Movie Franchise Crossovers and Podcast Monetization

You're tuned in to altered geek Yes, so back

to what I was saying cats look like a freaking

nightmare hellscape Like I people are going to

have like fever dreams about it It looks I can't

believe they thought it's a good idea to come

out the same day of Star Wars though What studios

producing it? Doesn't matter. It's gonna fail.

Yeah, let me see here It's not enough to bankrupt

the studio, but it's gonna impact their financial

something fierce like is it Sony let's say Sony

I was gonna say like Like even furry fans like

are would they be into this because it doesn't

look no they hate it. It's creepy It's weird.

There was I was watching internet today about

a month ago and the furry community hates it

Here, that's what is it cats the movie? Yeah.

Oh, it's universal Oh, that's gonna bomb anyway

because everything they do sucks Like they they

have not had Universal really hasn't had a good

Amblin Entertainment. So you're talking Spielberg?

He's the executive producer. Yeah Why? I changed

his name to Senora Spielberg. Now, you know,

it's really funny. It says directed by Tom Hooper

My eyes while focusing on it went Toby Hooper

Yes, I would watch the Texas Chainsaw Cats massacre

I was like, oh my, if that poster says Toby Hooper

on it, I will actually go see it because then

I'd know the whole movie would be like, it'd

be like 35 minutes of this musical and then it

would just descend into madness. Like I would

love if a movie. I would pay so much money to

see that. I can just imagine Doug rolling over

right there. I'd fall out of my wheelchair. In

high school, I remember in my film class, I'm

like 17, and my teacher goes, all right, Alex,

I was like, oh, that's not how you make a horror

movie. And he goes, well, Alex, what's your idea?

What's your big idea? What would be the scariest,

terrifying, best publicity stunt for a movie

ever? And I was like, do you really want to know?

And he's like, yeah, I said, you don't market

it as a horror film. You make a horror movie

that is a normal family drama about like a family

adopting a dog or, you know, like, think like

Beethoven type thing. And you get through the

movie and you go into and first of all, you release

or you film two versions. You film one where

it has a happy ending, where everybody's with

the dog and everything's happy, friendly. And

that's what you release to the MPAA. And I said,

I prefaced it by saying. By the way, teacher,

you have to be willing to be sued for this for

what you're because what you're about to do is

because it would technically be fraud. You film

you film that ending where it's like a fan movie,

you get rated your G rating. And but what the

real ending is, everything's the same until the

last 10 minutes when everybody's sitting down

to dinner. Then it just it ends with him taking

the dog out the back and walking away. And then

my teacher just looked at me and he goes. Oh

my God, Alex. And he's like this flabbergasted.

And that's how you make a horror movie nobody

expects. And we could become the greatest horror

film of all time. He goes, dude, you go to take

this. But the thing is you market it as one thing.

The MPA sees it as one thing. And I said, and

here's the best part. I said. Before you submit

it to and you can only work for that opening

night the very first showing and it can't be

something Cento digital It has to be something

that's open and premieres all at once but I said

what you do is you get that not only do you get

the g -rating you send that family film that

has no swearing and anything to the I forget

the company that does it they're the ones that

give it those white doves and You can get away

with it for the first showing at like 7 p .m.

On Friday night And then it becomes the biggest...

It becomes the biggest news story in entertainment

Hollywood history. But it can only be done once.

Because somebody accidentally submitted it to

the theaters all at once. Yeah. It can only be

done once, and you would go down in infamy as

the... You'd be infamous, but you'd be known

as the person that made the biggest hoax movie

in Hollywood history. Also... Is that not the

definition of horror when you have no idea that

it's coming? It's true. That would certainly

make some headlines. That would be the best horror

film ever. But and now that everybody else has

heard this, I don't think it can be done now

that I've said it. But that is that is my that's

my idea. So if they did that with cats, I'd be

OK with it. That was my roundabout way of saying

that you could do that. But this is one of those

cases where it might be more funny to hear how

how messed up Alex at 17. That was my horror

film. That was my idea. And I just remember my

teacher coming to me afterwards, and he's like,

Alex, as horrifying as that was, he goes, you're

actually right. It's the perfect horror film,

but you can only do it once. So if you're just

joining the show right now, welcome. Welcome

to Altered Geek. Of course, I'm Steve Phillips.

And joining me in this adventure into geekdom,

obviously, is Mike the Birdman Don and Alex.

I promise I'm not that psycho. Anymore. No, you

are evil! I mean that was half my life ago, so...

This probably went from the guy... Coming from

the guy who made me put barnyard animal sounds

throughout the entire episode last week. I promise

I wouldn't do it. I won't swear this time, I'll

just disturb you this time. Yeah, that's a little

bit better. Since we're talking about movie franchises

here, and that was the question for last week...

about basically what do we think about movie

franchises and all? Are they trying too hard

to create universes? Are some best left in the

past as trilogies or things that change the status

quo either by misdirection in trailers or taking

characters back to their corporate playgrounds?

Especially this one would change the status quo.

Yeah, it would destroy it. It would destroy the

MPAA. They would have to implode and create something

new. You'd have to be willing to lose like 50.

You'd have to be willing. You'd have to go into

hiding. You'd have to be willing to never release

a film in the States again. Or, yeah, you'd have

to be willing to release things direct to video.

You'd never have a chance of releasing things

to theaters ever again. And you'd have to be

willing to lose every single penny that you ever

made from that film. Do you know what's funny?

Netflix would probably still hire you. Netflix

or somebody or I'd be able to make films in Europe

for the rest of my life. Think Netflix would

hire you they I mean look what they did with

Adam Sandler or like well they would do it Like

the I would film that movie for like a five million

dollar budget it would get sued into high heaven

Netflix or somebody would pick up the legal bill

and then they'd be like able to market saying

hey the most controversial film director in history

we signed them for you know, whatever and then

whatever I watch just because the first thing

I make would be super watched and then everything

else would be like It would be mundane by comparison

because what can you ever do again that's that

crazy? And that's why Warner Brothers did the

Banana Splits movie. Or you know what I do? After

that, I only make children's films. And the reason

is you'll never know. Everybody will watch because

like, is this the one where he's going to do

something friggin crazy again? But you get high

ratings because everybody would watch it. Exactly

and and the thing is you make like 30 of those

movies and by the end they're like people like

oh it's not gonna happen and then you slip something

in or but like you would have an insane because

every time you release a movie be like is this

the one where it's gonna creep you so you'd have

all these like 20 year olds in these theaters

or watching TV like is it gonna happen and they'd

watch and analyze every frame trying to see if

if something was slipped in But you'd have to

make sure that your entire process was guarded.

Not one person involved in the editing process

could speak. You'd have to do it very Robert

Origa style, where you do the editing yourself.

Yeah, you'd have to keep it under lock and key

and secure server. Yeah, or any of the creepies.

stuff that you do or if you do slip something

in or again I wouldn't necessarily have to because

you make it secretive like oh he films extra

scenes on his own and I would have to film stuff

myself and then edit it myself and If nobody

if everybody saw maybe 20 % of the film that

they're working on and you had like four crews

working on different things it would be difficult

for them to Collaborate and see the whole picture.

So you'd have to be very very secretive So to

swing things back to Steve's original question

talking about franchises I was looking I've actually

been thinking about this all week in terms of

There are franchises. I like I think there are

franchises that have gotten too big for Too big

for their kind of britches for example, and one

example. This is the alien franchise Alien 1

2 3 and even resurrection self -contained Cool

Prometheus was an experiment and it was ultimately

I feel unnecessary I don't need to know where

where the space jockey came from I think it was

better left as a mystery and then alien covenant

explaining that they wiped out the engineer civilization

and now an Android is technically responsible

for the xenomorphs It takes away a lot from it.

I still like that one better than Prometheus.

And it was so, so incredibly for somebody Ridley

Scott has done some of the best cinematography

and lighting on his film in history of Hollywood,

like Kingdom of Heaven, I still think is the

best shot film ever. Just just based on his lighting

and filming it on 70 millimeter and all that

crazy stuff. But this it was so dark. and so

gray you couldn't even see like I saw it in IMAX

so it's brighter and I was like this is it like

the only film there's two films that have been

that dark and I almost fell asleep at other than

that one was Thor the Dark World and the other

was Chronicles of Narnia what was the the Dawn

Treader no the Prince Caspian or something yeah

That one. One of those was incredibly like everything

was blue and muted and like almost black and

white. And he was like, oh, I'm going to fall

asleep. And that's the look he went. And it was

like, it doesn't inspire people to the series.

The series was like bright and colorful, but

dark. And he went dull and dark. Another franchise,

cause like Steve talked about this on creating

universes, I think two that worked together well

and could be expanded further into a shared universe

was Freddy and Jason. Because at the end of Nightmare,

or at the end of Friday the 13th, part nine,

Freddy's glove drags Jason's mask down the hill.

Then in 2003 we had Freddy versus Jason. If you

told me that Chucky existed in the same universe,

I would be okay with that. Which version of Chucky?

The Brad Dorff version. So basically the one

that's more spiritual? The franchise. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, the one with the voodoo. And even to further

expand upon that, in some of the early drafts

for Freddy versus Jason, at the end of the movie,

Pinhead shows up and says what seems to be the

problem gentlemen So if you wanted to combine

all the horror movie monsters into one shared

universe, it's like kaiju, but with murderous

maniacs I'm okay with that. I'd like me some

Candyman mix in there and What else would be

good? It would have to be something recognizable

maybe pumpkin head I mean you could go leprechaun,

but you could go That would be so stupid No,

you know because that's going too far. No the

Jeepers creepers thing. Oh The creeper creeper.

Yeah, see that's okay I don't think Michael Myers

would fit Because Michael Myers is almost a little

too grounded into reality now. Really? Yeah,

not really a mortal Yeah, you could go with what

else has had like a long storied Maybe the guy

from phantasm, but he's an alien. So not so you

know, it doesn't really plus Angus Scrimm is

dead. So yeah And if you really wanted to have

the ultimate team up when everything's all said

and done You have them before he gets too old

to do his own stunts Bruce Campbell Yeah, you

could have as far as heroes have him with I'm

trying to think is there there's not really any

other heroes in horror films that span multiple

not Really? I mean, there was in the comic books

for Ash versus Jason versus Evil Dead. They had

the dream warriors came back like, um, Nancy

came back somehow. I think even though she died

nightmare three and the other survivors from

Friday the 13th, but there is no heroin. You

could get Tommy Jarvis from the Friday the 13th

movies, but he's been played by multiple people.

I guess if you want to bring back Corey Feldman.

Yeah, he's too busy trying to make music. But

yeah, like that's the only franchise I think

if you wanted to build it out to be big and stupid

and it wouldn't break things. Alien needs to

shrink down because involving the Predator stuff.

Yes It is in the comics from the 1990s and there

had been alien versus predator movies But neither

of them were really good If you had any interesting

ideas if you really wanted to and I honestly

think it could work It depends on on the tone

they go for and it's gonna depend on Getting

a few franchises together But at one point they

were released owned and released by the same

company and that would be doing a RoboCop versus

Terminator Yes, that could work as a good one

because Orion is back and Orion was the original

release company for both so I mean you could

do it where It would have you don't even need

It would have you don't need a basically D -Day

has been pushed back. He keeps getting pushed

back always in the films, right? well, let's

say it gets pushed back to a point where RoboCop

exists and You could you could make it where?

You could literally make it where Robocop is

the protector, because Robocop, being computerized,

sees Skynet, the virus, starting to take over.

Have you read the original comics? No. Okay.

So you don't even need to change that much action.

This would actually work. So it turns out Skynet

sends back a Terminator to Detroit to kill somebody.

