#431 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (17th June 2020)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Let Me Bore You to Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

That's the whole recording really. I don't think this... I'm not sure if there's anything to say. Is there anything? You know, I often struggle with things to talk about.

I mean... Oh, wait a minute. No, I don't. So, I hope you're well.

I want to say a big thank you to everybody. I'm not going to read them all out because there's too many too many messages and comments of kindness and love towards Andre. So I want to thank everybody.

I've replied to each comment, I hope I have at least, and messages online but it'd take the entire recording to read everyone out, every single one. That's a lovely sound, isn't it? When I was doing... That used to be my most annoying thing when I was when I was working at the call center. On occasion, I'd have someone call up me and I had a cold and all I could hear all the way through is a really like a proper coldy sniff.

Like they're trying to stop a waterfall spurting out of their nose. So, there was one message, I think. I think I've got a birthday message.

Oh, what's going on here? That's strange. You've exceeded your overdraft limit. What? 24... Honestly, mate.

How? I lose track. 24, 16. 24, 16.

That's really weird. That's very strange. I just had 24 pound 16 taken out of my account.

A PayPal payment. 24 pound 16 for what? Ah, I know what it was. Or do I? I think it might have been Shopify.

Shopify has just gone out of my website. Isn't it weird, you know, how everything... Well, I know it's an exaggeration. Everything seems to happen at the same time sometimes.

It's like everyone in the world wants money right now. Oh, man, come on. Give me a break.

Oh, well. So, yeah, just thank you everyone for Audrey's well wishes. There isn't really much in the way of updates really on him other than... And so I've got... Have I got a birthday? Oh, it's tomorrow.

I'll read that tomorrow then. It's Taylor's birthday tomorrow, but I'll read it tomorrow. That's the 18th.

See, I'm even keeping check. If anyone sends me a message on Facebook or wherever and to say, can you wish me a happy birthday on a specific date, I now put it in my calendar. How about that, eh? Andre seems to be doing okay in himself.

When I say that, what I mean is he's still hobbling around, still dragging his body around. But the fact is he's still doing it. He's not letting it stop him from doing anything.

And okay, well, he hasn't been doing hopscotch lately and he hasn't been able to go out dancing. But other than that, I know I shouldn't laugh at him, but he's... The way he moves, he doesn't move forward. He doesn't walk forward.

He moves, he walks to the side quite often, but now he can't. And I know it's not funny. I'm not laughing.

He keeps banging into things. He aims at something and he ends up going in a completely different direction. And I'm not laughing at him.

I'm not. It's just funny sometimes to see, because he's quite clumsy anyway. And to see... I don't know.

Everyone's going to hate me now. I can't believe you're laughing at your disabled ferret. I'm not laughing at him.

I just think he's cute. Even when he's ill, he's cute. I say ill.

I hope it's not illness. I hope it is. Because, you know, if it's a broken bone, that's not an illness, is it? You know, that's just an injury.

That's something that can heal. And so basically, I have an appointment with the vets next Wednesday. And I'm going to take him in there, leave him there, and they're going to do the x-ray.

And it's going to cost me £120. So I've had to wait till next Wednesday to do it. Actually, it's the earliest appointment I could get, to be fair.

So I could have left him in there on Monday, but I couldn't pay for it on Monday. So they weren't going to do anything unless I paid them. So I brought him home and he's eating right now.

He's crunching away. And if you didn't know, you wouldn't even know because he's just doing exactly what he normally does. You know, he keeps coming up to me.

He wants cuddles. And if I take my slippers off, he bites my feet. You know, nothing's changed.

He's not lost any of his naughtiness, mischievousness, annoyingness, or whatever you want to call it, cuteness. Having him bite my toes, there's nothing cute about that. It's just painful.

Even though he doesn't bite hard, his teeth are like razors. And earlier, I was determined not to take him out at all yesterday. But he just kept hassling me.

And he just wants to go out. He wants to drag. It might sound weird, but he wants to go outside.

That's what he wants to do more than anything. And he's been doing it since he was like three months old. He's been going outside for walks.

Now, I thought, you know, I'll take him for a walk, and I'll carry him. And he'll be happy with that. Or I'll take him out, put him on the grass.

And he'll just like lay there and, you know, be happy. No, he wants to walk. So what I do is I took him to the garage earlier.

It was actually today, it was this morning, about half 12 in the morning, a few hours ago. And I only put him down on the grass, so that he's dragged himself across the grass. Didn't let him go on the pavement, didn't let him scratch against the side of the wall like he likes to do.

I just made sure that he only went on the grass, so it's soft. And he didn't want it. He wanted to get on the pavement.

He's, for some reason, and he's scratching at the front door now, because he wants to go out again. He's actually scratching as we speak. What's going on with him? And so he's not worried.

He's not bothered. He really don't care. What's he doing now? Oh, he's gone into the kitchen.

Oh, sorry, I closed the kitchen door. Don't like that, do you? Now he's having a drink of water. I don't know if you can hear it.

