TechList: An Interview with the Creators of Homestar Runner

You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably more than a few puns, because that's kind of how I roll. Enjoy this playlist. Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio eight there, and welcome to

tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and a love of all things tech, and we thought we would bring to you a playlist of some fun episodes for Stuff to listen to while we all try to get through these trying times. And the first one I think is a real doozy. We really knock it out with a funny pair of people, the Brothers Chaps, the creators of Homestar, Runner. My former super producer Ramsey ended up landing me an interview with

these two gents. They came into the studio and we had a great conversation and stick around to the very end because a special guest gave me a very special sign off for that episode. Hope you enjoy. I am overjoyed to be joined in the studio by Matt and Mike Chapman, also known as the Brothers Chaps, the creators of Homestar Runner as well as many other projects. And uh, it's a bit of a fanning out, geek out moment for me. I've been a fan of Homestar Runner since

before I was working at How Stuff Works. And really it's great to have two people here who they there were preceded the age of YouTube web series because YouTube didn't exist when you guys launched Homestar Runner. And anyone who has been on the Internet for any length of time has at least encountered Homestar Runner references if they're not deeply familiar with the incredible lore and mythology, the the the deep legends of Homestar Runner that have found

their way into all sorts of other mythos. I mean you're part of the Buffy verse, guys. Ye know, somehow we're responsible for the Doje meme, even though we didn't really have anything to do with that. Yeah. Uh, well, and you have a You have an incredible couple of bonus tracks on Guitar Hero two which have confounded me on numerous occasions. So I mean you're the influence just keeps on going. But for people who have never seen a Homestar Runner cartoon, they're not familiar with it. I

can't wait to bother at this point, you missed the boat. Sorry, guys. Just go go to know your Meme dot com and you'll find stuff. No. I want to hear from you, guys, because I'm really curious to hear your elevator pitch for what is Homestar Runner. Homestar Runner I like the Matt

s ferred brower right now. It struggles with this. There's a series of animated shorts following the exploits of non humanoid, ageless UH organisms that have UH that interact with one another in meaningful and humorous ways to the delight of several of literally dozens of people. That's the elevator pitch, and that's why we just did this ourselves, that's never had any I mean, I'm starting to get get a glean of the the marketing brilliant exactly that has been

part of Home Start Runners since the very beginning. So I know you guys have talked about this in other interviews, but I would love it if you could kind of walk people through the origin of where this all came from, because it's all I mean, I know, it's kind of a mishmash story because Home Star Runner itself ends up being a reference to a weird joke that kind of

came up of a local Atlanta ad spot. Right, Yeah, So our friend Jamie Huggins was nicking a Kroger or Win Dixie ad that Mark Lemke was on and probably nine or something. Jamie doesn't know a lot about sports, so instead of saying all Star second basement for the Braves, Mark Lmpie, he was trying to parody this commercial and said, and now homestar running for the Braves, Mark Lampie. And we're also just like Jamie, what is the homestar runner?

And so then a couple of years later, um, we kept using that phrase and decided to use it as a you know, the name of a character when we were born one day and made a story involving the homestar Runner. This is great because you know, it's it's the sort of thing. I think it's an inspirational story, honestly, because I know I've got lots of friends. We goof off and we make you know, you make a joke, and every now and then a joke is just it's sticky.

It's something that that for some reason resonates beyond just the moment of making an offhand, absurd reference, and then it kind of snowballs from there and it can grow. And to me, that's sort of what hopes our runner sounds like it was something that begans just sort of this one off little goof but it ended up inspiring uh a huge number of shorts. So after the the

little joking about a local ad spot. And by the way, if you ever really need to mind for comedy gold, you just have to find some some great Atlanta local Atlanta UH commercials. I've seen so many amazing ones, including people I know have showed up in them, like Chris Blair of Dad's Garage character. But if you guys, UH then went on and started looking at things like a children's books and seeing how terrible children's books can be, and thought we can do a terrible children's book. Uh,

and Homestar Runner had a spot in that. But beyond that, we get into the you know, late nineties, early two thousand's, and the Worldwide Web was really just starting to get some really serious traction at that point. Right, we're sits seeing kind of the the in phase of what people later on would call the web one point oh era, where everything was very static, nothing was interactive. You would probably have a web page and it wouldn't change from one month to the next, so there's no reason to

ever go back. You could go once and that's it. You made a new web page. You didn't update your webpage. Right, here's my new webpage. L You started something out and you would have to have the little under construction at the very top, right, because it's never finished, except for the fact that it's always kind of finished. So you got interested in in uh, in flash animation and flash in general. And UH this is interesting to me because it gave an opportunity to have a more dynamic experience

on the web, something that was totally new at that time. Today, we take it. For granted, you know, every website is dynamic in some way or another, or it has some sort of dynamic element worked into it. But at that time, it was pretty new, and the concept of creating ing uh episodic content that you could very easily see, you know, the next episode, that was new as well. There weren't a whole lot of examples of that before you get into say the mid two thousand's, when uh stuff like

YouTube started to show up. So from what I understand, is it true that essentially the reason why a Homestar Runner exists as a cartoon is that it was kind of a way to uh, to practice with Flash. Like you were, you needed to animate something, so why not use this character? We're really learning web development stuff like that's why we were learning Flash and graphic design and stuff like that was like for job type stuff, and we just used the Homestar characters as like, how are

we going to learn this new software Flash? And well and more so than we need to animate something, it was like we need to make something. I mean, I graduated from film school and moved back to Atlanta from Tallahassee, Florida, and uh, you know, they weren't shooting Avenger just movies

and or whenever that would have been. Um, they weren't really shooting much of anything other than fantastic local uh, and so I you know, there wasn't a whole lot to do, and like there was you were not ever going to try and put video on the web at that point, Like there was just I mean, lots of people still had dial upe modems. It was just not um something that you could afford the bandwidth for either. So,

I mean, we just wanted to make stuff. Mike moved back from he dropped out of grad school and moved back and anytime we've always we've been together from when we were kids, we've made stuff together. And so we're like, all right, well what are we making? And Flash was away that was like, oh wait, we don't need you know, a budget, we don't need a crew, we don't need you know, to go rent to camera, we don't need film stock or whatever. We can start making content um.

