How Shannon Morse Works

Back when he was a brand new tech podcaster, Jonathan met with fellow tech content creator (and fellow Discovery Digital Network veteran) Shannon Morse. The two became good friends. Now, Jonathan learns all about Shannon's journey in becoming a successful content creator in an ever-changing digital landscape. Keywords: Shannon Morse, Hak5, Revision 3, Discovery Digital Network, TWiT, Tekzilla, Threatwire, hacker, content creator, YouTube"

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you. I have a special treat a beloved

(00:25):
friend peer peer is doing injustice. She does so much
more than I do. I have a dear friend who
has agreed to give up her precious time to agree
to my whim of appearing on one of the final
episodes of tech Stuff I'll ever be hosting. It is
Shannon Morse. Welcome back to tex Stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Shannon, Hello, Jonathan, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I am? I'm great. Like the closer I get to
the end, the more i'm I got a little spring
in my step. Not that I not that I hate
doing stuff, but I'm looking forward to what comes next.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yes, I'm always excited to see what's coming next.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah. For Shannon, what comes next is that before too
long she's going to be packing for Las Vegas to
head off to CES.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah. In a whole like I'm counting down the days
right now. I think I have ten days. I'm in
panic mode where I'm like scheduling the last minute sponsorships,
last minute schedules of like booth tours, and I'm like,
oh god, oh god, I have to make sure that
I leave enough time in between all these meetings so
that I can, you know, get down the Las Vegas
Strip from one one hotel to another, because you know,

(01:35):
it's an entire maze.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Oh yeah, yeah, No, it used to. When I first started,
it was the majority of the stuff I wanted to
see was actually in the Sands Expo Center before before,
like I mean, like for a while, I was like,
oh wait, there's a convention center too't even I was
such a nube. And it's funny that I that were

(01:57):
even starting off about this because honestly, like our story,
like the first time I met you in person was
at a CES. It's probably two thousand and eight or
two thousand and nine, Yeah, somewhere around then.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Two thousand and nine, I believe was my very first CES.
And that's right after I started working with Hack five.
So we went down there as a crew and I
believe that year we recorded like forty something segments at CES.
It was insane. It was bonkers, No wonder I got
sick every year after that.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
I'm getting sick just thinking about it. I was there
by myself, and I was largely directionless. Because while you
are talking about strategizing and planning things out and having
you know your schedule and making sure one of the things,
By the way, if you ever do get into the
world of covering ces, one of the most important things

(02:50):
you can do is make sure you have built in
time between different appointments, because, yes, getting from point A
to point B is never straightforward, even if it's the
same convention center. It can carry to you half an hour.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
The casinos are huge, and it takes forever to get
like an uber or a lyft or even a shuttle
or one of the monorail transportations if you can do
the monorail between the different places. So you always have
to like plan that into your schedule to ensure you
have time for traffic and for all the people, because
CEES ends up bringing in over one hundred thousand extra

(03:27):
people into that city, and almost every single person is
on the strip or at the convention center, so it
ends up being crazy, crazy packed.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, to the point where like they moved all the
press events. At least the last time I went, all
the press events were down toward like the Mandalay Bay side,
So that's that's about as far on the strip as
you can get from the Convention Center. Obviously there are
other parts of Vegas besides the Strip, but that's like
the heart and soul of where Cees happens. Anything that
happens off the strip, that's a huge commitment to have

(03:57):
to go off because you know it's going to take
you quite some time to get back. But my first
memory of you, Shannon, is that I remember being I
think it was like maybe Convention Center North at the
Las Vegash Convention Center, and I see you and I
had never met you before in my life, and for

(04:19):
some reason our paths had crossed and we introduced each other,
and then you gave me a hug, and I was like,
you have no idea how badly I needed that, because
I felt so directionless and so out of my element. Yeah,
and this is not one of the reasons I wanted
to have you on from one of my final shows.
Is this is not me blowing smoke. You are one

(04:41):
of the reasons that I wanted to stick with podcasting
because I had only been doing it for about a
year at that point. Oh my gosh, And you know,
you start feeling like you're you're talking into a void
if you don't have a lot of audience feedback right away.
Let's have the method, right We didn't want to give

(05:02):
out our personal emails on the show, and we didn't
have a show email for a while, so, but having
someone who was also working in communication tech communication and uh,
trying to synthesize complex ideas and then communicate them in
a way that's easy to understand and to digest. Like,

(05:25):
you know, meeting a kindred soul like that who not
only was a kindred soul, but someone who is outwardly
just welcoming and friendly was a huge impact on me
and was just an enormous.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, made me cry. That's really sweet.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
And y'all have to remember too that I'm approximately seventy
years older than Shannon is.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
That's a lie. We're the same age.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
We are not the same age. We're both Okay, I
like okay, I like your version. I like your version
a lot. So, but that's that's that's getting way too
far ahead in your story. That's just where our friendship began,
and we would typically reconnect at cees pretty much like
that was the one time of year. I think I
met you at a dragon con. Once it came to

(06:10):
one dragon con I did.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
My friends got married down there, so I flew out
for their wedding because I was one of their bridesmaids
or something I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, that was cool, though seeing you like on the
other coast was neat. But let's talk about your journey
into becoming what you are today. So let's just start, like,
can you tell me kind of your earliest memories of
even being interested in technology as a concept, let alone

(06:39):
as this is something I want to pursue as a career.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Oh my goodness, I would love to.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
So.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
I grew up in a military household. My dad was military,
and I think that's why I'm so friendly with people,
because I had to force myself to make friends every
single time we moved somewhere new or I would be
walking into a new school with apps no friends. So
that was always a thing for me, is like, I
want to surround myself with friendship, and I forced myself

(07:07):
into it. But when I was young and a nerd,
my dad would always watch like Star Trek and X
Files and like all those nerdy shows after work, So
I would always like sit in the living room with
him and watch those and eventually I think he noticed
signs that I was into the same things he was,

(07:28):
so he would invite me to eventually build a computer
with him, and I think that was around eight years old. Wow,
I do have photos. I don't remember it personally because
I was way too young to remember this, but I
do have photos of me sitting on his lap and
banging at his keyboard on an old like IBM type PC,

(07:49):
like something that he had built in the eighties, way
way way before my time. When I was just a
little teeny, tiny toddler. I had no idea what I
was doing. I have pictures of me playing on this
computer and not really knowing what I was doing. But
I think him inviting me to do that as a
little baby influenced my direction as a child and gave

(08:15):
me that interest in PCs.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
So when he.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Gave me the opportunity to help build the family computer
when I was, you know, a little eight year old kid,
I was like absolutely So I remember building this computer,
having this huge tower, huge motherboard, the ramsticks were gigantic,
like everything was big back then. We had a floppy
disc reader like all that stuff, putting all that together

(08:38):
on the dining room table, and we had this old,
like wooden nineteen nineties dining room table, like very quite
ugly nowadays, but very very you know, classic nineteen nineties.
I just remember how proud I was when we plugged
it into power and it powered on and it worked,

(08:59):
and he let me install video games. So I learned
so much through him. I really have to thank my dad, Like,
even though we don't necessarily have a great relationship now,
back in the day, like, I have to thank him
for so much of my nerdiness and my interests that
I kind of delved into as just a little kid.

