Tech Memes

Dan writes in with all your base or belonged to us, I would love to hear your take on the history of this ancient meme. And indeed, the Babylonians in their writings did talk of the one who would bring note it's not that ancient, I mean, I guess in the terms of technology, it's kind of old. I told Dan that this particular story, while great, wouldn't quite merit a full episode by itself. So we're gonna look at a few different memes that tie in with technology in general

and video games in particular. I'll probably do more episodes about big tech memes and where they came from in the future, but today we'll just examine a few. So where do some of the most famous video game memes come from, and how did they spread around and what do they mean? Well, first things first, let's define what a meme is. And the nice thing is we don't really have to because Richard Dawkins did it for us

in a book called The Selfish Gene Now. Dawkins proposed the idea of a meme meme being something we would use to describe an idea that spreads quickly throughout a population of people. That population, by the way, does not have to be regional. You know, you don't have to say the population of a town or the population of a country. That population could be uh any group of like minded individuals within a particular subculture. And the Internet

makes it possible for memes to spread globally rapidly. It's important to point out that memes don't have to be on the Internet at all. They that's one of the ways that we encounter memes, but that's just one method of distribution. A meme is an idea. The method Internet is just a handy way of getting those ideas spread throughout the globe. So while an image with a funny joke on it is a meme, not all memes are images with a funny joke on them. It's just one

single type of meme. It's kind of one of those all Dalmatians are dogs, but not all dogs are Dalmatians kind of thing. Some memes spread primarily through a specific culture. Culture, so gamers are a good example. We're gonna talk a lot about video games, and a lot of these memes spread at least at first primarily through gamers, some of which then ended up going into mainstream. So that's where I'm going to start with this discussion, and I'm going

to answer Dan's question first. I'm not gonna make him wait. The meme all your base are belonged to us as part of a group of memes that all originate from the same source material, and that source is a video game called Zero Wing, which came out in nineteen nine. It's a side scrolling game in which the player controls

a spaceship called a Zig, blasting through various enemies. Now those enemies are robotic aliens called cats C. A T. S. And in the very beginning of the game, it's revealed that this group of aliens had recently signed a peace treaty with Earth, but are now betraying that treaty. And if you understand Japanese and you play the original game, all of this is very very clear. It's a little

less clear in other version. You see, the game started out as an arcade game in Japan, and it was really really popular, so it was one of the ones that was chosen to be ported over to home video game systems in Japan. It was also ported to the Sega Mega Drive in Europe. Here in the United States we called the Mega Drive the Sega Genesis. It's the

same machine, but two different names. So the European version of the Zero Wing game featured some poorly translated dialogue in which the original Japanese was transformed into mangled English. And what follows is a reading of the transcript of the first part of this game in the Mega Drive version. What happened? What turn on you? How are your allonged us? You are destruction? What do you say? You captain? You know what you're doing? Move zick for great justice. It's

really moving, isn't it. It's a kind of gets you. Yeah, it's it's like the Braveheart speech. Really is it's really what it comes down to. So interesting fact, the United States never got that version of the game, at least not officially. People might have ordered an import, but the official version with the terrible translation came from the European market, not the US market. And it's a bit surprising that this meme even took off at all because the game's

release preceded the Worldwide Web. The earliest known examples of the memes appearing online date to n Now, that is pretty ancient for Internet memes, because most of them kind of surface and then maybe they're popular for a few months or a little over a year, and then they kind of fade away. But you also have to remember nearly a decade had passed since the game came out before it even showed up on the Internet in the

first place, so it's pretty incredible now. Despite the long amount of time between the game's release and its celebration online, the meme did take off. Various forums, particularly on gaming sites, saw the phrase popping up in discussions and profiles. Some musicians and other creators began to incorporate phrases and references

