As per usual, we span a range of topics this week: kicking off with The Wiggles (a kids entertainment group), then diving into what music/hip hop has become and how artists evolve with their music, live concert experiences and all the way down to toilet talk.
✍🏻 View the transcript for this episode
As per usual, we span a range of topics this week: kicking off with The Wiggles (a kids entertainment group), then diving into what music/hip hop has become and how artists evolve with their music, live concert experiences and all the way down to toilet talk.
Georgie used to photograph concerts for Tone Deaf, Casual Band Blogger, and A Music Blog Yea.
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Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Georgie 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Toast & Roast. I am your co host, Georgie. And here I am with Geoff.
Geoff 0:08
Hey, my friend has like, called us out for not posting a podcast on Monday.
Georgie 0:15
Oh really.
Geoff 0:16
This week, they were like, where’s the podcast, bro? I was like yes soz was, I was a bit lazy.
Georgie 0:22
So I was just listening to the, you’ve heard of Triple J, Triple J’s Like A Version, right?
Geoff 0:30
Yeah, I’ve actually heard of the segment. I don’t anything about the segment. So do explain what it is.
Georgie 0:36
So basically, I think that the name first of all is a bit of a play on words with Madonna’s Like a Virgin, because it sounds similar, Like A Virgin. And it’s basically a segment where different artists I think most of them are Australian, different artists on this radio segment cover a song by another artist.
Geoff 1:00
Oh it’s literally dedicated to covering other artists.
Georgie 1:04
Yeah. And so the one I was listening to was The Wiggles. They did a cover of Elephant by Tame Impala.
Geoff 1:12
Don’t know the song. But continue.
Georgie 1:15
You don’t know the song? You will know the song. It was it was used on an Apple, an apple ad or an ad for something.
Geoff 1:24
Elephant by who?
Georgie 1:25
Tame Impala.
Geoff 1:27
Tame Impala, okay. Okay.
Georgie 1:29
Yeah.
Geoff 1:29
Starting to seem familiar. Let me let me give this a little bit of a squiz.
Georgie 1:33
You will know the first like, it starts playing. And then you’ll—
Geoff 1:37
I’ve got (laughs) the Menulog ad came on and I thought that was the song. (laughs)
Georgie 1:41
(laughs)
Geoff 1:44
Like, I’ve heard this song before, it’s on Menulog!
Georgie 1:48
I can hear is, is that being like recorded in your—
Geoff 1:52
Yeah, no, it’s not.
Georgie 1:53
Okay.
Geoff 1:54
Oh, this song.
Georgie 1:55
See, you know it.
Geoff 1:57
Yeah.
Georgie 1:57
So anyway, you heard of The Wiggles though, right?
Geoff 2:01
Yeah, I’ve heard of The Wiggles as well. I mean, I’ve been traumatised my entire life coming to Australia being named Geoff. And subsequently—
Georgie 2:11
Ohhhh.
Geoff 2:11
Also, maybe, like, arriving to morning standup late cuz I sleep. (laughs) You can imagine the times I get the get the quote.
Georgie 2:25
Yeah. So for our international listeners, The Wiggles are a children’s music group or band.
Geoff 2:36
Let’s, let’s say that they’re a 90s children’s music.
Georgie 2:40
90. Yeah, yeah.
Geoff 2:41
These days, they’re not as relevant.
Georgie 2:44
Oh, well, I don’t know. Right? Because what? We’re not, we’re obviously not the target audience anymore. But I was.
Geoff 2:52
I take it back. My niece—
Georgie 2:52
I was reading about them. Yeah.
Geoff 2:55
Yeah, she listens to The Wiggles and she dances with more or less, Emma, that is a ballerina, so she enjoys Emma more than the rest of The Wiggles. Anyway, yeah.
Georgie 3:05
So yeah, a bit of historical context that yeah, The Wiggles formed in 1991. And—
Geoff 3:12
Serious?
Georgie 3:13
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And—
Geoff 3:16
I was born!
Georgie 3:17
That’s, yeah, same.
Geoff 3:19
That’s right, we’re the same age.
Georgie 3:20
The lineup changed in like 2000, I think it’s 2012. They sort of changed. There’s only one or original member in the current lineup. But yeah, I guess you could say they, they sort of pioneered, like, children’s music entertainment in Australia. And I think they’re actually known fairly well in in the US, I think, according to Wikipedia. They didn’t do as well in the UK.
It’s interesting.
But—
Geoff 3:50
Yhey’re basically like the Beatles for kids. Like—
Georgie 3:53
Exactly. And you know, what I was thinking is, people are very quick to have a dig at certain genres of music they don’t like for example, you know, kpop I know that’s not in everyone’s tastes, metal music is not everyone’s tastes, rap, r&b. People were really quick to comment about that. But to comment on The Wiggles is, it’s almost seems like it’s very wrong to start shitting on a children’s entertainment band, because they sing really simplistic songs or something like that. It just seems like the wrong thing to do. Especially given what The Wiggles has done to like to change like children’s entertainment, music.
Geoff 4:32
Let’s also be real here. The Beatles, they have a song called Yellow Submarine, I believe.
Georgie 4:41
Yep.
Geoff 4:42
That is, by far the most simplistic song I’ve ever heard, more simplistic than The Wiggles’ “Fruit Salad”. Like they say “fruit salad yummy, yummy”. And Beatles say I, “we all live on a yellow submarine”, like.
Georgie 4:58
It’s similar to Octopus’ Garden. Have you heard Octopus’ Garden, goes “I like to”—
Geoff 5:02
I haven’t heard of Octopus’ Garden.
Georgie 5:02
Oh, well it goes, “I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’ garden in the shade”. But yeah, the thing I thought about is how The Beatles, you knowm they were around in the 60s was when they kind of started becoming big. I’m a pretty big Beatles fan. And I grew up with the Beatles playing in our house because my dad was a fan. My mum didn’t really like them because she would say that they wrote really simplistic, not very interesting songs. But it’s really hard to deny how they sort of, they changed music for like the better, they inspired people. But it makes me think of if somebody tried to copy what The Beatles did back then, today, and tried to write these really simplistic songs, they wouldn’t get very far because basically someone’s already done it. Someone’s already like, done this like foundation of stuff.
Geoff 5:56
Ah well... Let’s let’s let’s hold off a little bit because there are hip hop songs that are “Gucci gang Gucci gang Gucci gang Gucci gang Gucci gang, Gucci gang Gucci gang Gucci gang”, called “Gucci gang”.
Georgie 6:08
I don’t know that song.
Geoff 6:10
But that’s like, today’s hip hop has seriously reduced in the number of lyrics and apparently the number of chords that are required to to make it, But but yeah, to say that they didn’t have the the, like a positive or big effect on on the music industry. Just because you don’t listen to them is a bit... It’s a narrow minded, but yeah. Yeah, you wouldn’t have heard the Gucci gang song because I mean, it’s ridiculous.
Georgie 6:44
I mean, things have changed a little bit recently, I guess, in the way people create music as well. And, you know, instruments or lack of instruments they use. But yeah, I mean, I guess I was speaking quite like lyrically, I guess. And even I suppose the chord progressions are quite similar. And they’re, I don’t know if you’ve seen those YouTube videos where people use the same four chords to sing a variety of songs.
Geoff 7:10
Oh.
Georgie 7:11
Many songs do use the same, use the same chords.
Geoff 7:15
There’s a video called the four chord song.
Georgie 7:19
Yeah, it’s probably that.
Geoff 7:20
Yes. It’s by Axis of Awesome. Yeah, Melbourne comedians. Yeah, god, that was so good at the time.
