The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss all the things that have happened this year, 2023. From Streaming, AI, Business, Social Media, and Yours Truly.
We hope you have an amazing year and we'll see you in 2024!
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Story Number 1 - 2:40
Story Number 2 - 28:00
Story Number 3 - 32:00
Story Number 4 - 41:47
Story Number 5 - 50:27
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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
----------
Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusiness
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
Follow Theo on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@therealtheoharvey
Follow Mr.Benja on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminJohnsonakaMrBenja
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The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss all the things that have happened this year, 2023. From Streaming, AI, Business, Social Media, and Yours Truly.
We hope you have an amazing year and we'll see you in 2024!
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Story Number 1 - 2:40
Story Number 2 - 28:00
Story Number 3 - 32:00
Story Number 4 - 41:47
Story Number 5 - 50:27
----------
Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
----------
Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusiness
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
Follow Theo on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@therealtheoharvey
Follow Mr.Benja on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminJohnsonakaMrBenja
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Theo Harvey: This is Show vs. Business, your weekly tuck on pop culture from two very different perspectives, with your host, the real Theo Harvey, and Mr. Benja, covering all the relevant info. So Mr. Benja, what are we covering today?
Mr.Benja: We're covering something special because we're covering all of 2023. What you're going to do?
Nothing. You're going to sit back and listen and be like, dang, that was really good, man. That really was 2023. That's what we're doing for this little wrap up of the year. We're thankful so much for you guys for having us this year. Let's get into what we're going to be covering though. We've got five batches, not five stories, but five batches.
We'll still call them stories though. We're going to have the streaming world and movies and TV that we remember some things that happened. A lot of crazy stuff went down. I know we were talking about Soka. We were talking about things happening at Amazon football and all that. There's just all kinds of stuff happening this year.
Also. We're going to have our AI watch recap for 2023. A lot of things happen with AI. Some of you may have started using AI. I'm personally over here talking to Bing GPT. Stay cool being, and we're just continuing on this ride. Was it everything we thought? Was it everything they promised?
There's a lot of money involved, so we're going to bring it up. Anyway, speaking of money being involved, we've also got the biggest business moves of 2023. Crazy things have been happening. A lot of money has been changing hands. And, I'm not even gonna say much about that because the video is going to jump in there and be like, hold on now.
So there's a lot to talk about with the business moves. Also, we're going to cover a general social media landscape. You guys remember pinky doll. You guys remember just. The craziness with threads and Elon Musk and Kanye West. It's, there's a social media has changed us forever. And we're just now starting to realize that it's changing us and it's a little stuff to talk about.
So we're going to cover that too. And finally, we're putting our little banter ish kind of discussion that we always have at the front at the end this time, because we really want to close it out with our moves in 2023. What we've accomplished, where we've been, what we've learned, et cetera, et cetera. And Theo, I think that about covers it because.
I just want to get into it pretty soon, right? Is that it? I love it, man. This is what we're
Theo Harvey: about. Our 2023 year review, Mr. Benja. Man, you know what? We're going to skip the banter today. We're just going to get right into it. So you want to go ahead and start us off, Mr. Benja?
Mr.Benja: Yeah, let's start it off with story number one.
This is the 2023 show versus business streaming best movies and TV shows from 2023 plus. Some general talk about the streaming action. So I misordered that, but we're going to talk about the general streaming first, uh, yeah. Streaming has been going crazy this year. It's we were getting used to these services and then they started merging and licensing off stuff.
We declared Netflix the winner of the streaming wars. Theo, how does, what's the general landscape for streaming now in 2023?
Theo Harvey: It's a hot mess, Mr. Benja. Ham, ham is what it is. Hot a mess. Look, Netflix is one. Let's just put it out there. They're the only streaming service that is profitable now.
Everyone else, even Disney. Plus, which had a, what, a those distance of overtaking Netflix is suffering now and starting to think about new ways to generate revenue max, which used to be HBO max completely bastardized his brand and just became this hodgepodge of Dr. Pimple popper and succession.
If you ever go to the streaming service it's a mess, man. I'm trying to watch, Ooh, what's the latest, hot TV show or the wire and Dr. Pimple popper. 90 day fiance. It just throws in my face every time I go to the app now. So anyway, and they're licensing all that great content of Batman and TV shows to Netflix now to generate some hot cash.
So yeah,
Mr.Benja: Max is a mess. I think Brian was looking for a Watchman and it's looked like that's going to be going away. So that's,
Theo Harvey: yeah. Watchman was a great series that came out in 2019 predated the the 2020, arrest we saw. But yeah, so max is down. Disney plus is down. We saw, we've been talking about down this pod for years.
Paramount plus people had that, you get it every now and then they're probably going to sell a whole company because they're not making money. They were owned by the redstones and it's privately owned by a family. And it, now that the chief of the Jerry Redstone is running it, but their dad passed away not too long ago.
And so they're probably going to sell it cause they're just not making any money. And you got Peacock, which, no one people know about that one. I think me and five other folks from NBC know about Peacock, but it's
Mr.Benja: Andrew Mackey was talking about Peacock. He said Twisted Metal is going to get renewed.
So I got to make sure I actually check it out now.
Theo Harvey: Gotcha. Gotcha. So like I said, it's these smothering of hodgepodge streaming service because remember at the time when Iker set it off, this kind of streaming war was saying in so many words that they were giving their best content to Netflix.
He said it was like giving away nuclear arms to third world country. You remember when Netflix used to license a lot of content from all these other cable show, cable channels and, companies and content companies and Netflix. That's why they had to go into their own original content because they knew that the licensing fees revenue was going to go down.
So that's when you had an orange is new black. And what's the other one with he, that should not be named Kevin Spacey. What was it called? I can't remember. That was House of cards. Puzzle cards. Yep. Those are the two ones that just blew up for Netflix and then it just went from there.
