Podcast Awesome
On Podcast Awesome we talk to members of the Font Awesome team about icons, design, tech, business, and of course, nerdery.
🎙️ Podcast Awesome is your all-access pass into the creative engine behind Font Awesome — the web’s favorite icon toolkit. Join host Matt Johnson and the Font Awesome crew (and friends) for deep dives into icon design, front-end engineering, software development, healthy business culture, and a whole lot of lovingly-rendered nerdery.
From technical explorations of our open-source tooling, chats with web builders, icon designers, and content creators, with the occasional gleeful rants about early internet meme culture, we bring you stories and strategies from the trenches of building modern web software — with a healthy dose of 80s references and tech dad jokes.
🎧 Perfect for:
- Icon design and content-first thinking
- Creative process and collaborative design
- Work-life balance in tech
- Remote team culture and async collaboration
- Internet history, meme archaeology, and other nerd ephemera
🧠Come for the design wisdom, stay for the deep meme cuts and beautifully crafted icons.
Podcast Awesome
Nerd Show and Tell: Meet Alex Poiry
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
🛡️ Sword Fights, Security & Memes: Meet Alex “Yellow Dart” Poiry
In this wonderfully offbeat episode of Nerd Show and Tell, Matt chats with Alex Poiry, Head of Security at Font Awesome. But don't let the job title fool you — this isn’t just firewalls and protocols.
Alex dives into how a background in history and German led him to a career in tech, how a classic Homestar Runner video gave him the nickname “Yellow Dart,” and how swinging a longsword in VR gave him tennis elbow.
Yep. It's that kind of episode.
🧠In this episode, we explore:
- The role of a Head of Security at a globally used icon toolkit
- How analog circuit metaphors help explain digital concepts
- Why early 2000s memes still live rent-free in Alex’s brain
- Nerdy passions: from Klingon to Tolkien to longsword combat in virtual reality
- How storytelling shapes tech, marketing, and public trust
If you love cybersecurity, weird tech journeys, or just want to hear a security lead talk about Klingon, this one’s for you.
⏱️ Episode Timestamps
- 00:08 – Meet Alex Poiry: Font Awesome’s Head of Security
- 03:44 – From liberal arts to lock-downs: how Alex got into tech
- 07:56 – What “security” actually means at Font Awesome
- 12:30 – Data privacy, metaphors, and teaching tech
- 18:42 – Klingon, Lord of the Rings, and meme nostalgia
- 23:26 – Geek Squad war stories & unexpected repairs
- 27:25 – HEMA swordplay and VR: a nerdery crossover
- 33:22 – How storytelling influences PR, security, and connection
đź”— Links & Credits
- Font Awesome Security Info
- Homestar Runner – Yellow Dart
🎵 Theme by Ronnie Martin
🎶 Music segues by Zach Malm
🎛️ Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions
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HIGHLIGHTS
"At what point in time when you get to a certain age, how do you tell if it's you getting old or if some things actually are worse? Because there's a definitive period in American cinema that's not as good as some of the other periods. There's a fantastic storytelling section of American cinema that starts in the 1970s and kind of goes into the it goes into the then you start to hit that era of the blockbuster.
The MCU is great. It's fun, and it's nice to see all this expansive stuff. But I wonder, are we going to look down the line in, like, 30 or 40 years and we're going to be like, these movies were fantastic storytelling, or if it's just going to just kind of be, like, fluffy."
"What is your form like when it comes to historic European martial arts? And then you could do like a super hot thing where you just put a character up in front of it and just like whack him with a sword and he breaks and falls down or he blocks and you can try that stuff. So then you can actually work on your form without getting sword elbow."
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NOTES
Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!
Matt
Welcome to Podcast Awesome. In this series of Nerd Show and Tell episodes, we chat with members of the Font Awesome team, take a deep dive into some of their recent work, and share the Nerdy interest that enriched their lives.
0:00:24
0:00:28
Matt
I'm your host, Matt Johnson. In this podcast, I catch up with Alex Poiry, Font Awesome's head of security. This conversation was really funny and we covered a lot of territory. Some of the topics include how he found his way to tech after he'd gotten degrees in history in German, his love of early 2000s, memes, historic European martial arts and its connection to virtual reality, how he gave himself tennis elbow with a long sword, and a whole lot more.