Georgie 7:28
I mean, it’s also kind of educational, like, I come from a slightly musical background, because I was like, a classically trained pianist, and I play guitar a bit. But like, I’m not that good, like, musically these days. But it’s always interesting to have these like, sort of musical tidbits.
Geoff 7:46
Yeah. I was watching these YouTubers called TwoSet, TwoSet violin. And they’re, they’re a classical music channel. And they’re a couple of violinists essentially. And they, every now and then they bring in a music producer, who does, you know, more of the cinematic and more of the hip hop genre to help them like write a hip hop song, or do like some some kind of music that’s outside of the classical range. Like, he teaches them how to make these songs, because the the premise is that hip hop is super easy to make. And like lo fi beats are super easy to make. And it’s it’s like trivial to classically trained musicians. So it’s just really funny to watch them try to do good music, like good hip hop music, and their most recent one was just to try and imitate Hans Zimmer. And the thing is, they never look at these tools, the he, like these producers, like showing them these tools were kind of like GarageBand, where it has every instrument. And you literally just press keys on a keyboard, and you can change it to any other instrument you want. And it’s just funny to watch them. Like they do a melody on like a piano. And then later on, they’re like, oh I didn’t really want it on piano, so they just like switched to trumpets and be like, oh my god, you can just switch it to trumpets? Where’s the skill? Where’s? Where’s the skill involved in just switching the instrument on the notes, oh man.
Georgie 9:33
Yeah, I guess music’s changed quite a bit. It’s kind of been more, I mean it’s kind of more accessible now. People will be to create music, but then like to write something that’s actually good. Like I’m not saying it needs to be extremely complex. And I think that’s what’s so interesting about it is that you can write a pretty simple song, and it would still sound good. Like, quote unquote good. Yeah.
Geoff 9:57
The, like recently it’s been, there, there’s been videos or something, oh, what was I watching? Anyways, they were talking about how hip hop isn’t easy, because it’s actually really difficult to create songs that connects with a wide audience. I think it was actually Hot Wings with Lorde. And she was talking about, she was talking about this, like, the the ability to just connect with so many people with a simple melody is not easy. It’s not easy at all. Especially when it’s perceived as easy. It’s kind of like our jobs, to be honest, like, people think it’s just super easy to make a website. And then they like—
Georgie 10:47
What that, what’s that bloody builder that keeps getting in ads? I’m not gonna I’m not gonna say it. But there’s like, those website builder, you know, make our jobs seem—
Geoff 10:54
Website builders.
Georgie 10:55
Fucking redundant, and I don’t wanna... ugh.
Geoff 10:59
Exactly, like automation, and all of these like things where there’s tools to make the thing. And it’s relatively easy sounding. But then, of course, when you want to actually go into, you know, mass market, it’s, it’s a harder thing to do. Yeah, it’s funny there are tools out there. Like there’s supposed to be an AI that just builds websites for you. You’re like, “I want to blog” and it just like builds one for you.
Georgie 11:27
Spits one out for you, just regurgitates one that looks the same as every other one.
Geoff 11:32
Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of like the idea behind the AI is to try and make it like, ever so slightly more different. Just to just to, I think it’s called Grid. AI. I don’t want to plug them. But yeah, Grid AI. But yeah, I think from—
Georgie 11:48
Sunsetting—ha, is that, wait, are they closing alright?
Geoff 11:53
AI was easy—oh, they sunsetting Oh, this is literally sunsetting.
Georgie 11:58
Is this what you wanted, Geoff?
Geoff 12:00
This is what we wanted. We wanted—
Georgie 12:01
Oh no wait, they’re saying Version Three.
Geoff 12:04
Oh, version three.
Georgie 12:05
They’re coming out with a new version. Boycott. Boycott, close tab.
Geoff 12:09
Boycott. I mean, we all know that automation isn’t isn’t like the most effective way to achieve stuff. You hate automation. Like, right?
Georgie 12:23
Yeah, I’m not a fan.
Geoff 12:25
Yeah.
Georgie 12:26
But we were talking about The Wiggles.
Geoff 12:28
We were talking about The Wiggles. And now we’re talking about automation.
Georgie 12:36
Yeah, so anyway, I just, yeah, I was listening to The Wiggles cover of Tame Impala, oh Tame Impala’s Elephant song, and they weaved Fruit Salad into it. Which was really clever, actually. It was really good.
Geoff 12:52
I wonder if they got here.
Georgie 12:55
They do. It’s on YouTube.
Geoff 12:58
Oh, cool. Anyway, so you’re saying they weaved—
Georgie 13:02
They weaved “fruit salad, yummy, yummy”. Yeah, anyway, um, did you listen to a lot of The Wiggles growing up though? Or did you, were you kind of exposed to it as a as a kid? Like, I wouldn’t say that—
Geoff 13:15
I wasn’t exposed to it.
Georgie 13:16
I’ve watched a lot of it, but I just I just heard, like, I heard a lot of their songs even though I don’t remember, you know, being put in front of the TV and watching them.
Geoff 13:25
Same same. I think I got wind of most of their songs. I never went to a concert. My nieces go to concerts for The Wiggles. But I don’t think I ever went as a kid to the concerts. I think my first concert was like Linkin Park.
Georgie 13:47
Oh my god. Are you for real, dude, when was this? Because I was I used to be a really big fan of Linkin Park, but I’ve never seen them.
Geoff 13:55
It was their—
Georgie 13:56
Meteora? Hybrid Theory.
Geoff 13:58
Sorry? No, it’s when they did Minutes to Midnight. Midnight to Minutes? Minutes to Midnight?
Georgie 14:03
Oh dude. You saw them like after they were—
Geoff 14:04
I was really late.
Georgie 14:05
...good. Yeah, you were fucking late.
Geoff 14:07
I liked Minutes to Midnight. All right, OK?
Georgie 14:09
Was, that was—that was, Geoff? That was like the turning point. You got to listen—
Geoff 14:14
I know. I listened to all their old stuff.
Georgie 14:17
Oh you have.
Geoff 14:18
Yeah, I did, I did.
Georgie 14:19
It’s like a line I tell people is like, you need to listen to all stuff because like, I’m just one of those dickhead purists when it comes to music.
Geoff 14:26
Yeah, like artists. Artists fucking hate you. They’re like, why are fans putting us in a box? So we can’t fucking like the artists.
Georgie 14:36
No, it’s so true, though. Because I think there was an artist who said like, where we are supposed to like fucking change. Like you can’t expect us to create the same shit again and again. It’s boring for us as musicians. And it’s like, you know, if you like us, our music when we change that’s cool, but you don’t like you don’t have to, because at some point, music becomes like a business right? If you become a really popular a musician, like you can’t sing the same shit all the time because it may not make money and then like, sometimes you got to lose the fan base. I don’t know if you’ve heard that before, but it’s actually an interesting topic.
Geoff 15:12
It totally makes sense. I mean, like, just because the artist is no longer making new songs in the same style that you like, it doesn’t mean the songs before that you liked disappear. Just keep listening to the old stuff. It’s like just (laughs), I don’t see a problem to be honest. Yeah. And everyone who gets angry about it is just so bad. They don’t respect the, they clearly don’t respect the band and the art of being an artist. They’re just selfish bastards who can’t like, let go of the past. Yeah, I mean, like, it’s kind of like when a, an artist dies, everyone gets really sad about artists dying.
Georgie 15:53
Their music lives on. etc.
Geoff 15:55
Yeah, their music is still there. I don’t see the problem everybody. Just listen to their music. Doesn’t matter if they’re alive or not.
Georgie 16:02
Listen, listen to what you enjoy. Like, even if it was from like, what? When was 1960? Like 60 years ago, right? This is why people still listen to The Beatles.