in their works, popularizing it even more. By two thousand one, Wired had covered the story, and soon it got the attention of other mainstream outlets like The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, and USA Today. The phrases from this translation live on to this day. You will often hear people refer to or see references to all your base are belonged to us. And this really shows you the power of memes. The good ones catch on quickly and spread

rapidly through various groups and stick around. They don't just get really popular and then disappear. Uh. It's it's an interesting kind of pop culture in a way. Some of them can break free of their origins have become mainstream pop culture and not just stay in those little enclaves that they began in. But some of those might be stuck in smaller niches. For example, do a barrel roll? That could be one of those Hey, Dylan, do you recognize do a barrel roll? Dylan does recognize? Do a

barrel roll. This meme comes from a Nintendo sixty four game called Star Fox sixty four, which in itself was a popular sequel to an earlier Super Nintendo game simply called Star Fox. Now. In both games, you pilot a spaceship and you can dodge incoming enemy laser fire by doing a barrel roll. But in Star Fox sixty four

the maneuver received special attention. And there's a point when you're heading toward the stationary turrets that are firing on you, and that's when a character I think he's a donkey pops up. His name is Peppy Hair, and he shouts do a barrel roll, just as Dylan did earlier. And thus a meme was born. By the Worldwide Web was

becoming a household name. It would take a few more years for it to develop its cheeky side, and on January two thousand four, someone created a definition of do a barrel roll on the Urban Dictionary, that great repository of information both entertaining and incredibly base. And in two thousand and six, a group of four chan pranksters began to call Tom Green during his talk show and they

would just shout do a barrel roll over the phone. Now, to be fair, this was not a case of people being unsolicited mischief makers, because Tom Green's career was based off of hosting Collin shows in which most of the calls were some sort of prank. So it's not like Tom Green was new to this kind of experience. It was just a very specific implementation. The meme found its way on numerous images and animated gifts on the Internet. And yes, I pronounce it gifts. I know that the

creator of the format says Jeff's but he's wrong. Gift is how it should be said. I'm planting my flag on this one. Not my flag anyway. There are plenty of examples of this meme online, usually involving animations of people or animals flipping over accompanied by the text do a barrel roll and even if you Easter eggs, So here's one. If you want an Easter egg, go to Google, just Google dot com and do a search for do a barrel roll. Go ahead, give it a shot. It's

pretty cute. All right. I got a several more memes I want to talk about, but before I do, let's take a quick break to thank sponsor. All Right, we're back, and the next meme I want to talk about is the zerg rush. Dylan, do you know this one? Dylan does not know this one. This refers to a tactic in the game StarCraft. So StarCraft is a real time strategy game with the science fiction theme, and you play

one of three different factions in the game. You control various units and methods of production, and you participate in strategic battles in order to control essentially what is a board. So you build various facilities which allow you to create units, and you use those units to try and defeat the other player. So one of those three species are the Zurg, and that's of course in the original StarCraft game, and

they are insect like critters. Their main advantage is that you can make an awful lot of them relatively quickly. So the individual units, particularly the starting ones, aren't very strong, but sheer numbers can make up for it. Because your production time is so short, you can produce a lot more units as Zerg than people playing the other factions

in the game. So one go to strategy is just to ramp up unit production as quickly as possible and just overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers, just hordes of soldiers, and that is the Zerg rush. It's a rush both because you are overcome by huge numbers and that it happens pretty quickly. It's such an effective tactic that it became pretty common in StarCraft games for players to establish

some rules of decorum. That it was considered kind of common courtesy to say when someone would be allowed to launch a Zerg rush. Typically you'd say that Zerg players would have to withhold attacking in that way for a certain number of minutes, like you might say no Zurg rush for a minutes, meaning eight minutes of the game have to pass before you can do a Zurg rush, and that gives the other players an opportunity to shore up their defenses or otherwise work on a strategy to

survive an incoming attack. Otherwise, it was largely seen as unfair that you were taking advantage of a very simple mechanism within the game, and you were defeating people not through superior strategy, but just by the fact that the

