July 24, 2024 • 41 mins
Is Skibidi Toilet ready for its closeup? The animated YouTube sensation is being prepped for a potential move to film and TV, according to this week's guest, the film-industry veteran Adam Goodman, who is working alongside director Michael Bay to guide creator Alexey Gerasimov as they plot the future of the controversial character Generation Alpha already considers an icon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
which we speak with some of the brightest minds working
in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety.
Have you heard of skibbety toilet? If you're a card
carrying member of Generation Alpha, of course you have. But
to anyone older, that absurd sounding phrase may mean absolutely nothing. Well,
(00:31):
get ready for that to change. This strange internet phenomenon
is about to go mainstream if everything goes according to
the best laid plans of my next guest, who knows
a thing or two about building big franchises. He's Adam Goodman,
a film industry veteran who has shepherded intellectual property like
The Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to global success.
(00:54):
Skibbety toilet presents him a whole different challenge, which we'll
talk to him about right after this, and we're back
with Adam Goodman, co founder of Invisible Narratives, a company
(01:16):
that melds the best practices of the creator economy with
traditional entertainment, which he knows well from his days at
Top Jobs, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks. SKG. Thanks for coming in, Adam.
Thank you so much for having me. So, you know,
because the median age of Mike podcast is probably slightly
higher than fourteen years old, we got to do some
(01:39):
level setting on Skimbity Toilet. We got to explain this
phenomenon before we get into your best laid plans. As
I said, what is this ip?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Skimmity Toilet is IP, and that's the best way to
describe it. It started as a meme. Our creator. We
have a visionary creator, a filmmaker named Boom, and Boom
was making for many years Transformers pre Viz videos that
he was posting to his YouTube account and he was
encouraged to start posting something original of his own, and
(02:13):
he started with this crazy, wild, very random meme that
really started with a viral song and a guy whose
head popped out of a toilet. This was February of
twenty twenty three. Boom had about a million subscribers on
his channel. Cut to June of twenty twenty four, and
(02:37):
we're looking at almost forty three million subscribers on this
franchise right now. So it started as a really wacky, crazy,
fun inspired thing and is now turned into something that
has episodes and lore and Cliffhangers and about twenty other
channels that are making daily content in the skibbity toilet multiverse.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Now that's a great here, but we've got to unpack
this on a number of fronts. First of all, when
you're talking about forty three million subscribers, you know, at
our Variety Intelligence Platform unit, we did some number crunching.
We looked at the data. I mean, first of all,
forty three million subscribers, we're talking about seventeen billion views.
(03:20):
That's like second only to mister Beast. I think it's
like quadruple what Marvel is doing. I mean from a
data perspective, we're talking about elite at least on YouTube,
and we're also talking about this is something that's a
gaming phenomenon. This is top of the level.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Of what you can expect from a digital creator, right,
So this is unprecedented. I mean, you can't plan for this.
The fact of the matter is years ago I worked
on a cartoon about a sponge named Bob, and if
somebody had pitched me that idea, I obviously didn't create SpongeBob,
but I was lucky enough to work on it. I
would have thought that was a crazy sill the idea
(04:00):
or turtles that were mutants and ninjas and teenagers. So
these things when you see them, they don't make sense
until you do see them, and then when you squint,
the whole world sort of opens.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Up to you. Also, what's remarkable is, you know you
referred to this as a meme and in the beginning
at least, and you know, memes come and go, and
at first, this thing, you know, I'm gonna actually have
our podcast listeners take a listen to this audio. And
(04:32):
I do this with some hesitation, because, dear listeners, once
I play this, this may this may destroy your brain
and never leave your head ever again. But with that warning,
take a listen.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
What is going on on stimyt, what is going on on.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
St okay For those with functioning brains, Welcome back to
the podcast. You know memes Hawk to a Girl is
a meme, right, but this is like this meme became
(05:20):
a dense, mythologically driven series. This is like Hawk to
a Girl turned into like a six season HBO series.
How on Earth did what was once a silly song
becomes something that is so much richer and taken very
very seriously among its fan base. Well, it starts with
(05:44):
our creator.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Boom is someone who is a massive student of cinema
and television and animation and franchise, and we encouraged him,
and the encouragement comes from his, you know, massive, massive
audience to tell stories and to look at this as
though he's building something that could be the next Transformers
(06:05):
or could be a Marvel's universe. There are so many
channels that started doing this, and initially it was referred
to as brain rot and a lot of kids kind
of looked at this, and there's a real kind of
separation in dichotomy between those who get it and those
who have turned off on it. And our mission has
(06:26):
been to convert the unconverted, to really kind of surprise
them and to defy and to subvert their expectations that
they're storytelling. And there's characters and there's myth, and there's law,
and there's a building blocks to a massive business that's
being put in place here, all laid on the foundation
of storytelling, and we really have just started to scratch
(06:48):
the surface of it. Where this franchise goes is nobody's
this guy's the limit for it at this point, but
we believe it could be something that's generational and that's
what's so excited amount it.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
And yet at the same time that I'm trying to
convey that people take this, the fans, young fans take
this deeply seriously, Like I still have to convey how
deeply absurd the animation is. I mean, on the one hand,
you have like a alien race with toilets for bodies
(07:21):
with heads coming out of them, fighting a race with
you know, TVs and cameras and speakers for heads, these
you know, dueling sets of appliances, and a violent war
for I don't know, shelf space at cost go. I
don't know what they're fighting about. It's completely absurd. So
you know you have been around IP of all kinds.
(07:43):
What is it about this that is resonating because I
have no idea.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Well, I think it's hard to know exactly. And I'm
not going to sit here and tell you that I
am the key demo for this, or or or I
built this by design. My business partner in this venture
is Boom, the creator and the filmmaker Michael Bay. We've
heard of him, and years ago, when I was at DreamWorks,
we bought the rights to Transformers, and everybody thought that
(08:12):
that was a really silly idea to make a movie
about a toy from the eighties. In fact, I think
there were articles that came out that said, what's next
a movie about Legos, which turned out Okay. I think
this is the same kind of thing. I think if
you look at this and you try to and you
try to assess this through our point of view, it
doesn't make any sense when you look at it through
(08:33):
the lens of something that's fresh, that resonates with an
audience that's not built on your parents or your grandparents' ip.
This is something that Jen Alfa feels like they found.
They discovered, it's something that they take a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Of ownership in.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And for us, we look at this and we say, okay,
if you squint, yes, there's a toilet in it. But
the reality is is that what do we spend more
time looking at television's cameras? Toilets we don't look at,
but we obviously have our interaction with them. So these
are things that we are interacting with on an every
(09:10):
single day basis. The fact that the creator has turned
these into kind of mechanized warriors is something that is
just awesome and you've never seen it before, and that's
what makes it so great. And it's weird and peculiar
and it's fresh, and they get it and we don't,
and that's what makes it super cool.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
So you keep mentioning Boom, we should mention Boom's real
name is Alexi Jersimov. He is from Georgia, that is
the from overseas, Georgia, not Atlanta, Georgia. Twenty six years old.
How did you get to him?
Speaker 3 (09:48):
What?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You know?
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Who is?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
He had talk to me about the process of, you know,
hooking up with this guy.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
He's an animator. He works on an animation platform that
is very primitive actually compared to unreal owned some of
the engines that other animators are working on.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
But he's a beast.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
This kid can imagine things and execute on things on
a level that is unheard of before. He is doing
shots that make Michael's headspin. Michael and he have a
terrific collaboration and work very closely with each other, talking
about episodes, talking about art, talking about action, talking about
(10:29):
sound design, talking about where this franchise goes. Wow, He's
very capable to hold his own in conversation with Michael,
and then some and Michael and I are students to him.
