the masks we left behind. [The Counter Hit #7]

right.

About to get started, folks.

Three, two,

one.

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Hey, do you think we try too hard to live

up to others' expectations?

Let's talk about that.

(Music)

Let's talk about that. (Music)

Welcome, welcome,

welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to the counters of hits.

Counter hits,

counters hits, counter hits.

The counter hit show

brought to you by zero dot media.

It is an absolute pleasure to be with you

all today on this lovely day.

My name is Sam Kirk and on the counter

hit show is an alternative internet

online broadcast, podcasty kind of show.

We were talking about the things that we

love and what that says about being human

and all that other good stuff.

It's alternative because there's a lot of

other online shows that, well,

they do similar things.

They talk about stuff they like.

But we never forget that we are here

right now on the internet.

And we're here.

And now so are you.

Let's take a little bit of time right now

to waste a little bit of time together

before the inevitable end and give

ourselves some renewed energy and

strength as we keep

navigating this space called life.

Like I said before, my name is Sam Kirk.

I'm your host for our

show today, counter hit.

I'm excited for our show.

But first, let's talk about the fact that

if you are in the United

States right now, that's right.

The United States, the the Americas, the

good old Americas, you are

well, kind of on a detox.

You're recovering.

You're probably hung over a little bit

metaphorically or otherwise after a

lovely and fantastic holiday, holiday

that we call Labor Day, the first Monday

of September of every single year.

Labor Day kind of funny.

It's the one day in

which we don't do labor.

At least most of us don't.

Some people do have to do labor.

Some people have no choice.

Those that are working in the health care

field, the 24 seven fields, the fields in

which there's always

there's always work to be done.

Those of you we salute, right?

However, if you are in the United States

and you have a government workplace or a

workplace that supports national

holidays, which Labor Day is one of them,

you are you should be guaranteed

specifically some kind of deferred

holiday, deferred Labor Day of your

choice sometime this week, maybe in two

weeks, depending on your billing cycle.

Doesn't matter.

Thank you for your support.

But also, we all deserve

a little bit of a day off.

That's what yesterday was

all about for all of us.

But I want to make sure we do not forget

how we got Labor Day.

How did we get Labor Day?

And folks, I want to quote the great

venerable, if not amazing and fantastic

mayor of New York City,

Mayor Soran Kwame Mamdani.

He said earlier yesterday in 1882, 10,000

workers marched up Broadway in the first

ever Labor Day parade, led

by Democratic socialists.

That's right.

And organized by New York's unions.

They rallied the government that went on

to win us weekends, safety standards,

overtime pay, a minimum

wage and social security.

He ends it with none of these victories

were guaranteed and none are permanent.

That is right, folks.

That is right.

We got Labor Day as a result of people

fighting back, people

wanting more, people saying, hey,

the person that's responsible for paying

my paychecks and paying my bills, you're

not being fair to me.

We didn't get weekends because

the person giving us a job

was nice to us and gave us

per month.

some I'm seven days a week.

It wasn't until it was argued that we

could get weekends off for

Saturdays and Sundays off.

It was argued that we generally did

better when we had

some breaks in our workday

because we are human beings.

We're not

robots.

Last I checked our fatal flaw in this

grand scheme is that we

are not in fact robots.

We tried to be once, but we hopefully

we've all given up by then.

We have some people

dialing into the Patreon.

Welcome, my friends at the Patreon.

Thanks for tuning in.

Hopefully you can hear me and see me loud

and clearly we're broadcasting here on

Patreon as well as YouTube.

Twitch.

Twitch didn't really work out super well.

We're just going to forget

about Twitch for a little bit.

That's okay.

We don't throw out the whole thing

because one little thing doesn't work.

Whatever.

We just make it happen.

We just make it happen.

Labor Day is a

special day for some people.

For some people you're probably thinking,

"What's the big deal?"

So what?

Get off work.

Get one extra day off.

Well, in the United States,

we don't get that many holidays.

It might feel like we do, especially

around the Christmas holiday time, like

from November, end of November, all the

way through the end of December.

We really don't get that many holidays.

And it is really nice to get a holiday

for no other reason

than having the holiday.

You're not celebrating something.

You're not

celebrating your country.

You're celebrating some old religious

thing that might not pertain to you.

You're just literally having a day off

for the sake of having a day off, and we

should have more Labor

Days as far as I'm concerned.

To make it personal for just a moment,

yesterday, for Labor

Day, I had work I had to do.

And by work, I mean stuff for the podcast

that you're listening to and watching to

right now, stuff for my other job, my

public speaking job I had stuff to

prepare for, et cetera, et cetera.

And I was a bad boy,

and I decided to sleep in.

Sleep in a lot.

And after I slept in, I

decided to spend time with family.

That's right.

I spent time with my brother and my

father, who went for a very nice, long,

gorgeous, sunny day

bike ride throughout town.

And it was lovely.

It was very, very

healing, very connecting.

And it was just nice for just a little

bit not to be thinking about work.

So if you are not in a position right now

where you're able to enjoy Labor Day or

holidays like this, I'm so sorry.

Hopefully your

workforce is better for you.

If you are right now in hustle grind

culture, trying to manifest destiny and

make your life better for whatever

conquest you're going for, you probably

don't feel like Labor Day is a worthwhile

endeavor, a worthwhile break to have.

But I implore you not only to celebrate

Labor Day and like holidays, but I also

implore you to enjoy the time off when

you can make it and to make

more time off for yourself.

Because let me tell you, I feel restored.

I feel refreshed.

I didn't think I would.

I thought I feel like I'm behind.

I thought I'd wake up this morning, feel

like, aha, so many things gotta get done.

But no, I just felt great.

I felt really good.

I felt

like I was coming into myself like my

real who I am as a person, a little,

little more calm, a little more chill.

The anxieties of life hadn't hit me just

yet early in the morning.

It was quite nice, quite nice.

So

whatever, whatever excuse you gotta have

to take that PTO, that

time off, that vacation,

shut your phone off, take your emails off

your phone, do whatever, disconnect

yourself as much as you can.

Everyone deserves sporadically,

occasionally, sometimes, just some days

off to be completely

shut off from the world.

And for me specifically, being totally

untapped on divine phone

or computer or nothing.

I wasn't even, I

wasn't even on the internet.

It was a beautiful, lovely day.

We love that for ourselves.

We absolutely love that.

So Labor Day, you're a good one.

I think we should have more

arbitrary holidays like this.

A Labor Day was not an arbitrary holiday.

It was one that was fought in strife and

all that good stuff.

Thank you for all those that fought in

the unions to give us

Labor Day and many more things.

Hopefully you're

not crying in your crib right now because

of the fact that our

minimum wage hasn't gone

up in quite a bit of time.

We probably would have expected that to

have gone up a bit more.

It has not.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that every time we try to do

any kind of social change or progress,

it's deemed as socialism.

I'm sorry about that too.

We're trying, we're trying really hard.

And I have confidence that we'll swing

back the other way at some point.

But for right now, this is where we are.

We enjoy those moments, those breaks,

wherever we possibly can.

But hey, it's not just

that, not just Labor Day.

Here at the counter hit, we try to

provide good news, things that, you know,

make us happy, things that

give us hope for the future.

And this good news comes

to us from techspot.com.

If I recall correctly, techspot.com.

That's right.

Good news here.

This is coming from Rob Thubran.

Thubran, if I'm pronouncing that

incorrectly, I apologize.

Report on September 7th, 2026.

The headline, "CD and vinyl sales are

surging as frustration with

digital media keeps growing."

Woo!

I never thought I'd say that.

As someone who tries to be, you know, a

Buddhist in many ways and tries to be

minimalist and not try to, tries not to

own things as much as I possibly can.

I never thought I'd be accelerating this.

The tagline here, "CD revenue jumps 58%

while vinyl sales

continues long running revival."

Yeah.

So if you weren't around back in the

days, back in the 90s, CDs were like the

way in which you owned

music or listened to music.

There was a popular song on the radio,

like Blink 182's What's My Age Again.

You'd listen to either MTV, you'd listen

to your radio, or you'd go ahead and go

to your local CD store for 10 bucks,

maybe sometimes 20 bucks, buy one compact

disc with super high quality audio and

put it into your CD player.

And you'd probably rip the CD later and

put it onto a big giant MP3 player and

share it with your

friends and all that stuff.

Whatever.

We don't talk about that.

But hey, that's what you used to do.

Then there was a time

when CDs started dying.

That's right.

There was a time when

you went to a store and the CD selection

would be very minuscule, very tiny, and

CDs were cheap, like maybe five bucks,

maybe 10 bucks, a CD.

Vinyls became like a boutique hipster

kind of thing, and now

they've grown a bit as well.

