Paying for Twitter Verification?
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What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And this week, we've got a bunch of interesting mega-company stuff to talk about. We have some metaverse thoughts, and I've...

We have a video out on the metaverse now, and we can dive into the weeds on that. We can go into some smartphone features that we might miss, a little bit of a game I hear. And then also we're going to wrap it all up with everyone's favorite trivia, so be sure to wait till the end. But first...

Can Elon turn Twitter into an S-tier social media platform? So I have like two things to talk about. Do you want to go straight off of your tweet on Twitter platform? I guess that's a good place to start. So you tweeted, was it last night? It was last night. I guess first we have to just mention, just in case you haven't heard, Elon has bought Twitter. Good, useful background information. Yes. There's lots of social media platforms out there. Twitter, what's the most popular?

publicly held company, had a bunch of leadership. Elon Musk swoops in, buys Twitter. I don't know if it would, he swooped multiple, it's very confusing. There's a reason we haven't really covered it because it's been all over the place. It's extremely complicated, yeah. Yeah, there would be days where we would think about talking about it and then we didn't and then the next day everything changed so it's hard. Even some of the stuff today we're recording on Tuesday.

we say today might not be true on friday there's a pretty good chance that this episode comes out and there's something else that happened imagine elon's not even the owner by friday it wouldn't be surprised as of this recording he walked in with a sink and said let that sink in and i think we're just gonna go ahead and say he's he's in he's in he's he's in he's doing things but really my question so i tweeted uh last night

YouTube is, maybe it's a hot take. I don't know if it's a hot take. I didn't actually think it was that hot of a take, but it got some reactions. YouTube is still the only S tier social media platform. I don't think it's a hot take. We've talked about it before and we agreed.

I think the reason it felt like a hot take there is because you posted it on Twitter, which when you post it on a site, that site will probably defend it. If I posted it on Instagram, I'm pretty sure Instagram fans would have said, hey, this is not so bad out here. No one would have seen it because there would have been 40 suggested posts before and no one would have. They would have left the stories because reels and ads would have gotten in the way.

I guess I'll just explain why I said it, which is like, obviously I've been making YouTube videos for a long time. There's a bunch of different perspectives that make a platform or a social media site S tier for me. It has to be from the viewer platform. There's lots of content. It has to be from the creator side. Lots of tools, lots of advertising revenue opportunities and things like that. And they all sort of merge together into like a place that people actually enjoy spending time and using it.

Twitter's pretty good, but much fewer people use it, and it doesn't have nearly as many good, useful tools, especially if you're trying to build a business on it. That's one of the things I consider important for a social media platform. Facebook, we all know about that. Meta's creation used to be very highly thought of and now is sort of a background. I mean, this is people my age would say it's a background tool.

account you don't delete because you still only know certain people through what they post on Facebook. Exactly. Like family members and stuff. You know, there's Instagram. We know what that is. There's TikTok. We know what that is. There's Snapchat.

Maybe a little underrated, but we know what that is and what it was. Be real. Have you used be real? We've, um, we've used it in the office before, but it was months and months ago. So it was very buggy. It seems like it's fixed some of it. And part of me wants to start with some of the people in the office again. Um, I do know people that use it. I do think it's an, I've said before, I actually think it's a really good idea. It feels like the, what beam could have been. Right. Um,

I actually think it's really cool. But again, I think Instagram or TikTok or someone have already tried to steal it and they're going to steal it. TikTok's giving me notifications already to start posting stuff. If I were B-Real, I would get acquired right now so they don't turn into Clubhouse, which was

Should have gotten acquired but they didn't and yeah, that's that's the argument remember that question that age-old question is it a feature or a Platform Clubhouse turns out it's a feature. It was it's just built into seven other things now Yep, but I don't want to stray too too far away from here because I kind of wanted to focus this on Twitter and While we don't first of all, what tier would you put Twitter in if YouTube's s tier good question current Twitter is

Current Twitter is C tier. Okay. I hard agree with you on that one. Middle, middle. I would love to disagree, but I think we're both kind of on the same page here. And I think let's say some hypotheticals of what we think could make Twitter S tier. Yeah. So like Elon being a part of it now has a lot of people hoping things are going to change with it. Keep in mind, it's still a public company, still has to like try to run as a business and make decisions that

float it as a company and maybe make money someday. So that's still going to have to happen in the background. But yeah, I think one of the things we hope to see more is, well, I'm going to say more features just as like a blanket thing. Like it's Twitter has started a super simple, you would just text it and it would post for you and it had to be 140 characters or less. Now there's photos, now there's videos, now there's polls and all sorts of things. And obviously you can follow people. Maybe, maybe there's more features to Twitter that, that sort of work in the Twitter sphere. Yeah.

Trending topics and being a video platform can evolve. Like we have Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Twitter is just kind of like you can upload videos. Yeah. And if you find like you follow people who upload videos and that's the only way you'll see videos, but maybe they can surface videos more than just trending topics. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. That's sort of the base stuff that comes out of my head. Quick side note, Twitter's a private company now. It's still trading. It was taken off Thursday, I believe.

Okay. I'll double check, but I'm pretty sure it's a private. Either way, it doesn't matter. They got to make money. Yeah. We'll see what happens there. And we're saying they have to make money knowing that Elon has already tweeted like Twitter's. I'm not buying this to make money. Like, sure. He can say that as many times as he wants. Ultimately, even if he doesn't want to, like, make record profits with it in order to keep it alive, it has to make money. And.

That's something we'll talk about in a couple minutes, 'cause there's a few other things he said that we wanna talk about, but right now if we're talking about what Twitter could do better, I like your idea of features, and when I think of videos, I wouldn't want it to go straight into reels and swiping through a million videos at a time, but it would be really cool if somehow,

Popular tweets that you were looking at that had a lot of engagement or even popular videos that were in those tweets had some sort of like I could see suggested videos that are similar to it of other tweets that are on the platform. That's it. Being able to very quickly go into other sides of the platform to see what other people are thinking. Yeah. Yeah. That's like an old YouTube thing. Like you finish a video and more video suggestions pop up. Recommended. Yeah. Related videos. That's a super obvious one. Yeah.

And also, what was I, I was just about to say something. Oh, spam. Oh yeah, sure. There's like so much of a, there's obviously a spam problem and maybe we'll talk about the verification thing in a second, but the problem of like a popular user tweeting and then a bunch of impersonating accounts also swooping into the replies and scamming people, that would be nice if it was less rampant. YouTube's had to deal with this too. They've done a really good job.

It took them a little while. It took some poking. It took enough of like...

