Shadowing Practice: Everybody wants to waste your time - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I couldn't believe what I would see I walked into the room

and I said this can not be happening right now this is not the kind of thing

that normally happens in this town

is it this camera I look at this one okay why don't they just edit

that part out can you tell us your name my name is john

and what is your connection to crazy legs who the serial killer i don't know who

that is you don't know is this for tv sort of sorry

we must have got the wrong guy yeah i think

you did i work at hobby lobby whoops well could you tell us about

that oh uh sure so hobby lobby is sort of a knick -knack store it's

so they're just gonna interview him anyway it's a good place to work

because we have sundays off and i'm not like religious or anything

but i just don't like working on sundays no

it didn't hurt necessarily i just wanted to go to a dermatologist to make sure it wasn't anything serious

but then i found out that

if you bundle it with your home insurance

it's actually a little bit cheaper how long is this you know what's funny

i never understood the roadwork bond people would quoted to me.

Is this the whole episode?

You guys want to hear about the time I got my tonsils out?

Oh my God, I'm done.

This is so stupid.

The year 2005, my throat ravaged with strep.

Hey guy, does anyone else feel like everything is designed to waste your time now?

Or am I being too cynical?

Netflix documentaries are multiple episodes when they could have just been one 45 minute movie.

Video games are too big.

YouTube videos are too long.

And please, for the love of God, stop asking me for my phone number every time I buy something from a store.

I don't want to join your rewards program.

I just want to give you money in exchange for a hat.

Is that too much to ask?

Sorry, I'll start with the Netflix thing.

It seems like half of what I watch on Netflix is twice as long as it should be.

They always make it just interesting enough to hold your attention,

but it's still pretty clear they're trying to stretch it out as much as they can.

And I know it's not just me who feels this way, because I'll look up reviews after I watch something,

and they almost all say the same thing.

Watchable, but it drags on.

Could have been tied up in one episode.

Please, Netflix, stop trying to make a series when there simply isn't the content for a series.

They made a documentary a couple years ago about the Cecil Hotel, a place that has, I'll say it,

an alarming number of deaths associated with it.

It's the site of that extremely famous elevator video of Elisa Lam right before she was found dead.

So there is plenty of mystery to uncover here, but by episode two, they were just interviewing YouTubers.

Not people connected with the story, Just a bunch of random dudes who had googled stuff about it before.

They keep calling them web sleuths, which I guess is the most official way of saying

that you just woke up one day and decided that you are a detective.

Well, since no one else has been able to crack this case, I guess it's up to me.

Generally, one of the big things

that separates a professionally made documentary from just any average YouTube video is the access they have to the subject matter.

Anyone can throw together a video where they summarize a Wikipedia page, But the most memorable

and revealing documentaries are ones where we hear the perspective of the people involved

I watched one on Hulu recently called the contestant and not only is this an absolutely insane story

But you get to hear it from the point of view of the guy

it happened to you also get to hear from the villain of this story

Who is such a monster?

I can't believe he agreed to be a part of this

It's fascinating to see how proud he is of himself like yeah I tormented this guy and ruined his life,

but you gotta admit it made for a pretty cool show

But this is kind of the expectation when you turn on a documentary

that you're gonna hear the story from the people involved in the story

So when you put on an official Netflix Docu -series on a streaming service

that costs money to use and most of it is just regular people

Offering their two cents on the same blurry video everyone else has watched.

It kind of feels like a huge waste of time

It's so aggressively time wasting that I can't help but feel like that was the goal.

All right We have everything we need to tell this story.

We have other guests who are staying at the hotel

We have the manager of the hotel at the time.

We have the maintenance worker who discovered her body and in between interviewing them

We're also gonna hear from someone whose only credential is having internet access

I am a co -founder of the Elisa lamb discussion group on Facebook No, he wasn't there when it happened,

but he has listened to a lot of podcasts about this

So we should probably hear him out more recently

They made a docu -series about Ashley Madison a website whose

mere existence is fascinating let alone all the fallout from their massive data leak that exposed a bunch of celebrities and politicians.

There is absolutely a story worth telling here and some of it was very interesting.

But again, pointless interviews, backstory that's unnecessarily detailed.

there's such a clear amount of filler put into these documentaries.

