The 404 1,525: Where we press 1 for retention

It's Wednesday, July 16th, 2014. I'm [UNKNOWN] And from our CBS studios in New York City, welcome to the 404. [MUSIC] Hey, what's up everyone. Thank you for tuning in to the show. I'm Jeff Bakalar. I'm Justin Yu. We got a wonderful situation happening today, because the construction right now is like temporarily stopped. So if you hear any drilling, that's just the sound of my stomach rumbling. I'm having a very tense, tense sort of day. You getting an ulcer? I'm getting an collitis. What's going on? Nothing, I feel alright, I feel okay. Alright. Yeah, how are you feeling? Are you hungry? I don't know if it's hunger or, like, I don't know, impending sadness. Okay. But just like a lot of, like, I don't know, do you, do you, like, do your emotions So foreboding. make your stomach do weird things? If I get nervous Yeah. >. then my stomach starts to churn a little Yeah. bit and I'll get maybe a little gassy too. One of my buddies was telling me like his, his wife's pregnant so he, like, he game himself an ulcer. Oh yeah. Isn't that crazy that your brain can just decide like I'm shutting down. I'm taking your body with you. with me. Stress can do a lot of crazy things. migraines, headaches. Are you stressed out about something? I mean I'm always like more stressed out probably than the average person. For no good reason. Okay. It's like. You know a lot of things going on. I don't know, I guess I'm a worrier a little bit, I internalize a lot of it. You know. This is nice though, this is sort of therapeutic. Okay. Yeah. I mean. You havent' revealed anything yet. Oh, no. I have like nothing going on that would cause me great sort of strife, whatever that means. Yeah. I don't know. How about you. How you feeling? Weird. Yeah. No, it just reminded me like that. You know what it was, like whenever the drilling happens I get this feeling in my gut. Oh. From upstairs. Huh. Yeah. Is, is that weird? Like something bad is gonna happen? I don't know, like if I'm home in my apartment and I hear like banging upstairs, I get nervous. Mm. Is that weird? No. No, it makes sense. Makes sense, right? It's like what are they doing up there not. Expecting sounds of crafted down here. Well, I'm sure that's nothing you have to worry yourself about, I'm sure they're just fine up there. No! I, know! I'm not, I don't care what's happening to them. [CROSSTALK] It's not that kind of banging. [CROSSTALK] Oh, ok. Like a nefarious. [LAUGH] Well no, let me, use another word Like drilling huh? A different kind of drilling. Yeah, it's It's like a constructional sort kind of sound. That makes me nervous. Yeah And I'm just like they suck up there. Mm. You know? Yeah You can't get mad about that with neighbors Oh hell yeah I can. Really? I told you, the dummy with the speakers? Oh, right, yeah. You know? Mm-hm I can get mad at that easily. You deal with your neighbors like that? Mm When they're not being robbed? Yea, yeah. I, I probably only deal with the sounds of AOL. I've told you that before. Yeah. That's the same neighbor by the way. Well, maybe And, I'm sure. She deserved it. I'm sure that whoever robbed her laptop was probably really bummed when they fired it up and AOL automatically started. Right. May rip the 44 1 modem out of the. Yeah. Was that was it was or 28 8 44? 44 4? Was it? What was it? Do you remember, Ariel? Mm, no, I don't remember. 14 4 28 8 56 K. But that, but there was nothing in between? No, they run 56K. When they pulled the 56K model out of the phone line. Yeah. I'm sure like, why is this laptop connected to the wall like that? [LAUGH] [LAUGH] Yeah. It's tethered. Yeah. Yeah, so still nothing on that front. But yeah. You know, aside from the, the AOL sounds, like the you got mails. Yeah. And the notifications, and the door slamming closed when people leave. Right. I don't really hear anything from my neighbors. Yeah man, that was the soundtrack to my college career. Like all those dorms, you would just like, everyone with the door open. Just like, the door opening with the squeak, and then the door Yeah, yeah. Just a constant interruption. Yeah, and I would, and like you became friends with everyone on the floor, so when you signed off, you would just hear like. [UNKNOWN] LIke, 40 rooms on that floor Yeah, that's always a weird feeling. No one knows what we're talking about. You know what's weird is, yesterday at dinner I went to this place called Motorino. It's a pizza place in Brooklyn, right? And we were there to celebrate a friends' birthday, so there are maybe six of us and the restaurant was packed. Yeah. So, there were a lot of people in there. And right around nine o'clock we all get weather alerts on our phone at the same time. Did you get that on your phones?>>Oh yeah burr burr.>> If your on the East coast or especially in New York yeah we get these weather warnings all the time for flash floods and if you're if they know that your phone is in the area they'll automatically send you alerts. And it will play, like, that sound regardless of whether you're phone is on, silent. It's like this automatic, you can turn it off in the setting in your phone, but it is always set to be on. It is crazy and so, we were all eating in this restaurant, and all of a sudden you hear every person's phone start going off at the same noise. Like an air raid. Yeah. And people were freaking cuz we all had no idea what was going on, but we all pulled out our phones, and it was like wow. Who knew everything is connected in this way? It's yeah, that started happening I feel like two years ago maybe. Yeah. It scares you because especially, like you said, when you're in a crowded place and everyone has it go off. I want to say it even happens if your phone is silent. Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. Even if you put your phone on silent it'll probably make the noise. I don't know about that. I shut my off man. I shut off all my alerts. I don't want that. Yeah, you don't want to be, you don't want to know [CROSSTALK]. I'll go with it, I don't care. See that's the kind of guy [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK]. Smoke em' if you got em'. Hell Yeah. That's a good way to live. That's, that's interesting man, I like how we turned a negative into a somewhat positive. It's still negative, but, It's still negative overall, but nonetheless, what do we have going on today Aw man, alright, let's talk about this genetic testing story. I think its kinda interesting. So everyone already knows about 23andMe, right? Its like that, at home, do it yourself, genetic testing. Right. And that's for individual person. But, there's this new home test being marketed by a Canadian company that actually requires two people and its called, what is it called actually? Do you see that here? Kept, well I feel like you is this the cappuccino thing? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Wait, no! [LAUGH] What? [LAUGH] I don't know. Why did I put that in here? [LAUGH] [LAUGH] I think you had a wrong link in here. [LAUGH] Yeah, that's what just happened, dude, cuz we had this run down. Yeah, it's crazy. So, I mean this is totally off base but [LAUGH] Yeah. This has nothing to do with the story we're talking about. And it has nothing to do with the 404 secret flavor from Doritos either, the different potato chip flavor. But you're gonna look it up and see exactly what we're talking about. It's a DNA test to determine if your relationship Yeah. of you and your significant other. Right. Will work. Right, right, right. So do you have something for that? Or do you just sort of like. I'm still looking at these Lays chips by the way. Yeah, they look good. Did you see that, the description of some of those? The chips? Yeah. Yeah, going back to this completely off topic story, Lays is debuting like four different chips. Bacon mac and cheese, cappuccino, which. I don't know about you but like, you know that weird upchuck like I threw up in my mouth feeling [LAUGH] Yeah. Yeah. you get when you hear something gnarly, that's what just happened to me. That's pretty disgusting. Kettle cooked wasabi ginger Uh-huh. Still a no for that. Okay. I could go for that Yeah. I, I'll try it out. Anything kettle cooked I try out. Yeah. And then a wavy mango salsa. [LAUGH] Which. Wavy. Wavy's for, oh, I hate that man. I, that's for losers. I hate wavy. For what? Wavy potato chips are for suckers. Is that like, like the ridges right? Yeah. Yeah. That's for, for complete and total losers. Wait. What's the difference? I just. Look at them, they're like ridged. I like the ridge. Oh, you're crazy. What? they have a better crunch? You like the Pringle's style flat chip? No no, that's for maniacs. I like kettle cooked chips. Oh, those are alright. I like the wavy's because they're like thicker like a more of a crunch. Yea, so you hear that drilling? It's making me nervous. Yeah. Like impending doom, like something awful is about to happen. Yeah, like the ceiling is gonna fall down. That's what it sounds like. [LAUGH] It's like all this asbestos piling up on Ariel's hat. I know! Damn. Alright, do you have a story? [CROSSTALK] Yeah, I have a story. It's in the rundown. Reset. Everyone take a reset, okay. We're not [CROSSTALK]. The story is in the rundown now. Does that ever happen to you when you copy something and then. You forget and you paste it into the wrong window, that's what happened to me. Clearly I've been looking up snacks way too long in the morning. [LAUGH] But anyway, this DNA test is actually for relationships. And it'll tell you whether or not you and your partner, or you and someone you're interested in. Could potentially have either a successful or a doomed relationship. How is that something that can be forecasted with a DNA test? Well okay, it's, it's kinda, crazy. But the, the company, the firm is called. Instant chemistry, right, and it's a do it yourself test costs 164 buck, which is pretty expensive, but it's for two people, and it's sort of based on the assumption that a successful relationship requires matching personalities, but also matching DNA. So, they do three separate tests. Two of them are biological so one is a spit test, right? So that tests your DNA. serotonin Yeah. To see if your serotonin levels match up with each other. And that will see if maybe your fights will be productive or not. YOu know what I mean, or if you're gonna fight at all. And if you do fight, will you be productive? Or will it be one of those things where you. Start going off on random tangents. There's a second one called long term chemistry and that analyzes your genetic makeup. So a lot like 23 and me. And whether or not that will that we'll complement each other. And then the third one is an online psychological compatibility test. And that shows how insane you are, and whether or not your brand of insanity will match up with your partner's. And then what that will mean for your longterm stability and happiness in the relationship. Cuz there's only a certain flavor of insanity that really works well with a lover's. Yeah. Quarrel s>> What do you think, is this the new. Is this really the new fortune telling, is this the new horoscope where they're really jacking you for a lot of money I mean, 164 bucks is a lot. I mean's there's, there's science [CROSSTALK]. And it's not guarantee. Right. Necessarily that if it says your gonna be successful, you don't have to ever work on your relationship, they're not saying that. Right, I mean look, the, there not, it, it's not. Snake oil, I mean I think the snake oil is where, you know, who's to say that, that DNA denotes, you know, relationship compatibility. Yeah. So, you