Like YouTuber creators speaking up about it. I made a video just about comment spam. But as of today, it's much better than it was. So they eventually got around to figuring it out and they continue to evolve because, you know, spammers don't just sit still. They're going to try to figure out better ways to get around it. Exactly. So, you know, there's something to that. Yeah. I would say real quick one more, like ultimately, and this is something that's not going, I don't know how they're going to solve it, but I think the biggest issue with Twitter is just...

it is seemingly one of the smaller social media sites in terms of active users and it has to grow somehow. It's really weird. It is true that it has a small user base of people relative to the other giants. Like if you compare it to YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, whatever, Instagram, Instagram,

But it seems like everyone important is already on it. I think that makes sense. The thing is, it almost feels to me like the people who are on it are people trying to follow other people that they are either like fans of or want news from or like, like, so I'm on it because I'm

the tech space right now i like to follow everyone in tech but then i'm also making sure i'm following a lot of publishing things like the verge and all the other tech blogs and it feels like i'm trying to like just keep tabs on different people influencers like large creators conversations pretty much or what they're thinking it's not like a personal thing almost right but less like people you know in real life but there is

very few people I know in real life that I'm conversing with there. It's generally because those people I have

Those are Facebook, those are Instagram, stuff like that. Normally I would say that that's how you get more people to get onto a platform is you need to get more of the big publishers and interesting people to join so that it makes regular people want to join. But it seems like instead of maybe Facebook, for example, let's say all your friends are on it but you don't really care about following the New York Times on Facebook, if you think of any publisher, they have a Twitter and they tweet all their stuff. That's what I like. And if you think of any...

almost any celebrity or politician specifically, they all have a Twitter and they all tweet stuff. And then regular people...

quote those tweets and share those tweets and those tweets become news and like when an earthquakes strikes somewhere the first place I find out about it is like boom seven new tweets showed up at the top of my timeline they're all people from the same area that felt the earthquake like that's how breaking news happens usually in my world so I'm like a lot of people use Twitter but it still is it has this like this outsized relevance relative to its actual like

amount of people using it. Yeah. I mean, we also like in our space, Twitter's super popular in the tech world, just like, and the creator world as well in general, or maybe not even in the creator world as much. There are a lot of people that I follow that aren't in tech that don't have Twitters, which is kind of crazy to me. But I do, like you said, the kind of like

live super fast-paced updates is what I like about Twitter and I think that is better for people who are kind of like enthusiasts like say you're a New York Times reader if you just read it every once in a while

maybe you're not on Twitter. But if you read it and have journalists on the New York Times that you really like, you're probably on Twitter so you can follow that author and then see their random other thoughts and stuff like that because you generally think, I like this person's articles. I like their point of view. I would like to see what else they enjoy. Maybe some live tweets of... I mean, like...

there's people who are live tweeting court cases and stuff like that. You might be interested. There's people who are live tweeting, uh, weather events and such like that. Live tweet tech event. Live tweet is awesome. Like, that's what I like, but I think it caters way more to the enthusiasts. Whereas Instagram's way more just like on a personal level. Yeah. I, I,

A tech live event is an interesting thing too because like an Apple event let's say happens some people I will see will be live sharing things that happen on their Instagram stories they're not posting to the feed every two seconds when a new thing gets announced but they're posting a new story every you know little bit and

and that's one way of doing it. A lot of other people that I also see are just like, especially me, when there's a bunch of announcements and things that are coming out at once, I'm just live tweeting the things that get unveiled, and that's another way to do it. That happens a lot. And then there's just following a live blog, and I wonder what is the...

most mass consumer way and what's the nerdiest way on that spectrum i figure the live blog is actually the nerdiest way but maybe twitter live tweets weird i think live blog is like the most chronological way of doing it because twitter then like when you are live tweeting an apple event if like the apple watch ultra comes out and then 20 minutes later a

I don't know, maybe they just announced the regular iPhone 14. Like the ultra thing is going to be on chronologically above it because it's going to get so much more engagement. But that engagement and the conversation that happens is probably not happening in a live blog. And I kind of think the nerdier enthusiast people like to have those

those conversations underneath it, which is why I love Twitter so much. Yeah, a tweet shows up and then right underneath it is all of people's public reactions to it, comments to it, replies, quote tweets, people getting ratioed left and right, all of it's happening right there in front of you and you can just choose to just jump in anywhere and just engage with it. Yep. Other than, if it was an Instagram story, you wouldn't see any of that. You would just see the image and then click, click, click, click, and move on. If it was a live blog, you would just see the posts, click, click, click, click, move on. So, yeah, having the, I mean, I guess you could post on Facebook and have comments, but... I would say Twitter...

in terms of like but Twitter has a better conversation engagement platform if that makes any sense compared to like YouTube and

Instagram is the worst to attempt to see an actual conversation happen in the comments. It basically is impossible. Well, you can't even have a conversation. You can reply to a comment, and that's kind of it. And it's a total mess. Same with TikTok. It's like Twitter at least has some form of threading, and I think Twitter is the faster-paced Reddit and maybe slightly slower Discord if you can't physically be at your computer just straight up typing in a live chat, which I think is...

the best part about Twitter ultimately is being able to have some of those conversations. All right, so a rumor, I guess, has come up that's kind of been confirmed maybe, or at least replied to, that maybe one of the ways Twitter will try to make money is they will start charging people for Twitter verification. Now, I don't know about all the details of this. I assume you can't just hand them 20 bucks and get a blue check. That wouldn't make any sense. That's what I want to talk about. I believe you will have to complete the verification process and also pay for it.

uh, which there's a bunch of verified users on Twitter. It's not enough to like turn a profit, but it is some money, which is interesting. Uh, would you pay for Twitter verification? To just, first, let me quickly go over like how we got to this point, like what was happening on Twitter to, so we can discuss what is a rumor and what we're like speculating on. So essentially I believe it was Casey Newton reported that Twitter was going to start, was,

thinking of the idea of charging people $20 a month to be verified. So that report comes out, lots of conversation happens. And the reason I think we can think that this is correct knowledge is because

First of all, there was a poll that someone said, how much would you pay to be verified and have a blue checkmark on Twitter? $5 a month, $10 a month, $15 or wouldn't pay. 80% of people said wouldn't pay. And then Elon responded, interesting. Probably not the numbers he wants to see. But that's also those people. That's a million votes too. That means most of those people aren't verified. And of course they wouldn't pay. Very good chance, for sure. And then after that,

Somebody else was complaining about paying 20. I think it was Stephen King The author was talking about paying not paying $20 a month. So Twitter and then Elon responded We have to make money somehow which again for everyone way back there who may have said like Elon doesn't care about money Like they have to make money somehow. He literally said it on Twitter. He said how about $8 a month and then explains that after

After that, he replied again along the lines of... Negotiating in the comments? Basically negotiating in the comments of a Stephen King tweet. They're just going to keep bargaining you down. They're never going to stop. They all said zero, by the way. So that's why we're at this pretty confirmed that this was at least

talked about and high up enough that Elon's thinking about it. So I think it's a reasonable thing to think might happen. Now, like you said, we don't know. Is that going to be, I pay $20 a month, I get a blue check mark? Is that going to be, I'm verified already, I pay $20 a month, how do people get verified after that? All of that stuff is kind of up in the air and we're definitely speculating on. But first of all,

I can't say this. You ask me, would I pay $20? I'm not verified. I could say no, but it doesn't really matter at all, right? Because I think as a person that's verified and uses the verified features and appreciates the verified tab where you can see other verified notifications as a subset of notifications, and also as someone who gets impersonated quite a bit on the internet, I would pay a lot more than $20 a month to make sure I'm the only MKBHD verified on Twitter.