It felt like half the runtime of the last two episodes

was just trying to make us feel bad for this YouTube vlogging couple, which I'm sorry, was never going to happen.

In fact, I would say the best thing to come out of this was

that it forced them to take a short break from exploiting their children's medical issues for AdSense revenue

because they were too busy making 17 videos about how they were gonna be on Netflix.

Now I would guess like with a lot of their scripted content,

the shadowy Netflix overlords are more responsible for a lot of these decisions than the talented people who work on these.

I don't think almost every single documentary is three 60 -minute episodes because that's always how much story there is to tell.

I think that's the mandated runtime that their bosses give to them.

So even when they end up with footage that doesn't add anything to the show,

they kind of just have to leave it in anyway to pad the length.

There's a series I did a couple years ago with Chris

and Belle called The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.

As you could probably guess from the title,

This was a parody of like lifetime murder mysteries and it was a pretty funny show I enjoyed it,

but the whole time I was watching this.

I just kept thinking this should have been a movie

Why is this eight episodes?

Is it because they knew it would take me four days to finish instead of getting through it all in one night?

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Therefore extending my subscription just long enough for them to make a little bit more money for me

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You know now that I hear that out loud I'm pretty sure it's

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that at this point I just assume most of Netflix's decisions are made by an algorithm

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that prioritizes keeping people subscribed as long as possible and it's figured out the best way to mathematically do that,

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even if it lessens the overall user experience.

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I think overall, Netflix is trying to do too many things at once.

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They want to make good shows, but they also want to make a lot of shows,

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and they want the shows to be longer than they need to be, but not in a way that would cost more money.

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And they need to move the plot along so no one gets bored,

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but not too quickly, otherwise the people who are looking down at their phones the entire time might get confused.

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She'd heard from so many showrunners who were given notes by the streaming channels that they say, this isn't second screen enough.

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The viewer is expected to be on their phone kind of half doing something else

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while your crime drama or whatever is playing

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And you just can't make it as complicated as you have because they're not going to understand it

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Because they're only going to be half concentrating on your show

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You know when you hear stuff like that

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It's actually not that surprising how often shows like

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Avatar would repeat the same information they just told you a few minutes ago

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You're not supposed to pay attention

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when you watch Netflix You're just supposed to put it on in the background

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so you have something to listen to while you make dinner

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But like if you're designing your content so that it's best consumed while half paying attention to it

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Why would I waste my time devoting all of my attention to it?

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On the topic of things that are getting too long, what's going on with YouTube videos?

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Does anyone know?

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I'm old enough to remember

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when the 10 -minute mark was something videos got stretched out to Now it feels like half the videos

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I get recommended to me are seven -hour

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Retrospectives on like the penguins of Madagascar and I'm kind of conflicted on how I feel about this.

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Because on one hand, some of the best videos I've seen on this website are well past the hour mark.

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There are multiple Defunctland episodes that have better storytelling and production value than any Netflix documentary I've seen.

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When H -Bomberguy or Jenny Nicholson release a four -hour video,

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I know it's not just because they're trying to inflate the watch time so it gets boosted by the algorithm,

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it's because they spent months working on it and that's just how long the video ended up being.

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I'm a sucker for a comically in -depth review of a piece of media

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I've never thought about for more than two seconds.

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As long as a person making it is passionate about the subject and they put in the effort to make it entertaining,

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I'll watch just about anything.

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But I'm worried that some people are taking the wrong lessons from the success of some of these channels.

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They see that a very long video about a niche subject has the potential to get a lot of views,

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so it's almost as if they go into their video with the goal of making it as long as possible,

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even if there's not really that much to talk about.

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The current YouTube meta is to turn your video into a podcast.

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It's to pad the absolute shit out of the runtime because that's what the algorithm likes.

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And to be clear, I don't really blame these people for doing this,

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especially smaller channels who are just trying to make their videos stand out before they drown in the bottomless ocean of content.

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But it's just frustrating from the audience perspective that the system is rewarding, unedited yapping.

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If I just vomit out every word that remotely pertains to the topic at hand with no thought into brevity, no consideration of the viewer's time,

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it's actually more likely that YouTube will push my video out to those people whose time I'm not valuing.

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The algorithm is teaching me that I shouldn't cut things out of my video

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if they feel superfluous or unnecessary or repetitive or like I'm just saying the same thing over and over again, but in slightly different ways.