Geoff 16:12
Yeah, I mean.
Georgie 16:13
Yeah.
Geoff 16:14
All of my music taste like, end, like stops at 2010 or something like that. Like, you ask me for like an English song? I will, I will only recognize things prior to 2010 like Minutes to Midnight was released in 2007.
Georgie 16:29
Wait, so you’re saying you don’t know any songs from the, I mean, I agree with you because I don’t really listen to music that’s new. But—
Geoff 16:37
Yeah.
Georgie 16:38
Like, I don’t know. Surely you’ve heard of like The Weeknd?
Geoff 16:43
Yeah, yeah. So I’ve heard of—
Georgie 16:44
Wait, yeah we had a conversation about this, because you heard some some cover of Blinding Lights or something.
Geoff 16:48
Yes. Yeah.
Georgie 16:52
(laughs)
Geoff 16:52
The thing is, I know a few songs. Like I heard, I’ve obviously heard songs in the last decade. But like, if you looked at my playlists that I would listen to on repeat, you’d find that all of the English songs are so freakin old. It’s because like the new songs they just don’t make it into into my playlists. I think like the last one that made it into playlists was like Sunflower. By what’s his name? The weird...
Georgie 17:22
This does not ring a bell.
Geoff 17:24
Song, Sunflower song. It’s by Post Malone because it’s in a movie. This is how I learned about new new songs. They come up in movies and soundtracks and stuff like that. But they don’t often make it into my repeat list. And like, we go like, I don’t know, road tripping. Almost none of the newer songs kind of come up in road tripping, we’re always singing like 90s hit songs. But yeah, that’s kind of like—what were we talking about talking about? Concerts, oh right?
Georgie 18:01
Like diehard fans of concerts.
Geoff 18:03
Yeah diehard fans.
Georgie 18:04
So you said your first concert was Linkin Park in, so this would have been about 2010 or something like that?
Geoff 18:10
Only... was 2010. Was that 10 years ago? No, I went earlier than that. Probably eight or nine.
Georgie 18:20
Hey, so you know, you went to a concert before I did. My first concert was in like 2011. And I wouldn’t call it a concert. Yeah?
Geoff 18:30
Got tickets as a birthday present. I think my sister and I went to watch Linkin Park. Yeah.
Georgie 18:37
Where, where, where’d you see them?
Geoff 18:39
In Perth. I was still in Perth at the time. The thing is like it was the first time I went to like one of those stadium or big concert halls. And thankfully we got seats because I looked down at the mosh pit, and I was like, hell no.
Georgie 18:54
Don’t wanna be there?
Geoff 18:56
I would not, I would not, I would not survive. I’m small. I’m a small person, we’re small people. Get crushed and die.
Georgie 19:03
I used to like mosh pits and like, so—
Geoff 19:06
How can you breathe?
Georgie 19:08
I guess my first concert, I wouldn’t even call it a concert was in 2012 was just a gig at a like a ball for a solo artist who had come out of it emo punk rock band called Armor for Sleep, so it was like super niche—
Geoff 19:22
Oh I know Armor For Sleep.
Georgie 19:23
You, what the fuck, you know, how do you fucking know?
Geoff 19:26
I know.
Georgie 19:26
Shit.
Geoff 19:27
Yeah I know.
Georgie 19:28
I like, hardcore Armor For Sleep fan.
Geoff 19:32
Yeah Armor For Sleep, I know them.
Georgie 19:33
Holy shit.
Geoff 19:33
They’re in my, they’re in—
Georgie 19:36
What To Do When You Are Dead, best fucking concept album of all time.
Geoff 19:40
(laughs)
Georgie 19:41
Maybe, I dun—
Geoff 19:42
Is it advice?
Georgie 19:44
Is—no it’s not, just a it’s a commentary on like, I guess you could say it’s a social commentary on what happens in the afterlife. But anyway, amazing, amazing album What To Do When You Are Dead, by Armor For Sleep. So yeah, Ben Jorgensen was the lead singer and he had a bit of a short solo career, and he, I don’t know why he fucking came to Australia, but he did. And I was like shit, man, this is I’m not missing this for the world. So I that was my first gig.
Geoff 20:10
He solo’d out here? He didn’t come in with Armor For Sleep.
Georgie 20:13
Yeah, he didn’t—well, I mean they did, years, years ago before, years before he had his little solo career. And now Armor For Sleep is doing like reunion shows in the US or they have a few coming up, I assume, you know COVID safe, etcetera.
Geoff 20:32
You know what I saw the other day?
Georgie 20:34
Mm?
Geoff 20:34
It was an ad for Kiss. Kiss. Kiss’s final final tour. I don’t believe it.
Georgie 20:41
Final final version two, dot psd?
Geoff 20:43
Yeah, final final version two. Final real final, complete.
Georgie 20:49
So, but you know when they do that sometimes they say this is our final farewell you know, Armor For Sleep had one too but then they do a reunion and you’re like hey, you lied.
Geoff 20:58
Exactly! Exactly.
Georgie 21:00
It’s a bit, it’s a bit funny because like undoubtedly even a big band like Kiss, they’re, they’re gonna have. They gotta have a reunion tour, right?
Geoff 21:08
It’s kind of like, like Rugs A Million? You see an ad for Rugs A Million every year.
Georgie 21:15
I don’t know what that is.
Geoff 21:17
Oh, it’s a store that sells rugs.
Georgie 21:19
Oh, wait it’s one of those giant warehouse rug sales?
Geoff 21:23
Yeah, it’s just like a giant rug, warehouse—
Georgie 21:27
With the obnoxious ads?
Geoff 21:28
Yeah, yeah yeah. Rugs A Million, buy a lotta rugs, rug, rugs, and then the thing is—
Georgie 21:35
Maybe we should get them to sponsor us. (laughs)
Geoff 21:38
Well they’re always closing down. It’s an ad every year for like, “huge reductions on our Amelia range, Rugs A Million closing down again in whilst it’s all stock, stock is running out”, they do this every year and they never close. (laughs) Always having a closing down sale.
Georgie 21:56
(laughs)
Geoff 21:57
But they never fucking close. And I think they’re like a law.
Georgie 22:00
All the more reason to get them to sponsor us.
Geoff 22:04
I think I think there’s, I think someone brought in a law, like you can’t can’t tell people you’re closing down without closing down. It’s supposed to be a law.
Georgie 22:16
Oh, man.
Geoff 22:19
Back to like the dead artists thing.
Georgie 22:21
Wait oh yeah, no, back to your stadium comment though. Like I—
Geoff 22:25
Oh, yeah.
Georgie 22:25
Because I really liked going to see bands and I photographed bands for for a few years.
Geoff 22:34
Oh, how did you get into that?
Georgie 22:36
Oh, yeah, I studied black and white photography at uni. There’s like a—
Geoff 22:43
Hold on—
Georgie 22:44
I guess you could call it a minor—
Geoff 22:45
You have a unit—
Georgie 22:45
It’s not a major. Yeah, it was an entire like—
Geoff 22:48
A whole unit, for just black and white photography.
Georgie 22:51
I had like, I think I was like, even two units. And it was like—
Geoff 22:53
Wow.
Georgie 22:53
The darkroom processing and everything like that. So it was like, old school process in the dark room. You know, you got to make your own film—like, not make your own film. What’s the word?
Geoff 23:06
You have to process your own film?
Georgie 23:08
Print—yeah. Do all the testing. You would waste a lot of photo paper. If because—
Geoff 23:14
So not minimalist.