know, I, I, I, I don't know, I think a lot of those, you know, sites that sort of, like, take it away from personalities and, and try and base it on something else, like I'm not gonna name it cuz people will get mad at me, but. You know, I think like, cite that, don't take like really just personality. Like, that to me that's really all that matters. Yeah. And things in common. Right. Personality, obviously it's got to be important. Yeah. Attractiveness, of course, it all plays in. But. You know when you're short of like, play shifting the core, key components of relationships on like things that may or may not have anything really to do with the relationship. Yeah. Stuff you can't see or touch or feel or taste. Yeah. To me it sounds kind of goofy. Right, right I don't think you can necessarily measure how. How compatible you are. Right, there's not like a number. A lot of time it's just an unexplainable feeling. Yeah. There's not like a freaking, specific amino acid. Right. That, you know, says hey, you know Jeff and Stacy are really gonna hit it off. Yeah, especially cause there's not just one person that you could potentially be compatible with. Of course. Literally like infinite. But it does give you a percentage, which is kind of an extension of like the Okay Cupid match. Right. Which entails- On. Which entails other online dating stuff. But that's all based on surveys you take. Sure. And how important those questions you answered. Which deal with personality. Right so this is basically the same thing. They are adding the DNA thing to see if your serotonin levels are compatible but I think. More than anything else you can taker a free online personality test and see if your stuff matches up. To me that holds more water than DNA. And, you don't have to pay 150 bucks for it either. You know, just,. I don't know. I'm pretty sure our DNA's close to monkeys. Yeah. So I could take a test with a monkey and then be like paired up pretty nicely the same way. Soulmate. My soulmate. Beautiful monkey [CROSSTALK] My, you know, my soulmate. Amy, raintrap, gorilla. [LAUGH] What? Is that from Congo. Congo. Yeah. Dude, we reference Congo at least twice a year on this program. Yeah, I know and I haven't seen it since it came out. I need to rewatch that. Ugly gorilla. yeah, I don't know, I think it, also could be emotionally, a trap too if couples take this and think that they're compatible and this test tells them their not, [UNKNOWN] be questioning themselves about whether or not they could find someone they would be happier with. I'm willing to say with almost. Complete confidence, okay. At sites like christianmingle.com have more accuracy than this DNA. But does it match people up? Because at least you're both in the same category. Like look, we're gonna, God's gonna do this for us, so let's just. This website channels the word of God. You have aligned interest, already. You have aligned, oop sorry. Give me that. Yeah. [LAUGH] You have aligned interests already. Right. Like you both are believing that God is personified inside of a website, and decides who should be together. So that's fine, Right. So you already have a similar aligned philosophy, whereas this is just- Blind matching. This is blind, sort of, look, and I'm not taking anything away from DNA. Like, that's clearly a thing. Yeah. But i'm not saying that there's enough evidence to say that it well, it denotes compatibility. I agree with you. Cause they were stuff like J date, Like J date, both of you two are jewish and you only want to marry jewish people. [COUGH] And that's one thing you've got going for you. That's all you need, I mean if it's the most important thing in your life, then it's all you need. And the fact that everyone has blood and DNA is not enough for this thing, is what i'm saying. I wonder how, this is gonna be completely off topic, kind of, but I wonder how Christians that meet on Christian Mingle sort of answer the question like how does this interfere or work into God's plan for you. Like do you think they would say. Like, you know, god's plan all along was for me to find this website. Right. And then meet this other person on the internet. Or, or do they think that it's kinda wrong for them to, sort of interfere with, like, you know, god's plan for you? Well. You know what I mean? I mean, the sl, I'll have you know the slogan of christian mingle is find god's match for you, so they have a partnership. Its like all I've got. [LAUGH] Like they've signed. Someone signed. Right. Paper. Like yeah. Co-signed. Right. CEO. Right. God was like, hey, I'll, you know, I'll license out my likeness. Right. Exactly. For your website. Right. And whether they have a. Six year deal, a ten year whatever is is. Yep Right now, got match for you Mm hm Is contained within the ones and zeros on that website. Especially not a bad deal. You wanna find your match mate? Just believe I exist. Yeah, just believe in me. And I've taken all my knowledge and strength and power and wisdom and guidance and I've put it into a website. That you, are now completely like, you know, if I'm super religious and like God finds my match for me on Christian Mingle dot com. I'm, I can't like, say no to that, right? Like, if I meet. << Some, you know. << Yes. << My significant other there? << Yes. << How are you gonna say no to God? << Yes, but there's not just one person on there. Like, it would be cool if they showed you one person. This is your match. That is what Christian mingle should be, like this person. Yeah luckily the signed up for christian mingle too. Otherwise it;s kid of confusing like, is this another test? Is god testing me so I can recognize the ones that aren't my match? And how do you know? That's tough man. There's this movie Timer on Netflix have you seen that? I have not. It's this movie about the near future. Where a