And so it was like, all right, well, I guess we're gonna learn how to animate because and we had done stop motion stuff we were kids, and we're fans of animation obviously. Yeah, Mario pained for the Supernintendo, but we never u that wasn't what either of us were like schooled in UM. We were always artists and creators of something, but never specifically animation. So we didn't look at it initially. I was like, oh, we are we

can't wait to start animating. It was more like, this is a way to tell stories, So what is the best thing we have for that medium? And it was like, oh, what if we turned that homestar Runner character and his friends into a cartoon? UM? And so that was kind of what it was born out of UM and the same reason that we would, you know, leave each other dumb answering machine messages, voicemail messages. It was like, oh, wait, here's some content. I have a medium to produce something

on It's the thirty seconds before the beat happens. Here, Mike, here's my little narrative I'm gonna give you when I'm asking you if you you know, remember to get some high life at the publix or whatever. So anyways, so Flash was kind of the next one of those, you know, was the next. And Flash was also easy. I mean it was easy enough for people that weren't animators to you know, stumble their way through and produce something that

was you know, halfway de sente. So two guys in their apartment with like a couple of keyboards could like make something that sounded you know, as good as the like. At that time, you know, they're were these studios making flash things that had like you'd watched the credits of a thirty second flash cartoon and it had like thirty people involved, um, one for each second of the cartoon, right, And this is so interesting to me because it parallels

so nicely with the rise of computer games. I did a an episode recently about Sierra Games, which I know you guys love. Yeah, I got to talk to Ken Williams and he actually came on. He tried to get Roberta. Now, he tried to, but she she was busy trying to figure out how to work their cable box. So yeah, all of that is actually in the episode two. So it's great, but uh, and I was very thankful for

him to participate. But it was so interesting because the whole reason why Sierra Games got started was that he was programming. Roberta had started to encounter games, and a lot of those games were being written by people who were teaching themselves how to code. So games were great because it was something that had structure, right, you had an idea, you didn't had to learn how to bring that idea to fruition. And so the game was really the the tool they were using in order to educate

themselves on how to code. And then eventually the whole industry kind of grew out of that. And it's very similar to what you guys are saying, like necessity is the mother of invention. You had this this tool there, you need to learn how to use the tool. You had certain limitations placed on you, but those limitations ended up just shaping the direction, didn't hold you back necessarily. Um And in fact, I could argue that without those

limitations you could end up being paralyzed by choice. Right, you have so many options open to you don't even know what to tackle next. That's why Homestar cartoons are still five fifty four hundred because that was the default, and flash and still animated at twelve frames a second.

Linotations are still seventeen years later. Wow. Yeah, And it's it's interesting now because we're in an era that sort of the post flash era as well, where we're starting to see Flash being you know, pushed further and further away, and there's not really any development development on that, and I know that has posed something of a challenge or Homestar Runner as well, because you know, that whole archive it's all in flash, so I'm sure there's the the

some of it has been poured it over to YouTube obviously, which is great because you know, that's a fantastic way for people to find it. Although I think you guys ended up following a strategy that I've heard several creators say is uh incredibly important for you, it was necessary, which was that you created your own space where stuff

would go and live, and that Homestar runners own domain. Uh. The Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth has talked about the same thing, that you need to have a space that's your own, because if you start depending upon some else's platform and that platform changes, you're at their mercy. So you are actually ahead of the game. But only because really, because that was that was the only way to go forward, pioneers,

because what else was there to do. But it ended up being again like that that inspired Bernie Burns over at rooster Teeth to do the same sort of thing he he knew he didn't want to put everything just on another platform like at that time it would have been like my Space or YouTube. Um, so it's it's something that has since gone to inspire others. So you go in, you start making this cartoon and uh, you're

having a good time. At what at what point during the process did you start to feel like this was gonna be something bigger than just a fun project to do occasionally, uh, and become something a little more serious than that. So we're we're what early two thousand's here, We've been doing it for a couple of years, maybe two thousand, two thousand one was sort of when we were just that was the sort of early years. And I think it was sometime in two thousand and one

when we started doing strong bad emails every yeah, every week. Yeah. I think that was a turning point. Um. And it certainly didn't feel like it at the time, but I think looking back, having giving the fans a week like something to look forward to every week, and knowing, Okay, I'm gonna check back on Monday morning. I'm gonna check back on Monday morning, that sort of snowballed into sort

of where we I don't know. Yeah, and then we sort of think of the point where we realize like, oh wait, I think lots of people are watching this, and more than maybe maybe we thought. Was when for the first couple of years we were just on like a Yahoo shared hosting account. It was supposed to be like thirty bucks a month, and you've got like five

gigs of bandwidth or something. And I don't know how many cartoons would have been on the website at that point, but um, I remember printing out this thing, and I think we got kind of a tip off right from somebody at Yahoo that was just like, hey, I'm a fan of what you guys are doing. You're gonna have to find another solution. And he was like, I've been

looking the other way for a while now. And so I get on our account and download the like, you know whatever, just bandwidth chart thing, and we've done like thirteen terabytes of transfer or something on our thirty or five games whatever. So there's we always just pictured this UM server in the back of some Yahoo data centers, like smoking sparking in the back. Yeah, and that's when it, uh, we got shut down at some point, right, that's when where the system is down. So the site was actually

down for a day or two. Yeah, um and uh, but that was kind of when we were like, oh, wow, okay, you know, we've gotten some emails and people. We knew that there were some, you know, but we just sort of assumed it was like, oh, these few people that know about flash Animation on the web have found our

stuff and that's awesome, and we thought that was great. Um. I think that was when that was kind of the moment we were like, oh, wait, maybe this is something we could do, we could continue to do and because at the time we still had regular day jobs. Um. And I think that was probably about the same time we decided to sell some merch and and and a year or so into that was when our dad, who was was a c p a UM like basically told his too screw up artists sons to quit their jobs.