So I remember thinking to myself, I

wonder when CDs are going to come back.

When is that going to happen?

And looks like it might

be happening right now.

And again, as Rob says here in his

article in a nutshell, it's time to dust

off that old turntable boom box.

Physical media is seeing a big resurgence

with both CDs and vinyl sales jumping by

double digits in the first

half of twenty twenty six.

The news comes as public anger over

digital media from increasing streaming

prices to buyers not actually owning

their purchases intensifies.

News of the latest increase in physical

media sales comes from the record

industry association of America, RIAA.

It revealed that recorded music revenues

for H1, 2026, not Q1.

I guess hemisphere one.

That's half the year.

Got it.

We're up six point nine percent from the

first half of twenty twenty

five and outpaced inflation.

Whoa.

With both streaming and

physical formats posting gains.

It was physical media

that grabbed the headlines.

Revenue in this sector grew an impressive

twenty five point nine percent as vinyl

saw seventeen point seven percent growth

and CD revenue grew up a massive fifty

eight point six percent of growth.

Wow.

That's kind of amazing.

They're right here.

Streaming, of course, remains the largest

source of recorded music revenue by far.

It generated it generated four point nine

billion up four point seven percent.

Paid subscriptions reached three point

four billion up six point four percent

while ad sported free subscriptions were

up three point seven

to nine hundred million.

So the article states to talk about the

context, everything else.

But I want to talk about the good news

here, if in whatever

way that I possibly can.

And for me, as I talk about the good

news, I'm thinking about

how a lot of people I know have

subscription fatigue.

Everything's a subscription.

You know, one of the first I think one of

the most notable subscriptions that

existed was Netflix.

Right.

Netflix.

You got to

pay a couple of bucks and

you got a DVD in the mail.

You watched it whenever you could.

But the faster you watch the DVD, you

could pop that back in the mail and get

your new updated DVD that was in your

list, your queue of

watchlist things you want to get.

That was the first version of Netflix.

Then streaming happened.

Fun fact, there was a giant that was

going to do streaming first and they

passed up on the idea and

they're not a giant anymore.

It's called good old blockbuster.

I was I was there for that blockbuster

almost had streaming thought it was a

dumb idea passed on it.

Netflix went, OK, we'll offer streaming

as a free bonus to being a Netflix owner.

So if you were someone who paid the five

dollars, I think it was maybe seven

dollars for your Netflix mail in trade in

rental ability, you got free streaming.

That's what it was.

And then most people just

preferred the streaming.

They just like streaming more.

It's more convenient.

I just yeah, I don't have that much of a

selection of movies at the time, but I've

got something and it's such a cheap deal.

It's cheaper than going to Blockbuster.

It's cheaper than going to the grocery

store, getting a red box, red boxes.

When the vending machine pushed a button,

got a DVD or disc from there.

Yeah, remember that it was convenient.

We were cheating the system.

And shortly after more subscriptions

existed, then Hulu happened and was like,

what's different than

Hulu versus Netflix?

Well, they had a

different selection of movies.

And then the idea of,

well, you know what?

I've got a cable TV subscription which

cost me hundreds of dollars a month.

Let me go ahead and get rid of that and

just keep my couple of ten dollar

subscriptions for all

these other services.

And before we know it, we're now paying

about the same amount of

money for our subscriptions.

Paramount, Amazon, Apple,

YouTube premium, YouTube Red,

Twitch has subscriptions.

Patreon, we have a subscription here.

Not to hate on my platform that much, but

yeah, patrons got everything.

Subscriptions.

It's insane.

It's crazy.

People are upset.

People are mad.

And then on top of all of that, you pay

all this money to have access to a

library that's constantly changing,

constantly fluctuating.

You don't own any of it.

And it used to be I

was OK not owning things.

I still ultimately am.

I think we can become

chained to our possessions.

But people have a right to be pretty

bitter and resentful of this.

Oh,

geez.

Yeah.

All your friends that are

sports fans with those as well.

Yeah.

And that adds even more to the podcast

than every single sports station has

their own streaming service.

And if you're a sports fan, you can't

just like have the one sports channel.

You got to have the specific sports

channel that follows a specific team for

the specific season and

the specific calendar.

It's a whole thing.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

So this seems pretty reasonable.

This seems legit.

I was just watching a lot of younger

folks, especially, are getting so sick of

being tied into being online and getting

sick of the subscription model that

they're really focusing on, you know,

buying old analog tech and so forth.

So this is pretty fascinating to me.

I don't know where this is headed.

It might just be a small

little blip in the radar.

I hope that this slowdown of this

overconsumption of subscriptions

incentivizes companies to kind of change

their tune just a smidge.

That would be really

nice if they could do that.

That would be great if you ask me.

Pretty cool.

Pretty all right.

I think that would be

beautiful.

But for right now, this

stat is pretty interesting.

All that being said, I don't condone

spending a lot of your money on

possessions or things.

But another article I was reading, I

don't have the source of it and I

apologize, was basically saying that the

youngest generation right now have

decided or they kind of look at the

finances, the economics of the situation.

They're never going to

be able to afford a home.

So you're never going

to be able for to home.

What's the point of

saving money for a home?

So go ahead and just buy things.

And that I think that would break most

economics and economics experts hearts to

hear that because the whole thing is like

save money, get a little bit of a pile of

money so you can invest in a thing that

you keep investing in.

Whether that be the stock market, whether

that be a house, whether that be

something that can appreciate and value.

Now, the whole entire schism is gone.

The whole entire thing is just who cares?

That's kind of wild.

It's kind of insane.

You think about it breaks my heart.

But makes sense.

I get it.

This is the world we

are living in right now.

So I think it's kind of beautiful that a

lot of us are kind of giving the

proverbial middle finger

to subscription models.

I think it's kind of a nice thing.

I think we should do more of that in our

in our own way, our consumerist

rebellion, so to speak.

I'll be curious to see where this goes

moving forward here.

Fun fact, I don't have a vinyl collection

of any kind and I love music.

I'm an audio file.

I just don't have a vinyl collection.

They take up a lot of space for me.

And while I appreciate the the value of

the microphone is missing me.

I appreciate the value of what vinyl

brings and records bring.

I do like how they sound.

They have some more

warm stereophonic sound.

I don't know.

I just I'd rather pay for a higher end

set up so I can listen with headphones

and get lossless

quality and pay it that way.

But still, I'm a big fan of getting off

of streaming services.

I think the last one I'm

kind of on to Spotify right now.

And even then, I think I'm getting

Spotify for free from

a friend or something.

Don't tell Spotify that.

That's right.

Remember when

the Netflix CEO, I think it was, was

like, hey, I don't care if

you share your password or not.

And now they actually care.

I have firsthand accounts of people who

were on, quote unquote, family plans.

But now they're cracking down on people

who are part of a family plan that aren't

in the same address or not.

And so they're canceling people left and

right and blocking their IPs.

What happened to them not

caring about that stuff?

What happened?

It was I guess it was

the pandemic, right?

We didn't care back then.

It was OK.

We were we were willing to be a little

more amicable during that that strife in

life, that 18 month period.

We were all going

through a pretty bad plague.

Now, who cares now?

Profits, profits,

profits, profits, profits.

So, hey.

Don't feel bad about if you want to buy a

CD, buy a physical piece of media.

As someone who is a preservationist at

heart, even if I have qualms about

overspending of consumption of things,

literally having

something physical specific to you

that that can mean a lot.

And you can pass along to your children,

your children's children, have a good

time and enjoy that.

Mm hmm.

Number must go up.

That is true.

But what's more important is that what we

get satisfied out of life, because last I

checked when the numbers keep going up

and I die, I don't get to

take those numbers with me.

Last I checked.

Unless someone's figured out a way to

defy that, maybe

Raish Al Ghul has an idea.

I don't think we've been able to beat

that problem just yet.

So with that, we have

good news about that front.

And then we have

maybe not so good news on the on the

ownership of things front,

the ownership of media front.

And for that, I'm thinking of the good

old court case that's happening right now

between two private

plaintiffs and Sony interact.

The company that used to be known for

audio equipment and

then CD manufacturing.

And now they're probably most famous for

video games, the PlayStation five being

their most famous or most current common

video game device right now.

The suit is Haycock versus Sony

Corporation of America.

And this has been going around the social

medias for a little bit, but I want to

highlight it here here

for counter hit purposes.

This article comes from Tech Power Up and

it's rewritten by Dr.

Usman Saleem.

I believe that's their name.

Sony has filed its response to a proposed

class action lawsuit over how the

PlayStation store discloses discloses its

digital licensing terms.