wrist band is invented with a countdown. That shows you how long you have until you meet your soulmate. Oh, I thought that was that movie, Out of, what is it. With the Jay, the Justin Timberlake movie. [CROSSTALK] Yeah, where he's got like, the currency is time. Oh, right, right, right. You can, like, borrow other time, people's time. Yeah. Out of Time. I don't, I don't remember. I hope to God that's not. I hope to ChristianMingle.com that that's not the slogan for that Brazil. I hope it's not. But yeah, timer's the same deal but with matchmaking, with love. And so you know, after fifteen years of being in service, this company has like a 95 percent rating. But the deal is, when you sign up for it, it is subscription service of course. You pay every year. But you know right when you sign up for it, it will tell you the time but if no time shows up, which is the case with the main character in this movie, no time shows up on her watch, so that means either your match hasn't gotten one yet or they're dead. Yeah. So. Bummer. That's the sign of the movie. But I like that because it only shows you one person. It's not like here, 500 people you could potentially be matched to. Right. Right, right, right Like ChristianMingle.com does. I never really seen ChristianMingle.com. Yeah [INAUDIBLE]. I want to hear from someone who's met, who's met, like a wife or- And if they decided to defy the word of God. No, I mean, I don't want to like, challenge people's religion or anything. I'm not challenging. I'm curious. I'm not. But I am genuinely curious, about how they feel about it. Of course. Or Jdate too, same deal. Jdate it's like, I've never, I don't think I've ever seen Jdate either, but I know people who have used it. Yeah, Yeah. I don't know. I think you have more of a, I don't think that- Jdate's slogan should be. Just please your parents. Yeah, like this is what your mother wants. Yeah, that's the only reason why people on there. I think Christian Mingle can have the same logo too, I mean same slogan too. Absolutely, yeah. How not to piss your parents off. Yeah. It's important to them. So that's, that's this company, you can go ahead and check it out. I personally don't think it's, So did you see your money, just get a 23 in [UNKNOWN] Seems like a lot of money, but you know what, that's, again it's like people that im just not a fan of like, business entities taking advantage of people who may or may not know any better Yeah. Yah [LAUGH] that's how it feels. It kinda falls into that category. But if you're going to rely on another company that's never met you before to determine Exactly The extent of your relationship, maybe you deserve to get suckered. Let me ask you another question. Ask away. This one's gonna be hard to answer. But, this next story will attempt to answer it. The question is, what is art? ... That's deep. Yeah. But let me submit. Do you want an answer? No. I want you to tell me if this, if you consider this next project to be art. Because I do truly believe like you can... Subjective as it may be, you can label what is and what is not art. Yeah. It's gonna vary by person. Right. But I also think there's like, Or by artist. Right. And I, but I also think it, it also falls in line with like, the majority of people having similar taste in, in. Yeah. Like the way we review products, or video games, or whatever. Right. Or movies. Yeah. Most good stuff rises to the top than the not. Maybe. Maybe? Yeah. I like, I think it was Andy Warhol who said, art is anything you can get away with. Right. I think it's pretty funny. It's true! And that actually applies here too, so what we're talking about is a photographer named Megan Gould. Who believes that real beauty in art is found right in front of us, waiting to be discovered. And what's right in front of us right now? Am I looking at the finger prints on an iPad? [LAUGH] A laptop screen. And so her new exhibit is called Surface Tension. Oh God. I don't like the name. In the project, she takes photographs of seemingly invisible hardware. That gets ignored and interacts with the contents inside. So when you pick up an ipod for example it's this beautiful piece of work but you don't really care what the screen looks like when you turn it on because you're just going in the internet. And she want to point out the beauty in smudges and fingerprints that are left on your device after you turn it off and. Throw it back on the couch. So that's exactly what this project is. She took touchscreens from her family's two iPads that they owned, complete with the fingerprint streaks on them and she scanned them right, and it's in a regular printer scanner and after that's done, she manipulates the image in Photoshop to create. What you're looking at on the screen here. The more contrast. Yeah. So it, little bit more contrast, it creates kind of like a natural black and white, sort of, almost like the surface of the moon shots. Yeah, it looks like those clean me. like, finger things on the back of dusty cars. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Is that art? I dunno. That, I mean, depends on what you do. Look. I mean, people are going to cr, I don't know. I feel like I'm supposed to say like one thing. What? I'm gonna say the other. Oh. Okay. Like, I genuinely think like some of this kind of is art. Yeah. And here's why. I think there's something magical about organic, like, chaos. Right? Mm-hm. And, and while you can't really say that this is because- Like, there are certain hot spots on screens that people touch, Mm-hm. and like, you're gonna get patterns that develop on a phone. Near where the keyboard is on an iPad. Near where the keyboard is. Right. But like there are very famous artists like, like Pollack who like tried to capture that sort of like chaos. Right. That, that like you know, their, their style. and they did it sorta, almost manually. I know there's a lot of like chaos with like the way you paint but like that's a, a similar sort of thing. Hm. As unintentional as it is. Yeah. There's that angle you can look at, and there's the angle of, like, it's really kinda strange the things you can see in these smudges. Yeah. Like, for this one, for me it kinda looks like people. Mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm. Right? Like, I see a Rorschach. Yeah, like, I see people in, waiting for a subway here, Yeah. is what I see. You know what I like about it too? Another angle you can take on it is there is like this Japanese, it's sort of like a japanese tradition called Wabi Sabi. And it is basically like the art of imperfection. The way it's used now a days in contemporary art is a well used scuff. So you know, like for example, like a really well used phone that's all scratched up on the back, or a pair of beat up sneakers, or, oh you know, a lot of people really get into like, the hash marks you get on an old pair of jeans. Of course. And, and things like that are, there's beauty in that. I. Absolutely, I remember like once, I don't remember where it was, you probably remember, but, it was a television screen that has a display on it, and they had a, I forgot where it was, but, they had displayed the same thing, on the television screen, for so long, that the same image has been burned onto it. Mm-hm. So even when you power off the screen, you can still see. What was on it? Do you remember that? Right. I don't, but I mean, that's, I've totally heard of that, I mean. Yeah, but stuff like that is like. Sure. So unintentional, but I think that's really cool. I think what you described, that sort of like fetishizing of the weared in like. Yeah. Worn sort of stuff, like. Like old leather [CROSSTALK] Because it's, it's completely organic. Yeah. And it's not done on purpose, where like, it's, I mean, you know, like, jeans get that treatment. Like they get the Oh, artificial. Artificial sort of, like wear and tear. Yeah. But there is something beautiful about something that's like, you know, with, you know, withstood the test of time. Right, yeah, it's a historical thing. For sure. So. I mean, you know. Shocked or not shocked, like that's, I, I kinda don't hate this. Yeah, yeah. It's not the worst, I, I agree. > This is officially not the worst. Yeah. I mean, think about it. That's the best of the worst. Including artists like Warhol and other sort of, you know pioneers, if you will. Like they've used way grosser and simpler. Yeah. And you know, borderline offensive techniques to achieve quote unquote art. Yeah, I almost wish that she hadn't manipulated these by hand in Photoshop afterward. Well, I mean. You know, I just want them to be, you know, like, you could see how many times she had swiped to unlock her iPad or something. Right, but I feel like you can see that. Yeah, theres more smudges on the bottom for sure and you can see how long she dragged her finger versus tap marks and Right. Interesting you can sort of build the history there. Kind of cool, I mean, I ain't putting this on my freaking living room wall. Yeah. I'm not a maniac. I wouldn't even go to the exhibit, man. I probably wouldn't, either, because this is good enough for me. Yeah, this is probably fine. Or you could just turn off your screen and just look at it naturally, your own. I would love, we should do a daily, like a daily segment, is this art. Sure is my answer sure. I don't know man. I'm not really feeling it. If she, if you told me she took a bunch of water color and made that, then I would like it. But, an iPad, no. So what about like that, that sort of splatter paint esthetic. Like Jackson Pollack? I mean, I, I, I would call that art. It's not my preference.you know? But I mean, unless I, I feel some kind of connection to it, which is rare. But, you know, it's whatever. It would be kinda cool if she took a blank canvas, and looked at her iPad, and then try to draw with her finger the same. Like you know, pushes and swipes that she would do [CROSSTALK] Right. Right, right, right, right. On a tablet. Right. But using paint, to see what that would look like. I'm not trying to take anything away from Jackson Pollock. I do think some of the, like the color, for him, it's like the colors that do it for me. Sure yeah. That are kind of amazing. Yeah I like that. But like. But concrete [CROSSTALK] There's a lot of similarities there. Yeah. There is. You know, like, there's a lot of similarities. Yeah, I mean like I said, if you told, if you didn't tell me that was an iPad I would like it a lot more. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, this is, I'm like all tripped out by this thing now, man. Look at that. It's friggin rad, I love it. Whoooo. See, I would buy that. You'd buy that? At a reasonable price. Sure. [LAUGH] Where was I that I saw like the strangest, oh. I told, oh yeah, at the house. Oh, yeah. The house of death. That creepy house. And. Uh-huh. Bottom part. [LAUGH] Man. You know what I like, is tie die. That is art. I mean if we're talking about splatter prints and things like that. [CROSSTALK] I think it's art for like, lame-os, but it's still art. Yeah. It's only art for lame-os because it's gotten clumped into like the- Stigmatized. Yeah. For sure. Lava lamp, style, like stoner stereotype. And because it's achieved through like a very simple process. Right, but it's sick. ANd who hasn't tye-dyed their old T-shirts? I've never done that before. You never did that? No, never. Seems like I did it on a yearly basis in elementary school. [LAUGH] Really? You actually had like a thing, like a No, it's like rubber band. Yeah, you rubber band it and dip it in dye. Wow, I've never done that before. Yeah. Weekend project. I thought Steve Guttenberg would know a thing