game favors these underpowered but but numerous units. As for the meme, the story goes that there was a multiplayer match in which a Korean group was controlling the Zurg forces and an English speaking group were the opponents, and early in the match, a group of Zurg units began to attack, at which point one of the English speaking participants typed omg Zerg rush and the Korean player typed kei ki ki k e k e k e, which

is akin to l O l in English. You I sometimes encounter kiki ki along with zurg rush references in this meme, and those references tend to be on images or enemy gifts or something being swarmed by something else. So I've seen one where there's a plane that looks like it's being surrounded by a big flock of birds and it was labeled zerg rush. Or you might see one type of person completely surrounded by other people and

that might be zerg rush. Like I would imagine a picture a dragon con, for example, with a whole bunch of people in costume and one person who's clearly not in costume just stuck in the middle of it. That would be something that you might see zerg rush attached to. Oh and Google, by the way, has an Easter Egg for this meme too, So you can just go to Google search and type in zerg rush. That's a z e r g rush. Let me know how you do

if you try that out. Now, not all video game memes are about criticizing a game mechanic or making fun of a specific game, or even celebrating a specific games similar just a celebration of good game design and writing, And I think that's the case with the cake is a lie. That meme comes from the game Portal, which

published in two thou seven. Now. In Portal, the player takes on the role of a young woman who is being held captive in a scientific research facility, and her captor is a passive, aggressive, snarky artificial intelligence named GLaDOS, and GLaDOS is constantly goading the character further down the pathway to keep trying to get through increasingly difficult puzzles. GLaDOS is constantly there, criticizing you and then giving you lackluster,

insincere praise whenever you successfully navigate one of these tough puzzles. Uh, you get a lot of snark from GLaDOS, including one of the greatest post credit songs of all time, written by Jonathan Colton in the voice of GLaDOS. One explore the game world, you can encounter stuff like messages scrawled on walls, and the messages are from an old lab worker named Doug Ratman, and one of the famous messages is the phrase the cake is a lie written repeatedly.

The reason for this is Gladows constantly tells you that if you are to complete all the tasks, you will get cake, and that the cake will be amazing. Occasionally, GLaDOS will even give you the recipe for a cake. There's a lot of cake, at least references to it in Portal. But Doug Ratman, the character that has left his evidence behind, says that the cake is a lie. And for a while people use the cake as is

a lie as just a general reference to portal. But gradually this phrase took on a more general meaning, and it came to mean the thing you are looking for doesn't exist, or even you are trying to achieve something that isn't possible. Urban Dictionary translates it rather eloquently. I think into your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator. So you can use this idiom to describe a common

thread and a lot of stories. For example, in the classic The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard promises rewards to Dorothy and her friends if they can get rid of the wicked Witch of the West. Only it turns out the Wizard is a flim flam man with no real powers of his own. Apart from being a fast talker. The cake is a lie. He doesn't have the ability to give the characters what they want. In fact, when

they returned victorious. He bestows gifts on them simply by telling each character that they already possessed the thing that they want, which is a good thing, since the Wizard had no way to deliver upon his promises. Now, some memes aren't about specific games at all, but rather gaming cliches in general, and why the big ones is called video game logic. Now, this refers to things that happen

in video games that defy common sense. For example, a popular meme in this category has a picture of Master Chief, who is the protagonist of the Halo franchise of games, and the meme says, can flip an extremely heavy tank, can't control gun recoil. So this refers to the fact that if you come up to a tank that's on its side and you press the right button, master Chief will move the tank so that you can get into it.