I can't remember who, uh, the human resistance

sends back someone to, um, but it turns out the,

Oh yeah. Okay. Here's what it is. The Terminators

send back Terminators to protect Robocop. the

human resistance sends back a human resistance

fighter to kill Robocop because Robocop's brain

patterns is what Skynet is based on. So if Robocop

dies, Skynet will never exist. So when Robocop

goes to interface with a computer at some point,

Skynet copies his brain patterns and becomes

self -aware. The human resistance fails and Robocop

gets reborn in the future as a computer consciousness

who takes over a Terminator factory, rebuilds

his body, joins the human resistance and eventually

destroys Skynet, goes back in time to stop the

Skynet satellite and then the human history proceeds

as normal and Robocop just has a nice life and

the Terminators never exist. It was pretty cool.

This book came out in 1991, I want to say. Do

you know what else? I was thinking it's a weird

combo, but I would like to see it personally

in the franchises. Like, we saw the Turtles and

Batman animated movie and that worked out surprisingly

well. I think Turtles and Transformers or Turtles

and G .I. Joe would be interesting to look at.

Well, funny you should mention... The whole dynamic

of mixing franchises. I'm gonna read this this

Email I got from scanner 51 And it kind of leads

into that he says I want to say that the three

-person show last week was great a real roundtable

Discussion took place and that was cool some

days ago someone in Twitter said that they didn't

like certain characters crossing over He didn't

need to see Batman and TMNT meet. I know I along

with TFG when Mike defended that series. I also

commented on that these crossovers are kind of

cool. The JLA He -Man was okay. He -Man versus

Injustice was okay. Power Rangers, Justice League.

Yeah. He says, lately I've been reading the DC

Hanna -Barbera crossovers. Those are great and

fun. Plus the Hanna -Barbera series where all

of the Hanna -Barbera characters crossover was

great too. The DC Looney Tunes was some of the

best books in 2017. And he says, Who would you

like to see cross over? Hmm And this could be

even in in film like not just Like I would suggest

we keep it to something that could possibly happen

So because it's not like we're we're ever going

to get like Deadpool Batman Well, they did make

they did make the Batman TMNT movie, so. Well,

but this would be Marvel, DC, not, you know what

I mean? Like, you would not see, you would not

see, like, Spider -Man. You could see G .I. Joe,

possibly. Well, wait, wait, actually, you could

see, you have a better chance now of having Spider

-Man appear in, in Justice League than in the

movies that you do of having him in the MCU,

so. Yeah, especially after, you know. today's

news. That's what I mean. So, so yeah, like they

said, make a shared universe and it's going to

suck. Yeah. Um, getting out of the realms of

comic, cause the problem is comics have so many

crossovers as it is. Let's think of like franchises

that are big. Like, okay, I would anything sci

-fi that has like multiverses involved, like

how freaking cool would it be if, uh, you know,

the, the star gate SG one team. you know went

through a stargate they were hit by lightning

or whatever magical shit happens in some of those

episodes and you know they end up um you know

on a ship and as they walk out it's the enterprise

or or better yet they end up in a galaxy far

far away a long time ago yeah yeah or or yeah

or that would work too but like think um Don't

know because I don't know how far Mike's and

Mike were you at the part in where the replicators

show up and they just The last episode I saw

was where they found them on that nuclear sub.

Okay, so the replicators what would happen if

the replicators merged for the Borg? Daleks or

the Cybermen because there there was Like Star

Trek had from IDW had a ton of crossovers like

there was Justice League and Star Trek There's

a few other ones like they work well as far as

Because it's got to be things that are realistically

able to happen because some companies play nice

and some companies don't we've we know now that

Nickelodeon slash Paramount are willing to play

ball with anybody So, you know what properties

they are basically GI Joe unless we who knows

These are all owned by Hasbro Hasbro now body

one in Canada. That's gonna be their distribution

art. They're not gonna be using paramount anymore

Power Rangers Transformers. This should happen.

Well, Power Rangers G .I. Joe. Power Rangers

Transformers work really well. Oh, yeah. Like,

I'm honestly surprised that there wasn't a Megazord

Dino bot set at Comic -Con this year. It may

be universal, but if Universal and Hasbro or

whoever has the rights to Power Rangers would

want to do it, Pacific Rim and Power Rangers.

Like it's basically like Pacific Rim was basically

Power Rangers if it was more realistic in quotes

Like it was more grounded made for adults that

would work What else I'd like to see and I kind

of did this on terrible warriors a couple of

years ago is I crossed Dragon Ball Z with Sailor

Moon I've seen that video. It's a it's a pretty

bad porno But I'm talking about like having the

like the kingdom of the moon versus like here's

freezes army What would they do? That would be

kind of cool to see work It just depends on who

owns the actual manga rights over there, right?

Like yeah, because I could see Akira Toriyama

writing a really cool story around well I mean,

if you wanted to look at it like they do those

crossovers all the time in the fighting games,

the jump fighting games. But like as far as a

true series or a movie, I would say Fist of the

North Star and Dragon Ball have Ken versus Goku

versus Goku. Yeah, like Goku is basically invincible.

But what happens when Ken hits him with, you

know, his technique for makes his head explode

or that one punch man versus Ken or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, so the people fans have been doing

those sort of crossovers all the time with like

was a death battle on that Yeah, but as far as

like if we're going because anime is another

one too where it's like you could have million

crossovers for going live -action Large franchises.

I would like to see the X files crossover with

something else They did an X -Files Ghostbusters

years ago. It only ran like two issues. I think

it would have to be like, cause X -Files has

had some silly moments, but it's not, it's more

grounded in, not grounded in reality, but you

know what I mean? It's, it doesn't have that

same feel. I think X -Files, what if you took

the X -Files and you put it in something you

wouldn't expect? Like it's X -Files crossed over

with, um, Universal Classic Monsters? Not, uh,

Twilight Zone. No, like, like, Like the conjuring

or or something you put him in something that's

that's getting money now or Like because it can't

be something like saw where it's a it's a person

it has to be something With a supernatural sort

of edge to it. Well jigsaw could be supernatural

No, you know what I would like I would like X

files crossed with final destination Where they're

basically having to uncover they're like is it

death or is it we know is there something else

involved with this or? One thing I'd like to

see this done and this movie kind of did it because

all the characters are public domain anyway You

guys remember that really terrible Hugh Jackman

Van Helsing movie. I liked it. I liked it when

I saw yours I want to see that again but maybe

expand the roster of people he can fight. Like

maybe if they maybe if they redid League of Extraordinary

Gentlemen, but made it good. Yeah, because like

there's something about the Van Helsing character

I've always really liked. I like him fighting

the universal monsters. That's cool. Maybe revisit

my idea of fighting. Like other monsters like

literally if you had a descendant of Van Helsing

and he must destroy Jason Voorhees Why not have

Van Helsing team up with Sherlock Holmes? That

would be cool that I never quite thought like

basically they have their own like it's even

you could make it you know fish out a water story

where they're transported in time and it's like

not like the 20th or what 22nd century or anything

you transport them to modern time and they're

basically run like they they acclimate but they're

running like a detective agency and there's like

supernatural aspects to it um so you got like

these guys that are from the 1800s that are now

you know 200 years in the future almost and they're

you know Sherlock Holmes would acclimate really

fast because he has an inquisitive mind and would

do all the reading Van Helsing would adjust to

the weaponry and learn the way of the land. And

then you'd have to have what, maybe one or two

more people. So who else would be? Watson. Well,

Watson would be there, obviously. I guess you'd

have something public domain. Maybe get like,

I guess it would be like League of Extraordinary

Gentlemen, because you could get like Alan Quartermaine,

or you could get... Invisible Man. Tarzan. It

could be like Defenders of the Earth, only not

terrible or just terrible. I love that show.

What I love is that I thought they made up Lothar

because in that cartoon, I'm like Lothar. I'm

like, who? He just looks like a normal dude.

I'm like, why does he look like a normal dude?

So Lothar is real? Yes. Oh, what's funny is I

saw. They made fun of it. They're like Lothar

of the hill people. Oh, no, he he's real and

they changed him because he's Extremely racist

in the first couple versions. He's he's a savage

from Africa is how he's described and He's drawn

like full -on minstrel caricature. It's pretty

bad Because remember it's from this comic strip

from the 20s and 30s, right? Then they made some

changes to him. But like even back then they

always said that he was like He was a good person

and loyal and this and this and this. But like

a lot of the comments were like, yeah, he's loyal,

but he's a savage. And it's like, oh, does anybody

own the rights to the Phantom character right

now? Yes. I think it's King features. And then

I think the Phantom should make a comeback. Well,

you know, you could have done a crossover with

the Phantom of the Shadow. You could do you could

do one with all of the those characters, all

the ones from like, I think King features owns

most of them and they've pimped out some of their

releases to Mill Creek before. But the Phantom

was was that universal that put that out? I think

so. I'm pretty sure. So there's a few of them.

And the best fucking tagline for a superhero,

not just OK. One of my favorite superhero taglines

is your friendly neighborhood Spider -Man. But

honestly, that just sits above that. The Phantom,

the ghost who walks. That is awesome. So and

I'm sorry, Steve, I swore around. I'm sorry.

That line is so cool. That's the first time.

And I was genuinely trying to. I'm sorry. It's

excited. Let him be excited. I love the Phantom.

Even Phantom 2049, which is admittedly is a terrible

super Nintendo game. But yeah, the Phantom, the

shadow. OK, so they own they own. They own Flash

Gordon, they also have Mandrake the Magician.

Flash Gordon, Doctor Who! That would be cool!

But I'm thinking, I'm surprised King Features

hasn't been trying to get their stuff off the

ground because I thought they were public domain.

No, they still own the copyrights. They licensed

them out to other comic. I think it was Dynamite

and a few other companies have done them in the

past. But they have Flash Gordon, Mandrake the

Magician, The Phantom. They own Popeye, but you're

not mixing Popeye with that. Okay, so here's

what they there's a bunch that they still own

But like you're not putting Betty Boop in there.

That's not gonna be any fun You could get a team

together like defenders of the earth was King

features So you could do that with think of it

would be the Phantom Mandrake the magician flash

Gordon You could put Lothar in there if you want

to But you you could get those and then like

the shadow That would work they sort of cover

every type There would be inevitable people like

saying hey, you know mandrake the magician isn't

that just like Isn't isn't that just like the

sorcerer supreme sort of but he wears a top hat

any Yeah, but you could do that you could do

those films like that would be There are names

people have heard of, especially Flash Gordon.

Yeah, because honestly, I would really like to

see a Doctor Who Flash Gordon crossover. Or like

I said, live action Defenders of the Earth would

honestly be pretty cool. I mean, cut out the

stupid kids, but keep the four core characters.