He was like, this is dumb. You quit your jobs and make these cartoons for living, would you? Which is we've always feel like it's the probably the best moment you could you could ask for from a father's son. Oh yeah, when you got a churm public accountant saying hey, guys, no, you know that that regular steady gig. You have quit it? What that's amazing? Make cartoons with your brother in the basement,

good griefs. It's like, yeah, dream come true moment right there, Tons and tons of shorts that you guys have made, lots of wonderful characters, not to mention all the alternate versions of those characters. It was always the most fun was to sort of world build and do other Yeah, yeah, I was enjoyed. I love the old timey ones. Always like people that like, that's that's my favorite too. Well,

there's a sort of polarizing it's no to me. It's just the level of absurdity coupled with the Transatlantic accent my favorite. There's a there's a video that that we did here and how stuff works about the Transatlantic accent. They got me to be the one to do it, and I have to say, like, there's certain certain influences that went into the absolute nonsense that I was spouting off randomly at the end of the video, just to kind of give examples of trans Atlantic accent and the

old timey homestar runner ones were way up there. It's like, I know what I'm saying has no meaning, but it doesn't matter. So and also it's just fun to do until somebody really tells you to knock it off, and then that it's actually fun to do for about another five minutes. Yeah, you gotta Yeah, you gotta get past that point. Right. It's the whole thing where you you tell a joke until it stops being funny, and you

keep telling it gets funny again. Yeah, all human repetition got louder to remember the I always think of the sideshow Bob stepping on the Rakes and the Simpsons. It's like it's like, wait, he's gonna do it again. It's like happened so many times that it's like, whoa, we did it one more time. And so it was Wow, I didn't you know. I thought they were going to

draw the line of nineteen Uh. Well, out of all that massive amount of stuff that you guys have done, are there anythings that just stand out in particular in your in your minds as things like when you came up with it or when you first animated it. Uh. It brought you, guys just just genuine joy, and whether whether or not it went on to have a life

of its own afterward. I'm always interested to hear the kind of stuff that when someone writes it and I know this gets self indulgent, but when you write it and you just think that's great, that's just a great little moment there. You know, even if even if you have to associate yourself with it a little bit, is there anything like that stands out in your mind? For me? And it made me. I don't know if it's the

same for Matt. You mentioned Sierra Games. We did a Peasant's Quest, which was a riff on King's Quest sort of in the trog Door universe, and to me, making that whole game was probably the most fun thing we ever did. And Homestar related, um, just making the graphics for it, making the puzzles, do I mean just an implement it may being able to make a game that was not only it wasn't a parody of those games.

It was an homage to those games, and it was those games, you know, like it was functional, it wasn't just a joke. Yeah, I feel like when we made there's a emails one eighteen What's virus or one nineteen where he gets a computer virus and all this kind of crazy stuff happens and it gets a little like meta and uh, and it ends up with him getting a new computer in the next one because he asked to sacrifice his computer. But I remember that was one where we stayed up all night we did. Uh. Is

that another one where we messed with the frame. Yeah, we re sized the size of the movie, but the viewer wouldn't know because we still always had this black border around it. But then at some point in it that like border moves and so they're like kind of

messes with your head in the cartoon. And then we there's a part where pop up ads started showing up in the cartoon and then we made a real pop up ad like we did some like I forget what it was action script like made one cap and in your browser too, So this broke broke the fourth wall, you know, outside of your normal computer realm. And um, I just remember finishing that one up, like I'm pretty sure we stayed up all night for that one and uh.

And then the next day, Um, we went to what Steak and Shake because I want we would always like we'd like finish it up and be like, yeah, that's good, it's kind of good feeling. And we didn't even like go look because we tried not to be. We always want to know, stay in touch with the fans, but never like tried to you know, we didn't like dissect every comment or every at the time, it would have

been like a live journal page or something like. There weren't just like message boards, uh or comments sections like there are now. But um, I don't even I think we didn't even look at like anything. We're just like we just they're all gonna love it this. Everybody's gonna love this one, and we love this one. We had a really good time with it. Let's go get say

and shake. I don't know that sort of moment where you're like confident enough in yourself to be like I think I think we did a home run here, and then you know, and then you went back and it

was like, oh, I think people did like it. Like I remember always thinking along those lines when you would make a good one, it was like, okay, we did a good when people liked it, and then that my thinking was that, okay, that just buys us three or four bad ones, and now the full gift three or four bad ones every game when you do it's like, okay, I've got a little more currency to mess up. Well, you know, that also brings me. There was a recent

piece I read that was interesting. It was about um uh, people who are in the creative industry. They were specifically focusing on YouTubers, but to me, it really could be anyone from twitch streamers to podcasters to cartoonists, really any any creative endeavor, especially a creative endeavor where you're trying to deliver consistent um content on on like a schedule, that one of the dangers is always this this fear

of burn. Now that's not just it's not just the idea of writer's block, which is something that we all deal with at one time or another where you're just you're staring at the empty page and there's just nothing coming to you. But just that that pressure of delivering, especially when you've built up a reputation of certain kind of material. Was that ever anything that was threatening you guys while you were working on it. Yeah, I mean