But yeah streaming as a matter of fact streaming as a flex They finally released their first ever what we're watching report as a data dump that included viewership figures for more than 18 000 titles from january to june of this year and it was breaking down like, you know What's going on and how they're seeing everything?
Netflix is absolutely like The world's global television, right? We talked about this before. This is the channel you go to watch squid game, or different TV shows from across the country. I'm exposing audiences to new content. I've been watching my wife's watches a lot of, shows from Africa, right? And different countries there. And so it's exposing, audiences to new kind of content that they don't see normally. Obviously, Squid Game is, huge and other type of topics. And so it's and then they have a broad fare. That's the stuff for the top 100 shows.
The ones that kind of do well for Netflix are shows that we're familiar with. Procedurals like Suits TV shows for kids, like Paw Patrol and things like that. A bingeable series is like Wednesday or you or Outer Banks. Like I said, they're becoming the first global television channel or television station for for the world, man.
It's crazy. So if Netflix won, that's pretty much it.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, that's what it looks like, man. I, they got in, did their job, not necessarily that a lot of the stuff was great on Netflix, but it's just getting in there, connecting with the people, giving them what they want to see technology was on point.
It worked out properly. The billing subscription and all that, the whole, everything about their process is pretty much in order, which I can't say for a lot of the other streaming services. I don't know if you remember my rant and my, my, my disgust with the HBO max search feature, where I searched for SCOO and I don't see Scooby do.
And then I hit B and all of a sudden Scooby Doo shows up and I'm like, what the heck? But but no, I guess we gotta give it to him, man. And also the Strikes went on, huh?
Theo Harvey: Yeah we talked about that around what the late summer time frame, those rumblings that the actors gonna strike, their reunion.
And I think they have a contract for every three years and they did it. Now, mind you, this is after we went through a pandemic where a lot of TV shows and movies are shut down and then the strike hit. So it's like this content lag of content over the last several months. We're starting to sense that now here in late December and probably we'll probably sense it also in the summertime where a lot of our content is going to be slowed slowed down, but yeah, man, the strikes actors were going against.
Obviously just streaming, talking about residuals. We had a big lengthy podcast about how the oranges and new black actors say they were getting like six cents to the dollar on some of their residuals. And, or even at the time, I think some of the actors are saying the actresses that were on that show that it worked in second, third jobs.
And they were on a hit TV show. Never knew it. stUff like that was, streaming and of course, AI, which we'll talk about later. This is definitely your artificial intelligence and what that meant for entertainment. Cause we know AI can basically mimic any type of writer if you type in the right prompts or even generate, images, that can mimic a human being. And so the actors really went hard on that in their negotiations. They want some concessions, it's still business. I have a feeling that those concessions, there's some loopholes there that we're going to find out later that the actors said, Ooh, we should have thought of that.
So yeah, the strike happened. Longer than they probably thought it should happen. And now they're back. Everybody's back in action, but it's definitely changed Hollywood.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. I don't know, man. I wonder how sustainable their current model is. And I related to what was happening with Spotify and a lot of the streaming music.
It's like all of your musicians are basically turning into influencers, festival organizers setting up. Not tours, but roving parties, where it's like, Hey, I'm showing up in this town. We're going to be doing this party. And yeah, like Snoop dog was talking about, his numbers were off, but he was talking about how, yeah, I've got all these streams and this is all I got paid.
It's this is a pittance and we're down again. Cause it said the same thing when Spotify did their Spotify unwrapped there, he was like, it's yeah, why am I not worried about Spotify? What? I'm going to look down and see that I got 12. Get out of here with that. So you've got these big artists finally speaking up that it's not like they, I won't say they did anything, didn't do anything wrong, but it's like, Hey, it's not necessarily Spotify's fault.
It's we've got all these corporations in between us and the audience and suddenly. We turn around and we're getting nothing and Spotify is this huge company and the music executives are happy and the artists aren't. So I'm just wondering how between Spotify streaming movies, outside of, your few major stars in movies.
The drop off in terms of what you're getting paid in these streaming situations is very low. It's just going to be, it's just going to be weird. Just watching all this fall out and happen this year.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. And two things on that. I just want to say that I think inherently the internet has broken how we distribute anything and so because distribution is free Content is free in essence is pretty much broken.
Everything about that. So that's from Yeah, television shows movies to Music right because it's free and people expect that then of course, you know a lot of content It's going to be generated that's that people are like, Hey, I don't want to pay for this anymore. And so I think that's the core function of the internet.
I don't think it's a bug. It's a feature, it was created to be free. And that's why we have influencers, or we have to do advertising because no way paying nothing for the internet. And so that's just the core tenement of all this. And that's why the streamers came in so high.
Cause we like, Oh, we get all this content for practically free. And then now that everybody's trying to walk that shit back, they're like, no, don't hold up. So anyway, make a long story. And then going back to your other thought about this I love what you said about artists. You're right. Music art, that's a good analogy to the movie and TV stars.
Cause like you said, like a Taylor Swift, which we'll talk about, you're right. She's more of an influencer. Yes, she has music, but. Let's be honest, she hasn't produced any new music in the last year. She's just re-leasing her new old music. People are having a good time singing the old songs, and she's going to city and having a good time and dating football players and just being influenced doing movies.
Yeah, doing Mo a movie based on a concert, based on music that she's already done before . It's just . Yeah, so it's you're right. It's more are you truly an artist at that point? And so to your point, going back, we talked about this too. Hollywood doesn't know how to generate new movie stars. We grew up on the Denzel Washington and the Tom Cruises and all these folks.
And, Oh, this is a Denzel Washington movie. I'm going there on, on Friday night to watch that movie. What's the last, the only one that's popping off halfway decent. When I say pop off, that means they can open the movie almost and their name is like at the top and people know that's their movie.
And this guy, Timothee Chalamet, he's like the only one recently and maybe Tom Holland is second, but those are the younger ones that have started to get their name out there and open the movies. But man, they got some stars out there. All those kids from euphoria, as a Dan, I think What's her name?