And yet every time you fire your gun, it flies up in the air, and you think, well, if you're strong enough to move a tank over, can you control the movement of a handgun. It does seem to defy logic, and this is pretty common, and it's not. That's not

the only example. I mean, sometimes it's something like invisible walls that you are free to roam anywhere until you encounter an invisible wall, which in the video game world makes sense, but when you think of it outside of that context, you start to question, why is this a design in this game? Or maybe there is a game rule that says if you even step foot in the

edge of water, your character will drown. That's another instance of video game logic, like especially a character that seems to be resilient to almost any kind of damage, like you can be shot fourteen times in the chest and keep going, but if you touch water, you you immediately drown.

Your toe is apparently where you breathe, and you're a goner. Uh. Lots of different variations of this exist online, and mainly it's just to point out how video games can be inconsistent with their logic, that things that the game allows in some cases mean that things that doesn't allow in other cases don't really make sense. And uh, it really kind of helps bring attention to shortcomings in games. Sometimes those shortcomings are necessary just to make the game work properly.

Another example of a short coming in a game is repetitive dialogue, particularly in non player characters that you might encounter in something like a role playing game. Now, it's not really feasible to create a game in which everyone you encounter has a distinct personality and a non repetitive dialogue option, particularly for games that have hundreds of characters in them. So the more characters you have, the harder it is to give each one an individual personality and

history and conversational options. So that means sometimes you hear the same phrases repeated, and sometimes that gets a bit comedic, and that is the case with our next meme, I took an arrow in the knee. That one comes from Skyrim, which is from Bethesda, and that game came out in

two thousand eleven. It's a big, sprawling fantasy game across an enormous map, and that map has several towns and villages and outposts in it, and most of those places have guards living there, and there are male and female guards, and they often have different voices. They've got several different voice actors to record the same lines of dialogue, and that's the problem. They all pull from the same pool

of scripted lines. So while the guards you see may look different and sound different from each other, they all have very similar stories to share like. It turns out they all have the exact same background, which includes a mysterious incident in which they were shot in the knee by somebody. So the actual line of dialogue is I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took

an arrow in the knee. Now it doesn't pop up every time you meet a guard, but it does happen occasionally, and that line is so distinct that's noticeable every single time you hear it. So there are tons of memes based off this game experience that are video montages of guards talking about getting shot in the knee, which gets funnier the longer it goes because you realize that Skyram is almost entirely bought related by guards with a limp uh. There are variations on images in which the first part

of the phrase gets replaced by something else. So, for example, I saw one with a My Little Pony character on it that says I used to wonder what friendship could be, then I took an arrow in the knee. But my favorite was one that I couldn't immediately identify. I didn't know what video game it was from, but it showed like a a typical fantasy villain, something that you might see in like Diablo or or something along those lines.

But it was a headless character. So it was this big, monstrous suit of armor but with no head, and the caption said I used to have a face. Then I took an arrow to the knee, which makes perfect sense. Really,

I love that one. I once actually pitched a short comedy commercial about a guard recruitment service that would supply villages and towns with guards, and their method would be to seek out adventurers and then shoot them in the knee, and then the only suitable job they would have at that point is guard and voila instant security force for your town. But I never did make that video. Maybe

one day I will. I've got some other memes to talk about, including the creepiest one on this list, but before I get to that, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Now some memes go beyond being silly, and now it's time to talk about slender Man. And actually to talk about slender Man, we have to talk about spooky spaghetti. No, I'm sorry, I mean I'm at creepy pasta. And here's where the old man and Me surfaces. Because I gotta be honest with you guys. I had

to look all this stuff up because I'm old. I know what slender Man is, but the creepy pasta stuff that's after my time on the Internet. So I had to actually learn about this stuff, which was really interesting actually, So for those who do not know, there's this nomenon on the Internet called creepy pasta. Now that term actually is a twist on an older Internet slang word called copy pasta, which first started popping up on the forum

four chan in the mid two thousand's. It's a word used to designate an example of viral copy and pasted text. So this is when you will encounter like a paragraph of text that has clearly been copied from somewhere else and pasted into this forum, and it just starts to spread from that point forward. You see it all over the Internet, particularly in forums and Facebook. You'll see a