it definitely made things. You know, early on we made cartoons because they were fun, and then you know, there was definitely a period where Saturday Sunday came around and we're like, we don't have no ideas for the strong bad email we have to make one, and then you just kind of have to power through. Yeah, um, which is it wasn't really that big of a deal. But if it wasn't for the expectation that we're there, you

wouldn't have done it, you know. Yeah. I mean it's tough when you're trying, when your goal is to entertain someone and it feels like you know you're gonna have to push through it. Then that adds that extra layer, right, like you're like, it's not just that I need to do it, I need to do it and make someone laugh and I'm not having I don't want to be

doing yeah yeah, um. But I mean that's I think working in that the way we worked where most of the stuff we did we made in the forty eight hours or so before it was you know, thrown out into the world. You know, we made most everything from Friday to Sunday. Um, So it was a double edged short.

I mean sometimes it was terrible, you know, probably the results were terrible, But other times you use that same energy and it's like if you sit there for two weeks and overthink things, you're you're going to talk yourself out of something that's some dumb idea that you know could have you know, droped door for instance, is probably

something that you think about it long. And I was like, I don't know, maybe we can just maybe he shouldn't have this beefy arm sticking out his BacT that when you cut, you know, fifteen minutes before you're gonna put it live. Just just leave it in. Let's do it. It's a design choice at this point. Uh. We also had the I feel like we had the luxury of

being able to do kind of whatever we wanted. And so even if there were those times where we were like out of ideas for a strong at email or something, that's when we'd be like, well, let's do an old time what do we want to do. Let's do an old timy cartoon this week. Let's do uh. You know, we invented like eighties hair metal band for the Homestar Universe.

We invented a like indie rock band because that's kind of where we were in high school and college, and so it's just sort of like, I just want to make it like indie rock song this week. And I was like, all right, let's invent a band and put it in a cartoon. And then then that's you know, so we it was kind of nice where we just have to stop thinking of like we're delivering this formula to anybody and a lot of thing, you know, especially if it wasn't in the form of a strong, bad email.

I'm sure there were fans that were disappointed, but it was like, all right, well, that's what you gotta put up with. For like I I didn't get burned out and hated the thing that you like that I do because I got like re energized by taking a little flight of fancy or whatever and doing something kind of

um out of our normal wheelhouse or whatever. Um, And so I think that we would um employ that I think a good bit too kind of helped stave off any sort of burnout where it was just like, all right, I should shut up because like, not only do I get to make cartoons for a living, but I got to like blow off making cartoons and go, do you know, makeup mapa like eighties hair metal song this week? So well yeah, and you guys also had stuff on the site that went beyond like you like. The games are

a good example. There were various interactive elements on the website besides games and little sound boards and things like that. You had the live action Troug Door uh trailer, which is one of my favorites, and partly because I know some of the people were what I was watching and I was like, see so fun and Uh, that's the beauty of living in Atlanta. And you guys got to work with some great Atlanta talent, which I imagine is is just exploding at this point because we've got so

many things happening in Atlanta. I'm sure that opens up a lot of different opportunities as well, um, which is fantastic. But I also want to thank you guys for this idea of being able to branch out and try different things and and open up different universes, because I like to imagine that there was one of those weeks where we got blessed with Teen Girl Squad, which is probably my favorite of all of the variations that have come out. It's one my wife and I still quote consistently, so

we're always happy whenever we get a teen Girl Squad. Uh. So, you know, the popularity of Homestar grew and grew and and it's really interesting that you guys were you know, you weren't really focused on the analytics. It's not like

you were, you know, watching those counts. Like you know, there are people who are are obsessed over that, whether it was back in the old web days where you had the little visitor counter that would go up by one little digit counter to the group every time, or now it's obviously like YouTube views and subscriptions, that kind of thing. It seems like that was never really, uh, something that you guys were terribly focused on or concerned with.

You were just you know, looking at the content and creating that, and we didn't want we sort of actively didn't look at that because we didn't want you know, if we did something that we liked that it maybe didn't get the views. That's something else, like we didn't want that to affect like okay, let's just make another trout door or make another stinco Man or something. So we would actively sort of try to distance ourselves from knowing what was hitting and what wasn't, just so that

we could so it wouldn't mess with the creative process. Yeah, we talked to uh YouTube, a couple of younger YouTube guys a few years ago, and uh they were talking about how like you know, they used the live thing. There's like a live analytics thing on YouTube, like you can upload your video and then right then and showing you it's just like any other you know, Google analytics thing where you can see who is watching it right now and if they and you know, if they commented.

I don't know if you know exactly who did what comment. You know, they're interacting with the comments or they liked or they did the thumbs down or whatever, or the moment they stopped watching the yeah yeah, yeah. And so he said, it was like, it's like he's immediately watching this like focus group, but this is not He didn't he's not testing this. This is this guy just made this thing and uploaded into the world and he's having to like watch this judgment happen like user and time.

And I was just like, how can you do that? He's like, I know it's terrifying, but I can't, like I can't look away. Like I was like embraved as part of the process, and I'm happy that we didn't even we were just for a long time. It was um, I mean it was this will sound like a humble brag or whatever, but it was like we actually were doing crazy enough amounts of traffic that are I don't know if it was just that our web hosting guy was like lazy and didn't want to like compile these logs.