Sidney Sweeney. They're trying to, get some stuff going. But man, no one knows who these kids are. Even Zendaya. So it's could you see anybody going to see a Zendaya movie? I don't think so. It's got to be around a Marvel or a Dune. I'm not going to see Zendaya just be, back in the day there was a Julia Roberts movie.
And you go see it.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. See I come out to see the slim blockbuster where I depressed the hell out of everyone in the theater. My name is. There you go. It's there you go. You know what, I didn't talk about this. Y-I-I-I-I love her, but she's, yeah. That blockbuster quality type of star.
Yeah.
Theo Harvey: I get it. And real quick, I, did you see that movie leave the World Behind Where Julia Roberts in it at all?
Mr.Benja: Or Netflix? No that's on my list.
Theo Harvey: Yeah, go check it out. But she was one of the biggest stars of all time. Now she's relegated. Some of it's due to age, of course, to being in TV shows, right?
Netflix, but it just goes to show you, man, the state of Hollywood stardom. And we saw what happened to Will Smith. It's it's, I don't know, man. So it's do movie stars and TV stars realize they have to be influencers now? And I don't think they do.
Mr.Benja: Mr. Beast coming in 2024 to theaters everywhere.
All right. What else we got here going on for the movies and streaming? MCU, we've been talking about it dying. We'll see what happens. I don't have too much to say on that.
Theo Harvey: No, I think we talk about it enough, but we'll see. Feige still got two aces in his hole. We know what those are, right?
Mr.Benja: Yep. The X Men and the Fantastic Four. Is people really looking for Fantastic Four that much? No.
Theo Harvey: So maybe it's just one Ace.
Mr.Benja: An Ace and a Jack, maybe, yeah. Yeah,
Theo Harvey: there you go. So yeah, so like I said, we'll see. But this was definitely the year where the cracks were pretty much open between the Marvels and quantum mania and obviously the TV shows.
I think everybody's just exhausted a little bit. So we'll see.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, definitely. James on the D. C. side. We got James gun shenanigans. Listen there was a report that just came out from Jason Momoa. He was like, Hey, listen I'd love to keep doing Aquaman, but I'm just looking around and I'm not seeing my face or my name in the scripts or Aquaman in the scripts.
And I don't know. It's just not looking good. I was like whoa. Suddenly Jason right before his movies coming out talking about. Hey my future isn't looking good. I don't know what that means, but James Gunn, what you doing, bro? Cause he was talking about James Gunn. I
Theo Harvey: just think about Jason Mamoa. He says, Hey, I'm here for, I'm here for a good time.
Not a long time, right? So that's Jason Mamoa's he'll MO about everything, especially Aquaman. So there it is. Yeah, I don't really have too much to add to that, but just saying, James Gunn shenanigans. We talked about this all year long with just him announcing, the Superman legacy that he's going to direct and write, and that's not even coming out for another freaking two years, right?
18 months. And so it's like. aNd then, and all the shenanigans was he announced all the new, he's basically wiped and cleaned a lot of stuff. And so all the stuff they had slated, like the flash and Aquaman and the blue beetle, man, it's almost like he shitted on the current content.
You don't know, maybe that stuff could have popped and they could leverage that. But it's almost like he just put to a trash dump and just. Dumped everything in the trash because he's in charge now, which so like I said, I'm not hating on him. I respect it, but at the same time, now that we're in the midst of MCU falling, DC was always faltering.
So it's what hope did they have?
Mr.Benja: Exactly. All right. So let's just run through really quick. Some TV shows that people were talking about or that people liked. The Last of Us. I actually had to stop watching it, but I respect it.
Theo Harvey: Oh, you did? I didn't know
Mr.Benja: that. Yeah, I started into it and I was like, huh, alright, and turned it off.
You played the game though, right? A little bit. I didn't play much of that either. I was just like, whatever.
Theo Harvey: Oh, okay. I was a fan, man. Pedro Pascal, and I have a daughter, so it's brought all that to the forefront, so it's definitely a dad type of movie mixed with some horror and survivalist dystopian future stuff.
But yeah, I liked
Mr.Benja: it. I love zombie. Not that. We had Star Trek Strange New World. I didn't check that out at all. Oh
Theo Harvey: yeah, I'm a fan, man. Best Star Trek show by far in a while. It just brings back that fun of Star Trek. And I think I told you there was a musical episode you gotta watch that where it was reminiscent of Buffy, the musical episode there.
Where it was relevant to the story and drew plot lines and yeah, very good show. So go check it out.
Mr.Benja: Loki season two was a lot, there was just a lot of time googly moogly going on. A lot of people really liked the beauty of it and know he finished his arc and everything. Once again, I think it took Marvel to a place it did need to go and it got away from strengthening Marvel as it should be strengthened.
But that's similar to how people were talking about Andorra last year. It's Oh, I love Andorra. It's yeah, but. Yeah. Okay.
Theo Harvey: I love it. I love it. Yeah. I don't, I didn't really love it. I love what you said. So that's my take on Saluki season
Mr.Benja: two. And the big surprise. One piece came out and knocked it out the park.
People were really surprised. Anime live action is now a thing. Yeah. You saw the
Theo Harvey: whole series, right? That. Okay. Yeah. I know you've read some of the manga and you read, did you, have you caught up in the whole manga and the whole tell me,
Mr.Benja: I'm closing it on 700 episodes out of 1000. Look at
Theo Harvey: you, Mr.
Benji. And you told me about this month, year, a long time ago. And I was just like, yeah, whatever. And then I finally got it now. So thanks to you. And then me and the kids watched it and thoroughly enjoyed it. So I hope The TV show matches the excitement. I try to read the manga. I couldn't do it. I read the, it's different thing.
I read comic books. Yeah. I read comic books of invincible so I can catch up on that. I got through that game of Thrones. I read all the books, because I got through that. I couldn't go through Manga Man , I was just not my type of thing. But I liked it. I liked the live action. And to your point, it was a surprise.