Georgie 23:17
Print it out—I still I still have some photos. But yeah, I mean, obviously they have a few memories attached to them. But I accumulated so much like, I wouldn’t call it junk, just needed a lot of stuff. It’s an expensive hobby. And yeah.
Geoff 23:30
The, so is the unit is the whole like unit slash minor, about like about getting graded on how well you can process these photos. Like is the art of black and white and the technical.
Georgie 23:47
Yeah, yeah. So you learn like you learn how to take a photo like with, you know aperture, and all that kind of stuff like technically how, what, what do you learn from like, camera, the camera itself. And then you learn about all of the actual darkroom processes, how to have how to, like print the picture. And so if if you fail in that part, obviously, you not going to come out with a very good picture, even if your film looks fucking amazing, right? Because you need to be able to print it propertly. And then like the final piece of work is a piece of art, which of course, it’s a little bit subjective. I think we were given, ah it’s hard for me to remember because it was a while ago, like 10 years ago now, but there was like a topic you had to stick to or like some kind of concept.
Geoff 24:31
Yeah.
Georgie 24:31
That’s where your pictures had, the subject of your photos had to be in that or something like that.
Geoff 24:36
So yeah, I did a photography unit. And the one task or assignment that was very, that I can remember clearly is pastiching. For those people who don’t know what the word is, it’s basically taking taking a photo or taking inspiration addition from an original art original work and recreating it in the same style, but with your own take on it or whatever. Like reblogging or retweeting, quote, retweeting
Georgie 25:16
Seems like commentary on the original artwork.
Geoff 25:19
Yeah, yeah.
Georgie 25:19
But like, recreating it?
Geoff 25:21
I can’t—yeah, yeah. So I can’t remember which artists I, I did a copy of. But pastiching, imitating the style of an artist or work, so yeah, I remember having to do one of those. And, of course, like, I took the photo, and they’re like, yeah, yeah... nah, I got a mediocre score. So yeah, anyways, you were saying about, like black and white photography, cool. You’re doing that unit. And then—all that liner?
Georgie 25:52
Yeah, took my camera to a couple of the gigs I started going to just sort of practice but obviously, it’s fucking shit. Because it’s low light, right? And I had just like this black and white camera. And, you know, eventually I got, like, a really cheap digital camera, or I borrowed my parents one. And I just brought that along to take some digital photos. And it’s like, kind of fun challenge because it’s like I first I cared about taking photos of these bands I really liked. But then I got like, really into it. And I think I eventually, like, did a bit of research and bought my own DSLR I can’t remember what my first camera was.
Geoff 26:31
Was probably Canon.
Georgie 26:32
It was a Canon. Yeah, it was a Canon. I just thought it was it like a might have been 1000D. So it wasn’t even like, it wasn’t super great.
Geoff 26:40
Yeah.
Georgie 26:41
Super basic stuff. Just wanted to take some nicer pictures with a more professional camera than your traditional point and shoot.
Geoff 26:48
My one was a Nikon. I remember that.
Georgie 26:53
I think it’s because my black and white film camera was a Canon. So I got, I just got a Canon digital one. And then yeah, eventually, I met some people who were also taking photos that obviously were like better than me. And then I found out that they took photos for certain publications, and I just kind of, yeah, tried to sort of apply for one on them. And then that was kind of how I got my foot in the door, so to speak, wasn’t really that good to begin with. But the thing I loved about the whole experience was like it was a kind of a whole learning thing. It was, though it came with its own challenges of trying to take photos of moving objects in, moving subjects in low light, and enjoy the music at the same time. And yeah, it was really fun. So yeah.
Geoff 27:40
Yeah, I think this kind of just speaks to the fact that if you really want to learn something, you should relate it to something that you enjoy. And for you is kind of like you wanted to learn to use your camera. And via the concert stuff, you were able to kind of get better at taking photos, right?
Georgie 28:06
Yeah.
Geoff 28:07
And that’s kind of how I got into my career as well. Developing stuff. It was basically like, I was playing online games, and a lot of these games had fan sites or if everyone knows Neopets and—
Georgie 28:22
Oh my god yep yep. Neopets.
Geoff 28:24
Its profile editor. But yeah, I mean, like I was playing games, people made websites for the games, I wanted to make websites, or at least help people make the fan sites for games. And that’s essentially how I met—I actually designed my stuff at first, because I didn’t know how to code it.
Georgie 28:45
Photoshop and stuff?
Geoff 28:46
Yeah, just Photoshop it. Oh, slicing on Photoshop, exporting to Dreamweaver, and then adding iframes to different boxes. That was a—
Georgie 28:57
Yo be honest, I didn’t really use Dreamweaver a lot. I just actually did a lot of my stuff in like, I think I did Paint Shop, I think was a Paint Shop Pro person before I used Photoshop.
Geoff 29:06
Woah.
Georgie 29:06
Yeah. And then I’d leave a blank area for the iframe. And then I’d absolutely position it and have like a fucking image map. For the—
Geoff 29:13
Wow image mapping.
Georgie 29:15
I don’t—yeah, image because I had my navigation is—this is so inaccessible—but my navigation was like as part of this giant image just like printed text.
Geoff 29:22
Yeah, yes.
Georgie 29:23
And that was an imagemap.
Geoff 29:24
Yeah, I went the other way, because the export from Photoshop would turn it into tables. And then I just delete the cell and then put an iframe in it.
Georgie 29:34
(laughs)
Geoff 29:34
Without getting too sweaty about the details. I met someone online who was was actually a front end developer. So I gave them my design and they came back with a zip file and I looked at it and I was like, holy shit. This is really good. So I reverse engineered their code and learnt how to do front-end.
Georgie 29:54
That’s sick. That’s the view source, like the view source thing. I think I learned a lot by viewing the source of a webpage.
Geoff 30:00
Yeah, exactly.
Georgie 30:02
Did you, like come across those view source like, people would try and like, obscure the source of their page because people copied their stuff.
Geoff 30:11
I mean—
Georgie 30:12
And they’d just try and put a big comment with like an ASCII art of like a skull and stuff. I counted that a lot.
Geoff 30:20
I don’t think I counted it a lot. But I understand like, everyone’s kind of, like, concern around it.
Georgie 30:27
People were protective and it’s like theft was a big thing back then. Now, people don’t give a shit because it’s like—
Geoff 30:32
Yeah.
Georgie 30:32
It’s different.
Geoff 30:33
Even when we got into professional stuff. Like, I got asked how to obfuscate our JavaScript. And I was like, yeah, but anyone’s gonna be able to figure it out, no matter how much shit you do to it.
Georgie 30:48
Yeah. Because I feel like this was a big thing when I was like, learning to code and you didn’t—
Geoff 30:53
Why did you? Why did you start to learn to code?
Georgie 30:58
It’s a similar thing to you. So like, I think I might have just played on Neopets at first as well. That was like my first sort of like playing games online. And then you got to make your pet page or whatever. And then I gradually just got more curious as to how to make webpages. And that’s how I kind of learned, and then I moved away from Neopets because it was obviously really restrictive. Like, I wanted to just make my own page from scratch. So yeah.
Geoff 31:23
Yeah. What was what was your, your own page? Like, you were like, I’m sick of Neopets because they’re restrictive, but what did you make?
Georgie 31:33
So I think there was like, it doesn’t exist anymore. But there was something called Matmice, which I think might have originated in Australia.
Geoff 31:42
Math mice?
Georgie 31:43
Mat. Matmice, so I think it was like three sisters or three friends who—
Geoff 31:48
Oh my god.
Georgie 31:49
Wanted like a web page. Oh it’s just one page, web page provider.
Geoff 31:52
Free invite only social network aimed at children and teenagers find founded by three sisters in 2000.