0:01:04
Matt
So Alex, thanks for hanging out on the Nerd show and tell. And the first question out of the gate, I guess, would be in your slack channel. In the Font Awesome Slack channel. You have given yourself the name Alex. Yellow dart pori. And I had to do a little background information check on Yellow Dart. Can you tell people a little bit about where that comes from?
0:01:30
Alex
Yeah. So for some of the probably younger people who might be listening to this back in the day, back in the day, it's still out there. You can still watch it, but there's a thing called homestarrunner.com. It's still out there. And it's a guy who made just little short web videos, but they were all animation. I can't remember what technology he used. One of his little episodes is called the Well Thought Out English Paper.
0:02:06
Alex
And it's basically a kid writes him a message and says, hey, I have to write an English paper. Can you write it for me? And so he writes out this well thought out English paper, and as he's doing it, he's explaining this is how you get good points with the teacher. And so he says, it couldn't hurt to jazz up your name a little bit. How about Kyle the yellow dart? Smith.
0:02:33
Alex
A well thought out English paper by Kyle Smith. You know, it couldn't hurt to soup up your name a little bit, Kyle. I throw a cool nickname in there like Kyle The Yellow Dart Smith. Oh, yeah, that right there.
0:02:49
Alex
I'll get you. And so anytime I go someplace and they just let me free form type my name into a field, like I tend to do something a little silly. Little wacky silly.
0:03:06
Matt
Why not? It's funny. I looked it up on Urban Dictionary and it goes right along with what you're saying. It says, a cool nickname that will easily earn five to ten extra credit points when added to an English paper. And then, in quotes, a well thought out English paper by Kyle Yellow. Dart Smith. And I was like, what the heck is this? And I started following the links. I'm like, oh, homestar runner. Okay, I get it.
0:03:30
Alex
We should definitely link that so that other people can just click the link, just go watch it.
0:03:35
Alex
You'll be yeah, it's like classic dork techie culture from the early 2000s. Yeah, that's good.
0:03:44
Alex
How to draw a dragon. That's the other one we'll link in there.
0:03:47
Matt
Nice.
0:03:48
Alex
Unrelated, but important, of course.
0:03:51
Matt
So tell me a little bit about your background professionally and how you found your way to Font Awesome. Awesome and kind of what the connection was there.
0:03:59
Alex
Well, my background professionally begins in the year 2000. I had finished high school and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do for college. And there was a company in my hometown called US Telecom. And just through knowing some people and some friends, I got a job there as a marketing intern. And one of our software engineers was a young fellow by the name of Travis Chase.
0:04:40
Matt
Oh, yes.
0:04:41
Alex
So if you guys haven't heard of Travis Chase and you're listening to this podcast, basically one of the co founders. So Travis, real nice guy. Like I said, I worked in marketing. He was over on the software side of the house. But I did a lot of crossover stuff. So our marketing campaigns were all run via these Fax Blasters, which I maintained, and there was some scripting for it and things along those lines.
0:05:05
Alex
And so I knew Travis. I had this kind of intro to tech and marketing. And then I got laid off from US Telecom and just went my own way, went to college, majored in history in German, and then I met my lovely wife to be. And my life plan had kind of been to go work for the US State Department, which is something that's useful. Like when you have degrees in history in German, it is something that is useful, but it's a very military like life. Like you're going to be bumping around from place to place writing reports.
0:05:43
Alex
So it's not a very stable life as far as living in one place for a long period of time. Right. I don't think my wife was particularly interested in that. And I was like, well, what else do I know and love? And then basically after history and German, the next highest thing that was interesting to me was computers and software engineering. So I didn't actually really leave college. I just went to college for eight years and got three and triple majored, effectively went back and got a degree in CIS.
0:06:20
Alex
And then from there just kind of the regular progression. I moved to DC. To work with Booz Allen Hamilton. Then I came moved back to Kansas City to be closer to family, but still have, like, a career that I ended up at a place called Cerner, which got acquired by Oracle and Travis and I had kind of kept in touch off and on. Because if you reverse back to about the year 2000 and must have been 2008 well, it was around the time that Obama got elected. The first time? I don't remember what year that was. Was that eight?