'cause they had what Failures with Cowboy, bebop, and was the other one, OneNote?
Mr.Benja: Yeah. They sucked. onE night not one note death note. Thank you. Death note. I actually didn't mind too much, but they tried to stuff an entire season down into a movie. So it got, yeah, I could see how people didn't like it.
I was filling in pieces of story in my head, but speaking of filling in pieces of story, Ahsoka also dropped. Yeah, Falloniverse Rebels season five came out. Ahsoka came out it really didn't blow my socks away or anything like that. You wanted it
Theo Harvey: to. You wanted it to. I did want it to.
And you know what? After seeing Rebels, I sped through that series. I got with you and Dr. Chris, maybe we'll have him on the show. On this pod one time got, it's pretty good, great show, man, to build the characters. And you felt that, that connection with all the characters.
And so they had pieces of that in the live action that I see why fans loved it. But man, I don't know, man, they dropped the ball. I don't know. It was just a little too slow and plodding in places.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, it didn't do anything. But I don't know. It didn't, did it do more than special ops lioness? That's one of yours.
I've never even heard of that.
Theo Harvey: So much. This is one of those offbeat streams we talk about Paramount Plus. I loved it, man. Saldana, excuse me, Saldana, yeah. From Guardians of the Galaxy and of course all the Avengers stuff. She did a TV show. By Taylor Sheridan, who also does Yellowstone.
Great show, man. It's just about what it's like being in the military and covert ops now, post 9 11, post, pandemic. It's like a different war to fighting. It's almost like they don't know. You know what they're fighting for and they're just fighting. And so I thought that was a good, but really the story is based about a undercover op where a woman would go in and be friends with one of the biggest terrorist groups, daughter, and then basically once they, she does, he gets in with them, then they would go in for the kill.
And Zoe Saldana was actually not the best piece of that. The person that played the actress that played the the covert operative who had to do the work, he was phenomenal. I've never seen that actress in my life. And I was like, okay, so anyway, so yeah, go check it out. If you guys want to get a sense of what's happening in the war on terror
Mr.Benja: now.
Yeah. All right. Now I get. I get a, I get flack for saying things this way, but beef came out, Korean drama on Netflix. I don't even know what to kind of drama to call this revenge, fight, anger, personal issue. Drama beef came out, did, did very well for a while. It was very good. Not my sort of thing.
I Wasn't in an angry mood to watch it. Beef was this thing. What'd you think about it? I loved it,
Theo Harvey: man. Steven Young, I didn't know he was that good of an actor. People have been saying that for years. But cause, he came from Walking Dead. I just thought he was just the character from Walking Dead, right?
I didn't know who he was. Then I saw him in Up. He was good in that. And then I saw him in this. I was like, dude, that guy's a good actor. He just plays just You know, intensity. And Ali Wong was a comedian, right? She was an actress and, she knocked out the part. And then you told me about this guy.
Matter of fact, I think the four leads of the four leads, only one's a real actor, right? David Cho, you know him as artists, right? And then Young Bozzino, I think he's a musician. So it's blows your mind. And it was, they were all fantastic. characters in this, for, so yeah, kudos to that show.
And it was just a meditation on how hurt and anger can just fester at you and make you a terrible person. So I liked it.
Mr.Benja: The bear season two.
Theo Harvey: I'll put you on that. Hopefully you liked it.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, once again, I thought it was really good, but I just can't be dealing with those angry, heavy emotions like that, man.
I'm like, gosh, calm down. Each of thanksgiving stuff and to be happy.
Theo Harvey: So three episodes, right? That I think. Some of the episodes are okay, but those three episodes, the one when the character Sidney, when she travels across Chicago to get inspiration and the way they edited it and they, show her thinking of the architecture and the colors going to her history.
That was the first time I saw on television, how artistry could be made and people, as artists. And I thought I was like, wow, they really visualize what it's like to be an artist, to create something new. That was cool. And I liked that part. The other one was the family drama, right?
Mr.Benja: Character
Theo Harvey: actors in a room and it was just fascinating just to see that tension just boil up, and so that was great. And then one where Richie went into a fancy restaurant and completely transformed his art to find his identity. And so those three episodes alone, probably the three best episodes I've seen a TV all year.
Mr.Benja: Yep. And yeah, that pretty much does it for our TV wrap up though. Yeah. Let us know
Theo Harvey: what you thought was good this year. Those are the things that just stood top of our minds. I like to put my year in review list out there. So
Mr.Benja: there it is. Yeah. I don't know, man. You want to blog that?
So yeah, let's get through the movies right quick. The biggest story, I guess with Barbie versus Oppenheimer um Barbie Heimer Barber timer. I didn't see either of those, but I assume
Theo Harvey: there, I guess what Barbie's on max now. So go check it out. Oh, nice. Yeah, man. I went on Barbie on a whim. I was like, Oh hey, daughter.
Let's go see Barbie. I didn't know it was a thing, man. And yeah, man, people just in pink. I felt bad. My daughter, we just came to some old, some old blue jeans, just like whatever. And it's a thing, man. But yeah it's okay. I was, it's not my thing, but I get why people would loving it. And Oppenheimer.
Yeah. I was missing something for him. I thought it was going to be a little bit more impactful, right? But it didn't do that. To me, I think they were both a little letdown. But there it is.
Mr.Benja: All right. Letdown for me was Quantumania. And the Marvels, actually. I liked the Marvels, but it was a letdown in terms of what it could have been.
Marvel dropping to two soft turds on people. If you're going to drop a bomb on somebody, you got to make it nice and firm. Not soft and falling apart. Yeah, but speaking of interstellar stuff anything on to be is just interesting. And that's going to be the mark of 2023 because blacks and UFOs came out and it's anything on to be gets a mention here.