So we can see that, like because we occasionally we would ask were like, so what can we give us our actual numbers and stuff like what are we doing? Um and uh, and he'd always be like, it's gonna take like a couple of days because it's all these like log files and it kind of like chokes on them, and so we just never have those numbers. So I kind of feel fortunate that we didn't, because I think

we could have obsessed over that stuff. And now it's carried into even though we are you know, we're putting stuff on YouTube now and have a Twitter account and stuff like that, but like we just don't care if like it kind of helps inform, uh, those decisions now where I don't think we'll be a good bye, even though it seems like that is the way that if you're gonna make money on this stuff, you need to like get a million viewers and you need to have

ad revenue and all that stuff. But it's kind of like I'm glad that I'm not sweating that even if it's not sure, it's not like crushing if we put up a new cartoon and it doesn't hit well. Yeah, I mean, like again, going back to the example of

not not putting all your eggs in one basket. With the YouTube example, we've just seen YouTube change their policies that in my mind, really hurt people who who specialize in short form content because a lot of the metrics that they're using is the number of collective hours watched per given amount of time, like per month or whatever. And obviously, if you're producing short form content, you need to have way more people watching your stuff to get

that collective number of hours up. And it's not it's not a comment on the quality of the content so much is just the quantity of it, which seems kind of backwards to me, and it's an if you just I didn't realize that that's I knew there was a change recently. Yeah, it was something along the lines of life.

I think. It's like, in order to even be considered for monetization at this point, your videos need to have achieved something like four thousand hours worth of viewing time, which obviously, if you're doing short form and even if you have an engaged, dedicated audience, you've got to write a whole bunch of different episodes or or instances in

or to achieve that. Whereas if you are someone who maybe you you record a two hour or three hour gaming session and you upload it and there's you know, there's a proven audience for that content because it's three hours, and because a lot of those people will watch the entire three hours of material. You rack those hours video when you're set, no right, just watch it yourself. It's just wow. Like I remember when the Little black Spot was an orange and uh you now here we are

and then is just desiccated into nothing. Um, this isn't good, but it's consistent. Uh yeah, it's it's it's well again. A great reason why why going into any one platform is a bit of a you know, a danger, because you might you might end up having a policy change that you have no control over. And it's not that your stuff isn't great or that it doesn't have an audience.

It's just that because the rules changed above you, you suddenly have a door closed in your face, which seems kind of unfair for anyone who's not like a big time content creator like one of the one of the superstars um and obviously YouTube has gone through numerous changes over it's it's history. I did a three part series about YouTube recently and really talked about how it's changed dramatically. So there's no guarantee that's going to keep that policy.

Maybe if there's enough resistance, will change it again, but it's one that draws concerned from people who maybe they want to get a start, They have an idea and they want to indulge in that idea and they hope that it brings delight to others and maybe one day they can make a living out of it. But it's it. Not only is discovery difficult now, but when the rules change like that, it's difficult to even get to the

point where you can start monetizing it. You guys, however, had this monetized your your stuff through mostly through merchandise

and without advertising. Uh. That was also interesting to me because like I own some Homestar Runner stuff, but it was the sort of thing that I went and searched for as opposed to you know, watching a cartoon where halfway through it tells me, hey, by the way, if you want a shirt that has that funny thing that's strong bad just said on it you need to click this leek here or even at the end where it

wouldn't have really been obtrusive in anyway. Our dad always wanted us to do that, and we were always to our street cred was valuable. Yes, uh, kind of shot ourselves in the pot. We're that now amazed that people found because it's almost like the store was this easter egg that you had if you really searched for home Star shirt, you could you could find a bit like

we were very reluctant to well, it's funny. In like two thousand one or two, Uh, we were approached by someone from Hot Topic and this wasn't like they walked up to us was like a contract for like, hey, you want to join you know, your your characters into

T shirts and make millions of dollars. But they weren't starting a conversation that could have led to any you know, any different variation of that scenario, and we just wanted nothing, you know, we didn't want to do it, and we we kind of pitched him like, oh what if we did these other kind of weirder like jokes from our website that weren't like the characters like they want to do Team Girl squad shirts and this other stuff, and and we ultimately said no. And I forget who I

was talking to, but it was like a small not like an audience I was talking to, but there's a lot younger kids, and I like I said it thinking that. Uh. I was like yeah, then we got approached by hot topic and like, you know, so of course we said no to that. And then they were all just like stared at me, and it's like, why did you say no to that? And I was like it was hot

hopping topic came to us. I was like you, like that would have just killed us instantly, Like it's like, yeah, maybe a bunch of kids would have bought stuff and whatever, and they're like yeah, and you would have like made a million dollars. Well I don't know that, and uh and then I probably would have hated what I did after that. And they're just like that was a bad decision, made a bad decision, and you should have put your stuff in hot topics. Good to have life life lessons.

It comes. I don't know, I get. I like to think that the Homestar Runner is therefore responsible for they

shut up and take my money. Mean, but but I mean that I appreciate that too, because again, it was that sort of uh philosophy, that sort of while it wasn't something that was being overtly stated, it was something that a lot of fans appreciated, and you know, taking the effort to try and find a way of supporting was great because it was it was a show early on that you know, I think a lot of stories about internet content focus on the negatives, like the idea

of people who don't want to pay for content so they find work around so that they can get it for free. But the opposite is also true, where you'll find people who are encountering content that is seemingly being presented. I mean, there's no there's no advertising, you know, there was there was nothing where there was like a donate button or anything. It was like there's a store and you could go there and you could purchase things. And they said, you know, I want to support the content

creators that I love and the stuff I love. I want them to keep making the stuff because I'm enjoying it. And it tells you that there's there's really a place for that too. And of course now we see platforms like Patreon that have come out to do more direct supportive artists, that have proven that point that there are people who are willing to do that if you give them the opportunity. We've had people tell us like, yeah, about ten homestar ounerships. I never were the second one.