lot of copy pasta. On Facebook. I see it all the time where people have uh copy and pasted a a message they clearly didn't write it themselves, and it has gone viral from that point. Now, creepy pasta is a more specific type of this copy and paste viral information. It's a term that describes stories that have a horror element to them, frequently that is supernatural in nature, although not necessarily, but a lot of them are kind of paranormal creepy stuff. This, by the way, it's not a

new thing. I mean, we've had folklore for as long as people have been able to tell stories. Before the Internet, we would use technology to share these kinds of information using faxes. It was actually called facx lore. People would share jokes and stories, cartoons, and other printed material by faxing it to each other. So there's something innate about humans that drives us to create and share these stories and ideas, whether it's through the Internet or a facts

or just sitting around a fire chatting away. Anyway, let's get back to Slenderman now. Slenderman didn't just start off as like creepy pasta per se. Originally, it was actually part of a series of pranks pulled by members of the Something Awful forums. Something Awful is a comedy website, and in one of the forums, members had decided to manufacture photos depicting seemingly supernatural phenomena using Photoshop and other

editing software. So the idea was let's take pictures, let's manipulate the photos so that we can give them a weird, otherworldly element to them. And then here comes the prank part. Let's share those photos on paranormal forums, like forums that are about paranormal activity or are uh, you know, got an interest in paranormal subject matter, and pass them off

as real. So the challenge was create these these altered photos and then share them on various paranormal sites and try to convince people that these are in fact actual examples of photographed paranormal activity. Now. One of the members of that forum was Eric Knudsen, who contributed under the

handle Victor Surge. That was the name he used. He edited some photos of people uh and typically school children, but not just school children, some teenagers as well, and inserted the figure of an unusually tall man in what appeared to be a suit. The man didn't seem to have a face, and perhaps had some tendrils or something coming off of them. It was hard to make out because the details were pretty fuzzy but also very unsettling.

Victor posted these images on a forum for people interested in the paranormal, along with a short account of what the pictures supposedly showed, and according to Victor's story, it was people being evacuated from a library that had caught fire and the unusual ghostly creature may have had something to do with it, and many of the children were never found again, and that was the the birth of slender Man. Now, this particular character was probably inspired by

other depictions of ghouls and bogimen. There are a lot of different historical variations on this idea of the faceless, unusually tall creature that looks vaguely like a man, very menacing in nature. There are also examples of this even in computer games. Uh So, it's not like it was a totally new idea, but this was a particularly interesting incorporation of this idea and a really compelling photoshop job.

It really struck a nerve others. Something awful members began to incorporate slender Man into their own stories, and they began to add to the mythology sometimes referred to as the slender Verse. Slenderman had entered the world of creepy pasta. They popped up on lots of different sites including four Chane, fan Gloria, Unfiction, TV tropes, Deviant Art, and many other websites and forums, So it became one of those things where people began to shape and evolve and tweet this

idea and make it grow from there. That's kind of this this defining feature of folklore and memes in general. And also, uh, you could argue that that it's a continuation of the same sort of ideas you would even

see back in the pulp horror novel days. HP Lovecraft, for example, created a bunch of fictional books, including the Necronomicon in the Mythology of Stories, and he encouraged his author friends to incorporate elements of his Cathulu universe, including mainly those fictional books, in their own work, and he would do the same. So in this case, you had a bunch of different authors incorporating each other's creations and giving those creations more weight. They seem to be more

real because more people were writing about it. How could it be one person's imagined thing when it's popping up in other people's stories. Very similar with Slenderman, except we're talking about the Internet in general, not a small group

of authors. And over time you began to see other incarnations and implementations of slender Man that included a video game in which you play as a person being pursued by the Slenderman while you uncover clues in a secluded forest in your fenced end, so you can't easily escape, and you have to find notes, but each note you find gives the Slenderman more of an idea where you are, and he starts to close in on you. Several filmmakers