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They'd prefer if I stretched out every video as long as I could but if that's all I'm doing,

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what message am I sending to the audience I'm trying to cultivate?

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That their time is just something for me to leverage so I can get more views?

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That's a little shitty.

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But the worst thing is

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when they start doing an ad read at the beginning of a video

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that quite frankly I'm not even sure I'm interested in yet.

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You haven't even hooked me and you're already trying to sell me a water bottle that smells bad?

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Brother, if I wanted to be advertised to, I would fly to New York City and spin around in Times Square.

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I didn't click on this video to learn about the deodorant that changed your life.

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I clicked on this video to hear a grown man rant about the Fairly Oddparents for three hours.

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So in that way, this is kind of my fault.

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I don't know what I was expecting.

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Also, no, I'm sorry.

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You don't have to do this.

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I literally do.

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I signed a contract.

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This portion of the video is sponsored by SoFi, the ultimate finance app, helping you bank, borrow, and invest.

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I have one goal in life, to be the first person in human history to have $100 all at once.

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An amount long considered to be unreachable, and yet, I will reach it.

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And even though I'm only about 3 % of the way there, I'm not giving up.

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Because with SoFi's high -yield checking and savings account, I can earn up to 4 .5 % APY on my savings with direct deposit,

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Your typical savings account with direct deposit at your local bank earns you just .46 % interest, and that's not enough for me.

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I have a world record to break.

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But here's the best part.

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So I guess I'll be the second person to have $100.

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Click the link in the description or scan the QR code on the screen to enter for a chance to win,

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Thank you to SoFi for sponsoring today's video.

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Now, based on everything I just described, you might be thinking, okay, so you want every video to be as concise as possible.

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You mean like Mr. Beast?

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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying.

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That is on the entire other end of the spectrum.

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There are videos that go on so long that large portions of them become nothing more than background noise.

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And then there's the most hyperactive,

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fever dream editing, non -stop cacophony of colors and sounds meant to overstimulate the eight -year -old boys watching on their iPad.

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And then there's a lot of space in between.

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But I guess because of all that space, it's weird to me how many videos end up on either extreme.

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It'll either be like, I just dropped my friend in an elevator for 72 hours without any food or water,

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but none of that even mattered because they ran out of air and suffocated before they even got hungry.

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Or it'll be like, but before I can talk about season two of How I Met Your Mother, we need to go back to the beginning.

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The first camera was invented in 18...

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I'm just asking that we meet somewhere in the middle, that's all.

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Also, to be clear, Mr. Beast

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and all of the channels copying him have never made their videos that way because they value people's time.

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They're just trying to keep their retention rate as high as possible.

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It's just a different metric they're prioritizing.

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If Jimmy cared about his audience at all, he wouldn't sign off on doing this unbelievably deceptive bullshit where during mid -roll ads,

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they put this progress bar on the bottom that starts off really fucking fast.

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It makes it seem like, oh, this will be done in a few seconds.

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I don't need to skip this.

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And then once people have done the math in their head

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and decided they're just going to see it through to the end, the progress bar mysteriously slows down like a lot.

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And suddenly that last 20 % is starting to feel like an eternity.

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I thought we were almost done, and now I'm not even sure we're halfway through.

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This shit really pisses me off, because this is a very deliberate choice.

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This is not an accident.

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You have to go out of your way to keyframe it like this with the intention of deceiving your viewers.

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It's such an openly manipulative thing to do to your audience, and is very telling of the way you view them.

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That you're willing to lie to their face

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if it means a number on an analytic screen might get a little bit bigger.

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To you, they're not real people.

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They're just data points that can be orchestrated in whatever direction you want them to.

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And that sucks.

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And if you agree with me, please sign up for my Patreon.

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Right now, I'm trying to buy a bunch of Teslas

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so I can see how many you can stack on top of each other before they explode.

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I have a lot of respect for creators that make algorithmically counterintuitive decisions because they don't want to waste their viewers' time.

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I think Internet Shaquille is hands down the best cooking channel on YouTube.

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He's knowledgeable, he's funny, and he always just gets right to the point.

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There's a promise of information in the title

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and he doesn't try to withhold it from you just

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because he could theoretically put more mid -rolls in by meandering for a bit.

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For a long time, Tom Scott was kind of the science version of this.