I mean, we're not trying to go in and teach
him what the movie business is. This is a whole
new medium for us as well, and we're really trying
to define what I always refer to as our tradigital strategy,
(10:53):
which is taking the best of traditional in terms of
the business practices which have all been but perfected over
one hundred and some years of filmmaking, but the nimbleness
of UGC and the opportunity for a filmmaker or a
designer or an animator like him to make something, to
post it to an audience, to get an immediate feedback
(11:13):
loop from that audience to know what's working, and even
more interesting, allowing that IP to be shared and so
that other creators can take advantage of it. And that's
one of the things that is really different than anything
that we've worked with before. Typically, we issue takedowns and
we're ready to, you know, kind of make sure that
nobody is messing with something that we know that we
(11:35):
want to control. In this case, we've taken a very
different approach to this. We want creators to play with
our IP. We want to make sure that people are
doing things obviously within reason, so long as it kind
of follows a certain guideline for us. But it is
something that we believe is kind of the internets, and
we want to make sure that people have the ability
to play with that and to enjoy it, which is
(11:57):
what it's really exciting.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So talk about that change in approach, because I mean,
that is very counter to the way it used to be,
and there does seem to be a lot of copycatting
out there. Aren't you afraid to let this lose complete control,
especially in the age of AI where this could really
get out of control.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, yeah, I mean, look, there's thankfully we have great
protections in terms of copyrights and trademarks, which gives us
a lot of you know, a lot of leverage in
terms of who we allow to work on this property
and who we don't. There are probably about twenty channels
that are doing really quality episodes of skivity toilet channels
on YouTube, channels on YouTube, and of those, there may
(12:41):
be even like sixty or seventy that are doing less
frequent updates and content. The less frequent we're fine with.
We don't, you know, we don't really pay attention to
we celebrate them. But the twenty that are doing really
credible content, we consider them part of our alliance. It's
(13:01):
the toilets versus the alliance. The alliance are the good guys,
and the alliance is what we're building into this network
of other channels that are making content for us. Boom
is able to look at those scripts beforehand. Boom is
able to address any creative concerns to make sure it's
following the same kind of narrative that we're looking after.
But we want to help those channels. We want to
(13:21):
help those channels build, and we want to help those
channels be able to continue doing what we're doing because
he can't post every single day and YouTube. The algorithm posts,
you know, and the more people that are posting, the
more that it helps, the discovery for it, the more
people that are introduced to it, and so that alliance
is something that we've been building. Again, it's super counterintuitive
(13:42):
to anything I've been involved with before, but it's been
working because we're living in a world where the content
is now free, So it's all the other businesses that
we're able to monetize around it. So knowing that the
content is free, the business is around it for whether
it's roadblocks or consumer products or life lissing. Those are
businesses that we're really trying to encourage to, you know,
(14:04):
to make sure that that content is serving up those
other businesses.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Well, now let's talk about those other businesses, because I
think what got a lot of people's eyebrows up was
you know, obviously, people see that main YouTube business, They
see this tremendous traffic, and people wonder like, okay, maybe
he's just you know, building a business entirely on YouTube,
(14:30):
and he's you know, keeping the control there. Maybe he's
going to move off platform at some point, who knows.
Then the deal with Bonkers gets announced, the deal with
your company and Michael Bay. Okay, the merchandise piece of
this comes into view. But then we see Michael Bay
and your name, and we're starting to think, okay, movies, TV,
(14:52):
other things got to be coming. So what business is
starting with merchandise? Starting with you know, Comic CON's coming,
Halloween is coming. We feel like there's movement towards the
mainstream here, So explain the other businesses and what we
could see coming down the pipe.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Well, to be clear, this is the mainstream. True YouTube
is about his mainstream as it gets.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
The conventional old school.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, well so traditional, we'll call it. Sure, this lends
itself very well. I will say that Michael and Jeffrey Becroft,
who's his longtime production designer and a colleague of his
that's worked with him on all of his movies, have
been working very closely with Alexi to design art, to
(15:40):
start to really professionalize the kind of back engine of this,
to make sure that if we ever decide to go
film or television, that this is kind of lifted beyond
just the resources that creators have on the Internet. We
are absolutely in talks right now both on the television
side and the earliest comer stations right now on the
(16:01):
film side. But it's not a be all, end all
for us, you know. We want to make sure that
we are able to support all the other businesses that
have been built in this fly flywheel that Invisible Narratives
has helped to create for Boom and the other ip
that we work with. But film and television is a flex.
It looks cool. It helps to kind of fuel the
(16:22):
consumer product business, which is obviously a really important thing.
It helps buyers at Walmart or Target to know that
there's going to be media and ads spent against this thing.
But we're pretty successful just on YouTube as it is
right now. So if we stay in this world, we're okay.
And if we move into more traditional then that would
(16:43):
just be for Michael and I pretty awesome and for Boom,
our creator kind of a lifelong dream of his.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Okay. Before we revisit that, though, how important is this
merchandise piece, because that feels like the first piece of
these business this is and it feels like that's what's
coming this fall.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah, I mean, there's two thesiss that my company has.
One is that we believe that IP is not going
to come from rebooting The Fall Guy or looking at
television shows that were frankly old when I was a kid, right.
IP is going to come from TikTok and YouTube for
where the audience is actually at right now. So our
business is solely focused on trying to find those things,
(17:25):
discover those things, nurture those things, and bring traditional resources,
creative resources, or business resources to those creators so that
we can essentially build out the next generation of blockbusters
that are organic to young people in their lives. The
second is that kids don't want to pay for content.
They want to pay for stuff, and stuff is something
(17:46):
that is really important for them and Bonkers what we've
seen and we looked at all the traditional toy companies
and new toy companies, Bonkers gets it. They understand that
when kids are walking through the aisles of or target
right now, the toys that stick out to them are
not things that were their parents or their grandparents' favorites.
(18:09):
They're things that they actually recognize. So YouTube, whether it's
Lanky Box or af Mau or Ryan's World or whatever
it is, these are the things that kids are really
leaning into. And so the toy program that launches this
fall with Bonkers is going to be sick and what
comes over the next twelve months, even after this, the
design of where this is going is something that we
(18:30):
believe can be as robust as some of the toy
businesses that Michael was involved with prior to Skivity Toilet
and could be something years from now. That's pretty significant.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So could you tell us what kind of toys we
could expect?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, everything now from mystery packs to role play to
vehicles to.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
You know, you name it.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
There's really not a category anything that you would expect
to see for Transformers or a Marvel toy or anything
like that. Obviously, not everything comes online in the fall,
but all the designs at this point because the franchise
has everything. It has weapons, it has role play, it
has characters, it has action figures, it has puzzles, it
has games, it has publishing.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
It really has all the.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Things that you're looking for in a mega hit so far.
And that's a testament to the imagination of our creator.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yes, however, then I wonder whether, especially given the title,
given the I don't know if you call it the protagonist,
but the toilet main character, is that all that going
to fly at Walmart? Is the violence gonna fly? I
(19:38):
just wonder, especially when you're you know, you're looking at
some of the press this has gotten, especially globally when
there's talk about, you know, the moral panic, and you know,
there's been headlines about like where they've actually talked about
a skibbity toilet syndrome where kids, I mean, it's hard
(19:59):
to take this stuff, si, I know where you know,
kids have trouble potty training because of skibbity toilet and
they're afraid, you know, heads are going to pop out
of toilets, Like, could this stuff actually create a problem
for introducing this to a mass market? It's beloved so clearly.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I you know, I am not a retail expert that
you know, we'll see the proof when you know, it
starts rolling out at this point. But what I what
I believe is we are seeing a very significant audience
from episode to episode that's not growing significantly at this
point just simply because it's so significant, But it's not dipping.