Think that'd be awesome or hell even to go further

back in time If you wanted to make an old time

defenders of the earth, you could do King Arthur

Sinbad Robin Hood Joan of Arc I Don't know. I'm

just picking names now But you know something

like swords and sorcery if you wanted to do something

like that. I think that'd be pretty cool Dragon

Ball Z and Mega Man You can feel me staring at

you can't you Although I could plausibly come

up with a storyline for that if you gave me two

minutes, um But not like I I'm gonna send you

guys in the chat It's a strip with Mandrake the

magician and Lothar because yeah, they have they

had to make some changes Basically, it's not

as bad as I remember seeing some of them so But

like, here's a caption. So it just says, uh,

Mendrix says, enjoy yourself, Lothar. And he

goes, me go for walk. Oh God. They made him dumber

sounding than the Hulk sucks because his character

in the cartoon was actually pretty cool. He was

just, he was a bro from the hood basically. Well,

who was that guy? In sin bad who was he was the

black dude who had all the all like the friggin

throwing knives Who was that? Oh, he was made

up for the Canadian show. I think he was pretty

cool, too I really enjoyed his kid. That's a

show. I wish that had gotten more love So I thought

it well ran for two years. It was it was basically

Canadian Well, I was a Canadian basically all

those shows were filmed here or in like New Zealand

The guy in that was it was No, the older brother

was do bar and that's the guy that voiced beast

in the x -men cartoon It was wrong guy. It was

no It was wrong gar the mute warrior. That's

the guy you're thinking of he was cool but yeah,

they I mean you could do like if you pull them

together you could do Robin Hood mixed with King

Arthur mixed with you could do a bunch of stuff

like that and that would but if we're talking

about franchises that were already big sometimes

they get so big you can't merge them or like

like steve said if you you can stretch them too

thin which is what happened with x -men like

they ran out of stuff to do unless they spent

a lot more money they there wasn't any point

in doing anything else with i think the problem

with the x -men movies is they got a little too

ambitious like to do a villain like apocalypse

You have to have the right script and it wasn't

strong. Well, they shouldn't done apocalypse

unless they could have made it three and a half

hours and made it for like three hundred million

dollars. And you could have like, OK, here's

the thing. Apocalypse should have been saved

for when they merged into the MCU as as like

an end of a phase villain. Yeah. Because you

could have done the whole, you could have done

the whole like five part episode that they did

on the TV show. Like have them being lost through

time while he's recharging. Like you could have

done so much there and they didn't. And I feel

like they're smarter doing the Deadpool movies

where they have these like more smaller, more

straightforward plots. They're setting things

up like Mr. Sinister in Deadpool 2. So they're

doing things like that, but There wasn't enough

done with Wolverine. They should have had at

least one more film with him. I'm kind of surprised.

I know it's a lot of physically grueling work

getting in that kind of shape. But at the same

time, he's still young enough he could do another

film or have his character be in Deadpool. And

then there's a way to not have him be on screen

100 % of the time. So he only has to basically

be in shape for half the movie. I'm trying to

think of other franchises that should Cross over

I know in December there's Power Rangers Ninja

Turtles, which should be pretty cool I'm actually

kind of looking for that except during a really

weird time though for some reason The Green Ranger

teams up with shredder. So it's during the green

with with like evil time period. So, okay I'm

down for that Um, let me see what else would

be interesting Needle Borg's Hellraiser That

would be And just if it's live -action you just

have Jay Leno play the the Elvis slash Frankenstein

I Forget what they called Flavor I wanted to

say Ruby, but I knew it and I knew that wasn't

right. Um, let me see. I'm trying to think of

Ghostbusters goes with a number of franchises

surprisingly. Well, um Again, there's a Transformers

Ghostbusters crossover happening right now. I

haven't read any of it though So I'm hoping it's

good. I know Ghostbusters has crossed with Transformers

before this there was a Ninja Turtles Ghostbusters.

There was Ghostbusters X -Files. Okay I've got

one because they basically killed the franchise

Hellboy and Constantine that would be a decent

team up Just like the BPRD with the Justice League

dark or the BRPD with the X -Files Imagine Molder

running into Hellboy. Imagine Molder running

into John Constantine. Yeah, like that would

be fascinating and if handled right. Basically

open his world up. Instead of only focusing on

what's up in the sky, what's all around us. So

that's a good thought. I like that. Let me see

what else would work. I'm trying to think if

there's anything transform. Transformers and

GoBots, I don't know if that's ever been done.

I know there's been references in the comics,

like, like what? They've kind of crossed over.

It would happen in a heartbeat if Hasbro bought

Tonka. Because I'm not saying like. You know

what you should do? They should do G .I. Joe's

Transformers and then have a competing company.

Just like they came up with the stupid Playmobil

movie now, they should do a GoBots and Mask.

Combine those together and they could go head

to head and then one could destroy the other.

Mask and Transformers wouldn't be a bad team

up. I think Hasbro talked about combining all

of their different universes, all of their different

comic series to create one universe. Michael

just wants a Ponybot. Yes. DJ poem three, you

never know. I'm trying to think of other things

that might be interesting cuz One thing that

might work, but I don't know The world isn't

set up for it but I like the politics of it if

you could take the politics of Game of Thrones

and Insert that in into D &D, but that's just

taking a theme out of something like Tyrion Lannister

is not gonna last very long in the Forgotten

Realms just because and Daenerys Targaryen would

try her dragon shit and Some ancient dragons

gonna kick her friggin ass Or a lich well West

you could use you could put Westworld and put

it in the same universe as a matrix Robocop will

Robocop or now the matrix something like that

that would work There's the matrix and Terminator

work surprisingly well together Yeah, I'm trying

to think of Like I'm in my brain I'm thinking

Harry Potter and something else, but I'm trying

to think okay I actually had a this was something

I came out with when I was in college I was sitting

at a lunch table talking with some of my nerd

friends and We got on the subject of Harry Potter

and I was ranting about Transformers because

of course I was and I actually came up with with

a storyline Conceivably how Transformers and

Harry Potter could work? together and it basically

it all it all was the storyline was that Megatron

and Voldemort were working together to protect

the Horcruxes. So Megatron wanted to learn the

secret of splitting his spark. Well he wanted

to split his spark into different pieces so he

could never be killed. like Voldemort so Voldemort's

like you help me and I'll help you achieve immortality

so the Decepticons and the Death Eaters teamed

up and obviously Optimus Prime and Harry Potter

and Bumblebee at Hogwarts and it was magical

stupidity but I did come up with a conceivable

reason for this to happen so the Battle of Hogwarts

would be way cooler if they had Autobots and

Decepticons You know what? You're not wrong I

Was thinking it's a kind of obvious but like

Power Rangers and Voltron. Yeah, I guess that's

pretty much slam dunk there Lino and He -Man

working together, so you have Mumra and Skeletor

fighting each other or something like that to

team up against Eternia or Thundera or something.

Evil Lin teams up and tries to get the eye of

Thundera. I don't know. Or you could just do

Scooby -Doo and literally any franchise. The

fact that it worked with Supernatural surprised

me. Well, and isn't there one with Weird Al now?

Weird Al and Urkel and somebody, I saw another

piece online just recently about Scooby -Doo.

He's crossing over all these really weird things.

It's like they don't even care anymore. They're

like, people will watch whatever we put out.

And for the record, I would watch Scooby -Doo.

My God, do I hate him with a passion. What about

Scooby -Doo, but like Robocop Scooby -Doo dog?

No, no, no, no and while we're on that fact Steve

you're gonna have to bleep this one, but fuck

yogi bear I hate him too. I went on a rant on

Twitter. I wanted to fight him with nunchucks

No Okay, how about Flintstones scooby? You know

what that could work if You had scooby -doo either

go back to the past or the Flintstones come to

the future Fred Flintstone has to work together

with them to get home. That could work. Like

their spirits are haunting where bedrock used

to be or something? Yeah. And they're like, hey,

guys, you need to help us get back to our time

or help us get back to our bodies. And Fred,

Velma, and Daphne are like, OK. So that could

conceivably work. I'm surprised that hasn't happened

already. Hell, we. We've had the Jetsons in WWE,

so anything is possible. Hell, you cross wrestling

with a surprising amount of properties and pretty

much anything that works with diminishing return

on results. I think G .I. Joe, like a G .I. Joe

cartoon movie with like it's already been done,

like Sergeant Slaughter, right? So you could

introduce more wrestlers as Joes. Yeah. I'd kind

of like to see them revisit that again, actually.

Because that would be kind of fun. And if they

wanted to get kids into it again, like they used

to back in the 80s, I don't see why they couldn't.

But I guess it's all up to Vince in marketing

now. Yeah, because I think we're saying a lot

of these because they're not so big that companies

wouldn't consider it. But you really can't do

Like, in live action movie form, Batman with

anything that's not from DC. Like, they would

just never allow it. You know what could work?

Because it's worked in comic form before. They

had a Batman Spawn series that came out in the

90s, and that was interesting. Okay. Spawn and

Constantine. Because it's all both dealing with

hell. Yep. Or, um... Would like to see This would

be more a meet -up or maybe a fight the DC character

hitman and the Punisher or ooh It's not really

a It's not so much a crossover, but it's a team

up. I'd like to read the question and Batman

Give me animorphs and anything else from like

the 90s scholastic books You like a scholastic

team up -a -thon. Animorphs and Transformers

could work surprisingly well, especially if you

did the Beast Wars era Transformers. Yeah. No,

leave it. I was waiting for him to say that.

Yeah, that series does not need to be touched.

I'm trying to think if there's anything that

would work with that, though. Not that I can

think... With which? With Beast Wars. I'm trying

to... Just because its narrative is so focused

into where it is. Crossing it over really wouldn't

work. Oh, I thought of a franchise actually it

might work with transformers depending on how

you set it up do you guys remember there the

Hercules and Thunder Thunder the Barbarian I

Think you know something with transformers neck

and it's supposed to be the far future in sorcery,

but technically work with With transformers,

it doesn't really matter which franchise of transformers

or which version Robotech like Macross Well,

that's where they got the idea for skyfire. He's

a value you could And actually, you know what

like the macro like Macross Robotech that whole

thing and Gundam or transformers and gun them

Big hero six Swat cats. Swat cats. Well, I mean,

you could do swat cats and biker mice or something.

Biker mice or biker mice. Actually, I'd like

to see biker mice, street sharks and Ninja Turtles

team up for a comic book series. You could do

a lot. I think a lot of them are owned by the

same people, too. I would just like to see like.

Traumas toxic crusaders toxic Avenger using something

it would be difficult unless you just went with

the kid route like from the cartoon show versus

The NC 17 movie where he crushes people's heads.

I thought of something weird Again going back

to the Ghostbusters. Well But it could be a really

funny tongue -in -cheek comic book it wouldn't

work in live -action Maybe animated Ghostbusters

Beetlejuice Yeah, because think what if Beetlejuice

had to act as a guide to the Ghostbusters to

the afterlife? They're like, well, you're not

supposed to be here But I guess I'll help you

if you help me sort of thing And if you got Michael

Korn to come back and voice Beetlejuice, that

could be kind of fun Back to the Future Jurassic

Park Back to the Future is a franchise. I'm surprised

how long the comic book ran And Back to the Future,

Doctor Who, even just as a one -shot could be

fun. Back to the Future, Bill and Ted. Yes. Doc

Brown, Bill and Ted, that could be just... These

crossovers don't necessarily have to be epic

and world -spanning to be fun. And I think that's

the idea, because I know with the original feedback,

and Steve's referring to a thread on Twitter

that happened like a week ago. That you don't

necessarily need to see it, but sometimes it's

fun to explore ideas Okay here I got one for

you Rambo diehard Okay, are we talking Rambo

first blood or Rambo first blood part two forward

Part two for part one. Well part one the original

the original plot had him kill himself. Yeah,

he went crazy So John McClane and John Rambo

team ups. Yes, for whatever reason, there's something

that happens and it's just too big. Like, like

McClane is stuck in a, you know, basically it

wouldn't have, it couldn't be a building. It

would have to be like a fortified island or like

a small town or something. You know what? And

like they, they're, they both happened to be

there for something. And like, um, it would have

to be like an, like, An army like okay, they're

they're often Guam or someplace and a foreign

army invades this the like or they invade Puerto

Rico and take it and they got to get it back

because there's a Live -action crossover, which

I think if you got Michael Bay behind the kid

Michael Bay doing the action portions of it And

if you got the right director doing the live

-action this during or at least the character

development side of this fashion the furious

so that over -the -top car action vehicle action

and transformers That would be cool but I think

what everybody wants to see it would be Insane

for the amount of people on screen would be expendables

and fast and furious You'd have it would be every

action person ever except for Chuck Norris and

even then Chuck Norris is in one of them, so

Let's say that could be interesting or if you

did again grabbing the people from Fast and the

Furious to do Mask. Universal Soldier RoboCop,

where the RoboCop is the future of the Unisol

program. Interesting. I like where your thoughts

go with this. Because they're large enough franchises,

like Universal Soldier, you know, not counting

those two TV movies, which were hilariously bad.