Georgie 31:59
Yeah, so I had a page on Matmice and I just put all these like cute graphics on it, and like just other information about me, was just like a single page and like it had just more freedom in in what you could code.
Geoff 32:14
To express yourself! As an artist.
Georgie 32:17
Yeah! So that really spoke to me and then I think I moved to Freewebs after that. And, you know. That—
Geoff 32:26
Yeah, and then you decided to start a blog?
Georgie 32:29
Yep. Which started on Live Journal. Don’t try and fucking look for me.
Geoff 32:33
Oh, yeah. Live Journal.
Georgie 32:36
Yeah.So I started on Live Journal in like, yeah 2002, 3. And then, gradually—
Geoff 32:42
Do you remember what compelled you to—
Georgie 32:45
Blog?
Geoff 32:45
...tell people about your life?
Georgie 32:49
Yeah, I do.
Geoff 32:49
And your thoughts?
Georgie 32:50
Yeah, so I’ve always been like, really into writing stories and things. Maybe not so much now. But when I was younger, I like writing stories and poetry. And then I kept it, I kept a diary which is like, you know, usual teenage diary or you know, preteen diary, “dear diary, today I had—”
Geoff 33:10
“This cute boy looked at me this morning, and I fell in love”.
Georgie 33:14
(laughs) Don’t stereotype. But it’s so funny that we both like have the same thought there.
Geoff 33:22
It’s the only thing that gets stereotyped in every American—
Georgie 33:25
In every, yeah.
Geoff 33:26
TV show, movie.
Georgie 33:27
In every girl writing a diary thing. Yeah, I like to write a lot. And it was like, in, I think I was like, 11 or something. And my friend and I both had diaries, but we were like, cool with sharing secrets with each other. Not that I really wrote like, heaps of secrets or anything to be ashamed about. But then we’d just read each other’s diaries. It was no big deal. And, you know, it kind of like was a way of sharing what was going on through our minds without having to have a full conversation about it. And just, it was a different kind of, you know, friendship, openness thing. And then that’s how I became comfortable with writing about my life to strangers on the internet. As weird as that sounds.
Geoff 34:09
It is kind of weird.
Georgie 34:10
That’s what got me into like, writing stuff on the internet.
Geoff 34:13
Yeah. Like Twitter is described, or was early, described earlier, as kind of like a radio station to me. Like, you kind of just broadcast your thoughts and you hope somebody dials in to the, to the, to the line to tell them.
Georgie 34:29
That’s what it was like. Maybe people still have that mentality today, but I remember because I joined in like 2009 I think? Or 2008, end of 2008.
Geoff 34:40
I’m 2010. Oh I’m so late.
Georgie 34:45
Like when I joined I actually joined because I was participating in you know, Namecheap, the domain registrar. I was participating in one of their competitions that they had going around Christmas, hence I joined in December.
Geoff 34:59
Cos you’re, you’re a name, domain name hoarder.
Georgie 35:03
I’m not anymore dude. I’ve only got like, three?
Geoff 35:06
Or you were? Yeah.
Georgie 35:08
I was. Yeah. But yeah, that’s why I originally joined Twitter. And at the time, I probably had, yeah, like, I was following 10 people, and they all followed me back because they were my friends. And I would literally use it as like a status update thing, because it would say, “What are you doing?” Or “What’s happening?”
Geoff 35:27
Oh yeah the prompt. The prompt “What’s happening”. Today’s “what’s happening”, I don’t remember what it used to be.
Georgie 35:33
Yeah, it used to be “What are you doing?” Or what’s on... whatever, it doesn’t matter, but it’s—
Geoff 35:37
What’s on your mind? Like, Facebook’s, “what’s on your mind?”
Georgie 35:40
Yeah.
Geoff 35:41
Fuck Facebook, man.
Georgie 35:43
Yeah, let’s not get started. But um, yeah, I was writing on Twitter, like, oh, “I’m making a cup of tea”. And then like, a few hours later, I’d say, “writing a blog” or whatever, writing a blog post, you know, and that’s, that’s what it was, like.
Geoff 35:56
Oh back in the day.
Georgie 35:58
...microblogging. And you know, now it’s just like, to me, this is what Twitter is to me these days, screaming into the void. And like you said, hoping somebody’s gonna fucking listen, I don’t care, like I share onto Twitter every now and then, try to be all fucking active on the platform. And it’s just like, someone will like it. And I’ll be happy about it. I don’t really give a shit. It’s changed so much. It’s changed way too much.
Geoff 36:24
Yeah, I joined back when I was in San Francisco. I joined everything when I was in San Francisco. Everything from Foursquare to LinkedIn, to Twitter. Yeah, joined everything.
Georgie 36:39
That’s because everybody was kind of, like, it was getting, like the hot thing.
Geoff 36:44
Yeah, it was the hot thing. It was the hot thing. And everything in Silicon Valley is sort of like the hot thing. So every, everyone’s like getting you to sign up to their new startup and stuff like that. So I also signed up for my, oh what else did I sign up for? Anyways, those are the main ones, Foursquare, Twitter.
Georgie 37:03
Yeah.
Geoff 37:04
And, you know, everybody was like, I’m gonna check in at this location. It’s really cool. And so I got really wrapped up in it, you know, giving status updates at the random startup events. And actually, whenever I go to conferences, that’s when I get most followers when I like, live, tweet
Georgie 37:27
Met people.
Geoff 37:28
Conferences. And when I meet people—
Georgie 37:32
That used to happened to me as well. But like, I haven’t been to conference in a really long time now. But that was how I got followers too.
Geoff 37:40
Yeah, you speak as well. It’s crazy.
Georgie 37:42
Yeah, hasn’t happened for a while, but.
Geoff 37:46
So yeah, I got used to I mean, when, after I left the States, I kept checking in and one of my friends actually has a active—not an active, but used to have an active—list of their top restaurants in X category on Foursquare. And they would just reference that, they go, okay, just still go my Foursquare for for the top Chinese restaurants or whatever, in Sydney. But then I got really got, I got into thinking about exactly the privacy concerns for checking in, everyone kept checking in as soon as they got to places and I’m like, that means we know exactly where other people are at every given time. And I feel like that that get too, too close. Like someone can literally follow me. Problem was that, that people were checking in, as soon as they got to places, and you can just frickin follow someone wherever they are.
Georgie 38:43
Okay, that is actually that is actually yeah, quite—
Geoff 38:46
Everyone just kept checking in. It’s so creepy.
Georgie 38:48
Yeah. Because you could just follow someone’s movements if they were checking in every single place.
Geoff 38:53
Yeah. It was like—
Georgie 38:55
This is like contact tracing. But before like, before there was a pandemic.
Geoff 39:00
Yeah. And people were doing it willingly. No QR codes required. People just got to places, checked in. And it’s because I think Foursquare did a really good job gamifying it, they’re like you got points for checking it. And if you checked in the most times in the week or whatever, you’re king, you’re king of the coffee shop. Or you’re mayor, I think was mayor of the coffee shop.
Georgie 39:21
Yeah. Okay, so I didn’t use it, but like I would always see, I think, did they do reviews or something? I was always—
Geoff 39:27
Yeah, they did do reviews as well.
Georgie 39:29
...led to a Foursquare slight through looking for places to eat or whatever. And Foursquare seemed cool, but I just was never a member of it.
Geoff 39:37
I mean, it’s it was like a weird concept. And I don’t understand why everyone was so on board with it in terms of like checking in at every place so that they get they get the mayorship, and they also reveal their location to everybody almost live.