I don't want other people to be able to be verified on Twitter as MKBHD or as Marques Brownlee. I would pay. $20 a month is...

more than Netflix. It's more than, it's so much more than so many other things that offer so much more than that. That's the thing. So we keep saying like, there's all these things, there's all these people on Twitter, but there's also all these organizations on Twitter. How much would the New York Times pay to be verified? I would be super down to make organizations pay for a blue check mark. Sure, but then you have to like distinguish. Are we an organization? Is MKBHD an organization? Is a small publisher with three people? I think your Twitter is not an organization, Nick.

If we made it into an organization, yeah. Would the studio have to pay more than me because it's an organization? Here's the thing. There are journalists out there who are not making enough money that should be verified, that are accurate representations of media that should be verified. And asking $20 a month is ridiculous. They should have whoever they're a journalist for.

There are plenty of news and I think there are way too many independent media organizations that they are barely surviving and $20 a month is pretty brutal for verification on Twitter. I think it's... I just don't agree with it at all. I think there are places where maybe it should be paid for, maybe big organizations, but again, you have to draw the line which makes it so much more complicated and it's just like... I know people...

Isaac has started his whole thing with Tangle and he was verified due to being a journalist before. But when he decided to take that leap and like go make his own website so he could do like independent news journalism, asking him to immediately start paying $20 a month is it's rough.

Yeah, it depends on what you're paying for already. I think there's a lot of things that you like you have to weigh it against. Like, does being verified get you anything or is it worth anything to you at that point? Or if you're just getting started, maybe you don't have being verified on your priorities. But when you start to grow, then you get impersonated more and then you start to think, I do actually want to be verified and have to go through the process now.

That's a tough question. It's definitely a question. What does verification matter? I mean, like, I'm not verified personally.

I don't care that much. Sure, I would love it. At this point, I just want it before if they make you pay $20 so then I can not pay for it and say, hell yeah, I didn't pay for it. Grandfathered in. Yeah, they're definitely not going to grandfather us. I don't think so. I don't know. It's a tricky situation. But also, on top of all of this, I just want to throw out there that one of the things Elon has mentioned multiple, multiple times is that he wants to authenticate all humans on Twitter, which if that were to happen...

why does verification matter at all authenticate all humans on twitter so just make sure everyone that has an account and is a human has to prove they're human i know where you're going with this already but in terms of just verification right now what like would that ultimately null it out like why do i need to be verified if elon is already verifying me as a human by being on twitter oh just by being on twitter at all you can't be on twitter if you're not

a verified human. I guess he's the one who said, I'll find the exact. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. If you're a if you're the owner of Twitter, you would like to make sure that there's no bots on Twitter. You'd like to make sure there's no spammers, very people making tons of accounts that go around and spam comments, replies, impersonating people. You don't want that to happen on Twitter. So those those accounts should not have a verified checkmark. But also, yeah, those accounts should not exist in a dream world.

but I guess that's two different levels of security. Like number one, if you have the verified check, you're definitely a human. And then if you don't have the verified check, you might be a human and we're working on getting rid of the ones that aren't humans. I guess that's the tiers. Yeah, spam accounts,

People and then definitely people or brands, whoever else is verified. I don't know. Do you think that your Twitter account is going to get plugged into the sort of Tesla sphere of things in the same way that if you have a Prime account, you can use it when you check out at Whole Foods? I think that there's an inevitable crossover. Yeah. So there's been some sort of visions of the future of what a Twitter account might be, which might be more than just a Twitter account. It could be an account that's connected to...

you know, other services you use to your bank, to your groceries. I don't know if there's big companies that do things like that. That would be one way to get a lot more people to use Twitter if there is real utility to having a Twitter account. It's something Elon's mentioned before. I forget. I want to say it was an interview with, oh man, what's that one Tesla blog? Not Teslarati, Tesla.

I don't know. He's had an interview and he said, he essentially is like, we don't have a WeChat in the US. WeChat runs everything in China. Yeah, that's awesome. I would like to do something. Government.

Listen, I'm throwing maybe not an exact quote, but very similar. But similar to what you're talking about is it would turn Twitter into something with far more features and an everyday life kind of thing. And trust me, what you thought is exactly what I thought. Okay, so that idea, but not run by the government, if it's actually good, is something that people would pay for.

theoretically, if it's actually a useful commodity account. I think paying for it would, oh man, we're really in the weeds. I love it. YouTube premium is like 14 bucks a month or something like that just to have access to the content. Netflix is 13 bucks a month just to have access to the content. Hulu is whatever it is.

Twitter blue. YouTube's not access to content. It's like ad-free access to content. Right, right, right. Access to ad-free content. There's a little tiny bit of premium content or whatever. I guess the idea would be to build up as much interesting, useful features on Twitter as possible that you could actually get people to want to pay for. And I think that's a much better way of going for making money than...

I think a regular verification process, the thing verification should be, uh, I don't know if I necessarily want to use the term trustworthy news sources, but like news sources that could potentially be, uh,

and like making sure that you're following the correct person in those sources. And it doesn't always have to be news, but just like, you know, somebody that somebody would want to follow making sure they're the correct person. I guess I always thought like verification for me was always just about being impersonated. That was always the number one thing. I mean, that's pretty much what we're, that's why I don't want to use the term trustworthy because there are plenty of people who are. Yeah, there's plenty of morons that you,

That can be verified. Your words, not mine. You're verified. You're definitely that moron. You're the only one I can say you're that guy. But as long as there's not a bot moron trying to scam you. Exactly. I'm the real moron, not the bot moron. No, I think my rule number one on the internet, as I've always come back to saying, is...

don't charge people for something that was previously free. So if you're e-learning or listening to this, coming up with new things to add value to Twitter and having people pay for those will be much better accepted than trying to go, hey, that verification thing that we've already been running for free,

Yeah, we're going to make people pay for that now. That's the general rule number one. That I'll totally agree with. I actually think editing tweets in Twitter Blue is like one of the better things they've done recently because I do think if you want to talk about things verified users could use, why make them pay for the verification? Why not give them a bunch of really great tools?

that they can just pay for monthly. - I think it's basically their hack of going like, ah, we don't really know anything that we could guarantee a lot of people to pay for, but we know we already have a lot of people enjoying being verified. And they're just trying to like loop that into the thing that people pay for. - I still don't think they'll do it, but that part,

is what scares me about it not confirming that it can't just be like, I'll pay $20 a month, give me that blue checkmark. Yeah. Because if they just want to make money immediately, which I don't think that's the course they're going. Just ruin the plan. Everyone is verified on Twitter. It would literally be the exact opposite of fixing spam bots. It would...