0:06:52
Alex
Yeah, it was eight, I think so, yeah.
0:06:54
Alex
Travis and I both, by total coincidence, ended up working at the same company, which was Gestalt, which was later acquired by Accenture. So I kind of got back in touch with Travis and kept in touch with him off and on. And then when I decided to leave Cerner and look for something new, I just reached out and he had something for me here at Font Awesome.
0:07:17
Matt
Nice. And your role is related to security, correct?
0:07:21
Alex
Yeah, I am ostensibly entitled at least the head of security for Font Awesome. I guess it's kind of the first time there's been a what we call like a dedicated security role. Having spent time with the code, I can say that we've got good engineers. There's some security that was kind of baked in from the beginning, so that's always good to see. But bringing more like the holistic security approach and all that jazz.
0:07:56
Matt
Yeah. Well, that gets into things that I'm very not versed in. Or what is it that you're securing? Is it more like customer information and securing customer data and what all is involved with that?
0:08:14
Alex
Okay, talk about security. I'm getting to my love language. So there is sort of a quick definition of security. Security is effectively anything that you do that protects an asset which is vulnerable to some kind of exploit. Every person, every group of people, every company, every household has something that they deem to be valuable, right? Could be anything. It could be your computer, it could be your silverware, it could be your car, could be your totally awesome means of providing and distributing icons across the globe.
0:09:05
Alex
That's your asset, the thing that you deem to have value, almost all assets have some inherent vulnerability to them. Cash is an asset. It holds value, but it's small and portable, so it can be stolen. Right. Cars are partially valuable as transportation, but they're also partially valuable as, like, status symbols. So a person can reduce the value of your car by scratching it up with a key. So the fact that your car is a status symbol and it's got paint on it makes it inherently vulnerable to damage, stuff like that.
0:09:38
Alex
So if you want to understand security in the context of Font Awesome, you have to figure out what it is that we value. In a sense, one of the first things is that we have a set of icons, some of which are free and some of which are not free. So doing something to prevent the not free icons from being used freely would be an aspect of security. But in reality, that's probably not the biggest value that we provide to customers.
0:10:12
Alex
The biggest value we provide to customers is probably our distributed network. So if you use Font Awesome, we put those icons that you want right at the edge so that your network can go out and grab them really quickly and load them up so that you're not running into delays loading pages and stuff like that. So that is a concept in security that would call availability. The value proposition, or one of the main value propositions of Font Awesome is that our icons are available and they're available very quickly.
0:10:50
Alex
So a lot of security conceptually is making sure that those networks properly monitored and secured and so on and so forth. There is also, of course, the general customer data kind of thing that we're concerned about in a general sense. The real beauty of Font Awesome is we just have so little customer data that there's not a lot to be super duper concerned about a lot of times.
0:11:22
Matt
And that's a real value that we have, too, is that we want to protect people's privacy and not ask for more than is necessary.
0:11:31
Alex
Yeah. I think in a modern context, people are always trying to extract sort of like the maximum amount of value that they can out of just people, right. But they don't necessarily want to give anything back. Right. They're just like, well, if I know this about you, is there someone who is willing to give me money for that information? And that's kind of why things like GDPR exist, is because basically the governments of Europe kind of got sick of this stuff. I mean, because from their perspective, it was a violation of human rights effectively. And that's actually one of the fantastic things that I've experienced, like working at Font Awesome is that the underlying ethos of the company is like, hey, man, just be cool.
0:12:13
Alex
Don't do that jerky stuff. Right. All we need to do is send you an email if something goes wrong or if something goes right. If you want to give us your first and last name, that's cool. We don't need to know what year you were born. We don't need to know your gender, we don't need to know your religious preferences, we don't need to know what browsers you use or where you shop.
0:12:30
Matt
Just right.
0:12:31
Alex
We're going to shoot you an email every once in a while, have some icons, switching gears a little bit away from marketing.
0:12:37
Matt
Yeah, right.
0:12:38
Alex
Font Awesome is great, guys.
0:12:40
Matt
You don't have anything to worry about. Your data is safe with us.
0:12:45
Alex
Really collect.
0:12:47
Matt
Yeah. What tech are you interested in learning about these days? Is there certain things you're kind of keeping an eye on on the news.