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Nerdwriter is like the film version of this.

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In a world where most video essays end up being somehow longer than the piece of media thereabout, Nerdwriter's still barely hitting that seven minute mark.

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It's just, here's this thing I noticed in a movie, here's some insight about it, and that's all I got for you, brother.

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But I think it's also worth noting that these channels are successful.

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They're not doing the thing you're supposed to be doing, but it works for them.

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And I just wanna use

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that as a testament to making things the way you want to make them

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or making the type of video you wish there was more of.

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Sometimes going against the grain actually is the best way to make yourself stand out.

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Like don't just throw together a bunch of crappy videos about whatever drama is trending.

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Make a retrospective about some niche hobby you had as a kid.

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This shit is way more interesting.

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Remember, this website is called YouTube.

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Not do the thing that you think will become popular to.

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That would be a really stupid URL.

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Now I'll admit it's not totally fair to get mad at other people for wasting my time

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when really no one wastes more of it than I do.

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There was a day last week where the screen time on my phone was 106 hours.

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And I slept in that day.

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There's so many things I want to do in my life before I'm gone.

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So many people I want to spend time with.

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So many places I want to go.

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But I can't stop scrolling.

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I don't want to, but it's as if it's been scientifically engineered to be the easiest thing to do.

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Adam and Eve were caught on camera.

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Can you guess who's holding the camera?

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Keep scrolling if you choose the devil.

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It's this weird feeling I get whenever I go on TikTok or Instagram reels or threads,

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just kidding, where I'm simultaneously aware of what it's doing to my brain, but I do nothing to try and intervene.

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I just sit there and let it destroy me because I have to see that next video.

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What if it's so funny but I exit out of the app before I ever get a chance to watch it?

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I'd cry.

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No, I'd kill myself.

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And it's almost as if that feeling is intentional.

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They've made it so the distance between you and a chance at dopamine is just one small swipe away.

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I'd almost say it's malicious but I know that's not true because a billion dollar company would never do that.

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Billionaires care about your well -being.

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That's how they made so much money in the first place.

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Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, they would never intentionally show us things to make us upset

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because studies show that people spend more time on a platform if they're seeing something that makes them angry.

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They wouldn't do that because that's not nice.

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This is what most of my timeline is whenever I scroll through Twitter.

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It's the most blatantly obvious engagement bait that has weaseled its way into being prioritized because it's successfully baited engagement.

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It's arguments about body counts and whether Nickelodeon shows were good or not.

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And it works on me.

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It has the intended effect when I see it.

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I was scrolling one day and I saw someone say, iCarly, Victorious, Zoey 101.

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And at first I had to squint for a few seconds because I wasn't sure what they meant by this.

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And then I realized they were saying the first two are good, LeBron James, and the third is sort of an imposter that doesn't belong.

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And I, in my head, got defensive.

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I was like, what are you talking about?

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Zoey 101 was good.

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It was certainly better than Victorious.

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How does this have so many likes?

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What's wrong with Zoey 101?

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And then I exited out of Twitter and sat in silence for a few seconds as I pondered what just happened.

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How I got upset that someone I don't know said a show from 20 years ago

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that I kind of liked isn't as good as a different show that I barely watch.

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Why is this how I'm spending my time?

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In this moment, I could have been doing anything else and yet I chose to introduce this argument into my head?

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That can't be good long term, right?

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Like we can all agree that's probably not great for my brain.

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If you're like me and you've been struggling with the endless scroll, I do have a recommendation.

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I found this by accident while I was doing a video a couple years ago about dopamine fast.

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It's called Screenzen and it's free.

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I have it set up

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so it only gives me a few minutes at a time on each of the most poisonous apps

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that I hate but am addicted to.

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So you can still pop in for a sec and get the feeling of being up to date.

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But then it'll grab you by the shoulders and yank you out before you get too sucked into the void.

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You still get a little bit sucked, but not all the way.

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But of course, I saved the most important issue for last.

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Video games are too big now, and I'm tired of pretending like they're not.

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When I was a kid, the idea of an open world game blew my mind.

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Up until a certain point, everything was very linear, very insulated.

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You load into an area, you do what you have to do there, and then you move on to the next place.

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But this idea that you could go anywhere, in any order, what could be more immersive than a world that you could essentially live in?

