Oh, since we lost folks, shocking new data released just shows that social media peaked in 2022 and it's been gradually declining ever since. We witnessed history of a 22-year-old inventor ran the world's first muscle car off a fuel he converted from plastic waste. Japan is about to elect their first female prime minister in history. Bad Bunny is causing a major NFL boycott and holidays in China are absolutely terrifying. All that and so much more, subscribe to the channel if you give it up for this bloody Spook Timber Studio. Woo! All the empress is doing. Now, I have hurt my back so I cannot do any whipping and this one's like majorly hurt. So, let's stop the yapping and let's go. [Music] You're lucky I'm doing this video stood up. I was about to do this the first ever sitting down video. That would be crazy and I didn't and I still got a whip in. So, you're welcome. Okay, let's kick today off with a story that absolutely shocked me. I mean, no one is really talking about it perhaps because no one's really noticed but social media usage actually peaked in 2022 and it's been steadily declining ever since. And the thing is, I was actually planning to talk today about the Sora app and how over the past couple of days all of these huge creators, I'm talking Mr. Beast, Casey Neistat, they've all been talking about how scary the future of content creation is and social media because of it. But in the research for that, I stumbled across this. Now, big credit to the Financial Times for doing this analysis but as you can see from these charts, every single age range has seen a decrease in time spent on social media. Surprisingly, with the age range 16 to 24 being the most pronounced. They've decreased the most. In fact, the only age group that hasn't seen a significant drop is the age category of 55 to 64 which I guess it does make sense since they are still adopting social media to start with. Now, the second chart gets even more interesting because the reason for using social media has also dramatically changed as well. That was so shocked that the era of using social media to, you know, keep up with your friends and be more social in that regard has kind of just disappeared entirely. But what is kind of shocking is that the biggest reason to go on social media for most people remains to keep up with celebrities which actually also peaked in 2022 and has been declining as well. And I imagine those kind of things like keeping up with celebrity can fall into the category of like, what is the latest Mr. Beast upload? Like that not like, what is Kim Kardashian doing today? Now, the category that has kept on rising is to fill spare time. Now, I think that one in particular is probably the most worrying and is the one that is worrying content creators like Mr. Beast, Casey Neistat and stuff because if one of your main primary reasons to go on TikTok or to YouTube is just to fill spare time, you're much less concerned about watching an amazing work of art made by a master filmmaker. You're kind of just there to get a couple hits of dopamine, to have a few chuckles and then just get back to what you were doing. I mean, it's it's like a not that deep. It's not that deep, bro kind of scroll. And I think that's the difference between mindful scrolling and mindless scrolling. And as we can see by the data, mindless scrolling is on the rise. Then, there is the most fascinating chart of all in my opinion. As you can see, the global average of time spent on social media is decreasing. And the exact same you can see in Asia and Europe but the only region that is actually bucking this global trend is North America. You guys over there, you're still climbing somehow when the entire other world is going down. In fact, by 2024, Americans' usage actually reached levels 15% higher than Europe. So, the big question is, why? Why is social media technically dying right now? And even more bizarrely, why is that exacerbated for younger people? Now, there's a lot of answers to that question. There's not just one. But if I were to throw my little two cents in the wishing well here, I feel like this is evidence that we're starting to see a distinction being made between good content and content that you can't stop watching cuz there is a difference. And the difference is, that's what determines how you feel after you get off the app. It's kind of like the difference in feeling you get after you binge eat unhealthy food out of addiction versus eating an unhealthy meal on the weekend because you know you've earned it. But the problem is the algorithms that run social media massively blur the lines between what's good content and addictive content. I mean, that's literally brain rot content, isn't it? I mean, no one's going to say that brain rot content slop is is good but it's also very popular and addictive. But the problem is because the social media algorithms prioritize watch time, this in turn forces content creators to make content that keeps you watching over content that makes you feel something, that makes you think, that tells a meaningful story, that sends a powerful message, that helps you learn something. And I mean, the list goes on. I mean, the distinction between these two types of content has never been more clear to me than um when Speed was getting a tour around Mr. Beast's studio. Now, Jimmy was showing him a bunch of these sets for an upcoming video and one of them