Everybody wants to waste your time

0:00 (dramatic music)- I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

0:06 I walked into the room and I said,

0:07 "This cannot be happening right now." (woman screams) (gun fires) This is

0:12 not the kind of thing that normally happens in this town.

0:15 (dramatic music continues) Is it this camera?

0:26 I look at this one?

0:27 Okay.

0:28 Why don't they just edit that part out?

0:29 [Interviewer] Can you tell us your name?

0:30 My name is John.

0:31 [Interviewer] And what is your connection to Crazy Legs?

0:35 Who?

0:36 [Interviewer] The serial killer.

0:37 I don't know who that is.

0:38 You don't?

0:39 No.

0:39 Is this for TV?

0:41 [Interviewer] Sort of.

0:41 Sorry, we must have got the wrong guy.

0:44 Yeah, I think you did.

0:45 I work at Hobby Lobby.

0:47 [Interviewer] Whoops.

0:47 Well could you tell us about that?

0:50 Oh, sure.

0:51 So, Hobby Lobby is sort of a knickknack store.

0:54 It's-- So they're just going to interview him anyway?

0:57 It's a good place to work because we have

0:59 Sundays off and I'm not like religious or anything,

1:02 but I just don't like working on Sundays.

1:04 (remote clicking) No, it didn't hurt necessarily,

1:08 I just wanted to go to a dermatologist to make sure it wasn't anything seri-

1:11 (remote clicking) But then I found out

1:14 that if you bundle it with your home insurance,

1:17 it's actually a little bit cheaper.

1:19 How long is this?

1:20 You know what's funny?

1:21 I never understood the 'road work' vine.

1:23 People would quote it to me-- Is this the whole episode?

1:25 Do you guys wanna hear about the time I got my tonsils out?

1:27 Oh my God, I'm done.

1:28 This is so stupid.

1:30 The year 2005, my throat ravaged with strep.

1:34 Hey guys, does anyone else feel like

1:36 everything is designed to waste your time now?

1:37 Or am I being too cynical?

1:39 Netflix documentaries are multiple episodes when they

1:42 could have just been one 45 minute movie.

1:44 Video games are too big, YouTube videos are too long.

1:47 And please, for the love of God,

1:49 stop asking me for my phone number every time I buy something from a store.

1:53 I don't wanna join your rewards program,

1:55 I just want to give you money in exchange for a hat.

1:58 Is that too much to ask?

1:59 Sorry, I'll start with the Netflix thing.

2:00 It seems like half of what I watch on Netflix is twice as long as it should be.

2:04 They always make it just interesting enough to hold your attention,

2:08 but it's still pretty clear they're trying

2:10 to stretch it out as much as they can.

2:12 And I know it's not just me who feels this way 'cause I'll look

2:14 up reviews after I watch something and they almost all say the same thing.

2:17 "Watchable, but it drags on.

2:18 Could have been tied up in one episode.

2:20 Please Netflix, stop trying to make a series when there simply isn't the content

2:25 for a series." They made a documentary a couple years ago about the Cecil Hotel,

2:28 a place that has, I'll say it,

2:30 has an alarming number of deaths associated with it.

2:32 It's the site of that extremely famous elevator video

2:35 of Elisa Lamb right before she was found dead.

2:37 So there is plenty of mystery to uncover here,

2:40 but by episode two they were just interviewing YouTubers,

2:45 not people connected with the story,

2:47 just a bunch of random dudes who had Googled stuff about it before.

2:51 They keep calling them "web sleuths",

2:54 which I guess is the most official way of saying that you

2:56 just woke up one day and decided that you are a detective.

2:59 "Well, since no one else has been able to crack this case,

3:02 I guess it's up to me." Generally,

3:04 one of the big things that separates a professionally made documentary from just

3:08 any average YouTube video is the access they have to the subject matter.

3:12 Anyone can throw together a video where they summarize a Wikipedia page,

3:16 but the most memorable and revealing documentaries are ones

3:19 where we hear the perspective of the people involved.

3:21 I watched one on Hulu recently called "The Contestant",

3:24 and not only is this an absolutely insane story,

3:27 but you get to hear it from the point of view of the guy it happened to.