(09:22):
I think it really influenced what I do today.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Wow, I'm hearing a lot of parallels of my own experience.
I mean, granted, for me, my first computer was a
Texas Instrument trash machine. But then I went to Apple
to E and then eventually got my first IBM competible.
When I say I, I mean the family I didn't
have it. It was the family computer. My dad writes
science fiction. In fact, he's written books in the Star

(09:47):
Trek series, so there's a lot of overlap here. Yeah,
he wrote in the young adult Star Trek series. Yeah, yeah,
Brad Strickland, look it up. Brad Strickland. He wrote several
books in the young adult Star Trek series, which was
like Starfleet Academy talking about you know, Spock and Kirk
when they were students at Starfleet that kind of stuff. Yes, cool, yeah, yeah.

(10:10):
So I grew up going to these science fiction conventions
and meeting the various people who were in the shows
and the movies and stuff amazing, you know. Oh yeah,
there's so many great stories, running into people like George
de Kay and it was fantastic. Yeah, oh wow, it
was great. But same sort of thing where my dad

(10:32):
kind of instilled in me this joy of geekery and
technology as well as literature. Like Dad taught American Lit,
which I thought was respectful, but I ended up majoring
in English Lit because I had to do one better.
But so similar stories there. So were you drawn to
any classes or anything when you were going through school

(10:53):
in the field of tech, Like when I was in
high school. Well, first I was going to high school
in rural George, so yeah, our resources were somewhat limited,
but I seem the closest, the closest for me was
a data processing class, which was essentially learning to type
on keyboards and do spreadsheets and that kind of stuff.

(11:14):
Nothing particularly, you know, nothing close to coding, but that
was as close as I could get in school.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Luckily, the schools that I went to were either on
military bases and they generally had pretty good financing to
have a lot of computers and stuff like that, or
I was going to school right off of a military
base once my dad retired from the military. So every
school that I went to, even though it was in
Missouri and our educational system was not the best in

(11:45):
the United States, we still had a lot of access
to technology. So I don't remember what year it was,
but I do have really early memories of having a
typing class where, you know, we played Oregon Trail and
we played mathematical games, and we had typing days. And
I noticed that when I was in those classrooms, and

(12:07):
then I would go home and be able to practice
typing at home too, because I was playing on that
computer I built with my dad, I noticed that I
was one of the fastest typers in the class. So
it ended up being a passion for me where I
was like, I want to play on computers more because
this is something that I can tell that I'm good at.
And it was weird because not a lot of girls

(12:28):
were into that when I was growing up, a lot
of the girls in my classes wanted to do other
stuff like play instruments and band, which I never got into.
But I was really into singing and acting, so I
really wanted to do that too. So it was like
all the little electives I got very passionate about, but
I had no interest in literature. I had no interest
in math sciences. I was like, I was okay at science,

(12:52):
but I didn't really want to do it. So I
just really wanted to focus on like the media side
of the electives as well as the technology sides because
those were the things that I found were things that
I was very interested in.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Wow. So that yeah, like literally at an early age,
it's the components that make up what your career is today.
The community, you know, being able to communicate. There's a
skill to that that I think goes largely unappreciated until
you see someone who perhaps is early on in their
journey into becoming a communicator, where you can see the

(13:30):
sausage being made a little bit more. They're not as
not quite as as polished. Perhaps they might have a
great perspective, they might be have great insight, right, but
maybe their communication skills need a little more work. Nothing
wrong with that. Actually I prefer that to the people
who are very polished but have nothing to say. Yeah,

(13:52):
those are the ones that I'm like, well, that's kind
of unless you have a teleprompter feeding them the stuff
they need to say, they aren't going to communicate anything
particularly useful.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's kind of how I feel, like, kind of awkward,
a little bit weird, but at the same time, like
I want to share things that I'm learning with people.
I think part of that might be because I'm the
oldest out of three kids, So my little brother and sister,
they would come to me if they had a question
if I wasn't beating them up at the time, So anytime,

(14:23):
like they wanted to learn, you know, how to plug
in and play the new Mario game on the Nintendo,
or if they wanted to learn how to play a
video game on Dad's computer on the family computer in
the family room, like I would, I would be the
one that would be teaching them how to do this
stuff since my dad would be at work until you know,
five or six PM. So I think part of part

(14:44):
of the reason why I'm you know, have this nerdy
representation of like awkwardness, and I'm totally fine with sharing
that on camera because we're all a little bit weird
and I think that's perfectly fine, but also wanting to
educate people and wanting to share things that I have
learned and gotten excited about. Like, I'm sure part of
that is because my little brother and sister, like I

(15:06):
wanted them to be nerds too, So I was like,
let me show my nerdy things to you.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, I love that you were teaching them both how
to interact and interface with technology as well as how
to take a good left hook. Yeah, it's I mean.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Too when they go in your room and try to
overwrite your safe game on the Lion King or something.
You know.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Oh oh yeah, that's crut back in the day. But no, no, no, yeah,
I think we're actually finally getting back into a realm.
Not finally, it's happened over the last couple of years,
but like a lot of independent games, they're being made
by the people who grew up playing those Oh yeah,
incredibly challenging, unforgiving games. And so now you get things

(15:47):
like UFO fifty or even older ones like super Meat
Boy or whatever, where it's clearly pulling from that ethos
of let's make this game brutally hard and okay't save well,
then where do we go from there? So you're going
through the elementary, middle school, high school. Yeah, you're developing

(16:09):
this interest in media as well as in technology. What
happens next?