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And boy, did I want to live in any other world than the one in

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which I played clarinet and got bullied by someone who also played clarinet?

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You're not better than me.

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We're the same.

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To me, open world games felt like the culmination of every technological milestone.

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It felt like the future of gaming.

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And then, over time, it became the standard.

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It became what every game had to be.

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And then all of a sudden, it seemed like the goal shifted from making the best game to making the biggest game.

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I guess because it's easier to market something based on scale than to just come out and say,

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hey, the story's really good in this one, trust me.

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I started to get overwhelmed by games because of the seemingly endless list of tasks I needed to complete, the chores that I needed to do.

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And to be clear, I'm not talking about games like

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Crime Scene Cleaner.

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That's a great game, okay?

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I don't mind chores when the game is chores.

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I'll play Power Wash Simulator all day.

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I played Unpacking shortly after moving into this house and I hadn't finished Unpacking in real life yet.

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My wife was not happy about that.

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What I'm specifically referring to is when games feel artificially padded with repetitive side quests, when there's like seven different activities to do,

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but you just end up doing each of them a hundred times.

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And as someone who goes into games with a completionist mindset, this is the quickest way to make me give up.

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Because I'll try to collect every item

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and go into every corner for like 20 % of the story until one day I just stop opening the game altogether,

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relieved by the massive weight now off my shoulders.

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I think that's a big reason why Elden Ring had such a big impact on me and so many other people.

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Yes, you're in this staggeringly large open world littered with places to go and things to kill,

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but it's not in the form of just a bunch of exclamation points on your mini -map.

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Almost everything you do in this game is motivated by, oh that looks cool, I want to go over there.

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It's a feeling you should have while playing an open world game.

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It's that sense of wonder that has mostly been lost by all these cookie -cutter taskathons.

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Also, the more bloated a game is with content, the more narrative dissonance there ends up being.

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Which of course only matters as much as you let it,

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but it's still really funny sometimes when the main questline of a game is trying to instill this sense of urgency,

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but at any given moment you can just go fuck around for 15 straight hours.

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We've only got until midnight tonight to rescue my uncle or they're gonna execute him!

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Hey, do you think there's anything cool in this cave over here?

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A compromise that works great for my brain is a semi -open world, like the two most recent God of War games.

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I like when there's enough optional side exploration that it still scratches

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that itch for me without

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it ever feeling like I'm missing out on this overwhelming amount

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of content by just wanting to streamline the story for a bit.

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I think it's okay for a game to be modest in scope just

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because the technology exists to procedurally generate a thousand different planets doesn't mean we have to do that.

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Sometimes I wonder if the technical limitations from previous generations actually made games better.

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I mean, it certainly made them more contained.

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It made them more approachable.

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I love going back and playing older games that only take a few hours to finish.

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I want to be able to complete things.

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I wanna have a full experience in a reasonable amount of time.

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I'm tired of not getting any closure from games

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because they make it so tedious and long -winded to get to that point.

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And that's assuming the game even works when you first buy it, which chances are it won't.

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It's become so normalized for games to be unfinished

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and littered with bugs on release that it's actually surprising when a game comes out and works the way it's supposed to.

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A lot of even really good games aren't worth buying for like two full years.

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Cyberpunk, fantastic game in 2024.

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But I bought this on release and had to slog through so many bugs, retread so many areas because of crashes,

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all before encountering an immovable obstacle.

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I could not progress the story because every time I tried to initiate this cut scene,

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the other character would not say the next line he was supposed to, so they would both just sit there in silence indefinitely.

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I couldn't continue the game past this point, and I was like 10 hours into it.

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I had a similar game -breaking experience with Dying Light 2, Metro Exodus, and I'm not even touching Starfield anytime soon.

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The bigger a game is supposed to be, the more I don't trust it to be a complete experience when it first comes out.

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It usually takes years to fill out all the missing pieces, so I'm not gonna waste my time

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or money on what I assume will be a significantly worse experience than

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if I were to just wait until it's on sale in 2027.

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But in a world of titles forced out prematurely by a deadline that was never realistic,

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nothing feels quite as egregious as the yearly full -priced sports game.

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You spend 11 months building up a player or a team or a general manager, if you're a weirdo like me.

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And then as soon as the calendar flips over, you gotta start from scratch.

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All right, everyone, time for the new game.