All right. He's come over to me, so now I'm holding him. Oh, that's weird.

As I held him up, I felt a twinge in his hip on the left side where his leg is. A bit of a twinge there. What I'll do, I'll lay you down on your back.

That's it. I'll just play with your hands, because you like that, don't you? That's it. Yeah.

You're going to say hello to all your fans out there, all the people that have been thinking about you and hoping that you get better. You've got a bit of a fan club out there, Andre. Want to give me cuddles? Want to give me cuddles? Yeah.

Oh, daddy kisses. Good boy. Honestly, the only time I notice that there's anything wrong with him is when he walks, or when he... I mean, I'm laying him down, and you can see that the left back leg is raised.

So even when he's on his back, the left leg is raised up, so you can't straighten it. Okay, he wants to get down. Go on then.

I don't want to kind of talk too much about it, because it's not much fun, I guess, is it? But that's it, really. He has to be anesthetized, or I don't know what the right word is, but put to sleep, not put to sleep, put to sleep, but he has to be not sanitized. What's the word? Anyway, just basically to make him dopey so they can do it, because he's a ferret, and he moves around a lot.

So that's what they're going to have to do. So I'm taking him in on Wednesday. I have to leave him there, and the vet will do what he needs to do when he gets a chance.

And then they'll phone me, and I have to go and collect him. So that's it. That's my Wednesday organized.

So yeah, I'll be glad when it's done, and I can start figuring out what he needs to do. And if he has to have an operation, then I'm going to have to figure out a way of getting the funds together to pay for that. Because the vets, they won't take like a payment plan, and I thought they would.

And I said to them, can you do a payment plan? I'll do the x-ray now, but if you let me pay it over the next few weeks, and nope, nope, straight away, nope, you've got to pay for it now, or we don't do anything unless you pay for it beforehand. I'm not going to leave the country. They have my address.

They have my bank details. They have my name. If I didn't, they could take me to court if I It's weird, isn't it? I can buy, you know, I can't because I don't have the credit.

I don't have enough money on it, but I could go out and get something online on credit for a thousand pounds or 800 pounds, you know, from the online catalog that I'm on. I could just order something like that. Yeah, I can't get in x-rayed without having to pay for all up front.

I could buy on the catalog and spend the next three years paying for it, or get a mobile phone and pay for over two years, but not for a ferret. Not that I imagine there's many places that'll be phoning up people saying, would you like to take a contract out? You get a ferret, you pay for it over two years. You know, that would be slightly strange.

I mean, perhaps I should read out some of the messages, just because, you know, people took the time to write them. So maybe I should read them, maybe. Let's have a look.

So I hope on this, okay. Jen writes down, this is wonderful, Jason. Keep strong, little Andre will be just fine.

And she said, Jen actually posted me a little cartoon. It says, and it's like broken up into four pictures, ferrets will steal everything. It says that first one is your food, your keys, your wallet, and your heart.

True that, it's very true. And Rachel says, hope you get swole before the x-ray. Swimming sounds like a good idea, so I'm going to have to look at that.

Rihanna, she says, hey Jason, hope everything went well. He's sending lots of healing thoughts his way. Also, hope you're good too.

We can't forget A's, Andre's daddy. Thanks, Rihanna. I know, I know, sonny.

I know you love him. You miss him, you love. Let's have a look.

So I've got a few other messages here, quite a few. Rachel, thanks, Rachel. I'm just going to say thank you to everyone, it'd be easier.

Thanks, Rachel. Thanks, Diane. Carlin, thank you.

Sherlyn, Kate, Kathy, Juju, Leticia, Letty, Donna, Joanne, Deb. Thank you very much for your messages. You can see them all on my Facebook page.

Also, just let you know, I do a let me bore you to sleep Facebook page. Just need to just go onto Facebook and put in let me bore you to sleep. We don't have to, honestly, if you wanted to.

Don't have to. There's no rules. So let me bore you to sleep.

So say thank you to Luke. Thank you to Natalie. Thank you to Claire.

And here's a message. This is from Claire. Hi, Jason.

I listen to LNBYTS. So LNBYTS.com is actually one of my websites. But LNBYTS, every night for the last few months.

But last night, I'm sorry, but it was just not boring enough for me to fall asleep as I was waiting for the end of the story about what happened at the vet yesterday. The LNBYTS sessions are getting too interesting. Hello.

Thanks for all you do. Thanks, Claire. I'm sorry.

I don't mean that to be. I'll try and be more boring. And we'll say Sarah.

Sarah replied to that message from Claire saying, haha, my thoughts exactly. Jason, it's only because we care. Don't change a thing.

Thank you. And Luke commented, Claire, Claire, I totally agree. He didn't say Claire, Claire.

He said Claire. I just said it twice. Totally agree.

I'm now going to bed early because I can't wait for the next installment. Sorry about that. I'm, be honest with you.

Yesterday, I've just done something I haven't done for quite a while. Don't worry. You haven't got to put your hands over your ears or anything.

Nothing weird. I just watched a whole movie. It was on telly, film four called The Sessions.