Speaker 2 (16:14):
I ended up doing like a lot of plays when
I was in high school. I got really into theater
and got into choir. I ended up finding a really
good talent for those, so by the time I was
a senior, I got in a word best actress for
a class out of three hundred people. So that's quite
a bit.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Okay, well, quick favorite play? I got to know your
favorite play?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Oh, I would say Into the Woods.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Okay, excellent.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
I love Into the Woods. I played Cinderella, so I'm
kind of biased there. And I had such a blast
doing that because it was my first, like really major
role when I was in high school. So I loved
it so much. It was incredible for me. And it
was incredible too because it kind of took me out
of my shell quite a bit because I was a
nerd I didn't have a lot of friends, so that

(17:04):
show and the fact that my drama teacher was really
he wanted to see me succeed and he really trained
me to be really good on stage. He was like,
you're going to train yourself. You're going to learn these things,
and you're going to go on stage and you're going
to blow everybody's minds, Like people are going to cry
when you sing this song. And I was like, oh
my god, okay, and it worked. Like it really helped

(17:27):
me get out of my awkward, like self conscious shell
when I was in high school, and that was one
of the big turning points for me going into this
career later on, you know, after college days. So I
was doing that on the like artist side, and then
on the technical side, I was trying to get into
classes like JavaScript. I learned that I was building websites

(17:50):
at home, like in HTML, and eventually I learned a
little bit about C plus plus. So there was some
programming involved in a lot of self teaching that kind
of stuff because we didn't have all of those types
of classes available. We just had a few here and there.
And I took some classes on journalism because it was
something I was kind of wondering if I should dip

(18:11):
my toes into so I tried to learn about journalism
and see if it was something I would be interested in.
So once I got into college, my agreement with my
dad was if I go to college in the state,
he would help me with my tuition. I would cover
everything else, but he would help me with my tuition.
And this is way back in the day when tuitions

(18:32):
were not super expensive. They were much much cheaper than
what they are today, so we're talking not too bad.
I still had three jobs when I was in college
to afford living on my own, buying my books, buying
meals and stuff like that. So I worked at like
a Domino's Pizza so I could get free pizza every day.

(18:53):
Not the best diet, but you know what I survived.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, I think it's admirable already, because, like, as you
point out, like even though it's not as astronomically expensive
as it is today, I mean, it's still a big
chunk of change. Oh yeah, and you know, going out
and being able to hustle so that you can.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
I had to, Like I bought my first car, and
I remember one time a tire blew out while I
was on the highway driving home so I could do
my laundry at my parents' house, and I didn't know
what to do. I had to pay for a new tire,
and like little things like that, those little emergencies you
run into. You don't realize how expensive that stuff is

(19:33):
until you're living on your own and you're in charge
of those expenses. So that was a major growing pain
for myself, is just moving out of my parents' house
and becoming very independent and learning how to take care
of myself. It was tough, but you know, those were
the college days. It was hard. But I'm glad that

(19:53):
I had so many jobs and I'm glad that I
did it, and I'm glad I learned even postage was expected.
I remember like having to mail a check for something,
and I remember how how I was just like what
the stamp price went up? It went up from like
thirty nine cents to forty one cents or something, and
I was just like, what this is more expensive now?

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Like I didn't budget for this.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
I did not budget for this two cent increase on
a stamp, Like what the what the I do not agree?

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, well, I mean, like like to your point, like
those emergency things Like I remember when I first got
out of college, I was living so close like it
was literally paycheck to paycheck. Yea, where you're living so
close to what you're making that anything that happens out
of the routine is.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
It really screws up everything.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
It's monumental, Like yeah, like even if you've saved up
to do something, if something unexpected happens on top of that, Yeah,
Because I'm thinking, I'm thinking about how I found out
I was severely allergic to lobster, which was aboard a
cruise ship docked it. Now saw that you don't want
to be you don't want to be docted at Nassau

(21:04):
when you're having a medical emergency. Uh. But you know,
my partner works for in the travel industry, so we
were able to get this cruise ticket for like a
severely marked down price, which is the only reason we
were able to go. This was like a luxurious vacation
for us. And then I have a medical emergency on

(21:26):
board that literally doubled the price of the cruise. Uh,
because we had to pay so I wouldn't die. And
so because that's how that's how healthcare works in our country,
but I did that. I did not die, and you know,
we were able to recover. But yeah, it's one of
those things where it's a tough life lesson.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah it's hard.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, it is very hard. So I can I completely
empathize with your tire story. Hey, y'all, it's Jonathan from
the Future here too to tell you we're going to
take a quick break with this interview with Shannon Morris
to thank our sponsors. We'll be right back. I'm curious

(22:13):
at what stage, what were you still in school when
you were starting to experiment with using the Internet as
a communications delivery mechanism, because when I was in school, Yeah,
that's cool, because like when I was in school, the
web was brand new. Yeah, and there certainly was no
like streaming element, Like everything was message.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Boards, like it was all text based. Oh, I remember
message boards. I was in a chat room called bras
Chat from Space Ghost Coast to coast, and it was
just a bunch of strangers chatting with each other, which
was probably not the smartest thing to do when I
was a young girl, but I had no idea what
I was doing, so I was just chatting with people
about Space Ghost and Brack like it was pretty nerdy stuff,

(22:56):
so I'm pretty sure I was fine, but not necessarily
a recommendation I would give these days. So yeah, I
was doing stuff like that when I was in school.
I was building websites again, like geocites, angel fire, stuff
like that. I was the perfect age for that. And
I was also into anime and nerdy things as well,
like Sailor Moon. So I was building like Sailor Moon websites.

(23:20):
And then journaling came along on the Internet, so I
was able to use some of my previous journalism classes
to understand how to write efficiently and how to write
in a way that people would understand. And it was
journal It was like this is what I did in
school today, but it was still being able to post
like little articles that people could read. They don't exist

(23:43):
to this day. I don't know what happened to those websites.
They're all long gone, thank god.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah. Well yeah, if you look at things like the
story of live journal alone, yeah, live journal. Live journal
went through a time, y'all. Like there, It kind of
reminds me of Tumbler too, Like these these sites that
got even if they weren't large communities, they were very
devoted communities and very and then and then stuff goes wrong,

(24:10):
and obviously it's like any invested community of stuff goes wrong,
you're going to have a lot of people upset about it.
That's true. That's that's putting it lightly. Both for live
journal and for Tumblr.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah, I got into those, and eventually, when I was
in college, I discovered online media, like video media, whether
that was flash media like homestar Runner, websites like that
that just posted funny flash videos or I also got
into a show called Pure Ownage, which was based in Toronto, Canada,

(24:44):
and it was a series of online episodes, real life
episodes about these these characters. These this series of like
I think three or four different people. It was three
guys and one girl, and they were all really into
gaming and I was into gaming two so I found
a lot of their inside jokes to be hilarious. Eventually

(25:06):
they did It was like probably my junior year of college,
but they did a live show in Toronto, and me
and my friend in Missouri, we were going to college
in Missouri. We were like, let's drive to Toronto just
we randomly decided this, let's drive to Toronto just for
their live show. We won't rent a hotel or anything.
We're just going to drive up see the live show,

(25:26):
and then drive back home. And this is like a
sixteen hour drive or something. It's ridiculously long. But we
were in college. We were like, we could live off.
We'll get White Castle in Saint Louis while we're driving
up there, which is disgusting, don't recommend. It was really cross.
So we got White Castle because that was the thing
to do. You drive to Saint Louis and get White Castle.

