 What's up, everyone? So today we're gonna talk about Starlink, and we're also gonna talk about skin in the game, okay? That's a good Nasim Taleb buzzword. Here's the deal folks. So last week I put up a video about how I'm gonna get internet out in, you know, where I live very remotely, which involves using the 4G network and some equipment. It's not really important here, but I was asking for recommendations from people who had done something similar. Now, I got many good recommendations, but importantly, I got a bunch of recommendations from people who had not had such experience, and a lot of them recommended the same thing. This thing called Starlink, or as we call it here, Soilink. But so what is Starlink if you don't know? I had actually never heard about this till people, like literally hundreds of people either emailed me or commented about this thing. Starlink is this speculative technology project. It's a Elon Musk project, okay? And he is sending up all of these satellites into the sky, and it's supposed to be satellite internet, okay? Now first off, satellite internet already exists. I'll go ahead and tell you it's terrible. Now, maybe the technology they're using is somehow different or supposed to be better. It makes big promises about what it's supposed to be, and maybe they're gonna come true. Now, here's my problem though, okay? Now, I have nothing against Starlink. It's probably, if it works out, it works out fine, okay? That's fantastic. Maybe in a year's time, I'll actually be using it. You never know. So this is not a video about Starlink. What I'm more concerned about is the fact that there are literally, like the viral marketing campaign, in that there are literally hundreds of people who have had quite literally no experience with Starlink whatsoever, other than reading about it on Reddit. And they are basically marketing this product that they have never used. And I know they haven't used it. First off, it's only available. It's not available where I am. You have to be very high in latitudes in North America to get it, okay? And it costs, you know, maybe a down payment or so of 500 bucks and 100 bucks a month. Now, if that actually worked, and it worked at the speeds that they were talking about, that'd be great. But here's my issue. None of the people recommending this project have used it. There are one or two people out there online who have, you know, like, do videos or have posted other stuff about using this product. But I guarantee you that it is not something that all these people shilling it that heard about it on Reddit or something like that. They have never used it. Now, that upsets me. That's a lack of skin in the game. I think it's totally wrong to recommend something, especially when it's costly to someone else, when you don't know what you're talking about. When I say know what you're talking about, I don't mean, oh, I read it on the internet, so it's going to be real. But having direct experience with that stuff, that's why when I asked about internet, I specifically said, if you have done this, could you tell me what you did? Because that's what I'm interested in. Now, why do I say this? Now, again, it might be that Starlink is going to be great. Okay? Maybe. I'm not saying it's not. What I am saying is I'm not going to recommend a product before I have direct knowledge and direct exposure to how it's been used. Now, there's one time I can think of in my past on my YouTube channel, where I did not do this and I regret, I feel guilty about this. I want to say in the first year of me having a YouTube channel, I did a video on this thing. It was another speculative technology project. And you have to understand there are millions of these speculative technology projects all over the place all the time. And most of them are going to end up Ponzi schemes or scams. Okay? Or they're just not going to be big flops. All right? But one of these products that I recommended in a video is this thing called the EOMA. You guys might remember it if you've been at my channel for a long time. It was this little computer card, minimal computer card. You could fit it into a laptop casing. You could fit it into a desktop casing. The laptop casing could be like 3D printed. It was all open hardware, free software. Everything on paper was fantastic. Something you could keep in your pocket, right? You could plug it into like a public terminal and it would still have all your stuff on it. It's a very interesting idea. And I did a video on this about how great, how great the product was, how great the idea. Now, I wasn't getting paid for this or anything, but I just thought it was a good idea. So I did a video on it. Now, and after that video, I did put money down to get like a prototype. They were, you know, trying to make up prototypes in China and ship them out to people. Okay? Sort of the same state that, what's it called? Skylink or whatever? Skylink? Is that what it's called? Whatever. Who cares? Soylink. Sort of the same kind of, you know, state of development as Soylink is. Okay? Now, the issue with that is after a month, they were supposed to ship out in the month. I didn't get anything. They put out updates. Oh, we got to delay it another month and another month and another month. And I want to say around a year and a half went by and I never got anything. And no one else got anything because they kept running into problems. They kept, you know, underestimating how long it would take or things they'd have to do. Or I don't know, they were just sitting on my money. That's all I know. So eventually I asked for my money back because they were, again, if they had originally said, oh, maybe in three years we might have it. But that's not what they said. They said we'll be shipping it out