What we're talking about here is

folks who are gamers

who love video games are pretty upset

right now at Sony because Sony has

decided to say, hey, we're going to shut

down physical media production.

I think it was 2028 by the end of 2027

into 2028, meaning you no longer will

have the option of

purchasing a physical video game.

Your only option will be to get the game

digitally through Sony's own digital

shop that they have the Sony, the P.S.

store, as they call it.

This is coming on the tails of that.

And so they write here, the company

stands is that no reasonable buyer

expects to actually own a digital game.

Let's repeat that one more time.

The company stands is that no reasonable

buyer expects to

actually own a digital game.

They're arguing that when you go into the

PlayStation store and it says you can buy

something for $69.99 or U.S. dollars or

your regional equivalent, you know

implicitly that you're not owning that.

You're just having a license to that

particular piece of media.

The suit, Haycock versus Sony Corporation

America filed on June 18th by four

PlayStation owners out for not two in the

Northern District of California.

It alleges that Sony's checkout violates

a B two four two six a California law

requiring clear disclosure when a digital

purchase only grants a license.

Sony's August 21 response argues that

quote reasonable consumers would not be

misled and quote into believing their own

games since into believing they're they

own their games since buyers agreed to

the software product license agreement.

SBLA before purchase, which states

plainly that the quote software is

licensed to you, not sold end quote.

OK,

this reads like,

unfortunately, you agreed

to the terms and conditions.

That's what that reads like.

Look, I'm a gamer.

I buy games.

I can count on one hand the amount of

times I've actually read through that

disclaimer message, the software product

license agreement message

like two or three times.

I think I've done it back

when it was first happening.

Now they're all they

all read kind of the same.

I just I kind of know generally it's just

all my data is being sold.

I don't you know, they have the right to

pull the plug on the game as

they want to, etc, etc, etc.

And yes, I'm a logical human being.

I was taught the moral lesson that yes,

when you ever you are buying a piece of

software, you're buying a license, a

permission to use that software.

Here's the problem, though, on all their

marketing material, Sony, especially.

It literally says to buy

something, to purchase something.

The implication being

you get to own something.

And that's what gamers

are fighting on right now.

Dr.

Usman Salim continues to support the

point that digital ownership is, quote,

not plausible, end quote.

So the lawyer, Sony's lawyers cite two of

the plaintiffs own purchase histories.

Jason Mendoza bought

Resident Evil Requiem.

Great game on February 14th, 2026.

And Edward Haycock bought the same

digital copy for sixty nine dollars and

ninety nine cents just 11 days later.

If ownership was genuinely transferred at

purchase, Sony argues that Haycock's

transaction couldn't have occurred since

Mendoza would already own it.

OK,

this is this is great wordplay.

This is this is conflating two different

ideas at the same time.

If I buy this pen.

That that must mean that no

one else can buy this pen.

Except for the fact that the manufacturer

of this pen, this is a monfimi, I think a

Korean company that

makes this nice fancy pen.

They make thousands, millions of this pen

that anyone can buy.

They have supply to do that.

But according to this

argument, that's impossible.

I own this pen, so you

can't buy this pen anymore.

That is

categorically absurd.

They are they're conflating

two different ideas, which is

the fact that a digital good has an

infinite amount of supply.

And so Ergo, you can keep distributing

that as much as you possibly can.

And the license ship for the idea, the

ownership of the original property and

being able to modify, manifest that or

redistribute it in a

commercial sense.

Those are two very different ideas.

I am not I'm not a smart person when it

comes to legal, but I know that

distinction right there.

I have a feeling they're shooting

themselves in the foot.

We have a comment here in our Patreon.

I hope the judge in that case doesn't buy

such a garbage argument from Sony.

But these days, who knows?

Yeah.

Yeah, you're right.

I mean, it seems plain as day to me, but

we've seen a lot of really weird cases.

If the if the judge doesn't know what

they're talking about, doesn't know what

they're getting themselves into,

it goes the other way the way we didn't

think it was going to have.

So I

think this is going to be fascinating.

I think this is actually going to shoot

themselves in the foot.

And I think it might force Sony to be put

into a position where they have to change

their language around

selling this kind of stuff,

these digital goods, which would be a

good thing, I think probably would tank

sales because if it's very plain to see

that you don't own something before you

buy it and they make the marketing super

clear on that, it's

going to make sales go down.

Absolutely.

I think it'll definitely lead to

something of that nature, but maybe it

could also lead to the best part, which

is maybe they have to delay their

shutdown of physical manufacturing or

physical certification of

physical media for a while.

Like it's by the end

of twenty twenty seven.

I get the logistics why they have to make

that decision because it costs them too

much money and they're

making way more money on digital.

But there's nothing stopping them from

being able to license out the

manufacturing of physical media to the

publishers themselves or other

manufacturers or other distributors so

they can license that stuff.

That's how the Famicom works in Japan.

The original Nintendo Famicom,

they licensed it out to every other

publisher could

produce their own cartridges.

Whereas in Nintendo of America, one

central location

manufactured all the cartridges.

It's just a difference of modus operandi

and they could go down that path.

You know, I'm thinking about the

PlayStation Plus

subscription and how expensive it is.

I think I saw last was like

one hundred fifty dollars here.

Let's look at that right now, folks.

Let's let's look at this together.

P.S. plus prices.

Subscription.

Here we go.

According to the

official PlayStation Web site,

they offer you three different plans,

essential, extra and premium.

And of course, you have to scroll down to

kind of find that

there's three different plans.

You don't know that there

are three different plans.

Essential is

basically just online gaming,

cloud gaming and some discounts.

Extra gives you, I

think, access to PlayStation.

Oh, no, all of them give

you access to monthly games.

It gives you access to a larger catalog

of games, kind of

like subscription model.

And then premium gets you access to like

classics games like PS

one and PS two games.

Let's see what the available options are.

Of course, you have scrolls all the way

down and look at this one

hundred sixty dollars per year

for the premium model.

One hundred thirty four ninety nine for

one year for extra eighty bucks.

U.S. dollars for the year if you want to

do just the bare bones essential.

Now, here's what I

think is wild about this.

I haven't had a PlayStation Plus account

in a very, very long time because I ran

into this problem where I got the

PlayStation Plus account

when it was pretty cheap.

I forget how much.

I feel like it was like

maybe thirty five dollars.

I don't know.

Allow me to play online, which I thought

was kind of silly because I used to be

able to play online on the PS two.

But whatever.

Go ahead and charge me.

And to incentivize that they give me a

couple of free games per month.

They give you throw a couple of games.

Some of these games are really high

quality, which were cool.

But I remember no matter what, even

though I was paying for it every single

month, you still had to log on at least

once and activate those free games.

You had to go into the section where it

says your free games are right here.

Click the button, add it to your account

and click another button where you agreed

to like a checkout clause, which made no

sense because just add it to my account.

Just do it.

Just do it automatically.

And right there, I'm like they're doing

this because they want you to forget to

have gone to do that step.

They want you to forget.

It's like a gym membership.

They want you to not use their plan as

much as you possibly can.

And so with that and the added cost of

this PS plus thing that

keeps going up every year.

And now for the premium plan, it's one

hundred and six sixty bucks or so.

I eventually stopped.

And when you stop your plan after having

had a plan for like seven years, you

don't have access to your old library.

Your library is gone.

Your old library where you got all your

free games, those are gone the moment you

stop paying for the service.

Another kind of middle finger to you.

So I did the thing I paid attention to

most having a PlayStation

Plus plan and also as well.

Xbox is not off the hook.

Their Xbox live account plans

have the same kind of thing.

I felt this intense pressure to play my

PlayStation almost every day, even when

it didn't make sense for me to do that.

So this is this is Machiavellian.

This is psychology.

This is just them trying to get as much

out of you as they can.

They don't want to make

anything easy for you.

This is not pro consumer for sure.

Comment here in the chat.

I think they want to sunset Blu-rays

altogether or may not have a choice the

way manufacturing plants are repurposing

for supporting the A.I. resources race.

Yeah.

Is Toshiba still making Blu-rays?

That's a question.

Because Toshiba last I checked was the

largest manufacturer of Blu-rays.

This is a really professional show here.

Toshiba goes Blu-ray.

That was back in 2026.

This is a historical thing because

Toshiba is the one that was like, hey, we

don't want to do HD DVDs anymore.

And that killed the

Xbox's HD DVD viability.

They did make a bet on it, but eventually

they said, no, we're just going to do

nothing but Blu-ray.

This is an old historical article here.

I think Toshiba might still make them.

I'm not quite sure if

they still do it or not.

But yeah, Sony is

probably manufacturing as well.

They were the big Blu-ray manufacturer,

Blu-ray player people for sure.