(20:39):
We are seeing like real consistency in terms of who
this audience is. And I think again, part of the
you know, part of the thing that you and I
or all of my friends or any of my kids,
even in my own house look at sometimes and think
this is weird and obscure is exactly the thing that
makes it awesome. It's the thing that makes it unique
(21:01):
and interesting and cool. And yeah, there's a toilet, but
the toilet is the toilets are a small part of
this franchise. And if you, as I said earlier, if
you take the toilets out of it and you look
at it, it's no different than Optimists and Bumblebee and Megatron.
These are giant mechanized warriors that are having gigantic, dynamic
(21:22):
battles and you know, terrific action.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
We'll be right back with Adam Goodman and more on
skibbity toilet, and we are back with Adam Goodman. Stephen
Colbert had a little fun with Joe Biden and imagining
(21:46):
what it might be like to well have a listen
to what he did with this internet craze and the
current president.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
And of course for the very online skibbity Biden Biden.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Give me, give me evined, guit evided, give me these,
give me evin that hiders like what tron.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Trump Trump is, use Hitler's Likewhitler's like what Trump is?
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Useless language, giv d give.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Me Now, if you don't understand that video, your grandchildren
will explain it and you still won't understand.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
So, Adam, when you hear something like that, does that
sort of uh give you a sense that it's kind
of like priming the older audience for accepting what could
be a household name for even people who are not
in the target audience, that will give them a sense
of what could be something that their kids or grandkids
(22:56):
are soon going to be asking for.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Or does that No, we have such a long way
to get from where we are right now with our
audience to Stephen Colbert's audience at this point.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
But that's okay.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
There's a lot of audience that there's younger audience that
we need to accept in, and there's slightly older audience
that we need to convert to being less wary of
the brain rot and more aware of the episodes, the
storytelling and the narrative that's being leaned into this at
this point.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So you said that, you know, there's sort of the
earliest conversations going on about taking this property to film
or TV. Why isn't it essential? I mean, can you
really make the same amount of money on digital platforms
on just YouTube? What about also the other digital platforms.
(23:52):
I mean, it's certainly got a presence on TikTok. What
is your general approach here in terms of monetization, because
I would have, oh no, you gotta have the you know,
a cinematic universe for this.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (24:05):
No.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I mean, look, there have been very successful businesses that
have been wholly organic to the digital space. If you
look at what Ryan did with his toy business, this
is a business that has done solidly nine figures worth
of toy sales alone over the last number.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Of years Ryan meaning Ryan's World.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah, and eventually Ryan switched over to Nickelodeon, but its
main driver was his YouTube channel. So going traditional is fantastic,
and our design for it is something that we aspire
to make something that is really awesome. I look at
what fortiesh and Netflix did with our Cane and that
was a terrific series in something that you look at
(24:43):
and again as a video game person, it seems obvious now,
but at the time, none of these things are obvious,
and we do believe that we can do something that
is really like, really cool and more anime and more
sophisticated than what the YouTube channels do every single day,
just because of resources that are there. But the business
(25:04):
is so beyond YouTube. Roadblocks is something that our licensee,
our license partners who are using Skibty and Roadblocks are
doing such a phenomenal amount of hours spent with our IP.
And so what's incredible about this IP is that some
kids are finding it through YouTube, and some kids are
(25:28):
finding it through Roadblocks and don't even really know all
that much about the YouTube channel of its own. They're
learning the characters and they're modeling it, they're twinning with
their characters, they're talking to their friends about it.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So there's a whole other.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
World that Michael and I have learned about over the
last few years of being in this business that is
as significant as anything that we've ever been involved with
in our entire careers. And film and television will only
give us escape velocity and allow us to do amazing
things and to develop this out that years from now
it be still has real relevance. But if we don't
(26:04):
do film and television, it's still something that has, you know,
incredible business opportunities. For The key is right now is
that when you're working with traditional partners, which is fantastic,
but number one, you're always subject to mother may I, Mother,
may I do another season? Mother may I, you know,
do a new toy line?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Mother may I?
Speaker 6 (26:25):
You know?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
And and so right now we have a lot of
control over this ip and in giving our creator the
ability to do things that typically once they go into
a partnership with a film or TV studio, they may
be firewalled.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
From some of their imagination at that point. Okay, it's
just in terms of I kind of liken it to
an organ transplant. I just wonder whether once you take
this property out of YouTube, whether that's sort of underground
appeal that I feel like it has could somehow be lost.
(27:02):
He himself, Alexi Boom has talked about not wanting for
it to feel corporate, and with all due respect to
yourself to Michael Bay, does the association you guys bring,
does that risk it turning corporate?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I mean, I don't think that any of the properties
that Michael and I have been involved with are necessarily
thought of as being corporate. They're commercial, they're blockbusters. There
are things that you know, again Michael, not me. I
was only lucky enough to be the executive on those things.
But I think with vision, this becomes something you know, imagine. Again,
(27:45):
this is kind of crazy to think about because we're
thinking through the lens of everything that we've seen. But
if you thought about this more of a John Wick
District nine version, where it's a hybrid of live action
and you know, incredible you know, visual effects and animation,
something like this and some of the art that we
are developing and seeing right now can be so badass
(28:09):
and so spectacular and so different than what anything that
you've looked at and yes, you may look at this
thing at first and kind of blink your eyes at
this and say it's not for me, but our hope
and the challenge is this is to make sure.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
That it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
What we won't do is make something just to make
it that would be a money grab and that we're
not interested in doing because the business is doing so
well for us right now. But if we find a
partner in this that really believes that there is opportunity
for this to grow and to really see the storytelling
grow and for this to be what we hope this
can be, then film and TV seems like a natural
(28:43):
extension for us.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I mean, you say live action, and we should note
this thing barely has dialogue. I mean, there's been over
seventy episodes. I guess you know there are multiple minutes.
It's hard for me to even imagine like actors in it,
Like is Glenn Powell going to show up and you know,
(29:04):
audition with a toilet over his head?
Speaker 7 (29:06):
I just like it.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Boggles the mind here. I mean, I actually wonder whether
it's international appeal is the fact that there is no dialogue.
It's just sort of translatable. Do you feel like that's
part of the appeal.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's it's it absolutely. I mean, our international numbers are
staggering for this. I would age we have a massive
US audience to it, but it peals in comparison to
the rest of the globe. At this point, I'm certain
that it feels localized in every region it plays simply
because there is a little dialogue in this. But the
great thing about where we're going with this is we've
(29:40):
been slowly putting dialogue into the episodes and the audience
is reacting great to it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Well. I can't wait for the theme park rydes that
I think will be the cherry on top. Thank you
so much for coming in, Adam. This has been a
really interesting conversation. I can't wait to see what you
do with this next. Thank you for having me. I
appreciate it. And now for a bonus segment. You may
not have heard of skibbety toilet before, but you may
(30:08):
have heard the word skibbety or riz phantom tax yeah sigma.
Now to the untrained ear, these words may sound like
total gibberish, but when I heard them come out of
the mouths of my next guess, I learned there something
of a second language among Generation Z and Alpha, and
(30:29):
they're known as brain rot. Think of it as online
subculture where skibbety toilet is just one of many, many,
really really stupid memes. And because my Generation X mind
is too old and feeble to comprehend any of this,
I am joined by my own sixteen year old son
Max and his best pal Eli to help me make
(30:51):
sense of it all. Thanks for joining me in studio, gentlemen.
Speaker 8 (30:54):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 7 (30:55):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Let's just start real simple here and no pressure. But
you're here basically as representatives of everyone on earth, like
eighteen and under. What does skibbity mean?
Speaker 7 (31:08):
It really has no meaning at all, but really, yeah,
there's no meaning behind skibvity. Well, it comes from a
meme before the skibbity toilet meme, so like the skivvity
toilet is like an animated show. And then it comes
from a previous meme in which it's like some a
Bulgarian song and like a fat guy like a belly dance,
(31:31):
like a song, fat guy dancing like shaking his belly,
and it's like a Bulgarian song, and it's like it
sounds like the song is saying skibbty, like it's completely gibberish, like,
but that's where the word is taken from, and then
they made the serious off of that.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
So but but what are we what are we old
people supposed to take to the fact that the language
is gibberish and means nothing, like, what's the point of
saying it?