Just imagine how many fake Elon Musks there could be. And they're all verified now because they'll have 20 bucks a month to spend on scamming people. So again, I don't think that will be it, but I'm worried about if it's a money play, that would be the fastest way to make money. Yeah. Usually the fastest way to make money is not the best way to make money. Can I put in my two cents here? No. One, I love Twitter bots.

You love Twitter bots. There are some very useful, fantastic bots. I thought this was going to be a hot take about Twitter spam. Oh, no, no. Spam sucks. Yeah, yeah. But there are some genuinely useful bots. I agree. So if he gets rid of all bots, that's a problem. That's a good point. Yeah. Being only people on Twitter is not...

Twitter. There are lots of things on Twitter that are not people, that are really cool parts of Twitter. That's what I thought you were going to go to before when I said, I know where you're going with this. Yeah, the authenticating part also means there are a lot of really fun whatever accounts, business accounts, parody accounts, just helpful Twitter bots that can point you in the right direction to something. It's part of Twitter. It's part of Twitter. You're literally killing part of Twitter if you take that away. And the other thing is with super apps, you think people will actually use a Twitter app that has everything built in?

I feel like Instagram tried, and we all complained about how much crap is in Instagram. That is a whole different subject. I think it is going to be very hard to do here in the U.S. Because like you said, no one wants it to be government run, but making it government run is what would force everyone to use it. Would you rather it be government run or run by one guy? I'd rather neither. I'd rather... That's the choice, I guess. ...stitch all my credit cards and pay in cash again, which I...

hate doing it's already rough enough being like i use an android phone and wow all these google services work so well together and oops my life is now completely in gmail google calendar and all these other services that one company runs uh having a super app run by one company that also one guy who's a little rogue sometimes could really mess up that's the nicest way of putting that not not the best no it would be terrible yeah yeah i think that's a tough one

I guess we'll leave it at that. Don't charge for things that were previously free. That's probably a good rule of thumb. And also Marques will pay upwards of $500 a month for Twitter verification. This is true. I wasn't going to say it, but now that it's out there, yeah, I would pay an unreal. Yeah, what's your number? What's your upper limit of how much I would pay? Are you asking just for verification? Yeah, just verification. Verification, it wouldn't be very high, but just to have my Twitter account and use it, it would be very high. What would you think of a one-time price? This is bad. Okay.

$20 a month? $20 a month is ridiculous. To be verified? Yeah. I think that's crazy. I think you have to taste it first. Yeah, I think that's actually pretty worth it. I don't think so. Maybe a tiered version and depending on how many followers you have make it more expensive, but it's crazy to ask a

a journalist with 2,000 followers, but 2,000 very loyal followers who really care about that. - The question is, does that person even need to be verified? - I think there's always people who could cause harm in the comments. - Impersonating them, yeah, that's always gonna be possible. I guess my notifications are so chaotic that I do need that filter. - For sure. - It is my barometer. So I would pay personally.

I would pay a hundred bucks a month easily. God. To keep the filter. To keep the filter. And I'm not advocating for that to be the price. He's doing. I'm saying that's what I would pay. He's doing it for all of you out there so you don't get scammed in our comments. That's what he really cares about. There are real accounts impersonating me in the comments every day. That's my.

I don't know what that noise was. Anyway. Okay. Yeah. That's my, that's kind of it. That's, that's where, that's where we're at on Tuesday. Who knows where it'll be by the time this comes out. I can't wait till this ramble is just completely null and void by the time this releases on Friday. There's a whole like PDF of new rules on Twitter by the time this comes out. They pay you $20 a month to be verified. Perfect. That's what. That's actually ideal. Let's have it. Now I want to be verified. Yeah. It's great.

All right. Let's take a quick break. But before that, let's do trivia. Okay. Trivia question number one. Who are the top three most followed accounts on Twitter? One point per person. On Twitter. On Twitter specifically. We recently did this with Instagram. Yeah, Instagram. And I remember some of those. It's so much different on Twitter. Is it? Do you think? I think so. I don't know. I don't know.

Does Kylie Jenner even have a Twitter? Yeah, for sure. Does she actually? There are so many of them who don't, or it's weird to see someone on Instagram with like 60 million followers and then you go on Twitter and they have like a thousand. I think there's people who you don't think of as a Twitter person, but you'll check and they have a Twitter. Kylie Jenner does have a Twitter. I'm sure she has 25 million followers or something. 40.3 million. Yeah, like something crazy. But she's not a Twitter person. That's crazy. She's the Instagram. Anyway, yeah.

Yeah, I'll brainstorm. Also, just saying, no producer cam, but producer cam is ordered. It's happening. It's a future thing. Let us walk the stroll into it soon. You'll be able to see the look in their eyes when they read the questions to us and know how we struggle with these. Yeah. They dress up really nice as producers, too. They're both in full tuxes like they usually are. Oh, yeah, all the time. You'll be able to see the tuxes when we get the studio cam. Cut, cut. Can we hire actors to play us?

With helmets on and they just mouth into the microphone. You just have metaverse avatars. Oh, wow. That's a good segue. We'll be right back. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees. And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot.

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Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. All right, welcome back. So who cares about the metaverse? Yes. A video you just posted on the main channel. Interesting question. Lots of things talked about, but I thought we'd dive a little deeper. I'll throw some of my thoughts out there. Please. I think just the metaverse is...

is a super interesting area that obviously everyone's talking about and I'm already getting scared of talking about it. Well...

Here's the thing. I also want to preface all of this with just like saying that while VR has been getting very popular, I think we can all agree that like the crypto NFT section of the world kind of took over the metaverse for a little while. And I don't think that that's

they have to be together they're mutually they're exclusive to one another like so i want to talk about the metaverse that is not including crypto and nft stuff because i think it's given it sure of in that sense i think people are like screw the metaverse i hate everything about it they get looped together it's like the web three it's yeah i and i don't love i i get why people don't like that um and i want to just talk about like the metaverse is in like a a separate universe

that's digital that we can be a part of through different factors of AR, VR, whatever's happening. This video, by the way, was in the works for like over a month.

and it had a bunch of different... Way over a month. Yeah, way over a month. But we had a bunch of different ideas of how to approach... Because we haven't talked about the metaverse in a video. And it became this swelling topic of it keeps getting talked about. There's more Facebook presentations. There's more VR. We're going to get more headsets. And maybe the question is just like,

What is the metaverse? And the more we researched this, the harder and harder it was to answer the question because there are several metaverses by several companies. Maybe it's Decentraland and there's like 300 daily active users in this one and there's 400 daily active users in this one and there's like the Facebook concept of the metaverse and then there's Horizon Workplaces and then there's like Just VR. What are we even talking about? It got really hard to filter it into one video.

