S1: #5 - “Black Smosh” Almost Happened?! w/ MatPat

Summary

Podcast Summary: Smosh Mouth S1: #5 - “Black Smosh” Almost Happened?! w/ MatPat

Release Date: March 20, 2019
Hosts: Shayne Topp (short), Amanda Lehan-Canto (tall), and rotating guests
Guest: Matthew Patrick (MatPat), creator of Game Theory

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**1. Introduction and Guest Introduction

The episode begins with the hosts briefly mentioning ongoing technical issues as they welcome Matthew Patrick, popularly known as MatPat from Game Theory, as their guest.

• Ian Hecox: “Hello, everyone. I am your host, Ian Hecox. Who am I with today?” [01:24]
• Matthew Patrick: “Oh, hi. Yes, I'm Matthew Patrick, better known online as MatPat, the biggest nerd on YouTube.” [01:35]

**2. MatPat’s Role and Background

MatPat discusses his background in digital video and his role in advising other content creators, including Smosh, during their rebranding phase.

• Matthew Patrick: “I was a digital video expert. I was an analytics guy. I was using the learnings that I was coming up with off of my own work on YouTube to help other channel creators grow their businesses...” [07:22]

**3. Smosh’s Rebranding and the “Black Smosh” Project

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around Smosh’s attempts at rebranding, including higher-ups' idea of creating a separate “Black Smosh” to cater to different demographics. The hosts express their concerns about such strategies.

• Ian Hecox: “One of their dream projects was to create Black Smosh...” [00:34]
• Matthew Patrick: “The whole concept was... we'd give like-minded creators a platform to get more views, earn more money...” [04:01]
• Courtney Miller: “They wanted to cast a group of black people to create urban comedy... think that two white guys aren't gonna be enjoyed by black people.” [13:17]

MatPat criticizes the idea as a superficial attempt to diversify without genuine integration, likening it to other ill-fated multi-host YouTube channels.

• Matthew Patrick: “They just need to create Black Smosh followed by female smosh, gay smosh... it was bad.” [13:17]

**4. Challenges of Scaling Content Creation

The discussion highlights the difficulties of expanding a YouTube channel’s cast without losing the original charm and connection with the audience. MatPat emphasizes the importance of gradual integration versus forced inclusion.

• Ian Hecox: “We wanted to make it a slower, gradual process... but Defy wanted them in all videos immediately.” [09:15]
• Matthew Patrick: “You have to make sure you give time to build genuine relationships with new cast members and the community.” [10:03]

**5. Personal Stories and Fanfiction

The conversation shifts to personal anecdotes, including fanfiction about MatPat and Ian, touching on themes like adoption and imagined relationships.

• Matthew Patrick: “Most fanfictions involved me adopting children...” [17:32]
• Courtney Miller: “I saw fanfics where my character ends up breaking a baby... it's uncomfortable.” [18:19]

**6. Impact of the Internet on Information Consumption

Hosts and guest delve into how the internet has transformed news consumption, emphasizing the prevalence of negative news and the decline in critical thinking among users.

• Matthew Patrick: “The internet creates a cycle where negative and dramatic stories get the most visibility... there's no retrospective analysis.” [44:33]
• Ian Hecox: “Critical thinking is something that needs to be taught more in schools... the internet fuels propaganda.” [54:16]

They discuss the challenges of misinformation, the role of algorithms in promoting sensational content, and the importance of teaching media literacy.

• Courtney Miller: “The internet makes the world seem worse because we see so much bad stuff all at once.” [50:48]

**7. Disney Movie Remakes and Casting Choices

The hosts and MatPat critique the modern trend of live-action remakes by Disney, focusing on casting decisions and their impact on storytelling quality.

• Matthew Patrick: “I prefer original stories and great performances over big-name stunt casting... like Will Smith as Genie compared to Robin Williams.” [77:04]
• Ian Hecox: “Animated movies still tell original stories that resonate without relying on star power.” [83:49]

They highlight examples like "Aladdin" and "Frozen," discussing how casting well-suited actors versus relying on celebrity presence affects audience reception.

• Courtney Miller: “Live-action remakes often prioritize star power over storytelling, which can detract from the movie's quality.” [82:50]

**8. Closing Remarks and Banter

The episode concludes with light-hearted banter about personal grooming habits, armpit hair, and humorous interactions about adopting behaviors from fanfiction. The hosts reflect on the depth of the conversation versus the light nature of the podcast.

• Ian Hecox: “Good job, guys. We solved racism.” [06:48]
• Matthew Patrick: “It's all about having a good time and chatting with your buddies.” [87:33]

Notable Quotes:

• MatPat on Black Smosh Idea: “To the outside world, seeing this character, they're like, oh, my gosh, this is reminiscent of all this terrible stuff from the past. But to Japan, it's like, no, this is just a commentary on this fashion trend.” [06:13]
• Courtney on Fanfiction: “There always is like a drama. Like the romance happens and then I get cancer...” [17:03]
• Discussion on Critical Thinking: “Critical thinking is something that they really need to teach more in schools.” [54:16]
• MatPat on Internet Negativity: “The worst possible thing you can do is to do it the wrong way... it's your responsibility to make sure that that kid is doing as best as he possibly can.” [36:16]

Conclusion:

This episode of Smosh Mouth offers an engaging blend of serious discussions about content creation strategies, the influence of the internet on information consumption, and personal reflections, interspersed with humorous banter. MatPat’s insights provide a unique perspective on Smosh’s challenges and broader media trends, making the conversation valuable for both fans and content creators seeking to understand the dynamics of YouTube channel growth and audience engagement.

Transcript

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Matthew Patrick]

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[Courtney Miller]

Ramble.

[Ian Hecox]

One of their dream projects was to create Black Smosh.

[Courtney Miller]

I don't know if I want to have kids. I see, like, the financial burden and I'm like, dude, I might break the baby.

[Matthew Patrick]

Because of how fast the Internet goes. There is no sense of. Let's look back and analyze what the reality was and what it meant.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, I want some hairs to be in there when I put deodorant on. Being like Madden. The shields.

[Ian Hecox]

What? I'm gonna start this. This little timer right here. Gadoosh. All right, now it's going. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to this. I almost said welcome back, man.

[Matthew Patrick]

Also, he just started with a sigh over here too. Like, he starts talking and she immediately sighs.

[Ian Hecox]

You know, this is. This is episode five. We still haven't gotten all the kinks worked out.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

Hello, everyone. I am your host, Ian Hecox. Who am I with today?

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, I'm Courtney Miller.

[Matthew Patrick]

Are you asking that because I'm supposed to introduce myself?

[Ian Hecox]

Yes, please.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, hi. Yes, I'm Matthew Patrick, better known online as Matpat, the biggest nerd on YouTube.

[Ian Hecox]

Oh, wow, that's saying a lot. Those are some lofty claims.

[Courtney Miller]

Maybe that's a kink we need to get out. Maybe we should introduce our guests when we have a guest, like, for them. Is that.

[Ian Hecox]

You know, I just. I just don't want to talk for them.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, it actually means he doesn't want to do the research anyway. That's the story.

[Courtney Miller]

He forgot your name. He forgot your name.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, that's what it was.

[Matthew Patrick]

Matthew Patrick.

[Ian Hecox]

I don't want to assume.

[Courtney Miller]

Matty Patrick.

[Ian Hecox]

I don't want to assume anything.

[Matthew Patrick]

All right, I appreciate that.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah. Some of you people might know his channel, Game theory. Also, there's GTLive and Movies. Movies.

[Matthew Patrick]

See, this is why he has to have the guest to actually introduce. You know, I have three channels, like how difficult is that to remember?

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah. Do you know all our channels?

[Matthew Patrick]

Right.

[Ian Hecox]

Smosh.

[Matthew Patrick]

Main movies.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

Okay, great. Good job, guys.

[Courtney Miller]

Welcome back.

[Matthew Patrick]

Welcome to Smosh of the show. Smosh Cast. There it is. Maybe we should interview Ian about the stuff that he actually is supposed to be doing. Right? Yeah. So I have the Game Theorists.

[Ian Hecox]

The Game Theorists. Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

GT Live, which is our livestream channel. Then we have the Film Theorists. Film.

[Ian Hecox]

Film.

[Matthew Patrick]

Film. Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

But then. So does it ever bother you that your channel is called the Game Theorists?

[Matthew Patrick]

Okay.

[Ian Hecox]

But your show is Game Theory, right?

[Matthew Patrick]

It is, that's correct. I don't know.

[Courtney Miller]

I feel like. Cuz that's like Game Theorist is who you guys are.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right.

[Courtney Miller]

And then the show is Game Theory.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah. The whole. The whole concept of it was.

[Ian Hecox]

But when you started it, were there more than one person?

[Matthew Patrick]

No. But when YouTube allowed you the opportunity to kind of choose your own moniker or like do the kind of the custom URLs for channels. We decide we had partner shows on the channel. And really the channel's whole premise was this idea of being able to spotlight multiple critical thinkers about the genres that we were covering. Right. So because we were fortunate enough to get a large audience fairly early on, we were built on this idea of, hey, let's give like minded creators who are doing edutainment style content that is critically thinking about all your favorite franchises, a platform to get more views, earn more money, things like that. Hence the idea of not just naming it Game Theory or Film Theory, but the Theorists, because it's a group of collective thinkers. It's a community.

[Ian Hecox]

Okay. Okay.

[Courtney Miller]

It's a people.

[Matthew Patrick]

It's also impossible to spell. So.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a good speller. Strangely, when we met, you were working for the same company that we were under.

[Matthew Patrick]

This is true.

[Ian Hecox]

And it was really strange because I had seen Game Theory before and then I didn't find out until like much later when you were still working there. I was like, wait, hold on.

[Matthew Patrick]

What?

[Ian Hecox]

The dude from the Game Theory works at our job. This doesn't make any sense. What did you do exactly? What was your title there?

[Matthew Patrick]

I was stealthily undercover spying on you the whole time. That was it. I was.

[Ian Hecox]

I was.

[Matthew Patrick]

I was like an insert spy there.

[Courtney Miller]

Nice.

[Matthew Patrick]

And then taking it back for my.

[Ian Hecox]

Own betterment, you probably could have chosen a better channel.

[Courtney Miller]

He was the agent.

[Matthew Patrick]

I don't know. I felt like we were like one of the. Basically doing the exact same thing.

[Ian Hecox]

Okay.

[Matthew Patrick]

You guys were singing Pokemon parodies and I was talking about Pokemon being racist at the time, you know, Heck, yeah. Exactly.

[Ian Hecox]

The same thing fit right in.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right.

[Ian Hecox]

Wait, which Pokemon are racist?

[Matthew Patrick]

Jinx, obviously. And then they had to redesign. Redesign her skin to make it purple.

[Ian Hecox]

Did they really do that?

[Matthew Patrick]

Right? Yeah. Wait, to her, I mean, all Pokemon are kind of in a questionable gender.

[Ian Hecox]

Oh, I was thinking Mr. Mime. For some reason, I got Mr. Mime and Jinx mixed up because. Yeah, okay. Yeah, Jinx. Ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about it now.