Speaker 7 (31:57):
Then there are brain rot terms that have meaning, but
the term skibbety has no true definition and is more
of just like a filler word to throw in when
you're talking about brain rot.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Right, So then let's get to a word that you mentioned,
phantom tax, Like, right, what does that mean?
Speaker 7 (32:13):
So this comes from the popular streamer Kaisinat and he
has a friend named Phantom who likes to take his
food while he's streaming and take a few bites of
his food. And people kind of took that and started
calling it the phantom tax.
Speaker 8 (32:27):
Uh huh, Yeah, that makes sense. But like skibbity is,
there's no like etymological meaning or anything. It's it's just
complete gibberish and it's completely meaningless.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Okay, I'm starting to understand why this is called brain
rot because these words really I mean, well, first of all, like,
should we actually be concerned for the state of your brains,
Like is this a medical condition?
Speaker 7 (32:54):
No, not our brains, but the young generations.
Speaker 8 (32:57):
Yeah, the young one.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Oh so you as like we should at at sixteen,
you're sort of like the bottom end of generation ZE,
but you're worried about the alphas.
Speaker 8 (33:06):
Well, we're fine, Like we think like this stuff is
funny because they think it's funny and they take it
like seriously.
Speaker 7 (33:12):
But brain rot and just like like TikTok in general,
has a lot of like negative side effects. For example,
it messes with attention spans and also memory consuming like
hours of just short form videos with no meaning behind
them does negatively impact a memory, especially in younger kids
(33:33):
who are consuming it like all day long.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Okay, so there is actual reason for concern here. Is
there any part of brain rot that is like redeemable,
Like like what about Riz? I mean, you know, riz
seems to be something that's like that seems to be something.
Speaker 8 (33:51):
Cool, like yeah, I mean that that has a meaning.
It comes from charisma. It's just it's short for that, right,
It's just like your play like how much he can
you attract women?
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, which begs the question, I mean, do you guys
have riz?
Speaker 7 (34:06):
Oh yeah, a lot of riz.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Is that measurable?
Speaker 7 (34:10):
It's hard to measure, but it can be done.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Do I have riz?
Speaker 8 (34:14):
I mean you have a wife and kids, so I guess.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So if I have a wife and kid, that meets
you had to wife? Is a verb too?
Speaker 8 (34:23):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's actually multiple parts of speech.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 8 (34:28):
Like a lot of these brain rot terms.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Are it can be noun verb interesting? Yeah, okay, Well
what about brain rot in general? Do you think it's
going to be like a lasting media phenomenon that will
grow as the generation that made it popular grows with it,
Like it'll soon be like a television aesthetic.
Speaker 7 (34:52):
I think brain rot will definitely evolve into like other things,
not just like skibbity toilet like on TikTok. At least
there's definitely like trends that appear every now and then
of like different types of brain rot like subgroups. Right,
Like RIZ was probably one of the first ones to
come up, and that was like many years ago, like
twenty twenty two, maybe twenty twenty three. Skibbity toylets more recent,
(35:16):
you know, phantom text too, Like it kind of like
it grows over time. But I think it'll probably just
stay as like a TikTok joke brain rock terms.
Speaker 8 (35:27):
Yes, I would also say it's worth noting that I
think the word brain rot has sort of migrated as
a definition, Like I think I think it originally meant
like just that specific set of stupid, weird memes that
were created by Jen Alfha, like skimby toilet and stuff
like that. I think, like, like, do you agree, do
(35:48):
you think people use it as just meme culture in
general now as like anything stupid on TikTok?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, why don't you think adults get brain rot? Like
why don't they understand it and kind of freaked out
by it?
Speaker 8 (36:04):
They didn't make it? Yeah, I can't blame them. It's
really weird.
Speaker 7 (36:07):
Even us as gen z don't really get it because
we didn't really come up with it.
Speaker 8 (36:11):
The younger generation did, so we don't. We don't think
it's like funny. We just think it's funny that they
think it's funny. So I mean we're laughing at them. Yeah,
they're laughing at the brain rot like they think it's funny.
We're laughing at them, like we're making a joke.
Speaker 7 (36:24):
Like I've tried to talk to my little sister about
brain rot, right, I asked her if she if she
knew about skibbity toilet, and she told me that she
dabbles in skibbity toilet from time to time, and she
was pretty serious about it. It didn't seem like a
joke to her, and she couldn't really tell that I
was joking, which is a little it's a little scary,
I think.
Speaker 8 (36:44):
But yeah, I mean, like I guess that sort of
talks to the point of like just the scope of it.
Because like if you I don't know about you, but
you can tell me your experience. But if you ask
like any nine or ten year old or like somebody
around that age range, like chances are they know what
skimmity toy it is. I'd say like seventy percent of
(37:05):
children that age know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
It's not as if like other forms of entertainment, they're gone,
right usual TV shows, movies, whatnot. It's not like we
could waive all that goodbye and brain row takes over
everything exactly.
Speaker 8 (37:21):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's it will be hard
for brain rot, for the entertainment industry to sort of
market brain rot to the general public if they want to.
But I mean they've made a ton of stupid things,
like they made Five Nights at freddy That's a movie
now like that started out?
Speaker 7 (37:40):
Is like that comes from a video game with like
an actual storyline like that. There's substance to that.
Speaker 8 (37:45):
No, but it's it's it's a younger like gen X
isn't playing five Nuts at Freddy's And they made it
into a movie.
Speaker 7 (37:52):
But what can you really like mark it off of
brain ro I mean there's no meaning, there's no story behind.
Speaker 8 (37:57):
Yeah, it will be hard to market that.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
But you realize that, you know, not too long ago
they had these kinds of conversations about like how are
they going to turn the Transformers or Lego into a movie?
And look at it now, so you never know. While
we're on this subject, Max, we should point out this
is not your first time on this podcast. Five years ago,
(38:22):
at the tender age of eleven, you came on to
discuss your impressions of virtual reality technology and you express
some optimism for the development of this market. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 6 (38:34):
I think I'll probably do more because it's going to
be more updated and more improved, and you can do
more things, and it's probably going to be like, you know,
like everyone's going to be into it. It's going to
be like right now, VR is like the biggest thing,
and it has used to grow and more people use it.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
So yeah, first of all, ain't puberty a kick? Second,
it's awesome that Eli is here too, because you guys
often played VR games together remotely over the years. So
I want to hear you both comments on how you
feel today about the state of VR as an entertainment
device versus when you first started years ago. Do you
(39:14):
feel that sense of optimism still.
Speaker 8 (39:17):
I feel optimistic still, but I don't think it exactly
met my expectations that I set when I was eleven.
I don't think VR has gotten substantially bigger as I
as I said five years ago, but I still play
(39:38):
it from time to time. I often I've had, like,
you know, several two week three week phases, Yeah, phases
where I play like super diligently.
Speaker 7 (39:48):
I'd have to agree with Max. I think, like at
the age that he spoke on that podcast, like, I
definitely had much higher hopes for VR. I thought it
was going to get a lot bigger, like technologically, but
it hasn't. I haven't seen a lot of change and
it definitely hasn't gone that much bigger. The Apple Vision
Pro did have some pretty cool like features and stuff,
(40:09):
and it's definitely an interesting piece of technology, but I
think VR has a long way to go before it
gets a lot bigger.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Well, we'll just have to check in again in another
five years, and then another five years till eventually you
inherit the Strictly Business podcast from me and are asking
your own child about what he thinks of the next
generation of devices. Sorry, like you're gonna have to get
your own podcast, but I'm confident that you will. Yeah,
(40:37):
and I thank you both for joining me today.