(25:47):
And we drove on like Coca cola and coffee and
just drove the entirety overnight to Toronto. We saw this
live show, got to meet the actors that were in
this show, and then we drove all way back home.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
We ended up building this wonderful friendship with the guys
that were in this show in peer ownage, and we
developed this friendship over the course of a few years.
So we kept on traveling back up to Toronto to
hang out with them. We did little like a vacation
in the summertime one time, and that was my first
like introduction to live entertainment that you could post on

(26:27):
the internet, like live videos you could post on the Internet,
and it was fun and it was funny, and the
community was all nerds and into video games. So of
course I fell like deep into this rabbit hole of
like what else is on the Internet. And that was
when YouTube was created, right around the time I was
in college.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
Wow yeah, see gosh again, so many parallels. First of all,
I had the Home the Brother's Chap who made Homestar.
I've had them on the show and Strong Bad actually
gave me a great outro for time.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
I love them so much.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
It was they were so funny. It was a ridiculous conversation, y'all.
If you if you want to just laugh at people
being silly, you can search the archives for when I
had The Brother's Chap on on on tech stuff. But yeah,
I uh, for me, it was Red, not regular media
that would come much later. Rooster Teeth. Rooster Teeth was
like that was those were the online creators that I

(27:23):
because I found Red Versus Blue when they were maybe
there were maybe three or four episodes into the very
first season. That was back when you had to download
the episode to watch it because there wasn't a streaming player.
I remember that. Yeah, yeah, But so I'm curious then,
so you're you discover the online media part. It's kind

(27:44):
of the world's coming together for the stuff that you're
already interested in. Uh. Was it kind of a natural
evolution for you to move into that space where you
started to work there or was there anything in between?

Speaker 2 (27:58):
It was natural. I feel like the universe kind of
brought me to the right people at the right time.
Because I was about to graduate from college. I had
no idea exactly what kind of career I wanted to
go into because I had so many different interests. But
this YouTube thing was brand new. I didn't understand how

(28:21):
to upload your own videos. I didn't know how to
record them, how to edit, nothing like that. I was very,
very new to that whole idea. I understood like written
publications because I had the journalism classes, and I understood
being in theater, and I understood how to like do
technical computer stuff, but bringing it all together, it hadn't
quite clicked. So there was this one moment when me

(28:43):
and my friend again, we went in to see one
of these live Piana shows in Toronto, and I made
friends with a couple of people that worked on G
four tech TV way way back in the day, and
some of those folks just happened to be the crew
of Hack five five. They were there too, and they
were recording shows, and I had kind of made friends

(29:06):
with them online too because I had discovered their stuff
from pure ownage and I was like, ooh, hacker channel.
That sounds neat, that sounds really interesting, Like am I
interested in hacking?

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Maybe?

Speaker 2 (29:18):
So I started watching their stuff too, and I was like,
this is very advanced knowledge, Like I kind of want
to learn more. I ended up meeting them at one
of these shows in person, and I was like, hey,
let's be friends online. So eventually we became really good friends.
And right after college, I moved from Missouri to Virginia

(29:39):
and I moved into the hack house.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
I took.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
I took a gamble. My mom was like, you're crazy,
but I decided to do it. I was like, no,
these are trustworthy people. They're really good guys. There's a
girl living there, like she's boyfriend or girlfriend with this
other guy, so like, we'll be fine, it's fine, everything
is fine, Mom, don't worry about me. So I moved
out to Virginia and that's when I started my very
early career where we were not getting paid much at

(30:04):
all whatsoever, and we all still had full time day jobs.
As a YouTuber. Wow, my earliest videos were so awkward.
I was so nervous because being in front of a
camera is completely different from being on a stage. When
you're presenting yourself on camera as yourself. It's very different
from learning lines and acting as a completely different character.

(30:29):
And that was something that was really hard for me
to kind of integrate into working with hack five. So
my very early segments, which are still online on their channel,
are so awkward. But I'm still proud of it because
I could go back and look at those and then
see where I am now and be like wow, like
I have completely changed over that series of time, and
you can see, you can see how I've matured as

(30:52):
a content creator in front of a camera, from this
little awkward I don't know what I'm doing girl to
what I'm doing now right. So hack five taught me
a ton about being in front of a camera, about
being a camera person and walking around and shooting on
the fly, like on the street or at a coffee

(31:12):
shop or in our own home. I learned about lighting
and audio and so many other things by just living
in this household and basically breathing content creation day in
and day out, even though we weren't making any money,
like it was just a passion. It was a passion project.
So we would come home from our full time day

(31:32):
jobs and be like, hey, let's have some dinner and
record a hack five video. Okay, let's do it.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, I mean people might not remember that in the
early days of YouTube, there was no way to monetize.
Contact was directly on the platform, right, Like you could
get a sponsorship if you were really big, I mean eventually,
but even the YouTube ad partner program it was extremely

(32:00):
selective early on. Yes, and yeah, it was very hard
to be considered for that in the early days. And
there were also the restrictions on video length, like for
the longest time, you couldn't upload anything longer than ten minutes,
which is why, like I mentioned Red Letter Media accidentally earlier,
but like I remember, the first thing I ever saw

(32:22):
them post was the infamous mister Plankett review of Star
Wars Episode one, the Phantom Menace, and I think it's
nine ten minute long videos because they couldn't at the time,
they couldn't upload it as one thing. Yeah, I think
now it's same now.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, tack five, Like, we couldn't upload really long videos.
We were still recording to tape too, so we had
to digitize tapes and then put them on the internet.
And it was so complicated, it was so so much work.
Like kids these days they have no idea how hard

(33:02):
it was to upload videos to the internet when you're
recording on like old cassette tapes.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yes, hard, we didn't. Like these days, you can be
you can be a good, a great content creator just
using like a smartphone and maybe a separate microphone. Yeah,
and that's and then some some decent lighting and then
that's all you need. But back in the day, it
was recording to one medium and then digitizing it so

(33:28):
that you could you could then spend the incredibly long
time it takes to upload that digital content to whatever
platform that's hosting it. Yeah, because like we're talking about
a time where digital cameras were pretty limited, right, Like,
like you wouldn't typically have a smart card that could

(33:49):
hold enough, especially if you wanted to record at a
high enough resolution. You weren't going to get very much
content on a on a single smart card. So also,
I think it's fascinating you're talking about a time where
these very small groups of content creators essentially have to
learn everything because you don't have the budget to have