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Yes, it's $100 again, but we've made so many improvements.

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The number on the box is different.

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And where's your credit card?

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NBA 2K has one of the most aggressive microtransaction systems I've ever seen in a video game.

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But they're not just dedicated to milking every single dollar out of your bank account.

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They've also made it their personal mission to waste as much of your time as humanly possible.

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A few years ago, they added something revolutionary.

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They turned the park into the city.

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Now, functionally, at its core, the city is just a menu.

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Every physical location that you have to trek to could have just been text on a screen

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and it would have been way more efficient to navigate.

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But that wouldn't be innovative.

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Innovation is when you have to jog a mile just to have Gatorade before your next game.

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Innovation is when you create something tedious so you can sell the solution to it.

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Man, aren't you guys tired of having to navigate this big stupid city we made? then buy a bike.

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It's $10.

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fuck you.

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Imagine if every time you turned on your computer, you had to make a little guy run across town just to go to the Gmail store.

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Oh shit, forgot my password, gonna have to sprint over to City Hall.

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I feel like every single element of this game is designed with the goal of wasting your time.

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Whether it's getting interrupted in the main menu to show you two separate ads,

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or a halftime show you cannot skip even if you press X the whole time.

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Don't get me

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Don't get me wrong, this halftime show is great.

406

They've got Ernie, Kenny, Shaq, my three favorite guys.

407

They show highlights and relevant stats.

408

They make jokes.

409

By sports game standards, this halftime show is fantastic.

410

But there are one million games in every basketball season and I don't want to watch one million halftime shows.

411

I'm just trying to speed run to the playoffs

412

so I can take a virtual trophy home to my real life Orlando magic.

413

Is that too much to ask?

414

58 seconds, by the way.

415

But whatever, those are just minor inconveniences.

416

The really egregious wastes of time are in the my career mode.

417

Now the thing is, when you start his career, this guy fucking sucks at basketball,

418

which is a problem because that's the thing he's trying to do.

419

He's slow as hell, he can't shoot to save his life, he has one shirt and it's brown.

420

And in order to fix these things, you need to obtain virtual currency.

421

Now, there's two ways

422

you can do this option one grind spend dozens of hours playing dozens of games scraping together pennies

423

so you can get one percent faster one percent stronger one percent better at handling ball

424

but it's never enough this process is miserable you're useless out

425

there you don't belong in the nba you would be better off in any other line of work

426

and this is exactly by design this is how the game wants you to feel.

427

They want you to hate this part.

428

Because they know the more frustrating of an experience you have, the more likely you are to just skip to option two, spend 40 more dollars.

429

Come on, just do it.

430

You don't have time for this.

431

Don't you want to get to the fun part?

432

You'll start doing the math in your head and rationalize it as a no -brainer.

433

Yeah, $40 is a lot of money, but it's not nearly as much money as I could earn in the 40 hours it's saving me.

434

You feel like a genius.

435

You feel like you outsmarted the system.

436

And then you realize, this is the system.

437

I did the exact thing they wanted me to do.

438

And it wouldn't even be that bad if the game itself didn't already cost $70.

439

But now you're out over a hundred bucks, maybe 150 if you pre -ordered it.

440

Also, the professional athlete you created doesn't play like he's never touched a basketball in his life before.

441

I've got all the natural ability in the world thanks to my genetics.

442

And then you get to do it all again next to you.

443

This whole system of paying to skip a grind that has been intentionally designed to be insufferable has become way too common.

444

Developers are purposely holding our time hostage knowing we'll probably spend a few bucks to get some of it back.

445

I feel like that's almost the entire business model of MMOs.

446

It's one of the reasons I stopped playing RuneScape after our lifelong on -off relationship.

447

I kept having to fight the urge to spend a few bucks on gold

448

because the alternative was earning it in the game, but then I'd have to play the game.

449

And I don't want to do that.

450

I just want play the end of the game.

451

How long does it take to get there?

452

Oh.

453

Well I guess this is where I live now.

454

In conclusion, life is short and your time is precious.

455

It's your most valuable resource and you should treat it that way because unfortunately no amount of it is guaranteed.

456

And I just hate seeing how much it's become commodified,

457

how companies have figured out ways to steal as much of it as they can from us.

458

You can't even pause a fucking movie anymore without having your attention demanded.