Speaker 7 (40:39):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 8 (40:44):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
or Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners. Please
go to Variety dot com and sign up for the
free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune
in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.
Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
which we speak with some of the brightest minds working
in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety.
Have you heard of skibbety toilet? If you're a card
carrying member of Generation Alpha, of course you have. But
to anyone older, that absurd sounding phrase may mean absolutely nothing. Well,
(00:31):
get ready for that to change. This strange internet phenomenon
is about to go mainstream if everything goes according to
the best laid plans of my next guest, who knows
a thing or two about building big franchises. He's Adam Goodman,
a film industry veteran who has shepherded intellectual property like
The Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to global success.
(00:54):
Skibbety toilet presents him a whole different challenge, which we'll
talk to him about right after this, and we're back
with Adam Goodman, co founder of Invisible Narratives, a company
(01:16):
that melds the best practices of the creator economy with
traditional entertainment, which he knows well from his days at
Top Jobs, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks. SKG. Thanks for coming in, Adam.
Thank you so much for having me. So, you know,
because the median age of Mike podcast is probably slightly
higher than fourteen years old, we got to do some
(01:39):
level setting on Skimbity Toilet. We got to explain this
phenomenon before we get into your best laid plans. As
I said, what is this ip?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Skimmity Toilet is IP, and that's the best way to
describe it. It started as a meme. Our creator. We
have a visionary creator, a filmmaker named Boom, and Boom
was making for many years Transformers pre Viz videos that
he was posting to his YouTube account and he was
encouraged to start posting something original of his own, and
(02:13):
he started with this crazy, wild, very random meme that
really started with a viral song and a guy whose
head popped out of a toilet. This was February of
twenty twenty three. Boom had about a million subscribers on
his channel. Cut to June of twenty twenty four, and
(02:37):
we're looking at almost forty three million subscribers on this
franchise right now. So it started as a really wacky, crazy,
fun inspired thing and is now turned into something that
has episodes and lore and Cliffhangers and about twenty other
channels that are making daily content in the skibbity toilet multiverse.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Now that's a great here, but we've got to unpack
this on a number of fronts. First of all, when
you're talking about forty three million subscribers, you know, at
our Variety Intelligence Platform unit, we did some number crunching.
We looked at the data. I mean, first of all,
forty three million subscribers, we're talking about seventeen billion views.
(03:20):
That's like second only to mister Beast. I think it's
like quadruple what Marvel is doing. I mean from a
data perspective, we're talking about elite at least on YouTube,
and we're also talking about this is something that's a
gaming phenomenon. This is top of the level.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Of what you can expect from a digital creator, right,
So this is unprecedented. I mean, you can't plan for this.
The fact of the matter is years ago I worked
on a cartoon about a sponge named Bob, and if
somebody had pitched me that idea, I obviously didn't create SpongeBob,
but I was lucky enough to work on it. I
would have thought that was a crazy sill the idea
(04:00):
or turtles that were mutants and ninjas and teenagers. So
these things when you see them, they don't make sense
until you do see them, and then when you squint,
the whole world sort of opens.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Up to you. Also, what's remarkable is, you know you
referred to this as a meme and in the beginning
at least, and you know, memes come and go, and
at first, this thing, you know, I'm gonna actually have
our podcast listeners take a listen to this audio. And
(04:32):
I do this with some hesitation, because, dear listeners, once
I play this, this may this may destroy your brain
and never leave your head ever again. But with that warning,
take a listen.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
What is going on on stimyt, what is going on on.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
St okay For those with functioning brains, Welcome back to
the podcast. You know memes Hawk to a Girl is
a meme, right, but this is like this meme became
(05:20):
a dense, mythologically driven series. This is like Hawk to
a Girl turned into like a six season HBO series.
How on Earth did what was once a silly song
becomes something that is so much richer and taken very
very seriously among its fan base. Well, it starts with
(05:44):
our creator.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Boom is someone who is a massive student of cinema
and television and animation and franchise, and we encouraged him,
and the encouragement comes from his, you know, massive, massive
audience to tell stories and to look at this as
though he's building something that could be the next Transformers
(06:05):
or could be a Marvel's universe. There are so many
channels that started doing this, and initially it was referred
to as brain rot and a lot of kids kind
of looked at this, and there's a real kind of
separation in dichotomy between those who get it and those
who have turned off on it. And our mission has
(06:26):
been to convert the unconverted, to really kind of surprise
them and to defy and to subvert their expectations that
they're storytelling. And there's characters and there's myth, and there's law,
and there's a building blocks to a massive business that's
being put in place here, all laid on the foundation
of storytelling, and we really have just started to scratch
(06:48):
the surface of it. Where this franchise goes is nobody's
this guy's the limit for it at this point, but
we believe it could be something that's generational and that's
what's so excited amount it.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
And yet at the same time that I'm trying to
convey that people take this, the fans, young fans take
this deeply seriously, Like I still have to convey how
deeply absurd the animation is. I mean, on the one hand,
you have like a alien race with toilets for bodies
(07:21):
with heads coming out of them, fighting a race with
you know, TVs and cameras and speakers for heads, these
you know, dueling sets of appliances, and a violent war
for I don't know, shelf space at cost go. I
don't know what they're fighting about. It's completely absurd. So
you know you have been around IP of all kinds.
(07:43):
What is it about this that is resonating because I
have no idea.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Well, I think it's hard to know exactly. And I'm
not going to sit here and tell you that I
am the key demo for this, or or or I
built this by design. My business partner in this venture
is Boom, the creator and the filmmaker Michael Bay. We've
heard of him, and years ago, when I was at DreamWorks,
we bought the rights to Transformers, and everybody thought that
(08:12):
that was a really silly idea to make a movie
about a toy from the eighties. In fact, I think
there were articles that came out that said, what's next
a movie about Legos, which turned out Okay. I think
this is the same kind of thing. I think if
you look at this and you try to and you
try to assess this through our point of view, it
doesn't make any sense when you look at it through
(08:33):
the lens of something that's fresh, that resonates with an
audience that's not built on your parents or your grandparents' ip.
This is something that Jen Alfa feels like they found.
They discovered, it's something that they take a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Of ownership in.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And for us, we look at this and we say, okay,
if you squint, yes, there's a toilet in it. But
the reality is is that what do we spend more
time looking at television's cameras? Toilets we don't look at,
but we obviously have our interaction with them. So these
are things that we are interacting with on an every
(09:10):
single day basis. The fact that the creator has turned
these into kind of mechanized warriors is something that is
just awesome and you've never seen it before, and that's
what makes it so great. And it's weird and peculiar
and it's fresh, and they get it and we don't,
and that's what makes it super cool.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
So you keep mentioning Boom, we should mention Boom's real
name is Alexi Jersimov. He is from Georgia, that is
the from overseas, Georgia, not Atlanta, Georgia. Twenty six years old.
How did you get to him?
Speaker 3 (09:48):
What?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You know?
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Who is?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
He had talk to me about the process of, you know,
hooking up with this guy.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
He's an animator. He works on an animation platform that
is very primitive actually compared to unreal owned some of
the engines that other animators are working on.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
But he's a beast.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
This kid can imagine things and execute on things on
a level that is unheard of before. He is doing
shots that make Michael's headspin. Michael and he have a
terrific collaboration and work very closely with each other, talking
about episodes, talking about art, talking about action, talking about
(10:29):
sound design, talking about where this franchise goes. Wow, He's
very capable to hold his own in conversation with Michael,
and then some and Michael and I are students to him.