Facts,
Theo Harvey: man. Those are double facts, man. Matter of fact, my wife and I saw this to be show about, black women. Lesbians living in a house together to figure out who was the biggest stud. And I was like, I'm there for it. And it was filmed like with an old 1989 camcorder. I'm there for it. Mr. Benja.
Mr.Benja: Oh man. Some other bangers, they clone Tyrone.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3. We got to see James Gunn doing his best before he went over to DC. Spider Man Across the Spider Verse really got people connected back into the whole Spider Man thing and animation in a different way. So that was excellent. Oh, you remember the drama
Theo Harvey: real quick on that one with people going ham on the fact that the black Spider Man was trying to give the white.
Spidey girl, Spidey Gwen, you remember that
Mr.Benja: whole incident? Yeah.
Theo Harvey: It's they're cartoons, man. But anyway it's a thing.
Mr.Benja: Why she got her shoes on the bed?
Theo Harvey: Why she got two brothers
Mr.Benja: trying to get her? Exactly. thEre was also Godzilla minus one. Came out of nowhere, kinda.
And just, took over the theaters. Good stuff. Did you see it yet?
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff.
Mr.Benja: Go check it out. And I didn't see the creator either. I've been slipping apparently.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. It didn't do well in the movie, but it just, I want to see original stuff. So this is like AI, if it was alive and trying to fight for his rights.
I loved it.
Mr.Benja: Good stuff. All right. Let's jump on and the Super Mario movie. That was definitely a point to remember. Let's move on to story number two, our AI watch slash wrap up. We're a year after Chad GPT. How are you thinking, feeling about it? Man, I
Theo Harvey: mean, we use it, but I see it as a glorified kind of, email checker.
Maybe some research a little bit, maybe I'm not using it right, but I just, I'm not seeing it a game changer yet until what I do on a daily basis. But I see the possibility, maybe I'm just not thinking. Outside the box enough. I don't know. What about you?
Mr.Benja: For the things I've actually put in work to do, like it's a super calculator in a lot of ways where I use this to come up with complex Excel formulas and I use it to do regular expressions and stuff like that would normally take me too long.
And yeah, I've used it to outline things and help me write like, Hey, what about this? What about that? Or how about a format this? Yeah, as far as being a groundbreaking though, I know it is groundbreaking for some. But I haven't really integrated it into my process. I just keep playing with a lot of bits of it.
We got barred being met as AI and now Grok is coming along. So we got four AI beast coming in and really fighting Grok. By the way, is the one from X slash Twitter and. Yeah, I think it's an interesting little race they're having there.
Theo Harvey: Yeah, I don't have too many notes on that. It's just, I think you're saying bits and pieces, but I think, we're hinting at something here.
It's like AI is supposed to be so revolutionary, but I still think there's a missing piece, maybe Apple needs to get involved. You gotta make it something that's easy to use and that people don't even have to think about. And it's
Mr.Benja: does it have to be like revolutionary in that sense? Was.
Amazon didn't feel revolutionary. It just slowly got better and was out in front of everybody. So I think it can still be big. It just hasn't it's not that flying car moment that everybody always expects with technology.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, they just want to enhance it.
Chat GPT was what's it called? It's a signal flare. Hey, we're here. And that's why I got everybody excited last year around this time. I was playing with them, with my kids. But, the usefulness is still there's a gap between the novelty and the
Mr.Benja: usefulness. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm going to cape for a AI right now.
Video, AI cheap articles, written cheap stories, story images, videos characters without five, without six fingers, five fingers, um, financial summaries, there's just so many little things that it's doing and so many little things that it's disrupting. I think it's bigger than we think it is.
And that's my wrap up, thought for AI. I
Theo Harvey: agree. I think there is. I'm seeing it more and more to your point. We use it. I forgot. We do use it to do some editing for us. And I've been using some of the images and stuff and we see that with people as well. So I would agree, but it's just personally, I haven't taken the time to go
Mr.Benja: in there deep.
Yeah. And what happened with your boy, Sam Alton?
Theo Harvey: Who knows, man. Yeah, I just it's a whole thing. We went into a detail before I would just say this, that Sam wants power. It sounds and he's going to try to figure out what that means. And but he's constrained by.
The rules that he himself placed on the company by making a nonprofit. So I think his willingness to want the company to do good is being campered by his willingness to have power. And so we talked about this the need to do good for humanity, to make sure AI is controlled versus I want to make as much money as possible.
I think. Those two sides of Sam Altman are fighting and we're seeing that display in real time. Sounds like
Mr.Benja: show versus business. Boo!
Theo Harvey: You did it! I didn't pay you the big
Mr.Benja: money! Story number three. All right, so we got some business moves that happened and went down in 2023. We're just watching all these characters play out.
Ain't Doggone it! Taylor Swift kept coming up. So we're gonna start off our little business discussion with the girl Taylor Swift. I just remember her meme going viral of her doing the little swimming pool dive. Did you ever see that? I have not ,
Theo Harvey: no. I gotta go look it
Mr.Benja: up. She has this concert and in the middle of the concert she makes it appear like she's jumping into a swimming pool, but she's basically jumping through the stage and she disappears through the stage and people are like, oh my God, where'd she go?
So it's a cute little thing, but what else did Taylor Swift get up to?
Theo Harvey: Too much. Obviously her big heirs tour kicked off and has became the biggest thing. It was neck and neck with Beyonce, but then just, went to that. Stratosphere was, and then she leveraged that to it's so basically biggest cause of all time over a billion dollars and she's doing a worldwide and then, she got into this relationship with a football player.
So that brought more attention to her to audience that, they probably knew about her, but now she's just in their face every Sunday with this relationship with Kelsey. Cal what's the one with Travis Cal Kelsey, Travis, Kelsey, excuse me for Kansas city. And now she had a movie that got released.
And so now she's on the cover of time. So it's just she jumped into another stratosphere of her fame and wealth and influence. And so it's this was a year of Taylor. Who knew? And like you said, there was a minute, there was a moment there where she went away for a couple of years.