[Matthew Patrick]

The levels of realization that are happening right now are pretty. Pretty stellar. Just images, because you have the skin, you have the lips, you have all sorts of stuff. And the funny thing is, Jinx was never meant to be racist. To be like. It was a parody of this trend called ganguro, which was a very popular kind of female style for people in a very specific part of Japan at the time, who bleached their hair very, like, bright yellow or white, kept it long, who did a lot of excessive tanning to make their skin look darker. And who would do, like, big designs, big, bold lips.

[Courtney Miller]

Sounds like an Orange county mom.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah. Or a clown. One in the same.

[Courtney Miller]

One and the same.

[Ian Hecox]

Cause I mean, obviously blackface isn't something that Japanese people really. It wasn't a part of their culture. They wouldn't have really known about it.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. And so to the outside world, seeing this character, they're like, oh, my gosh, this is reminiscent of all this terrible stuff from the past. But to Japan, it's like, no, this is just a commentary on this fashion trend that's. That was recently popular. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the smoshcast, where in the first five minutes we've talked about racism.

[Ian Hecox]

And I think we solved it.

[Matthew Patrick]

We did. Congratulations, guys.

[Ian Hecox]

Good job, everyone. We solved racism. Sorry, I had a left hand handshake.

[Courtney Miller]

That was gross. I'm left handed and that was gross.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right here.

[Ian Hecox]

Sorry.

[Matthew Patrick]

Let me. Let me do the reach over.

[Ian Hecox]

Okay. Thank you. For the listeners that aren't watching on video, we had a really bad handshake.

[Matthew Patrick]

But we fixed it.

[Courtney Miller]

Good job. Good job.

[Matthew Patrick]

Way to use those context clues, listeners. The Smosh cast. Really making you work for the visuals that are going on.

[Ian Hecox]

Right.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yes. So anyway, I worked at your company.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah. And you. You consulted us a few times on our channel.

[Matthew Patrick]

I did, yeah. So basically, in the early days of YouTube, not only was I kind of using my own channel in the background and learning and kind of growing on YouTube that way, but I was also a digital video expert. I was an analytics guy. I was using the learnings that I was Coming up with off of my own work on YouTube to help other channel creators grow their businesses, understand their analytics, and basically try to grow faster.

[Courtney Miller]

Right, Nice. Was I there? Were you working there in 20. How long were you working there for?

[Matthew Patrick]

I was there for. So I was in kind of that McNamara space for about two and a half years.

[Courtney Miller]

And that was because I started working at defy on in 2015.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right.

[Courtney Miller]

Were you there?

[Matthew Patrick]

No, but I was part of the conversations that were leading up to. Wait, in 2015? Actually, 2015, you might have been coming in. Right. As I was kind of like, wrapping things up, but I was a big part of the conversations about the whole smosh rebrand and about, you know, how do you bring in. How do you bring in new characters and personalities and is that a good idea? Can the channel survive without Ian and Anthony?

[Courtney Miller]

How did you feel about that? How did you feel about them wanting to bring in new people and changing stuff? I really wanna know.

[Matthew Patrick]

I mean, it was one of those things that the ability to succeed was slim. Yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

Making changes like that is wild.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah. And you have tons of examples in the past on YouTube of channels who had tried it and it never worked. Right. Like Ray William Johnson, that's probably the best example out there where he tried to hand hosting duties of equals 3, and none of the hosts ever really caught on. And so the smart thing that you guys did and the thing that I think all of us internally who are talking about it were recommending was you have to make it a very slow, gradual, extended process.

[Ian Hecox]

And the thing is, we wanted to make it a slower thing. We wanted to make it a more natural thing. We get to know Shane, Courtney, Olivia, Noah, Keith. We wanted to get to know them better before putting them in more content. But Defy was so adamant about, like, no, you guys need to put them in all the videos immediately. And we're like, well, this. That's not how YouTube works. Like, we need, like, we need to make this a real thing. We actually need to forge real friendships with these people before we start putting them in all the videos.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

So, you know, I think the transition would have made a lot more sense to the viewers if we would have been given the real time. But Defy, obviously they're like, well, we're. We're paying the money, so we need to have them in every video.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. And not just forming friendships with you guys as a cast, but also, like.

[Courtney Miller]

Us for the fans.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, exactly. Forming friendships with the community around the channel, you know, the audience. Because so much of YouTube is built on this idea of, like, I know who these people are. I have an established relationship with them because I'm seeing them week after week after week. And I know their likes, their dislikes, their personalities, what, you know, what they find funny. And so for all of a sudden, there to be like. And we're the new guys on the blast. Hey, look at us. We're fun and quirky and don't you love us? Oh, my gosh.

[Courtney Miller]

And it's crazy every. Like, there's so many TV shows. I'll use Chuck as an example. Weirdly, no one's gonna understand this, but it's like, sometimes, like, TV shows will be like, oh, here's these new younger. Like, in Chuck, it was like there was these secret agents, right? And then the. The CIA, or whoever they're working for brings in these new, hip, younger secret agents, and they're seen as, like, the bad. Cause it's like, ew, new. Gross. Get him out of here. And, like, they brought in a new Chuck. They brought in. Yeah, pretty much. They're just like, here's our new young agents. And they were. And they was like, totally, like, butting heads like enemies. And it's like. It makes sense that, like, that's the instant reaction for a fan when they see, like, all of a sudden, this new team of people. And, like, the content was. We were kind of separated sometimes, so it was like, definitely. I'm sure. The reaction.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, it felt like. It probably felt like an invasion to some people to. You know, for myself, it was something that needed to happen, because in order for our content to evolve, it couldn't just be. It couldn't just always be myself and Anthony, like, two guys hanging out in the house together. Like, we did that sketch. We did a sketch starting with Anthony and I sitting on a couch probably 200 times.

[Courtney Miller]

I would love to know the exact amount.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, well, somebody can go in and research it.

[Matthew Patrick]

That's a film. Yeah, you can go for another channel that you don't know about or watch.

[Courtney Miller]

So wait, so did you.

[Ian Hecox]

Movie theory, right?

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, movie theorists.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, right, right, right.

[Courtney Miller]

Movie dreams. So did you have a hand in, like, the strategy at all, or, like, when we brought in, like, I just want to know in depth a little.

[Matthew Patrick]

Bit more my secret role behind the scenes.

[Courtney Miller]

I know. You're the agent Cody Banks of Defy. Sorry, I'm forgetting the weirdest old.

[Matthew Patrick]

These pop culture references are gold right now. Yeah, no, I mean, it's interesting, and it's funny to hear Ian talk about, like, Defy. Like the higher ups that defy wanting to fast forward that process and kind.

[Courtney Miller]

Of like just jam it down their throats.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah. Shoehorn it in as quickly as possible. Because this was the same group of people who are also promoting the idea of doing Black Smosh.

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

Like unironically wanting to do Blacksmoth. Yep. Which I. Which I wasn't sure. Like, had you had those conversations with the team, clearly, based on your reaction.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, there was somebody. There was somebody higher up. I'm not going to say their name. For, for many years. For many years, one of their story, one of their dream projects was to create Black Smosh, which what they wanted to do was cast a group of black people to create, shall we say, urban comedy. They were like, well, you know, there's this whole other audience out there, so we just need to create Black Smile.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah. I mean, basically the thought process of this person in the meetings that we were having was, well, we have this back catalog of funny scripts. So if we just, you know, change out the two white dudes for different demographics, we have tons of new verticals and basically you reuse the same scripts, but just kind of like mix it up a little bit. And. And it was. And, and it was. It. His first spin off was always gonna be Black Smosh followed by, you know, female smosh, gay smosh. Like it was bad.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, yeah, that's rough.

[Matthew Patrick]

Like, that is. That is truly spilling the tea every.

[Ian Hecox]

Every time they brought it up. And that's really funny. I've never mentioned, I've never mentioned the whole Black Smosh thing.

[Matthew Patrick]

Probably smart of you to not mention it.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah. But every time they brought it up. No, no.

[Courtney Miller]

And here's another weird frickin reference. Hairspray. How there's like Negro Day on the dancing show. Like that says, and I'm sorry, that's rough, but like that's. It's just that I get that vibe when I hear about what they were trying to do.

[Matthew Patrick]

Well, and the thing was, you know, the first time. Cause again, I'm this young guy who has only been working at this company for about a year, but I'm like the guy who understands YouTube. I'm the guy who's been able to build up my own channel in the background. Like, I was the representative of like the digital video ecosystem and optimization. Right. And so I'm in these rooms with all these traditional media guys who had been working in TV for years and had, you know, decent levels of success there. You know, it's suddenly now like, let's figure out ways to capitalize off of these. These brands that we have and this and that. And he tosses out this idea. And at first, like, everyone, you know, me and a couple other people in the room are like, haha, that's, you know, that's an idea. But really. But they were so serious about it was the thing. Like, they legitimately thought that there was no problem with it and that it was totally fine. And of course, at that point, the conversation fundamentally shifts to like, oh, no, you're taking the like, absolutely not. Do not do this. This is horrific for so many reasons.

[Courtney Miller]

Were they wanting to call it that? Like, actually.

[Ian Hecox]

Well, that was always just the sort of working title. Yeah, the working title. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with, you know, to two black dudes doing comedy. Obviously. Key and Peele was probably one of the greatest sketch shows ever made. But it wasn't for the sake of representation. It was for the sake of. Of like, let's just get this other thing going to appeal to this other group. Because we don't believe that two white guys are gonna be enjoyed by black people.

[Matthew Patrick]

This is. This is actually why I'm shocked to hear that you also know this. Because to me, when that was brought up in the room, I'm like, this is unbelievable. I can't believe that someone would actually legitimately think of this as an idea. And so now to hear that it was also brought up to you and you also had to shoot it down.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, multiple times. It's unbelievable to me. It kind of became a running joke about this person because it's just ludicrous.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right.

[Ian Hecox]

It doesn't make any sense.

[Matthew Patrick]

Amazing. So there you go. The. I do remember the other joke that he would toss out when it came to, like, some of the other verticals and obviously bringing up like, gay smosh. LGBT smosh. Because that's a whole new community. The joke was, though, that they already had gay smosh because you and Anthony were already hosting. Did they. Did they toss that joke your way?

[Ian Hecox]

Probably.

[Matthew Patrick]

Okay, there was like.

[Ian Hecox]

There was like another.

[Matthew Patrick]

Just so we have full transparency here of what was being said behind the scenes.

[Ian Hecox]

Yes. Yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, my gosh.

[Ian Hecox]

I mean, you gotta keep those fan fictions going.

[Matthew Patrick]

Sure.

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, they never stop. They haven't stopped.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Matthew Patrick]

No purchase necessary VGW Group void. We're prohibited by law 21/ terms and conditions apply. You know, it's, it's, it's unfortunate. Like you guys had all your relationships. All my fan fictions are me adopting children. Yeah, it's actually, it's actually really sweet until you get to the part where my wife ends up dying a horrific death.

[Ian Hecox]

Oh my God.