0:13:04
Alex
Or I am always fascinated by ways that you can help people learn something, learn something new, or learn something better. Right.
0:13:15
Matt
And that's a technology in itself.
0:13:16
Alex
Yeah. The technical definition of technology is the application of scientific thought in order to accomplish a goal. I think that's not a perfect definition, but it's in that neighborhood. I recently found a thing I missed the kickstarter, but it ended up being on sale, so I ordered it. There's a thing called spin tronics. And this to me is fascinating because at the basis of all computer systems, of course, are electronics.
0:13:43
Alex
And there are aspects of electronics that, while I don't necessarily need them for my job, I think they're important, and I always kind of struggle with them and stuff like that. So it's like trying to wrap your brain around some aspect of how a circuit works. Like, okay, now do I need to be concerned about the volts here, or I need to be concerned about the amps here? Right. What about this resistance aspect of it? And will this burn out my Led if I try and connect up a circuit this way?
0:14:12
Alex
And if you search online, you'll find a lot of people, they're trying to use water as an example of how to think about electricity, right? Like water pressure through a pipe and so on and so forth. But I think even that's kind of a little bit unhelpful, because if you don't really have an intuitive sense of the way water moves through pipes and the way pressure works within pipes and stuff like that, it's not a metaphor. That's super helpful.
0:14:42
Alex
Spin tronics has built a fully analogous circuit system that works entirely on physical properties of stored energy. So it's got a battery in it. The battery is just this little spring loaded thing, right? So it's like, listen, if you're going to get electrical power, it's effectively analogous to you storing the power of your arm into this little spring. And then the circuit is chains of a known length, and that can help you with the understanding of couloms and stuff like that.
0:15:17
Alex
And then they've got an am meter, which helps you with the understanding of amps. But what it does is it looks like a little tiny, steampunk Victorian phonograph player. So it causes it to spin, and so you hear a higher pitch, so it's visual it's hands on. You can build the circuits, and they add all of this sort of sensory stuff to it so that you can really get a feel for it. And that is using old technology to help you sort of understand modern, newer technology and stuff like that. And that's something that I've always struggled with.
0:16:01
Alex
I'm constantly forgetting things. I've been trying to teach my daughter a little bit of this stuff, and so now I've got this great toy that's fun to use. It's much more intuitive, and it has kind of a steampunk aesthetic, which is cool.
0:16:15
Matt
Yeah, no, I mean, it's such a great way to learn is that if you can involve as many senses as possible, create as many analogies as possible, all those things just sort of create connections to where you're like, oh, okay, so this was in a real world example. It's kind of like this. I've learned well in that kind of style myself if I'm learning a new technology. As a writer, I'm constantly, always trying to think of a real world example.
0:16:47
Matt
I worked at a data analytics consultancy for a while, and as I was trying to get my head around that technology, I was always looking for ways to explain it in sort of layman's terms so it would actually stick. That's super interesting. That's very cool.
0:17:03
Alex
Metaphors, to me, are probably one of the most powerful tools that humans are able to wield for conceptual type stuff like that. A good metaphor is worth I was about to say it's worth its weight and goal, which is kind of a metaphor. And it's simultaneously ironic because metaphors don't weigh anything. So, anyway, you get my point. I agree. Metaphors bringing it back in, finding ways to turn it around and help humans get an intuitive understanding of stuff, that stuff is just Italian chef's kiss.
0:17:38
Matt
Yeah, for sure. So great. Okay, so moving on to very important subjects at hand, here what I compact do you think should make it into the Font Awesome? Awesome. Canon that is not currently a part of the icon canon.
0:18:04
Alex
No, it's fine. I have pretty hyper nerdy interests for the most part. And I've made some jokes like this around Dave, sort of caught him rolling his eyes at me. So I don't think these are going to make it into the can. But right off the bat, I definitely think we need all of the Klingon characters. We've got the Latin and some of the Cyrillic characters. I think Klingon, possibly maybe you want to open it up to a different fan base.
0:18:42
Alex
The tangoir characters from Lord of the Rings, assuming those don't belong to the actual estate of J-R-R. Tolkien. And now I guess Amazon or whatever. Love to bring those in. That would be fantastic.