Especially if people in the home domestic

markets aren't looking to buy

Blu-rays for movies anymore.

That makes sense.

They pay for every retention

of the game to the publishers.

People don't do it.

They save on that.

Yeah, sure.

They pay for that.

But like, come on.

Why even offer it?

But they license from Sony, don't they?

We don't have to dive deeper there.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, no.

So we have a Patreon comment asking

about, you know, the reason why Sony

might not automatically give you these

games for free is that they pay to redeem

them every single time.

I've read it differs per contract.

Like, for instance, I know for a fact.

What's that game?

It's an Oddworld game.

That game is Soulstorm.

Oddworld Soulstorm done

by Oddworld inhabitants.

I saw an interview with

director Lauren Lanning.

The way their contract worked was they

got a lump sum fee for being part of

PlayStation Plus for the month they

launched and no more money than that.

Just there was a cap and they got it no

matter how many downloads they got.

And he cited he got screwed on that deal

because they went well above beyond where

the cap would have given them if he had

just had faith in the product.

So I think it's on a

contract per contract basis.

I think I think it's not not exactly that

way every single time.

I think Sony, they did.

They determined the terms with their

their publishers, their the game

developers on that front.

Yeah.

But anyway, I mean,

Sony is is here for money.

They're here to make tons of money.

They're here to push their pressure

wherever they can on consumers.

And I think I want to kind of talk about

here when it comes to

manufacturing of stuffs.

When it comes to the proposition of

removing physical media, I think that's a

mistake even on a business level, even if

mathematically it makes sense.

Like mathematically, it will

make sense in some capacity to

stop making the thing

that costs too much overhead.

That makes sense mathematically.

It's too costly.

I get that.

I really do.

Problem is the value proposition to

gamers is completely thrown out the

window the moment you get rid of one of

the options I have to buy the game.

So, for instance, as someone who buys

majority of my games digitally, I do it

out of convenience because I don't want

to take up time on my

shelf, take a space on my shelf

to

most of the time

kudos to Sony, by the way.

They do pretty good

deals on their digital goods.

So sometimes it's cheaper to get it

digitally than it is to go to the retail

store and pick up the physical copy, even

if they're both on sale.

Usually the digital company is cheaper.

And then me as the consumer, I get to

make that choice like, hey, go to

Tsushima on sale this week.

Should I get it?

I

really want a physical copy of that game.

I'm going to go to the store and buy a

word at myself or hey, I'm at the store

and look, they've got a discount bin of

some games and these are great.

Do I want this or do I

want the digital copy?

I get to make that consumer choice.

Now I'm not going to make that choice.

The choice is simply in Sony's hands,

simply in Sony's hands.

So it'll be curious to see how Sony

represents themselves further in court.

I think that'll be dastardly for a lot of

people there at Sony, the execs.

The issue is a bit more complicated than

what gamer guys and girls

like to make it out to be.

And it's not fallen on me.

It's not been lost on me that we probably

lost this battle 20 years

ago when we said it was okay to

pay $8 for a cosmetic DLC for a random

character in a video game.

When we said that was okay, when we let

them nickel and dime us that way, it just

started the slippery slope to them just

gaining complete ownership control of all

their IPs and all their

"licenses" for video games.

So it'll be curious how

the language updates itself.

You know, it's always been the case that

when you buy a video game, you don't

never own the video

game, you own a license.

I remember that from like the Apple 2GS

days and the Commodore days, like you'd

get the disc and would

say, please don't reproduce.

And

you also knew

that there were people that

we all had like a disc writer.

You could just write the discs to a blank

floppy if you wanted to and play the

games on three and a half

floppy if you wanted to.

Horse armor did ruin everything.

That being said, if you're a console

gamer, you always grew up with a physical

cartridge of some kind

for a while, then discs.

It was always a physical thing.

It was like your key to play the game.

You couldn't just like,

you couldn't just install it to your hard

drive until PS3, PS4, PS5, that era.

So it's just a convergence of everything

that's happening so far in the tech

industry and having to belie consumer

interests and consumer

expectations on that.

So yeah, that's

makes sense.

Well, we'll see how this court case goes.

I'll be curious to find

out when we get updates.

We will be giving you

further information about that.

But now next up, we're going to talk

about something

totally, completely different.

Elizabeth Holmes.

Stay tuned.

(Music)

All right folks, so I said to

you before, Elizabeth Holmes.

Remember Elizabeth Holmes?

Elizabeth Holmes, the American

businesswoman convicted of fraud and

connection with her health

technology company Theranos.

Remember Theranos back in

the early 2000s, mid 2000s?

Yeah, she was a real character, that was.

You can look up the information here on

Wikipedia, but the glyph notes were,

She sold this revolutionary product that

was developing methods

to get blood testing,

not requiring you to have to get a full

amount of blood taken out of you, because

apparently she had a "fear of needles",

and so it was simply something as small

as a quick little finger prick, a small

little dollop of blood

from your fingertips.

This was making waves in the early 2000s,

the company was evaluated at over $9

billion dollars, holy cow!

Until shortly after, in 2015-2016, there

was accusations being thrown her way

about fraud, and it turns out there were

some whistle blows there at the company

that kind of revealed that the technology

was never real, it could never do

anything, it was all smoke

and mirrors the entire thing.

I'm not here to talk about that.

I'm here to talk about the fact that if

you've been paying attention to the story

of Elizabeth Holmes, you'll know one

thing about her, which is that she is

known to have an interesting persona,

as in, she has a very deep voice when she

talks, at least supposedly she does,

until you catch her

not having a deep voice.

That's right, sometimes she has a deep

voice, and sometimes she doesn't.

Apparently she was depicting this deep

voice for a very, very specific reason.

The reason was to kind of make herself

feel like a larger-than-life figure, and

kind of borrowing from other figures that

she really admired, such as Apple execs

and Microsoft execs and

Steve Jobs and so forth.

She had this deep masculine voice, which

was very unnatural, but people caught

people off guard, very innovative, very

charismatic, people heard that, but then

everyone saw that she'd break, she'd

catch herself, and she'd start speaking

in a much more feminine, higher-pitched

voice, that seemed more natural to her,

before sinking back

down to her wealthy voice.

And people just felt

awed about this person.

Anyway, it turns out the

whole thing was a fraud.

Turns out she may or may not have been

some kind of sociopath, who knows?

People have always commented how she had

this creepy stare,

and as of I think today,

there is a documentary about to happen.

It was then actually a

couple days ago, September 6th.

It's being directed by Nathan Fielder,

whom you might recognize

as a comedian of sorts,

and we're going to react to this trailer

right now, together,

and see

what this trailer's all about, because

I'm curious, because I've heard there's

something about the way she looks in the

trailer that looks odd.

So let's react to it together, let's see

if the sound works for us.

I'm not that person.

I can promise you that.

I don't have anything to deceive you on,

of course I'm not deceiving you.

I'm engaging with you as a human being.

Why

would I deceive you?

There's no,

there's no reason for me to do that.

Okay.

Alright.

Okay, good shot.

You're being real right now?

You're always being real.

What?

What was that?

What?

What?

What was that?

Wait.

That's it?

That's the trailer we have so far?

People have been freaking out about this?

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Yeah, I mean, she's got

a creepy look in this.

Devee, you won.

Of course I'm not deceiving you.

Of course I'm not deceiving you.

I was engaging with you as a human being.

Engaging with you as a human being.

That makes no sense.

Who says that?

I don't know what the

context of this conversation is.

It looks like he's got

his headphones on like

he's talking to her like about the film

he's about to film her in.

Why

would I deceive you?

Now what's creepy is she's moving her

head like kind of erratically, but we

know in like one of the last shots here.

The reason she's doing that

is she's rocking her baby.

So yeah, that makes sense.

But again, that that

stare is kind of kind of wild.

Bright eyes and everything.

Why would I deceive you?

I'm always real.

The intentional eye

contact is a bit creepy.

Again, I don't know the context.

I'm sure there's more

to it in the documentary.

Documentaries are great.

They always have a

filmmaker's lens to them.

But wow.

Jeez.

Okay.

That's wild.

Elizabeth Holmes having

a documentary about her.

People get to learn

from that particular story.

You know, I don't want to comment too

much about this, but I hope that if you

are someone who knows

nothing about what happened with

her company Theranos and her

specifically, if you

watch clips of her, I suppose.

I hope people get to walk away knowing

their own version of this and if they

ever experience an out in the wild.

Again, I only know what I've heard.

I'm not here to make conjecture.

If it is true that Elizabeth and Holmes

age 42 from Washington, DC

is a sociopath of some kind.