Georgie 39:50
Yeah, I bet it was the gamification part that got people, like people don’t think about privacy as much. I mean, people didn’t think about privacy as much as they do these days, even like this whole digital footprint thing even, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Geoff 40:06
And I remember like, in 2010, I think one of my very first tweets was like, “I’m not going to use this very often”. And now 10, 10, 11 years later, and I’ve got, what, 3900 tweets or something like that. 4000 tweet.
Georgie 40:28
I have like 100,000, but—
Geoff 40:30
Got 100,000! Holy crap.
Georgie 40:32
Yeah, have a look. No, but I was a very active user like back in the day.
Geoff 40:40
So I took that number, it’s three, it’s 3469, 3-4-6-9. You—
Georgie 40:43
Calculate an average?
Geoff 40:44
...divide that by the 11 years, I averaged 300 tweets a year.
Georgie 40:52
Can you calculate mine? I mean it’s—
Geoff 40:53
What’s yours?
Georgie 40:54
I dunno, just go look at my profile, right.
Geoff 40:59
But, but yeah, I was like, holy crap. I mean, it’s not a lot. It’s almost like average two tweets a month or something like that. Was it, 300?
Georgie 41:06
I mean, if I know—
Geoff 41:09
26 tweets a month.
Georgie 41:12
Yeah, I think I probably tweet like maybe once a week, on average these days. But yeah, back back in the day, I used to, I used to like basically chat on—I used to chat on this—
Geoff 41:25
100,500 tweets.
Georgie 41:27
100, was it 105,000?
Geoff 41:28
100,050 it a hundred thousand, five—a hundred and five thousand? What? A hundred and five hundred? Don’t ask me anymore!
Georgie 41:43
Yeah alright. 105.5k.
Geoff 41:45
Divided by like 14 years. That’s 7000 tweets a year.
Georgie 41:52
To be honest, I’m willing to bet that if you like, if you could dig deeper, you’d see that in the past maybe two to three years, like because I remember—I remember before I hit the 100k, it kept saying 99 point blah, blah. And that was actually quite a few years ago. So like my amount of tweet edge has like severely dipped. So to speak.
Geoff 42:13
Yeah. Yeah. I think the moment I realiaed, I mean, people were actually checking in on Twitter, Twitter as well. Like when Foursquare kind of died off, people checked in on Twitter. But yeah, that was probably a turning point where I was like, I don’t really need to broadcast anything to anyone.
Georgie 42:34
Yeah.
Geoff 42:34
So I stopped. And then when I went, started going to conferences, I started tweeting a little bit more because it you know, interesting content. And I guess that’s where my Twitter ended up being more about my industry and less about my life. Because yeah, a lot of people followed me from the industry. And now I work with someone who, who is semi semi famous. So the Twitter, Twitter has definitely become more of an industry thing, for me.
Georgie 43:08
Yeah, I think I think most of my followers are actually, people who have followed me as a result of me speaking at conferences, I think there was like a big like, maybe my, I don’t know, I think I have like 2000 followers? I can’t even remember to be honest with you. No, I think only 1000 How many followers I have.
Geoff 43:25
Oh my god, you have two and a half thousand followers?
Georgie 43:28
Two and a half. Yeah, so I reckon the first like 900 were probably people who like knew my blog because I got semi famous like through blogging and then you know, then I didn’t have a lot of followers for a while, and then I started speaking at conferences and then I got a good bunch more. So yeah.
Geoff 43:47
Oh who’s the um, completely forgot her name is Melissa, from, from Master Chef.
Georgie 43:56
Melissa Po?
Geoff 43:58
No, Melissa...
Georgie 44:01
I don’t know I don’t watch MasterChef. I need to cough, can you cut this out?
Geoff 44:11
Melissa Leong, so she’s super, she’s apparently really famous. And I had no idea who she was because she’s a, she’s a food blogger and I just don’t read blogs as you know. Don’t even read my friends’ blogs.
Georgie 44:24
I find it really interesting though, that like what people define as like fame as like, I’ve talked to some people I work with and they’re like, oh yeah, you’re like famous in the community. And one of my friends like who I used to work with, who used to be at my company and then has since left, he said oh, like I knew you before I started working there, I was like, what the fuck I was like, how did you know me? Like, probably from the community or something but—
Geoff 44:50
Yeah.
Georgie 44:51
Yeah. What does “famous”, mean, right, like for to some people I might be well known because it looks like I have a ton of followers or they saw me speak at multiple conferences. But then to me, someone who is famous clearly, like got more followers than me or, you know, has greater reach. Or if I have a conversation with someone else about this person, and they know them then like, yeah, that person’s more famous than me. It’s interesting.
Geoff 45:16
Yeah. Yeah, the, I always call my coworker famous, and by by measures of other influential web developers, she’s not very famous, like.
Georgie 45:32
Yeah.
Geoff 45:33
So she always sees herself as not that famous. I think she’s famous because I knew her before I knew her. Like—
Georgie 45:42
Yeah, yeah.
Geoff 45:44
That’s just it, right.
Georgie 45:45
Yeah.
Geoff 45:46
If their reputation precedes actually being in person and personable with them, then, that’s kind of like why I jokingly call someone famous.
Georgie 45:56
Yeah.
Geoff 45:58
You know, you know, me. Never want to be famous.
Georgie 46:02
I think like, I think my I think my manager is famous because he’s spoken at, like, conference like international, conferences multiple.
Geoff 46:11
Like, Mike. Mike is pretty famous.
Georgie 46:14
Yeah. And I’ve spoken at one, right. But then we have these arguments about like, ah, you’re more famous, I think I have more Twitter followers. I’m like, I don’t care. Like most of them are duds. Like, but another thing is like industry, right? So like, I will mention certain people to my husband, Nick, who’s like, he’s, uh, he works in product. He’s like a product manager. And he also has like a hobby and like iOS development. And like, he’;; mentioned people, but like, I don’t have a fucking clue who you’re talking about and I’ll mention people and he won’t know, because he doesn’t know about like, the front end space. And so yeah, it’s it’s just this weird thing that fame will kind of depend on what the person is famous in, so to speak.
Geoff 46:52
Yeah, it’s, I think, yeah, industry specific. I know there’s, there is a quite a popular developer in the front end space at the moment. And I’ve had his name come up in, in a lot of interviews, I say a lot. I’ve only done maybe three, or four. But like, two out of those four interviews, his name gets brought up. And my coworker is like, I can’t believe this guy has fanboys.
Georgie 47:23
(laughs)
Geoff 47:23
It’s kind of weird. Like, I wonder what he thinks of the fact that his name comes up.
Georgie 47:29
Yeah.
Geoff 47:29
Of his own infamy, or fame.
Georgie 47:33
So to speak, yeah.
Geoff 47:33
He comes up in the interviews. But it’s just sort of like the nature of it. I think we’re talking about I don’t know, front end architectures. And when someone has kind of like, developed some of our core front end architecture tools, then it’s hard not to bring up his name when you ask, like, what kind of tools do you like to use? It’s like, well, this tool by x name, you know?
Georgie 47:55
Yeah.
Geoff 47:56
It’s kind of like, you know, we only we only know what Atlassian is, because we’re in the software industry. Nobody outside our software industry knows who the hell Atlassian is.
Georgie 48:05
No one gives a shit.
Geoff 48:06
Yeah, they’re a double billion dollar company or whatever. And, but no one gives a shit.
Georgie 48:13
Yeah, it’s like, comparatively more people have heard of, say, like Google and YouTube, right? So I remember when I started, like, or I was maybe five years into my career or something. And like, I remember having a conversation with my mum about like, my mum was, I guess she was just has this traditional view of working for like a big company, right? And so if I said to her, I work for Google, for example, that would be a thing that she could tell people, people will be like, oh, yeah, like, that’s cool, right? Because they’ve heard of Google. But then it’s like, I work at Campaign Monitor. It’s like, no one really has really heard of that. And it’s also kind of a relative thing. Where like, people know, a place or they don’t know a place or they know of a certain like industry where or just don’t.