0:18:56
Matt
So do you go so far as have you learned to speak Klingon or can you read it?
0:19:01
Alex
I know a little bit of Klingon. The weird thing about Klingon obviously totally made up language, right? In case you guys didn't know, klingons aren't we haven't actually encountered them yet. I don't actually know the Klingon characters. I know the transliteration of Klingon. So Klingon being written with the standard, like, Latin characters that we're familiar with. So I know a little bit of Klingon.
0:19:32
Alex
They say Kapla, which is success, right? Standard Klingon greeting is like, nook neck, which means kind of literally like, what do you want? Various words and titles. Their grammar, the grammar that the people made up for the Klingon language. Very alien, so it is difficult to wrap your head around. So when it comes to stringing together words into like, coherent Klingon sentences, not so good.
0:19:59
Matt
Right?
0:20:00
Alex
A couple of phrases here and there. I teach them to my son. He just yells them periodically in the car at people. Although it's always the wrong context. Like kapla when you do something. Well, success that makes sense. But he says things like he yells like, I jumped. Like it's klingon so good for you. But.
0:20:24
Matt
It'S sharp sounding, and it sounds cool to say it's. Do you have some favorite or a favorite faunasmicon?
0:20:45
Alex
Yeah. Going back to my love of, like, kind of older Internet memes, I'm a big fan of the honey badger.
0:20:50
Matt
What's the background on that meme? That's kind of going over my head a little bit.
0:20:54
Alex
Oh, really? Yeah. I can't think of the guy who did it. Basically, he would take nature videos, and he would do this kind of like it would be like a regular nature video where normally he would have had this very serious English guy with a lot of gravitas talking about a thing, but he does this really campy wacky. He's not even really giving you super great information. So in the honey badger thing, it was a YouTube video, and he's just like, the honey badger. He's like the honey badger.
0:21:30
Alex
He's just crazy. He just doesn't care. He's just like, what do you want, stupid? I'm just going to eat this now. Okay, shut up. It's pretty badass.
0:21:42
Video voice over
Look, it runs all over the place. Whoa, watch out.
0:21:45
Video voice over
Says that bird. EW. It's got a snake. Oh, it's chasing a jackal. Oh, my gosh. Oh, the honey badgers are just crazy. It's the honey badger. And he did several of them. I don't know why the honey badger ended up getting, like, 38 billion views, and, like, the other ones got, like, 10,000. But, like, the honey badger animal whatsoever looking, it's just grunting and EW eating snakes. EW. What side of mouse?
0:22:11
Video voice over
Oh, that's nasty. Oh, they're so nasty.
0:22:15
Alex
The early 2000s meme stuff. The stuff that really stuck for me was the GI. Joe. PSAs. Who wants a body massage?
0:22:25
Matt
Body massage.
0:22:27
Matt
Body massage machine. Go!
0:22:28
Alex
The dude with the helmet, like he's helping the kids. You just can't use it. What the hell?
0:22:39
Matt
Oh, my gosh. So random.
0:22:42
0:23:01
Matt
All right, what is the crappiest or weirdest job you've ever, ever had? It looks like there's one that involves mice and cockroaches in a computer.
0:23:17
Alex
Yeah, that's definitely up there. I did work for years in college in the geek squad.
0:23:25
Matt
Okay.
0:23:26
Alex
And I was living in southwest Missouri and we were the only Best Buy. You basically put a pin in our Best Buy, and there was one about 70 miles away in one direction, one about 110 miles away in another. So we're kind of the focus for a pretty large segment of Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. And you'd get farmers who used a computer for something related to their agribusiness. But for whatever reason, instead of putting it in their house, I guess probably because they spent all of their time in the barn. It would be, like, in their barn, and they would bring it into us. And I don't know. It only stays on for like a minute and you just open it up and it's full of hay. And some mice have built the home in there and their fans are just completely blocked with just whatever's in a barn.
0:24:31
Alex
I'd seen heat sinks, right? The whole purpose of a heat sink, conceptually from a physics perspective, is you get a lot of surface area made out of a highly conductive material so that you can blow air through it and cool off your processor. These things would just be like full of dirt. I was like, was there like a flood? How did this happen? I could have been dusty, but this has like solid caked on dirt in your heat sink. I had to take it apart and wash it.