But eventually, I mean, we did get to play with the headset, the new one, before we saw the presentation. So we got to form our opinions about it. We hear the price. We get the demos. And then it starts to crystallize a little bit. And we're like, actually, this is more just about like one company sort of trying to steer their future into being a platform instead of being built on another platform.

Kind of like we saw, you know, Ask App Not to Track from Apple and a whole bunch of Facebook's ad business taking hits. So like they're looking forward, pivoting the ship and barreling headfirst towards metaverse stuff. I do also want to like,

- That's the main thing we're seeing though, but like the metaverse in general isn't all Facebook and meta just 'cause they name themselves very opportunely. But like there are plenty of other situations, like Vive has its own, like there's something called VRChat years and years ago that you could argue is a metaverse that's way before Facebook even changed their name. So while that's the main thing, but it's also another thing if you are Facebook,

bad reputation right off the bat. Like, rightfully so. I totally understand it. So all of these things are being seen very negatively at first and I understand it. And as coming from someone who kind of thinks the metaverse is pretty stupid right now, I... So what is the metaverse, Andrew? And why is it... It's just like a digital... The easiest way is it's like a digital space that can be accessed and you can have experiences in it. Oh, man.

Oh, man. This is how the video concept started. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was months and months ago. What is a metaverse? Okay, it's a universe that's digital. Oh, well, I guess that kind of is like anything, right? Like Twitter is a metaverse. It's weird. Oh, it's a virtual experience probably that happens in VR that lives separate from the real world. Oh.

I agree with you. I think it has to be like VR based or AR based. Like, I think you need to be like, cause then is Minecraft. Exactly. The metaverse is World of Warcraft, the metaverse. And like, you could probably argue, yes, Decentraland, you don't need it. You can go live it like second life, stuff like that. Hmm.

it is all very confusing yeah there's not a lot of actual definitions and hard lines in the sand which is why that ended up not being the the direction of the video is trying to define the metaverse yeah just the dictionary for it is virtual reality space which users can interact with the computer generated environment and other users

Sure. There we go. That's the basic definition. You're in a space in VR with other people. But I do think we should focus on kind of what meta's vision is because I think that's the most common one right now. And as much as I don't like it,

I understand why things are going there and I do agree that position in the future makes sense. I do think having more human-like interactions in positions where you can't physically be with each other, I think is most people would agree makes total sense. Yeah. Right.

And not only that, like we can all also agree that as video calling experience, like zoom or FaceTime or teams or whatever, there is a disconnect there. Like it does not, it's great, but it just doesn't quite feel there. And I mean, Apple and Microsoft have been working on things for years to try and help with eye contact and better lighting and center stage and making it feel more personal, but it just always has this kind of disconnect. So being able to put on some sort of God,

and to feel like you're transported somewhere with maybe family who lives across the country or maybe friends who are in another country, like totally different times, whether that's meetings for business and stuff, I think totally makes sense. I think the position we are in now is very hard to convey that to people because it's this wild jump that you have to make to get to that. And we're nowhere close to it. That is the main point, I think, is the idea that,

is actually, it makes perfect sense. It's like, if you can build these experiences that are much more realistic feeling and much more connective in their engagement than like a flat face on a screen or a bunch of squares in a Zoom call, then it's theoretically better.

But when you try these experiences now, you're wearing this big plastic headset on your face and it's uncomfortable and the graphics aren't that good and the mics are like the audio isn't as good as from your face. And like suddenly you're like, well, this isn't actually better. But there is companies that believe if we pour enough money into this and make it better and better and better, eventually it will actually be a no brainer.

to do the metaverse version every time. And so they're dedicating themselves to being at the forefront of that new thing. It's a,

- Big dedication to come this early. I think one of the biggest issues right now with even just the outskirts of people trying to believe into this is I still just don't feel like VR in general is that well-known. People aren't that familiar with VR. It's still getting to the point where I'll give someone the Quest 2 that I have and they go into it and they have the best time ever.

But to navigate even through like the beginning menus of to tell someone how to do Beat Saber is a learning experience. And while they enjoy it, the familiarity of VR is just not there with I would

probably argue 90% of the human population that would even think about doing any of this. And like, if I almost want to take it a step back, an IT department, they will stick to like a Windows version until it basically runs out of support because users get so used to something they don't. When I worked, Windows 10 was out for like three years at the IT place I worked for. All of our users were on XP or 7. Having people

completely just shut down because they have like a new windows or os upgrade like imagine now being like hey here's your vr headset enjoy like this is how you're going to take meetings now the just the the unfamiliarity with all of it feels like a total nightmare in businesses and i think i think still making vr more easily available for like

gaming and stuff and more extracurricular activities would then help people get more familiar with it and then maybe you could take those steps into the enterprise world. Yeah. I guess the way I framed it in the video is like games is one of the things you can do in VR. Incredible. And it's one of the most fun universally like

great first experiences. But let's say you look at these headsets, there's still a big clunky thing on your face, there's a battery hanging off of it, and the battery life is only an hour. But fast forward to the future, you have this super lightweight headset, maybe it's just a pair of glasses that can do all the same stuff, just theoretical future tech. And

the graphics are dramatically better and smoother and more immersive. And it's just an amazing graphical experience. Then suddenly it makes sense. It's like, oh, it's actually a better version of a meeting than a Zoom call is today. Yeah, exactly. So that's the future they're betting on getting to. I think audio, big thing there too. If they can get like,

crisp audio might be one of the like most annoying parts of any teleconferencing ever because just like that constant just screech every once in a while or something cutting out like in real life you don't ever go like oh i'm sorry your mouth kept moving but i didn't hear any of the words that came out of your mouth i was distracted by the glitching lips what is happening so i i really do think

I don't want to just say the metaverse sucks because I do want there to be innovation. I think right now the metaverse sucks. And I'm excited for where it goes and I'm hoping that when I'm old enough

I was going to say when my knees don't work, but that's probably like a couple of years away. So, but when I'm much older and can't really get around, like I'm excited for the metaverse to be a thing, hopefully then. So then like I get to experience some things still. Do you remember the project Starline demo did at Google IO where it was like, it looked like a guy like, like talking to a mirror, but then he could like make eye contact with a virtual, you remember this? That looks like a like weird indie horror movie. Yeah. Well,

it kind of does look like a horror movie, but it's like you are having a video call with someone who is somewhere else in the world, but the video call will look extremely realistic. You'll be able to make direct eye contact with the person and it'll have this 3d element where you can move around and see angles that the way you would, if you were in real life with someone, that's an another like background thing in the back of my head where I'm like,