I mean, we're not trying to go in and teach
him what the movie business is. This is a whole
new medium for us as well, and we're really trying
to define what I always refer to as our tradigital strategy,
(10:53):
which is taking the best of traditional in terms of
the business practices which have all been but perfected over
one hundred and some years of filmmaking, but the nimbleness
of UGC and the opportunity for a filmmaker or a
designer or an animator like him to make something, to
post it to an audience, to get an immediate feedback
(11:13):
loop from that audience to know what's working, and even
more interesting, allowing that IP to be shared and so
that other creators can take advantage of it. And that's
one of the things that is really different than anything
that we've worked with before. Typically, we issue takedowns and
we're ready to, you know, kind of make sure that
nobody is messing with something that we know that we
(11:35):
want to control. In this case, we've taken a very
different approach to this. We want creators to play with
our IP. We want to make sure that people are
doing things obviously within reason, so long as it kind
of follows a certain guideline for us. But it is
something that we believe is kind of the internets, and
we want to make sure that people have the ability
to play with that and to enjoy it, which is
(11:57):
what it's really exciting.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So talk about that change in approach, because I mean,
that is very counter to the way it used to be,
and there does seem to be a lot of copycatting
out there. Aren't you afraid to let this lose complete control,
especially in the age of AI where this could really
get out of control.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, yeah, I mean, look, there's thankfully we have great
protections in terms of copyrights and trademarks, which gives us
a lot of you know, a lot of leverage in
terms of who we allow to work on this property
and who we don't. There are probably about twenty channels
that are doing really quality episodes of skivity toilet channels
on YouTube, channels on YouTube, and of those, there may
(12:41):
be even like sixty or seventy that are doing less
frequent updates and content. The less frequent we're fine with.
We don't, you know, we don't really pay attention to
we celebrate them. But the twenty that are doing really
credible content, we consider them part of our alliance. It's
(13:01):
the toilets versus the alliance. The alliance are the good guys,
and the alliance is what we're building into this network
of other channels that are making content for us. Boom
is able to look at those scripts beforehand. Boom is
able to address any creative concerns to make sure it's
following the same kind of narrative that we're looking after.
But we want to help those channels. We want to
(13:21):
help those channels build, and we want to help those
channels be able to continue doing what we're doing because
he can't post every single day and YouTube. The algorithm posts,
you know, and the more people that are posting, the
more that it helps, the discovery for it, the more
people that are introduced to it, and so that alliance
is something that we've been building. Again, it's super counterintuitive
(13:42):
to anything I've been involved with before, but it's been
working because we're living in a world where the content
is now free, So it's all the other businesses that
we're able to monetize around it. So knowing that the
content is free, the business is around it for whether
it's roadblocks or consumer products or life lissing. Those are
businesses that we're really trying to encourage to, you know,
(14:04):
to make sure that that content is serving up those
other businesses.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Well, now let's talk about those other businesses, because I
think what got a lot of people's eyebrows up was
you know, obviously, people see that main YouTube business, They
see this tremendous traffic, and people wonder like, okay, maybe
he's just you know, building a business entirely on YouTube,
(14:30):
and he's you know, keeping the control there. Maybe he's
going to move off platform at some point, who knows.
Then the deal with Bonkers gets announced, the deal with
your company and Michael Bay. Okay, the merchandise piece of
this comes into view. But then we see Michael Bay
and your name, and we're starting to think, okay, movies, TV,
(14:52):
other things got to be coming. So what business is
starting with merchandise? Starting with you know, Comic CON's coming,
Halloween is coming. We feel like there's movement towards the
mainstream here, So explain the other businesses and what we
could see coming down the pipe.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Well, to be clear, this is the mainstream. True YouTube
is about his mainstream as it gets.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
The conventional old school.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, well so traditional, we'll call it. Sure, this lends
itself very well. I will say that Michael and Jeffrey Becroft,
who's his longtime production designer and a colleague of his
that's worked with him on all of his movies, have
been working very closely with Alexi to design art, to
(15:40):
start to really professionalize the kind of back engine of this,
to make sure that if we ever decide to go
film or television, that this is kind of lifted beyond
just the resources that creators have on the Internet. We
are absolutely in talks right now both on the television
side and the earliest comer stations right now on the
(16:01):
film side. But it's not a be all, end all
for us, you know. We want to make sure that
we are able to support all the other businesses that
have been built in this fly flywheel that Invisible Narratives
has helped to create for Boom and the other ip
that we work with. But film and television is a flex.
It looks cool. It helps to kind of fuel the
(16:22):
consumer product business, which is obviously a really important thing.
It helps buyers at Walmart or Target to know that
there's going to be media and ads spent against this thing.
But we're pretty successful just on YouTube as it is
right now. So if we stay in this world, we're okay.
And if we move into more traditional then that would
(16:43):
just be for Michael and I pretty awesome and for Boom,
our creator kind of a lifelong dream of his.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Okay. Before we revisit that, though, how important is this
merchandise piece, because that feels like the first piece of
these business this is and it feels like that's what's
coming this fall.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah, I mean, there's two thesiss that my company has.
One is that we believe that IP is not going
to come from rebooting The Fall Guy or looking at
television shows that were frankly old when I was a kid, right.
IP is going to come from TikTok and YouTube for
where the audience is actually at right now. So our
business is solely focused on trying to find those things,
(17:25):
discover those things, nurture those things, and bring traditional resources,
creative resources, or business resources to those creators so that
we can essentially build out the next generation of blockbusters
that are organic to young people in their lives. The
second is that kids don't want to pay for content.
They want to pay for stuff, and stuff is something
(17:46):
that is really important for them and Bonkers what we've
seen and we looked at all the traditional toy companies
and new toy companies, Bonkers gets it. They understand that
when kids are walking through the aisles of or target
right now, the toys that stick out to them are
not things that were their parents or their grandparents' favorites.
(18:09):
They're things that they actually recognize. So YouTube, whether it's
Lanky Box or af Mau or Ryan's World or whatever
it is, these are the things that kids are really
leaning into. And so the toy program that launches this
fall with Bonkers is going to be sick and what
comes over the next twelve months, even after this, the
design of where this is going is something that we
(18:30):
believe can be as robust as some of the toy
businesses that Michael was involved with prior to Skivity Toilet
and could be something years from now. That's pretty significant.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So could you tell us what kind of toys we
could expect?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, everything now from mystery packs to role play to
vehicles to.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
You know, you name it.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
There's really not a category anything that you would expect
to see for Transformers or a Marvel toy or anything
like that. Obviously, not everything comes online in the fall,
but all the designs at this point because the franchise
has everything. It has weapons, it has role play, it
has characters, it has action figures, it has puzzles, it
has games, it has publishing.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
It really has all the.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Things that you're looking for in a mega hit so far.
And that's a testament to the imagination of our creator.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yes, however, then I wonder whether, especially given the title,
given the I don't know if you call it the protagonist,
but the toilet main character, is that all that going
to fly at Walmart? Is the violence gonna fly? I
(19:38):
just wonder, especially when you're you know, you're looking at
some of the press this has gotten, especially globally when
there's talk about, you know, the moral panic, and you know,
there's been headlines about like where they've actually talked about
a skibbity toilet syndrome where kids, I mean, it's hard
(19:59):
to take this stuff, si, I know where you know,
kids have trouble potty training because of skibbity toilet and
they're afraid, you know, heads are going to pop out
of toilets, Like, could this stuff actually create a problem
for introducing this to a mass market? It's beloved so clearly.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I you know, I am not a retail expert that
you know, we'll see the proof when you know, it
starts rolling out at this point. But what I what
I believe is we are seeing a very significant audience
from episode to episode that's not growing significantly at this
point just simply because it's so significant, But it's not dipping.
(20:39):
We are seeing like real consistency in terms of who
this audience is. And I think again, part of the
you know, part of the thing that you and I
or all of my friends or any of my kids,
even in my own house look at sometimes and think
this is weird and obscure is exactly the thing that
makes it awesome. It's the thing that makes it unique
(21:01):
and interesting and cool. And yeah, there's a toilet, but
the toilet is the toilets are a small part of
this franchise. And if you, as I said earlier, if
you take the toilets out of it and you look
at it, it's no different than Optimists and Bumblebee and Megatron.