3:30 You also get to hear from the villain of this story,

3:32 who is such a monster I can't believe he agreed to be a part of this.

3:36 It's fascinating to see how proud he is of himself.

3:38 Like, "Yeah, I tormented this guy and ruined his life,

3:41 but you gotta admit it made for a pretty

3:43 cool show." But this is kind of the expectation

3:45 when you turn on a documentary that you're gonna

3:47 hear the story from the people involved in the story.

3:49 So when you put on an official Netflix docuseries

3:53 on a streaming service that costs money to use and most

3:57 of it is just regular people offering their two

3:59 cents on the same blurry video everyone else has watched,

4:02 it kind of feels like a huge waste of time.

4:04 It's so aggressively time wasting that I can't

4:07 help but feel like that was the goal.

4:09 Like all right, we have everything we need to tell this story.

4:11 We have other guests who are staying at the hotel,

4:13 we have the manager of the hotel at the time,

4:16 we have the maintenance worker who discovered her body,

4:19 and in between interviewing them, we're also gonna hear from someone

4:23 whose only credential is having internet access.

4:26 I am a co-founder of the Elisa Lamb discussion group on Facebook.

4:29 No, he wasn't there when it happened, but he has listened to a lot of podcasts

4:34 about this, so we should probably hear him out.

4:36 More recently, they made a docuseries about Ashley Madison,

4:39 a website whose mere existence is fascinating,

4:42 let alone all the fallout from their massive data

4:44 leak that exposed a bunch of celebrities and politicians.

4:47 There is absolutely a story worth telling

4:48 here and some of it was very interesting.

4:50 But again, pointless interviews, backstory that's unnecessarily detailed.

4:55 There's such a clear amount of filler put into these documentaries.

4:58 It felt like half the runtime of the last two episodes was

5:01 just trying to make us feel bad for this YouTube vlogging couple,

5:05 which I'm sorry, was never going to happen.

5:07 In fact, I would say the best thing to come out

5:09 of this was that it forced them to take a short break

5:12 from exploiting their children's medical issues

5:14 for adsense revenue because they were

5:15 too busy making 17 videos about how they were gonna be on Netflix.

5:19 Now I would guess like with a lot of their scripted content,

5:21 the shadowy Netflix overlords are more responsible for a lot

5:25 of these decisions than the talented people who work on these.

5:27 I don't think almost every single documentary is three 60 minute

5:31 episodes because that's always how much story there is to tell,

5:35 I think that's the mandated runtime that their bosses give to them.

5:38 So even when they end up with footage that doesn't add anything to the show,

5:42 they kind of just have to leave it in anyway to pad the length.

5:44 There's a series they did a couple years ago with Kristen Bell, called,

5:47 "The Woman in the House across the street from the Girl

5:50 in the Window." As you could probably guess from the title,

5:52 this was a parody of like lifetime murder mysteries

5:55 and it was a pretty funny show, I enjoyed it.

5:57 But the whole time I was watching this, I

5:59 just kept thinking this should have been a movie.

6:01 Why is this eight episodes?

6:03 Is it because they knew it would take me four days

6:05 to finish instead of getting through it all in one night,

6:07 therefore extending my subscription just long enough for them

6:09 to make a little bit more money for me?

6:11 You know, now that I hear that out loud, I'm pretty sure it's that.

6:13 At this point, I just assume most of Netflix's decisions are

6:15 made by an algorithm that prioritizes keeping people subscribed as long

6:19 as possible and has figured out the best way to mathematically

6:22 do that even if it lessens the overall user experience.

6:25 I think overall Netflix is trying to do too many things at once.

6:28 They wanna make good shows, but they also wanna make a lot of shows and they

6:31 want the shows to be longer than they need to be,

6:33 but not in a way that would cost more money.

6:34 And they need to move the plot along so no one gets bored but not too quickly,

6:38 otherwise the people who are looking down

6:39 at their phones the entire time might get confused.

6:41 She'd heard from so many showrunners who are given notes

6:43 by the streaming channels that they say this isn't second screen enough.