What if these headsets just aren't it? What if the whole metaverse thing would be like looking into a virtual space or just like a huge virtual window instead of just a headset? I don't even know. I kind of like the AR way of like maybe glasses that can produce some sort of hologram of something. Like if I'm in my room in my space, but all I have to do is wear a pair of glasses and then you can be there in a sort of hologram and feel like you're there. That feels kind of like maybe an in-between, but I also...

kind of like ultimately in the perfect world where it all makes sense and you can have a fully immersive VR experience without being uncomfortable and all those things. Then in that scenario, it's like, but I want to create the, um, the atmosphere inside it. So then full VR kind of makes sense. I, I don't know. I like go back and forth on this whole, um,

way, way in the future, this is going to be really cool. But all of the things right now are doing a horrific job at showing it off. - The gap, some people might call it a gap between where we're at and where we wanna be. It's more of like a canyon, like a giant chasm of like-- - With alligators in the bottom. - It's gonna take billions of dollars to cross this canyon. But you know, a couple companies are spending the money. - Yes, so I want to say there is hope for the metaverse.

Right now, all of me talking about, I'm not even going to call it the metaverse. I'm just going to talk about VR because VR gaming is so much fun and I've been having an absolute blast with it lately. Have you seen the people making comparisons to other non-VR games? There's people who are just like, they're so down on the metaverse. They're like, look at the graphics of VR games and then look at the graphics of all the games we love. And they're like, graphics in the metaverse suck. They've never played VR then. That's, yeah. The immersion matters. And maybe this doesn't help with the...

I think it's immersion helps more when you're trying to just see like a meeting. It feels more, but like when you're in a game and you're really super focused on something that doesn't quite matter. Super hot is literally like three colors. Stick figures. It's red, basically polygon like people. It's,

white and then black. And I have literally fallen on my face playing super hot because I thought I could like lean on to something. It's so immersive. It's insanely immersive. So yeah, I just, I want VR to come to more people because it's such a fun experience, but I like it in the gaming and not professional way right now.

It's not a very hot take at all. We'll keep an eye on it. The video's out there. Who cares about the metaverse? Lock it down 2022. We're at the beginning of the chasm. We'll see how long it takes to get to the other side. Facebook might run out of money by the end. A lot of people would be happy about that. We'll just have to see. We'll just have to see. All right, let's take another quick break and another trivia question, then we'll come back and talk about smartphones and play a little game. All right. Your watch? My watch.

Yo, I found The Love is Real by Chasm. Before we even start, would we still say Siri is the most accidentally triggered? 100%. Dude, they made a joke about it in Hocus Pocus 2. I watched it last night. It's got to be, by percentage, the most accidentally used piece of tech people own. It's the only type of Siri? Yeah. I set timers with it sometimes. I do. Cool. Timer. Yeah. World Cup Soccer is this November, right now.

Or in a little bit? Football. Football? Football. What was the first FIFA World Cup to be fully filmed every single match? In 8K. In 4K. In 4K? I don't remember. Bonus question, if you could name who won that World Cup. I can't.

I can't. I don't. I don't know that one. I just don't know that. But I can think about the 4K thing. Yeah, we'll accept either the place it was played in or the year. Won't know the place either. It's okay. Wait, wait. I'm just going to toss something else out here. Do you remember what now pretty common smartphone feature was kind of announced by a phone partnership with a World Cup event? Under fingerprint... Under display fingerprint was like the Vivo...

Next 2020, I think. And it was like they released it with a ton of advertising at one of the World Cups. At the World Cup? That's so weird. We got invited to it. World Cup Russia? Was that like four years ago? That's such a weird... I always thought it was very strange. And I thought it was very interesting. It's strange for a fingerprint scanner to be advertised at a sport where the only thing you're not allowed to do is use your hands. I think it was mostly that it was the phone. But back then, that's when Vivo were the people who were just like...

They weren't very popular, but they always did those really innovative things. Yeah. Under display camera and stuff. Yeah. Well, sorry. Sidetracked that one a little bit. I know the 8K one. I don't know if I know the 4K. No, wait. Broadcast? No, there is no 8K one. Okay. I think I know the answer then. Anyway, we'll come back to that. Be right back. We'll be right back.

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Maybe game, maybe just brain teaser. I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. It was a Reddit thread that I found very interesting, and then I just want to broaden it a little bit, and I think it could be a fun discussion. The thread was, does anyone else think phones with squeezable sides were great? Okay, fun. We already disagree. Did you hear that in the mic? I shook my head so hard my headphones almost came off. But I wanted to take this as,

Are there any features that are missing in phones that we used to have that maybe we miss? Or if you want to take it one step further, features we used to have in tech that are now gone.

that we miss um but i also want to start with i do miss squeezable sides what yeah did you wait why did you enjoy using them or do you like the idea of them no no i liked them i liked uh the best time i used them oh you're talking about the squeak not the buttons but this no no oh no not squeezable buttons okay okay i was very i went down the path i pictured this this the

Remember the U11? I was gonna say, I think squeezable buttons are the reason HTC doesn't make phones anymore because they failed so bad. They fell on their face there. They did do squeezable sides though. Or I think it could even just be like squeeze for a customizable quick action. I found it okay. I liked being able to, if I were like,

Going out on my pixel 3 when I had it if it were cold out and I had gloves going to the car I could just like on my way out grab my phone squeeze it and be like text Claremont my way home And it's like very easily be able to like throw out a couple Really quick text messages while without having to do any unlocking or anything like that, which I really liked Yeah one scenario, but I believe you can also just say the hot word you I don't like having

Lock screen hot word activated. I have I and I think this is Google's own problem, but I Don't know if you see this to use Google assistant like Google home. Yeah home, right? Yes so like I have found

It just does not work very well. And it seems to be like whichever device in my house can get to the question first, that's where I'll play through. And sometimes my phone seems to beat my Google Homes and I hate when that happens at home. Sometimes it asks me. I'll be testing a new phone and I'll say the hot word out loud for the first time and it

the phone will answer when I didn't want it to, but then a little pop-up will say, "Hey, did the correct device answer that you were expecting to answer?" And I always, I hit no, and then usually it fixes itself. - Yeah. - So when I'm in the room with the assistant, the assistant speaker answers.

i still have some i've had some issues still with all that up and i mean i still even have issues where if i'm in my living room my kitchen google home picks me up and i just hear that like i hear that far that far away because yeah because like we don't have like full doors we just have like entryways i guess throughout that it's close enough but yeah that's why i liked the squeeze version of it as one of them instead of lock screen because i usually have that disabled because my house likes to like

ring around the rosy of who gets to answer it. - It makes sense. For gloves it makes sense. I like swiping up from the corner.