And it was about a man who had polio as a child and was basically living, spent most of his time inside an iron lung. And he was a poet and other stuff. I won't go into that stuff, but it was very, yeah, it was quite powerful.

It was funny as well. And, but there's also, yeah, it was very, there was part of me, I was thinking, I want to do a recording. But then I thought, no, I'm going to, I'm going to watch the end of this film.

Let's, let's watch the whole thing, not just half of it. So that's what I did. So there, so there, there, knee.

So see if there's any other messages, comments, none that I can see. One notification on my Facebook page, the other Facebook page. A couple of comments.

I might miss a few out. I'm sorry. Jodie says, poor little guy.

I hope he's all right. Couldn't the vet put a splint on or something? I mean, for things like that, I don't know. Thanks.

We'll find that next week. A few people have asked me questions on medical questions and stuff, which I don't have the answers to. I had a friend who said to me, she, she asked me a list of things that, didn't you ask the vet this and that and this? No, no.

I don't know what to ask the vet. I'm not medically. I've never had, I've never looked after an animal before.

What I mean, last five years, I mean, but I've never been in this situation and I don't know what to ask. Maybe I should know. Maybe it's, it's not, it's not because I don't care.

But I don't know what to ask. You know, one of my friends said, what are they doing an x-ray for? You can't find out about nerve, nerve damage on x-ray. I didn't know that.

I've got no idea. Another friend said, oh, it can't be, it can't be arthritis because you get, you'd have that in both legs. I don't know.

I don't know. I wouldn't, all I know is if I go online and start researching, I get so much contradictory information that it's, I don't know how useful it is. So there's a lot of people who are very, they seem to know a lot more than me.

So I'll have to, I'm going to have to just listen to the vet. I mean, generally, cause otherwise, plus it's difficult because the vets, I'm either talking to the vet on the phone or I'm talking to him outside with other people there very briefly, keeping a distance. And it's so, such a weird scenario that my brain just doesn't really work.

If I was in a room with him, I'd probably bombard him with questions, but it's, it's such a weird environment to be on the phone when the person's behind the door, you know, this is so weird. It is just a bit too weird for me. The whole idea of, I don't know, it's just how it is, but it's strange.

I mean, the doctor's surgery talking through a window. I mean, that's, I mean, that's Monty Python land, isn't it? That's just, just surreal. But anyway, um, that's all I've really got to say about Andre as far as updates.

He, I'm not sure if he's milking it a little bit because yesterday I think I wiped his bum about four times. And at one point I saw him sitting in the front door and he was just sitting there going to the toilet. Didn't even try and stand up.

Now today I've not cleaned him once and he hasn't needed to be cleaned. So I think he was milking it yesterday. I think he was making fun of me.

Honestly, he was like, well, daddy will clear it up. I don't need to do anything. I don't need to put any effort in.

I mean, I'm just thinking he's got three legs. If he stretches his front legs out, it can make a, at the very least a wobbly triangle or a wobbly tripod sort of balancing. But he's, yeah, he's been good today.

But he really, honestly, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing yesterday. The total laziness. It probably wasn't laziness, but it just seems weird that he hasn't done it today.

Now that I've left him sort of clean himself up, he's doing it. So he doesn't need me to be cleaned up after him all the time. But I will do, I don't mind though.

But what's annoying about it is he'll struggle to get away from me, even though I've got the wet wipes and trying to sort of clean him up. And he's still struggling to get out of my arms. Shouting, don't go near there.

It's private. It's like, Andre, do you think I want to go near there? Do you think this is what I would want to do with my time? Seriously? I don't like wiping my own bum. I definitely don't want to wipe yours.

But he's been good today. And it's, I've got paper right underneath my chair. And so yeah, he seems in good spirits.

So, but he does, he does make some really weird noises when he's asleep. That kind of stuff. So I'm not really sure what that's about.

Again, he might just be trying to, you know, get my attention. He's a tension seeker. So yeah, I spoke to my psychologist today on the phone.

So he had a monthly phone call. I don't actually go and see her anymore because, you know, humans are not allowed to be in the same room. But again, that's strange on the phone.

I don't really like talking on the phone anymore. I'd do it if I have to. But I'd write, you know, it's, I used to love talking on the phone before I worked on phones.

You know, before I spent years and years and years talking on the phones in a call center, years and years and years of my tolerance for phones is reduced to, you know, occasionally I can have a conversation on the phone that lasts a while. Generally, not really into it anymore. It's a bit like text as well.

Never liked texting. Not really ever enjoyed it. I've done it occasionally.

I've done it hundreds and thousands of times, I guess over the years, but I'm not into conversations that just continue and continue and continue. It's like, no, there needs to be an end to this conversation. Just, you know, sometimes it's nice, but generally, you know, I've had girlfriends in the past that wanted to just keep talking to me.

Like, apparently that's normal. So, you know, it's not. I was the weird one in that one, but hard to believe that I'd ever be the weird one.