6:47 The viewer is expected to be on their phone

6:49 kind of half doing something else while your crime drama

6:52 or whatever is playing and you just can't make it

6:54 as complicated as you have because they're not gonna understand it,

6:56 because they're only going to be half concentrating on your show.

6:58 You know when you hear stuff like

6:59 that, it's actually not that surprising how often

7:01 shows like "Avatar" would repeat the same information

7:05 they just told you a few minutes ago.

7:07 You're not supposed to pay attention when you watch Netflix,

7:09 you're just supposed to put it on in the background

7:12 so you have something to listen to while you make dinner.

7:14 But like if you're designing your content so

7:17 that it's best consumed while half paying attention to it,

7:20 why would I waste my time devoting all of my attention to it?

7:23 On the topic of things that are getting too long,

7:26 what's going on with YouTube videos?

7:28 (gentle music) Does anyone know?

7:29 I'm old enough to remember when the 10

7:31 minute mark was something videos got stretched out to.

7:34 Now it feels like half the videos I get recommended to me are

7:37 seven hour retrospectives on like "The Penguins

7:41 of Madagascar." And I'm kind of conflicted

7:42 on how I feel about this because on one hand some of the best

7:46 videos I've seen on this website are well past the hour mark.

7:49 There are multiple "Defunct Land" episodes that have better

7:53 storytelling and production value than any Netflix documentary I've seen.

7:57 When Hbomberguy or Jenny Nicholson release a four hour video,

8:01 I know it's not just because they're trying to inflate the watch time,

8:03 so it gets boosted by the algorithm,

8:05 it's because they spent months working on it

8:07 and that's just how long the video ended up being.

8:10 I'm a sucker for a comically in-depth review of a piece

8:13 of media I've never thought about for more than two seconds.

8:16 As long as a person making it is passionate about

8:18 the subject and they put in the effort to make it entertaining,

8:21 I'll watch just about anything.

8:22 But I'm worried that some people are taking the wrong

8:25 lessons from the success of some of these channels.

8:28 They see that a very long video about a niche

8:30 subject has the potential to get a lot of views,

8:33 so it's almost as if they go into their video

8:35 with the goal of making it as long as possible,

8:38 even if there's not really that much to talk about.

8:41 The current YouTube meta is to turn your video into a podcast.

8:44 It's to pad the absolute shit out

8:46 of the runtime because that's what the algorithm likes.

8:49 And to be clear, I don't really blame

8:50 these people for doing this, especially smaller channels who

8:53 are just trying to make their videos stand out

8:55 before they drown in the bottomless ocean of content.

8:58 But it's just frustrating from the audience

9:00 perspective that the system is rewarding unedited yapping.

9:04 If I just vomit out every word that remotely pertains

9:06 to the topic at hand with no thought into brevity,

9:09 no consideration of the viewer's time,

9:11 it's actually more likely that YouTube will push my video

9:14 out to those people whose time I'm not valuing.

9:17 The algorithm is teaching me that I shouldn't

9:19 cut things out of my video if they feel

9:21 superfluous or unnecessary or repetitive or like I'm

9:24 just saying the same thing over and over again, but in slightly different ways.

9:28 They'd prefer it if I stretched out every video as long as I could.

9:30 But if that's all I'm doing,

9:31 what message am I sending to the audience I'm trying to cultivate?

9:35 That their time is just something for me to leverage so I can get more views?

9:39 That's a little shitty.

9:40 But the worst thing is when they start doing an ad

9:43 read at the beginning of a video that quite frankly,

9:45 I'm not even sure I'm interested in yet.

9:47 You haven't even hooked me and you're already trying

9:49 to sell me a water bottle that smells bad.

9:52 Brother, if I wanted to be advertised to, I would

9:55 fly to New York City and spin around in Times Square.

9:58 I didn't click on this video to learn

10:00 about the deodorant that changed your life.

10:02 I clicked on this video to hear a grown

10:04 man rant about "The Fairly Odd Parents" for three hours.

10:07 So in that way, this is kind of my fault.

10:09 I don't know what I was expecting.

10:10 Also...

10:12 No.

10:13 I'm sorry.

10:14 You don't have to do this.

10:15 I literally do, I signed a contract.