was this the ceiling and the walls, they were filled with spikes. As the video starts, they slowly start coming in. And this is all while it's closing in where the contestants are trying to figure out a puzzle. And when Mr. Beast explained the whole reason for doing this, he said this. Yeah, this is the intro shot. It's going to be crazy cuz like you click on a video, spikes are instantly coming down. People are still have a puzzles. How do you stop watching? It's so cool. All right. Yeah. Classic. Yeah. Classic Mr. Beast. And when I heard that, I it just suddenly hit me all of a sudden. It was like, his main thing was, how do you keep people watching once they're on? Not, what amazing story or, you know, video do I want to create? And I'm not saying that Mr. Beast's content isn't good. You guys know I glaze Mr. Beast a lot. But I think a lot of people are questioning the future of social media especially right now when apps like Sora are just flooding the internet with this crazy content. They're all like, what the hell? Park now. I'm a sorry, officer. I I just Don't move. LATCH IS LOCKED. OPEN IT RIGHT NOW. HE'S STILL SOUTHBOUND WEAVING THROUGH TRAFFIC 88 miles an hour. OUT OF THE WAY. MAMMA MIA. I think it's going to start to matter a lot more about how people feel when watching the content rather than just people watching the content. And I think if it's just addictive watching because you can't stop, then you're going to see trends like this continue. Anyway, sorry. I should probably cut this one off sooner rather than later. This is supposed to be a Monday rapid fire. Just passionate about the subject. Moving on. But talking about good content, guys, over the weekend, we may have just witnessed history. So, on Saturday, 22-year-old inventor Julian Brown ran the first ever muscle car on plastiline, not gasoline. Plastiline is his 110 octane gasoline that he converted from plastic waste. Now, as you can see from his live stream that he did in Atlanta, he turned the car on to show the crowds watching. I think there was like up to a thousand people there that there was no fuel inside and sure enough, it couldn't start. Then, he proceeded to fill it with a canister of plastiline, pressed the button and boy, it started and the rest is history. Now, to be clear to everyone that I know is rushing into the comments right now, Julian Brown didn't invent pyrolysis. Converting plastic to fuel is a well-established process that has been around for decades. But what Julian Brown did invent is the world's first ever continuous solar microwave pyrolysis reactor. That is a world's first. And this reactor fundamentally changes how renewable and expensive this process of pyrolysis is. And what needs to be stressed even more than just that is that he did all of this without the backing of large corporations and he was able to do this all by himself in the backyard with a box of scraps. WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS! NOW, HE SAYS that the reason for doing all of this is to send a message to the world that people are no longer going to wait for big corporations or big government to do what needs to be done. We are done. It does not matter. We're not going to wait on some big corporation, some big government to do what needs to be done. If we need to do it ourselves, we will do it ourselves because this is our world. >> in May, he got his plastic diesel scientifically tested and it passed with flying colors. In fact, the lab even said that Julian's diesel released better emissions than regular diesel. I thought it was surprisingly well distilled. Um I thought it was surprisingly clean as well for a plastic. And it blew my mind that plastic could be re-distilled into diesel. Now, he says his ultimate end goal is to get this into the world and where it needs to be. Let's get it in the world. Let's get it implemented how it needs to be because that's the whole point of why I started this. And so, that's the strive and the move without a doubt to get this where it needs to be. So, big congratulations to Julian. Protect this man at all costs. Moving on. Also, talking about history being made, Japan is about to make history of their own because Sanae Takaichi is about to become the country's first-ever female prime minister. And the thing is, you're probably thinking, "Oh, that's a pretty liberal and progressive move by Japan." Well, no. Actually, it's the opposite. Sanae is actually a hardline conservative. She's anti-immigration and and actually anti-liberal. In fact, she isn't even a conventional feminist at all, but rather in favor of traditional values. Because she opposes things like married couples having different surnames, same-sex marriages, and she's also not in favor of women inheriting the throne in Japan's royal family. Japan's ruling party, which is ironically called the Liberal Democratic Party, they elected her as their next leader. And that's a move to actually attract more conservative voters. And while she hasn't been technically voted in as prime minister yet, her party is the biggest in Japan's more powerful lower chamber, meaning she's by far in the lead to be elected when lawmakers make a vote later this month. But why this is so significant is because, I mean, kind of like we're seeing all over the world right now, political parties in Japan are now also leaning more to the right to secure the votes and the power that is