But I had one girlfriend and she's phoning me and I was in the supermarket and she said, where are you? I said, I'm in a supermarket. And that was a boring story, wasn't it? See? So, just letting you know, I can tell boring stories. And she said, why haven't you been answering your phone? I said, because it hasn't rung.

She said, I've been ringing you. I've rung you four times. Well, I wish I hadn't answered it this time.

You know, imagine phoning someone up and then moaning at them and then expect them to ever answer the phone again. It's like, come on. Moaning at someone because they didn't answer the phone, even though they just have answered the phone.

How come you never answer the phone? You might just have. Therefore, your accusation is incorrect. Moaning.

Apart from that, I'm a great boyfriend. I'm the best, the bestest. I think I'm a really good temporary boyfriend until the novelty wears off.

Three days, maybe. That's all the messages I've had. I've had messages but I've not read them all now.

But it's been nice, you know, to hear that people care about my little boy and I think someone wrote down he's got no idea how many people are kind of thinking about him and that's nice. I know he's, you know, he's just like I am with just strangers, you know, some people may never even seen him on, you know, they might just heard him in the background or heard me talk about him. But I know there's a few people that will have seen him on Facebook or YouTube or some of the videos or pictures that I've posted and stuff and I feel like I want to do more.

I want to take more pictures of him. Just, I don't know, I suppose for obvious reasons I guess. But I don't want to think like that.

I've got lots of lots of pictures of him and videos and stuff and I've never really been big on pictures of people. I mean even a very, well not my first girlfriend, but someone, she did me a favor. I don't know how to put it, but anyway she is back in when I was 19 and I, you know, what's that 19, 29, 30, blimey, 30 years.

I had dreams. I had dreams 30 years ago. Wow.

And I still remember what she looks like. I've got no pictures of her. But I remember.

I think I do. Yeah, I kind of remember parts of her. I mean, I don't mean parts of her body, I mean just parts.

So I can't remember her smile. Yeah, actually I can't remember. I wish I had a picture of her.

A really beautiful woman she was. It's, you know, I'm not, you know me, I'm not, I'm not shallow at all. I mean, I'd do with a duck, I don't care.

Bloody newspaper on the floor. It's winding me up. Or did I say bloody? I said bloody.

He said a swear word, a naughty word. But I, you know, I'm trying to think. Yeah.

So I don't know what else I've got happening this week. I was talking to my psychologist and I was telling her how I'm getting more people listening and she must get fed up with me talking about this because it's not really what I'm supposed to be talking about really. You know, it's supposed to more be about the how, you know, personality disorder and bipolar and stuff can be managed and helped.

But the biggest thing I've got, the two biggest things, but the only two things I've got in my life is Andre and this. I want to say this. I'm not talking about just this podcast.

I'm talking about the whole thing, you know, the website, all the other podcasts that I do that are actually more popular than this one. This is more personal in a sense of me being personal and the relaxation, the stress, anxiety and panic attacks. On a daily basis, I get double the amount, if not more, sometimes triple the amount of listens or downloads in a day.

But as I said before, I get at least triple the amount of this podcast because it's shared on a few other podcasts as well. So yeah, I get probably get about, it's not a lot really, I get about a thousand, thousand downloads a day spread across from the let me bore you to sleep. So I get about a thousand listens a day, which is okay, isn't it? That's 365,000 a year.

It's not bad little number. If you think about it, think about it. So that's all.

And also considering that most podcasts only show the last 250 episodes and I've got 400 who knows what it is now, I lost count, 400 and something. And so there's a lot of the earlier stuff that's not even being listened to. You can listen to it, it's go to my website, it's all on there.

But it's not going to be available, I mean it might be available on Spotify, I'm not sure. But iTunes, I think that only has the most recent 250. Some podcasts providers only only provide the most recent 150 episodes and some podcast providers don't even update the feed.

So I got, there's a few out there that it's the right podcast but they've stopped adding them like months ago for some reason. And I didn't know why. I don't know.

So yeah, it's, I had this conversation with my psychologist. I make some weird noises. And I remember I said to someone years ago, I think when I first moved in here, I said to my friend downstairs, I'm probably the most successful failure, one of the most successful failures there is.

And what I meant by that was, I was reaching a worldwide audience, reaching you know, loads, thousands and thousands of people. Yet, you know, I was unemployed and living on benefits and you know. But success is different, isn't it? Success doesn't mean money.

It doesn't have to mean money. Success is succeeding. I suppose that's what it is.

It literally is, isn't it? Literally, succeeding in what you set out to do. So I set out to annoy as many people as possible and I have succeeded. And you know, I started out with a handful of people listening.

Well, I started out with no one listening because no one had ever, you know, everybody has to start out with zero listeners unless they're already famous. So if, as an example, if Brad Pitt decided to do a podcast, that would very likely be one of the most successful podcasts in the world instantly because he's such a huge star. So people, or if Justin Bieber did a podcast, he'd have millions of people listening on the very first episode, the very first day.