[Matthew Patrick]

Almost every single one.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, I always do that. Okay. I've dipped into the fanfiction sites and I've seen some of it. Cause I'm just curious. And we have the videos where we actually take them, script them out and act them out for videos. And there always is like a drama. Like there was like a shortening one where it's like, okay, whatever. The romance, me and Shane, the romance happens and then I get cancer and it's like the story could have just ended. Like, dude. No, the bad.

[Ian Hecox]

That was generally the, the, the theme with a lot of the fan fictions where Anthony and I, they wrote our girlfriends in there. And then one of our girlfriends would die and then he would come, like, let's say his girlfriend died. Anthony would come to me and I would comfort him. And then we'd. Our embrace would hold a little bit longer. Hand would move up and brush our cheeks against each other.

[Matthew Patrick]

Calm down.

[Ian Hecox]

And then, and then. Yeah, then it always get hot and heavy. So, yeah. Death is a common theme with romantic fanfiction.

[Courtney Miller]

It's uncomfortable to read that about yourself, man.

[Ian Hecox]

That's a little weird, I think.

[Matthew Patrick]

I think it's beautiful.

[Courtney Miller]

So would the fan. So would the fan be the child that you adopted that they wrote?

[Matthew Patrick]

Yes, usually they were in some, you know, some equivalent of an orphanage.

[Ian Hecox]

Okay.

[Matthew Patrick]

At which point, you know, kind of Annie style.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

Tossing out classic references here. Annie the Musical, you know, And I would come in and save the day. Like either I wasn't able to have kids or I just wanted to adopt a child. And sometimes Stephanie would die before I adopted the child, sometimes she would die after. Like, it would vary. Sometimes I was adopting the child because of the sadness that I felt over the loss of Stephanie. And so I needed a child in my life. But yeah. And then the two of us would go off on adventures together and I would teach them science, basically. And usually how it boils down is that. And then Matthew and I would go off to the museum and learn about science.

[Ian Hecox]

That's adorable. So, like. But after the mourning period, you guys definitely boned, right?

[Courtney Miller]

It's a child, Ian.

[Ian Hecox]

Oh, it's a child.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

Were you. Welcome to the podcast, Ian.

[Ian Hecox]

Well, I figured. I figured, like, he raised. He raised them and then, I don't know. I mean, there's worse fan fictions out there.

[Matthew Patrick]

Trust me, A lot of my fan fictions stood incomplete or, you know, we're in the early stages of completion. So I, you know, I don't know where they would go from there. Welcome to the Smosh cast, ladies and gentlemen, where we have covered racism and now we're covering up, you know, very topical Michael Jackson style. Child predators.

[Ian Hecox]

This is great, but let's not get into Michael Jackson again, please.

[Courtney Miller]

I will say it's very weird. Like, obviously we have scripts that are written, like, where we're as ourselves, so we see that normally. But, like, when you see fan fiction about yourself, like, one time there was one that, like, they said I smelled like vanilla. And like, I literally were, like, at the time, was wearing vanilla lotion. Not right now. What do I got on? I got like.

[Matthew Patrick]

Don't you smell like hairspray? No, like secret. Secret deodorant.

[Courtney Miller]

Weird. Cause I wear Old Spice, so That's really interesting.

[Matthew Patrick]

You're not so much spicy as you are like lilac.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah. Male or female Old Spice?

[Courtney Miller]

Male.

[Ian Hecox]

Nice.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, just it's the only thing to keep up with my sweaty pits, man.

[Ian Hecox]

I know, dude.

[Matthew Patrick]

Hashtag not spun.

[Ian Hecox]

Well, you saw my armpits yesterday. Yeah, I got some hairy pits here.

[Courtney Miller]

I didn't know that guys needed to trim it.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, I trim my armpit.

[Courtney Miller]

Your armpit hair?

[Ian Hecox]

Cuz, like, there's so much hair. Like, I don't think I've trimmed my armpit hair in like two months or so. And it's really long.

[Courtney Miller]

It's like longer than your normal hair on your head. I mean, pretty close, man.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, you might be right.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

Your hair is really short now. You don't have that bowl cut anymore.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, that's true, but. And when you have all that hair, it doesn't. It doesn't aid the coverage of the deodorant. You know, it's a shield. It's like.

[Matthew Patrick]

I'm amazed by this. So what is the appropriate length of armpit hair?

[Ian Hecox]

Well.

[Matthew Patrick]

Cause I have armpit hair, but I have never trimmed because I've never thought of it as excessively long.

[Courtney Miller]

But some people I Don't grow pit hair on my right side at all. And my left side's like a few hairs. Like, I don't know what's wrong with me. You won the jewelry lottery, Stole all the hair. Like, can I have some maybe? Because I would like, please, please.

[Matthew Patrick]

Would you like it?

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, I want some hairs to be in there when I put deodorant on. Being like Madden. The shields keeping the deodorant off your nose.

[Ian Hecox]

What?

[Matthew Patrick]

Like little troops in your army fighting against pit sweat.

[Courtney Miller]

Sometimes I feel lonely and I just.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, and hairs on your body are the only thing that are gonna keep you company. Do we need to talk?

[Courtney Miller]

Maybe.

[Matthew Patrick]

I feel like. I feel like this is a fanfiction rating to happen.

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, no, no. But for real people, they. The person guessed my correct smell at the time.

[Matthew Patrick]

It was weird.

[Courtney Miller]

Cause I did smell like vanilla.

[Matthew Patrick]

Wow. You're like, man, they know.

[Courtney Miller]

They know.

[Matthew Patrick]

They know me.

[Courtney Miller]

But then they're like. And then she kissed Noah's ear.

[Matthew Patrick]

And I'm like, no, you're not an ear kisser.

[Courtney Miller]

Not Noah.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, not my coworker. You're fine with ears. Just not co workers. Yeah. Heck yeah, I get that.

[Courtney Miller]

Give ears kisses. This is so weird. I'm gonna go.

[Matthew Patrick]

No, please stay. Based on the professions of loneliness that you just had, it sounds like this is the only human contact you have for today.

[Courtney Miller]

Maybe that's why I read the fan pictures.

[Matthew Patrick]

I was gonna say may, like, please stay in the company of our armpit hair, but we haven't gotten to the core of the issue here, which is what is the appropriate length of armpit hair?

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

[Matthew Patrick]

Like Ian. So where is your. On your person? Show me the length of your hair normally. And then let's get a sense of like, where you trim it down to. Cause presumably you're trimming it down to the appropriate length. Right, Right.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah. So I use clippers.

[Matthew Patrick]

Okay.

[Ian Hecox]

And I. I just. I just go down to the. Down to the skin.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, so you take it all the way down.

[Ian Hecox]

Right. But I go. I go to. I go to the direction of the hair. So like on the. On the upper part of my armpit, the grain goes upwards, and on the lower part of my armpit, the grain goes downwards. So for the upper part, I have to shave up.

[Matthew Patrick]

Okay.

[Ian Hecox]

And then on the lower part I have to shave down.

[Courtney Miller]

Electric trimmers. You don't use scissors?

[Ian Hecox]

What?

[Courtney Miller]

I thought you were meant clippers.

[Ian Hecox]

Scissors.

[Courtney Miller]

When you said clippers, I thought you meant like snip, snip, snip, woman. Are you mad you don't use a tree. A tree trimmer.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. The first time I heard the term clippers, I was very confused. It's very confusing if you're not familiar with the idea that clippers is just like a glorified razor.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Ian Hecox]

Like an electric razor.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah. When I think clipper, I think of like a scissor or a shear of some, of some form.

[Courtney Miller]

But now it's shears, man.

[Ian Hecox]

Clearly you guys don't frequent hairdressing salons enough. Yeah, clearly you don't know the, the, the lexicon of a, of a salon.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, I mean, I learned it, I learned it at a certain point. Trust me. I'm a frequenter of sports clips.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, but, but I, yeah, I, I got a lot of, I got a lot of body hair. As, as I grow older, it starts sprouting up in weird ass places.

[Courtney Miller]

I feel like since I started working here. Your tummy has gotten much more hairy.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, it has.

[Courtney Miller]

I don't know how you don't. You never know how I know this stuff.

[Ian Hecox]

We see each other like half naked quite a lot.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

Never fully though. Just, just want to put it out there.

[Matthew Patrick]

Just going to let that.

[Ian Hecox]

Never seen each other.

[Courtney Miller]

Mostly full blown Nikes around in a diaper.

[Ian Hecox]

We're supposed to tell everyone about that.

[Matthew Patrick]

All right. No shame. It's okay. I have a person in my life who walks around in a diaper too these days.

[Ian Hecox]

That's true. But it's a little bit more acceptable for that because you have a little teeny tiny baby.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, yeah, that is true.

[Ian Hecox]

How is the, how is the babby?

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh my gosh. It's cool. It's very cool to have a babby. It's wild. A little potato. Yeah. It's unbelievable how difficult it is for the first three to four months. And it's still hard after that, certainly. But it's just fascinating to watch how much personality they have weeks after being born. Like it's immediate. Like you can tell how independent he is. You can tell that he doesn't like to cuddle so much, but he does, you know. But he's very eager to learn and teach himself. He loves books, he likes to eat them. He's eight months at this point.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, they just kind of chew on the pages.

[Matthew Patrick]

No, it's wild. So it's part of our nightly routine to read him a story or two before he goes to bed. But we'll take him out in the afternoon or something to a story time, play with tambourines. Do some basic wave the scarf around. But as soon as it. And he has fun with those. But as soon as the book comes out and the person at the front of the room starts reading, he will actively crawl to the front of the room and just be, like, locked in. It's very clear that he's in the early stages of being a teacher's pet. And I could not be more nerd. Absolutely.

[Ian Hecox]

You. You birthed a frickin nerd, dude.

[Matthew Patrick]

Thank goodness.

[Ian Hecox]

Did you always want kids, or was this just, like. Was this a revelation you had when. When you met your. Your lovely wife, Stephanie?

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, no, I've always. I've always wanted kids. I've always wanted a kid. I don't know if I've ever wanted to, because both Steph and I are only children. And I'm like, you know what? That's a good amount. I had a good upbringing.

[Ian Hecox]

I was gonna say. Cause usually only childs turn out to be little shits, but how did I turn out?

[Matthew Patrick]

Ian.

[Ian Hecox]

Moving on.

[Courtney Miller]

Wow. Hey, he was his magazine, Right? I had six siblings growing up.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, she had way too many. Way too many siblings.

[Matthew Patrick]

Where did you fall in the line of six?

[Courtney Miller]

I'm number five, so I have two little brothers.

[Matthew Patrick]

Wow. Okay, So I. So I know that in, like, a family of three, right? Three kids. Because my mom was in a family of three, and she was the middle child. The oldest child is, like, most responsible and gets a lot of attention because they're number one. Number two is like the forgotten child who feels kind of left out because they're sandwiched between the other two, the first one and the third one who ends up being the baby of the family. Right. Yeah. So the middle child's kind of forgotten and, like, has to feel like they have to prove themselves or whatever. Yeah, man. In six, what is the dynamic?

[Courtney Miller]

Like, so there's seven of us. Totally. And there was, like, only a couple years, a gap in a lot of those. So, like, I don't really. I don't really know. Like, I was. So there was the top two. Cami and Casey, born, like, top two. The top two.

