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My name is Nicholas Ploof. Wow, I moved too much, and so the lights came on. Where's the tape?

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I got used to too much moving with my hands for the videos to say stuff. I'm doing my job too good, yeah.

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My name is Nicholas Ploof, and I'm a writer here at Linus Media Group.

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How long have you been working here? Two years, over two years now.

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Basically, every day, and I'm learning something, almost every single week or day.

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Every project, whether it's something new or something I already know about, I'm going to have to learn more about it.

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So, I like always learning, and I like, if I'm not challenging myself, then I just kind of sit around doing nothing.

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It's like I need something to push me. Yeah, that's probably my favorite part.

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The worst part is, that's a tough question.

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Standards are pretty high, and so that can be really hard.

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It can be hard when scope creep happens, and then all of a sudden an easy video turns into a not easy video.

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So, all of a sudden a video can become huge and hard to manage, a little unwieldy.

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Maybe I have to do even more research than I initially thought.

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It's like, oh, this is kind of deep where I want to go, and then all of a sudden I'll talk to Linus or James or someone else, and it'll be like,

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actually, we're going to go deeper into this, and then it's a whole extra half a day of just research.

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Otherwise, the parking.

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We've hired quite a few people. When I first started, this wasn't much of a problem, but now we're at the point where, if you're not here by like 9 o'clock, 9.30 at the late,

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even if you show up at like 9.30, you're probably not getting a parking spot, and you're going to have to park on the street.

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9.12. Yeah, don't show up passing like 9.12.

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It's hard. Not in a bad way.

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It's just, he's very demanding, and he has really high standards.

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He does change his mind, but it's usually for a good reason.

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So I've only ever had to basically argue full stop and say, no, we are not doing this once.

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It was only one time, and I presented a pretty good argument as to why we shouldn't, and, you know, he went with it.

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He's like, yeah, okay, fine. It's just, yeah, he's reasonable.

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He's got a strong opinion, but it's not usually a bad take.

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Usually. Wanshow is a whole other thing.

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But when it comes to projects and video ideas and whether or not a video will be better because we're doing a certain thing his way,

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it's usually right. He's been doing this like 10 years.

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But he has really high standards. And like I said before, I like having to meet high standards because I'll try to do that, and it'll push me to actually improve myself.

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But yeah, it can be hard. I don't know how I'd describe him.

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He's Linus. It's hard to...

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I don't know. He's a tech guy running a media company.

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I don't know. Like I said, he's got a strong opinion on things, and he's got high standards.

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I don't know. I feel like I kind of described him in the last question already.

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He's just very set in his ways, but he's not going to like...

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He's open to feedback.

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He'll just probably have a response when you inevitably have a response to that feedback.

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They probably think it's like all fun and games. And to get to work here, you know, it's like a dream come true.

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It's a lot of work. It's a lot of hard work. And you wear a lot of hats no matter what department you're in.

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Say you're an editor, there's a good chance you're going to have to shoot something at some point.

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You might have to edit something completely unrelated that you've like never even had to do before.

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If you're a shooter, there's a lot of different challenges that you might face.

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These guys always have to set up weird lighting setups and get everything right.

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Get the camera angles perfect and all that.

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As a writer, yeah, it's hard because we have a lot to do.

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Like I said, I'm a writer and host, but really I'm like a producer.

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I'm an IT guy, not like management level, but I'm like low end IT guy to try to fix whatever computer problem is happening.

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I'm a producer, you know, running around making sure the video actually happens.

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So yeah, just don't try to come in thinking it's all sunshine and rainbows and we just mess around all day.

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Because you've seen a few videos where people are messing around in the warehouse or something like that.

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It's yeah, it's a job. I was working from home during the pandemic and I was on PC Master A subreddit all the time and I was upgrading my computer all the time.

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That's kind of just what I delved into in terms of hobbies.

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And I saw the post go up saying, hey, we're hiring writers.

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And I thought, eh, well, I'm a writer.

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I like computers.

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I'll apply and see if I get it. And then I got it.

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It wasn't easy. There was a lot of, you know, tests and it was like a two or three interview process.

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But yeah, I'd been a fan of the channel for years.

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Not like a huge fan, but you know, I'd watch the LTT videos along with like GN and other tech channels for years.

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And I, it's funny about a year prior to that happening, I actually looked up, oh, they're right.

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They're Canadian. Oh, they're NBC. Oh, they're in like Surrey kind of Vancouver area.

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I'm in Vancouver area. I like computer.

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I like writing. I will apply and then I did and then I got the job.

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He's pretty close. He's pretty similar, honestly.

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Everything is kind of ramped up a little bit. And in some videos, he's definitely playing more of a character than in others.

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Like I don't, I personally don't like the gold controller videos because he goes, I don't know if you've seen them, but he goes like way too like energetic and like he's geeking out over gold and stuff.

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I just, I don't know. He doesn't seem as authentic as he does in a lot of other videos.

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So those are like some of my least favorite ones.

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Honestly, yeah, it's, he's not, I don't think he's too different off camera.

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Like maybe a bit more reserved and relaxed, but it's similar.

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Yeah. He's definitely playing a persona, but it's like an amped up version of himself.

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So if I could change anything about LMG, what I would like to change is I would like to focus on more content that is less expensive.

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I would love to have us start a channel that like solely focuses on low end hardware, low end TVs, low end electronics in general.

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Because, you know, it's not that we don't know, we do a lot of expensive stuff and it's not that we know, or that we don't know that it's, you know, out of reach for most people.

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It's just, it's a lot easier to talk about expensive stuff because it's usually got the new features, it's got the cool stuff.

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If I go buy some like 1080p TV, it's like, it's a TV, it's a 1080p, so it's hard to make that content.

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But at the same time, I think there's a huge audience for people who want that.

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Because especially once you start comparing like five 1080p, even entry level four, five entry level, like $400, $500, 4K TVs, it becomes more interesting.

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And so you can kind of go off of like, what's the differences rather than what's the new hotness.

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So that's what I would like to see more time for projects would be good.

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If somebody wants to work here, what's one thing they need to know?

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Be open to criticism. Like you, you can't be thin skinned at all if you want to work here.

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I've never been put down or insulted or anything like that.

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But, you know, if I walk into a script review and I have a bad intro, the first thing Linus is going to tell me is like, this is a sh** intro.

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And he's right. Like that's like, it's, he's right.

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He'll point out, it's always constructive. He'll always then, you know, here's why here's X, Y and Z, like this doesn't work.

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This is a bad take, etc. But you'll be told right away, like whether something is a terrible idea or if it's not going to work or if, you know, it's just bad.

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And so luckily I'm good. I can take a lot of criticism just fine.

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Like just tell me what's terrible about it and we can move on and keep going.

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But yeah, if you thin skinned, if you, if you come in and you like, you have a script and you present it as a writer at least.

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And there's a bunch of flaws. Get ready to be called out on them because James is a grammar stickler in a good way.

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And he's the head of writing. He should be. And then Linus is, I don't want to say a content stickler.

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Like he's very much like, this is good. This is bad.

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This is going to get views. This is not going to get views. And he's usually right.

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And so if you're not ready to basically take a script and be okay with it completely changing and being told why it got changed and why it was bad in the first place,

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then you're fine. If you can't do that, then yeah, you're hooped.