So someone that doesn't already do podcasts, if they're famous or really, well yeah, if they're really well known, have a following, they get it. But most people, not most people, but I suppose most podcasters start off with nothing. Start off with no listeners and then they build it up.

Because yeah, the majority of podcasts aren't successful and they don't have millions of listeners. There's quite a few that do, but you know, it's just like YouTube. There's loads of channels that are really successful, but every channel that's, I say successful, that's getting millions of views.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of YouTube channels that are maybe getting 10, 15 views. I get very little amount of views on my YouTube channel. I get, I think 2000 views a month on my YouTube videos, which is just tiny, tiny, tiny amount.

But I'm okay with that. I put no energy into the YouTube channel. And the reason for that is because I lost, I've lost so many YouTube channels.

And part of the reason for that is, you know, people put complaints in or whatever, you know, YouTube channels can be taken away or closed. No one can take away my podcast because I'm paying for this. I'm paying to do this.

And so yeah, it's, I suppose podcasting is more suitable for me. Plus I've been doing it, you know how long, I've probably mentioned this, but someone said in a book, it might be an audio book that I listened to, they said, or it might be a video on YouTube I watched. And he said, put down what you are.

Tell people what you do. And I said, what has it got to do with you what I do? And he didn't answer back. So it was a video.

They said, if you're if you're a singer, say you're a singer, if you're a podcaster, put down that you're a podcaster. Because a lot of podcasters don't put that down. You know, there might be an architect, or a musician, or a hairdresser, or a makeup designer.

But if the person makes podcasts, or their YouTube creator, then that's what they were saying, put down what you do. So I started thinking, am I a podcaster? I mean, obviously I am because this is that's what I do. So I get get a minimum of 4000 downloads a day.

I know it's not a huge amount, but it's still it's always growing. But it's like, yeah, it's not just now I've been doing podcasts since 2007. So that's weird, isn't it? 13 years, I've been doing podcasts.

But it's only now that they become not my podcast, only now that podcasting really seems to have taken on a bigger chunk of the audience that are out there. So it's weird. It's like, wow, so I've been a podcaster for nearly as long, to be fair, pretty much the same amount of time as I've been doing my online stuff.

So I did the videos first, and then I did the podcasts. But it's all around the same time. Because I had a MySpace account.

And then I went from there. Facebook, of course, took over from what there was loads, absolutely loads of social network sites. Back in the day, it's not something I normally say back in the day.

It's weird when you hear kids say that. Back in the day, three years ago, when I was nine, the old social network sites, I was a member of all of them. List of social network.

Okay, let's have a look. Okay, about.me, I used to be on there for a while. But that's okay.

Be welcome. I remember that one. Blip.no. That's Norwegian one.

I might have been on there. Okay. Black Planet.

I joined Black Planet. And I basically just joined every single one. I mean, it says the focus is Black Americans on Black Planet.

But I was on there. I had loads of friends on there. Bazoo.

No, not that. BuzzNet. I'm finding loads I don't reckon.

Diaspora. DeviantArt. See, DeviantArt is still going.

I want to find one, obviously, Facebook. Flickster. So, Flickr, F-L-I-C-K-R.

I've been on there. I used to. Foursquare.

Why does that sound familiar? Okay. Friendica. I think I was on there.

And let's have a look. Of course, there's Instagram. But I'm just looking at ones from the past, not the ones that are around now.Me. How weird that I can't find any of the old ones. There's one called Ond Lok Saksniki.

And it's connect with former classmates in Russia. Oh, I'm on there. No wonder I've got no friends on there.

Well, there's loads on there. But they used to be like proper social networks that were popular. VK.

I'm on VK. This is music upload, listening search, popular in Russia and former Soviet republics. I'm on there.

Again, I don't get a huge amount of interest from people on there. How weird. So, I've gone through all of them.

And there's loads that they've missed out. Because there was quite a few that was similar to Facebook. So, let me have a look.

Okay. Daily booth was a photo blogging site. So, that's not a friend feed.

Does anyone remember friend feed? iTunes ping. I used to use that. And it's not there anymore.

There was any years ago, ping. Basically, it was, you would, it would share it. So, if you pinged an RSS feed, which is the feed for a podcast, or source, I think the feed for a blog as well, I think, is it? It can be.

It's basically what it is. It just gives you the, it's like a list. It gives a list of the episodes and stuff.

So, the RSS feed, if it's shared with iTunes, for example, then brings up the because you don't actually host an iTunes podcast with iTunes. You host it elsewhere. And then you share it.

You share the RSS feed is a bit like the web address, you know, jasonnewland.com. But it's RSS, something, whatever. So, you share that as a good, I feel I should do more tutorials. I think that's greatly explained.

And the Friendster, that's what I was thinking about. Friendster. Does anyone remember that? One of the original social networks to make noise before Facebook.

I was on Friendster. Friendster dominated the Asian market since it launched in 2002. It was available and used globally.

But 90% of its traffic came from Asia. The platform had more unique visitors than any other social network in Asia in 2008. Friendster ended up evolving into a social gaming site in 2011, touting more than 115 million users, mostly from the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.