[Ian Hecox]

Oh, say all their names, by the way.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Unless you don't want to. Unless you don't want to share that on the podcast. Do you really want to put names out there?

[Courtney Miller]

First names are. I mean, is that bad?

[Matthew Patrick]

Have I crossed? I love that we've talked about everything from, like, pedophilia and racism, but it's like, ooh, names.

[Courtney Miller]

It's not hard to find Them, you know, on my Instagram, I'll just say their first name. So it goes Kami, Casey, Kathy, Carrie, Courtney, Clark, Connor.

[Matthew Patrick]

My gosh, they're the Kardashians.

[Courtney Miller]

I know, but they're K's and C's. Okay, so we did it like different and first. So did you do it first? I don't know, Cammie. I think we did it first in terms of age, actually. I don't know.

[Matthew Patrick]

Are you calling out the Kardashians right now as stealing your bit?

[Courtney Miller]

Copy Cats, C, K or wait, cc oh, God.

[Ian Hecox]

You remember when I said we can't spell?

[Courtney Miller]

I really should go. I should go. But okay, so there was only a couple years, gaps in a bunch of them. Kami and Casey. It was like a year or two and then there's a couple years, like a larger gap. And then it was Kathy and Carrie. It's like literally less than a year or a year and then there's five years and then me and then like three plus years and then Clark and Connor who were like year or two apart. So there was a gap. And I was kind of a loner a lot of the time. Carrie was technically the middle child and she definitely, like, we. I think at some point we all played every role because I was like. Because my parents were divorced. So a lot of times, like in joint custody, it would be like me and my younger brothers at my mom's house. So I was the oldest, but I was also the youngest for a while and I was treated like the middle child. So it's like, I really, I really don't know, like, what the full dynamic was.

[Ian Hecox]

And as like some went off to college or whatever, then. Then other people became the oldest of the house or the youngest.

[Courtney Miller]

My oldest siblings, like, raised me like a lot. Like it's in and it just all tapered down. I think. Connor, as each kid popped out, we had to kind of raise ourselves a little bit more because there's like just too many fricking kids, man. Like Connor, I don't know how he made it. I don't know how he did it. Like, there was too many of us. We're all dealing with ourselves. He definitely had to struggle and learn by watching us.

[Ian Hecox]

I've heard with large families, if you factor in the dinner table kind of thing, it's just a battle royale for food. It can be we just grab whatever you possibly can or else you won't eat.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, there was times where we had to be like, hey, that was my role. Stuff like that. But now My dad has a habit. He also works at a fire station. So used to cooking for large groups. He always has. So, like, he always cooks way too much food now. And it's like, only a few of us over for dinner.

[Matthew Patrick]

How often are all of you together at this point?

[Courtney Miller]

So rarely. Like, maybe a couple times a year. Like, all of us, because some people are on the East Coast, Right?

[Matthew Patrick]

Sure.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah. So it's pretty rare.

[Matthew Patrick]

Do you feel close to every single. Like, how close do you feel to, like, when there is such a huge gap in ages? Do you feel really close to all your brothers and sisters or.

[Courtney Miller]

Growing up there was definitely, like, buddies buddying up. And with a lot of siblings, things get cliquey. But especially in these recent years, since we're all kind of becoming adults and we're more on an equal plane, it's so weird. And I feel like I didn't realize until recently how it's really. This dynamic that I grew up with is something a lot of people have. No idea what it's like because, like, my. My brothers that are younger than me are now, like, all adults. Like, Clark just turned 21, and, like, now we can go on, like, outings together. Like, it's like we all. It's a party now when we hang out. It's not so much like, femme. It's like we're all. We all feel like equals.

[Ian Hecox]

There is something weird about, like, the larger families. For some reason, the youngest child never goes beyond. Like, for me, it's hard to wrap my head around not seeing them as, like, a small child.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

I still call them little brothers.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah. Because, like, they'll never be, like, quite like an adult to you. Like, I. Like, I had a family, friends, they had three kids, and the youngest always, like, despite him being, I don't know, 28 now, he's still just, like, the little one.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

I'll never be able to get that out of my head.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah. It's nuts. And, like, I. I don't know if I want to have kids, like, the way that I've seen how much. Because we were a very. There was so many of us, and we were very poor for Pretty poor. Not too bad. But, like, growing up, it was, like, so many kids to provide for. And so, like, I see, like, the financial burden, and I'm like, dude, I might break the baby. I don't know. I'm scared, man.

[Ian Hecox]

You need something to pour your love into, though.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah. I mean, I did have.

[Ian Hecox]

She's. She's a very. She's A very affectionate person.

[Courtney Miller]

You just need something.

[Ian Hecox]

You need like a rock or just.

[Matthew Patrick]

More armpit hair on it to pour your love into. A baby or armpit hair? One of the two.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, they're pretty much the same thing.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, basically same amount of care, same financial burden, you know, just. Just slather some antiperspirant on.

[Courtney Miller]

So you've always wanted to have a kid? I don't understand what that feels like.

[Matthew Patrick]

I think it's just one of those things where like I had such a positive family experience. I always have gravitated toward like teaching and wanting to, you know, inspire or help out kids. Like even back when I was much younger, in like middle school and high school, I taught swim lessons, you know, and that idea of just like interacting and having fun with younger kids and being able to like show them the world and teach them things and watch them learn and grow and experience stuff is something that I've always felt passionate about. And so the idea of being able to teach, you know, a son or daughter of my own about the world and, you know, hey, here's the good stuff to know, here's the bad stuff, and like, here's, you know, the things that I would, that I learned from personal experience, like I wish I had known moving, you know, when I had done it. Yeah, I think that's, that's just a really cool thing to be a part of someone's life and watch them grow. I will say, as my life went on and as, you know, we got closer to kind of that decision, there was that thought of like, is there enough time in life to make this happen? Because I mean, like, we all understand, like we are busy all the time, you know, running our own business, creating content. Like LA is this hustle bustle of nonstop. You have your hustle and you have your side hustle and like people are going round the clock. Yeah. And I did have, you know, this period of time where, you know, I had to self reflect around. Do I still, like, yes, this is something that I grew up wanting and yes, this is something I thought would be really good for, you know, for me and for a kid. And I think I would make a good father. But with my life where it is now, can I still prioritize a child in the way that I would want to and do this right, because. Because the thing is like the worst possible thing you can do is to do it the wrong way. And now all of a sudden, like you resent the child for slowing you down in life or you're upset about, you know, you live with regrets of, like, I could have been somebody, but then I had a kid, and then it slowed me. You know, all this stuff of, you know, there's a lot wrapped up into it. And if you're having a child and bringing a life into the world who is dependent on you, it's your responsibility to make sure that that kid is doing as best as he possibly can. Right. And so, you know, as we got closer to kind of like, hey, are we doing this or not? Like, there was that moment of like, hey, is this the right time? You know, can we fit it in? But I think that sort of reflection's important.

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

If you're kind of jumping into it. But. But yeah, at the end of the.

[Courtney Miller]

Day, thinking about that is already like, yeah, you're a good parent.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah. And you certainly have more the luxury of deciding that and. And getting the time to decide that a lot of. And honestly, like, nobody has the time, right. For to. To have kids. It's just kind of. It just happens and then. And then you make it work. Right?

[Courtney Miller]

Well, if it's not planned.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, right. Well, even if it is planned, like, you still, like, that's a. It's a big commitment. You just make it work. And. And I know you guys will obviously make it work, and that's really cool that it's almost. You should have, like, kid theory, but you get to try. You get to try all your theories on child development on this. On this living thing, and you can see what it becomes.

[Matthew Patrick]

As a baby shower gift. Someone actually got me a book that is experimenting on your baby, which is. It's. And that sounds.

[Ian Hecox]

I hope it doesn't have a German name on the author.

[Matthew Patrick]

That's great. Dates back to, like, World War II era.

[Ian Hecox]

Oh, strange.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, it's odd. No, but basically, what it's. It's very cool. It's a compilation of famous historical studies done in completely safe ways on babies to learn about their development, how they process the world and, you know, where they hit certain milestones. All based on, like, actual scientific research. Right. So one of the simplest and earliest ones you can do, which is really fascinating, is this idea of putting three dots into, like a triangular formation onto a piece of paper. Right. And you show the baby those three dots, like, from birth. It's like from month one. And you show them the three dots. If they're two dots on top and one dot below, similar to the eyes and mouth or eyes and nose of a face, they will watch it. And like, look at it and process it longer than if you actually flip the dots upside down and show them one dot on top and two on the bottom. Because humans, like, we're very inefficient. Like having a baby has taught me how very. Yeah, we are very inefficient. Like, we. It is a terrible design, quite honestly. It is.

[Ian Hecox]

You know, Would you design a human, Matt?

[Matthew Patrick]

For one? I would make sure that like the teeth aren't coming in like eight months into their life. So that way it's like, oh my gosh, I'm in trouble. I'm just learning how to eat things. Oh my gosh. There's tremendous pain in my mouth. Is these things that probably should have been there to begin with suddenly jut out through, through my mouth hole.

[Courtney Miller]

The fact that I can't run as soon as I'm out of a vagina, I'm frankly mad.

[Ian Hecox]

I mean, giraffes can do it. Why can't we get.

[Matthew Patrick]

Get good humanity?

[Courtney Miller]

It is very bad how like the baby can't even support their head when they're like, that's. That's rough. Like we were to be if everything. I don't know. I wish I was a giraffe.

[Matthew Patrick]

Well, even, even stuff like when, when babies first start learning how to use their hands and I'm doing this gesture of like twitching and stuff because that's what it looks like. They can't get sleep for that period of like a month, month and a half because they're constantly like waking themselves up by smacking themselves in the head muscles. Yeah, they're also like over stimulated, over twitchy. And so, you know, that's why that like first three month, four month period is so hard because they're learning all this stuff. And to the baby's credit, they're like, I'm excited to learn these things and get control over my life. He's at eight months. He's getting really good at crawling and also getting good at like supporting himself on his legs and walking and doing like walking motions. It's really awesome. But again, his sleep is being interrupted. Cause he's like, I'm so excited about this new skill. I want to practice it and, you know, get up on my knees and sit up on my own and this. But it keeps waking him up. So I would probably design away stuff like that.

[Ian Hecox]

Okay.

[Matthew Patrick]

But it's wild to see just how cool and rewarding it is as a process. Like once they start like developing their likes and dislikes and having agency over their life and you start like you know, at this point, I can have a conversation with him where he's learning different, like, vocalizations. And so he'll be like, ah. And I'll be like, ah. And he'll be like. He'll see it and recognize it, and he'll be like, ah. And he's like, ah. Like, it's actually this back and forth.

[Ian Hecox]

So you birthed a dolphin?

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Can I just say, like, the. The leadership and, like, fathering father figure. Like, I don't know. It's a complex. But I think that's really cool. It's like, you kind of have the perfect profession for that because, like, you technically have, like, millions of children that kind of depend on you in a way. And, like, that seems. It's, like, almost too perfect because, like, you are able to utilize that influence and need to, like, help other people learn and stuff every day. Like, that's really cool and perfect.