I didn't need anymore and to support you. Yeah. Well, and people will say like, you know, I have I've purchased enough merch Like I'm not. It's not that I don't love you. I don't need any more T shirts. Uh. Can you please start a Patreon or something so I can give you some money every once in a while. What I want to I just don't need another homest uh. And so that's that's good to hear that people are

willing to do that. Every kid at my local elementary school now has a homestore runner exactly the thrift store of mine Stock. But that's a that's a great I mean, that's a great story because it tells you that what you have created has actually had a meaningful impact on people. And I know it sounds weird to call it a meaningful impact when you're talking about a world that has

a character called the poop Smith. But it's true and and it's it's great because it's again, I think it illustrates that positive side of the internet, and we so well so quickly focus on that negative side. And it's good to have something you can point out and say, well, you know, look at this. It shows that if you have the structure in place, and if you have the right content in place, people flock to it and people

want to supp ard it. And you guys have also you know, I mentioned you know, you were incorporated into the Buffy verse in an episode. Um, you've got You've had lots of references in various types of pop culture. What was that like seeing the thing that you had created start to get referenced by by other like like pop culture icons, everything from and they might be giants, I mean, you know, making music for you And that one was pretty amazing because I was we're huge. They

might be giant fans, giants fans growing up. So when they emailed us, that was pretty mind blowing. Yeah, um yeah we heard from the Buffy thing I think was like somebody at Fox was like, hey don't see us. We they don't like, nobody here knows what you guys are, but don't we We put a Drogda reference in this upcoming episode. Josh is a big fan and they sent us through it was it was it an entertainment weekly.

There was some picture that they referenced. It was you had a strong bad shirt on and like on set of something he was shooting. Um, and so that was really cool. Uh, but yeah, that was at the time. It was that was pretty mind blowing. Just to know that It's like, okay, so people outside of you know, whatever weird world we thought we existed in as far

as fan bases go. People were finding that stuff and we've since found out things like, Um, at that time when it was a friend of ours worked with Damon lindall Off and said that he it was like me and Josh Sweden would get in trouble. I was supposed to be writing Lost episodes and we'd be closing strong band to each other something. I was like, holy crap, I was watching when you were wasting time watching what I was making. That's amazing. Um. So that kind of

stuff has been super cool. What was the show those that show The Magicians that's on now? This was It was nice because it felt like a little a nice little like a book end to the like Buffy thing where I guess they referenced Trong Door and uh, I think it's the season two finale or something, and I asked to haven't even seen it. I just people everybody told me what the similartle clips of it or whatever, which that's always so it's it's always cool to see

that stuff. Yeah, And then I actually led to other things like collaborations where you guys did uh the animations for um uh for They Might Be Giants video, which is fantastic, and and you've appeared on well, yeah, we've done several collaborations with them, the characters have appeared on stage where they might be chiants because I've been to some of those shows and the variety of playoffs, and that was always a joy, uh to the point where you I would imagine that was part of the inspiration

for them to come up out with their band, the Them band, the Sock Puppets they where they would wow when I would see that come out, and it's like, this is this is mind boy, this is happening right now. Um and uh and seeing seeing Home Star and Strong Bad in uh in person is always a big thrill for for me, despite it's so weird to say that out loud to the people who actually made that, but it's absolutely true. So you go through, you're you're doing

the the series. It's got you know, it's got some some not just US fan support, but it's also blossoming in various areas of pop culture. We see trog Door get into Guitar Hero two, which is still another amazing thing when that when I found out that that was a bonus track, I was so thrilled immediately. I was like,

this is my quest to master Door. That's solo, by the way, impossible, and you want to know something, this is what We didn't find this out until later, or I think we knew it, but we didn't realize it. So we played as Limousine, the band that plays other ones on live and so the we play with these guys that are in the spand yacht rock in another band called Saved by the band Um and are uh they learned the song and um And so our friend that does that plays guitar for us, Chris Harris, and

he learned the song. He's like, those really knows this stuff. As far as like squeally wanky guitar. It's all like, he's that's amazing. You can do the tapping, he can do all this stuff and it's incredible. And so he learned trog door and then we came in a practice and he played it and he like nails that solo. And then one of the other guys was like, you know when we originally recorded that, because he wasn't on that song, he was like, that's like that's keyboard. It

was just like playing four notes. Yeah, and he was like, wait what and he was like, yeah, no one can play that fast. I was like, oh, I learned it, so yeah. But so it didn't surprise me when I learned that. I think we kind of told the harmonics people that at the time and they're like, that's fine, we'll just we're making the guitar so that finastic and if they're and I've watched YouTube videos of people who have done the perfect run on that on the hardest setting,

and it's just mind blowing. I can't I can't even I can't see as fast as they're playing, which is the craziest thing. But then we get up to about and it was then when you guys were starting to get other opportunities that that also, we're pulling you away from Home Star. And as I understand it, it it was getting to a situation where it wasn't that you wanted

to to leave the series. It was that you were having, you know, other demands on your time, whether it was family or it was other other gigs that were coming up, and it just became one of those things where, uh, week after week it just wasn't you just didn't have the time to dedicate to making more content for Homestar Runner. Uh? Is that is that more or less accurate for how things turned out? Yeah? I mean we had no idea how long it was going to be either when we

matt second daughter was born. I think that was basically when we when we stopped doing stuff and we didn't know if it was going to be out. Let's take a break for two months, yeah, four years. Well, and that's the thing is that, you know, you you take those breaks and then other things come up, and and obviously you've got all these commitments on your time. Uh, and and then you're you're thinking, well, how how do I how do I communicate this to a fan base? Yeah?