10:18 This portion of the video is sponsored by SoFi,

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10:57 But with a SoFi high-yield-savings account

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11:03 would in an entire year in a big bank savings account.

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11:32 Thank you to SoFi for sponsoring today's video.

11:34 Now, based on everything I just described, you might be thinking,

11:36 "Okay, so you want every video to be as concise as possible.

11:39 You mean like...

11:41 Mr.

11:41 Beast?" No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what I'm saying.

11:44 That is on the entire other end of the spectrum.

11:47 There are videos that go on so long that large

11:49 portions of them become nothing more than background noise.

11:52 And then there's the most hyperactive, fever dream editing,

11:56 nonstop cacophony of colors and sounds meant

11:59 to overstimulate the 8-year-old boys watching on their iPad.

12:02 And then there's a lot of space in between.

12:05 But I guess because of all that space,

12:07 it's weird to me how many videos end up on either extreme.

12:11 It'll either be like, (upbeat music) "I just dropped my friend in an elevator

12:13 for 72 hours without any food or water,

12:15 but none of that even mattered because they ran out of air

12:17 and suffocated before they even got hungry." Or it'll be like,

12:20 (gentle music) "But before I can talk about

12:22 season two of "How I Met Your Mother", we need to go back to the beginning.

12:26 The first camera was invented in 18-." I'm just

12:29 asking that we meet somewhere in the middle, that's all.

12:32 Also to be clear, Mr.

12:33 Beast, and all of the channels copying him,

12:35 have never made their videos that way because they value people's time,

12:39 they're just trying to keep their retention rate as high as possible.

12:42 It's just a different metric they're prioritizing.

12:45 If Jimmy cared about his audience at all, he wouldn't sign off on doing

12:50 this unbelievably deceptive bullshit where during midroll ads,

12:54 they put this progress bar on the bottom that starts off really fucking fast.

12:59 It makes it seem like, "Oh, this will be done in a few seconds,

13:02 I don't need to skip this." And then once people have done the math

13:04 in their head and decided they're just gonna see it through to the end,

13:06 the progress bar mysteriously slows down.

13:10 Like, a lot.

13:11 And suddenly that last 20% is starting to feel like an eternity.

13:15 I thought we were almost done and now I'm not even sure we're halfway through.

13:18 This shit really pisses me off because this is a very deliberate choice.

13:21 This is not an accident.

13:22 You have to go out of your way to keyframe

13:24 it like this with the intention of deceiving your viewers.

13:28 It's such an openly manipulative thing to do to your audience

13:31 and is very telling of the way you view them.

13:34 That you're willing to lie to their face if it means

13:36 a number on an analytic screen might get a little bit bigger.

13:40 To you, they're not real people, they're just data points that can be

13:43 orchestrated in whatever direction you want them to.

13:45 And that sucks.

13:46 And if you agree with me, please sign up for my Patreon.

13:50 Right now I'm trying to buy a bunch of Teslas so I can

13:52 see how many you can stack on top of each other before they explode.

13:56 I have a lot of respect for creators that make

13:59 algorithmically counterintuitive decisions because they

14:01 don't wanna waste their viewers' time.

14:03 I think Internet Shaquille is hands down the best cooking channel on YouTube.

14:07 He's knowledgeable, he's funny, and he always just gets right to the point.

14:10 There's a promise of information in the title and he doesn't try to withhold it

14:13 from you just because he could theoretically put

14:16 more midrolls in by meandering for a bit.

14:18 For a long time Tom Scott was kind of the science version of this.

14:21 NerdWriter is like the film version of this.

14:23 In a world where most video essays end up

14:26 being somehow longer than the piece of media they're about,

14:28 NerWriter's still barely hitting that seven minute mark.

14:31 It's just, "Here's this thing I noticed in a movie,

14:33 here's some insight about it, and that's all I got for you,

14:36 brother." But I think it's also worth noting that these channels are successful.

14:39 They're not doing the thing you're supposed to be doing, but it works for them.

14:43 And I just want to use that as a testament to making things the way you

14:46 want to make them or making the type of video you wish there was more of.

14:51 Sometimes going against the grain actually is

14:52 the best way to make yourself stand out.

14:55 Like don't just throw together a bunch

14:56 of crappy videos about whatever drama is trending.