And I use the hot word for talking to it, but I can swipe over the corner to get the assistant anywhere, which is good enough for me. I think you can also, can you long hold power button within lock screen? Some phones, yes. Some phones, yes. I should know this. Oh, okay, it does. Pixel will do it. Some phones, like the Zen phone, will give you an ability to do it if you want to, which is, God, the Zen phone is so good. A lot of phones, that's not one of the options.

Samsung, Bixby. But yeah, you know, that is a thing I could say we miss in phones. I think there's a lot of obvious answers that I can already see the commenters typing, like the headphone jack or front-facing stereo speakers, like boom sound speakers. Fair. The headphone jack one...

It's so far gone. Yeah, like good speakers are definitely one of them. Google kind of brought it back this time and I'm sure some other phones do it, but like a real ultra wide selfie camera was something I was surprised they took away. It's coming back. Then there are like on top of that,

MacBooks finally brought back SD card slots, which is like crazy. Are we in this trend of now like they took it away and now they're bringing it back? There's, you know, most companies don't like to admit when they were wrong and they won't even say out loud that they were wrong. But when they bring back something that they previously made a big deal about getting rid of, you can tell they know that they were wrong. And that's good enough for me. You know what you did. Yeah, so I was trying to think of like maybe

some other phone feature that was less obvious. I feel like Adam's got one. Fingerprint sensor on the back. On the back, yeah. Not on the display. A bunch of phones in a row for a couple of years when I was in college all had a little dimple in the back of the phone. And you would put your index finger right, like that's kind of like, you just instantly... Yeah, it's like it naturally sits there. I hate that we're talking about that. Like it's...

A decade ago. A couple years ago. It wasn't that long ago, but we're talking about it like the good old days where you had to walk to school. Back in my day, I had a Pixel 4a. It was like six to nine years ago. There were a bunch of phones that all did it. Yeah, I love them. We got some on the side, and then they obviously moved to the front and then under the display, but that's a good one. I like on the side also. I'm very surprised we don't see that more often. It seems...

Would you argue it's cheaper than in display? Oh, it's cheaper, yeah. It's still tough. Like, it's tougher than on the back because it's still a really small area, but, like, the power button...

- It would just always be faster and like, I guess it would be an extra thing to put on the phone as like a special area. They all like having a smooth glass back now and they don't really do that little-- - Oh, you're talking about a back one or the like side? - Power button, I think that's easy to do. - Yeah, I don't know why more people don't do it. Who's, it's like ZenFone, one of the only people?

doing it now? Yeah, right now. It reminds me of the S10e back in the day. Yeah. Claire still uses that and loves it. And the swiping even, you could have it do that. Yeah, yeah. Now there's a couple phones that do it and the Zenfone's one of them. But I actually was just about to say, I remember when we had that theory which was like,

You have the under display fingerprint reader now and it's kind of small. It's just a little circle and you can easily. But aren't they supposed to get bigger and bigger until it's like the whole bottom half of the phone and you just like slap anywhere on the bottom half of the phone and it reads it. That just didn't happen. No, not at all. Hasn't even really inched much closer. They haven't gotten meaningfully bigger or faster. Would you argue that got like stifled from.

hey, here's this, but very quickly finding out that under display was not as secure. So then everyone focused way more on security, which meant keeping precision and less...

the old one plus fingerprint sensors that were just like pretty easily fooled you could probably throw that anywhere on the screen pretty easily but now when you have to do these ultrasonic very precise secure ones i think it's actually cost i think it's actually just like having a huge sensor that big behind the display glass that works as a very expensive technology

And we just haven't found a way. Like if you had, if you were the smartphone company that could take this standard size one or take the one that's 20% bigger, um,

And you can't really make a huge deal about it being 20% bigger because most people won't notice. You'll probably just take the standard size one. And so now we're just stuck with a bunch of standard size ones and nobody's willing to like actually make a bigger and bigger one. And there's like once in a while, there's like a concept phone where it's like, yeah, both your thumbs anywhere on the bottom half. It's super secure because it's two fingers and it's anywhere on the bottom half. So it's super fast. And you're like, yes, that's the future. But it never happens. We're not getting there. That's one of the things for my list.

I do stand by that the HTC M1, HTC One M1. One M8? Yes, HTC, but specifically the Google Play Edition. Oh, Google Play, yeah. My whole point in this podcast is just to see how many times you can bring back Google Play Editions so we can eventually bring back Google Play Edition. God, that's such a good phone. 2014, I reviewed this phone. Favorite phone probably of all time.

That's tough. I mean, it's not, it's maybe not number one, but it's easily top five favorite phones of all time for me. Okay. What about a, a feature or something that you hope never comes back? That is dead. Fake buttons. Do you, oh, fake buttons. Like what we were talking about before. Oh my God. I don't know why. I feel like there's a bunch of Samsung seems to really love just

Just like swinging for the fences on accessories and missing. Do you remember like the bikini case for the Samsung S8? S10, S8? I think it was S8. And they also then had that...

it was the the keyboard you could put on the front of the phone and it would like basically be tapping the screen i think half your yeah but then now you had a blackberry keyboard but now you had a blackberry keyboard yeah that doesn't have to come back the thing is i think fake buttons are gonna come back which is i think it's inevitable they come back they're gonna try it again they're gonna get i hope never comes back what the rollerball do

Do you remember like the Nexus 1? Oh, man. Oh, a trackball? The HTC Droid Iris had one. I never got to daily a phone with a trackball. It was not a good time. I kind of like the idea. Did you...

The Ares had one. The thing was is it was touchscreen already, so you never used it. Yeah, the Nexus 1, same thing. And the T-Mobile G1 also had one. I never got to daily any of those phones. Oh, okay. I had the phone, I had the Droid, which had a D-pad and a touchscreen. Yeah, but you never used the D-pad for selecting...

apps or stuff like that. I think I did for text. I think if I was, if I go to landscape and I was like just on the keyboard, then I would use the D-pad to move around. That's a good point. Also, the ball on the Ares would be okay for like

Back then it wasn't quite as easy where if you're texting and then you realize like, oh, I made a mistake to just touch it. Like rolling back on the ball through characters was much easier. Yeah. I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't mind that coming back. Bring it back. I don't think. Where would it go? I don't think modern phones would do it because it's not waterproof or like. Yeah. It's not actually feasible to bring it back. And we have a full screen. Like where on earth would it go? It's it wouldn't have much utility. It's not coming back. I would imagine. Have you ever used like a mouse with an iPad?