(34:13):
necessarily a dedicated camera crew or a dedicated lighting crew. Yeah,
like everybody has to learn how all of it works
to be able to chip in and help out.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yeah, I mean all of us. We were not paid
when we started doing this work, so this was completely
a passion project. And I think that really comes across
with a lot of our earlier videos, like there's no
way I would have put that stuff online if I
didn't feel comfortable with it because I was so awkward
and so new to it. But even just delving into

(34:47):
new information like hacking and DIY and being able to
modify your own computers and understanding programming and code and
all those interesting little things that we learned on Hack five,
and then also going behind the camera and wanting to learn, Like, hey,
to our camera guy who never wanted to be on camera,

(35:08):
I was like, how do you do the cameras? Like
how do you set up the lighting? I wanted to
learn everything that was involved because I found it so interesting.
I'd always been on stage for theater and like doing
choir and stuff. So being able to go kind of
behind the set and be able to understand how it
was all put together before I ended up there in
front of the camera was so interesting to me. I

(35:30):
just wanted to learn everything I could.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, to me, like, if you ever want to see
someone who's really dialed in to what they're doing that
ties into performance, watch any videos that show like a
stage manager, particularly if you're talking like professional theater level
stage managers, and see them at a control board and

(35:53):
also calling out cues to the other crews in the
theatrical department. Because like, I watched that and I'm just like,
I can't even like I know that your job is
like you have to be hyper focused for about three
hours for the duration of this show, but like it's
it's it's so intense. Learning all that, to me is

(36:15):
also fascinating. I love that part of your drive is
literally you love to learn, and that's kind of what
fuels into everything else. So I assume then that we
get to a time where, like it starts off as
a passion project and sometimes it's hard to put your
finger on these sort of things, but at some point
or another, as Tibolt decides to chime in on our conversation.

(36:39):
You know, Hack five starts to actually make some money.
How did things change at that point?

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah, so that was around the time that we met,
because that was around the time period when I started
going to cees and started going to conventions, mostly to
get the word out about Hack five, but also because
we really wanted to get on board with a network.
So we ended up going to some live show in
New York. I think it was like Live Dignation.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
I want to say, wow, wow, that that just gave
me like all the flashbacks go ahead.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
So pre pre us signing on board with a network,
we went to a live show of Dignation and we
met the CEO of Revision three, which was a multi
channel network on YouTube, so they were in charge of
like selling ads against all these different shows, and we

(37:35):
talked to the CEO. We were like, we would love
to bring our show on board with your network, and
he agreed, so we signed a contract with them, and
that was our first introduction to this is how you
make money on YouTube, because this was still the early
days when ad revenue was very hit or miss when
it came to, you know, having commercials on your videos.

(37:57):
So we had to sign on board with a network
in order to bring in sponsorships so that we could
get our name out there. We could get connected with
different sponsors who were working with creators at the time,
and I think back in the day we were still
called vloggers or video bloggers. I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah, I think either would be that or video blogger, blogger, Yeah,
that doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Yeah, I think it was video blogger. So we did
end up signing on board with them. We spent a
couple of years in Virginia just building up our repertoire
of videos, connecting with other content creators who were on
the same network as us. We started doing a little

(38:42):
bit more in terms of like collaborations and going to
events and doing interviews stuff like that, and we also
started bringing in more sponsors. So about two years into
working with Hack five, I was finally able to leave
my day job and go full time with Hack five.
So Hack five ended up getting a really good contract

(39:06):
and all of us different creators who were working with
that channel, we were able to move eventually to San Francisco, California,
which was where Revision three was located. So we really
wanted to get you little Hines out to San Francisco
so that we could start working in person more with
other content creators. And I'd also opened up a ton

(39:28):
of opportunities, like at that point. Over the course of
like the early twenty tens, I started working with all
the different channels. On Revision three. There were a bunch
of different shows on that channel, like tech Zilla, tech
Buffalo I think was one of them, Dignation of course.
There were a bunch of different shows, totally rad show

(39:49):
and I was able to, you know, get introduced to
a bunch of these different channels and sometimes come on
as a guest host or sometimes do little one off
interviews or what have you. What we do here.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
That was cool because you know, at the time, I
mean I've often said I've worked at the same job
for coming up on eighteen years, but the job company
has changed like five or six times. But at that
time it was how Stuff Works, and like the Vision three,
How Stuff Works was also part of the Discovery Digital.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
That's right, Yeah, we were both part of the Yeah.
So Revision three did get purchased by Discovery and it
turned into Discovery Digital Networks, and I think there was
some name they changed the name like three different times
while I was there.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Yes, it was on there, Yeah, because because how Stuff
Works was creating how Stuff Works videos. Then at one
point we were creating test Tube videos. And I was
so jealous of your team and the other teams out
there in San Francisco because you could collaborate and you
could have this kind of melting pod of ideas. And
we were in Atlanta, and you know, great people, fantastic coworkers,

(41:02):
the best I've ever had the pleasure to work with.
But we didn't have the collaborative opportunities because we were
on the other coast, and so it's really rare.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
And now I'm in the same position as you now
because I live in Denver, and other than myself and
maybe two other tech content creators, there is nobody else
here in Denver. So I don't get those collaborative opportunities
anymore like I did in San Francisco. But that was
a choice I had to make.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
Hey all, it's Jonathan from the Future. You know what
this means. Yep. We're going to take another quick break
and then we'll have the conclusion of my interview with
Shannon Morse. Fascinating though that your journey and my journey

(41:50):
have so many common points in them. I'm very curious.
I have been somewhat critical of the Discovery years because
I felt that I felt that a lot of the
quote unquote strategy Discovery had was let's acquire existing content

(42:11):
creators and use them to artificially build out a digital
domain for Discovery and then slowly tried to transform them
into something they're not. Yeah, I don't know to what
extent that happened for you guys. I know that we
started noticing it, particularly as we were heading toward the

(42:32):
end of that relationship.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
I did notice that as Hack five gained notoriety in
the tech content creator space and especially like the hacker
and cybersecurity space, our channel grew and it felt like
we had there was less interest in like selling sponsors
against our channel as opposed to just using it to

(42:58):
grow a portfolio, which is very similar. I would say.
I also noticed that I started getting invitations to be
a guest host on other shows, but we never saw
anybody be invited to be on Hack five or anything.
It was it almost felt like we were a little

(43:19):
bit ignored the larger that we got, and maybe it's
because they were having trouble selling ads or something. I
have no idea. I really don't like, I have no
idea why, but it did feel like we were a
little ignored. So eventually we decided to cut ties, so
we weren't with DDN anymore. And that was a wonderful