[Matthew Patrick]

I think it sounds. That's very sweet of you. Thank you. Actually, you know, it's. I don't know. It sounds cheesy to say this, but it is, you know, and it sounds like, oh, this is a good PR line or whatever. But, like, when I was younger, right, I saw the impact that, like, your everyday actions could have on the world around you. I had a friend who almost committed suicide and was on the verge of committing suicide. He was. He was new into the high school, and I was just kind of like this. This bubbly kid who, like, talked too much to everyone and so. And so, you know, he would come into, like, choir practice, and I'd be like, hey, good morning. Welcome, you know, welcome. And we would sit up and talk or whatever. I fast forward, like, three years later, and he, like, confesses to me, like, those conversations were the thing that prevented me from taking my own life. Like, I was coming into high school because. Ready to commit suicide because I, you know, I had a really hard time in middle school. Everyone made fun of me. I was this awkward kid. And you actually, like, treating me like a human made such a huge amount of difference and actually saved my life. And. And that was, like, such a huge moment for me because it's like, to me, that was just any other conversation. Like, it was. It was literally the base level of like, hey, here's another person in the room. We are in the room together, alone, at the same. Like, you talk to them. Like, you just, you know, you. You're nice. You share pleasantries. And it, you know, it really convinced me of that idea of, like, you pay it Forward you. The butterfly effect. You do something nice for someone and it pays off down the line. Right. And so my goal has always been. Yeah. You know, back then, when they're like, what do you want to do when you grow up and what are you looking to do? I want to be an actor. But at the end of the day, like, my goal in a lot of cases was, you know, I know I'm not going to cure cancer. I know I'm not going to do, you know, something that is revolutionary on the side of, you know, solving some big world problem. But what I. Right. But what I can do is at least, like, be nice and kind and supportive of the people in my immediate vicinity and hopefully that, you know, butterflies effect, butterfly effects outward and, you know, makes the world a better place. I want the world to be slightly better because I was a part of it. And at this point, like you said, I, you know, I'm in this incredibly fortunate and honorable position of being able to. To do that at such a massive scale. And so if I can use the platform that I've been lucky enough to find myself in to get kids excited about education or get them exposed to new ideas that they wouldn't have been, you know, privy to before or, you know, hey, I was fortunate enough to have really good teachers in my life if. If I can get someone else to, you know, who doesn't have good teachers to be like, oh, I get this concept now that's huge, and think critically about the world around them and ask questions and like. Or just, you know, have a better day if they're having a crappy day, like, something as simple as that. And so that's really been kind of the guiding principle around a lot of what we do. And now I get to do it at a very personal level on a very concentrated basis with this little potato, which is pretty awesome. Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

I mean, yeah. With some of those people, you don't know what the. What the one thing is going to be that could. That could steer them one way or the other. So it's really just about trying to make a positive impact wherever you can, because you don't know if there is that person that's looking for that one thing.

[Matthew Patrick]

And it's. And it's. And it's interesting, too. And it's a bit scary. Right. Like, the Internet's in this really weird period right now where the stuff that is, you know, negative and dramatic and, you know, definitely, like, not the positive news stories are the things that get the most visibility.

[Ian Hecox]

Sure.

[Matthew Patrick]

That get the, you know, that get the reshares, they get the retweets that, that get people talking, right? And to me, it, it creates this kind of self perpetuating cycle of this, this thing got numbers. Numbers matter. So I need to do more of this thing to get more numbers. Like when you boil it down, right? That's why the news doesn't cover the happy go lucky stories of like woman saves dog, you know, or like neighbors helped each other. But instead it's like so and so killed such and such and like, you.

[Ian Hecox]

Know, woman saves dog.

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[Ian Hecox]

Somebody was telling me about this woman was like playing with her, with her dogs and the dogs just snapped and they ripped her arm off. And it's like, yeah, that's. Well, she, she also died, so it's ruined a good life. But that's like, that's the story that you hear. You don't hear like woman, woman saves a group of puppies. Yay. It's, it's no, dogs flipped out and killed their owner.

[Courtney Miller]

And this is why you shouldn't have a boxer. Yeah, come on.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right? And then there's the push of like all boxers are violent and so all boxers must be purged from the world. And you know, because everything has to be such an extreme these days to get the headline clicks, to get the reshares, whatever. Now all of a sudden, it has to be the best or the worst ever. Even. Even stupid stuff too. Like, like movies, you know, even with movies, it's like this broke box. It's like every movie that gets released nowadays breaks a box office record. It's like, did they really, you know, is that true? But it's like every new movie. But it's one of those things where it's like, I think it's all about how you frame what you're comparing it against. Like box office record against whatever the Internet for the longest time was. Like, we need to create algorithms that keep people using our platform, right? We need to create a system where People are encouraged to, like, watch videos on our service or, you know, watch news on Twitter and talk about news on Twitter or, like, post their personal photos on Facebook or whatever, and they were successful at it. Congratulations, Internet. You did it. You know, there's, like, five giant companies now, and people use, like, are addicted to their phones. You know, no one thought about the ramifications of what that would do to how humans interact, how they behave, how they perceive the world.

[Ian Hecox]

I would wake up, and I would. My. My routine was I would wake up, I'd grab my phone, turn off my alarm, go to Twitter, go to Twitter moments, and then just scroll through all the news. And, like, I started finding. And this probably happened, like, right after the 2016 election. I would find that, you know, I'd open up Twitter and just, like, it would just. I started, like, getting anxiety in the morning. I would wake up, and I just read all this shit news, and it was not really the kind of thing you'd really want to wake up to. And I realized, like, I think maybe a year ago, I stopped doing that. And then I. I went to open up my phone this morning, and I was like. I was like, oh, no, no, not gonna do that.

[Matthew Patrick]

It does. It makes a big difference. And I know, like I said, it relates to the Internet, and certainly the Internet has made. And phones and stuff have made it exactly that, like, I reach for my phone in the morning, and I'm immediately put into a bad, negative mood about the state of the world because of whatever the news story is. But even before that, like, tv, if you look at the way Americans frame their news stories versus the way international coverage happens, they could be covering completely different things and you would not know it. Right. Like, in America, it's like, you know, massive outrage in Egypt as people, you know, charged the capital in order to, like, get governmental change. We were in Egypt around time of, like, a big government upheaval. Actually, it was. It was our honeymoon, Stephen I's honeymoon. And it was the first time that it really hit home for us. So that's how this situation was being covered in the US like, you know, crowds rallying against the government and protesting and, like, they're angry in the streets. We literally go to Egypt, and it was, like, one square block that. That contained, like, people who were upset. And then, like, a couple of protesters holding signs with, like, a hot dog stand across from, like, the Capitol building.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

And. And. But, you know, the way America frames it, it's like city on fire when it's. When it's. Not. They're like on fire for their like red hot hot dog next door, you know, like that. That's. It was just wild.

[Ian Hecox]

It is. It is nice though. Whenever I. Whenever I go home and I stay at my parents place in Sacramento, they still get the newspaper. And it's so. And it's so, like, it's so lovely just reading local news.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh my gosh.

[Ian Hecox]

Because it's not all. It's not all like garbage. It's like, it's like, oh, they're building a road here or whatever. And it's just so nice to like, not just read like, oh, these people died and like this government's being overthrown and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's just like, here's a thing going on in the neighborhood.

[Courtney Miller]

That's the thing though. Like, the Internet has brought in like, oh, it's not like. I'm sure a lot of things have gotten worse over time, but it's like also, we are just seeing it all a lot more. Before we had the Internet and it was just press and stuff. A lot of stuff wasn't as covered and a lot of like, you just didn't know as much about what was happening.

[Ian Hecox]

Sure.

[Courtney Miller]

So it's like now the world can seem like it's so much worse and it is a lot of bad stuff. There is, but it can feel a lot worse because we're seeing it all happen at once.

[Ian Hecox]

Whereas I totally agree. I honestly don't think that the world is any worse than it was 10 years ago or 15 years ago or 20 years ago. It's just the fact that we are so attuned to every bad thing that happens. I mean, gosh, can you imagine if we had. If we had the kind of press that we do now back in like World War II? Oh my gosh, when like, atrocities were being committed everywhere, it wasn't just in.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right.

[Ian Hecox]

Wasn't just in Germany. Like, there were terrible things happening everywhere.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

But it was also funny because like, Japan, they. They had this theory that they could put these bombs on balloons and then. And then the Airstream would take the jet stream, whatever, would take the balloons over to the US and the bombs would then drop on cities in the US So they did one test. I think.

[Matthew Patrick]

I think I saw this in the Hunger Games. I think the Hunger Games Part 3 did this. Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

So they flew these balloons and it was not that successful. But some bombs did land in like the forests in like Oregon or something.

[Matthew Patrick]

Okay.

[Ian Hecox]

They didn't. I think it hit maybe like one house or something. I don't think anybody died. I think some kid died because they found unexploded ordinance. They walked up to an explode or something. Either way, it didn't, wasn't that successful. But because the government at that time had such a, a grip on the press, they actually squashed the stories because they said, like, oh, this will be bad for our country.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right.

[Ian Hecox]

Put this story out. So they actually squashed all the stories. Japan never heard any news about it, so they just considered a complete failure. So they never did it again.

[Matthew Patrick]

Well, and again, going back to like the whole, you know, going back to me and like, why I do the channels and, and, and this idea of making the world a better place and stuff. One of the things that I'm always really passionate about and why the whole theory thing is so important to me is like, you just said that news never got out. That story didn't come out until just recently. Right. And I think a lot of people take what they're presented with by the world, by press, by news media, whatever, at face value and don't actually question why are we being told this? What is the agenda necessarily behind it? And like, who stands to profit off of these stories? Like, I think a lot of us have this like, idea of like, we want other people to just be naturally helpful, be naturally, like, informative. And hey, your job is to deliver me information and you will deliver it as effectively and, you know, neutrally, I guess, as possible. But it's one of those things that, that's not true in the slightest. Right. And so for us, like, we're doing it on a very minor basis as far as, like, is your favorite hero a villain? Yes. Even though, like, you know, you're cherry picking ideas just like the, you know, but it's that idea of, look at it from a different perspective. Ask the question of not just like, this guy's the hero, but are they actually behaving like the hero? And I was fortunate enough to have a dad who, oh man, we're going back to Father Fig. This is great. Look, there's a through line in this. I was fortunate enough to have a father who inspired that sort of curiosity in me. And this idea of, you know, do the research for yourself. Yes. Take what people are telling you, but also look beyond that and like, look at, you know, who's telling the story, why? What are the actual facts behind things rather than, you know, someone else putting their perspective on it.

[Ian Hecox]

I think critical thinking is something that they really need to teach more in schools.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

Because especially in this day and age, like, it's so easy to just believe something that somebody's just putting out there without considering their agenda. Like, I. At the gym I work at, out at, it's this really fun thing where they have three channels on the tv. One's espn.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yep.

[Ian Hecox]

And then the other two are Fox News and CNN right next to each other. And it's fun because I'll just be on the treadmill and be like, all right, what are the agendas today? Okay. Okay. So CNN's just talking about Trump, and Fox News is talking about Hillary still. It's like, it's. You know, it's. It's really funny because you see, like, they both clearly have agendas, Right. You need to. There is still news there, but you need to fish through that agenda and parse out what true information there is.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. It's funny that you have those playing at your gym.