It officially closed down in 2018 after three year hiatus. Hymen. Yik Yak.

Yik Yak, what a great name. At its peak, Yik Yak was valued at $400 million. After launching in 2014, the anonymous messaging mobile app gained momentum quickly among young adults, raising more than 70 million in venture capital funding, but also a hefty load of problems.

Its biggest one, one of its main features, its anonymity. That's funny. Users, typically high school and college students, could publicly post anything they wanted for other anonymous users in their geographical vicinity to see and interact with.

This caused problems for obvious reasons. Wow. I'm not going to read out what, but yeah, it's kind of obvious.

It's, uh, wow. The world of social media was already littered with internet bullies and it, yeah, it didn't take, so Yik Yak got into a lot of hassle. It didn't take long for the table to turn.

By the end of 2014, Yik Yak was already declining in popularity and usage, closing in 2017. Now Vine, I never got into Vine or Yik Yak, funny enough. I was, I don't understand what happened to Vine.

It was so popular. And I think, um, TikTok, it seems, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to be kind of exactly the same thing. Perhaps I'm wrong.

A social media legend and my personal favorite that helped propel video into the limelight. Okay. YouTube.

Have you heard of YouTube? Vine was another ahead of its time mobile app that helped set the bar for how social media and video could use one another to thrive. The short form video app was acquired by Twitter prior to its official launch and ended up becoming the most downloaded free app in the iOS app store at its peak in 2003. Up to that point, it was the most popular video app ever to come out, but it didn't last long.

Wow. I wonder what happened. Vine was unable to adapt as other rivals, e.g. Snapchat, emerged and adapted.

Plus Twitter's own business fluttered, which forced Twitter to close Vine in late 2016. I mean, they clearly weren't making any money out of it. They must have.

I think that's one of the issues. I think one of them, if Facebook had continued to be used by kids or the age group that it was aimed at, like college, you, you're very young people, then they'd have very limited advertising streams. Because, however, I think because older people embraced Facebook in some ways more than the younger generation, like really kind of took to it.

I don't mean old, old people, but maybe people in their thirties, forties, fifties, maybe. So Facebook can start advertising to people that had more money, I guess, than a 12 year old, for example. But an app on a phone is limited advertising because of the screen size.

And, and it was really aimed at a much younger audience. I mean, I do wonder how Twitter make their money. I mean, I do see adverts on Twitter, but it doesn't seem to be, I'm not sure quite how they get their money.

The thing is, what I never understood is not never understood. I mean, if you go back 30 years, I wouldn't have thought about this, but YouTube could legitimately, legitimately make billions of dollars extra by offering people the chance to pay for their channel. And you might think, what do you mean? What do you mean? Well, I'm sure I might be wrong here.

Didn't MySpace offer that service, that if you paid, you could change the outlay and you could have more like a premium outlay of your page. I might be wrong. It's a cow's cat, not a cow's, a cat outside going, yeah, yeah, yeah, at 4.21 in the morning.

Doesn't that cat know that I'm trying to sleep? Oh, wait a minute. So I, if YouTube actually offered people, and it's not going to, it won't be aimed at people that are making loads of money from YouTube. It won't be aimed at the big players.

It's just for everyone. And also just to say, look, for $5 a month YouTube channel, you can design your own logo. You can design the way your page is set up.

You can have a donation box on there. You can, all kinds of stuff. In fact, you could even embed the YouTube channel into your website.

You can make a website out of it with your domain name, and it could be your YouTube channel, things like that, and offer that service. Millions and millions and millions of people would pay for that. And you might think, well, why would they pay for it if they're getting it for free? If they're getting, I'm talking about people creating.

And for the reason why people that create videos would be happily pay $5 a month is because anyone that spends hours and hours and hours putting together videos are very likely going to want to personalize their YouTube page so it looks nice, so it doesn't just look the same as everyone else's. And there was a time with, I can't believe this is such a long time ago, with MySpace, you used to be able to get, you used to be able to download, I can't remember what it was, it was like a program, and you could change the design of your MySpace page, like really change the design. MySpace was way better than Facebook for that.

You could change the design, you could put images, you could change the places where things go, and you could actually change the entire design, which I think they charged for, but you could override it. But again, I might be wrong with the charging part. It was like, wow, that's really cool.

And I think people, I guess maybe Facebook can't do that because they need everyone to have the same page design because of all the, let's face it, there's so much stuff on there, isn't it, that people can do on Facebook. YouTube is videos, isn't it? It's fairly basic. It works, but it's very, you know, Facebook looks like it's a much more complicated setup.

So I wonder where's podcasts going to go? Because there isn't, I mean, you've got iTunes, or Apple Podcasts, you've got Google Podcasts, you've got Spotify. I mean, they don't specialize in podcasts, but they now host, I don't know, host them, but they share podcasts, other people, you know, on their platform. And I think Spotify is my second, my second most listened platform after iTunes.

iTunes first, then Spotify, then I think either Stitcher, then Castbox, and then sort of going on down a list of quite a few different ones. But I do just, yeah, I think that'd be quite cool. I reckon YouTube, if they really wanted to, they could offer, well, maybe they're just making so much money anyway, they don't care, they don't really feel the need to offer that.