next month, which obviously didn't happen. Now it'd be one thing if that were my own money. But the other issue is I had made a public recommendation that I'm worried that other people, you know, took for serious. And I did not have direct exposure to this. And it might be that there are other people maybe still even waiting haven't asked for their money back who haven't gotten this thing. Or maybe it actually ended up working. I have no idea. But, you know, it's not an issue now. So that's one of the things I sort of feel guilty about. I mean, another thing, you know, that's why you shouldn't read things on Reddit and like get excited about the ideas and then tell people about them when you don't know about them. The fact is you just don't know. There are a million things, especially when you're literally launching satellites into space. There are a million things that could go wrong. There are a million, like government regulations that might end up interfering. There are a million of, you know, just things you don't even know that you don't know. Okay. So that's sort of the issue. I mean, another thing around five years or so ago, Zoomers might not remember this. This is probably before your time, but millennials, you'll remember 30 year old boomers you might remember. There's this thing, another speculative technology project that was solar roadways. Wow, remember that? That was big cringe solar freaking roadways. They had like this video. And it was all about let's just dude, let's put solar panels, like have solar panels as a road. Let's just drive on our solar panels. That would be so cool, infinite energy dude. And it's like, why don't we just put the solar panels next to the road so they don't like get constantly filthed up by all the like tons of equipment driving on. I don't know. But, you know, it's supposed to, oh, we can make them light up. It's like Tron, dude. It was like the most soy, it was way before, well, I would almost say before the soy boy archetype, but it was basically a soy Reddit project kind of thing. And a lot of like for a couple months, people were like fanatical about this kind of stuff. Oh, I can't wait for this. This is the future. And of course, it fizzled out. This is the big, you know, scam video to make promotional money for this company. And it didn't end up working out. And even if Starlink is a, you know, a legitimate, I mean, thing about Elon Musk businesses is like, they're mostly just getting money from the government, like Tesla, like they just get money from the government. Like that's, that's his entrepreneurship. It's not real, you know, entrepreneurship. So I'm always going to be, I don't know anything about these Elon Musk guy, except for I know there's like a cult of personality about him. So a bunch of Redditors just like like the things he does. And I know he just gets a bunch of money from the government that that's, and if that's how you're making money, I'm just, I don't have that much faith in it. Maybe Starlink will take off. Again, I'm not saying if it works, I might be using that in a year, you know, you never know. But I just find this idea of people recommending stuff they don't, they don't use, they have no exposure to, like imagine doing that kind of viral marketing for anyone else. I know it's, oh, it's Elon Musk, so it's like a meme. Oh, I can tell my friend, oh wow, Soy Link is so fantastic. But like imagine if like Wells Fargo or some kind of bank put out like some new, like a new interest payment system or this novel in some way. Imagine shilling for that if you would never like experienced it before. Or imagine if like Exxon Mobile put out some new way to like get gas more quickly around the world. Okay, would you shill for that? Like would you really, like maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't. But the fact that there are literally people on the internet who are excited, I mean, not just excited in the abstract, but like marketing this thing they have only read on paper. It's just one of those things like you can't give recommendations about something unless you have skin in the game, unless you're in a position to lose something. And you know, that actually reminds me there's a, I'm not gonna mention his name, okay? There's a guy. There's a guy. I'm not gonna say anything specific. I haven't heard that much from this guy in a while. But I remember a couple of years ago, he used to do every single one of his videos had like a promotion inside of it, not just ads, not just like YouTube ads, but like a promotion where he's like, I'm gonna add, I'm gonna shill this project, product. And he shilled this particular kind of computer. And he was just known for shilling that in every video. And as it ended up, he actually never got one of those computers. They didn't even send him a free sample. Sad. So he was just pretending to like these computers. He's like, wow, when I buy one, which one am I gonna get? It's just pathetic, man. Why would you do that? Like why? I mean, in that case, I guess he's getting paid or something, but especially if you're doing it for free, don't do that. Like there's so many other projects that you could get excited about and might be legit. So yeah, it's dumb. Don't do that. Don't talk about things unless you have direct experience about. Otherwise, we'd be in the world where like people still, I mean, remember back in the day where like Linux YouTube was just like randomly installing some distribution that you've only used for 20 seconds and then making like earth shattering generalizations about that? Remember that? Like five years ago, back before, I don't know. Yeah, that's stupid. No one cares. You might think that that's a good idea, but it ain't. It just ain't. So anyway, see you guys next time.