[Ian Hecox]

It's infuriating.

[Matthew Patrick]

At my gym, it's only Food Network without. It's no exaggeration. Like, we have, like, the one that is. We have one that's just general sports. You have one that is general news, and then you have one that is actual Food Network. And so it's like, chopped or, you know, recipes. And so since I work out, work out harder, right? So I'm working out Saturday morning and watching, like, you know, the pioneer woman in her kitchen, you know, frying up some butter, and I'm like, yes, yes, please.

[Ian Hecox]

Wow, that's so evil.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, I just think it's so, like, TV phones. It's just images going at your face. Like, when you're scrolling through Twitter, you see something, you usually just. A lot of people just believe it and move on. I think I saw a video on Twitter the other day where people were like, oh, Trump forgot he didn't have his toupee on at this thing. And so he, like. It's a video where he takes off his hat and he goes, my hair is a mess. And he goes like this. And he's completely bald.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, that's cool.

[Courtney Miller]

But I'm pretty sure it was shopped, right? You could see his hand, like, go into the bald head. Like, it was a little bit poorly done. But people, like, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and they're commenting like, oh, my God, I can't believe that. So dumb. And they will move on never knowing the truth. And this is a little touchy. Remember the kids with the MAGA hats and the Native Americans who came up.

[Ian Hecox]

Which by the way, Fox News is still talking about that.

[Courtney Miller]

The original story. The original story was that these kids were. They came up to the Native Americans and got into the Native Americans face. But there's actually then later footage of the Native Americans coming up to the kids and like doing the music in front of that. Like it was, it was like a complete flip, I think.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, it was.

[Courtney Miller]

Story was.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, it was some. It wasn't that guy, but it was some like, it was like a couple other guys that might have been in some group related or something.

[Courtney Miller]

I think the kids were like on a school trip and we're like waiting for their bus. It was like something weird like that. And the kids were like, super.

[Ian Hecox]

But it's just two sides and you can see that and you can witness that. You'll see on the CNN Fox News thing.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, you're at that gym side by side.

[Matthew Patrick]

And it is, it's one of those things that like, you brought up a lot of stuff, which is scary because first off, you know, the camera is a selective frame. Right. And you can decide what to include or not include. And what you keep outside of the guidelines, what you cut out, what you edit, you know, and I think that's one thing that first off, people just don't think about that. Right. Like here in Hollywood. Yeah. The Oscars are held at this beautiful venue, super rich, super luxurious. It's happening in front of a Sunglass Hut. You know, it's a. It's a. It's a cheesy rundown strip mall.

[Ian Hecox]

It's happening in the worst place in LA that you do not want to go to. It's full of. It smells like piss.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

There's a dirty Spider man hanging out outside trying to get your money.

[Courtney Miller]

Not Tom Holland. It's not Tom Holland.

[Matthew Patrick]

No. A Dirty Spider Man. No, but it is. But again, because the camera shows this part of the frame and not this part of the frame, they're just showing you what you want to see. And I think that that idea of the storyteller is subjective is again to that idea of like, we need to teach people the essence of what it is to consume media. Like what is being kept in, what is not, what's being edited out. And then add to that the complicating factor of exactly what you said, CGI and the ability to replicate faces and.

[Courtney Miller]

Like conspiracy video on that.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. And that technology exists, this idea of being able to take so many different images of a person's face and replicate that person talking and saying stuff because we're in this culture of there's so much footage of, you know, especially public figures out there and footage of them saying every word possible that you can cobble together these really lifelike facsimiles. So not only are humans just bad at being able to process this stuff, add to it, you have people who are really good at being able to kind of like seed out false information. And then the capstone of it, all, right, is the idea that because of how fast the Internet goes and how quickly we're on to the next news story, the next big trend. What's the trend today? You know, what's the new meme? Whatever. There is no sense of, let's look back at what we were told and analyze what the reality was and what it meant, right? And it's always, we need to be the first to get the headline. We need to be the first to get the headline. Move on to the next thing, next thing, next thing. There's never this idea of like, wait, what did we believe versus what was real? And what came? Like, what was the impact of that? And is that something that we should be incentivizing or, you know, like, hey, maybe this is a bad idea moving forward. You never have that retrospective analysis. And so as a result, a lot of these problems just continue to perpetuate and don't get solved. Well.

[Ian Hecox]

Cause if you take any time to think, hey, should I post this? Well, then you're too late. Somebody else beat you to the punch.

[Courtney Miller]

And that's the thing, people with what you were saying earlier about negativity being so much more eye catching and tasty for news people to touch on. It's like, that's why it sucks. Like, the word feminism is seen by a lot of people as a negative thing because there's an abuser of every movement that will do a terrible thing and claim they're a part of this group. And then everyone's like, oh, that group's terrible because that's all that they've seen from that group or whatever. And then they move on and they don't do the research or question everything. I think I learned from the Internet, like, luckily I was exposed to the right stuff at the right time, that I was taught to question everything and not just let like, like you said, face value and move on.

[Ian Hecox]

You know, with all the stuff that went down with mostly our parents using Facebook, I think. I think there probably will be classes taught on ways to break down information that you're seeing on social media, because it's. It is A huge, huge problem. And it's. It's. I mean, it's propaganda. It's getting people to think a certain way. And it's. It's the new. It's the new. Sort of like war.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, it's. And it's. And it's tough, too, because a lot of times the truth behind a situation doesn't fit into 140 characters. It doesn't fit into. Or what? 240.

[Courtney Miller]

240.

[Matthew Patrick]

240.

[Ian Hecox]

At this point, like, wow, 2008.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. I know, but it does, you know, it's not tweetable. It's not the most. It's not the best, it's not the worst. It's a complicated situation that has many nuanced sides, and you're gonna have to stop and read and think critically about how. And that just doesn't work in this day and age of. Let me hit the retweet button. Let me write in all caps and say how offended I am.

[Courtney Miller]

You go to a Twitter moment and. And you read the tweet, and then they have a tweet to the actual article, and nobody clicks the article. They just want to read what everyone's saying at face value, what is basically going on. And it could be accurate or not.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. And that's the thing. Right. And we see it all the time in small scale with our videos. Right. If I make a factual inaccuracy and say something wrong in one of my videos. And sometimes that happens. It happens. Yeah. When you're covering the 60 year history of Mario or whatever. And I'm sure someone in the comments here will be like, it's not actually 60 years of Mario, but it's one of those things where, like, if you make a mistake that's out there and no amount of me in the comments being like, you know, fixing it, no one's gonna see that. Yeah, exactly. And even, like, people are just gonna get their information from, like, oh, he purposely included this in, or whatever. You know, for instance, we had a video where we talked about the tragic death of one of our editors. And, you know, we purposely kept that demonetized in honor of. In honor of him. It's not something that you should be making money off of.

[Ian Hecox]

Sure.

[Matthew Patrick]

But, you know, YouTube naturally has to run banner ad. Like, that is just one of the things that you cannot turn off. But it was one of those things where people are like, oh, you're trying to capitalize. Monetize this. This horrific event. It's like, like one that is so hurtful. Like, to have people think that, because I would never want to do that. But then, two, it's like no amount of me telling that story out there is gonna translate to people. Cause to a lot of people, they made up their mind or they think they have the story right. And it's one of those things where, like, it just self perpetuates and it's. It's tough. It's a weird, weird time. The Internet's in this weird inflection point. It's kind of scary.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah. They'll leave a comment of something like, you did that thing wrong. I can't believe you did that. And then they leave. Some of them don't even go back and check the replies if they're, like, actually being corrected. And they'll go on living and maybe telling other people. You never know.

[Ian Hecox]

I got a little taste of that talking about Michael Jackson in the last podcast.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, yeah. The comments are very split on that.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, well, actually, on YouTube, it was a lot of people saying, like, yeah, he did it. And then I went to my Twitter mentions, and some people with Michael Jackson avatars were railing on me pretty hard. And I was like, yeah, I expected that.

[Matthew Patrick]

Look at how controversial you are, Ian.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

And you have this, like, devil may care at. You're like, bring it on, Internet.

[Ian Hecox]

I mean, well, it's because Keith is a huge Michael Jackson fan. And I thought. And like, look, I'm not trying to change anyone's minds. And I just wanted to have a conversation about it because he's a. He's a big Michael Jackson fan. And. Yeah. I don't know, I felt like we. It was a good thing to talk.

[Matthew Patrick]

About, but that's it right there. And see that again, like, that's the thing that I think a lot of people are afraid of or just resistant to do these days is have a conversation.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

Like, no one.

[Ian Hecox]

Don't have all the facts.

[Matthew Patrick]

But then.

[Ian Hecox]

But then also the facts aren't those. The facts relating to Michael Jackson are so muddled, of course, and. And then twisted by both sides to fit their narrative. So wherever people are getting information, like, people keep reposting this meme of, like, all the facts of Michael Jackson. I'm like, okay, but I can't. I can't take, you know, two days to research every single fact on here to make sure it's right. So either I'm gonna accept it at face value or ignore it.

[Matthew Patrick]

You know, when I think that's again, like, that's why conversations are so important, because people are resistant to do it because if all of a sudden I admit that I'm wrong or like it exposes me to either being wrong or being misinformed or under informed. And to your point of this idea of I don't have two days to do all the research. If you have enough conversations with enough people, it's like, okay, I have a general understanding now of all these different perspectives, all these different like sources of facts from people who, you know, maybe didn't read the two days worth of information on it, but at least like no bits and pieces and you can put that together into like, hey, I have a much better informed position on this. As a result.

[Ian Hecox]

The thing to take away from it is don't touch kids. Like whether or not, whether or not he did it, like let's, let's talk like, let's have a conversation about like grooming children and, and abusing children and, and like what that is. Like whether he did it or not. We're having the conversation now and we're, we're, we know the signs. And you know, one of the big things that they talk about in the documentary, I don't want to go too far into it, but like, is the child abuse. It's not necessarily like the things that, that those, those victims had to wrestle with in their minds was like, I still love him. So I don't know. So it's like everyone thinks like, oh, it's something where they're like they're abused and they're, and they're, you know, it was a violent thing. It's like not necessarily, but it's still not okay.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. Yeah. That they're wrecked for life when that isn't the case. Right. Because it's happening at such an early age, the signs are different than what like you would assume or what the media portrays. Right. Like, you see, you know, it's not someone who's like broken or has mental issues. I mean sometimes they are and sometimes they do. But you know, a lot of times it is, it's, it's. I have this complicated relationship with this person and I don't know how to process it. And you know, to the outside world, you might not think that this happened to me, but it very likely could have.

[Ian Hecox]

Right?

[Matthew Patrick]

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[Courtney Miller]

I think the important thing is when you're having those conversations, say the Michael Jackson thing, it's like we will never know the exact truth. We'll never know. But I think people have to, like, sort out their priorities when they're in those arguments or discussions of. It's like, okay, what's the real issue here and why does this matter? And like, because it's not about, like, who's right and who's wrong. It shouldn't be about that. It should be like, big picture, like, what really matters? Like, why are we arguing about this.