14:59 Make a retrospective about some niche hobby you had as a kid.

15:02 This is way more interesting.

15:04 Remember this website is called YouTube,

15:06 not do the thing that you think will become popular tube.

15:09 That would be a really stupid URL.

15:12 Now, I'll admit it's not totally fair to get mad at other people for wasting

15:15 my time when really no one wastes it more of it than I do.

15:18 There was a day last week where the screen time on my phone was 106 hours,

15:24 and I slept in that day.

15:25 (gentle music) There's so many things I want to do in my life before I'm gone,

15:28 so many people I wanna spend time with, so many places I want to go,

15:32 but I can't stop scrolling.

15:35 I don't want to, but it's as if it's

15:38 been scientifically engineered to be the easiest thing to do.

15:41 Adam and Eve were caught on camera.

15:44 Can you guess who's holding the camera?

15:47 Keep scrolling if you choose the devil.

15:57 or Instagram reels, or threads, just kidding,

16:00 where I'm simultaneously aware of what it's doing to my brain,

16:03 but I do nothing to try and intervene.

16:06 I just sit there and let it destroy me because I have to see that next video.

16:10 What if it's so funny but I exit out

16:12 of the app before I ever get a chance to watch it?

16:15 I'd cry.

16:16 No, I'd kill myself.

16:18 And it's almost as if that feeling is intentional.

16:20 They've made it so the distance between you

16:22 and a chance at dopamine is just one small swipe away.

16:26 I'd almost say it's malicious,

16:27 but I know that's not true because a billion dollar company would never do that.

16:31 (gentle music) Billionaires care about your wellbeing.

16:34 That's how they made so much money in the first place.

16:36 Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, they would never intentionally show us things

16:40 to make us upset because studies show that people spend more time on a platform

16:44 if they're seeing something that makes them angry,

16:45 They wouldn't do that, because that's not nice.

16:49 This is what most of my timeline is whenever I scroll through Twitter,

16:53 it's the most blatantly obvious engagement bait that has weaseled

16:57 its way into being prioritized because it's successfully baited engagement.

17:00 It's arguments about body counts and whether Nickelodeon shows were good or not.

17:06 And it works on me.

17:08 It has the intended effect when I see it.

17:10 I was scrolling one day and I saw someone say, "iCarly, Victorious,

17:13 Zoey 101." And at first I had to squint for a few

17:16 seconds because I wasn't sure what they meant by this.

17:18 And then I realized they were saying the first two are good,

17:21 LeBron James, and the third is sort of an imposter that doesn't belong.

17:25 And I in my head, got defensive.

17:28 I was like, what are you talking about "Zoe 101" was good.

17:32 It was certainly better than "Victorious." How does this have so many likes?

17:35 What's wrong with "Zoey 101?" And then I exited out Twitter and sat

17:38 in silence for a few seconds as I pondered what just happened.

17:41 How I got upset that someone I don't know,

17:45 said a show from 20 years ago that I kind of liked

17:48 isn't as good as a different show that I barely watched.

17:52 Why is this how I'm spending my time?

17:54 In this moment I could have been doing anything else

17:57 and yet I chose to introduce this argument into my head.

18:01 That can't be good long term, right?

18:03 Like we can all agree that's probably not great for my brain.

18:06 If you're like me and you've been struggling with the endless scroll,

18:09 I do have a recommendation.

18:10 I found this by accident while I was doing

18:12 a video a couple years ago about dopamine fast.

18:14 It's called ScreenZen and it's free.

18:16 I have it set up so it only gives me a few minutes at a time

18:19 on each of the most poisonous apps that I hate but am addicted to.

18:23 So you can still pop in for a second, get the feeling of being up-to-date,

18:26 but then it'll grab you by the shoulders and yank

18:29 you out before you get too sucked into the void.

18:31 You still get a little bit sucked, but not all the way.

18:33 But of course, I saved the most important issue for last.

18:37 Video games are too big now and I'm tired of pretending like they're not.

18:41 When I was a kid, the idea of an open world game blew my mind.

18:46 Up until a certain point, everything was very linear, very insulated.

18:50 You load into an area,

18:51 you do what you have to do there and then you move on to the next place.