Geoff 48:57
Yeah, it’s kind of like I don’t know, back to the back to the music thing is kind of like, there’s only very few artists that have gained true global fame. When you say like Michael Jackson or Beyonce.
Georgie 49:12
Yeah.
Geoff 49:13
And like Kanye West and stuff like that. But then any any deeper than then like those global names. You lose so many people, it’s this is such a sharp, like—
Georgie 49:26
Yeah, so—have you heard of Lizzo?
Geoff 49:29
No, I haven’t heard of Lizzo.
Georgie 49:30
You have—get out. See, there we go.
Geoff 49:33
That’s it. Right. There’s a whole segment of the globe that knows Lizzo.
Georgie 49:37
Have you heard of Foo Fighters?
Geoff 49:39
Yeah, I’ve heard of Foo Fighters.
Georgie 49:40
All right, so I’ve gone too far. All right. Well, you know, Lorde, okay, well—
Geoff 49:44
Yeah, Lorde. Keith Urban?
Georgie 49:47
You know, Billie Eilish?
Geoff 49:49
Yeah, Billie. Yeah, I know Billie Eilish.
Georgie 49:51
But only because she stole our, um, nah, just sampled our pedestrian—
Geoff 49:56
Yeah, I saw that video, I don’t know. Did you also get it recommended on YouTube because it got recommended to me.
Georgie 50:03
Recog—nah, I didn’t get it recommended. I think Nick got it recommended, but I—
Geoff 50:06
You don’t have an account for Google, you can’t get recommendations.
Georgie 50:11
Actually I still do. Even though I don’t like sign in or anything I get like some kind of recommendations. But um, I saw that video a while back about how she sampled the, that sound from our pedestrian crossing. But I, to, to me it doesn’t. Like, I don’t know if it’s just me. But it doesn’t actually sound like she sampled a lot of it. I almost find it not recognisable in her song.
Geoff 50:36
Yeah, because he added a whole bunch of modulation to it. And it’s just literally a really fast click beat. It’s like—
Georgie 50:42
Yeah, I like I thought she would get the, brr! bit the the, you know what I’m talking about.
Geoff 50:47
Oh (high pitched onomatopoeia) du dududu, like—
Georgie 50:49
Thank you, that’s the one! I thought that part would be more like recognisable. But anyway, kudos to her—
Geoff 50:56
When I watched that video—
Georgie 50:56
...inspired by something entirely, entirely random almost.
Geoff 51:01
Yeah. When I watched that video, I was like, I thought yeah, okay. It’s kind of it’s kind of ingenious. But then after the video, he, I was like, okay, it is kind of ingenious. It is ingenious.
Georgie 51:13
It’s unique, right? Because I don’t think a lot of people would have really thought to do the same thing.
Geoff 51:19
This is accessibility at it’s like finest when you really, when you don’t even realise that these features are helpful for literally everybody.
Georgie 51:28
Yeah. Can we just take a moment to like, appreciate how like, awesome our pedestrian crosswalk, like—
Geoff 51:34
It really is. Yeah. When he said it when he’s like, this thing is ingenious, I tried to think of another crosswalk in countries that I’ve been to.
Georgie 51:47
Yeah nah ours is the best.
Geoff 51:48
I—
Georgie 51:48
Like, hands down.
Geoff 51:49
Yeah, like, in that, like, 10 seconds. I was like, he’s probably right. Like, I can’t think of any other better one. And then he explained it. And I’m like, yeah, he is right.
Georgie 52:01
Yeah. And you just don’t realise it because like, we’re like, clearly like able bodied people who we don’t really need those things that other people need in terms of like the sound and the, the tactility. And all that.
Geoff 52:15
Yeah, he touched on something about how the button doesn’t necessarily do anything. But he didn’t actually dive into, like, the psychological effects of having a button that does nothing. Like because people have a button, like, theoretically, because people have a button to press, they believe it’s doing something and therefore they are more willing to be slightly more patient, I think. Like that, that kind of psychological effect of having the button. We do this in web, and it’s kind of classified a dark user experience where you have a button for a feature that doesn’t exist—
Georgie 52:56
Is this like, almost like a perceived performance, thing?
Geoff 53:00
Kind of, kind of, it’s more of a marketing thing, because or not even a marketing marketing thing is more of an analytics thing. Because if you have a button that goes to a feature that doesn’t exist, and people click on it, you get told essentially—
Georgie 53:12
They’re interested.
Geoff 53:12
...that they’re interested. Exactly.
Georgie 53:14
Yeah.
Geoff 53:14
So you just track the click, and then after they click on it, you’re just like, this thing doesn’t exist. I’m like, this is stupid. But I get why people would do it.
Georgie 53:24
Yeah, that is a dark pattern.
Geoff 53:25
Yeah, perceived performance is also another thing where you just like trying to trick people into it. Oh, the mirror inside elevators.
Georgie 53:33
Oh, yeah. Which makes you perceive the elevator ride as like, not being that slow, because you’re occupied and maybe just having a quick look at yourself or something.
Geoff 53:40
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Georgie 53:42
And the space might be pretty small. But the obviously the mirrors make it seem like the elevator is bigger and maybe makes you more psych, like, psychologically makes you think it’s more comfortable.
Geoff 53:51
Exactly.
Georgie 53:52
Like cool, I will deal with this all the way up to level 25.
Geoff 53:58
I think some people were, I think it was a mistake. I don’t think they did it as a test or anything. They just put a mirror in there—
Georgie 54:03
They found out?
Geoff 54:04
Because it was aesthetic or something like that. And then they found out that people were people were like, immediately drawn to just you know, checking themselves, primping themselves or whatever. And they were just less frustrated when they got got to the end of the lift ride and like, and then they started putting mirrors everywhere in our lifts.
Georgie 54:24
I have to admit, like in my apartment building, there’s there’s two, there’s one spot that has two elevators, one of them has a mirror and the other one doesn’t. Every time I go in the one with the mirror. I do like take like 20 seconds to look—
Geoff 54:37
Instinctively!
Georgie 54:38
...atmyself. Yeah. And then I remember in the other one, like sometimes I’m standing in there and I’m just standing in there. I’m just listening to music and I end up like just kind of dancing, going, why, every now and then I’m like, oh, it’s taking a while, to go to basically the same level that I go to all the time, but it just, yeah, it does feel like it takes longer in the one without a mirror.
Geoff 54:57
Do you have a camera in your lift?
Georgie 55:00
No, not in the—
Geoff 55:03
Do you ever think—
Georgie 55:03
Not in it, but outside of it.
Geoff 55:04
Do you ever think there is one? Like you start dancing or something or singing? And you just pause? And you’re like, is there a camera? No, there’s no camera in here.
Georgie 55:13
Um, no, I don’t... I don’t really care because I don’t do anything like questionable. Like, I’m just dancing. I don’t care if they see me dancing. I’ll be like, cool. You have a fun time watching a woman dance in the elevator. Like I know that in my office building. There are like, there are cameras, because there’s just one straight up in the corner. And I’m like, sometimes I’m like, I’m in a hurry. And I’m like pacing in the elevator. Because like, because we’re at the top of the building, so it’s like level 38 or whatever.
Geoff 55:40
Yeah.
Georgie 55:41
So you’re in there for a while and these elevators very old so they’re even slower, and there’s no mirrors by the way. And so I’m just like pacing the elevator and I wonder if in security they’re just like, why she pacing or whatever. Also, full disclosure, sometimes I’m pacing because I really need to pee. And I’m like, the elevator’s so slow.