And then at some point it was like, wait, we've waited too long, or like, is it weird to try to say something when we don't know what we're saying. We don't know, you know, like if we're gonna say, hey, we'll do some homestar stuff in a year, we you know, yeah,

there was no definitive answer. And then at that time we didn't know we had like a development deal at Disney and a development deal at Nickelodeon, and we were gonna make some Yo Gabba Gabba episodes and these things that were just like that doesn't mean anything to a homestar fan, and maybe we undervalue that. Maybe they would have been excited to hear that stuff. But then it was like that Nickelodeon thing went nowhere and that Disney thing went nowhere, and so that would have been like

after the fact, would have been like depressing. But I was like, oh, they're like, oh yeah, so they're Disney thing didn't work out and Tickelodean didn't work out, and that like Neo Gabba Christmas episode they directed it was horrible and like, I don't know, So it just felt weird, especially because we never aside from being like we intimated that like we'd had babies and so we're gonna take some time off. That's kind of the only time Mike and I ever sort of inserted our like Creator lives

and show the fans heads. I mean, we always intentionally aside from some like fake things on a DVD where we're like spoofing how we make things, Um, we wanted us to be separate from it. We never wanted to have the like Creator blog side of it, and definitely not the like the way that most of the like YouTube personalities are like, even if their content is not that, they're like always after the facts like Hey, I'm the

star of the YouTube thing you just watched. Remember to go to the store and buy the new merch and blah blah blah. It's always just like we didn't want to be the face of any of it, you know. Um, So it felt weird to then have that conversation and after like never really talking to the fans as Mike and Matt m at least through the website, to like give a weird half as explanation of like, I don't know,

we don't know. That was that, you know, And then that just felt like I would be super unsatisfied if I just gotta we don't know what's going on from the creator of my thing that I liked, so I don't know. We always apologize I we didn't handle it right, we didn't know how to handle it right, and we are like, there was so funny. The day before we put up the first cartoon we made in Forever, which was this April Fool's cartoon in UM, I got a

somebody found my like personal email address a fan. It sent this like pages long thing like tearing us apart and saying that it's like radio silent, yeah, and for and just being like, here's this what this meant to me? Here like every week like it was. It was like the first half was like super awesome fan, in the second half was like and here's why I hate you. Will never support anything you've ever done ever again. And like literally we're finishing up this cartoon to sell, like

to upload it like midnight. I get this at like I don't know, seven pm the day before, and I think I just I forget. I think I wrote back and I just said like, hey, I'm so sorry, thanks for being a fan, and just kept it vague and sort of hoping that then now maybe that cartoon would happen, that they would be like, wait, they listen to a lot of amazing turn haf an hour, they made this cartoon.

Um so yeah, so that was the main reason we never we just the explanation was never like exciting enough to like to like feel like to like peel behind the curtain and be like, hey, look behind here, we're making a new project, because none of those projects ever really happened. Um so yeah, Well, oh sorry, I was gonna say we actually made a strong bad sort of addressing talking to the fans about it. I forget when

that was. That was maybe six months or so after we had stopped doing stuff and we made this thing and then never ended up putting it up because we're just like, this is weird. We showed it one time at a conference we were at last year. I went over kind of weird. Yeah, I think we made the rand call. I think I think my favorite. I'm also

fortunate in that because Lincoln live in Atlanta. Um, I'm I'm a frequent patron of Dad's Garage Theater, so I actually got to see the special Strong Bad Email Garage Theater because I've I've been supporting them since two thousands, so I was there at their old theater and when they went to uh move into seven stages for a while, and now they have their new theater and they that was one of the things they showed one night, and the crowd reaction when that came on was pretty phenomenally.

Showed that the Fox Theater that a special They had a special event, a special fundraiser at the Fox Theater and it was kind of a variety show of giving an example of the sort of material that they would do. And they showed the Strong Bad Special Email to Dad's garage and hearing the Fox Theater erupt an applause at a strong Bad Email was something really special. I think that was the second cartoon. I think that was the next thing we made after that April Fools in two

thousand fourteen was that, yeah, strong Bad Email. So it had been four or five years since we had made a strong Bad Email. Was the reaction to that that April first, two thousand and fourteen video. Was that something that UH was really gratifying for you guys, because I know, at least in my own personal circle of friends, when people found out that there was a new homestar Runner cartoon up. Uh, it went nuts on my Facebook page and like it was like it was like what half

of my friends were sharing. Um, so I imagine like when you you know, you've been you've been kind of away from it for four years. Uh, was it surprising to you to see a reaction? Yeah, it has gotten I think Gizmoto and some of the blogs and you know linked to it. So that was surprising. And you know, yeah, we didn't know. We just sort of assumed that the few people that sadly still check out Homestar runnerst com entered this u r L into their um, their yellow

keys of their mechanical because it was strong. But I didn't have a Twitter yet or anything, right, I mean, there's really no I guess we had a YouTube page, but we didn't, so there was really no way to communicate to the fans that hey, we've got this new cartoon up, and you went to the site, you know, if anyone would really see it, and then if if then people did stumble across it, if they would you know, be excited about it or pass it on or whatever.

So that was that was cool and that definitely led to it just sort of coincided with the fact that I was I was living in l A at the time when we made that actually and then we h I but I knew my family was moving back to the Atlanta area, and so the fact that Mike and now we're going to be back in the same town again and that like it was like, oh, it seems like people don't hate us, maybe want to see more things.