I mean, I imagine something has to be

underneath the surface to lie to that

many people to make that much amount of

money and to be investigated for fraud

and to still kind of deny her.

I would say that's an

anti leader right there.

I hope if you I fed if you meet anyone

that is kind of like this in any kind of

capacity, you know, steer away.

You don't do what Nathan was just doing

there, which is staring into the void.

There are people who have in

their life in some capacity.

Decided that it's their job to do

whatever they can to be liked by you or

other people and they'll do whatever they

can push whatever lever they can do to

make that happen for them.

And it's scary.

It is freaky because they don't they do

not abide by the same social contracts

that you and I might buy it by.

They're not in it to be in the group

together to for all of us to make it

through, you know, Team Human kind of

like one of our models here.

They're in it for different reasons.

And they're in it for different reasons

because they don't understand on a social

contract level why would make sense for

all of us to stick

together and help each other out.

Now they can be taught this.

They can they can learn this, but it has

to come from a place of like

Machiavellian greed.

Like they have to learn that it is in

their best interests.

They can't think about just trying to do

it from an altruistic perspective.

So

interesting, fascinating.

I'm curious that

Nathan's the one directing it.

I know he's he's he

does wild out there stuff.

He's mostly a comedian, but he's also

kind of like a kind of a wild outcast

when it comes to doing

weird projects like this.

I'm really curious

what comes out of that.

Maybe I'll watch the movie when it comes

out and see what happens again.

I'm probably more vested into this

because at the time in which she was

coming to fame, I was working in health

care pharmaceuticals.

We weren't paying too much

attention to what she was doing.

We heard some buzzing, but we were kind

of focusing on the ground floor what we

could do within our our purview.

I can't say more than that because of all

the agreements that I have

agreed to not say more about.

We weren't paying attention to what

Elizabeth Holmes was saying, but when it

kind of when it was coming out that maybe

there was something funny

happening about here on 2015.

Oof.

A lot of us weren't surprised.

So

wild, crazy, good stuff.

Good to hear more about that.

Masks.

Putting on airs, forcing who you are.

I think it's going to come back.

I think we're going to come back to that

topic in just a little bit.

Let's take a quick break.

When we do, we'll look into the wonderful

world of video games.

All

right, folks, welcome back.

Told you we're going to

talk about video games next.

How's your video game playing been going?

Do you like video games?

We like video games

here on the counter hit.

We think they're fun.

They're a fun waste of time, so to speak.

And yeah,

in the world of video games, one of the

things we've talked about quite a bit

here on zero dot a.k.a.

The counter hit is the proliferation.

Of remakes.

We uncovered a report by a marketing firm

across the pond in Europe that

basically said remakes are coming.

More remakes are coming.

We're never going to not have remakes.

And you better be ready for it.

And we've had a lot of

remakes this year alone.

And just today, the day after Labor Day,

September 8th, we now have

a new remake coming through.

That's right.

A new remake.

That remake, of course, is coming from

Nintendo themselves.

Another remake after Star Fox 64.

Could it be another Nintendo 64 game?

They had a direct today.

What could it possibly be about?

Hmm.

I wonder.

I wonder.

Indeed.

Let's watch what we had

this morning broadcast to us.

It's Zelda.

We'll get demonetized, I don't care.

This is the Ocarina of Time.

Very iconic shot of the title screen.

Ooh, Link's looking fab there.

Very shiny.

Everything looks very shiny right now.

It looks like wet.

Oh,

okay.

Wow.

No more free-running backgrounds.

There's a texture-walking I've seen

before, many unreal games.

It's an unreal-ing game.

Yep.

Whoa!

That looks interesting.

Oh, that looks all right.

This looks like a

one-to-one remake with just

different visuals and different pieces.

I like animation.

Very cool.

Very neat.

Everyone's hated water tunnel.

I'm like, "Oh, geez."

Link looks funny.

There's a great fairy.

Ah, that water that looks very...

Yeah, a new water tunnel.

Ah!

I think I always knew...

knew that you'd leave

the forest behind someday.

Even if that much is

true, you're my friend.

Forever and ever.

Who...

who's there?

That's great stuff, kid.

Good on ya.

I'm real impressed.

You know what?

You're not half bad.

Wow,

you can see my

hair is a zebra.

Great

music.

Now this world and our Triforce belong to me.

Look out!

Oh, Frederic Baker?

Frederic Baker, Anakin, is that him?

(Music Ends)

Here we go.

It's coming out November 5th, 2026, the

Ocarina of Time remake.

I want to see a couple quick things that

I saw that were kind of startling to me.

Right before this section right here, we

see a shot of

Princess Zelda for a minute.

Well, first of all, spoilers for those

that have never played this game.

You encounter this ninja-like character

named Sheik, who

actually turns out to be Zelda.

And I'm sorry, but I mean,

you could see the braided hair.

She...

Sheik didn't have braided hair before,

had it all tucked in, and like, you

didn't know Sheik had long hair.

I feel like that's more of a tell.

That it's Zelda.

Ugh.

Okay, fine, let's just do that.

There's one thing I wanted to point out

here, is that the faces

look really inconsistent.

Like,

we see that Link almost has like a

toy-like face here when he's adult Link.

And when he's a child Link, again, has

like a toy-like look, big

giant bright eyes, bushy-like.

Yet at the same time,

what I was struck by...

His face, you know, that's an artistic

choice they decide to make.

Yet...

Looking at this shot right here, where

young Link is in the kind of village

market area, right before you get to

Hyrule Castle, the character model, the

dancers that are in the market square,

they seem to have a face shape that looks

just like the N64 shape.

So that's a little weird.

It seems like we've

updated the faces of Link,

but made them look very different from

the N64 art design, yet made some of the

NPCs like the N64 art design.

That's a little bizarre to me.

I don't know how I feel about that.

There's something funny about this.

And there's one more shot

that really stuck out to me.

Yeah, look at...

There's a shot here of

young Princess Zelda.

Again,

something funny about the eyes and the

nose and the angles.

It's an interesting artistic depiction.

I don't want to say it, but...

Was this done with AI?

Was it?

I don't know, folks.

I have no idea.

I don't want to put judgment here.

I don't know who the developer is.

At least I don't think we

know who the developer is.

The artistic choices are

interesting to say the least.

Some of it is not surprising.

It looks like a modern

day 2026, 2027 video game.

Yet as someone who's played the original

a bunch of times, I've never felt that

Ocarina of Time needed to look like this.

So Ocarina of Time is coming.

We're getting a

remake coming in November.

That should be pretty

exciting for a lot of people.

Is that the same date that the original

Ocarina of Time came out in?

Let's find out.

I didn't find out.

November 21st.

The Ocarina of Time came

out November 21st, 1998.

And the new one's coming out.

It's like November 5th or 10th.

Let's see here.

November 5th, 2026.

Wow.

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

More remakes, folks!

More remakes!

And I was looking at some comments on

some of the people

reacting to this announcement.

They were so glad they could finally play

it because they had

never played it before.

And that baffles me

because this game is available on the

Nintendo Switch online

store or online service.

The subscription service, I know.

It sucks.

You could get it on older, you could get

it on the 3DS, you could

have gotten it on the Wii.

It was available on the GameCube as a

pre-order disc for Wind Waker.

Ocarina of Time is one of the versions of

Zelda that's been available on many

pieces of Nintendo hardware.

And to argue that, "Oh, yes, I can

finally play this game now

that it's getting remade."

Ugh.

I'm upset.

I'm not happy about that.

Just total shame.

Total shame they're doing that.

So, we'll see.

I will definitely pick up

the game when it comes out.

I'll check it out for myself.

See what's

all jiving with that

particular video game.

Truth be told, Ocarina of Time is not my

favorite game of all time, but it is many

people's favorite game of all time.

It's weird.

It's a weird time to

live in a world of remakes.

Just remakes over and

over and over again.

We're not...

Yes, we're getting new stuff.

I don't want to be boomery about this.

I don't want to argue that we're in the

bad times, so to speak.

It's just weird to me.

It's just

bizarre.

Why do we want to retread the same thing

over and over and over and

over and over and over again?

Why are we nostalgic for that?

Well,

being nostalgic is one thing.

I like being nostalgic.

Because then, if you want to relive that

nostalgia, just go ahead

and pick up the old thing.

That's fine.

Nothing wrong with that.

But here it's like we're chasing

something that's unobtainable.

And I don't get that.

I really, really don't get that.

But...

Commerce is where commerce is.

And it sounds like there's a lot of

machines coming to here.

They've got figures coming out.

They've got special editions coming out.

They're pushing this hard.

So...

Zelda's coming back, folks.

Great soundtrack.

Good stuff.

(Click)

My friend, I'm fast, which...

Goodbye.