have created online videos inspired by the character. There are series like Everyman, Hybrid Tribe twelve, and Marble Hornets that all took inspiration from and added to the mythology of slender Man in interesting ways. And there are really too many incarnations and incorporations of Slenderman for me to go into. Here you can find him or variations of him, and things like Minecraft and short films. But obviously I can't leave this topic without also mentioning the two thousand fourteen

stabbing incidents. And I say incidents because there was one in Wisconsin and one in Ohio that year. Both of them are terrible stories. So in Wisconsin, to twelve year old girls were arrested on attempted murder charges after attacking and stabbing a mutual friend nineteen times Allegedly, the friend has since recovered from her wounds, but the two girls remain in the court system being tried for this crime, and one of the two attackers, during a confession, said

that slender Man was the motivation behind the attack. She claimed that she believed that slender Man would harm her family if she did not carry out this attack. There's been some move on the family's lawyer in this case to strike that confession due to h a claim that the miranda rights of the of the the accused were not properly a ministered. So that's still something that's unfolding in the court system as I record this. The second incident happened in Ohio, and that was a little different.

A mother was attacked by her daughter and the daughter stabbed her mother several times and it mostly resulted with superficial cuts. But the mother said she believed her daughter was obsessed with the slender Man story and that that was the motivation behind the attack. Now, I'm not a psychologist. I have no training or expertise in psychology. However, I've seen similar cases involving other types of pop culture, and that includes rock music, role playing games, video games. Laws

that kind of scene. I've seen people blame other things for the behavior of folks. I don't necessarily believe that it was the thing that inspired the person to go out and do terrible things. I think in most cases there's some indication that there were underlying factors that were the real problem. Maybe the video game or pop culture reference or whatever gave some direction, but the motivation factor was already present. I don't think that a fictional creation

has that much power over actual people. Now, I don't want to end on such a grim note, so I'm going to talk about one last goofy tech meme, and in this case, I'm going to talk about a brave, some might say foolhardy character named Leroy Jenkins. This meme concerns the granddaddy of m m O r pgs, that would be the World of Warcraft. The story begins with a video, which was potentially staged, of a group of guild members from Pals for Life leading an excursion into

an area of the game called the Rookery. So, if you're not familiar with World of Warcraft, there's a fantasy based m m O rpg, meaning you're playing a role with a bunch of other people all online a massive multiplayer online role playing game, uh and you can do a lot of stuff on your own, but the game encourages you to form friendships with other gamers and to form groups with them, guilds with them, and do things

as a guild. And one of the things you might do is go into particularly difficult areas that you would have very little chance of surviving on your own. One of those in at this time during World of Warcraft's history was the Rookery. They had a lot of potential monsters to fight, including dragon spawn, which are pretty nasty.

It takes a clever strategy to defeat the hordes of enemies, particularly talking to people about their use of healing abilities, you know, the support characters, while the damage characters go in and try and clear out as many of the bad guys as possible. And that's where the video gets

its humor. So as this group is standing outside the room discussing over microphones, so you can hear everybody talking what the best tactics are and also acknowledging the likelihood that they're all going to be massacred because their survival percentage chances somewhere in the thirties as I recall, one character steps forward and says, all right, let's do this.

Ley Roar giant cans and he just charges inside immediately as party follows him, and they are very quickly eviscerated by the dragon spawn, and they very quickly also admonished Leroy for his impetuous decision and LeRoy's response as well. At least I got chicken, and truer words were never spoken. Now. The guild uploaded the video of this incident to a fan site called Warcraft Movies, and later they uploaded it twice to YouTube, and the second time it really found

huge success. Gamers and non gamers alike found it very amusing. Ben Schultz, who was the player trolling Lee Roy Jenkins, found himself the center of attention. Blizzard, the company that makes World of Warcraft, actually invited Schultz to come and be a keynote speaker at their gaming convention, blizz Con.

