My name is Nicholas Ploof. Wow, I moved too much, and so the lights came on. Where's the tape?
I got used to too much moving with my hands for the videos to say stuff. I'm doing my job too good, yeah.
My name is Nicholas Ploof, and I'm a writer here at Linus Media Group.
How long have you been working here? Two years, over two years now.
Basically, every day, and I'm learning something, almost every single week or day.
Every project, whether it's something new or something I already know about, I'm going to have to learn more about it.
So, I like always learning, and I like, if I'm not challenging myself, then I just kind of sit around doing nothing.
It's like I need something to push me. Yeah, that's probably my favorite part.
The worst part is, that's a tough question.
Standards are pretty high, and so that can be really hard.
It can be hard when scope creep happens, and then all of a sudden an easy video turns into a not easy video.
So, all of a sudden a video can become huge and hard to manage, a little unwieldy.
Maybe I have to do even more research than I initially thought.
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,
actually, we're going to go deeper into this, and then it's a whole extra half a day of just research.
Otherwise, the parking.
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,
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.
9.12. Yeah, don't show up passing like 9.12.
It's hard. Not in a bad way.
It's just, he's very demanding, and he has really high standards.
He does change his mind, but it's usually for a good reason.
So I've only ever had to basically argue full stop and say, no, we are not doing this once.
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.
He's like, yeah, okay, fine. It's just, yeah, he's reasonable.
He's got a strong opinion, but it's not usually a bad take.
Usually. Wanshow is a whole other thing.
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,
it's usually right. He's been doing this like 10 years.
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.
But yeah, it can be hard. I don't know how I'd describe him.
He's Linus. It's hard to...
I don't know. He's a tech guy running a media company.
I don't know. Like I said, he's got a strong opinion on things, and he's got high standards.
I don't know. I feel like I kind of described him in the last question already.
He's just very set in his ways, but he's not going to like...
He's open to feedback.
He'll just probably have a response when you inevitably have a response to that feedback.
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.
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.
Say you're an editor, there's a good chance you're going to have to shoot something at some point.
You might have to edit something completely unrelated that you've like never even had to do before.
If you're a shooter, there's a lot of different challenges that you might face.
These guys always have to set up weird lighting setups and get everything right.
Get the camera angles perfect and all that.
As a writer, yeah, it's hard because we have a lot to do.
Like I said, I'm a writer and host, but really I'm like a producer.
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.
I'm a producer, you know, running around making sure the video actually happens.
So yeah, just don't try to come in thinking it's all sunshine and rainbows and we just mess around all day.
Because you've seen a few videos where people are messing around in the warehouse or something like that.
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.
That's kind of just what I delved into in terms of hobbies.
And I saw the post go up saying, hey, we're hiring writers.
And I thought, eh, well, I'm a writer.
I like computers.
I'll apply and see if I get it. And then I got it.
It wasn't easy. There was a lot of, you know, tests and it was like a two or three interview process.
But yeah, I'd been a fan of the channel for years.
Not like a huge fan, but you know, I'd watch the LTT videos along with like GN and other tech channels for years.
And I, it's funny about a year prior to that happening, I actually looked up, oh, they're right.
They're Canadian. Oh, they're NBC. Oh, they're in like Surrey kind of Vancouver area.
I'm in Vancouver area. I like computer.
I like writing. I will apply and then I did and then I got the job.
He's pretty close. He's pretty similar, honestly.
Everything is kind of ramped up a little bit. And in some videos, he's definitely playing more of a character than in others.
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.
I just, I don't know. He doesn't seem as authentic as he does in a lot of other videos.
So those are like some of my least favorite ones.
Honestly, yeah, it's, he's not, I don't think he's too different off camera.
Like maybe a bit more reserved and relaxed, but it's similar.
Yeah. He's definitely playing a persona, but it's like an amped up version of himself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But at the same time, I think there's a huge audience for people who want that.
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.
And so you can kind of go off of like, what's the differences rather than what's the new hotness.
So that's what I would like to see more time for projects would be good.
If somebody wants to work here, what's one thing they need to know?
Be open to criticism. Like you, you can't be thin skinned at all if you want to work here.
I've never been put down or insulted or anything like that.
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.
And he's right. Like that's like, it's, he's right.
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.
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.
And so luckily I'm good. I can take a lot of criticism just fine.
Like just tell me what's terrible about it and we can move on and keep going.
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.
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.
And he's the head of writing. He should be. And then Linus is, I don't want to say a content stickler.
Like he's very much like, this is good. This is bad.
This is going to get views. This is not going to get views. And he's usually right.
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,
then you're fine. If you can't do that, then yeah, you're hooped.