[Ian Hecox]

And what's more important and what can we take from it?

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

I think the bigger argument though is do you think Aladdin's gonna be good?

[Courtney Miller]

Here he goes. Here he goes.

[Matthew Patrick]

Well, you know, I do have a channel dedicated to film, so I am aware of this. This sort of thing. No, I gotta say, I think it's gonna be good. Yeah, I do. I think it's gonna be better than the Lion King movie, quite honestly. Yeah, I think that's a bad opinion. Is that a controversial opinion? Is that my hot take?

[Ian Hecox]

So. Because I'm more apt to watch something with humans talking than like weird kind of live action, like. Well, I haven't quite seen. They haven't shown like the lions talking it. Because I think it's gonna be really freaking weird.

[Matthew Patrick]

I think there's a reason you haven't seen the lion.

[Courtney Miller]

Just like we're saying.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Courtney Miller]

What we see.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yep. I think that. So here's my take on Aladdin. First off is I think I'm bummed out about Jafar. I think that they miscast Jafar. He's so sexy. It's. He's sexy, but he doesn't. Like, if you're thinking Jafar, like you and he was such a. Like an iconic cartoonish Disney villain. I think say what you will about the casting and he might be great in the role. Just vocally. He doesn't have the vocal. Seductive, deep. I want to get wrapped up in his voice that Jafar as a character who is seducing everyone around him and kind of mind controlling him has. So that's my one ding on Aladdin. But if you look at, you know, all the spectacle that they've shown of it. If you. I think Will Smith, like, he's in a thankless role of having to, you know, remake a. Just an iconic, like one of the best performances, period, in a move. Like it was just such a perfect matching of character to personality when it was Robin Williams.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

I think Will Smith is one of the best people to do kind of like a new fresh. A fresh take on the journey or on the genie. So I think he'll be good. And it's, it's basic. And I was worried because I'm like, oh, they're just recreating the movie. But it seems like the genie is more like. It's Hitch. It looks like Hitch, dude.

[Ian Hecox]

That's what we. That's what we were saying.

[Matthew Patrick]

It's totally Hitch.

[Ian Hecox]

We're saying it's literally Hitch.

[Matthew Patrick]

It is. Where in Hitch, basically Will Smith is like the romance consultant who's like, hey, you know, lame white dude, I'm gonna teach you how to get the girl. And here it seems like it's Aladdin, but Hitch, where it's the genie being like, hey, Aladdin, street rat, let me show you how to get the girl. Which, you know, it's a different take. I don't think it's a bad one. I think it's. I think it's interesting.

[Ian Hecox]

I like that. I feel like Will Smith put in his contract that he can't be blue the entire time. Because. Because when he did Suicide Squad, his character Deadshot has like a full on mask. And then in Suicide Squad, like, doesn't have the mask, he's like, no, no, I just want the eye thing. That's it. Right? It doesn't have like a little. I didn't watch that movie.

[Matthew Patrick]

But I also wonder if. Because again, think about who's telling the story. Think about how these things happen, right? I think things get leaked out. If you're a movie studio and things get leaked out onto the Internet, you see how the audience responds. The stuff that you're kind of questioning and you double back and you're like, okay, well, let's rework this before we release the big trailer. And so here I think there probably was a world where the genie might have been blue the entire time, but it's an easy CGI thing to fix, right? And so now all of a sudden, if the Internet's making fun of Will Smith for being kind of like comedically blue the entire time, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, look, here's a trailer where he's not blue the whole time. Like, now, all of a sudden, you've. You've gotten people to be like, okay, I'm not as afraid of this anymore. I think it's the same reason why the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. You haven't seen Sonic's face yet. And then when you saw Sonic's face. Because it did leak out.

[Courtney Miller]

I haven't seen it.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, but. Right, so it leaked out.

[Ian Hecox]

It's not great.

[Matthew Patrick]

Leaked and it's not great. And the Internet's been kind of like, eh. And so I'm wondering if this, like, if it had been great, I bet you would have seen a Sonic trailer, like, shortly thereafter.

[Ian Hecox]

I'm less. I'm less worried about his face and more worried about his legs. Like, there's something really weird.

[Matthew Patrick]

There's something really weird about Sonic's legs being so hairy. Like, it's uncomfortable.

[Ian Hecox]

I just love. I just love that poster where it's like he, like, took the shot. He's like, man spreading on top of the bridge.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

And then, like, and then if you zoom in, if you zoom in on the bridge, like, right in between his crotch, like, he wrote, Sonic was here. Like, with W u Z.

[Courtney Miller]

It's 1996.

[Matthew Patrick]

Six.

[Ian Hecox]

Damn. Okay.

[Matthew Patrick]

It's period appropriate.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

But, yeah, I think so. Like, a great example of this, I think, is Venom, right? Where Venom had this leak of the, like, moment of Venom. Like, this is Venom in his tongue. And people like, oh, look at the leak. How's he look? And the Internet loved it. Right? The Internet was like, I approve it. This is what my Venom should look like. Great. Awesome. The response was positive. And then like, within, like, 24, 48 hours, you have a trailer for Venom. Right. I would assume that if things. The Internet was like, oh, his tongue's too stupid. Or like, this looks too. You know, this isn't the Venom I'm looking for. I want a more traditional whatever. I think you would have probably seen a delay there, and they might have, like, gone back and reworked things to make it happen again. That's just a conspiracy theory.

[Courtney Miller]

I love it. I love it.

[Matthew Patrick]

But. But Lion King. Yeah. I think that the reason why you're seeing such iconic moments from the film, but also, like, the animals not talking. And yet I think they're. I also wouldn't be surprised if that's the reason why Aladdin is coming out this year, because it's weird for them to have two live action remakes of such two hugely iconic franchises coming out months apart. And. Yeah, say what? You will.

[Ian Hecox]

Like, it's months apart.

[Matthew Patrick]

I mean, they're both coming out this year. Whoa. Which is. Right.

[Ian Hecox]

That's weird.

[Matthew Patrick]

Which I didn't realize until, like, I saw you know, the. Both trailers, and they're both coming out so close together. Yeah. Like, I could see them doing one.

[Ian Hecox]

A year, but these are blowing their wad. Like.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, totally.

[Ian Hecox]

It's like. Is that a. Is that a weird euphemism?

[Courtney Miller]

I think that's different.

[Matthew Patrick]

What is blowing through money.

[Ian Hecox]

Okay, all right. Well, I don't know. I don't know my euphemisms then.

[Matthew Patrick]

They're blowing something.

[Ian Hecox]

It seems like they're just kind of like. Because they only have. They only have so many things to remake in live action. And it seems to me, like, to me, Lion King was probably the best animated movie they ever made.

[Matthew Patrick]

Sure.

[Ian Hecox]

But maybe that's just because I grew up in the 90s, but just a 90s kid. What can I say?

[Matthew Patrick]

And you're not the type to respond to princesses.

[Ian Hecox]

Exactly. Yeah. I don't want to see women get empowered. Like, screw that. I want to see lions each other up.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, see, now, now we can cut that line out of this podcast. Ian from Smosh says.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, I will say when. When I saw the. The shot of the wildebeest, like, going into the gorge, I was like, I like it. Oh, yeah, I felt it, man.

[Courtney Miller]

See, for the Aladdin. The Aladdin trailer, like, when I saw the leaked images of Genie or whatever, I was like, oh, no, this is. This is. I'm worried. But then the trailer came out, and it's like, the first half, I wasn't super interested. I mean, but then when Will Smith comes in, he's, like, being funny and stuff. But then when the music picked up and I got chills, like, because you forget, like, an animated movie, it has a vision of what, like, image you have, and then in your memory, you see that world, that universe. But when live action, like, they really filled it all in with, like, beautiful imagery in the shots of, like, the chase and everything. You're like, oh, my gosh. There's so much I didn't imagine in my head that is gonna be there.

[Ian Hecox]

I haven't seen any of the live action Disney movies yet because I just don't care.

[Courtney Miller]

Well, Maleficent was incredible.

[Matthew Patrick]

Maleficent is surprisingly good.

[Courtney Miller]

Okay, another one.

[Ian Hecox]

But the.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, I was surprised by that. I'm like, whoa. I didn't realize that they were actually doing right. I thought. The story seems fairly complete at this point. I don't know what they're doing with that. Is it a prequel?

[Courtney Miller]

I don't know.

[Matthew Patrick]

I don't know.

[Ian Hecox]

Anyway, yeah, but with Aladdin, it was interesting that they. The songs that, you know, Aladdin and Jasmine are singing don't sound any different from the original.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

But then. But then, like, you know, they're gonna have to do something different with Will Smith because, like, you ain't never had a friend like me. It's like, through a little like Fresh Prince in there, I'm like, okay, like me. Like, because obviously you're not gonna do like, Robin Williams. Like, yeah. Also, I didn't know. Okay. Am I just stupid for not realizing that? Like, in the Lion King, I thought that the kids were the ones like, like the Simba. I thought he. Yeah, Simba and Nala. I thought that they were the ones that were actually singing the songs. I didn't realize that they had, like, other singers do their songs for them. I just assumed, like, Jonathan Taylor Thomas just had a great voice. I was like, wow, good for him, right? No, I'm just an idiot again.

[Matthew Patrick]

I don't. I don't think you're dumb. Thank you. Because why would. You know? Why would you. Why would. Why would you. It's not like the movie's beating you over the head with, like, this is a new person. You know, it's being portrayed as all one care about the framing.

[Courtney Miller]

And we weren't. I feel like back then, it wasn't like a common knowledge of behind the scenes stuff. Like, it wasn't like everybody knew about, like, that, like, because I feel like nowadays, like, you kind of hear a little bit more of, like, what goes on in production behind the scenes. Like, we instantly see the images of Beauty and the Beast when they show the graphics of how they made Beast with the suit and everything. I feel like that stuff wasn't accessible back then when a Lion King.

[Ian Hecox]

Sure. Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

Tell you what, though, I'm all aboard that practice, quite honestly. Interesting. I love the idea of actually getting, like, in my ideal world, you just get someone who's good for the role and all that that role entails. Coming from the theater world, you know, there's so many talented, like, Broadway actors and like, you know, little known personalities who would be perfect for these roles.

[Ian Hecox]

And that's what they did with Frozen. Like, they got, as we call her Adele Dazeem.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, Adele Dazeem, absolutely. Who is one of the best singers.

[Ian Hecox]

But nobody knows who. She wasn't selling the movie because nobody knows who she is.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right. She just is a Phenomenal performer who has a legit background in vocal performance and theatrical acting who can crush it in a character. Like, that's the thing. And that's the thing that kills me about all of these remakes is like, and that's the reason why I really didn't like the Beauty and the Beast is cause, you know, say I love Emma Watson. Great. Fantastic. Camera.

[Courtney Miller]

Dad, maybe is that your timer?

[Ian Hecox]

That's my timer.

[Courtney Miller]

Oh, every time. He doesn't know where the timer's coming from.

[Ian Hecox]

I forgot. I'm sorry.

[Matthew Patrick]

No, you're great. I just think it's funny.

[Ian Hecox]

I'm sorry, that totally interrupted you. It's okay, we can keep talking.