These are giant mechanized warriors that are having gigantic, dynamic
(21:22):
battles and you know, terrific action.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
We'll be right back with Adam Goodman and more on
skibbity toilet, and we are back with Adam Goodman. Stephen
Colbert had a little fun with Joe Biden and imagining
(21:46):
what it might be like to well have a listen
to what he did with this internet craze and the
current president.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
And of course for the very online skibbity Biden Biden.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Give me, give me evined, guit evided, give me these,
give me evin that hiders like what tron.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Trump Trump is, use Hitler's Likewhitler's like what Trump is?
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Useless language, giv d give.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Me Now, if you don't understand that video, your grandchildren
will explain it and you still won't understand.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
So, Adam, when you hear something like that, does that
sort of uh give you a sense that it's kind
of like priming the older audience for accepting what could
be a household name for even people who are not
in the target audience, that will give them a sense
of what could be something that their kids or grandkids
(22:56):
are soon going to be asking for.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Or does that No, we have such a long way
to get from where we are right now with our
audience to Stephen Colbert's audience at this point.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
But that's okay.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
There's a lot of audience that there's younger audience that
we need to accept in, and there's slightly older audience
that we need to convert to being less wary of
the brain rot and more aware of the episodes, the
storytelling and the narrative that's being leaned into this at
this point.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So you said that, you know, there's sort of the
earliest conversations going on about taking this property to film
or TV. Why isn't it essential? I mean, can you
really make the same amount of money on digital platforms
on just YouTube? What about also the other digital platforms.
(23:52):
I mean, it's certainly got a presence on TikTok. What
is your general approach here in terms of monetization, because
I would have, oh no, you gotta have the you know,
a cinematic universe for this.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (24:05):
No.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I mean, look, there have been very successful businesses that
have been wholly organic to the digital space. If you
look at what Ryan did with his toy business, this
is a business that has done solidly nine figures worth
of toy sales alone over the last number.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Of years Ryan meaning Ryan's World.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah, and eventually Ryan switched over to Nickelodeon, but its
main driver was his YouTube channel. So going traditional is fantastic,
and our design for it is something that we aspire
to make something that is really awesome. I look at
what fortiesh and Netflix did with our Cane and that
was a terrific series in something that you look at
(24:43):
and again as a video game person, it seems obvious now,
but at the time, none of these things are obvious,
and we do believe that we can do something that
is really like, really cool and more anime and more
sophisticated than what the YouTube channels do every single day,
just because of resources that are there. But the business
(25:04):
is so beyond YouTube. Roadblocks is something that our licensee,
our license partners who are using Skibty and Roadblocks are
doing such a phenomenal amount of hours spent with our IP.
And so what's incredible about this IP is that some
kids are finding it through YouTube, and some kids are
(25:28):
finding it through Roadblocks and don't even really know all
that much about the YouTube channel of its own. They're
learning the characters and they're modeling it, they're twinning with
their characters, they're talking to their friends about it.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So there's a whole other.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
World that Michael and I have learned about over the
last few years of being in this business that is
as significant as anything that we've ever been involved with
in our entire careers. And film and television will only
give us escape velocity and allow us to do amazing
things and to develop this out that years from now
it be still has real relevance. But if we don't
(26:04):
do film and television, it's still something that has, you know,
incredible business opportunities. For The key is right now is
that when you're working with traditional partners, which is fantastic,
but number one, you're always subject to mother may I, Mother,
may I do another season? Mother may I, you know,
do a new toy line?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Mother may I?
Speaker 6 (26:25):
You know?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
And and so right now we have a lot of
control over this ip and in giving our creator the
ability to do things that typically once they go into
a partnership with a film or TV studio, they may
be firewalled.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
From some of their imagination at that point. Okay, it's
just in terms of I kind of liken it to
an organ transplant. I just wonder whether once you take
this property out of YouTube, whether that's sort of underground
appeal that I feel like it has could somehow be lost.
(27:02):
He himself, Alexi Boom has talked about not wanting for
it to feel corporate, and with all due respect to
yourself to Michael Bay, does the association you guys bring,
does that risk it turning corporate?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I mean, I don't think that any of the properties
that Michael and I have been involved with are necessarily
thought of as being corporate. They're commercial, they're blockbusters. There
are things that you know, again Michael, not me. I
was only lucky enough to be the executive on those things.
But I think with vision, this becomes something you know, imagine. Again,
(27:45):
this is kind of crazy to think about because we're
thinking through the lens of everything that we've seen. But
if you thought about this more of a John Wick
District nine version, where it's a hybrid of live action
and you know, incredible you know, visual effects and animation,
something like this and some of the art that we
are developing and seeing right now can be so badass
(28:09):
and so spectacular and so different than what anything that
you've looked at and yes, you may look at this
thing at first and kind of blink your eyes at
this and say it's not for me, but our hope
and the challenge is this is to make sure.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
That it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
What we won't do is make something just to make
it that would be a money grab and that we're
not interested in doing because the business is doing so
well for us right now. But if we find a
partner in this that really believes that there is opportunity
for this to grow and to really see the storytelling
grow and for this to be what we hope this
can be, then film and TV seems like a natural
(28:43):
extension for us.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I mean, you say live action, and we should note
this thing barely has dialogue. I mean, there's been over
seventy episodes. I guess you know there are multiple minutes.
It's hard for me to even imagine like actors in it,
Like is Glenn Powell going to show up and you know,
(29:04):
audition with a toilet over his head?
Speaker 7 (29:06):
I just like it.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Boggles the mind here. I mean, I actually wonder whether
it's international appeal is the fact that there is no dialogue.
It's just sort of translatable. Do you feel like that's
part of the appeal.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's it's it absolutely. I mean, our international numbers are
staggering for this. I would age we have a massive
US audience to it, but it peals in comparison to
the rest of the globe. At this point, I'm certain
that it feels localized in every region it plays simply
because there is a little dialogue in this. But the
great thing about where we're going with this is we've
(29:40):
been slowly putting dialogue into the episodes and the audience
is reacting great to it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Well. I can't wait for the theme park rydes that
I think will be the cherry on top. Thank you
so much for coming in, Adam. This has been a
really interesting conversation. I can't wait to see what you
do with this next. Thank you for having me. I
appreciate it. And now for a bonus segment. You may
not have heard of skibbety toilet before, but you may
(30:08):
have heard the word skibbety or riz phantom tax yeah sigma.
Now to the untrained ear, these words may sound like
total gibberish, but when I heard them come out of
the mouths of my next guess, I learned there something
of a second language among Generation Z and Alpha, and
(30:29):
they're known as brain rot. Think of it as online
subculture where skibbety toilet is just one of many, many,
really really stupid memes. And because my Generation X mind
is too old and feeble to comprehend any of this,
I am joined by my own sixteen year old son
Max and his best pal Eli to help me make
(30:51):
sense of it all. Thanks for joining me in studio, gentlemen.
Speaker 8 (30:54):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 7 (30:55):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Let's just start real simple here and no pressure. But
you're here basically as representatives of everyone on earth, like
eighteen and under. What does skibbity mean?
Speaker 7 (31:08):
It really has no meaning at all, but really, yeah,
there's no meaning behind skibvity. Well, it comes from a
meme before the skibbity toilet meme, so like the skivvity
toilet is like an animated show. And then it comes
from a previous meme in which it's like some a
Bulgarian song and like a fat guy like a belly dance,
(31:31):
like a song, fat guy dancing like shaking his belly,
and it's like a Bulgarian song, and it's like it
sounds like the song is saying skibbty, like it's completely gibberish, like,
but that's where the word is taken from, and then
they made the serious off of that.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
So but but what are we what are we old
people supposed to take to the fact that the language
is gibberish and means nothing, like, what's the point of
saying it?