or two about that, actually. He's been down that road far too many times. [LAUGH] Yeah, for sure. All right. I wanted sort of discuss this crazy Comcast phone call that landed on the Internet yesterday and pretty much everybody heard. Our old buddy, Ryan Block. Yeah. So, yesterday. Finally, he made it. Ryan Block, who's you know, he used to be the former editor-in-chief. Engadget now works on gadget. Just, GDGT, right? Legitimate question. Yeah. Is that still a thing? I don't know. Let's see. That's why it's a legitimate question. Yeah. I coulda sworn somebody told me it's gone. Really? I'm trying right now. GDGT, right? And it goes back to Engadget. It forwards to Engadget. Oh. Inception. Yeah. So anyway, Ryan Block, yesterday published a audio recording to SoundCloud of him trying to cancel his Comcast service. And give all the credit in the world to Ryan Block for keeping his. Composure Mm-hm, yeah I mean obviously after I hit the record button, I definitely would have done the same, are we gonna listen to this now [CROSSTALK] Yeah, I kind of wanted, I kind of want you to play a part of it. So basically, you're right, it is really painful to listen to the entire thing, it goes on on for what, eight minutes or something like that? Yeah he claims the conversation went on well beyond that but he only record about eight minutes of the entire conversation, and And he practically has to beg the customer service agent to just cut his service, that's all he wants, is to disconnect. For sure. And instead of doing it right away like he's being asked to, the customer service guy on the other side of the line. He tried his best to get the reason behind the cancellation. He offers all kind of deals and almost pried into Ryan's personal life to get to the bottom of why he is trying to cancel. And none of that really matters because Ryan is like, hey I don't want to answer any of these questions, just cancel the service. Can you do that? And he won't get a straight answer out of this guy. It's crazy. There, there comes a point where, I'll start playing it in a second. . Hopefully you guys can here it. There's a point where like, the dude on, the Comcast dude, you know, Ryan's like, just, just cancel my service, man. Yeah. And the guy's like, why do you wanna do that? He's like, I don't know why you wanna cancel something that works. Yeah, yeah. And, man, like I said, give him all the credit in the world. I would've lost. It all. Yeah. Like I would have been fired because this was made news what I said, what I would have said to this guy. Yeah. Nevertheless here we go. Tell me if you can hear that. You hearing that? 105 megabits per second for your internet. Astound will not give you that speed. Okay we'd like to, we'd like to disconnect. We'd like to disconnect please. Okay, so why is it you don't want the faster speed? Help me understand why you don't want faster Internet? Help me understand why you can't just disconnect us? Be, because my job is to ha, is to have a conversation with you about having, about just I mean keeping the- So yeah, it's pretty [CROSSTALK] Of what's going on with this guy. Poor, poor Ryan Blah having to deal with this, totally unacceptable in my opinion, and my- Yeah. And I been through this, I've you know, what I do is whenever I have these conversations, I'm trolling the. Provider because I want them to give me like a free thing. Right. Right. That's like a move you can just sort of make. It's kind of like this unwritten law that they have. Where like, if you complain long enough or threaten to cancel they'll like do this sort of rebuttal that always ends up with you getting showtime in your pocket. Or something like that. Right. But Ryan doesn't want any of that stuff. No. He just wants to leave He just wants to leave. For whatever reason he doesn't. Ever and giving the reason why, he's not moving or anything like that. He just wants to cancel it. So what's the fallout? So the fallout is you know, after it went viral yesterday, it got posted a million times and Comcast, of course, has already responded and they apologized for the mishap. They said they're investigating it. And in a quick little comment at the bottom, they said they're gonna take action. On the service agent, quickly, as soon as they find out what happened. Right, so, what does that mean, are they just gonna decapitate him? [CROSSTALK] Yeah, I'm not sure, they gonna like send his lips to Ryan? [LAUGH] [LAUGH] I'd never again, Yeah no attach, never again. You know, to be honest, I kind of feel bad for the customer service guy too, he's just a dude doing his job, you know, and I can imagine there's gotta be like. You know, there's gotta be some kind of rule inside the company where you're only allowed to cancel like, five accounts a month, and if you cancel six, you're going to get a demerit, or something like that. So, so, and I agree with you, and I definitely think like, you have to look at both sides of the field on this one, but- And there are a lot of people that are calling just to get the extra features. Sure. And this guy was really trying to sniff him out and I get that. I feel bad for the rep a little bit, I don't feel bad, because of like just, just, his tone. That, look I mean, there comes a time where, and I guess it is just sort of, you know, uh,uh,uh, handed from above, handed down from above, this mentality that you can not. Get this guy off the phone and cancel the subscription. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like by any means, you know, by, so. You know, but still, after a while, like this went on for that long. Mm hm. I mean, come on. Like you couldn't tell very early long that Ryan is not willing to negotiate at all. Sure. That's it. No. I mean look, this might change things. Like after this, like this might change the ways customer service works. Yeah. Because of how shockingly aggressive the rep was. Right Whether or not that's a company policy Mm-Hm to me its just, I dont know I, I, I can't I, I, I would be shocked like, I mean Comcast comes out, obviously their knee jerk thing says this is not, this is unacceptable. Right and, and, and we dont endorse this type of behavior. But you know in the employee handbook it says we dont know keep them on the line as long as possible. Right, let's take that, So where's the leak of the employee handbook where it says that? Right Cuz where's that? Or like, I wonder what are the guidelines from the company on when to give up? Exactly After ten minutes. Cuz at the end he falls immediately. Like it's weird. It goes on for maybe ten minutes, then there's an additional ten we didn't hear before. And then, all of a sudden at the end, the guy just goes, okay, you know what, I'm just gonna disconnect it. Yeah. Right. Have a nice day. And then, it's over really. Abrupt. Right. So it's weird, I dunno. He didn't say anything, different at the end. He just kinda gave up, so maybe he was just tired. It's like Boiler-room Man. That's exactly Yeah. That's exactly what I was gonna say. Yeah, it's like always disclosing. It's like that whole thing where, But I forget who it is. Is is Ben Affleck who's coming into the office? He's one of the guys at the firm. Yeah he comes into a meeting with all the new hires, all the new stockbrokers. And he's like on every call, there's a sale. Sure Either you sell the client stock or they sell you on a reason why they're not gonna buy. Somebody wins Someone wins so don't let them win, but apparently they needed Ben Affleck over at comcast. Man, it's just, you know, obviously anyone who hears it, the first thing you do is you side with Block, because he's just like, hey, you know, it's like in 40 Year Old Virgin. Jonah Hill just wants to buy those gold platform heels man. [LAUGH] Right. [CROSSTALK] I just wanna buy this and leave, and where them in my house. And she's like, nope, can't do that. Yeah, yeah. That infuriating, frustrating, you know, point of view. But again. But I sympathize, because you know the guy from Comcast doesn't care one way or another. Clearly, his **** is on the line. Like, he doesn't care if, if Ryan Block cancels his Comcast service. Right. But. If they so, they say that, they're going to deal with that guy. If he gets fired then it's not a company policy then what are the firing him for? He wasn't unprofessional at all. I think he was, maybe you could make the argument that h is tone was so aggressive it just, there was no. Coming back from [UNKNOWN] But what I wanna know, is like, alright, you do fire him, you fire him for that, or you fire him for going against company policy. If you don't fire him, and just quote unquote deal with him what does that mean? And, and, you know? I don't know. Yeah. You heard, you heard this too [UNKNOWN] [CROSSTALK] Yeah, I did, I did. It's crazy. It does speak to me speak to the power of social media as a weapon in customer service. Definitely. You know what I mean. Obviously Ryan got his service cancelled. I'm sure they went and offered him even more after all of this came out because it's bad publicity for Comcast,right? So that shows you if you get into some kind of trouble with customer service all you gotta do is send out a bunch of tweets or something. Yeah. Use that to your advantage. I've done that. Absolutely. Definitely. What if you just stop paying your bills, will that mess up your credit? No. It 's not credit. Comcast bill? They might come out with a bill collector after you. That could potentially mess something up but, yeah they hire third party collections agency. Like when you get your power turned off, that's not a good thing. I feel like that would affect your credit too. I don't know if it, I think a collection agency might come into it but not. Paying your bill. Yeah. Won't, cuz there's no credit there. You're not charging anything to it, they're just giving you an invoice. So, I don't know. We'll have to ask Jill next time. But yeah, it's, it's, man, you know, like I said, give it up, raise your glass to, to Block because he did the one thing like everyone always says they're gonna do. Yeah. You know, like how many people have always been like, man, one day I'm just gonna record these **** and put it up online. And it's. It's true. Like he, he struck gold because he got himself into a situation where it was just priceless. How do you record that? How did he record that? Do we know? Like how do you do it? Is there an app? Maybe he used a computer or something. Yeah, maybe. I know there used to be this thing you plug into landlines that recorded. You know, but I don't know about cell phones or anything like. Oh did he have a speaker? It sounded like he may have had it on speaker. It could have been speaker. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It could be that, yeah. You know, it's crazy, my friend told me a story yesterday about using social media for customer service. He told me that he bought a couch a week ago from Target.com, right, and had it delivered to his apartment, but when they came, he and his girlfriend weren't at home. And so, instead of taking it back and redelivering, they left it on the sidewalk in front of his apartment building in Brooklyn. No. In Clinton Hills. No. No signature required. What? Yeah. And so he called up Target and was like, hey. Of course when I got home the couch was gone. I have no idea where it is. There is not trace of it what are we going do I need a refund? Yea. And Target refused to give me one. Wow They were just like we didn't need a signature on it so we just left it out there. Yea. And you have to deal with the rest. So, we can't do anything further. Pissed. Yeah. You know, and after a bunch of phone