I think one of them had Gary Busey in it, which

tells you something. But you get, you know, You

get Dolph Lundgren back and Van Damme back and

Peter Weller. They find out the Universal Soul.

Yeah, Peter Weller. And the Unisoul program has,

you know, the Unisoul program was a military

program that was shut down. And OCP picks it

up. And OCP picks it up. Secretly had picked

it up in Detroit. And you can even set it in

the same world where, like present day, where

RoboCop itself, like the first Let's say two

movies are canon. I don't think you really want

to count the third or the fourth or the or the

tv show or anything like even though they're

still considered the same continuity, but the

first two films and You have um It turns out

like ocp has turned out the unisol program into

and they um, they've licensed it out to every

major city And so instead of dead soldiers, it's

dead cops. It's cheaper than robo cop it's they're

they're saying it's either dead it's dead cops

but what how they've been marketing it is not

dead cops are saying oh you can volunteer to

be in the program what they're not telling you

is that they kill you to turn you into the they're

you know they actually kill you to do it and

what ends up happening is they're monitoring

software the unisoles used ends up becoming you

know corrupted and then you got to get these

guys that are non -networked and people that

have been out of the system to get them out so

then you have you know Dolphin and Van Damme

and Peter Weller's RoboCop have to go in there.

And you could even tie that into Terminator by

having the Unisol program end up turning into

Skynet. I would pay some serious money to see

this. Because basically all the tech from the

RoboCop and Unisol program on human anatomy and

thinking and everything fed into the AI control

program. Yes, and then it uses that basis for

the RoboCop system to just factor out the humans

and manufacture basically the husks that don't

have any of the human brains anymore. You hear

this Dark Horse Comics or IDW or Boom Studios,

whoever is holding the licenses? Those three

would work really well together. Oh, and obviously

Timecop and Terminator. That actually would be

kind of a... Again, I hate to use the word fun,

but I could see that working Because that would

work with that or even Robocop like it the time

cop works with a lot of things time cops a series

I wish had gotten more Love and attention than

when it did because the first time cops great

the second one not as good and I think there

was a third I There might have been a directivity

at the second one had like think a limited run

wasn't that like Jason Scott Lee or something

like that? Yeah, it was one That or the guy from,

is that the guy from Iron Chef? Mark Dacascos.

No, that's Mark Dacascos. It was, yeah, it might've

been Jason Scott, Lee, or Mark Dacascos. I can't

remember who it is. I mean, you could do a Double

Dragon Street Fighter movie crossover because

they were both terrible. The crow crossed with

something. I think they've made that movie like

so many times that people don't know anymore.

I'm thinking about the crow and Constantine would

work. The crow and the axe files would certainly

work. Oh, no, the crow and Ghost Rider. They're

both spirits of vengeance. That's clever. That's

actually remarkably clever. And if you had...

And actually Ghost Rider and Constantine works

too. Or Ghost Rider and Hellboy. Man Marvel come

on I Would see it takes it takes money and risk

and nobody wants to do either of those anymore

which is unfortunate because and You also have

to have the right Creative script to go with

the tubes. I never thought in a million years

I'd see Power Rangers Justice League because

as far as I'm concerned Superman can kick the

crap out of the Power Rangers But for some reason

they can stand toe -to -toe with Wonder Woman.

So figure that one out So, I don't know I'm trying

to think I'm trying to think of other franchises

that have not necessarily grown beyond their

their bounds Think franchises that are at risk

of doing it as we've mentioned most For a lot

of this episode Ghostbusters is a franchise that

could very easily overstep. It's bound to cross

with the wrong property Transformers is at risk

I think even he man depending Because I don't

know how the new series is gonna handle and that

comes out in a couple years with Kevin Smith

executive producing So hopefully he won't fuck

he won't you know, like screw it up You know,

you know, it would be like Really big and as

far as TV goes and would probably do way better

than you'd expect Would be 90210 not the new

90210 Not not this madness don't 90210 Degrassi

have Bunch of people from Degrassi go for a semester

at You know go to California there was something

I was talking about this on Twitter about a week

ago and obviously Disney Plus announced all these

shows and They mentioned she hulk And She -Hulk,

for those of you that don't know, is a lawyer.

She's Jennifer Walters, or Waters, and she's

Bruce Banner's cousin. So she got a blood transfusion,

is now an eight foot tall green lawyer. I said

on Twitter, and I tagged this guy in, and I tagged

Ice T. And I'm like, dude, can you do a cameo

in the She -Hulk show? But please be your character

from Law and Order SVU. And then people started

jumping in on it. They're like, well, the Avengers

did take place in New York. This means Law and

Order would be canon with the MCU. Can we please

make this happen? It probably wouldn't be him.

They'd go with Richard Belzer because he's cameoed

as this character in X -Files and everything

else. That would be cool too. If you could get

me Richard Belzer and Ice -T to team up for one

episode of She -Hulk, even if it was for like

just a minute and a half. Wait, then a question.

Do you have Hulk Hogan guest star in that episode

of somebody and then choke him out like in real

life? He's there for the Gawker case or something.

But still, it would be really neat to see other

characters from other franchises. Because there

hasn't been a character like the Richard Belzer

character, Detective Munch, in TV. ever because

he was on the wire he was on law and order he

was on um homicide life in the street i'll look

it up right now because there's too many i think

he was on frazier at one point um he was on arrested

development i think like he's crossed into so

many different universes which means technically

they are they're all connected So, in theory,

Homicide Life on the Street happens in the same

universe as The X -Files. So, the aliens are

coming for us. Yeah. So, I think he's in the

Guinness Book, because it's like, Homicide Life

on the Street, 119 episodes, as that character.

Law and Order SVU, 241 episodes. Homicide, the

movie. Law and Order, the regular one, four episodes.

Arrested Development, X -Files, The Beat. Law

and order trial by jury the wire 30 rock Jimmy

Kimmel live not as in the actor as the character

So the real world is part of this continuity

apparently like the world we currently live in

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt a Muppet version of

him appeared on Sesame Street sketch, which is

credited to being He appeared as his character

was spoken lines in an album It's apparently

as continuity to He's mentioned in in Luther

the British BBC show and it's and it was confirmed

that that that character is in the continuity

of that British BBC show with What's his name?

Why am I gonna play? Yes So there you go. That's

what I mean. That's insane I think I think they

some of those are just done because they want

to say it's funny that to have him in everything

But the fact that he played in the X files is

like what yeah and this was before that that

was commonplace because i remember when when

that happened that was like an episode in season

five i think unusual suspects i think was the

name of the episode before before they really

jumped shark and and went from filming in bc

down to the states and season six on we got weird

yeah so anyway steve you were saying sorry we've

been dominating this conversation tonight You

You picked the topic that we could go on for

like 12 hours on Yeah, my bad anyways So switching

gears a little little Yeah, quite a bit have

you guys seen the That Samsung's trying to push

their pedal their their foldable phone again

$2 ,000 get bent man Literally because nobody

in their right mind is gonna pay for this now

The technology itself is cool because you can

go to Las Vegas and see foldable LCD screens

on certain Slot machines that's neat and everything,

but I don't want a foldable phone in my pocket

I Would give me a phone that has three or four

days of battery That would be beautiful High

use to Give me functionality over stupid gimmicks

Like the the razor flip phone when we were in

high school that like that was the cool thing

Because it was still it's because it was paper

thin But the battery still went like three times

as long as now it's not powering the same kind

of screen or power that we have now But it was

it was leaps and bounds better than the candy,

you know brick ones that we were used to It had

a decently bright screen folded up in half it

was a lot harder to break the screen because

it was very rigid and There are people that still

have them and they work a lot of people use them

still as like their emergency phones Like that

would that was the last time that anything that

thin needed to be made And they were great. Oh,

yeah They those things like they got good signal

to which was which was the great thing about

them But no, I mean I like I know Motorola or

Yeah, Motorola is trying to make the new version

of the Razer, the Razer 4, which is going to

be a flip phone, smartphone, very much in the

same style as the original Razer. That'll do

better. Plus, it's supposed to be about half

the cost of the Samsung one. See, I can't see

people going back to those things because everybody

wants touch screens now. Well, it would have

a touch screen. Yeah. And it would be a foldable

phone just like this. Although the outside LCD

that was on the original one, it would cover

the entire surface at the front of the phone.

So it would be basically like a square version

of the phone. And then you open it up and you

have the full version of the phone. So we have

basically a screen on about three quarters of

the phone. Basically the phone you could get

grandma and she would actually know what it is.

Color me skeptical. It's gonna do better than

the anything that Blackberry put out in the last

five years or the Windows phone which had its

support dropped Well, neither one of them have

done anything to be honest like they're both

totally useless in today's era Yeah, like I'm

honestly surprised the Windows phone didn't do

better If you ever used one They had horrendous

horrendous response time extremely bad app support

like you ever use the Windows tablet yeah it's

basically that at a quarter of the speed like

the last time a Windows film I had a Windows

was it a Windows 8 or Windows 7 Might have been

before Windows 7 even I had a smartphone from

like Sierra Wireless or some brand and it looked

like an old brick style phone But it had a flip

out keyboard on the front thing was built like

a tank crazy battery life could play up a few

games Worked great and it was great for 2006

2007 It was perfect. And you know what's new

about the newer phones from Windows? Nothing.

It's basically the same thing only they added

touchscreen support Yeah, and in honestly, it's

it's just yeah I Originally before getting the

pixel 3a I wanted one of the the Motorola phones

to be honest, but This phone is actually really

nice the 3a Because it's half the cost of the

three but it has all the same functionalities.

And I got the 2XL, which I had the option of

a 3A or a 2XL. 2XL was cheaper. I got it for

free. Would have had to put like 80 bucks down

for the other. Yours has a couple extra features

like faster charging and you don't, and a bunch

of other cool things. The 2XL has actually a

better screen than the 3A. It's sort of a halfway

between the flagship three and then yours. And

I wasn't a big fan of it being no headphone jack

but then I realized you know what that means

is waterproof and there's a bunch of other stuff

so like I'm I'm liking the interface being super

clean too when you go to a third -party company

a lot of times they have different bloated crap

that they put on it which is why I like the pixel

phones because they don't have all that garbage

yeah and I don't know about and yours should

have it too I think yesterday they pushed out

Android 10 Yeah, I don't have it installed yet.

Before you install it, do you use any Google

wallet or banking information that you use to

tap payments or anything on there through NFC?

No, I have Google Pay on there, but I don't use

the NFC feature. Okay, then you're fine, because

I updated mine and it completely broke support

because the apps aren't updated yet to work on

the new standard. So when you go to tap payment

and you turn it on, it goes, we can't see your

SIM card, so we can't process payment even though

everything else is fine. And I looked into it

like, oh, yeah, everything is more secure, but

it's going to be a week or two or more until

banking companies release new versions of their

apps that are able to actually use that security.