That just kind of was like, all right, well, we're back in the same town again, we should a least start doing stuff as you know often as we can, um, between whatever other gig we were doing. Yeah, so since then, we've been doing Home Star stuff, you know, every few months or depending on what the other stuff we're working on is. So sure, So what other stuff are you working on? Since? Uh, you know, we know that Homestar

Runner is in good hands. It's going to continue coming out and and keeping Hope alive so that when we do that that jumped Home Star Runner, there's a there's a good chance there's gonna be something new there. But what else are you guys working on? Um, we're just talking to For the first time ever, we've been talking with adults whom locally here, which is and so we'll see. We have no idea if that will go anywhere or not, but we uh, we've known people that have worked on

shows there. We've known you know, creators or shows there and stuff before, but it never actually spoken with them. And it's actually it's it's great because there's a hilarious I think it's been debunked enough now but for a very long time, if we would ever talk to people, and not that we do so many interviews, but it would come up to be like I heard that you guys stormed out of an Adult Swim meeting and said to them and you're like, no, I mean, I don't

know there was ever an overture either way. And we love that. We love that channel and you probably heard the hot topic story. Yeah exactly. Um, but so so that's exciting. So for the first we were just like, yeah, they're down the street. It kind of makes sense, like I moved to l A even though there was like

an entire cartoon network you know here as well. Yeah, everyone assume when they find out we're from Atlanta and like, oh, you guys must you know, work with cartoon networking Adult Swim And it's like, now we do stuff with this needy um. But so that's exciting. So we'll see where that goes, um and uh and what else. And let's

just we haven't been doing other homestar stuff. You have a couple of homestar like sort of top secret e things that will be revealing soon that will be exciting that we've been spending a lot of that take a lot of sort of build up time, secret time, secret time. Fantastic um And I've been um speaking of Sierra Games.

There's a park down at the end of my street, and so I've been making King's Quest style graphics of a couple of little parts of the park a waterfall, and so I made this little King's Quest looking waterfall. Oh Man, Roy Roy Roy Moss Senior Memorial Garden. It's called the garden, and it is not a garden. Yeah, runoff retention. I guess that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. But it's actually it's featured. It's heavily featured in The Peasants Quest Live actually Janka Cave. Yeah,

oh man and uh. I also have to give you guys props for two more eggs because I've been Yeah, so that was we did that with Disney for two years. We ended last you know summers or so. Um, but so that was really good. That was great. We made ninety shorts little shorts for Disney. Nice. That was our That was the last five we did. Yeah, that was our most fun. We did that with our daughters. Um so our three daughters, so good voices and so that was yeah, glad you liked that. That was yeah, that

one was certainly fun to make. That was good to know too. We we actually get we get that back so we can actually try and take give Panda practice some more life. A bunch of the stuff we made for Disney, like this day owned. Sure we can show anything else with but Panda Bractice is one of those few that's like, especially like Megan cartoons with your kids, there's nothing better than that. So maybe maybe that'll find life. My daughter's yeah, she's not gonna want to do that

with you anymore. Now. It's just I am were going to be changing it. We're not gonna be able to. I recommend to my listeners if you have not seen the series two more Eggs, go to YouTube, and especially the Panda Bractice episodes. They are they are amazing. Uh and and they will make you want to play drums on people's faces. As a local Atlanta too, did you

did you get our lowest Yes? Yes. As I always watching it, I was like, this is so clearly a beautiful homage to the Atlanta try is your lowest rights is? Of course I've been hearing that voice forever and uh and yeah, it's not meant in any sort of insulting. Well, I hope I do it. I hope it's respectful. I I could tell as I was listening, like this is this is someone who has genuine affection for that voice.

It's not making fun of that voice. And she's also a friend of Dad's garage theater, so sometimes you hear that voice if you go to see a show there, which is amazing. So again that's the other thing I love about about watching your content is that it gives me another connection to my home, So it's always fun. And to occasionally explain to people where certain little things come from is always kind of fun too, because it gives them a chance to go down that rabbit hole

that uh, the Internet was really created for. Ultimately, that's what the Internet is, right, It's just just one giant black hole of information. Um. One of the series we did for two more ex is called Truncles. It's it's fake British show, and so there's a part with some of the background drawings of buildings and structures in this town of Trunkles are local buildings like around Decators wonderful. Keep your eyes open for the library at Decatur High School,

which is this weird sort of that's face. Yeah, I know, I know it. Well. Oh man, Well, thank you guys so much for coming on tech stuff and spending this time. I really appreciate. It's been a thrill for me and anyone out there who's not familiar with with your work, they need to go out and seek it out, because it's that level of of surreal absurdity that just the first time I think anyone watches anything, they might just

be confused. And then and then after they watched the same thing a second time, they're like, Okay, I'm starting to get it. And then next thing you know, they've watched the same thing fifteen times, and you say, you realize, there's nine of the right that you that you can watch and and in sequence or out of sequence if you prefer, you can really just jump around if you like. But it's great. I can't wait to make um more

references with my friends. I really hope that we can get that giant trog door uh portrait with the cutouts over to the Georgia Renaissance Festival. I think I'll talk to the entertainment director. I know him, so we'll see if we can get hitting somewhere like off like in some forest somewhere. We have to like I know exactly where it should go. It's like it's like like listen, I know it's a big hill, and I know it looks like there's not much up there. You will find treasure,

right like, trust me. Thank you so much for joining the show. I really appreciate. Thank you. Yeah, so that's it for this episode of text stuff. Thank you for tuning in where my guests were a small piece of potato that has been sitting inside transistor radio since the nineteen seventies. Thank you for being on potato. Yes, that's that's that's nice potato, all right, and so join me next week when my guests or me say, apparently it will be that same piece of potato next week. Thank

you very much. Don't forget to support this podcast if you're like what you're listening to next week, I hope and maybe the sixteen that was an interview with the creators of Homestar Runner. And we're gonna move right on along. So if you want to keep listening to the playlist, We've got a lot more coming and let me know what you guys think if there are things you would like me to cover as we go through all this. I've got a big series about the PlayStation coming up soon.

But if there are any other topics you would like me to cover, reach out on Facebook or Twitter, the handle for both his Tech Stuff HSW and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.