calls, he didn't really know what else to do. I, see that, I would call the credit card company, be like, I'm not paying that charge. Yeah, yeah. I, I'm, do you think they would've handled that? Some, some cards do that yeah, for sure. What he ended up doing was going on Twitter. And he doesn't have like a ton of followers. He has maybe like 1,000 or something, which is a good amount. And he, what he ended up doing was tweeting them for an entire day. Just, you know, whatever targets twitter account was. He sent them multiple tweets complaining and telling the story and things and at replying people and really getting involved. And a customer service agent, that was actually the social media handler for target actually called him personally on his phone to apologize for what had happened. And to push the refund thru. Yeah man. I mean, it's happening everywhere. It happened the other day on Reddit, on the Xbox One subreddit. This guy sent in his Xbox. Yeah. It came back unrepaired. Yeah. After he had sent it in. And it took all this tweeting at Major Nelson. You know? Yeah, yeah, the guy. That is like, like the Xbox personality guy. And. You know he intervened and, and got it taken care of. Yeah. Cuz they, they want to put out a those fires as quickly as possible. Of course. It's in their best interest. And if they know it's their fault then. It's definitely the most consumer friendly sort of, you know, empowering tool there's been in awhile. Yeah. For sure. So do that if you're having a problem. So remember when we were talking a while back about Justin hates info graphics? [CROSSTALK] Right, you just think they're like the bane of, of the internet. You, you just- Never read one before. You're like, information's stupid. [LAUGH] Yeah. I hate having it presented in a visual pleasing way. Organization. Oh [CROSSTALK] Give me that wall of text.>> You're like I'd much rather digest loads of information through like gigabytes of one's and zeros and data. Well this is where the video game metrico comes into play. This August video game consisting. It's called in info graphics game and it looks like a platformer that you sort of jump on info graphics. Uh-huh. And like the things you do in the game. I just found out about the game today. But the things you do in the game dynamically change the background because it's all like pie charts and bar graphs and stuff like that. Yeah. Now. I think that stuff comes more into like the stylistic component of the game. I'm, I'm not sure like, it's really about infographics. I think they just use it as a stylistic tool. Yeah. But you hate this nonetheless, right? This is actually a way cooler use of the. Info graphic than I would care to read [CROSSTALK] Yeah. But I would actually play this looks cool. All the vectors and rectangles and stuff, kind of makes [UNKNOWN] sick environment. Oh, you mean like everything that makes up info graphics? And video games. Right. What is the point though. They're just running. It looks like a platformer. Oh, I see a guy jumping on stuff. Yeah. Is this a free game? No. It's not free. It comes out on August 5th for Playstation Vita exclusively. I feel like it's a $5 to $15 game. Okay. So, maybe when, I get it, I"ll let you sit down with it. Yeah. And you'll just like review this, infographic platform game. Yeah [LAUGH] Yeah, I"ll catch up on all my naps. Yeah,you know? That's what I'm here for. Can, can you? It would be cool if you could upload your own infographics to the game. Would it be? Yeah. Yeah, that's like, that's like the must have feature for [UNKNOWN] I mean, infographic platform game? That already sounds like the most boring thing to me. It's an infographic action game. Oh. [LAUGH] I know, right? Like man. I don't know, but it's, it looks like an indie developer, so that's good. We got our, we got our Oh, yeah. We're into that. Support the, support the indie dev team. That's a big deal, right? For sure. Alright, the game's Metrico. August what? Yeah. All right. All right, check it out. All right, I think we are done today. I wanted to give a birthday shout out. Aw, thanks, buddy. Yeah. Happy Birthday. Yeah, thanks, buddy. Not your birthday. No. But it is Brandon's birthday. Oh. And his girlfriend Dana actually e-mailed us. About a month ago. Oh no! Asking me if we could give a birthday shout out to Oh. So she' been doing this planning for a while now I'm not sure what she has planned for today but I bet it's great. Hell yeah. Brandon's turning thirty today and so she asked us to surprise him with a birthday shout out on the show so. So, welcome to your thirties. I thought you were going to say "welcome to the end of your life". Yeah, it is half over I hope you enjoyed it. Hey, happy birthday Brandon we mean that. Happy 30th It is a big milestone. Way to do it buddy. We got to live this long. Welcome to the club. Hell Yeah. It is a good club man. When you turn thirty everything is important. Right? You don't get bothered by all the trivial nonsense in life, it's a good age. My friend, one of my friends summed up the 30s like this: he said in your 20s, you'll go out for a night on the town, in your 30s, you go out for a night outside of town. That sums it up perfect, man. Yeah! I like that. I'm gonna go ahead and clap. [APPLAUSE] Clapping to that little riddle and a clap to Brandon on his 30th birthday. Yeah, enjoy. That's a good one. Great stuff happy birthday Brandon. That's so awesome. He's got a great girlfriend. Right that's who we were? Right, Dana. Dana, you're the best. We'll see you guys tomorrow shoot us n email before four at CNet dot com follow us on Facebook twitter Reddit and Instagrm and we'll see you tomorrow. I'm Jeff Bacalair. I'm Justin Yew. I'm Ariel Nunez. This has been the 404 show. High tech. Low brow. Have an awesome Wednesday. We'll be back here tomorrow. [MUSIC]