(43:41):
turning point for me because I had more opportunities just
as a content creator to not only work with Hack five,
which was like the best job I could have gotten into,
but I also started working with other shows too, Like
I was doing who was I working with way back
in the day Alien where I want to say I
was working with them Sony. I started working with Signal

(44:03):
by Sony for a while, and I started developing shows
for twit. I was working at twit for a little
while up in Pataluma, California. So I did that for
like two years, and all of those ended up being
really good opportunities because I was growing my own portfolio.
It almost felt like in the back of my mind
and maybe it was just like a gut feeling where

(44:24):
I was like, Okay, I feel like this multi channel
network is not going to last forever. We're going to
have to figure out how to sell our own ads.
We're going to have to figure out how to hire
our own people and do our own hosting and get
to the events that we need to get to and
all that stuff on our own. We need that independence.
And I was learning that independence just kind of naturally

(44:47):
because I had that gut feeling, and my gut feeling
was right. Eventually, we didn't have that MCN anymore.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Oh yeah, no Discovery even before we could see the
writing on the wall because different channel were getting shut
down or we're migrating away from the network. Yeah, And
to your point, like, one of the benefits of being
part of that network is that you have a whole
team dedicated to things like sales and marketing so that
you don't have to stress about it so much and

(45:16):
they take care of things. But then the downside of
that is like, if a relationship starts to go sour,
you got to you have to take on all those responsibilities,
or you've got to find someone else who will do
it for you. Yeah, is for sure pretty tough.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
And I feel like none of it well from my perspective,
I never felt like anything went sour, went bad. It
was just like things were changing, and we felt that
change happening.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Yeah, and I think.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
It was just the industry as a whole at that point.
A lot of content creators were finding that you have
more opportunities if you're independent rather than being with an
MCN and we did figure that out. Eventually, We figured out, like,
we can make you know, full time incomes if we
are independent, and we really had to strive for that.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah. It was all so an interesting time because that's
around the same time that the infamous pivot to video
move was going on in like established media companies, where
where people who had been dedicated to writing you know,
you know, text based content for the web were being
pushed to create video because one platforms like Facebook were

(46:23):
We're promoting video over text based content. Briefly, as it
turns out, that was a rug pull situation. Yeah. Yeah,
we had like an entire editorial group essentially laid off,
and the people who were left behind were all folks
who were like in the podcasting side and the video side,

(46:43):
and that was kind of an eye opener over at
House Stuff Works. Yeah, you were also mentioning the fact
that it was easy to get on other shows and
hard to get people on your show. In my case,
it was the other way around, because I was given
essentially full creative control of tech stuff, which was nice,
but getting permission for me to be on someone else's

(47:05):
show was a nightmare. And our mutual friend Tom Merritt,
yeah to tell you that it was harder for him
to get me on his tech news show than it
was to get the Chief Information Officer for the United
States of America.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
What Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Yes, he had to jump through more hoops to get
and I said, Tom, I'm not worth it, man, just
give up, and I ever know we're going to have
you on the show.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
I remember that early show because that was one of
the first guest hosting opportunities I had. Is when I
was on one of his tech shows way back in
the day. And it was easy for him because under
our contract with Revision three, we were still independent creators,
so we were allowed to take on whatever guest hosting
we wanted, So it was easy for me to go

(47:52):
on like Techzilla and do a show with Veronica and
Patrick Norton, or go on tom Merritt's show back in
the day, whoever it might have been. Eventually in twenty fourteen,
I remember a big turning point was when I went
on my honeymoon and Twit canceled my job position that
I had with them and tech which show was it.

(48:15):
I was on Texxilla as a host. Eventually they took
me on as a full time host for Texxilla and
they were canceling Techzilla. I think just because like one
thing a lot of channels learned over time was that
internal shows where you have a producer, cameraman, editor, blah
blah blahlahlah blah blah, they're very expensive to produce, and

(48:36):
if you don't bring in enough on advertising, then those
shows end up being very costly. So they canceled a
lot of internal shows and Techzillo's one of those. So
I didn't have Texxilla anymore. I didn't have that job
at twit, and I was panicking because I had just
gotten married and marriage is expensive. So it was around

(48:56):
that time that I became more independent as a tent
creators started a show with Patrick Norton called tech Thing,
and we did that show as well as Hack five.
I was still doing Hack five pretty much every single week.
I was doing like four or five shows per week
for those two different channels, and that was a lot

(49:17):
of work and we had to understand how to do
crowdfunding on Patreon, so we brought on board membership style
Patreon memberships, so people could sign on, donate a few
bucks a months, and they could, you know, back our
show basically, so we didn't have to have a sponsor
on every single episode, which was great as a new

(49:37):
channel when you're starting to develop and starting to mature
that channel as something that's brand new that a lot
of networks, brands sponsors don't necessarily have familiarity with yet
that is one way to get those shows off the ground.
So I was doing that for a few years.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Fascinating, Like, it's blowing my mind that you're you became
acquainted with and used the major forms of funding content
creation online, like everything from advertising to sponsorship deals to
branded content to count funding. Yeah. Yeah, I mean again,

(50:14):
it's a hustle. Like when I talk to people who
have done the more independent approach, I've always had the like,
I have to face it, I've had the luxury of
working for a big company. The company kept changing, but
I kept working for big companies so I never had
to hustle like that. And whenever I talked to people
like you or to Veronica, Veronica Belmont, or you know

(50:39):
folks who have had to do that independent like figure
it out approach. I've always been impressed and wondered, where
the heck you find your energy to be able to
do all the things you have.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
To do what you do. That energy was lots of caffeine,
Lots and lots of caffeine, lots of sugar. It was
to it was a lot of It was like just
searching for health and understanding how to stay healthy while
we were doing so much work, while we were traveling
to conventions, while we were doing fan meetups, like everything

(51:15):
involved with being a content creator, it's hard work and
it definitely is grind for sure, especially if you're trying
to start something new and get it off the ground.
And I've done that over and over and over in
my industry. As the industry has changed over the past
like fifteen years, I've had to kind of pick up
the pieces and start fresh. Whether that's because a network

(51:37):
has canceled my show, or a different host has to
come on board, or maybe I just want to start
something new, Like there's always a reason. So that's been
a big I feel like something that I've had to
repeat throughout the time that I've done this content creation
career is just understanding how to start new and understanding

(51:59):
how to divert fire income. And that's really tough.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah. It makes me think of like the challenges that
doctors face and that they constantly have to be learning
the latest in medicine, and that if you stop doing that,
you stop being a responsible and good doctor, right like
you're not. If you're not keeping up with the latest
in methods of treatment or whatever, then you start to
become a you know, kind of a drag on all