So I was like, well, damn. But other than that,

it looks and feels the same except the major

feature that you might like too is there's an

option in your settings to set the system default

to dark mode where it turns all the backgrounds

dark. Any app that has that support makes it

darker, makes the contrast better and it uses

less battery because it doesn't illuminate the

pixels that don't need illuminating. Yeah, I

actually have had that feature for a while. Yeah,

I'm saying it's become it's standard. It's like

the one of the main thing. Yeah, right down and

I really like that feature It's it's it's a nice

feature though to be to be honest And then of

course we have 27 years of Batman anime series

cool Cuz kind of surprised that you know it knock

on wood, I'm kind of surprised that more voice

actors aren't dead when you start approaching

the 30 -year mark. And it's not like they were

kids when they recorded. No. Well, I mean, you

still have a majority of them. It's just, you

know, pretty much and the one that played Commissioner

Gordon. Yeah, I wasn't trying to jinx it or bring

it down, but like a lot of shows when they're

approaching that, like if you look at a lot of

shows from the 80s and early 90s, a lot of these

voice actors are either like 65 plus now so you

know we're going to get to a point where they

have fan expos and we're like oh half the people

can't show up anymore because they're no longer

around so it's kind of cool that they're all

around to record features and stuff for when

they release new dvd sets and that because i

think isn't the they just came out with one for

batman the animated series was it this year i

think it comes out next month No, they had the

blu -ray already earlier in the year I think

but the next month is the Batman Beyond one.

Yes Yep So yeah, it's always cool when they those

people are still around and they can go promote

it and or in the case of many of them They end

up showing up again for those new animated features

Which is great I love hearing them show up on

things from time to time just because it's a

nice nod So one other thing that it was going

to have us kind of talk about, don't know how

long the conversation will go on this, but we'll

see. Some things that basically discussing how

podcasting has changed since we first got involved

with it and what we enjoy and dislike that's

changed over that time. Well, it's a lot harder

to get noticed now because everybody and their

goddamn cousin has a podcast. Basically, and

anybody who's like a celebrity has one now too,

which pulls away like 99 % of the people that

would potentially listen to you. Yeah, which

is really unfortunate. I've noticed that too,

because like back, you know, the early, early

days of Twitter. 2007 2008 2009 through like

I would say about 2012 it was still pretty raw

territory and and people were kind of you know

downloads were good people were kind of you know

there were limited options not everybody could

get into it because they didn't know how and

then you started getting all the youtubers getting

into it and then all the celebrities and news

personalities either repurposing programs or

publishing special shows to it And now it's so

flooded with... Although they say there's only

like 700 ,000 podcasts, so they say... That's

not true. That's not true. Well, maybe on their

platform. Yeah, yeah. Because if you look, like

listenership of even our networks, they're probably,

if the celebrities weren't a part of it, taking

up the vast majority. And I'm not saying like

Joe Rogan doesn't count because he was doing

it around the same time that... He's been doing

it like 10, 12 years anyway. And so he's huge

based on that. But the vast majority that just

come in and automatically seem to have a million

people downloading, if they weren't a part of

it, our networks would have probably 10, 20 times

the listenership because of scarcity and because

there are a lot of people out there that only

think of, when they think of podcasts, they think

that if it's not from a celebrity or from a major

company, that it's going to be crap and they

don't even want to bother listening to it because

they think, Oh, it'll just be some mom and pop

shop doing, you know, rambling about nothing.

And reality is like most of the really good things

out there are run by people like us and not,

not some, you know, something pushed by Westwood

one or podcast one or whatever it is studio.

Like there's those like five or six big podcasting

companies run by millionaires. Plus one of the

things that I can tell you from the broadcast

industry is a lot of radio stations are doing

podcasts now. They syndicate their morning shows

or any of their talk programs as podcasts, but

they don't know how to utilize it. They just

chop them up in the podcast chunks and throw

them up on their websites and RSS feeds. And

they sit there and virtually do nothing because

nobody knows about them. Which is kind of weird.

Well, I've and I've noticed that a lot of a lot

of places don't Exactly understand the process

You know back when we when we all first started

there really weren't I mean, yeah You had your

pod being you had your blog talk radio. You had

your Libsyn you had a few, you know Blueberry

you had some of these other ones that We're in

the game, but there really weren't a lot and

they were so pricey or bogged down with crap

That you couldn't you you didn't trust them.

You didn't want to you know put your your files

there so most of us hosted our files on our back

-end servers which was a drain on the server

resources, but And it was no real good tracking

on it because bots could get to it, too, but

It was and it was Yeah. But also back then, most

podcasts people were putting out for bandwidth

concerns were mono and like 56 or 64 kilobits

per second. So like most of them were and most

of them were under like an hour. So you were

downloading only like 20 megabytes. So it wasn't

too bad. You know, we're in the days now where

people like again, Joe Rogan and other large

podcasts, podcasters are doing two to three,

three to four hour shows per week. Like they're

doing 12 hours of podcasting a week and releasing

them at, you know, in stereo at two or three

times that data rate. So you can be downloading

from one podcaster. You can be downloading three

or 400 or 500 megabytes per week. And depending

on what your data plan is, you would definitely

not want to do that on your phone. You'd want

to do it over wifi. Yeah. And, you know, even

when we were starting out, like half of our programs,

we were going well over well over an hour. I

mean, this show has been going over that. That

was one of the reasons why I started listening

back in the day because you wanted something

for the commute that could be with you all week.

You get two or three shows and that could last

you the whole time. Yeah, and that was the great

thing about it and and we used to do some shows

that were like You know anywhere from like two

to six hours depending on what the topic Comic

-con coverage wasn't there one that was like

six hours or something? Well, no Blanchard did

one it was like something One of the comic -cons

like New York Comic -Con or Toy -Con or something.

Yeah. Anyways, he was on to you Radio free Cybertron

for like their 13 -hour live stream and I was

like, nope Because they were like, I think I

was like invited and I was like, yeah, I'm good.

And I remember him releasing one that was five

and a half hours. And was it Star Wars or something

else? But it was it was it was one take. There

were no cuts. There were no breaks. Yeah, it

was it was it was Star Wars. We we did it was

movie we can review. We did I want to say we

did two episodes of it. We did one that was like

the prequel trilogy and one that was a sequel

trilogy. And That's when we began, and it was

Dodd, myself, Blanchard, and I think Kevin? Yeah,

it was Kev. Cooving off halfway through it? Halfway

through, we lost attention. And Mike was being

dead serious on everything and trying to pull

us through the Wikipedia page. But that's because

it had to end at exactly five hours, 24 minutes,

and 38 seconds because there's some hidden meaning

in that form. I Don't think it was I don't think

it was that reasoning for that one I think it

just the conversation genuinely was going through

that long on the episodes when in actuality they

probably should have been either a cut for time

like trim down drastically or 30 minute hard

hard limit per movie and you can just say we're

approaching five minutes for this What else do

you have to say about it? What? Yeah, and we've

done that with some things like, you know, the

top 100 will you know have our say on that character

and then kind of move on so that's not like 30

minutes on one character, but It would you know,

I mean we were still learning at the time But

at the same time like we get so bored. We were

sitting there making fun of him on Facebook Somewhere

there's a catalog of that. I just don't have

that conversation. I remember what happened because

he's like, what are you guys doing? Like, cause

we were not even paying attention. Yeah, because

we're like going TEEHEE! Yeah in the background

and we're just laughing and he's like what is

so freaking funny blah blah blah late just starts

losing it and then I Don't think I made it through

that like I've listened to there is a podcast

that I listened to on the well I'm not in the

regular It's a monthly podcast because some people

still do that where it's only one show a month

And what they'll do it's Was the the retro gaming

roundup? They've been doing it. Oh, I think there

are ten years now too, and they have different

segments Like, one guy that works for them, I

think he works for NASA as an engineer at some

point or something. Sounds like a real hick from

the South. But, like, you know, voices can be

deceiving if how intelligent he is. But they

have different segments where it's like five

hours, but they have chapter breaks. And you

can actually see, it's like, oh, if you want

to listen to 45 minutes, they'll have on hardware

on how to repair a pinball machine or how to

repair a certain computer. and they'll have 45

minutes and then you can jump to another spot

that's like here's our top 10 round table on

this type of thing in gaming and then you can

jump for it and they'll have like 12 or 13 chapters

and it'll be a five five and a half hour podcast

released you know on the first of the month every

month and i do i do like having those and that

might take me a week to get through but you know

it's something you still look forward to And

that's something you can't do on radio. And that's

something that, like you said, Mike, the radio

stations aren't taking advantage of is the ability

to have free form conversations or long form

things that you can you could do a 14 hour podcast

a month if you really wanted to and put. chapter

stops in it where somebody could just click a

button and jump to wherever they want. I find

one of the things that I've noticed, it was a

feature on iTunes. I think it still is when you,

when you, when you, I guess you just mentioned

it where they talk about doing chapter stops.

I find a lot of podcasts don't take advantage

of that. Um, me as it's the vast majority of

them upload an MP3 format, which doesn't support

it. Some people do it for compatibility. Yeah,

which is fine. The platform that we use auto

does MP3 and I don't believe there's an option

to do anything else. No, otherwise I would have

been there. There is an option. When you go to

to edit the you can add, but that will only work

on their website or app. It doesn't work. I did

it for the first time. We used speaker, but it's

not useful to. 99 % of people that won't be listening

through that method. So yeah, it's no point in

doing it unless it's the only way to listen Yeah

in majority of the platforms though don't support

a see which allows you to do that exactly. Yeah

Yeah, it's like it's basically only iTunes that

does it and if we had not moved to a Podcast

hosting platform and we had still been doing

everything the old -fashioned way that you guys

have done for like 11 years We I feel last Before

we switched over, Mike, when you were in the

hospital and I was running stuff, I was doing

everything in AAC and I was putting chapter stops

in and we were hosting on the site. So yeah,

there is probably about 15 episodes that have

chapter stops. And then when we switched over,

it was like, this is a lot of work if it's only

going to work on one platform. Yeah. And see,

there was only one person on GeekCast Radio Network

that ever did the AAC and that was Michael Powers.

And he did a few on Off the cuff and he was trying

it out kind of messing around with it but at

the same time the amount of work that has to

go into that compared to Yeah, I mean it granted.

It's not that difficult if you're sitting there

in taking timestamps of when the conversation

switches ahead of time and and then you just

kind of mark it in in when you're doing the editing

but It's again majority of the platforms don't

support it other than Apple. Yeah, so it doesn't

make sense it would be nice if when you like

if if we did it through our hosting platform

and then if it would do it for um like spotify

and all those if it if it had a generic thing

where it could just let it could let it know

uh the way around that i found is like that long

retro gaming roundup that i listened to which

by the way i highly recommend it i really like

that it's it's a a couple british guys and an

american that run it what they've done is in

their episode description, they actually have

the timestamps. So you can manually go to it.

If you for any platform that doesn't have, you

know, a quick jump to button. And our shows are

generally speaking about an hour to an hour and

a half long. There's no point in putting chapter

stops for that. I find personally, I mean, this

is coming from my background in radio, anything

longer than an hour and a half, and you really

risk tiring out the listener. But you wouldn't

think you got to remember from that Mike is there

are I'm willing to bet 75 % or more people that

don't listen to it in one fell swoop. Yeah, like

yeah I mean like I'm just coming at it from the

broadcast Point of view not from the podcasters.

Yeah Yeah, cuz if you look at a pure podcasting

of you the top 10, 20 podcasts in the world are

all generally three hours or longer. Yeah. Which

is to me nuts. I mean, the, the longest podcast

I listened to is at most two hours and that's

Kevin Smith's fat man on Batman. Cause it never

has a hard limit. Whereas, uh, how is that Rogan?