People did not like her, right? They felt she was annoying and all this stuff, but man, don't underestimate the power of artists, man, and what they can do and recreate themselves. And she's still the same person, people love her, man. Yeah. I don't get it, but I understand it.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. And I want to focus on her a little bit because she's representing that influencer brand persona that just corrals all this attention and money in her general direction. So whether it's putting out a movie, whether it's putting out her version of Wordle, just all this stuff that people are like, I need something to attach to.
Oh, there's a brand, a person I can attach to. Yeah. Forget the Spotify streams. I'm buying whatever she's putting out. There
Theo Harvey: it is. Kudos to her.
Mr.Benja: Yep, man. We talked about, we already talked about Netflix, but they did officially win the Streaming Awards. They're making money there while everybody else is crying over how much money they
Theo Harvey: lost.
I was looking for some award to give them, but I don't have anywhere. So kudos to them.
Mr.Benja: I have this mysterious orange what do you call these? And it's not a Taurus. It's a is that what it is? A Taurus? I have no idea. I forgot the mathematical term for the donut shape. Anyway, yes, S.
B. F. Wait, what's the bank's name? Silicon Valley Bank. S. V. B. You for S. V. B. Here and I said show versus business in my head and I was like, wait a minute, that can't be right. Half lies the V. Yes. Silicon Valley Bank. Of course. What happened with that?
Theo Harvey: Yeah. So Silicon Valley bank was the bank of choice for a lot of startup companies and they just ran out of cash.
They were basically banks are basically not Ponzi schemes, but basically they're trying to say, Hey, we can get access to capital. We need to, but in the meantime, we're going to use your cash to make more money. And they got caught with their pants down when there was the atypical, what they call bank run when people need to pull a bunch of cash out of their bank at the same time on the suspicion that Silicon Valley bank did not have their money.
And yeah, it just crashed. So it was weird. That happened literally over a week. I think it was so fast that one minute we heard that they didn't have enough money. And then the VC war, they destroyed it. The VCs who had companies that had money in that bank told them to take their money out.
So all these Silicon Valley startups took their money out of the bank as a bank run. They didn't have enough money to cover it. And so the bank failed. And so now all these startups had no access to cash. And as cash is a life, but I can tell you cash is the lifeblood of any startup or company.
And so now they were left in the lurch. And so now the same VCs, it told the companies to put that, get the money out of the bank. And I sold libertarianism, right? They sold about independence. They basically were crying on Twitter or X all weekend. I don't know if you remember that to call them for a bailout.
And of course they got one. So there was millions, the U S government backstopped all deposits. So basically everybody made whole and Silicon bank, the assets got bought out by, I think first Republic and another bank. So it was a whole, it's a whole thing, but yeah, it was, it just shows you the.
Do you remember Wolf of the Wall Street where he said the Fugazi? That's and I think that was a death kneel of, we talked about this before, but death kneel of yeah, Sam Altman, Sam Bankman Freed and other things that kind of collapsed over the last year.
That was a death kneel of the metaverse of T's just high flying billion, billion dollar status. Cause now we're seeing everything fall apart and inflation, we can talk about this in the business notes, but inflation has been out of control. And so I think that the era of easy money is no longer there.
We're going to see people who go to win this new world are really going to be grinders because that era of just yeah, make a million dollars. Buy this course or get money from startups or, you can borrow money as you present interest. Those days are gone, man. And so I think that Silicon Valley Bank's failure is probably going to be a really it's been that canary in a coal mine for what's going to really happen for the longterm of
Mr.Benja: our economy.
Yeah. And And everybody's waiting to jump in on any mistakes. Twitter turned to X people got pissed off at Elon Musk. Not sure if he was going crazy or not and wondering what was happening with their favorite platform. And right in the midst of every X mistake this year, we also saw Meta and Zuckerberg and Masseri and all the.
People over there jumping in to say, Hey, we got threads. We got this alternative replacement. It became the biggest new app of all time, the fastest. Adoption just because of its Instagram power pulled all the users over. I want to say it was the fastest adoption of an app just because it had that Instagram connection.
But yeah, that happened.
Theo Harvey: Oh, you don't, there's Mr. Benjamin, what is your take on it? Is it here for the long haul? Is it here? Not just for a fun time, but a long time. What's going on?
Mr.Benja: I think it's here for a long time. The after the crazy and everybody was just on it, then it died down.
Now it's definitely picking back up again. I'm having fun on it every day. I'm getting up to my, my high post and engagement amounts. So it's, I'm making it my primary platform for all of 2024. We'll see how that goes. Yep. And hopefully Disney joins on because companies have been dumping X and jumping on threads like.
Just like crazy. Christian Dior was on there. Whatchamacallit, Pizza Hut started threading. It's like all these companies are starting to post on threads, even though they don't have an advertising play just yet. So that'll come soon. But speaking of Bob Iger and Disney, Your boy came back.
What happened here?
Theo Harvey: We talked about this man. Bob Iger came back. Oh man, but I was loving it. I get to the rescues. Go say Disney did properly. The stock is sank like a rock man. He's in the midst of one of the worst board proxy fights. And so basically people are trying to get more board seats. Without the approval of Disney.
And so they, cause they think the direction Bob Iger's going, he's fighting that, obviously he's fighting the streaming wars, which he lost handily. So he's trying to figure out how he's going to recover money. He's got to figure out what he's going to do with ESPN. And he's going to buy Hulu. That's going to be another 9 billion.
They just had the biggest layoff, 7, 000 people, he announced early this year across the country, across the company. So yeah, Bob Iger's just. And a mess man right now. And then we talk about also the lead, the depth his cable business is drying up. Disney channel and other, ESPN, because basically people are not buying cable anymore.
And so cable was a good model business model because you got money in two ways. People were paying for cable and it got ad revenue. And that's, so now that's getting dried up. So the only thing that's saving it, helping them a little bit is the all the parks, but even now, I think I told you stories of my, my, my niece who worked there Disney, this woke or go broke narrative that we talked about, a lot of people are poo pooing on just going to Disney parks and protesting.