(Music)

All right, folks.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

Talked a bit about video games before.

Now we're changing the tide.

Justice Mitch, talk about

everyone's favorite subject.

Reddit!

That's right.

We're back here for another episode,

another edition of Reddit Reactions.

It's a popular one.

We keep doing it because it seems to be

something people like.

I'm not a Redditor.

As you're going to see in just a little

bit, I'm going to share my screen.

I don't even have a Reddit account

because I don't think I do.

But people like to talk on Reddit.

It's a whole different subculture.

And sometimes where people

need help can be in Reddit.

And we've oftentimes looked at leadership

as well as life to see what people's

stories are and see what

advice I could possibly give.

Unsolicited, of course.

And today we're going to be going back to

our time-tested, wonderful

workhorse that is the

leadership Reddit r slash leadership.

Everyone's favorite.

And I've just gone ahead and gone the

front page and picked up

the first story that I saw.

And this is what I'm seeing right here.

The first one from 18 hours ago.

This is being recorded today.

It's number eight.

Title is First Time Leader.

Let me zoom in on this.

There we go.

Beautiful.

That's good.

First Time Leader,

Assertive Direct Report.

OK.

OP says, I'm a first time leader and my

team has grown from two to

15 and only a few months.

Holy cow.

A few months.

First time leader.

That's a lot, man.

That's a lot.

The leader of one of my teams wants a

promotion and has made no secret of it.

He claims my boss hired him to be at my

grade and report directly into him.

But transpires it was a lower

grade and reporting into me.

Oh, OK.

That's what he says.

OK.

He is very ambitious and assertive and

invites himself along to all of my senior

meetings and openly contradicts me and

tries to lead every single discussion and

team strategy event.

My other team leader is much more relaxed

and willing to be influenced and led.

I find the assertive team lead to be

exhausting as he is forever briefing my

seniors and turning up to my senior

stakeholder meetings, trying to progress

my strategy work, etc., etc., etc.,

trying to progress my strategy work.

How can I handle this

without destroying his motivation?

He's very good at his job, but I fear he

will leave as his role is X grade, but he

is hellbent on achieving Y grade.

OK.

I have a development plan in place to

help him get to his next grade, but I'm

starting to dread and interact with them

as he's constantly challenging and

wanting to reshape every decision.

How can I handle this

as a learning point?

Ooh.

OK.

All right.

First time leader.

First of all, give yourself grace.

I mean, you've grown from having two

people underneath you to 15

in just a few couple of months.

I don't know how many months.

It could have been nine months.

I don't know.

But still, even less than a year, that's

a big jump in people.

Slow growth is usually

what we want in any kind of

organization, any

kind of progression here.

But in two to 15 is a lot of people.

Your person wants a promotion made of

secret of it, claims my boss hired him to

be at my grade and

report directly into him.

But it was a lower

grade reporting into me.

So he's claiming that, hey, you know, I'm

not supposed to even have this job.

Your boss, your boss said, hmm.

Your boss said, I

should be just like you.

Same grade.

But turns out I have to report to you.

This makes no sense.

I would I would question that.

I would see if you could talk to your

boss and see if you can validate that

claim if that's true or not.

If it is true, then your

path forward is pretty simple.

OK, so understand why it is that they got

into this position, why they're getting

paid less, why they're underneath you.

And what's the what's the plan from your

boss of how to get this person manage

them upwards if you can?

If not, if you're if your boss does not

corroborate that story, then

you know that this person's

doing what they think

a ladder climber supposed to do.

They think they're

supposed to take initiative.

They think they're supposed to lie a

little bit through their teeth.

There's put on airs.

Feel like they're the big stuff.

They think they're supposed to be taking

over stakeholder meetings for you so that

they can show how much

initiative they have.

They think they're supposed to work with

your senior leaders.

That way you don't have to maybe from a

place of trying to make you look bad, but

probably more just trying to

show them flex their stuff.

And they think that's the path forward.

You say, how can I handle this without

destroying his motivation?

Well, you want him to succeed, right?

You want to do well.

If you frame whatever you want to say to

him from a place of wanting him to do

well and being his champion and being his

master coach, I don't know

how you could deflate him.

But does he expect the job tomorrow?

Does he think he's

supposed to already have it?

Is there like a wrongful

employment suit here happening?

I don't know.

Like something feels funny here.

You say you have a

development plan in place.

So I don't know if the

development plan is fine.

You know, development plan is putting

something on paper, what you want to

track for this individual.

I guess the question I would have is,

have you spoken to him before any of that

stuff has been written down beyond like

him just wanting your job?

What are his real goals beyond all of

this so you can champion for him and have

those conversations with him?

Because if you come in with a development

plan already mapped out and he hasn't had

any kind of his own buy in into it,

that's not going to go super well.

That's not going to be helpful to anyone.

He won't be bought into it.

He'll be upset.

He'll probably shut down even more.

You want to ask him questions and see

what what is it he really wants out of

this company, this job, his career.

And it might be that he

wants a totally different job.

He just doesn't know it yet.

You never know.

You want to incorporate what he wants out

of that job in a way that

makes sense for him specifically

to get him to be more bought into it.

That's what I would do.

I think there's more to the story.

I'm starting to dread interaction with

him as he is constantly challenging and

wanting to reshape every decision.

He might be.

That's maybe that's true.

And if that's true, that sucks.

Is it also possible maybe that he's not?

It's just that you're uncomfortable by

that first interaction where he said he

was supposed to have a different job and

you're uncomfortable.

The fact that he's a totally different

style of lead than your other lead is.

Is that a possibility?

I don't know.

You might have to tell me that.

Opie.

We have some comments here.

This is spicy.

Didn't you post this

yesterday in the management sub?

Someone says

the same advice applies

today as it did yesterday.

This is not your fight.

Your employee was promised something that

your boss didn't deliver.

Getting in the middle of it

will not end well for you.

Instead, simply go to your boss and state

factually without judgment what the

employee has said to you and ask them how

they would like you to proceed.

Making a decision on your

own here is deeply perilous.

Opie responds.

Hi, I was just getting a

wider range of opinions.

I'm using them all to

drop a plan as we speak.

I didn't realize it was frowned upon to

share to both groups.

Apologies.

We

have a response to that response.

This and I fear he will leave as his role

is X grade and he is hell

bent on achieving Y grade.

Quote unquote.

Do not be surprised if giving you the

current role was meant as

a means to manage him out.

We answer good call out.

Good call.

Once again, we don't know what your boss

has said about this.

You haven't reached out to him.

I don't know what the

details are about this.

But yeah, it's possible that he wanted

this one job and he was put in this

position specifically so that way you

would be managing about that is true.

The commenter says maybe that they are

good at their job and aligned culture

wise to the needs of leadership, but not

aligned culture wise.

The need of leadership

parentheses tough luck.

This happens and parentheses in such

cases, they have seen someone being

slotted in between the high performing

person and the role they want.

It's a signal to the high performing

person either a stay happy where you are

or B get the fuck out.

You parentheses, the manager and

parentheses are being put in the middle

to learn the craft and ensure the ship

floats even if the high performer jumps.

Yeah, it's a good call out there.

Not sure how candidly you can talk about

this to the high performer,

your HR or your boss, though.

That's very circumstantial.

Yeah, I mean, your success as

a leader is absolutely true.

You don't need high

performers on your team.

You develop a system where anyone can

kind of flourish in there and do their

best and people will go, I want to work

for this person and their team members

because they're able to

manage that in a really good way.

Another comment here.

You are a new leader and

already leading other leaders.

Opie says my team has had very rapid

growth until the structure

is developed due to necessity.

Counterpost.

This is a repost.

Didn't you get some good

answers from your last post?

So a lot of people are mad

at this person for reposting.

OK, I don't know what the what the

culture is here at Reddit.

If you're not supposed to do that or not,

I guess it's equivalent of spamming.

I don't know.

But look, it's a problem.

The person that owns the thread, the

leadership can just

delete it if they think so.

But I mean, there's a

lot of comments here.

I mean, this person has 34 upvotes, 32

comments in the span

of a couple of hours.

I don't know.

And

we have another comment here from someone

saying how critical is

this particular person?

What does your RACI

matrix look like for them?

Are they looking for a promotion for a

particular reason or that

they feel they earned it?

It sounds like they have a demonstrated

in subordinate behaviors, particularly on

ways that pits your work

against theirs to your seniors.

Possible B, create friction that

particularly impacts your team.

And that's what

impacts your duties as well.

Possible C, voice that they should have

your role and vice versa.

Not sure if this was

confirmed by you or not.

Do you feel they are

risk to other team members?

If so, in what way is none of what I

listed is bad individually.

And I list them to confirm there.