459

I know you're just getting up to pee, but if you could please scan this QR code,

460

we got a lot of interesting information about Lysol wipes.

461

The way our attention gets pulled in every direction at all

462

times also makes me feel like I should be multitasking always or I'll fall behind.

463

I always feel like I'm missing out on something.

464

There's so many movies I wanna watch and games I wanna play, and there's not enough hours in the day to do it all.

465

So when I do give myself free time, I try to be overly efficient with it.

466

I can't just play a video game.

467

I should be catching up on podcasts.

468

Loading screen, perfect.

469

That gives me exactly nine seconds to scroll through TikTok.

470

I hate to be bored.

471

I'd hate to have to listen to the thoughts that are already in my brain.

472

I need to be absorbing new information constantly or I'll die.

473

I've been trying more and more lately to not let the feeling

474

that there's something better I could be doing prevent me from enjoying the time that I have.

475

Sometimes it's nice to go for a walk without bringing my AirPods.

476

There's still plenty of stuff to listen to.

477

Birds, cars, one billion cicadas making the world's loudest sound.

478

I don't need to min -max content consumption.

479

In fact, I probably shouldn't be doing that.

480

I don't think prioritizing constant small hits of dopamine, hoping it all adds up to something meaningful, is the secret to being happy.

481

The secret to being happy is gambling.

482

Nobody's ever had a bad time in a casino.

483

This is free.

484

So how do you make money?

485

The advertisers cover the cost of the TV.

486

This.

487

This is an ad.

488

This is always on.

489

Whatever you're watching, we're able to monetize using the bottom device.

490

Pistler, check this out.

491

So there's a Pizza Hut ad right there.

492

We literally are now on pizzahut .com and we can order a pizza.

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407 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Everybody wants to waste your time”. This video has 492 sentences and 6332 words to shadow. The speech runs for 30:28. The speaker talks fast, about 208 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
documentary noun	/ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/	A film, TV program, publication etc. which presents a social, political, scientific or historical subject in a factual or informative manner.
scroll noun	/skɹoʊl/	A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll.
earn verb	/ɝn/	To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work.
suck verb	/sʌk/	To use the mouth and lips to pull in (a liquid, especially milk from the breast).
deposit noun	/dɪˈpɑ.zɪt/	Sediment or rock that is not native to its present location or is different from the surrounding material. Sometimes refers to ore or gems.
skip verb	/skɪp/	To move by hopping on alternate feet.
algorithm noun	/ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/	A collection of ordered steps that solve a mathematical problem. A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that possibly begins with an input…
halftime noun		The halftime show, the primary light entertainment of a game, after the second quarter, when players can physically recover, coaches can give players a pep…
stretch verb	/stɹɛt͡ʃ/	To lengthen by pulling.
yield verb	/jiːld/	To give as a result or outcome; to produce or render.
podcast noun	/ˈpɑdˌkæst/	A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
buck noun	/ˈbʌk/	A male deer, antelope, sheep, goat, rabbit, hare, and sometimes the male of other animals such as the hamster, ferret, salmonid, shad, skunk and kangaroo.
hobby noun	/ˈhɑ.bi/	An activity that one enjoys doing in one's spare time.
topic noun	/ˈtɑpɪk/	A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest.
silence noun	/ˈsaɪ̯ləns/	The absence of any sound.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
give up verb		To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone).
stand out verb		To jut out, protrude (from a surface etc.).
throw together verb		To assemble rapidly, without precision.
add up to verb		To have a particular effect in combination.
build up verb		To erect; to construct.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Can you guess who's holding the camera?
I was like, what are you talking about?
Why is this how I'm spending my time?
Hey, do you think there's anything cool in this cave over here?
Don't you want to get to the fun part?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	you've been struggling · I've been trying
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has been · has watched · has listened
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is designed · have been tied · was found
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who work · people who are · someone who also

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 176 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, math /mæθ/, throat /ˈθɹoʊt/, athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/, innovation /ˌɪn.əˈveɪ.ʃən/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, shortly /ˈʃɔɹtli/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
Long words — get the stress right: documentary /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/, innovation /ˌɪn.əˈveɪ.ʃən/, elevator /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, repetitive /ɹɪˈpɛtɪtɪv/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like documentary, scroll, earn.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Everybody wants to waste your time - Learn English Speaking with Video

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