Yeah, like the floating pointer. Yeah, you know how the little dot moves? I think it would snap around like that, and I would hate that. So you're saying add it to the iPad. Add a little rollerball to the side of the iPad. That would really, truly compete the most confusing lineup of iPads of all time. They make a new one, and it just has a little rollerball on the side. You're like, which iPad is this?

They could make it waterproof if it was like an under display rollerball. Like the screen just has a little bulge in it at one point. What if they just add the Lenovo rubber, the little red nipple. The big pad joystick. Yeah. The joyless stick. On the corner of the iPad. There we go. New iPad coming at you. You hold it by the edge, right by the lightning port or whatever iPad you're using and just use the joystick all the time. All right. That's not coming back.

No, that's oh man somebody like unnecessary inventions has to make that or something like that perfect that perfect That would be wonderful bring back 30 pin. Oh geez. Let's go to trivia. Let's go to church We're just trying to get tech cancelled here Okay on the heels of that beautiful hot take 30 pan Let's get the boards ready. Yeah, so the score is

Marquez 10 Andrew 9 is this one where we get like a point per? Yep, so this question who are the top three most followed accounts on Twitter? You get one point per person that you get correct Do we just name three people or do we have to go in order and then is it wrong if it's in the wrong? They could just name three people I have a list of like six people that I know are extremely popular and I just don't know what order to try to put them in the top three and

Yeah, I have like two. I have one I'm pretty sure of, one I think I'm sure of. Does it have to be a person? It doesn't have to be, but I will help you out. It is three people. I'm pretty sure the at Twitter account is not as much. I don't think that actually has that much. More than the at Twitter account? People have more followers than at Twitter. Isn't like the Instagram account not have that many followers? On Instagram? Yeah. I think it has a lot. Oh, really? I think it's like top five.

Really? Yeah, I think. Twitter has 64.7 million followers. Not even close to top three. Oh, oh. Those three like totally random people. Oh, God. It's Chef Emeril, Rudy Gobert. And your grandma. Oh, wait.

When did you write this question? Five minutes before recording. I have also noticed that number going up. No, no, no. Marquez is not on the list, by the way. No? No. Okay. Soon. Soon. Okay. We'll get there. Ready? All right, wait. You want to flip them around, and then who wants to read them first? Marquez can read first. Okay. Okay.

It's a flipped. Wow. Oh. Oh. Is Trump on Twitter? That's why I was asking. He's back. Oh. Okay, Marques, what are your replies? So my three are Barack Obama. Okay, that's good. Cristiano Ronaldo and Elon Musk.

Two out of three. I got one. Well, unless Trump's the other one. Nope. He just came back and I thought maybe with all that's going on on Twitter, that could have skyrocketed recently. Musk is number one, isn't he? Yeah, so the top three. Former President Barack Obama. Number one, right? 133.4 at number one. Canadian Treasurer Justin Bieber is number two. On Twitter? 113.8 million.

And then number three, the chief twit himself, Elon Musk, with 112.9. Oh, no. Dude, he had 110 yesterday. Oh, Trump's not back on Twitter. Oh, yeah. He's back on now. No, not Trump. I mean, yeah, he got to, what is that, 2,000? 2 million? 2 million in two days. Oh, my God. He had 110 million yesterday. Oh, my God. He'll probably be number one in not that long. Yeah, give it a month.

It only took $44 billion to be the most popular person on Twitter. Well, I put someone who's not even on Twitter anymore, so I lost that one. So I got two points. You got one of them. All right. So the score now, Marquez 12, Andrew 10. So the next question. What was the first FIFA World Cup to be fully filmed in 4K? Just the, okay. Bonus question if you could say who won. Oh, wait. Can I clarify something? Sure. Like broadcast in 4K? Yeah.

Or filmed in 4K? I'm going to go with broadcast in 4K. Yeah, broadcast in 4K. Also, this is the Men's World Cup. Yes. Okay. That's a good question as well. I guess I... Not to get way too pedantic, but... Let's get in there. It's the World Cup of handball, right? Yeah, it's the World Cup of hand... No. The upcoming World Cup, they are broadcasting in 4K, but it's not native 4K. They're upscaling 1080p...

for some games to 4K. Oh, that's terrible. The World Cup that this question is about was natively filmed in 4K. Yeah. I really wanted to write trick question because I didn't think it happened yet, but I think enough of these are... Ooh, one...

It's a country that would win. Correct. It is a country. It's just who won? It was. It's who won? Just identifying the World Cup in general. Yeah. The World Cup. Oh, man. I feel like we're going to make so many people mad because we're not good soccer football fans. A bonus point is who won. Okay. So you could get a maximum of two points with this question. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's right. That's not right.

I would have known if it... Also, you know, just while Marcus is figuring this out, Waka Waka by Shakira is like one of the best songs ever. Just saying. It was for a World Cup a long time ago, but it slaps. Also, K-Nan waving flag. That's a good one. That was like 2010. Yeah, that was a while ago.

I want the extra point. I just, there's no shot. Do you want a hint at the extra point? Sure. No? You don't? I have a guess. I don't know if it's right. It was not the USA. Oh, I knew it. Spoiler. We were not even close. There's no shot. We're coming for this year. Did we even make it? We do have a good, yeah. We do have a good young team this year, but we'll see. I've said that about the Devils for like a decade. World Cup winner. Let's go with that. Okay.

Alright, I'm ready to flip. Yep. All right. Oh wait, so Marquez, what was your answer? I said the 2018 World Cup. Okay. Oh and then I said Portugal won No, so I got one point. Okay, Andrew. I said the Russian World Cup, which was 2018. Yeah, so I didn't that six years ago Four years for every four. It's every four the 2018 was six years ago 2022

I'm an idiot. I'm glad math wasn't on this. You had me questioning myself. And I wrote Germany won. Nope, not Germany. It was France. That's a good guess though, right? It was a good guess. Germany has a good team. What year was the, uh, do you know who was in the final? Um, that's a great question. When did Germany beat Brazil seven to one? Oh, I remember watching that. Everyone was very mad at that. Um,

and i think i was at like a cty it was france v croatia oh wow i did not know that good for them yeah okay so you each got one point keep that out the part of me thinking it was six years ago

And if not, can you cut out the part of me asking to cut out the part of me thinking it was six years ago? We're going to do a slow zoom on your face for both you thinking it was six years ago and then asking to take out that you thought it was six years ago. Perfect. Uh, soccer fans, we love you. BTS stans, we love you. Everyone. You wouldn't call it soccer. You wouldn't. I got canceled in my college. Yeah, there it is. It's in the comments. All right. Well, that's been it for this, this week of Royform and figuring out which World Cup was broadcast in 4K. Uh,

We appreciate you listening and subscribing, of course. Now that we have a beautiful new subscribe button, you should definitely hit that button. And until the next one, happy tweeting. Not for long. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We are partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music was created by Vayne Sill.