18:55 But this idea that you could go anywhere in any order,

18:57 what could be more immersive than a world that you could essentially live in?

19:01 And boy, did I want to live in any other world than the one

19:05 in which I played clarinet and got bullied by someone who also played clarinet.

19:11 You're not better than me, we're the same.

19:13 To me, open world games felt

19:16 like the culmination of every technological milestone.

19:19 It felt like the future of gaming.

19:21 And then over time it became the standard.

19:24 It became what every game had to be and then all of a sudden it

19:28 seemed like the goal shifted from making

19:29 the best game to making the biggest game.

19:32 I guess because it's easier to market something based

19:35 on scale than to just come out and say,

19:37 "Hey, the story's really good in this one,

19:39 trust me." I started to get overwhelmed by games because

19:43 of the seemingly endless list of tasks I needed to complete.

19:46 The chores that I needed to do.

19:48 And to be clear, I'm not talking about games like "Crime Scene Cleaner",

19:51 that's a great game, okay.

19:53 I don't mind chores when the game is chores.

19:56 I'll play Power Wash Simulator" all day.

19:58 I played "Unpacking" shortly after moving into this house

20:01 and I hadn't finished unpacking in real life yet.

20:05 My wife was not happy about that.

20:06 What I'm specifically referring to is when

20:08 games feel artificially padded with repetitive side quests,

20:12 when there's like seven different activities to do,

20:15 but you just end up doing each of them a hundred times.

20:17 And as someone who goes into games with a completionist mindset,

20:21 this is the quickest way to make me give up,

20:23 because I'll try to collect every item and go into every corner for like

20:27 20% of the story until one day I just stop opening the game altogether,

20:32 relieved by the massive weight now off my shoulders.

20:34 I think there's a big reason why "Elden Ring" had

20:36 such a big impact on me and so many other people.

20:39 Yes, you're in this staggeringly large open world

20:42 littered with places to go and things to kill,

20:45 but it's not in the form of just a bunch of exclamation points on your mini map.

20:49 Almost everything you do in this game is motivated by, "Oh, that looks cool,

20:53 I want to go over there." It's a feeling

20:55 you should have while playing an open-world game.

20:57 It's that sense of wonder that has mostly

21:00 been lost by all these cookie cutter task-athons.

21:03 Also, the more bloated a game is with content,

21:06 the more narrative dissidence there ends up being.

21:09 Which, of course, only matters as much as you let it,

21:11 but it's still really funny sometimes when the main quest line

21:14 of a game is trying to instill this sense of urgency.

21:17 But at any given moment, you can just go fuck around for 15 straight hours.

21:22 "We've only got until midnight tonight to rescue

21:24 my uncle or they're gonna execute him.

21:27 Hey, do you think there's anything cool

21:29 in this cave over here?" A compromise that works

21:31 great for my brain is a semi-open world

21:34 like the two most recent "God of War" games.

21:36 I like when there's enough optional side exploration that it

21:39 still scratches that itch for me without it ever feeling

21:42 like I'm missing out on this overwhelming amount of content

21:45 by just wanting to streamline the story for a bit.

21:47 I think it's okay for a game to be modest in scope.

21:51 Just because the technology exists to procedurally generate a thousand

21:56 different planets doesn't mean we have to do that.

21:59 Sometimes I wonder if the technical limitations

22:02 from previous generations actually made games better.

22:05 I mean it certainly made them more contained.

22:07 It made them more approachable.

22:08 I love going back and playing older games that only take a few hours to finish.

22:13 I want to be able to complete things.

22:15 I want to have a full experience in a reasonable amount of time.

22:19 I'm tired of not getting any closure from games because they

22:23 make it so tedious and long-winded to get to that point.

22:26 And that's assuming the game even works when you first buy it,

22:29 which chances are it won't.

22:31 It's become so normalized for games to be

22:34 unfinished and littered with bugs on release

22:36 that it's actually surprising when a game comes

22:38 out and works the way it's supposed to.

22:41 A lot of even really good games aren't worth buying for like two full years.

22:46 "Cyberpunk", fantastic game in 2024.