[Matthew Patrick]

But anyway, so like, I wasn't a big fan of Beauty and the Beast.

[Courtney Miller]

Emma Watson.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, I'd say I love Emma Watson. Great, fantastic. But the thing is, like, she can't sing the role like someone who has actually been trained and doing it for years to sing the role. And sure, she might help put butts in seats maybe, but it's one of those things that like, if you, if you just have good performers doing a good job and just like kicking butt, like, it's gonna be great. And so for me, the thing that kills all of these live action remakes is when all of a sudden, like, great, I'm, I'm immersed in this world, I love what's going on. And then like their vocal performance hits and it's like stretch for those notes or like clearly auto tuned or anything like that. And so I'd rather, you know, I'd rather them dub over someone else who actually can sing like they did with the Lion King in the early days. Or you know, in the, like I said, in the ideal world, just cast a no name actor. Give them a chance to shine.

[Courtney Miller]

I feel like they'll be happy that they did.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, they're gonna, yeah, of course it'll.

[Ian Hecox]

Make a better product, but it doesn't sell the product well.

[Matthew Patrick]

But doesn't it? Because here all of a sudden, if you, if you're casting right again, like you get a chance to see the person perform. It's not like, okay, you're on the movie set, hopefully this guy is good. No, you've presumably seen them read for the role, interact with everyone. That is the casting process, you know.

[Ian Hecox]

And sure, it's probably easier with an animated movie because you're not seeing that person. You're not like, who the hell is this?

[Courtney Miller]

Right?

[Ian Hecox]

Like, I don't even realize half the people in animated movies. I was like, wait, that Was that major celebrity. Like, I don't care really. Right. Like, occasionally I'll be like, oh, cool. Like that person. But then they have a cast of like 20 celebrities.

[Courtney Miller]

I'm like, for lion.

[Matthew Patrick]

Keegan.

[Ian Hecox]

Wait, Keegan. Michael Key was in this, like Brad Pitt. What?

[Matthew Patrick]

But it is, it's one of those things that to me, you know. Yeah. They might not help put butts in sea. So maybe have stunt casting for like one person there or whatever. Like, oh, I can't believe the Rock. Because it's always the Rock. Can't believe the Rock is in there. It's always the Rock. And he'll be glad to do it. He'll cash that paycheck and long days. Long. But the thing is, you know, fill it with a bunch of other people who are great and the movie sells itself. Did these original stories become so popular because they were stunt casted? No, it's because they tell really emotional tales that are, that are well told. The music is great and they're well performed. And so, you know, would I rather see, you know, Aladdin starring, you know, someone that I recognize or Aladdin just being performed? The heck out of people who are glad to be there, are excited to do it and can fill the role and like, to me, like, that's. I just love good stories. And if you're telling me the best story possible and great. If that person is the best for that role, awesome. I'm all aboard.

[Courtney Miller]

But yeah, I guess it's when they advertise those movies and they want to sell those movies, it's at face value where you see at, oh, big famous person. That's how they're trying to get the money right now. Not in the long run. What was the better decision?

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Matthew Patrick]

Like you see those rolling lists of animated movie credits, like at the end of the trailer, like, like you said Keiki Michael Key and it's like Zendaya's Michi. It almost makes me roll my eyes because it's like, clearly you don't have, you don't have enough faith in the trailer that you created and in the story that you're telling to sell me on just the premise alone. And so instead you're trying to impress me with all this star power and it's like, like Beyonce's in it. It's like, I don't care if Beyonce's in it.

[Ian Hecox]

Well, animated movies. I was reading something they were saying animated movies are some of the only places where you can still tell an original story and get people to actually get their butts in movie theater seats. Because nowadays it's. It's just about franchises and reboots and people will go and see those. But to see an original movie in the theater is very rare. Unless it's an animated movie.

[Matthew Patrick]

Or get like, I think, again, like, look at what Blumhouse has been able to do. Yeah, Blumhouse.

[Ian Hecox]

But those are all horrors. I mean, they're horror and they're low budget. They're very low budget. Good.

[Matthew Patrick]

Tell a good story with a low budget. Like, you don't need everything to be a CGI masterpiece. Good story. Like, theater is built on this idea of telling good stories. Right. And, you know, with lower budgets than movies, certainly. And film, really just stick a camera around, like. Yeah, there's more cost because you gotta set up lights and this and that. I think a lot. I think. Here's my other hot take. I think the movie industry just wastes egregious amounts of money on, like, needless excess. Like, don't even get me started on that. But it is one of those things where the idea of, like, telling a good story, like, no matter what your budget is, no matter what your genre, those exist. Certain genres are gonna cost more. Superhero action movies, certainly. But, like, if you're telling a drama or a, you know, like, Get Out. Yeah, you're right. Horror is kind of maybe has an easier opportunity to do it. I don't know. I'm a firm believer of a lot of times good content will just disseminate out there because, you know, you have to start somewhere and it creates a groundswell. And now, you know, because of the success of get out, which started slow and then built, people are super excited for us.

[Ian Hecox]

I am, right?

[Matthew Patrick]

Of course.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah.

[Matthew Patrick]

And I'm gonna be great.

[Ian Hecox]

I hate horror movies.

[Matthew Patrick]

Right.

[Ian Hecox]

I'm. I'm gonna see that. We're seeing an opening night.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah. Our whole, like, office group is gonna go see it together.

[Ian Hecox]

Whole smosh, fam. We're all gonna go see it.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, I'm just gonna, like, have someone next to me. I'm like, just so you know, I'm gonna break your arm.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, I'm pretty. I'm pretty spooked for that movie.

[Matthew Patrick]

Spooked and stoked.

[Ian Hecox]

Yes. Yo, bro, I'm freaking.

[Matthew Patrick]

Shoot, dude.

[Ian Hecox]

Sorry. We're trying to make this.

[Courtney Miller]

Maybe I'm trying to make this thing. It's a thing Ian randomly started. Like, he said it one day, and I was like, oh, that's from something, right? He's like, no, I just said it. He Goes, shoot, dude.

[Ian Hecox]

I don't know.

[Matthew Patrick]

Sounds like something that would come out of like.

[Courtney Miller]

Sounds like a meme.

[Matthew Patrick]

Dude wears my car right. Like, shoot, dude. I like that we, you know, bookended with comedy. Like in the middle. We got really hot and heavy with the discussions.

[Courtney Miller]

Alright. We were pretty heavy from the get go.

[Matthew Patrick]

That is true. Actually. I might be misremembering the beginning of this whole thing.

[Ian Hecox]

Well, before we go, is there anything you want to tell people about? Anything you're doing, Anything you want to shout out? I didn't even mention it. You're our first ever guest.

[Courtney Miller]

Really?

[Matthew Patrick]

I mean, you have only had five episodes. I know of this podcast, so it would have been hard for me to squeezed myself into those first four while you're establishing the format and still trying to. Yeah. First ever guest. Thanks, guys.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, that's awesome.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, wait, I'm not your first ever guest guest though.

[Ian Hecox]

Guest guest.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, oh, here I am being a smart alec about it. I'm your first guest ever, Period. Yeah, ever, period.

[Ian Hecox]

It's all been Smosh family.

[Matthew Patrick]

I guess I had. Oh, I'm so. Oh, I feel so bad that I was making fun of you then. I thought you were saying like, congratulations, Matt, this is your, your first time on the Smosh guest. I'm like, yeah, no doubt. You guys, you had five episodes.

[Ian Hecox]

You were a very first guest.

[Courtney Miller]

First guest.

[Matthew Patrick]

Oh, that's awesome. That is a huge honor.

[Ian Hecox]

Well, I thought you might be a good first person.

[Matthew Patrick]

I appreciate it. Did we, did we cover the topics that you wanted to cover?

[Ian Hecox]

It doesn't matter.

[Matthew Patrick]

That is a clear. No, it really doesn't. Shoot.

[Ian Hecox]

There's no topics. I have this kind of list of things to possibly talk about. We won't touch on any, but I.

[Matthew Patrick]

Don'T throw all of this away so Ian can create the show that he envisioned. I don't want to let you down as your first guest.

[Courtney Miller]

No, this is great. It's all about having a good time and chatting with your buddies.

[Ian Hecox]

That is right.

[Matthew Patrick]

Is that the tagline? Can it be having a good time and chatting with your buddies?

[Courtney Miller]

Shoot, dude.

[Matthew Patrick]

Shoot, dude. Have that good time.

[Ian Hecox]

Well, thank you so much, Matpat.

[Matthew Patrick]

Thank you.

[Ian Hecox]

And give my best to Stephanie.

[Matthew Patrick]

I will. Absolutely.

[Courtney Miller]

Baby potato.

[Matthew Patrick]

And the baby potato. He will be glad to receive. You know, next time, maybe. Next time. Yeah. This one's for you, buddy.

[Courtney Miller]

That was a good one.

[Ian Hecox]

I can't go that high. Nope. I don't want to end this podcast with a no.

[Courtney Miller]

He likes to end up with smacking noises instead.

[Matthew Patrick]

Smacking noises.

[Courtney Miller]

I think we should.

[Matthew Patrick]

I'm kind of grossed out by just the phrase smacking noises. Yeah. What sort of mouth? Like lip smacks.

[Courtney Miller]

Yeah, Lip smacking.

[Ian Hecox]

You know that people gotta get some water.

[Matthew Patrick]

You know that people have like a. Like a built in aversion to this, right?

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, I don't care.

[Courtney Miller]

I just need to. Please.

[Ian Hecox]

I have a built in aversion to that.

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah, sorry.

[Courtney Miller]

I. I think it's great. I don't want lip smacking sounds in this podcast anymore.

[Ian Hecox]

What's that? What's that? It's called like something. Starts with an a something phobia.

[Courtney Miller]

Something like that. People got upset about the Domino's video because we added.

[Ian Hecox]

We added a lot.

[Courtney Miller]

A lot of people were very upset. We shouldn't. Yeah.

[Ian Hecox]

Make sure you guys subscribe to the pod on all the podcast things that are available.

[Courtney Miller]

Any listening apps. Right.

[Ian Hecox]

Spotify, itunes. There's a whole bunch of other. Wonder what's another one?

[Matthew Patrick]

SoundCloud.

[Ian Hecox]

I don't think we're on SoundCloud.

[Matthew Patrick]

Well said. Don't. Don't do it. This is why you don't have the guests. The closing line.

[Ian Hecox]

Be sure to check us out on the YouTube if you're not watching us on the Smoshcast YouTube. We upload on Fridays. The pod comes out on the Wednesdays uncensored and on YouTube. When I say, you're just gonna hear a bleep. So I'm sorry.

[Matthew Patrick]

Censoring me right now.

[Ian Hecox]

Yeah, sorry. Censored the whole thing. I love you guys so much.

[Courtney Miller]

Cool man.

[Matthew Patrick]

Smooth, smooth exit. Smooth exit.

[Ian Hecox]

Thank you.

[Courtney Miller]

Thanks again for coming.

[Matthew Patrick]

My pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you for the lip smacks.

[Courtney Miller]

Goodbye. Goodbye.

[Matthew Patrick]

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