be a boss.
He said there's 4 people who work under him,
Aidan said there's only 1,
seems like maybe Aidan told a lie
and Stanley had to back it up.
Which begs the question why would Aidan lie for Stanley?
Becky's nodding with me,
- I think it's a good question.
- This guy's a troll.
- Stanley is getting defensive.
Well let me say this,
I think Becky should be the boss,
maybe I don't talk about movies with her as much
cause I'm intimidated by her.
Powerful women scare me.
These videos are taking years off my life.
This is going to destroy me if I get this wrong.
It could be anybody they're all in my head,
this is just unpleasant.
Destiny, will you come sit here?
Where'd you work before this?
- Amazon.
- Doing what?
- Video producing.
- Where was that, was this up in Washington?
- Seattle.
- Okay, how long have you lived in LA?
- About 7 months.
- How big is your staff?
- 5 people.
- How many videos do they produce a week?
- 50 videos every 2 months,
it's really confusing,
I would really love to spend all day breaking it down but.
- So what are your deliverables?
- Define deliverables.
- What the hell do you do?
(laughing)
- We've been through this John,
I do manage a small team of producers.
I'm not behind them like do this,
do that it's more so just like overseeing them,
I watch them.
- Okay thanks.
Aidan will you come here please?
Yeah thanks Destiny.
Where did you work before BuzzFeed?
- I worked at Showtime in New York for a while
and a small fortune company called Born Ready Films as well.
- What'd you do at Showtime, for example?
- I was in the creative services department
so I was a PA.
- What's your favorite movie?
- Good Will Hunting.
- Who's your favorite actor?
- Maybe Christian Bale.
- Okay. Thank you.
Becky will you join me here?
So do you run the legal department?
- Well no,
so we have a GC and then underneath GC we have,
general council, under that we have.
- I know.
- Associate general council,
people don't.
- Okay.
We have associate general councils,
I reporting to the associate general councils for IP.
- Okay.
Do you like country music?
- Yeah.
- Who's your favorite country musician?
- Either Dolly Parton or Patsy Cline.
- What's your favorite TV show?
- Of all time? Six Feet Under.
- All right, thanks.
- I appreciate that.
- Awe man, this is (bleep) impossible.
You know it's better to just be completely duped,
what's worse is when I feel closer,
I almost get it but I'm off a little bit.
All right, so Becky tells me she's not
the boss and look we gotta talk history,
I've seen Destiny and Becky a lot in these circumstances,
but what does that mean?
You'd think if someone you know was important
or like in charge they wouldn't be bothered
with this sort of thing.
I've never seen Aidan in my life,
not that that matters really I mean there are lots
of people I haven't seen yet.
Stanley and I, this isn't
the first time we've sparred,
battle of wits.
- That's a rough one.
- Not for me.
Aidan talks the talk,
I did catch him in some inconsistencies.
I mean it's totally random.
Could be Becky,
Becky would love to get one over on me.
Aidan likes Christian Bale,
I respect that.
I think it's Destiny.
(triumphant marching band music)
(clapping)
Dude I'm gonna be having nightmares about you for weeks man.
- Can I get the sound clip where he says I should
be the boss though?
I'd like to add that to my LinkedIn.
- Now I'm in a good mood.
These guys know I was in a very bad mood
before this video began.
God, this (bleep) is not fair man.
Becky talked a lot,
as I mentioned I couldn't,
I wanted to process it,
I do find it very interesting,
but I took a lot of notes on Aidan
and obviously you must work in this world.
I don't think anybody was like completely lying to me,
except Stanley.
Aren't you an editor?
- No.
- Okay. Well.
(laughing)
I guess I was wrong.
I was like if Becky was like at the top of
the food chain of legal,
she's gotta have more important things to do
than these videos,
but by that definition
if any of these people is in charge or manager
or whatever the shtick is,
the same logic applies.
I thought about Destiny
and I've observed sometimes how people kind of interact
with her out and about in the hallways
and stuff,
there's a certain there's a kind of deference there.
So I don't know if she was telling the truth
but the way she described being a manager,
you just watch other people do their jobs,
I guess was kind of convincing.
I think Aidan came in here he wanted to kill,
and he almost got me.
And listening to Becky talk about how big BuzzFeed is
and how vast their whole legal spider web is,
I just felt like if you were in charge of that,
you probably don't even like the internet.
You know, you probably like live
and breathe law and you know whatever torte reform
or whatever the hell lawyers do, I don't know.
- I would love to talk about torte reform.
- So, ultimately I got Becky off
the list and Destiny was
the last one there.
I was not convinced of Destiny,
but she had the least things going against her.
So that's that.
There's stress here there's pressure.
But you know that's what heroes have to go through,
I guess.
(zestful music)