22:49 But I bought this on release and had to slog through so many bugs,

22:54 retread so many areas because of crashes

22:57 all before encountering an immovable obstacle.

23:00 I could not progress the story because every

23:02 time I tried to initiate this cut scene,

23:05 the other character would not say the next line he was

23:09 supposed to, so they would both just sit there in silence indefinitely.

23:14 I couldn't continue the game past this point and I was like 10 hours into it.

23:18 I had a similar game breaking experience with "Dying light 2",

23:22 "Metro Exodus", and I'm not even touching "Starfield" anytime soon.

23:26 The bigger a game is supposed to be,

23:28 the more I don't trust it to be a complete experience when it first comes out.

23:32 It usually takes years to fill out all the missing pieces,

23:35 so I'm not gonna waste my time or money on what I assume will be

23:39 a significantly worse experience than if I were

23:42 to just wait until it's on sale in 2027.

23:44 But in a world of titles forced out

23:47 prematurely by a deadline that was never realistic,

23:49 nothing feels quite as egregious as the yearly full-priced sports game.

23:54 You spend 11 months building up a player or a team or a general manager,

23:59 if you're a weirdo like me,

24:01 and then as soon as the calendar flips over, you gotta start from scratch.

24:05 All right everyone, time for the new game.

24:07 "Yes, it's a hundred dollars again, but we've made so many improvements.

24:11 The number on the box is different.

24:15 And where's your credit card?" "NBA 2K" has one of the most

24:18 aggressive micro transaction systems I've ever seen in a video game,

24:22 but they're not just dedicated to milking

24:24 every single dollar out of your bank account,

24:26 they've also made it their personal mission to waste

24:29 as much of your time as humanly possible.

24:31 A few years ago they added something revolutionary.

24:34 They turned "The Park" into "The City." Now, functionally,

24:38 at its core, "The City" is just a menu.

24:42 Every physical location that you have to trek to could have just been

24:47 text on a screen and it would've been way more efficient to navigate.

24:51 But that wouldn't be innovative.

24:53 Innovation is when you have to jog a mile

24:56 just to have Gatorade before your next game.

24:59 Innovation is when you create something tedious

25:01 so you can sell the solution to it.

25:04 Man, aren't you guys tired of having to navigate this big

25:07 stupid city we made (wheels screeching) then buy a bike.

25:10 It's ten dollars.

25:11 Fuck you.

25:12 Imagine if every time you turned on your computer you had to make

25:15 a little guy run across town just to go to the Gmail store.

25:19 Oh shit, forgot my password, gonna have to sprint over to city hall.

25:23 I feel like every single element of this game

25:25 is designed with the goal of wasting your time.

25:27 Whether it's getting interrupted in the main menu to show you two separate ads,

25:32 or a halftime show you cannot skip even if you press X the whole time.

25:37 Don't get me wrong, this halftime show is great.

25:39 They've got Ernie, Kenny, Shaq, my three favorite guys.

25:42 They show highlights and relevant stats, they make jokes.

25:45 By sports game standards, this halftime show is fantastic.

25:49 But there are 1 million games in every basketball

25:54 season and I don't wanna watch 1 million halftime shows.

25:57 I'm just trying to speed run to the playoffs so I

26:00 can take a virtual trophy home to my real life Orlando Magic.

26:03 Is that too much to ask?

26:06 58 seconds, by the way.

26:08 But whatever, those are just minor inconveniences.

26:10 The really egregious waste of time are in the MyCareer mode.

26:14 Now the thing is, when you start his career,

26:16 this guy fucking sucks at basketball,

26:19 which is a problem because that's the thing he's trying to do.

26:23 He's slow as hell, he can't shoot to save his life,

26:26 he has one shirt and it's brown.

26:28 And in order to fix these things, you need to obtain virtual currency.

26:33 Now, there's two ways you can do this.

26:34 Option one, grind.

26:36 Spend dozens of hours playing dozens of games,

26:39 scraping together pennies so you can get 1% faster,

26:43 1% stronger, 1% better at handling ball.

26:47 But it's never enough.

26:48 (gentle music) This process is miserable.

26:51 You're useless out there.

26:52 You don't belong in the NBA.

26:54 You would be better off in any other line of work.