Because he, he, he Rogan stuff, you know, I don't

always listen to like the fight companions because

it's just them following a fight, but the guests

that he has on, his range anywhere from two hours

to five hours. And it literally is where does

the conversation go? And how much time do they

have? They've run out of time to talk, even though

the conversation has been so good, they wanted

to go on longer. And that's the advantage of

podcasting is, and that's why he's getting 50

million downloads a week. He's just a good interviewer.

Like he knows how to pull the questions and the

answers out of people. he'll have he'll have

an expert on Bitcoin on and then two days later

he'll have a fighter on and then two days later

have a comedian on and or he'll he'll do one

and he'll he'll get somebody on that was like

just destroyed on Twitter over something that

happened and he'll get the like their end of

the story from it where maybe you know big media

wouldn't touch the person with a 10 -foot pole

he gives people a platform to speak but he also

is willing to call people out on their bullshit

so you know I think a lot of people have gone

to using his style of podcast for when they're

a celebrity having people on and that's led the

length to be longer. The longer the length, the

more spots you have to throw in ads as well.

So you'll get these guys that have four hour

podcasts, but the reason it's four hours instead

of two hours is because they want to fit twice

as many ads in or they or they'll be like, Hey,

it's always sounds better if I have a three hour

podcast that has a million listeners than a two

hour podcast that does four. for potential like

sponsorships and crap and I think it's it's gotten

a little too monetized and it's that because

of that it's become so competitive with it that

like you don't even have like dynamic ad insertions

for as many of those larger ones anymore because

they're just paying them straight up to read

scripts uh you know the ad reads and ad reads

are cool some you know especially when it's like

rogan that he can basically say whatever he wants

or listen to i listen to some of the wrestler

ones and i like it when they get the freedom

to say their ad basically in their own words

and they can make it hilarious especially if

the company has a sense of humor we'll let them

you know run with it if they get a little vulgar

but Too many other podcasts out there, they read

it like they're reading a script and you can

tell that they're not interested. That's not

good for the ad company. It's also not good for

the listener because they just know they're being

read. Oh, here's the ad I got to read. If you're

going to have ads, at least try to, and they're

not going to be dynamically inserted where you

don't have control. at least trying to make you

sound natural or interesting. Another thing that's

different about podcasting now, especially in

2019, is the overwhelming and frankly draining

amount of Patreons that are out there now. I

know me and Steve talked about this a while ago

and it's frankly exhausting. Like I see a lot

of youtubers do it which is fine a lot of podcasters

do it too Which is fine if that's how your listeners

choose to support you Here's here's what it comes

down to some people Not everybody is going to

make it and I think people have a hard time accepting

that coming to terms with Sometimes you're just

never going to be good enough to make this your

living the normal way And they go to Patreon

because they've seen people be successful or

they hope they're going to be like some people

who can magically get money and not actually

produce anything. And I think everybody knows

who I'm talking about. Everybody knows at least

one or two people that are like that. They're

just like, how are they still making money when

they don't do anything? But that's the exception,

not the norm. The norm is people get like a dollar

or nothing. They'll do this Patreon and for that

person giving them their dollar, they'll have

to give whatever it is. It's one thing to take

donations. Have a donation button. Hey, help

keep us running. That's one thing. It's another

to expect random people to give you money direct

for stuff that you should not expect money for.

You shouldn't expect money for making videos

or making audio. You should only expect money

when you're working for a corporation that way.

If you are so incredibly good and you have such

an incredibly huge following, Yes. But if you're

somebody who's getting like 25 listeners, what

do you what business do you have having a Patreon?

Yeah, I mean, it's not like it's a Joe Rogan

or Howard Stern or something like that. And he

doesn't have that. They don't know that. They

make Joe Rogan has. Well, I mean, this. Yeah,

they say they have roughly, you know, 11 million

listeners or whatever makes somewhere between

50 million a month. I think. Yeah, something

like that. But. The subscription model thing

only works for bigger podcasters. It doesn't

work for the small guy. It doesn't work for the

one. Yeah. He doesn't even have like the subscription

model either. He does. And his is unique in that

he doesn't put any ads in the middle of the show.

He reads all his ad reads in the first five minutes

and that's it. So you can get so huge that you

can do that. The larger ones, you know, they'll

try to do the premium thing where it's like get

some extra stuff here or the worst ones are when

they do like let's have an interaction. ask us

questions, but we'll only answer them on Patreon.

Or they'll have ones where it's like, where the

main show or the show that they have out there

in the public is so riddled with ads. And I've

listened to a few, like ones that are like from

again, wrestling, I listened to a lot of like,

wrestling news ones, where they're like, every

three to four minutes is an ad insert. And it'll

be a two hour news podcast that has 25 ads. and

they're like if you want to get rid of the ads

you know pay us four dollars a month uh how about

screw you i'll never listen to you again yeah

there's let me see if i can find it um there

there's a company um it's called super cast i

don't know if you've heard of them no uh anyways

i just caught wind of this like earlier this

week and the funny thing is is um The joke on

their website is enough with the me on these

ads. But basically it's it's it's a subscriber

only content type thing for podcasters, much

like Patreon, but without all the extra crap.

And but at the same time, like I don't. I think

that this kind of plays into that whole subscription

feed fatigue. Like I don't think you know when

you have so much content to consume, you know

I'm not saying that people don't want to support

their favorites, you know programs or whatever

or donate some money here or there But I don't

think they want to pay a subscription plan to

keep listening I think that that's that's pretty

much going towards, you know, your Disney Plus

your Netflix your Hulu You know your Amazon Prime,

you know things like that that you're getting

up like like let's be honest like Sirius XM that's

dead Like, it's not going to survive. If you

listen, podcasts are advertising it now. They're

pushing a lot of money into that. The reason

you paid for it was to get stern and people because

they would get celebrities and famous people

on. Every famous person has a podcast. And guess

what? They invite all their friends for free.

And guess what else they do? They can have their

own platform and then they can own it. and then

get all of the money not have to spend it on

all these different things. You have ones out

there that don't even do ad reads that these

are rich people that do it like comedians that

they'll do it as advertising for their shows

basically so the only ads you're going to get

are where they're going to be next week for a

tour it's great they don't have to go on on local

radio to promote their stuff they have their

built -in fan base they promote it on twitter

on there and then they're not beholden to any

shareholders so they can say whatever they want.

no matter how crass or off color it is they can

say what they want and if they lose subscribers

it's on them they don't have anybody they have

to be paying off or have to deliver a certain

deliverable to which is you know the reason people

went to satellite radio in the first place the

subscription model was it's like pay cable you

can say whatever you want well the reality was

you couldn't say anything you want because look

what happened to open anthony You couldn't say

anything. You could say a lot more than you could

on regular radio, but you couldn't say anything.

And then what ends up happening, they end up

starting their own podcasting networks and they

get just as many, if not more subscribers because

they have the freedom of saying absolutely anything.

You can say anything you want in the podcast.

like true freedom of speech. There's people that

have hate speech podcasts out there, and they're

not being shut down because they're allowed to

say what they want because nobody forces you

to listen. And they're not going to have nearly

the same listenership. They might have like three

crazy people listen to them and believe what

they say, but they have the freedom to say what

they want. And you're not going to get that anytime

where you're working for a big corporation or

trying to aim for that big audience that used

to be on radio. The thing is, nobody sits down

and listens to live radio. I think I'm the only

one here that does. You're the only one here

that does. I'll listen. But you were like, it's

like you have connections because you know people,

but Joe Schmoe does not listen to the radio.

I haven't listened to the radio in years. Like

I listen to the radio when I have no other podcast

to listen to, and I still want to have something

on in the background. But with the advent of

Spotify, there's no point unless there's a specific

radio host or radio show you like listening to.

I know like my mother doesn't really listen to

the radio but she likes the John Tess show or

the Alice Cooper syndicated show. There are certain

things you'll listen to for a specific show but

guess what? Usually a day or two after they air

they show up as a podcast now with the exact

same thing without any of the ads. So like there

really isn't a point to listen to most of them

unless you want to get like you can still win

concert tickets and stuff from real radio which

you can't really do from most podcasts because

of the live aspect of it yeah and i'm i'm kind

of of the the mentality of yes i'd like to make

a ton off of this don't get me wrong but i'm

also not going to go to all that extra putting

advertisement all over the place. Like, yes,

I have dynamic ad insertion, but I'm not going

to sit there. But do you want the responsibility?

Let's say you do make it huge. Do you want that

responsibility? Because the internet has fundamentally

changed the social fabric of basically society.

Me and Alex were talking about this in a private

conversation a little while ago. Look at cancel

culture. Something you said 10 years ago, you

might as well have said 10 minutes ago and it

can destroy you. Yeah. You want that responsibility?

See, I don't care. I've always been, even like

on the internet in like 2001, I never said anything

online that I wasn't willing to say to somebody's

face. And if I say something vulgar or crass

or off -color, that's exactly how I would say

it in person. So I don't go out there. I've never,

ever gone on somebody's video or made a comment

where it's like, you see all those comments like,

you should just kill yourself, or you should

do this, or you make a racist comment. I've never

done that because it's not something I would

ever do in person or just do because it's not

the person I am. so don't say anything on fine

that you're not willing to say to my face and

I like listening to podcasts, you know across

the spectrum from like super family -friendly

stuff to super crazy vulgar off -color stuff

and I'm perfectly fine with listening to it and

I like that they all have audiences now the problem

with cancel culture is people get so paranoid

they're afraid to say anything and then you're

censoring yourself when it's like oh I'll lose

money on this it's like you know what the only

way to stop that is to just keep is not to go

further but like don't change anything about

what you do and people will simmer down at the

because people get outraged over nothing now

or make things out of people make campaigns to

shut people down out of nothing because they

feel they want the attention and they want they

want to feel that they've done something that

everybody likes I am I am a champion for this

I am this is shut down and this was horrible

and I'm the one that did it That's insignificant

thinking, and it's going to boil over. These

sorts of things have ebbs and flows, and I'm

not apologizing for anything, I basically say,

because it's my opinion. I think cancer culture

is going to get worse this year and into next

year. There's going to be a breaking point. Someone

very big is going to say something, and it's

going to be... Huge and I don't know how it's

going to end like I've seen a lot of youtubers

careers Effectively get killed they try and come

back And it doesn't work out so well for them

and you trend on Twitter and it's funny back

in the day Trending on Twitter was good and you

trend on Twitter. Now. You're either dead You're

in a controversy or you're a Marvel movie. It's

one of those couple reasons And people say oh

blame the Millennials. It's it's a it's a bit

of everything It's not like because Millennials

is a such a wide term You know like it's anybody

born after 1980. It's like well not really because

people born between 1980 and let's say 1993 94

are Vastly different in how they think how they

grew up and how they are than people born. Let's

say 95 to 2000 onward You know like if the way

to basically look at it is do you remember a

time before the internet? If you do, I don't

believe you should be in the same category as

people that grew up not knowing anything but

a connected world and There's been a lot of changes

socially in schools in the way people parent

The discipline is different Just the people's

worldviews on morality is different and everybody

now I feel is hypersensitive to everything. And

it's part of it that's been trained. Like you

do school shooting drills, you do these drills,

you do sensitivity training. And it's almost

like you've done to the kids that are young so

much over the top that they don't know how to

function and how to let things slide off. Like

we all had to learn very young to either not

get a thicker skin, not to accept when you like

not to accept bullying or anything, but you learn

when to pick your fights and what's worth it.

People don't measure what good will come of this,

of what they say anymore when they try to tear

somebody apart. And that's not coming down against

any movement or any one individual thing. It's

just think about what you're going to say before

you say it and think of what ramifications it

will have. And if you're still okay having that

happen, think about what good will happen from

it. it's only going to cause more trouble. What's

the point in doing it if the outcome isn't going

to be good? There is no good outcome from having

a Twitter meltdown. Yeah, basically know when

to walk away from the keyboard. I mean, one of

the things I've definitely... It's interesting

now more so than any other time in history. We're

seeing a cultural and a technological shift.