So anyway it's, he's very embattled right now. And so I don't know what this looks like for Disney's future. And there's another little factoid I found recently. He said, how does Disney stayed. Connected to children's entertainment when 85 percent of kids under age 12 are seeking out YouTube before any other Streaming service and I think that's facts man.
I see that with my kids who are both 11 and 7. We have disney's plus my daughter watches every now and then I can't get my seven year old to watch It's always a roblox or do perfect or the ninja kids and it's like blowing my mind. It's like dude
Mr.Benja: You remember a lot of people were mad when Disney shut down their I forgot the name of it.
Disney had a big world app where people could run around and all the different Disney characters and they shut that whole thing down. And people were like, no, you idiots, you did that too soon. And they were like, we're Disney. But yeah, Disney's messing up. We'll see what happens to them in 2024.
Yeah. All right. So I think we're good with the business news and we should jump into story number four. Social media has gone crazy in general. People are arguing. People are fighting. X has gone crazy. We'll start there. So we had people leaving Fox like Tucker Carlson showing up on X and then your boy What's his name?
not Patrick bet David court him for a hundred million. So there's all this action going on X Alex Jones returns Kanye West was kicking up noise Elon Musk himself, the X algorithm. So this is a huge funnel of information on social media in general. Most corporate pages if they haven't taken them down or edited them, have a Twitter button or a little X button.
Now it's just, there's just tons of people putting tons of information. And that's where the information news source is. That's where a lot of political and social discussions take place. And yeah, as far as social media, 2024 was the year that X started going off the rails, if you will. I don't even know if you use it, Theo.
Theo Harvey: I don't anymore, but you're right, man. You'd be surprised at how many influencers are still posting stuff on X, even after all the shenanigans of basically Elon Musk buying Twitter and just basically making a hell hole. And then now, with some of this comments he made about Israel and but they're still posting on there to your point.
It's almost like it's learned behavior. They don't know any better way. And so I was surprised by that. The people are still posting on Twitter, maybe slowly, but surely, but it's there's still no alternative. Maybe threads, maybe, Macedon or whatever, true social, but nothing's taking its place.
And so that goes to show you that, dang, man, this was really a powerful product.
Mr.Benja: No, it definitely was. Yeah. Spaces are still kicking off on there. People still use it for messaging. A lot of websites you log into with your Twitter account. If you want to make a sort of press release that actually goes out to people aside from the random people who read press releases.
You post it on Twitter. It's just a thing. So that's that. And as we said before, that's what caused Instagram's threads to take off. We'll see how that plays out, but people will complain that hey, nothing's going on in threads. There's really no trending. There's no, the feature set is so slim. It's going to see, it's going to take a second to see how it all plays out.
I'm going to hang out there. You can't take it from me because I hung out when. When Amp died so
Theo Harvey: for those that don't know, cause it happens so quick, fast, people don't even know probably what Amp is anymore. It was the Amazon attempt to create this kind of what clubhouse type environment, if you will.
And yeah, they brought some celebrities on board to hype things up, but I guess that goes to show you too, man. Celebrities can't make a social platform no matter how hard you pay them or how much you pay them. I think so there you go.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. I got paid from the app, so I got a little paycheck and I was like, Oh, she chugged.
And that's why I died,
Theo Harvey: Mr. Benja. That's why I died. They paid you. He has a celebrity and he couldn't sustain it.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. We also had the, pinky doll and the NPC craze went off. People acting like controlled characters online. Basically big stars are starting to really cement themselves. Aiden Ross, Kai Sinat Mr.
Beast, we already knew, but. His, influence is spreading. And that, and even on the business side, Alex Formosy. So this online influencer thing, Theo, that you talked about before is really definitely starting to make itself known in 2023. I know
Theo Harvey: it's crazy, man. We talk more about social media influencers than we do real TV, not real, but TV stars, movie stars.
So that, that goes to show you how to shift
Mr.Benja: it. Yeah. I wonder we'll have a whole predictions thing for 2024, but it's just really interesting to see and as you said, you called it to Hollywood. Doesn't know what to do with this stuff. They don't know but they don't know what the play is.
There's no playbook. It's just Hey, who's that guy? I don't know. He's popular with the kids.
Theo Harvey: And then they don't even know the influences. Remember there was a path where they were trying to get to Hollywood at one time, but I think a lot of them was like, F that. I'm good. I'm making, millions of dollars a year.
I don't have to do crap, but be myself? Why play a character or do something
Mr.Benja: else? Get that. Yeah. So not, you wonder where some of these people come from. There's a platform called Twitch where people basically play games or sit in front of a camera and talk all day. He's, Kai was talking about, he was making 400, 000 a month just from that platform.
So you're sitting there
there's a whole thing about Hot Tub Twitch. Do you know about Hot Tub Twitch? No, I do
Theo Harvey: not. Oh, no. Don't make me Google. No.
Mr.Benja: It's basically people sitting around in a hot tub while they're on Twitch. And they've got a laptop on the side of the hot tub. It could have been It could have been anything else, but seeing somebody in like their living room, in a bathing suit, in a hot tub, like a plastic hot tub, right?
One of those plastic blow up tubs you just fill. I'm
Theo Harvey: just, I'm just YouTuber dies because the laptop filled in the hot tub. Story at 11. It's just, it just writes itself.
Mr.Benja: Yeah no they've actually made like a special section of it on Twitch that it's so big that it's become A thing, it's like, Hey, who are we going to watch in the hot tub today?
Anyway but yeah, even with all this going on meta and others have been taken to task for controlling the minds of our youth and much of the populace. And now they're yeah, it's a thing. And so I don't know where this leads for the future, but in 2023, we found out that. Didn't find out, but it was made known that this stuff really does affect you.
Oh yeah.