But to offer people the option to design their own YouTube channel, because in the past, I would have happily paid YouTube, or Google, that owns YouTube, but I was with YouTube years before Google took them over. Even though they've owned them for a long time. You could just, I would pay YouTube, let's say five, five pounds a month, as an example, maybe long, maybe more.

And then they have that YouTube channel, in my own design, give me the options to change things around. Because you can, you can put in your own heading, the image, and you can change stuff around and put stuff about yourself and put website addresses and stuff in. But I'm talking about the whole design, you know, color in the whole thing.

And then have it as your domain name, as you have. So, so people put in jasonnewland.com, and my YouTube channel would come up, that is why I wanted for it to be, especially at the time when I had a couple of quite successful YouTube channels that were really growing. And that would have been really, that would be cool.

Because I've always had podcasts in the background. I was with SoundCloud for absolutely years and years and years and years. Probably over 10 years.

I mean, I can't even, wow. Yeah, many, many years, I'd have to look back. I'd have to look back at me.

I don't know how I'd find it. I guess bank statements. If I could find bank statements from yeah, at least 2000 and probably nine.

I'm sure I was with SoundCloud in 2009. Maybe earlier than that. As well as also being with loads of others over the years as well.

I think I've tried out nearly every podcast host, but some of them, they're not suitable for me because of how much stuff I've got. Even Podbean, as I was uploading my recordings for the Jason Newland podcast.com, which is one of my new websites that has all of my recordings on. You can listen ad free.

Even they sort of cut me off and said, you've uploaded too much stuff. There's a limit of 10 gigabytes a month. So I asked them to increase it and they did.

But it's just like, wow, some podcast hosts will allow maybe 15 hours a month. 15 hours a month. 15, that's like nothing, is it? 15 hours.

I mean, I do more than a week, which is a bit strange, really. I don't know why I managed to do so much. It's strange.

Oh, here's an interesting thing. If you're ever interested, or if you're... Oh, I want to go back to this. Google Plus.

Google Plus. I didn't like Google Plus right from the start because, first of all, Google forced it on everybody. They forced it on people and then they integrated it into YouTube.

Again, forcing people to have it when I don't think anyone wanted it. I was intrigued to start with. I can't remember what year it was it came out, but it's got to be well over 10 years when it first came out.

And it had some good points. I think the one thing that people liked was the Hangout, Google Hangout. But as far as the social networking part went, I mean, I used it, don't get me wrong, I used it for years.

And I shared all of my recordings, videos, audios to Google Plus for years and years and years. And I got seen by thousands of people. But it just didn't seem to... This didn't work for me.

I didn't use it the way I do with Facebook or Twitter. So basically, it was a revolutionary platform in the way it helped evolve search while further educating the world of web marketing about authority and entities across the globe. I'm not really sure what that means.

Google Plus turned out to be another failed attempt at dethroning Facebook by rival social network. But it wasn't even a social network at all, which is true. And maybe that's where lots of its problems arose.

It was focused on its identity network because of plans to be identity service providers for a program run by the federal government. Really? Oh, I didn't know that. It offers nothing worthy.

It offered nothing worthy to its users. And for that is now where it belongs, extinct. The number one.

So this is a list of... What's the headline? Top 10 failed social media sites. Number one is... What do you think it's going to be? What do you think it's going to be? I reckon I already know what it is. I'm just trying to find it now.

Blimey, come on. How long is this page? MySpace. MySpace.

It says here, yes, MySpace still exists. It has a working URL, which is the web address, an office with employees, really? And most importantly, you can sign up for a new account right now. But this isn't the same pioneering MySpace that helped spawn social media from what seems like a few dark basements.

It wasn't. To what ended up being billions of households and smartphones across the world. This is the MySpace that helped shape the digital marketing age of today, catalyzing the success of Facebook, even more when it relinquished its title as the most popular social media network to it.

It was. MySpace was massive. And some people may not remember it.

Some people may choose to forget it. Some people may never have heard of it. MySpace was the biggest, pretty much the biggest website on the internet.

Who was the biggest social networking site? Everybody was on it. So MySpace went from most visited website in the world in 2006, see, that's when I joined, to losing 10 million users, to losing 10 million unique users in just one month in 2011. It pivoted itself as the leading social network before reinventing itself as a music focused network for new artists and less personal businesses.

I'm not sure what that means. It hasn't seemed to work since then. What's worse, MySpace keeps shooting itself in the foot.

And the latest blunder isn't one to scoff at, especially since it tells the same story I tell here. I've actually, I went onto MySpace and I found some of my old stuff on there. Some, I think it was some recordings.

In fact, let me just have a look. I'm just, I'm interested now. MySpace.com. I wonder if it offers a search.

MySpace. Yeah, I'll search. I agree.