And I don't know which way it's going to go.

Are we going to enter a new era of hopefully

enlightenment and acceptance and whatnot? You

know, I'm hoping there'll be social progress.

On the other hand, this could go south. Oh, so

very easily because people are dumb, panicky

and stupid creatures. And as the movie says,

you know it. So. Don't know how it's gonna end

up and especially with social media and podcasting

being so closely linked together Hell there was

a story I saw this week. This is playing more

on a paranoid fear than anything else Someone

used the deep fake technology to sound like someone's

voice like like of a company and Scammed a company

out of like half a million dollars I think that

technological based crimes are going to have

to be cracked down on hard. And what I mean by

that is I don't mean like capital punishment

or anything, but like doing like identity fraud

like that should be like, Oh, guess what? You

have 20 years in prison, like hard labor prison.

Like you've got to like, it's like, don't even

attempt that unless you have somehow. No, you

can get away with it because doing it as doing

it, the culture of doing it for the lulls seems

to be a big thing. The whole swatting people

and all that. It's like, it's like, if you if

somebody swats, like, there's that one guy that

I think he just got 20 years for the swatting

incident where they ended up killing the guy's

dad or something or killing a dog and dad had

a heart attack and all this. That case like that

guy was two, I think it was two cases of swatting.

I think he just got 20 years. And this guy looks

like a wimpy, weakling, you know, incel, whatever

you want to say, not going to do well in prison.

I'll tell you that. It's a tough culture that

you're not going to do well in. And those kind

of sentences of 20 years are what you're going

to have to do. And it's going to have to be like,

it's going to have to be something that scares

you into not wanting to do it. Because I think

a lot of it, like, I'm not somebody who advocates

spanking their kids. I'm, but I'm not somebody

who's going to say you should never spank your

kids. I feel like a lot of people, when you hear

about these, a lot of the school shooters and

a lot of people that do the swatting and all

this and people that have these, you know, obviously

sociopathic tendencies, you hear about their

family life. And a lot of it is like new age

parents. I'm saying in quotes that, you know,

oh, we didn't believe in discipline. We would

just talk it out with them. They didn't get punished.

It's like, well, then they didn't have boundaries

set. So they think it's funny to do something

like this because, oh, it's no big deal. I don't

get in trouble anyway. And then the police come

and they get taken away. And then they're like,

what do you mean? Because the concept of punishment

doesn't exist for a lot of people. Or the concept

of self -discipline doesn't exist anymore in

the same capacity. One other thing. Oh, sorry.

People need to learn. to control themselves more

than what they're doing. There's another thing

that I wanted to talk about, and this is definitely

as YouTube and podcasting, it's basically media

has grown. One thing I do not like in particular,

and I don't see a lot of podcasts that do it.

I see this more as like a kind of YouTube thing.

So I guess it kind of goes into that. There's

a podcast can also be visual as well. Hate YouTube

drama channels. I Don't get the point of their

existence and I'm keeping nail I'm not gonna

mention names for Christ sakes. I don't want

their armies. Oh Those I can I can I can't name

them but I see them pop up in my feed When I

don't like it when somebody has a bunch of you

know, regular blog type YouTube channel and then

they cover one particular topic and that one

gets a ton of views for whatever the algorithm

is, or it was a popular video, and they change

their entire channel to be talking shit about

one particular issue. There's a guy from the

South, and every single video, and it pops up

on my feed because I watch a lot of gaming news

videos, every video is just stories about how

terrible GameStop is. And it's like... That's

your entire life every day of the week You make

a different video about how bad GameStop is because

you want to just you just get the views not because

you have any integrity or anything Good to say

the algorithm That'd be like me just complaining

about Comcast all the time. Like I used to do

on like headshot Like literally but like it's

like if you've had let's say you had an average

of a couple hundred views and you got one video

that had 10 000 you're like well guess what all

i'm talking about is this my integrity doesn't

have to exist i'm just going to talk about this

forever and ever and ever there will be consequences

you'll say you'll say something you'll say something

that uh is fault is a falsehood and you'll get

picked up by a lawyer somewhere for slander well

and it could be just that one episode it resonated

really well with people with what you said and

it it's a fluke it doesn't mean it's a repeat

Yeah, like there's actually a channel that I

know Mike and I both watch. You said don't name

names, right? Keep names out. So we both watch

it daily gaming news. There is far, far, far

too much coverage of like anthem fucking up or

part of language or like it's too much coverage

of anthem, like two or three games or game companies

where it's like every day it's a story about

don't care that's not important it's like it's

like oh this is it's like if you're scrambling

for just that story it's a slow news maybe you

don't need you you do not need daily coverage

if there's not enough coverage for that or find

something else find a fluff piece to talk about

you don't need to only have like cover these

things with the same negative tone every time

or try to make a joke of it it's not it's not

a funny running gag as they try to play it off

it's like I'll skip it. I don't even want to

listen to it because like who cares because you

and Every other news media site is gonna say

the same thing Give me something interesting

No, I totally agree like one of the things I

don't like about YouTube drama channels is particularly

how they make their living off of other people's

misery And when I got in the podcasting, it wasn't

like this. It really wasn't. And some of the

biggest YouTube drama channels have their fan

bases can be quite rabid, quite ravenous, and

they're willing to dox you. They're willing to

swat you. As Alex so succinctly put it, for the

walls, they'll do it. Do you know where you can

really trace a lot of this to? the rise of AVGN

and that guy with the glasses, all the reviewers

that were copying that mold, when channels started

popping up where they would just review the reviewers,

I was like, well, it's not meta or funny. It's

like, that's boring. When you're having somebody

whose entire channel is aggregating other people's,

other reviewers, and then critiquing their personal

lives or... or trying to dig in and say this

person's better than that person, or that person

copied that person, drumming up controversy that

isn't there, doesn't need to be there, your content

isn't valid and doesn't need to exist. But the

problem was that then spawned all these drama

channels into other categories. And you can trace

that back about 10 years or so. And Alex kind

of brings up an interesting point there, too,

where you talk about critiquing the creators.

There are far too many people in this industry

That I've got a friggin ego and there are far

too many Enemies there are far too many people

that I've just made content creation miserable

for one another Well, obviously there there is

competition and a healthy competitions a good

thing But it's gotten to the point Where it's

miserable out there at times and I know it's

hard to get noticed as a small person But like

I said earlier in this conversation Do you really

want to we call we call those midgets? We don't

call them small persons or is it the other way

around? It's like I don't know like is it worth

the public pressure because if you do quote -unquote

make it on the internet You're now held to a

ridiculous standard Which is really really strange

like Me I think I talked about this again with

Alice. I think we were talking about this privately

This isn't the internet of 2004 or 1999 or even

1997 No, there were very distinct eras that you

had the bulletin board college and like university

system from like 85 to 90 and use then you had

proto internet And that that sort of trickled

into about 93 then you have what I would call

baby internet, which was the Wild West from about

92 to 97 Maybe 98 where it was like truly the

Wild West like because by 90 remember 98 99 like

There wasn't a piece of software in existence

that you can just grab off of the whereas sites.

Oh, man. I forgot about those and some of those

sites still exist and people don't take them

down because they forget about them but like

used to be able to before the days of torrenting

and everything you would just go to one of those

sites and sometimes they had viruses sometimes

they didn't but you could just grab anything

you wanted there it was the wild wild west there

was no paypal there was no you wanted to pay

with a credit card sure it's probably gonna get

stolen Like before literally before Amazon and

before eBay and even even remember Do you remember

back then when eBay would let you pay and then

it would have a button that says Arrange payment

and the range payment could mean mail them cash

Yeah, or in Canada until like 2004 you could

use Canadian tire money and mail it in an envelope

which was like which Canadian tire money for

Steve and the American listeners Canadian tire

is like a hardware slash I don't know it's like

you buy your bicycles there you can buy camping

gear and you can buy barbecues more specialized

target it's like yeah it's like a hardware store

slash outdoorsman store well and it's really

popular and they have their own gas stations

everything well when you pay you get like five

percent of what you five percent of your bill

you get back in these dollar bills from them

that are like five cent pennies or nickels. So

you got basically like a loyalty program. And

people sometimes would hold on to like 40, $50

worth and use it for something. Well, you could

use that as a form of payment. That was a legal

version of payment on eBay until they universally

went with using PayPal for everything. So like

there it was the Wild West. And there there was

craziness going on. And then around 99. We get

high -speed Internet pretty much across Canada

from Rogers and I don't even know if Bell was

offering I think Bell was still had DSL Did they

have DSL in 99? Okay. Well, I had a friend who

had Rogers Internet, which was three megabit

service three megabit Insanely fast compared

to 56k like you could download an entire Super

Nintendo game in one second Whereas it would

take 25 minutes to download you know a rom file

back then which back then no kids even really

knew what like you didn't know if it was that

it was illegal it was on a website you could

just click it download it and it was in that

gray area anyway where it's like i'm playing

a backed up game so there was a sense of wonder

and discovery from 90 98 to 2001 i would say

maybe 90 yeah 98 2001 where the search engine

war was still happening where Not like Google

didn't find everything like a web crawler Well

you or if you were smart you use web crawler

where it would use like 10 or 15 search engines

to find your results It would cross reference

them and it would take you like two or three

minutes just to get your results Sometimes if

it was a large enough search You had the free

internet wars through net zero Excite everybody

where you could get like oh this one has 20 hours

a month of free internet and you download 10

or 15 different installers, and you'd have 10

or 15 different companies and you'd be like,

okay, well, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'm going

to use this free internet. Thursday, Friday,

Saturday, I'll use this one. And you would cycle

through for the month, whoever you could give

you the most internet for free. And you know,

that was net zero was the last one, they're the

only one that survived. And even then they eventually

died. So like we were, if you grew up in that

time period, you were pioneers of, you know,

what became the truly connected internet and

web forums are still there. IRC has been around

since the 80s. So there were, there are still

things. It wasn't really until remember when

web 2 .0 was being touted as the new thing around

2001, 2002. And for anybody that doesn't know

what that is, is the ability to give comments

on websites. That's what destroyed everything.

Because before that, remember web 1 .0 was all

about having Inline frames, you know how so like

the left -hand side of your screen would be a

section of a screen and you could have things

loading in the center of a screen so you basically

always had your Like you had your main page and

they said now it's all done dynamically through

PHP and everything right, but it was all about

Making sure you had to every website had to comply

to the web standards because not every browser

would work with it or People had browser tricks

to make things operate differently there were

secret websites within websites there were scavenger

hunts there was a whole lot of crazy stuff happening

in that time period and it all came to a crashing

halt when web 2 .0 came out and it was like wait

somebody can put a news article up and i can

make a comment back and forth it was like the

concept of merging uh a conversation web forum

uh like a web forum slash irc chat into a website

because Don't you remember every single website

had a chat feature right around then, even if

it didn't need one. And everything had a guest

book. If we search somewhere on free webs and

on GeoCities, I probably still have something

archived because in high school around 2002,

2003, we in my class, everybody had their own

website. It was my website. And at the bottom

of it, here's a website ring of all my friends.

and you could click on all your friends and you'd

have pages about your friends and about your

favorite things and you'd keep your blog on there

unless you had a live journal because you were

an emo douche. Hey, I loved live journal. I had

that too before I had Myspace. Because you're

an emo douche. Shut up, child. I didn't have

ICQ because I was young. I had ICQ. But you can

pinpoint when everything went to crap. You never

really heard about high school kids having suicides

or major crazy depression where they had to leave

school or crazy bullying until the advent of

two applications, Yahoo and Microsoft Messenger.