Schultz has repeatedly been asked if the video was actually a real capture of honest to goodness gameplay or if it was just a staged video for comedic purposes, and he says he likes to leave that up to the individual viewer. I'm pretty sure it's staged, but honestly, I don't really care because it's just entertaining. It's pretty funny and perfectly captures the frustration that gamers can feel when

someone on their team behaves recklessly. I'm sure the gamers among you have been in a situation where you're in a team based game and you all have a pretty good plan for how things should turn out and one person just goes completely off the rails and ruins it for everybody. It's a very frustrating experience. It's funny to watch, but it's not that funny to be in at the time. Also, I really like this one because I have a friend

named Ariel. She's been on the show a couple of times, and her band Tenpenny Travelers wrote a song about Leroy Jenkins and it makes me laugh a lot. I wish I could share that with you, but they don't have a recorded version, Otherwise I would include it with this episode. Uh. But the the meme of le Roy Jenkins spread like crazy,

not just in the world of warcraft circles. It also spread onto lots of gifts and stuff, and you wouldn't see Leroy Jenkins being applied to any situation where someone seemed to charge headlong into a scenario without fully considering the consequences of their actions. It became kind of shorthand for that, and Schultz would end up seeing his character incorporated into official Blizzard products, like a card in Hearthstone or in PC's within World of Warcraft, which is pretty

phenomenal when you think about it. I mean, you gain a level of immortality by creating this headstrong character rushes into danger without thinking of the consequences. I think that's pretty amusing. There are a lot of other memes I can mention. One of my favorites is Luigi's death Stare from Mario Kart eight. There's some of the funniest videos produced from the Luigi's Death Stare, but that one is so dependent upon the visual of Luigi sneering down at

you as he passes by. That doesn't really work that well for an audio podcast. And the memes out there keep on growing, some will endure, many will fade away, a few might come back after disappearing for a while because ideas are like that. And that wraps up this episode of tech stuff. But before I go, I have some exciting announcements to make first long time listeners know that tech Stuff used to publish twice a week. Good news everyone, We're doing that thing again. Starting next week,

this tech Stuff will publish two episodes. I think we're publishing on Wednesdays and Fridays. Dylan is shrug, so why don't quote me on it, But it's it's likely to be Wednesdays and Fridays. That's what it was before. So keep an eye out because we should have two episodes go live next week, not just one. And that's not all. As an experiment, I will begin to live stream tech Stuff recordings. That means you can actually watch me record

episodes live. It also means that if you tune in, you will hear episodes that will not publish for a couple of weeks because I'm always recording in advance. The episodes A record won't publish for a couple of weeks because I always want to have stuff in the buffer, so that way I won't skip a week of publication if I happen to go on vacation or if I get sick or something. So if you want to watch me record episodes, including the bits where I mess up

and have to go back to fix something you can. Plus, there will be live chat incorporated in this experience. I will participate in the live chat, particularly before the show begins and also during ad breaks. When I'm doing the show, I'm probably looking at my notes, so I probably won't be responding to chat very frequently unless I mess up and I want to take a little break. Now, if you have questions or comments about the show I'm recording, you can leave them in the chat at that moment,

and I can respond to them pretty quickly. I might even go back and re record something. So for example, if I give an explanation but you don't really think it was very clear, I might need to go back and redo it, which means the people who watch me live will be contributing directly to making the show a better show, which is kind of awesome. Now, the whole thing is going live on Twitch, dot tv, Slash Tech Stuff hs W right now. The plan is for me to go live on Wednesdays at four pm Eastern and

Friday's at three pm Eastern. Now, if you don't live in the Eastern time zone, do me a favor and just use Google to find out what three or four BM Eastern is in your neck of the woods. Don't ask me, I'm not Google. I'll try to remember to tweet out when I'm going live though. That should help. And if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes, feel free to shoot me a message and let me know. My email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a line on

Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.