Speaker 7 (31:57):
Then there are brain rot terms that have meaning, but
the term skibbety has no true definition and is more
of just like a filler word to throw in when
you're talking about brain rot.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Right, So then let's get to a word that you mentioned,
phantom tax, Like, right, what does that mean?
Speaker 7 (32:13):
So this comes from the popular streamer Kaisinat and he
has a friend named Phantom who likes to take his
food while he's streaming and take a few bites of
his food. And people kind of took that and started
calling it the phantom tax.
Speaker 8 (32:27):
Uh huh, Yeah, that makes sense. But like skibbity is,
there's no like etymological meaning or anything. It's it's just
complete gibberish and it's completely meaningless.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Okay, I'm starting to understand why this is called brain
rot because these words really I mean, well, first of all, like,
should we actually be concerned for the state of your brains,
Like is this a medical condition?
Speaker 7 (32:54):
No, not our brains, but the young generations.
Speaker 8 (32:57):
Yeah, the young one.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Oh so you as like we should at at sixteen,
you're sort of like the bottom end of generation ZE,
but you're worried about the alphas.
Speaker 8 (33:06):
Well, we're fine, Like we think like this stuff is
funny because they think it's funny and they take it
like seriously.
Speaker 7 (33:12):
But brain rot and just like like TikTok in general,
has a lot of like negative side effects. For example,
it messes with attention spans and also memory consuming like
hours of just short form videos with no meaning behind
them does negatively impact a memory, especially in younger kids
(33:33):
who are consuming it like all day long.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Okay, so there is actual reason for concern here. Is
there any part of brain rot that is like redeemable,
Like like what about Riz? I mean, you know, riz
seems to be something that's like that seems to be something.
Speaker 8 (33:51):
Cool, like yeah, I mean that that has a meaning.
It comes from charisma. It's just it's short for that, right,
It's just like your play like how much he can
you attract women?
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, which begs the question, I mean, do you guys
have riz?
Speaker 7 (34:06):
Oh yeah, a lot of riz.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Is that measurable?
Speaker 7 (34:10):
It's hard to measure, but it can be done.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Do I have riz?
Speaker 8 (34:14):
I mean you have a wife and kids, so I guess.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So if I have a wife and kid, that meets
you had to wife? Is a verb too?
Speaker 8 (34:23):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's actually multiple parts of speech.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 8 (34:28):
Like a lot of these brain rot terms.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Are it can be noun verb interesting? Yeah, okay, Well
what about brain rot in general? Do you think it's
going to be like a lasting media phenomenon that will
grow as the generation that made it popular grows with it,
Like it'll soon be like a television aesthetic.
Speaker 7 (34:52):
I think brain rot will definitely evolve into like other things,
not just like skibbity toilet like on TikTok. At least
there's definitely like trends that appear every now and then
of like different types of brain rot like subgroups. Right,
Like RIZ was probably one of the first ones to
come up, and that was like many years ago, like
twenty twenty two, maybe twenty twenty three. Skibbity toylets more recent,
(35:16):
you know, phantom text too, Like it kind of like
it grows over time. But I think it'll probably just
stay as like a TikTok joke brain rock terms.
Speaker 8 (35:27):
Yes, I would also say it's worth noting that I
think the word brain rot has sort of migrated as
a definition, Like I think I think it originally meant
like just that specific set of stupid, weird memes that
were created by Jen Alfha, like skimby toilet and stuff
like that. I think, like, like, do you agree, do
(35:48):
you think people use it as just meme culture in
general now as like anything stupid on TikTok?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, why don't you think adults get brain rot? Like
why don't they understand it and kind of freaked out
by it?
Speaker 8 (36:04):
They didn't make it? Yeah, I can't blame them. It's
really weird.
Speaker 7 (36:07):
Even us as gen z don't really get it because
we didn't really come up with it.
Speaker 8 (36:11):
The younger generation did, so we don't. We don't think
it's like funny. We just think it's funny that they
think it's funny. So I mean we're laughing at them. Yeah,
they're laughing at the brain rot like they think it's funny.
We're laughing at them, like we're making a joke.
Speaker 7 (36:24):
Like I've tried to talk to my little sister about
brain rot, right, I asked her if she if she
knew about skibbity toilet, and she told me that she
dabbles in skibbity toilet from time to time, and she
was pretty serious about it. It didn't seem like a
joke to her, and she couldn't really tell that I
was joking, which is a little it's a little scary,
I think.
Speaker 8 (36:44):
But yeah, I mean, like I guess that sort of
talks to the point of like just the scope of it.
Because like if you I don't know about you, but
you can tell me your experience. But if you ask
like any nine or ten year old or like somebody
around that age range, like chances are they know what
skimmity toy it is. I'd say like seventy percent of
(37:05):
children that age know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
It's not as if like other forms of entertainment, they're gone,
right usual TV shows, movies, whatnot. It's not like we
could waive all that goodbye and brain row takes over
everything exactly.
Speaker 8 (37:21):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's it will be hard
for brain rot, for the entertainment industry to sort of
market brain rot to the general public if they want to.
But I mean they've made a ton of stupid things,
like they made Five Nights at freddy That's a movie
now like that started out?
Speaker 7 (37:40):
Is like that comes from a video game with like
an actual storyline like that. There's substance to that.
Speaker 8 (37:45):
No, but it's it's it's a younger like gen X
isn't playing five Nuts at Freddy's And they made it
into a movie.
Speaker 7 (37:52):
But what can you really like mark it off of
brain ro I mean there's no meaning, there's no story behind.
Speaker 8 (37:57):
Yeah, it will be hard to market that.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
But you realize that, you know, not too long ago
they had these kinds of conversations about like how are
they going to turn the Transformers or Lego into a movie?
And look at it now, so you never know. While
we're on this subject, Max, we should point out this
is not your first time on this podcast. Five years ago,
(38:22):
at the tender age of eleven, you came on to
discuss your impressions of virtual reality technology and you express
some optimism for the development of this market. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 6 (38:34):
I think I'll probably do more because it's going to
be more updated and more improved, and you can do
more things, and it's probably going to be like, you know,
like everyone's going to be into it. It's going to
be like right now, VR is like the biggest thing,
and it has used to grow and more people use it.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
So yeah, first of all, ain't puberty a kick? Second,
it's awesome that Eli is here too, because you guys
often played VR games together remotely over the years. So
I want to hear you both comments on how you
feel today about the state of VR as an entertainment
device versus when you first started years ago. Do you
(39:14):
feel that sense of optimism still.
Speaker 8 (39:17):
I feel optimistic still, but I don't think it exactly
met my expectations that I set when I was eleven.
I don't think VR has gotten substantially bigger as I
as I said five years ago, but I still play
(39:38):
it from time to time. I often I've had, like,
you know, several two week three week phases, Yeah, phases
where I play like super diligently.
Speaker 7 (39:48):
I'd have to agree with Max. I think, like at
the age that he spoke on that podcast, like, I
definitely had much higher hopes for VR. I thought it
was going to get a lot bigger, like technologically, but
it hasn't. I haven't seen a lot of change and
it definitely hasn't gone that much bigger. The Apple Vision
Pro did have some pretty cool like features and stuff,
(40:09):
and it's definitely an interesting piece of technology, but I
think VR has a long way to go before it
gets a lot bigger.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Well, we'll just have to check in again in another
five years, and then another five years till eventually you
inherit the Strictly Business podcast from me and are asking
your own child about what he thinks of the next
generation of devices. Sorry, like you're gonna have to get
your own podcast, but I'm confident that you will. Yeah,
(40:37):
and I thank you both for joining me today.
Speaker 7 (40:39):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 8 (40:44):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
or Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners. Please
go to Variety dot com and sign up for the
free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune
in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.
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