26:57 And this is exactly by design.

27:00 This is how the game wants you to feel.

27:02 They want you to hate this part because they

27:05 know the more frustrating of an experience you have,

27:07 the more likely you are to just skip to option two, spend 40 more dollars.

27:12 Come on, just do it.

27:13 You don't have time for this.

27:15 Don't you wanna get to the fun part?

27:17 You'll start doing the math in your head and rationalize it as a no-brainer.

27:20 Yeah, $40.00 is a lot of money, but it's not nearly as much money as I

27:24 could earn in the 40 hours it's saving me.

27:27 You feel like a genius.

27:28 You feel like you outsmarted the system

27:31 and then you realize...this is the system.

27:35 I did the exact thing they wanted me to do.

27:37 And it wouldn't even be that bad if the game itself didn't already cost $70.

27:43 But now you're out over a hundred bucks, maybe 150 if you pre-ordered it.

27:47 Also, the professional athlete you created doesn't play like

27:52 he's never touched a basketball in his life before.

27:55 And I've got all the natural ability in the world thanks to my genetics.

27:58 And then you get to do it all again next year.

28:00 This whole system of paying to skip a grind that has

28:03 been intentionally designed to be insufferable has become way too common.

28:06 Developers are purposely holding our time hostage knowing we will

28:10 probably spend a few bucks to get some of it back.

28:13 I feel like that's almost the entire business model of MMOs.

28:16 It's one of the reasons I stopped

28:17 playing "Runescape" after our lifelong on/off relationship.

28:20 I kept having to fight the urge to spend a few

28:23 bucks on gold because the alternative was earning it in the game,

28:26 but then I'd have to play the game and I don't want to do that.

28:30 I just wanna play the end of the game.

28:32 How long does it take to get there?

28:33 (gentle music) Oh.

28:40 Well, I guess this is where I live now.

28:42 In conclusion, life is short and your time is precious.

28:45 It's your most valuable resource and you should treat it

28:47 that way because unfortunately no amount of it is guaranteed.

28:50 And I just hate seeing how much it's become commodified,

28:53 how companies have figured out ways to steal as much of it as they can from us.

28:57 You can't even pause a fucking

28:59 movie anymore without having your attention demanded.

29:01 "I know you're just getting up to pee,

29:02 but if you could please scan this QR code,

29:05 we got a lot of interesting information about

29:07 Lysol wipes." The way our attention gets pulled

29:09 in every direction at all times also makes

29:11 me feel like I should be multitasking always, or I'll fall behind.

29:15 I always feel like I'm missing out on something.

29:17 There's so many movies I wanna watch and games I wanna play,

29:19 and there's not enough hours in the day to do it all.

29:21 So when I do give myself free time, I try to be overly efficient with it.

29:24 I can't just play a video game, I should be catching up on podcasts.

29:28 Loading screen, perfect,

29:29 that gives me exactly nine seconds to scroll through TikTok.

29:32 I'd hate to be bored.

29:33 I'd hate to have to listen to the thoughts that are already in my brain.

29:36 I need to be absorbing new information constantly or I'll die.

29:39 I've been trying more and more lately to not let the feeling that there's

29:42 something better I could be doing prevent me from enjoying the time that I have.

29:46 Sometimes it's nice to go for a walk without bringing my AirPods.

29:49 There's still plenty of stuff to listen to.

29:51 Birds, cars, 1 billion cicadas, making the world's loudest sound.

29:56 I don't need to min/max content consumption.

29:58 In fact, I probably shouldn't be doing that.

30:01 I don't think prioritizing constant small hits of dopamine,

30:04 hoping it all adds up to something meaningful is the secret to being happy.

30:08 The secret to being happy is gambling.

30:11 Nobody's ever had a bad time in the casino.

30:13 This is free.

30:15 So how do you make money?

30:16 The advertisers cover the cost of the TV.

30:18 This.

30:18 This is an ad.

30:19 This is always on.

30:20 Yeah, whatever you're watching,

30:21 we're we're able to monetize using the bottom device.

30:24 So check this out.

30:25 So there's a Pizza Hut ad right there.

30:26 We literally are now on pizzahut.com