(52:25):
your patients. And similar to that, not that I'm saying
that content creators are as important as doctors, don't get
me wrong, but that as content creators, like you constantly
have to be learning how to maximize the return on
the investment of your of your effort and your tact

(52:46):
because other otherwise you're just going to be spinning your wheels.
I mean, discovery has always been a challenge in our industry,
and I think it just gets harder because, especially if
you are creating content for a specific platform, whether it's
YouTube or Twitch or whatever, if they change the way

(53:06):
algorithms recommend content, it could be that you're putting the
greatest stuff in the world out there, but no one, nobody,
It's not getting in front of anyone.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah yeah, And I think that kind of brings us
to the next piece and kind of the final piece
of my story of learning how to be a content
creator when YouTube is brand new to now is. Eventually,
after tech Thing and Hack five, and I was also
doing a show on Hack five called threat Wire, I

(53:35):
decided to move away from every show and every co
host that I had and move from San Francisco to Colorado.
And a big part of that was because I really
wanted to go Inde Pennant and I wanted to build
my own studio, and that was just not financially possible
in the San Francisco Bay area at the time because
for the space that I needed, which is like the

(53:56):
space that I'm currently working in now, I would have
to buy a house and on a content creator income
in San Francisco, that was not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Unless you're unless you're one of the co founders of PayPal,
you ain't buying the house in the Bay area. Uh,
no way, man.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
And I was even looking like outside of San Francisco
City proper. I was looking at like the suburbs the Burbs,
and I just could not find anything that was big
enough for a studio, had the kind of like internet
connection that I would need, and also would give me
the ability to record in a quiet space, because like

(54:32):
the Bay Area is not a quiet place to live.
So I did end up moving out here to Colorado,
and I had to start really focusing down on what
shows I needed to do to grow my career and
what shows I needed to let go of, And unfortunately
I had to leave Tech Thing, I had to leave
Hack five, and I left threat Wire last year in

(54:54):
twenty twenty three, so that was my last like show
on another channel that I was doing, and I went
fully independent in twenty twenty four, once I had built
the studio and had this house that I could record in, Like,
I feel like every single little piece of my story
has kind of developed up to this point where I'm
now a fully independent content creator. I have my own channel,

(55:16):
I'm doing all my own work, from thumbnails and editing
and post and pre production, every single little bit, and
I'm getting to the point where I'm like, maybe I
need to start hiring people. So I hired an editor
that was huge, Oh totally like a huge, huge difference,
and I started reaching out to brands myself and selling

(55:39):
my own channel, And the last couple of years have
been the first times ever in my life, in my
career that I have sold a brand for the entirety
of a year. So I have like a channel sponsor
as opposed to just one that has been brought on
for one video, And that astounds me that I've gotten

(56:01):
to the point where I can do that now, and
it makes me incredibly proud, and it makes me grateful
that I've gotten to that point, and it makes me
really happy to see what happens next, because obviously that
story is not finished.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
It's it's clearly a testament to your talent, your dedication,
your work ethic. Like you know, I would say congratulations,
but I always feel congratulations feels like you're saying, Hey,
the universe lined up for you, which is not the case.
You freaking put in the work to make this happen.
You clearly you planned everything out, You were very methodical

(56:38):
in your approach, and so I'm just going to say
great job, because like the hard work paid off. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
Now, I just got to figure out the algorithm. Every
couple of months. Yeah, that's always changing.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
That's always that's always tough. Like I remember, speaking back
to rooster Teeth, I interviewed Bernie Burns, the one of
the co founders of rooster Teeth, a lifetime time ago,
and one of the things we talked about that, you know,
one of the lessons he really took home, which served
rooster Teeth for a good long time. But even rooster
Teeth ultimately kind of fell apart, like it dissolved I

(57:13):
think last year. But but he was he always said
the biggest lesson he had was if it's possible to
have your own platform, host your stuff there, put it
other places too, But you're always going to be beholden
to whatever the other platforms out there do in order

(57:34):
to serve content to users, because they're going to do
whatever works best for the platform, not necessarily what works
best for the people who are making the stuff that
goes on the platform. But but that's hard too, because
getting traffic to an owned and operated site is incredibly hard.
Everyone just wants to go to the fire hoses that

(57:56):
serve up all the content.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
So have changes like Google is using AI to create
little summaries when you use Google search and that has
really killed off a lot of blog viewership traffic for
a lot of different websites. We also have a lot
of websites, like journalistic websites are going towards paywalls now

(58:20):
because they can't afford with the lower amount of viewership
that they're getting. Because of that, they can't afford just
using advertising like those basic, you know, banner advertisements on
their channels anymore or on their websites anymore. And then
we have TikTok, which might get banned in January at time,
or recordings. So you have all these things that are

(58:41):
currently happening in the technological you know, ecosphere that are
really affecting content creators, and this is going to be
future change that we're going to have to consider.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Yeah, yeah, I don't see this being like you were saying.
I don't see this being something where we're going to
arrive at a point where everyone's like, ah, this is
where we are now and we will forever be here.
I know it's always going to be. It's always going
to be the case where you know, the people who
succeed are the ones well, if people who are consistently

(59:13):
successful will be the ones who are the most flexible. Yes, now,
there will be people who are successful on one platform,
but when that platform changes, their success may waiver or
even just go away. So yeah, I think the lessons
you've learned have served you very well so far. But
I think they're also the ones that any content creator

(59:35):
really needs to take to heart if they want to
be successful in that space moving forward.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
I think that's one of the reasons why I've been
able to be successful, like I would say, mildly successful,
Like none of my channels have gone viral. You know,
I don't own a fancy car or anything like that.
Like I'm quite modest when it comes to that kind
of stuff. But if I compared this to the previous
shows that I worked on, a lot of them used

(01:00:00):
like classic G four television style productions, like really long
thirty minute videos to post those They still were posting
those kind of videos on YouTube, and a lot of
those shows did not want to change over time. So
you saw them fail or you saw them end up
getting canceled or sunset or just just I don't know,

(01:00:23):
ghost the internet.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
So fizzle out.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Yeah, they would fizzle out. And I look back at
that and I think about how much time I put
into learning how the algorithm worked and learning what was
changing on these different platforms, and I always tried to
integrate that into my shows. And if somebody who I
was working with, whether it was a channel or a network,

(01:00:46):
told me no, I was more inclined to start my
own channel so that I could make those changes happen.
And I think that's one of the reasons why I've
been able to grow my channel on my own is
because I've been accepting of those changes, and I've always
taken those to heart and said, Okay, well let's try this.
Let's experiment. An experimentation when it comes to being a