Geoff 55:58
Oh. You pace when you need to be? You don’t do the you don’t do the squirm? You do the pace.
Georgie 56:04
Squirm dance? It depends, right. In an elevator, like, I just feel like I need to walk around to hold my pee. Yeah, it, anyway.
Geoff 56:17
Yeah, I think—
Georgie 56:17
If I’m sitting I squirm. If I’m sitting then I probably like—
Geoff 56:21
And you cross your legs really tight?
Georgie 56:23
Yeah.
Geoff 56:24
You cross your legs really tight.
Georgie 56:25
Why not. Something like that.
Geoff 56:27
Do all the things.
Georgie 56:28
Yeah. Just yeah, I just don’t want to wet myself.
Geoff 56:30
I forget, I forget to pee. Like, I’ll sit down in the morning in front of my computer, do work. And then it’ll be like 5pm. And I hadn’t actually gone to the toilet. And all of a sudden, like, oh, shit, I need to, I need to go!
Georgie 56:43
You’re just like, I haven’t peed!
Geoff 56:45
Holy shit, I haven’t peed in, like, eight, ten hours.
Georgie 56:49
So like, there’s actually this thing that’s like, sometimes, you know, when you’re like busting to go, and like, you really need to go, there’s like, it’s kind of like, that’s the end of the line. Apparently, there is, I think there was a TED Ed video on this like, like, is it it’s, by the way, it’s not a good idea to hold your pee.
Geoff 57:05
Yeah, not a good idea, don’t do it.
Georgie 57:07
But at some point, like there’s a like, sometimes you’re busting just, you just gotta go. But other times you have an urge to go to the toilet, and like, but you can actually hold on for a longer period of time, because it’s not just, it’s just not at that level where you just really need to go. And so sometimes you’ll just be there for like, a couple hours before you’re like, oh, I actually need to go now, even though you have had actually the urge for like a couple of hours.
Geoff 57:34
Yeah, I can. I can forget. I can forget. It’s kind of like my hunger actually, I can can forget when I’m hungry. I’m like, oh I’m kind of hungry right now. And then I’ll kind of ignore it for a bit. And then it’ll be like an hour later, like, I was hungry wasn’t I?
Georgie 57:46
Oh so there is this thing with hunger as well that like your hunger is in like there’s like a sine wave thing. And so if you like if you don’t eat past this point, I think it’s called ghrelin, like G, R, E, H, L, I, N, if you want to look it up. It’s like, if you if you don’t eat anything past a certain point of you feeling hungry, then you’ll actually feel fine.
Geoff 58:10
“Ghrelin is a hormone that is produced and released mainly by the stomach with small amounts also released by the small intestine, pancreas and brain. Numerous functions termed hunger hormone. Because it stimulates appetite”. That’s really interesting.
Georgie 58:27
Yeah, so I think it’s something to do with like the level of this like increase and decreases over time during the day. So sometimes you can actually like if you don’t, if you forget to eat, you will not realise until later. Because that that hormone is just like, gone. Like it’s gone. It was kind of—
Geoff 58:44
I don’t eat breakfast.
Georgie 58:45
Yeah. Yeah, I don’t usually either. Like, I don’t eat like when I as soon as I wake up, because often I exercise first now. And then I’ll eat like an hour later.
Geoff 58:55
Yeah. Do you believe in breaking the seal?
Georgie 58:59
Oh for like, going to the toilet?
Geoff 59:01
For peeing, yeah.
Georgie 59:03
So Nick has talked to me about this. And he’s just like, “I don’t want to go because I’ll just break the seal”. So I’m just like, I don’t know like I don’t, I don’t think I have had enough experiences, like with regards to going to pee to really believe that. Like, I can see what what people mean by this, like—
Geoff 59:21
Like you’re on a plane, right...
Georgie 59:22
For people who have never heard about this. It’s just like, you go to the toilet and apparently, because you’ve gone, you’re just gonna keep going. Whereas if you didn’t go you would just you would be fine, just not, and not pee, right. That’s what it is. Right?
Geoff 59:34
Yeah. And it’s commonly because you’re on a plane, like the ideal scenario for this, I guess theory is that you’re on a plane.
Georgie 59:43
Long haul?
Geoff 59:43
So 5, 5, 7 hour flight, and you get on the plane and two hours in you need to go pee. But do you go to pee, go pee in for the risk of having to continuously go pee for the next seven like five hours? Or do, do you not go pee and basically keep the seal, and stay and, I dunno, not go to the toilet for seven hours straight?
Georgie 1:00:15
For me it depends on like, how how great is the urge to pee, right? So what I’ve learned over time and unlike I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I’m pretty sure a lot of people can relate, is that when I was a kid, I used to hold my pee so much like to the point of being uncomfortable, obviously, in primary school had an accident or two. And like, I just remember many times having like, like, because I used to drink a lot of water as well. Now I don’t like drink water like a complete nut, but I used to drink a lot of water in high school and I needed to go to the toilet every period. And like, I have experienced so much discomfort from holding my pee or needing to go to the toilet and not having an opportunity to do so. And that discomfort over time has just like kind of scarred me a little so if I need the toilet, I’m gonna go, because I would rather just go when I need to than be completely uncomfortable. And I don’t know, rupture my kidneys or whatever you, what have you, right.
Geoff 1:01:09
Yeah, my dad used to always tell me to go to the bathroom. Anytime we were at next to one or someone else was going or they, or he needed to go. It’s like you’re gonna go to the toilet. I’m like, I don’t need to go, and like, “you’re going”. Okay, okay. And then I inevitably have to actually go even though I didn’t feel like it. So that kind of taught me like, yeah, you might want to just go to the bathroom. But actually, for the most part, I can hold my, I can hold or slash not go to the toilet for like, five, five hours. Five to six hours because that’s the flight back home to Perth. I just sit there. I sleep. I completely forget about it.
Georgie 1:01:49
But is that because—ah, so you do feel like you need to go but then you’re just like, nah I won’t go.
Geoff 1:01:53
Sometimes. Sometimes. But yeah, that’s about all the time we have for all the toilet talk, you know. So.
Georgie 1:02:02
Can never have enough toilet... (laughs) Gotta talk about health. So we went from talking about The Wiggles to—
Geoff 1:02:09
In summary, Wiggles, dead musicians—
Georgie 1:02:12
Neopets.
Geoff 1:02:13
Neopets, a little bit of code, and peeing.
Georgie 1:02:15
And going to the toilet. So yeah, so you can you can follow us on social media, toastroastpod on Twitter and Instagram.
Geoff 1:02:27
Don’t forget to follow us on all the big ones. Apple Podcasts, Spotify podcasts,
Georgie 1:02:34
And the big urge to pee. (laughs)
Geoff 1:02:37
The big bowl, toilet.
Georgie 1:02:39
The big toilet.
Geoff 1:02:40
Bidet. The big bidet.
Georgie 1:02:41
The big bidet, yeah, let’s go with that.
Geoff 1:02:43
The big taurine where you go to the toilet and yeah, tell us a little time you had to hold your pee and you couldn’t go to the toilet, maybe stuck in traffic? And maybe a dead artist that you really miss for no reason.
Georgie 1:02:58
Oh no. I’ve got a story about the stuck in traffic one.
Geoff 1:03:02
Save it for next time.
Georgie 1:03:06
See you next time!
Geoff 1:03:07
Everyone stayed stayed chilly, be flabbergasted.
Georgie 1:03:11
Bye!
Geoff 1:03:11
See you next time.