In our non-stop, 24-hour news cycle, it’s easy to get caught up in trends and lose sight of the bigger picture. Remember last year, when all the Super Bowl ads were about crypto, and people were buying real estate in the metaverse? Well, here we are, a year later, and we haven’t learned a thing. Meta and crypto have been tossed aside, and we’ve got a new, tunnel-vision obsession: artificial intelligence (AI). Everywhere you go, it’s ChatGPT this, and Bard that - we haven’t learned a thing.
Well, most of us haven’t learned, but the smart ones keep their heads during times like these, with an eye on larger trends. For example, Marques Brownlee. In the short existence of this blog, I’ve multiple times recommended the work of “MKBHD.” The leading tech YouTuber, he puts together quality insights along with top-notch production value, and that’s what led his channel to 16.7 million subscribers (and climbing).
One of the ways to have a good, grounded perspective, is to keep in touch with your audience, and a couple of weeks ago, MKBHD did just that, with his highly successful Waveform Podcast. The podcast’s Twitter account put a call out for listener questions, and I stepped up:
My question rescued an episode careening down the AI rabbit hole, and redirected the attention to the conversation currently happening around mung bean optimal soil conditions. This conversation ultimately pauses with Marques saying, “This is completely sideways. Let’s get it back on the rails after the ads”.
However, my input needed further exploration, later in the show:
For more George G content, you can skip after it gets to the ByteDance trivia, and return to the more pertinent, soil condition content here:
It was very gratifying to have my call for agricultural content on the Waveform podcast receive such a robust response. Not to say the AI discussion wasn’t good; the AI stuff in the middle is actually very interesting. But I, for one, was happy for the opportunity to learn more about the the preferred soils of mung beans as well. No apology necessary at all, regarding the absence of orchard-specific content.
But That’s Not All
Not only was my name dropped multiple times, but there was another aspect that I appreciate. There was a “Back to the Future” theme running throughout the episode. The show did a peculiar editing move this week, recording a segment after the original recordings, and sandwiching it into the middle of the podcast. To call out the transition to-and-from a segment recorded in “the future”, Marques noted that they were going “back to the future”, and a brief clip of Doc and Marty was dropped.
Possibly a coincidence, but I’d lean more toward the likelihood of the McFly family name in my Twitter handle influencing this particular Doc and Marty editing theme choice.
So in summary, my Q&A Tweet was featured repeatedly on a non-Q&A episode, and beyond that, it appears effectively to have been used to frame the segment transitions. That’s pretty good mileage from a Tweet.
In Summary
I was listening to the podcast and I’d just returned from taking my dog on his morning walk. Sipping my coffee and waiting for my wife and baby to wake up, I heard my Twitter handle being read. I was pretty thrilled. When my wife came out to the living room, I wanted to tell her immediately, “They just read my Tweet on Waveform!” but instead chose to say, “Good morning!” as those words are more meaningful to her, I have found.
In fact, I don’t really know when it would make sense to mention this story to anyone. As huge as the podcast is (top 10 tech pod on Apple, as mentioned in the episode), I don’t think I actually have a single friend or relative who listens to it. Furthermore, I’ve gained literally zero Twitter followers from any of this.
But it was cool (a cool story, one might say) and it’s notable that Twitter did what it was originally famous for - it connected audience with talent. It was a throwback. This is all a fairly epic sequel to an article I wrote earlier in the year, about analyzing the Twitter view counter, and using it to figure out good Tweets to reply to. This one hit pretty well, and led to a lot of fun.
Also, I’ll be marketing my writing as “As featured on Waveform” from here on out. Technically, not wrong!