There isn't additional items I missed.

They sound like they have value despite

their issues and finding their

motivations will help understand their

goals and ultimately what will make them

happy in their role in future.

Are they response?

Are they responsibility focused, income

focused, growth focused, et cetera?

Yeah, I mean, that last part is kind of

what I was asking, which is,

have you had conversation about what this

person is looking for in their job, where

they want, et cetera?

Not about, you know, a plan necessarily,

but what were their goals in mind and

helping their coach alongside.

It's not like there's more to this story

that we're not going to get.

I'm not seeing any

any significant updates.

A lot of people giving

more advice here and there.

Yeah, again,

that that rapid growth is pretty

significant in such a

short amount of time.

But I would focus on

this person as a person.

Forget their forget the way in which they

communicated what they communicated

unless you feel it's a real

insubordinate,

insubordinate kind of flavor here.

Focus entirely if you can on advocating

for this person, giving them the path

forward to be successful if they want to

be successful and then it's their choice

if they want to be successful or not.

And then report up to your manager.

Like I said, talk to your manager.

Hey, is this true?

Like I said, my guy says that he should

have my job or a job like my job.

Is that true?

Is that not get the

details from your manager?

They might be able to

give you more insight there.

Cool.

Excellent.

Awesome.

Let's see what else we got.

Let's see if I can listen to at least one

more, maybe two more.

Let's see.

Mm hmm.

OK, we have a question

from seven hours ago.

This question, the OP says driving

conversations and engaging

with senior stakeholders.

OK, I performed exceptionally well in my

job, but my promotion has

been stopped for one reason.

OK, so you had a promotion, but you don't

have a promotion because of something.

OK, my managers think I don't have the

ability to drive conversations or engage

effectively with a group

of senior stakeholders.

I'm also seen as not

being visible and engaged.

How do I work on this?

What?

I've performed well, exceptionally well

in my job, but my promotion has been

stopped for one reason.

So you were promised a promotion, a

promotion was coming,

and then suddenly it's not?

There's more to the story.

I don't know that I can give any kind of

insight here because

if there's a promotion, that means

there's a spot

available for a higher level.

If it's being stopped, I mean, someone

else is getting the job instead of you

and they have the ability that you need

that maybe you don't have or they decide

that seat is no longer going to be filled

or they're going to wait until you

develop these skills for you can develop

in that seat, which is weird, but OK.

And the argument, I don't have the

ability to drive conversations or engage

effectively with a group

of senior stakeholders.

That could mean a lot

of different things.

It could also mean that there's a there's

an age bias for those stakeholders.

They don't want to talk

to someone who's young.

I'm assuming young like you, Opie.

And then you've been advised that you are

not being seen as visible and engaged.

How do I work on this?

The only advice I give you, because

there's a lot of data missing from the

story, is getting more details from

people giving you this feedback, asking

them what do you

specifically mean about it?

And I'm going to try this.

It's possible there's an

ageism ageism issue here.

It's possible.

It's possible you do

have to work on something.

It's possible.

I don't know, man, the whole you have a

promotion, but then you

don't get stopped for a reason.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't I don't if any company does it

that way, they promise you a promotion.

Something's lined up for you, but then

they stop it because of that.

Something's funny about the company.

That's all you got to say about that.

Couple comments here.

Someone says no one

can answer that for you.

You provide no details about your job,

know your behaviors, your

communication style, etc.

People are.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're all kind of saying the

same thing that I said there.

OK, cool.

Got it.

Got it.

Moving on.

Let's see if we can get one more in here.

Mm hmm.

Here we go.

From four days ago, Opie says, how do I

transition from being a

reliable doer to a leader?

Cool.

Opie writes, I am reliable.

Nice.

I provide good results and

apply myself to deliver success.

Mm hmm.

That's a weird way of

saying that, but OK, sure.

I have been promoted to a rank military,

which requires me to transition from

doing things to leaving

people and doing things.

OK, this makes sense now.

Yep, I'm reliable.

I apply myself to live success.

Yep, that's exactly how

a military person talks.

I get it now.

Got it.

Managing a group of people to execute

something bigger than myself

is my vision and direction.

Yeah, that is a

totally different skill set.

That's massive.

Huge.

Congrats to you, by the way.

But yeah, that's

totally different skill set.

I have issues with this, however.

OK, is it I have personal issues that I'm

struggling with that I'm adapting or I

just don't like the idea

that I have to do this?

It could be a phrasing issue.

Number one, I don't

trust people very much.

Oh, there we go.

And instead of micromanaging my

subordinates, which is terrible to me, I

just end up cutting out the middleman and

doing it myself to get the results that I

think are effective.

And my leadership sees

them as effective, too.

So I see this as a win.

It's not OK.

So it sounds like you

recognize this is a problem.

Cool.

OK, cool.

That's that's big for you.

Big ups.

Number two, I don't like taking credit

for what other people have done.

If I lead ex people through a big

development project, which a vision that

has a quantifiable effect on the entire

force, I feel like I'm being disingenuous

because I didn't really do anything.

They did.

I was just there for support.

I'm proud of them, of course, but I want

to use that effect to

bolster them, not me.

At least that's what I lean towards.

That sounds like a weird humble brag in a

weird way, but OK, I'm going to assume

that this person is being honest here.

The problem is my annual reports and

awards packages are framing my actions as

doing which is hurting my chances at

recognition and further promotion.

I feel like if I fully stepped into this

leader role, I would feel like I'm not

pulling my weight in the project.

The kicker is that I've been recognized

as an excellent leader in the past during

some professional military education.

I was cited by my peers, 144 people as

the best leader and the one who was most

influential in the

success of the five week course.

It's the one accolade I'm most proud of

in my 18 year career.

Are there any exercises or methods that I

can focus on to train myself to sort of

step back in a project and be more

comfortable with trusting others?

OK,

OK.

A lot to unpack here, but I'm going to

get to the through line right away.

You are uncomfortable

being in the position

of having to lead people.

You are uncomfortable being in a position

where you're more hands off.

You

are more uncomfortable being in a

position where you are hands off.

You feel better about

your own meritocracy.

That's, you know,

believing that I'm I'm worth more.

I have merit more when I do

more when I'm the one doing it.

You know that

micromanaging is just bad for everyone.

Kudos to you.

You also feel like you're not doing

enough when your whole

team is doing the work.

OK.

I don't have an exercise per se, but I

have something I want

you to start shooting for.

The being a leader is the opposite of

being a doer in many cases, and a

successful leader is one who vacillates

between being a capital L leader.

And being a kind of in the trenches

person who gets things done whenever

needed and tries to do

that as minimally as possible.

A successful leader is one who shoots for

the feeling of uncomfortability that you

are feeling right now.

So what does that mean?

That means if you're doing your job right

and your goals are being met and the

deliverables are getting done.

It should feel like you're sitting on

your hands and not doing anything, and it

should feel really uncomfortable.

Which is exactly what you're feeling.

And you know you'll be doing it right

when that's the feeling you have almost

every day of your work life.

Because

what a great leader is supposed to do is

put out the fires for their direct

reports who need help getting those fires

put out so they can keep doing good work.

It's not your job to

do the work for them.

It's your job to help

them get the work done.

Put another way, you're not responsible

for the goals of the team.

You're responsible for the people who are

now responsible for the goals of the

team, which are now the

people that work with you.

You're responsible for them

as people caring about them.

Managing their obstacles,

supporting them wherever you can.

This is a reframe of what you're doing.

This feeling that you have is kind of

more or less right on.

Now your bosses, they probably think

you're a great leader probably because

they see some of this, but they also have

seen the results of really great things

happened because you rolled up your

sleeves and did the work

without anyone knowing.

Because you don't like

taking credit for things.

Good for you.

Except you know it seems like from your

post you can't do that forever.

You're going to fall

apart if you do that.

You have to in some capacity

learn that that is not sustainable.

And know that if your bosses think you're

an amazing leader because of the results

of things, it's because they

didn't know how you got there.

And at the end of the day, that's all

people care about is results.

So it's you that has to

define the process to things.

So I'm curious to see what the comments

say about what you should be doing.

I would suggest how you're feeling right

now is the target and

try to feel it more.

Feel like you're not doing enough.

That will tell you

you're a good leader here.

Comments.

Congratulations.

You've completed the final level of team

member and commenced

level one of team leader.

Your job now is to nurture your team and

help them grow as doers.

Yes.

Your goal is help them fulfill their

potential and get them to execute at 100

percent of their

potential. 100 percent of the time.

Obviously impossible to

do, but that's your goal.

The reason you quote cut out the

middleman quote is because you know you

can do their job better

than them, which is true.

And also the reason why you got promoted.

