 Good morning, John. In 2010, YouTube celebrated itself with a thing called YouTube Rewind. At that point, this was just a top 10 list of the most popular YouTube videos of the year. Something that you could do back in 2010 when a viral video was something that happened maybe once a week and not a hundred times per day, like it does now. But YouTube Rewind really became itself in 2012 with a video that brought lots of top YouTubers into physical studios together to be a part of the memes. I remember feeling quite left out that I was not in YouTube Rewind that year or the next year. Then we did manage to slip into what may have been the peak of the series Rewind 2014, which is a vibe. Even re-watching that, though, it's clear that there is a problem. Already a YouTube video was moving away from being a genre of content and toward being a kind of content. To illustrate what I mean by that and the shift that really happened between 2016 and 2018, allow me to propose to you a thought experiment, Spotify Rewind. A single video that attempts to encapsulate the entire music industry's year in six minutes. No one wants this because it does not make any sense. Now starting in 2016, Spotify started to do something that people actually liked then and continue to like now. Wrapped is a recap of what you liked. Not like what happened in music that year, what you enjoyed in music and podcasts now. On YouTube in 2016, things were simple enough that people were like, yeah, okay, a fair number of these folks are people I have some affinity for or at least familiar with. But by 2018, the story of YouTube was very big, very complex, and had been really quite full of scandal. And more than anything, a YouTube video was not a genre of content anymore. It was a kind of content. It was not a single community anymore. It was many communities and many of those communities disliked each other. They had to have known that people would not like it. But in the way of large companies, I'm sure a lot of people looked at it and they said, this is bad, but it's the thing that we do and we've done it, so let's do it. Now in response to it being the most disliked YouTube video ever, in 2019, they just did like another top 10 video except with more production value and people also disliked that. It was clear to me at that point that there would never be a YouTube rewind and there was not another YouTube rewind. I would like to propose that we bring it back. Now people are annoyed by Spotify Wrapped. They will say Spotify Wrapped sucks either because they don't use Spotify and annoys them to feel left out or because they think that like your taste in music doesn't make you an interesting person. But I am neither of those kinds of person and I actually think that Spotify Wrapped delivers a ton of value to the people who make content, the people who use the platform and the platform itself. It seems to be a huge win. It shows me who I love, which I actually don't know. I don't know what YouTuber I watch the most of. It gives people content to share if they would like to. That's great promotion for Spotify and for the musicians and podcasters who are featured. And I think that it gives especially smaller podcasters and musicians a chance to feel appreciated and to connect with their audience. I think that this is what YouTube Rewind should be and I think that they should just call it YouTube Rewind. I think that that's great. A breakdown of my year on YouTube. Who did I watch? Who did I like? Is there a creator who basically like I'm a bigger fan of them than anyone else? Because I bet I am. I bet I'm gonna like 0.1% of a few creators. How many comments have you left? How many videos have you liked? How many super thanks and super chats have you sent? And in a perfect world, there's a chance for me to type a message to my favorite creator. And then the day after YouTube Rewind happens, creators get their own Rewind. That gives them all their stats and a few messages from people who appreciate their content. I think Spotify Wrapped does good things for the audience, the creators, and the platform. And I think for the people who find it annoying, they're part of the discourse too. It's a fun day. And it fixes all of YouTube Rewind's original problems. That it had to pick winners. That it had to try and portray YouTube in a particular way that was maybe not consistent with how we were imagining it. And of course with YouTube no longer being anything like a unified culture. And so YouTube, if you're listening, put me in, coach! My consulting rates are high, but they consist entirely of donations to Partners in Health. John, I will see you on Tuesday.