Theo Harvey: With the lawsuits are going against meta, targeting your teenage girls. We had this big report. We talked about how Gen Z years are, being shaped. As digital natives with social media and how it's warping their mindsets and views. The people aspirations are now to be a YouTuber.
When we grew up as being an actor or doctor, a doctor or a lawyer or something. So it's, yeah, what does that do to a culture of people when everybody wants to be famous? We're going to find out.
Mr.Benja: Yeah it's going to be weird. Yeah, the last influencer guy this is definitely spread into the business space too, where you have these business influencers and we wanted to take a minute to point this one out because guy Alex Hormozy, who was fumbling around in the business world and stopped and decided to be a social media influencer and.
Accomplished it. You got to, what do you think of Hormozy's 2024?
Theo Harvey: Nah, definitely blew up. A lot more folks know who he is. He's gotten so big, we've even seen parodies of him, right? And that's when you know you are famous. When people know they can get, shares and views by making fun of you.
He just, if you've seen him before, he looks like the Incredible Hulk, right? Big dude, muscle bound. And with a hat with a straggly beard and he's just spouting knowledge, man, and the stuff is halfway decent. He knows what he's talking about. And yeah, kudos to him. And he said, he's been doing stuff like this for years.
They used to do a weekly call all his, he's skiing from the gym world and all his people that were in his gym finance licensing model. You just have weekly, calls like this all the time. So for him switching that over to YouTube made sense. So we'll see what he does. He has his own kind of private equity kind of firm to invest in folks and their businesses.
So we'll see what's going to come out of that with these businesses. Private equity is insular. So they don't really. Speak too much about what happens, nobody's going to be like, yeah, Alex Hermosi screwed me over. No, this is not going to be like a pocket JT pocket watches.
Because, it's capitalization is not tied to marketing and, or what false advertising. He's just Hey if you want me to work with you, let me invest in your business. And then, and now that's legal. So we'll see. We'll see what he does next year.
I'll be curious.
Mr.Benja: Definitely curious for that. And for story number five, how was your 2023 in terms of your moves and making that show and making that business?
Theo Harvey: I was doing both, Mr. Benji. I was in the, I was in the kitchen cooking it up, man. Just staring at it. Yeah. So for me, trying to expand to my personal brand.
We've been doing this podcast. Can you believe almost? But over two years, almost three now. Yeah. Yeah, I, so I wanted to start doing more, talk about so much. And so I launched my personal brand, kudos to me from YouTube to, Twitter to Instagram even right now, man, I just kinda, it's getting there.
So I got over about a thousand across all. So definitely next year I want to do more of that and learned a lot, just, and then building a team around that. And then the other big thing I learned was just going to these guru events for the first time. I went to Myron Goldens. I went to Ryan Pinedas.
I went to earn your leisure. It was and I'm taking a course with Dr. Benjamin Hardy blew my mind, man. There's regular dudes. Number one they all saying the same thing. It's it must not be that insightful. So it's but they just have their own spin on it, of course.
And so just learning and understanding how this world works. And it was eye opener when I rediscovered it back. What? Yeah. Late 2022 or 20 late 2021 or so. So I'm really excited to see where this goes from my personal brand and my core business. I'm bringing some of that into my core business and really working on a marketing piece.
What about you, Mr. Benja what have you learned from the show and the business side?
Mr.Benja: I've learned that you can finesse with. Empathy, ethics and love. So one of the things that's kept me away from this, where I just wanted to sit back and create stuff and working with people. And I think a lot of the crowd that I started to learn from early on, where they were, they're these kind of sharks, and just would be.
Moving in ways that I thought was funny style. So I stayed away from it for a bit, but then I think somewhere between Gary Vee, Tai Lopez and yes, Tai Lopez, he got me with the the, in my garage video. Yeah, I was actually like fascinated by all the books. I was like, Oh, what books has he read?
I've probably read some of those. So that got me in the whole world, but yeah. Getting in here. I was like, you know what? This selling at its best is a noble art. It's like with all the noise, it's Hey, listen, man, there's value here. And you're doing some other stuff. That's not that valuable. Let me exchange and let's have an exchange.
Let's move you closer to something awesome. And Grant Cardone even, as loud and as brash as he is I felt a legitimate kind of, wow, this guy wants to he has strong values. I was about to say he's an ethical guy, but I don't even know. And, he does some shady business, but.
Point is I was just able to get a lot from these people. And it's you know what, here's my understanding. Let me move forward on some of these things that I know in theory and start really putting it out there, readjusting my personal brand into more of a less of a artist and then a person that into a person that creates and builds on this.
Idea of growth and providing value for people. Oh God, providing value for people. I haven't worked on this spiel at all. But yeah, that's my thing, man. I've got a new podcast coming out. It's all creativity threads, life that I'm really proud of. It's going to be definitely launching at the end of the year, which means like next week, I've got a couple episodes recorded.
It's a different, it's phase five of my podcast. So this is the evolution and it's going good, man. He's
Theo Harvey: learning
Mr.Benja: all in all threads. He's learning.
Theo Harvey: Yes. The algorithm is learning. Getting better. No, I love it. Mr. Benja. I think we're both super excited by 2024, so yeah, so we'll probably take next week off as we prepare for the holidays, we're coming back of our predictions show, Mr.
Benja. Get your predictions together. If you've got predictions out there, let us know what you think 2024 is going to look like. Matter of fact, I have one. I already got one. I'm gonna put it out there. How you won't be rich in 2024, the top three reasons. I'm gonna go with the complete opposite. I'm just going to win.
when friends that way. Call me the j. D. O. The pocket watcher,
but anyway, Mr. Bidget, thanks for sharing what you're working on. And we're super excited to everyone. If you like this. Podcast. Please subscribe and comment at show versus business on X formerly known as Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, wherever you listen to the podcast.
Go check us out also on our website and show versus business and leave us a comment and let us know what you think of what you heard all year. All right, Mr. Benja have a good one.
Mr.Benja: Peace from 2023.