The reason you don't trust them is

because they don't deliver

outcomes to your standard.

But of course they don't.

That's why they didn't get the promotion.

When they complete a task, they might

complete it 50

percent as good as you can.

You'd be OK with that.

You then give them guidance to construct

and instruct a feedback

that helps them, not you.

Next time they do that task, they might

complete 70 percent as good as you can.

Then you offer them

more guidance and feedback.

Over time, they will learn to complete

the task just as good

as you, if not better.

Now because of you, your feedback, your

guidance and your leadership.

That's your job now.

That's what you do.

Once each person in your team is

executing to your standard, you move on

to team level number

two, wherever that may be.

I like that.

I couldn't have said better myself.

Bravo.

Ninety two upvotes.

Absolutely. 100 percent.

The part about being OK with 50 percent

is the real struggle.

My instinct is always just

grab it and fix it myself.

I've been in a similar spot where I felt

like I wasn't doing real work.

I just stood back and

let others handle things.

Took me a while to realize that leading

is the work now, not a side

thing while you also do tasks.

Yep.

Absolutely.

And someone says, this is probably the

best explanation of

leadership I've ever seen anywhere.

Wish I had more than one vote to give on.

Yeah.

Great advice.

A lot of people love that comment.

It's a great one.

That's one comment says, people often don't

realize that being a leader is a

completely different

profession than a technical expert.

It's really natural to feel that way.

A leader has to accept that others will

do things differently

and will sometimes fail.

Your job is to bring them up and to

support them so that

they can get to your level.

Doing it for them will disempower them

and make them feel

like you don't trust them.

Absolutely true.

Keep your door open to them.

Give them clear instructions.

Listen to them when they come to you.

Let them offer answers rather than

telling them how to solve an issue.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't have any further comments here.

I think this is all fantastic, good stuff

here about leadership.

Again, when we roll up our sleeves and do

the work for someone, we

kind of emasculate them.

But if we say, hey, you call the shots,

you own this project now.

What support do you need from me in order

for you to be successful?

You call it, you tell me

what to do and I'll do that.

But then you still you

carry it home for me.

That's what leadership does.

So it sounds like

you're on the right path.

It sounds like it's

uncomfortability is the right call.

Just keep leaning into it, my friend.

Keep leaning into it and you'll be

surprised by the results.

All right, folks.

All right.

All right.

All right.

So here we are.

Our final segment for

our counter hit today.

We talked about a lot of

different interesting things.

We talked about

preservation.

We talked about Labor Day.

But the theme I kept coming back to, I

kept thinking about

throughout our time today

was masks.

The masks we wear to

kind of navigate life.

Yeah,

the masks we wear to navigate life.

I said before during Labor

Day, I thought long and hard about

grinding, doing some work.

I had some admin stuff I had to do.

I had enough work to pile me up at my

desk for eight hours that

day if I really wanted to.

And I thought about it.

And I thought about doing it out of a

sense of not wanting to have guilt or

shame coming into Tuesday today.

I chose not to.

I chose to say, you know what?

There's going to be work tomorrow.

There's always work tomorrow.

There's always work tomorrow.

I'm going to take the day.

I'm going to relax.

I'm going to chill.

Spend time with family.

Get some exercise in.

Enjoy the sunny day.

Disconnect from the internet.

Be off of everything.

And it was joyous.

It was truly joyous.

I felt the anxieties of

life kind of dissipate.

I felt myself relaxed.

And this morning, especially getting into

my routine, pretending

like Tuesday was Monday,

I felt my natural self come through.

The masks were falling

away or had been falling away.

If I'm being honest with you, by

mid-afternoon, the masks had come back.

The work mask, the husband mask, the get

things done mask, the I'm behind, I'm

behind, I'm behind mask.

It's already coming back.

And I'm a little ashamed by that.

And I'm a little upset.

But I love that I got to recognize for a

little bit when those masks were gone.

That's wild.

That's amazing.

I'm fortunate that I had

that opportunity to do that.

And I think about all of

us in the masks we wear.

Certain masks are

there for survival, right?

You're having a really crappy day, but

you're walking down the street.

You don't want to be doom and gloom to

all the strangers you see on the street

as you walk on the sidewalk.

You want to smile a little bit.

So that way you kind of communicate to

your whole collective that

you're a good faith actor.

You're a good person.

You're not out to get anyone.

I'm not asking you to change that

behavior necessarily.

What I am asking is what's the benefit

if we started to give ourselves

permission to see past people's masks and

get to the deeper person themselves?

You ask John down the

street how he's doing.

And every single day you see him, he

says, "Bye, bye, Daddy."

"It's a beautiful day."

Or "Live in the

dream," as some people say.

Lean into it a little bit and

say, "Yeah, tell me about it."

"What's your dream today, John?"

"What's going on for you?"

And of course they might talk a little

bit before they say, "Ah, you know,

that's all nonsense.

You don't want to hear about that."

What

you can say is, "Actually,

John, that's where you're wrong.

I do want to hear about it.

Tell me more."

Now, this requires emotional spoons and

energy that not everyone has all the

time, not even myself included.

But if we challenge ourselves just do

that just a little bit more,

I think the world can become a

better place than it was before.

I think so, anyway.

And I think that's worth

a shot, don't you think?

I think it's worth it.

Making us feel kinder, nicer,

more safe, more comfortable.

We're all in this together.

We're all in Team Human.

You're not alone.

Together we can do this.

I'm not going to leave you.

I'll support you.

I'm not going to carry the torch for you,

but I can be here right

now, emotionally available.

Tell me what it is you need from me in

order for you to be successful.

This is your show.

You call the shots, but I'm here, John.

I think of a world all the time where we

do a little bit more of that.

And sometimes I see it.

I see it with my friends, I see it with

my family, I see it outside, I see it.

You don't have to suffer alone.

You don't have to mask up.

You don't have to put

on armor arbitrarily.

It can be you, the real you, and your

friends, your family,

the ones that love you.

They'll be there for you.

And in fact, they'll love the real

version of you who's not

masked up all the time.

One of the things we do here at Zero Dot

is we intentionally make things a little

scrappy, make me a little rough.

I'm a recovering perfectionist.

Our

engineer behind the scenes,

our creative director, Daniel,

he's got an attention to detail that

pushes him to always try to get things

exactly 100% correct.

And it's served us well for a lot of our

lives and our careers.

But I'll tell you, it's also it's the

fastest way to burn out and it's also the

fastest way to disconnect

ourselves from other people.

So we're intentionally a little bit rough

here on Zero Dot on the counter hit.

We're intentionally

not super highly polished.

You watch our feed and I purposely put

filters on it to make it look fuzzy and

like a VHS, like a CRT TV, forcing you to

lean in if you want

to get more into this.

And yeah, that means our...

That means our attach rates a little bit

lower, but those that are attached get a

lot more out of it because they get to

listen to us in the background, watch us

in the background or really get invested

in because we have something to say.

And I'm not for everyone.

I'm weird.

Got weird behaviors.

I've got weird likes and interests.

And that's okay.

It's more than okay.

You wouldn't want normal.

Normal is everybody else.

Counter hit is counter hit.

You can only get counter hit here.

That's a promise I make to myself, to

always be myself whenever I've got the

cameras rolling for you all.

Think about the promise you can make to

your friends and family in the same way

and think about what you can do for

complete strangers or friends that...

acquaintances that could be closer

friends if you wanted to by trying to

break through their mask just a little

bit in a safe and gentle way.

I think the world

would be a better place.

And at the very least,

you'll be glad you gave it a shot.

I know I would be.

And that is your counter hit moment.

Hey, have you been

tuning in this entire time?

Good for you.

Bully for you.

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known, cannot be made possible without

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And this show is only made

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You can become a member too for only

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So come check us out at www.patreon.com

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dot com for more details.

All right, folks, here we are.

This is the end of our show.

I know

time is short.

I know.

I wish we could spend all the time

together, but we can't.

We have things to do and you have things

to do, but it's been a pleasure to waste

some time with you this

week here on the counter.

I'm your host, Sam Kirk,

my creative engineer and director.

Daniel Pratly is behind the scenes making

all the magic happen.

Give him a shout if

you can in the comments.

Remember to be human.

Remember to be there for

your fellow friends and family.

Remember that while all the other

craziness is happening, you don't have to

go down that same path.

That's what the counter hits all about.

Come find us at www.thecounterhit.com.

Check us out at our Patreon at

patreon.com slash zero dot media.

We are posted everywhere.

Our podcasts are Spotify, Amazon, Apple,

YouTube, even for everywhere.

Wherever you listen to us or watch us

know that we appreciate you.

And until next time.

Keep it real.

Cheers.