Okay. I'll tick, I agree. I'll search for me.

So Jason Newland. Return. Oh, okay.

There's a few. There's a few Jason Newland. There's one, two, three, three.

Okay. So if I click on that one. Wow.

The first one, I'll just have a drink, have a drink. I don't know if this is me or not. And I'm looking for photographs.

Nothing. Music. It is me.

Two minute relaxation. Five minute hypnotic break. Five minute relaxation.

Wow. None of the links work. So it says here, I don't know what it means.

1.8K. I don't know if that was followers. And then another one, 1,514. I don't know.

I can't see. Videos. There's no videos.

Connections. Blimey. Wow.

Loads of people. So that's connections. So I had 1.8K. Yeah, 1.8K connections on here.

Yeah. Wow. Blimey.

I bet all these people look different now. So yeah, no videos, but music. But none of the music works.

There was 16 tracks. Wow. So let's have a look at the next one.

Because I did have more than one account on there. In fact, someone actually opened an account for some reason. So I look at the second one.

Oh man. I don't know if this is me or not. No photos.

No videos. No connections. No mixes.

It's definitely me because it's got my old address. Well, not address, but where I used to live. Where I moved from in 2007.

So I look at the last one on here. Oh, this is music. Yeah, that's me again.

It's two relaxation sessions. Neither of them work. No videos.

Two connections. No photos. Oh, that's weird.

So I searched three. I'll see if there's any others. I'll put in hypnosis.

I'll see if anything comes up. No. Let me just try one last thing.

I'll try hypnosis. So I think I found the very, the oldest one that I got. But the one, there's still 1.7 thousand followers or connections on there.

Friends from many, many years ago. Isn't that weird? Strange stuff. Anyway, yeah, so I got a little bit carried away there.

Nothing more exciting than searching for yourself. Apart from, I suppose, other things that don't involve searching for yourself that you enjoy more. Wow.

So yeah, maybe that'll be me in a few years' time. Maybe 10 years' time I'll be talking and thinking. I used to do this podcast where I'd just talk about nothing for an hour or so.

What did I call it again? I forget. Really boring or something. Something like that.

Bore you to sleep. Something. I forget.

I used to post it on podcasts. But, you know, that was the old days. Podcasts existed.

Of course, then I'll be using whatever new technology there is. I used to edit them on a laptop. You have to Google laptop.

In fact, Google might not be around anymore either. That'll probably be another way of searching for stuff. It's interesting.

You never know. It's always changing. Something else will come along.

There's a thing, I'm not sure if I mentioned it, on Bing, you can take a picture of something and search for something else that's similar to that picture. So I'll show you. Oh, I've got Bing on here.

Where's Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. Okay. So if I take a picture.

Okay. Okay. Oh, okay.

Yeah. So in the search bar, it's got a picture of a camera and a picture of a microphone. So I click the picture of the camera.

Reverse it around to take a picture of me. I'm going to take a picture of me now. And now it's going to search.

And I tell you what's weird is I can't believe how many handsome men there are out there. And it is actually picking up some people. They do look a bit like me.

They're not me. And there's quite a few criminals, which I'm surprised about. Oh, but I'm not coming up at all.

Another prisoner. That's not fair. Come on.

Another prisoner. Bing can't only just have pictures of prisoners, surely. They seem to... Why have I not come up once? Let's see if there's a way of... No.

It's saying, would you like to add more? Yes. Include image. Submit.

Why? Search in this area. Text. I've never been so... Oh, God.

Just looking at the picture I took. I don't look like that, do I? No, surely not. I'm going to do a big smile.

It's still the same people. Oh, no. I've got one that's smiling.

I've got two that's smiling. It's the same people. They're just smiling now.

They've all got big beards, apart from the ones that don't. But there's no me's there. There's no pictures of me.

No, I'm not looking for pictures of me, because I can find them just by putting my name in. But that's not the point. I can't just put my name in under images, and I'm the... There's a picture of me from the... When I did the newspaper thing, Mind Power Can Beat Pain.

There's another one from one of my YouTube channels. There's another one from the Hypnotherapy Association. There's a picture of me and Andre together.

And one for my Stitcher. So on the first page of Bing, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. There's quite a few.

Plus there's images of some of my podcasts. So, aww, aww, aww, that's lovely. Aww, biddly, biddly, bong.

Anyway, I suppose I should just upload this old podcast episode. Hour and a half I've been yabbering on for. I've got a very, very quiet day tomorrow, I've decided.

Or today. A very, very, very quiet day. I'm not going out.

Oh, lovely bit of gas right at the end. And I've done a bit of internet website stuff that's now done that's good. I've still got quite a few of the Let Me Boydysleep recordings onto there.

That'll be done in the next few days. I will be completed. And yeah, so it's interesting times.

Very interesting. Kind of. Kind of.

So that's it. I'm going to go. Thank you very much for listening.

Thank you very much. And remember to be kind to yourself. Also, I want to say a big thank you to Andrea.

Should have said that at the beginning. So I want to thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy.

Lots of love. Bye.