(01:01:06):
content creator, because this is still such a young career
path is extremely important.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Well, Shannon, I think it's just a matter of time
before you hit the stratospheric level of success and next
thing I know, I'm going to be on a food
delivery app ordering a Snubsburger because you're going to be
like the new mister Beast.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Given that, given that I previously had a major in restaurant,
restaurant and hospitality administration, I can promise you that it
will be safe and sanitary whenever you do purchase those items.
And I will run that business quite well and efficiently.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
It won't it won't be like, Hey, it turns out
that there's one physical location and all the other ones
are run out of some guy's closet. Yeah, I am
pleased to know that. I mean, honestly, you know, anytime
I avoid food poisoning is a day I think. Well, Shannon,
first of all, thank you so much for being such

(01:02:06):
an incredible friend and supporter from the first day I
met you, like you didn't know me from anybody, and
like I know, I can get especially when I'm in
a situation where I don't really know a lot of people.
As extroverted as I am, I can get kind of
shut down if it's that overwhelming, like it's the es

(01:02:28):
And I know I can also become a little bit
parasitic and that I'll just latch on to people who
are friendly to me that I won't leave them. So
the fact that you never complained I greatly appreciate because
it was a huge comfort to me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
You are sunle.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Hey, That's what I'm cam for. I was. I was
Barnacle number three in the community theater production of SpongeBob
the Musical Oh My God, not true, Not true.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
You having friendships like yours has been crucial to me
staying in this career path because it can be hard.
You can get a lot of criticisms online. And having
the friendships that you developed through this career and having
people that understand what you go through is so important.
So that's been really, really big for me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
It's also wild to me that I don't know how
it is in other areas of content creation, but in
the tech space in general, like some of the most
generous people I've ever had the pleasure to meet work
in that space and have been incredibly welcoming. You know,
people like you, people like Tom Merritt, people like Veronica,

(01:03:36):
like just folks who were eager to share what they
had learned to have you on to share perspectives like
I never really expected that. Again, I felt so so
isolated out in Atlanta that I didn't even know that
was a thing. But whenever I reached out to anybody,
they were always so kind and welcoming, which to me

(01:03:59):
is very special. Like that's one of those things. It
speaks back to the theater side, right, like if you
are in a show, you have a show family, Yeah,
and that show family is like the closest, tightest group
of friends until the show's over and then it dissolves.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
It's so true.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
But uh yeah, it's kind of like that, like the
at least in the tech content creation space, the old
schoolers anyway. I don't know about any of these young
folks out there, but all the old schoolers they always
dread so much.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
Trying to befriend these youngins today that are doing tech
content creation is pretty hard.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Yeah, you got to go through like agents and managers
and stuff. It's super weird.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
I'm like, who can I actually talk to you?

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Yeah? Is this a bot that you've hired to be
like your representative in negotiations.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
I've made a few really good friends in the newer
generation of tech content creation, and they have been They've
also been crazy helpful because they have taught me things
that I didn't know coming from my old school.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Yeah. Oh no, it's really valuable. Like again, I don't
wanna I don't want to be dismissive and to suggest
that the people who have been through the trenches since
the mid two thousands, they they're the ones who have
it all figured out, because obviously every jo down comes
with changes no, yeah, no, we don't know what we're
doing now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
I'm still trying to learn how TikTok works and it's
about to go away.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
So like, yeah, yeah, I don't know how to get
it to go all in on reels, I guess, but
uh oh boy, yeah. Uh for those who for those
who want to seek out your work, what's the best
place for them to go? To?

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
YouTube dot com slash Shannon Morris spelled just like my
name is or you can find me on the new
threads in Blue Sky. How exciting. This is the first
time I've done a guest hosting where I can tell
people that I'm on threads in Blue Sky and what's
my name?

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
On those?

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
I'm pretty sure it's just Shannon Moore, So you can
find me if you just type in my name.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
Yeah. If you can't find her, fine be because I'm
following her so you'll see. Yes, yeah, each other too,
we do, we do. Yeah, Like it's so nice to
have a place that, uh, because I haven't been on
I left X a couple of years ago because I
don't want anybody anyone stealing your name. Yeah, I I

(01:06:20):
was like, you can take my name. The only it's
not going to do you any good because there's this uh,
this uh politician out in Texas named Jonathan Stickland who
has done some done some things that I am one
opposed to morally, ethically, philosophically, Like we could not be

(01:06:40):
more different, and I would get hate messages meant for him,
and I'm like, you need to look at my bio
because you'll realize I am not the guy you think
I am, because I'm like, I am so much more
inclusive than this dude is. But like I'm like, yeah,
good luck. If you want, if you want my old username,

(01:07:01):
if you were if you've got a high tolerance for abuse,
go for it. Because I I ejected, but yeah, I
totally get the idea of protecting the brand. Like that
makes sense. But since I'm getting out of the content
creation game, I guess it's all It's all fine for
that lucky you. We'll see, we'll see how I go.

(01:07:24):
Maybe like in like six months, I'll think, what a
huge mistake I got to launch a new show, and
it'll be.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Oh, then I can invite you on to be a
guest host on my channel.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
Yeah, sure, I'd love that. I mean, I'm still gonna
do content creation once in a while, but it's not
I don't have plans for like a new show that
I'll be launching anytime in the near future. It'll probably
be things like the occasional guest spot or maybe a
branded show that we have decided to do with a partner,

(01:07:55):
something like that, but it would be like a limited
run kind of show as opposed to on going. So
my listeners are taking notes. I'm sure all about this.
But Shannon, thank you again for coming on the show.
It has been a pleasure and I learned so much
about you and just for I love you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
I love you too, man, You're awesome and I always
really appreciate that we have a good friendship and we're
able to do this stuff like.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
This me too. There's no better way to end this
than just like that. So it's over now. By I
hope y'all enjoyed that conversation I had with Shannon. She's
always such a pleasure to chat with. She has incredible
insight into tech, into content creation, into just how to

(01:08:40):
be like a good person who can easily collaborate with others.
Like I said, she's younger than I am, that I
learned so many valuable lessons from her. If you are
unfamiliar with her work, I highly recommend you go and
check out her various stuff. She does reviews, she does
deep dives. She's got a ton of content under her belt,

(01:09:02):
incredibly accomplished, and like I said, just a nifty human being.
She's just great. So check out her stuff and come
back to listen to the next couple of episodes of
text Stuff. We've got a few more before I hang
up my spurs and go walking off into the sunset.

(01:09:23):
I look forward to chatting with you then, so as
I like to end all of my episodes until whatever
I end up saying in the last one, I'll talk
to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(01:09:47):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.