need to be in government. And it just highlights how so many countries are leaning more to conservative values and conservative politics right now. But the question is, what do you guys think? Is she what Japan needs right now or the complete opposite? Let me know your thoughts. Move it on. Also, staying in Asia, I don't know if you guys have seen this, but oh my lord, China holidays are horrifying. Now, the country is currently having their Golden Week National Holiday, which spans a massive 8 days. But when your country has a light population of 1.4 billion people and they're all trying to travel across the country for a little holiday, you get absolute chaos. I mean, look at that. That's got to be one of the worst traffic jams I've seen in my life. Like, how many lanes is even that? I would also remember, that's just the people driving. Most people in China get the train. So, uh if you want to know the actual numbers, their national railway saw a record-breaking 23.13 million trips on the first day. That has never happened before in China. That's record-breaking. That's like taking the entire population of Australia and getting them all to travel on the train on one day. In fact, over this holiday period, the Ministry of Transport say that they are expecting to see 2.36 billion trips over the holiday period. Billion. But the crazier part is that China's not even a stranger to this kind of thing, because in 2010, they had the world's worst traffic jam in history. It lasted 12 days straight. There were some people stuck in their cars for 5 days without being able to go anywhere. Point is, no matter how busy you think that your transportation is, it cannot be China busy. Move it on. Also, last episode we spoke about how Netflix and Microsoft were getting canceled at the same time. Well, it was only a matter of time before another company was in the firing line. And in this time, it's not just a company, it's kind of an entire sport. Thousands of people are now trying to boycott the NFL. I guess that's kind of a company, but also a sport, because of an announcement that they made that Bad Bunny will be performing the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Which, hearing that, you might think, "Why they trying to cancel them for that? Isn't he like the or one of the most listened to artists in the world right now?" Yeah, he is, but you'll be very unsurprised to hear it's about politics, because of course it is. Now, you may or may not know that Bad Bunny has been a long-time critic of Trump. And he actually recently canceled his shows in the US in response to the ICE raids. Now, that pissed a lot of people off. But then, despite that, he accepts the offer to do the halftime Super Bowl show, which many people call as like a culturally American event. And then, just to add the icing on top of the angry cake, his songs will be exclusively in Spanish, not English. Guys, even the US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem commented on the decision by saying that the NFL are weak and that they will not be able to sleep at night. I mean, that also that ICE Enforcement will be at the Super Bowl and in her own words, will be all over that place. And then, the situation gets even crazier, because it kind of reached a boiling point over the weekend, because Saturday Night Live was hosted by Bad Bunny and he spoke in many parts in Spanish, proudly. He also said things like, "NFL fans have 4 months to learn Spanish." If you didn't understand what I just said, you have 4 months to learn. And that everyone is happy about this decision, that he will perform, even Fox News. And then, he proceeded to cut a clip of Fox News saying some very positive things about him. And I think everyone is happy about it, even Fox News. Bad Bunny is my favorite musician. >> should be the next president. NOW, AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, the backlash for this was huge online. People started posting things like, "Stop watching the NFL. Hey, NFL, Bad Bunny purposefully insults the fan base that made you incredibly wealthy. I promise there is a line and if you push over it, we'll mobilize the right against you and you won't recover for a long time." They're even calling Bad Bunny a racist, saying, "Dump this racist asshole." And the thing is, these posts have been getting thousands of reposts and millions of interactions. But then, on the other hand, I think it's worth noting that Bad Bunny is an American citizen. Puerto Rico, where he was born, is American. It's American territory. So, those who support him are arguing that Spanish is clearly part of American culture and that this is all just an attempt to marginalize the Latin American community in the country. So, the big question is, what do the NFL do from here? Will they fold under the pressure and tell Bad Bunny, "Actually, no, you can't do the halftime Super Bowl" or will they stick to their metaphorical guns? You got You got to emphasize that when you're speaking about about America. Anyway, I think that wraps today's video. I hope you guys had a fantastic weekend. I hope you guys enjoy the spook season. It's not 100% yet, but it's getting there. Anyway, I'm off to record a Page Rose video talking about "2 Weeks Later, It Was the iPhone 17, Worth It? Am I sticking to my iPhone 17 or am I switching back to Android?" So, better rush off. Love you guys. See you on Wednesday. Woo!