Once they came out and once everybody was sharing,

they were in group chats with everybody. the

anonymity of being able to just poke fun at somebody

online instantly started to happen and it wasn't

until you can interact that way because when

you had to make your own website you only really

gave the link to your friends and it would sometimes

be on there if you had a fan site for something

but even then it took a lot more effort to go

and like write something on your guestbook than

it did to instantly send you a message trolling

you So I feel like around 2004 2005 is when this

stuff started really happening like There used

to be chat apps at this in the schools. There

was a it was called land school up here and it

was a chat app that was used I guess primarily

the idea was you could chat with friends or chat

with your fellow students to help get tips on

things. Well, basically They ended up having

to cancel that. They had been out for years.

They had to cancel it the year that I was at

the school, and that was school board wide because

we used it just to share video games through

the school and shit talk to teachers and do all

sort of stuff. We installed Quake 3 on the school

server when they were doing a server update so

that every time the computers restarted, we could

access. That reminds me, there was a thing. It

was a Microsoft program. This would have been

about late 90s to early 2000s, and it was called

MS Comic Chat. It would appear as a three -strip

comic book panel, and you would chat with people

via these comic book avatars. Do you remember

when that was a thing, or you'd talk via your

avatar? Yeah, it was similar to Yahoo and then

there were other ones. Yeah, there was that.

But I don't know, like forums still exist and

chats still exist, but. They're highly specialized

now. Yeah, cuz I think MSN shut down their generic

chat rooms a couple years ago And that was the

end of the regular chats, right? The reason I

brought up the the comic book chat because it

was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life.

You'd have all these chat rooms from all across

the world like us Canada England Australia wherever

right and nine times out of ten the first question

someone would ask is ASL AIDS sex location Okay,

fine. That's pretty standard the amount of times

people would immediately start in the cyber or

sexting was Hilarious, I would always be broken

English. So you'd end up with the most unintentionally

hilarious sexy talk and I remember Killing myself

laughing because I would troll these people in

And that was a thing like if you looked and it

was like that even until like MSN and everything

stopped uh the vast majority of people sexting

were over in like the middle east in europe trying

to contact people in the states and canada do

you remember any of those conversations oh god

i wish i could but there it was just really bad

broken english and it was always like you sexy

lady no man i'm a dude thanks You would never

talk to somebody like that and even if you did

that's asking for a one in a cosmological Chance

that somebody's gonna reciprocate that. Oh Okay,

so My school well, we were fairly ahead of the

curve in that we had a lot of tech savvy people

because Being in the tech trying basically we're

in Silicon Valley, Canada here. For instance,

the internet, like in quotes, the internet was

tested here. The very first email was ever made

and sent was sent from the University of Waterloo

here. So like we had that pedigree. So a lot

of the students here, you know, their parents

worked for these big companies like Wattcom and

Blackberry and everything. Well, we had a secret

website that wasn't purposely wasn't listed.

on the Alexa rankings. You couldn't search for

it. You just said it was browncastle .net. It's

been shut down, I find, since 2007. But it was

2005, 2006, when I was in my final year of school.

It was basically where everybody from my school

and the other schools in the region would hang

out. You signed up. Basically, you had to prove

you were a student by somebody else had to vouch

for you. That was the way to get in. But there

were like 500 users, 600 users on there, and

we were active all day. And it would be posting

things like, what are the answers to this week's

test? Or it would be like it was like full on

like sharing academic stuff, bad talking teachers,

which teachers are drunk, which one's hot, that

sort of stuff. But and or, you know, this is

in the proto stages of this is like before YouTube.

So it would be like sharing real media RMVB files

real media variable bitrate files or ASF for

those video files of like Chuck Norris clips

and or random porn and different things that

would pop up or weird People would like data

mine new grounds and ebombs world and like get

videos before they were posted on the official

site They would take it from the server and we

would have it first And then somehow word got

out that the website existed and there was some

academic cheating going on on there, which is

very little compared to the rest. And I remember

the school board issuing a statement, if you're

on browncastle .net, you can be kicked out of

school. Turns out you couldn't. They just were

saying that stuff. But found out later on that

that's around the time, like they shut down organically

when most of us graduated. Other schools and

other regions they started doing stuff like that

having their own secret websites and that's how

people started really bullying people is through

like You know secret societies or secret websites

that sort of stuff and that's something that

could only really exist in that time frame and

then you fast forward everything Current internet

like I guess web 3 .0. If you wanted to call

it is anything post Facebook and myspace When

myspace died and Facebook took over The internet

was never the same. Especially when YouTube came

out after that too. And then Twitter. There were

some ones that were like Twitter, though I can't

remember any of them. That's how memorable they

are. Basically when the microblog took over and

hell, you could get harassed via hashtag and

then anybody in the world can get at you. They

don't even need to know your name. All they need

to know is hashtag douchebag. Facebook will never

die, even though the controversies, they're just

too big now. They'll be a husk of what they once

were. Young people might not flock to it, but

it's always going to be like, there are people

that view Facebook as the internet, like, oh,

that's the main site for the internet, even though

it's not like people that don't, there are a

lot of people that don't realize that the internet

isn't a main site, but they think of Facebook

or YouTube as the net. Twitter can die. Um, look

at Vine died and, and TikTok basically took over.

It's the same thing. you'll see things come and

go, Instagram, Tumblr, they will go. There are

certain things that are so ingrained that they

will stay forever. IRC chat will never go away,

just because it's based on design, and if IRC

chat has not gone away in 35 years, it never

will. Same with bulletin board, like basic, there

are going to be some forums, there are some website

forums that have been running for 25 years, they're

still going to be there forever. Reddit is a

service that will never go away, just by design,

what it is. There's a few others that was digs

gone. Stumble on when went away. Yeah, that's

gone. Get glues gone. A lot of other social experiment

type ones have gone come and gone. Tumblr is

dying. Tumblr just got bought by WordPress. So

you might see some kind of a resolution. Not

going to do well. They bought it for the tech.

It probably won't survive in its current state.

Other big websites will come and go like Amazon

can't ever go it's too big Yeah, eBay can never

go it's too big Craigslist I'm surprised still

exists. We have Kijiji does the same thing basically

There are things that there are things that fall

by the wayside But there are certain staples

that can really never go away people like well

YouTube will get shut down It's like now it doesn't

matter how much money YouTube where is let's

say they potentially lost money They'll never

shut them down They just can't. It's just it's

too immensely big. Too much of the world's economy

and marketing and just economy in general is

tied into how Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, and

by lesser extent, Twitter exists. Hell, elections

have been shaped by it. News is deception. Yeah,

but I'm talking like if you shut down four or

five of those sites, if you shut down the five

most accessed websites in the world, I mean shut

down permanently, you could crash the world economy.

So, you know, when people say, oh, you know,

that's it, Facebook is done, or that's it, YouTube's

done, YouTube's still not making a dime. It doesn't

matter. They exist for the traffic and for the

demographic information. And that's something

that only existed after the third major wave

of the internet came about, which is 15 years

ago when Web 2 .0 was forming. you don't see

on websites anymore compliance to anything because

computers are so fast that even if a website

is coded improperly it'll still run it might

run slow but do you remember back in the day

Steve going to websites and then being like this

little badge at the bottom this website proudly

adheres to the xhtml standard and they would

have or it would be like the w3c W3C, xHTML,

and that's what we learned in school. If you

were taking web design, it was HTML 3, 4, like

HTML 5, don't bother with that. That's too much

of a loose standard. Yeah, I'm actually certified

in HTML 4 .1. Yep, and I'm certified in xHTML

1, 1 .1 strict. You were told every good website

should have an indicator of what... is on the

site. So it'd be like, there'd be a CSS flag,

there'd be an XHTML, DHTML for dynamic pages.

The only ones that still use it are educational

sites that have, what was that standard that

was for screen writing where it would have script

writing on the screen and pen support. It's another

one from W3C, but if you go to a website that

is from one of those that adheres to one of those

strict standards, it loads instantly. and never

and uses like no ram but web design programs

and everything now that everything that we were

told not to do in school is what's done now it's

all about how the website looks not how it functions

and we're i feel like we're getting to an age

where if they keep down this path with with poorly

coded php sites or and all this crap we're going

to get to a point where it feels like this dystopic

future where like ads pop up everywhere and nothing

work like when you looked at the 90s and they

they showed like visions of the future and like

you go to a website there's like a bazillion

ads all over it that's what we're at now it's

almost like the internet has been degrading back

to geo cities level and the last pretty much

pretty much especially if they're not using like

html5 or wordpress i mean html5 is now like you

know 10 12 years ago it was like oh god that's

that it's too loosey goosey web computers can't

run it well computers couldn't run the dynamic

content when we were all in school and using

Pentium 1s and Pentium 2s and Pentium 3s were

rent for like the Pentium 3s and 4s were only

used in like the art classes. When you consider

that your phone is like 100 times faster than

the computers you use in school. But HTML5 does

give you the option to use like completely open

source videos. Like everything on there is free.

There's no paid licenses. It's just everybody...

Tries to copy every website. So every website

looks the same now I can't stand when you go

to news websites and there's a like 500 ,000

ads before you can even get to the comment section

if they even have one or They all use was it

was it discuss or whatever? Yeah Yeah, yes garbage

Bogs down slow and it's so hackable and vulnerable

And you have to use your real name, which I understand

the idea of using your real name, but everything

is connect through Facebook, connect through

Twitter, connect through this. So that's why

I was saying that everything is so tied together

in Web 3 .0. It's like you're basically tied

into five different accounts, either your Apple

account, your Google account, your Facebook account,

your Twitter account, or magically, you can maybe

use your actual email. Yep So yes, that's the

end of my rant on the internet So anyways, I

think that about rounds this episode up. So I

like turtles Yeah, if you guys yes, you guys

enjoyed this episode and you'd like to hear other

interesting topics in the next one Sorry for

ranting or to have Alex disturbing as frig horror

movie Well, I didn't go into every detail, because

you wanted to keep it fairly clean. Fairly clean,

that's your idea? Oh, it involved a lot more,

I'll tell you off air. Oh god. So anyways, thank

you as always for listening to Altergeek. I've

been your host, Steve Phillips, along with Mike

the Birdman Don and Alex. What are your social

medias? You can find me online, as always, and

at all hours, at Birdman Dodd on Twitter. I'm

also available on Facebook or Mike at This We

Can Geek Dodd. If you prefer email, like that

old communication style. So yeah, look for me

and my hover graph full of eels. Indeed. You

can find me Find me on all those websites. I

was talking about like Facebook and everything

but it's Email is Alex this week in geek net

same if you use the feedback one it can go to

either of us if you wanted to Twitter I am death

phase twig or you can just use the this week

and geek both of us will monitor that You know

since you're not using anymore should I just

go by Alex Megatron just to really screw people

minds up and oh Okay, next time we do this and

we have Blanchard on introduce me as Alex Megatron

and see what he says or you could go TFG on Alex

TFG. Oh, oh You're gonna break his poor brain.

You have to enter you have to introduce me first

and then he's like what and then you introduce

him as Just or no, you're just blanchard now

No, it's Alex is Aquaman. So anyways. Oh, oh,

no, no, no, no. You introduce me as TFG1 Alex

and him as Aquaman. And just he might his brain

might just growl. That's what he sounds like

when he gets upset. So anyways, you can interact

with me in the show on Twitter at SCP 21 and

at Ultra Geek. So until next time, get altered

geeky with the Ultra Geeks.