0:24:59
Matt
That's so crazy.
0:25:01
Alex
Yeah, and then there's like a guy once brought in a computer and he was just like, yeah, it's not working very good and it smells kind of weird when it runs. And I was like, smells weird. And we plugged it in and after it was on for a couple of minutes, sure enough, there's like this weird burnt popcorny caramely smell coming off of it.
0:25:20
Matt
Nasty.
0:25:20
Alex
You open it up and I was like, at some point in time, did you spill something on this? And he was like, oh yeah, I know, but I cleaned it off. And the story on that dude was he felt like an entire two liter. Like it fell. He didn't even notice. And it just like glugged into his computer. And so he just like wipes off the top and he's like, seems good. The interior components were just covered and then computer gets hot on the inside and eventually so it's just like this caramelized mass of disgustingness which attracts bugs, thus the cockroaches and all kinds of stuff.
0:25:59
Matt
Like.
0:26:01
Alex
You genuinely never knew what you were going to get. Person brings in a computer, you just have no idea, right? Is it going to be some minor thing like they can't find a driver for their modem or something like that? Or is it going to be like.
0:26:17
Matt
My cup holder is jammed.
0:26:20
Alex
Yeah, cup holder.
0:26:22
Matt
Oh, that's funny.
0:26:23
Alex
Those were the days.
0:26:24
Matt
Oh, those are the days. That's funny, man. I seem to think that you'll have many different sources to draw from here and we've covered a good bit of it already. But what are you nerding out about these days?
0:26:50
Alex
Doing a lot of research into VR, trying to decide if I got three kids. Really, only one of them is old enough to use VR. So I'm trying to do research to determine if one I can make an argument that it's necessary for everyone in the family. Like, if I can find applications for my wife and daughter that way I'm not just buying it for myself, right? But then the second that I get into anything like that, my brain is like, well, surely there's a developer mode, right?
0:27:25
Alex
What can I do in VR? Would it be better to code in a VR environment? I got three monitors. But what if I had a VR headset and I was like, could I then walk around the yard and code? Would that look weird?
0:27:41
Matt
You have, like, some weird harness with a keyboard in front of you just walking around?
0:27:45
Alex
No, they sell it's like one of those old timey cigarette trays from back in the something like that. And it's a thing that you wear it.
0:27:56
Matt
Why am I not surprised? This is actually a thing, and I.
0:27:59
Alex
Was actually going to buy one of those because as software engineer, you lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle. It's about to get cold and gross, but all through the spring and summer, I could just walk around, use my little WiFi hotspot, and I could just cruise around my neighborhood and do some work and stuff like that. Yeah, but the VR headset has led to a second thing that I'm nerding out about, which is historic European martial.
0:28:23
Matt
Arts, because they're so connected.
0:28:27
Alex
Hold on. Here's the connection right? There's a couple of steps, but it's there.
0:28:33
Matt
I'm listening.
0:28:34
Alex
My daughter was watching the new Lord of the Ring series on Amazon, right? She's very fascinated with the character of Galadriel, and she's watching her do all this spinny sorty stuff. And I was like, she's like, I want to do that. I want to be and I'm always looking for ways to keep her engaged in some sort of activity and stuff like that. And a lot of the sports she keeps kind of, like, falling away from because I think the competition aspect kind of gets to her. So I was like, well, why don't we do historic European martial arts? Because I'd studied it a little bit when I was in college. I knew a guy and we messed around with it, so I can kind of get you started. And then if you never really want to spar with anyone, that's fine, but you can get some strength, some stuff like that.
0:29:15
Alex
So I started getting back into historic European martial arts, and I went out and I bought a long sword and a side sword for practice purposes, okay? But I am no longer 19 years old, and in college, I am 40 years old, and I'm old and I'm decrepit. So I'm out there, like, doing these moves with the long sword. And I gave myself tennis elbow.
0:29:42
Matt
Oh, no.
0:29:43
Alex
I guess technically, I guess we'll call it long sword elbow because that sounds way cooler. I was like, oh. While practicing with the saber, I hurt my elbow. And I thought, here's the thing, right about the long sword is when it comes right down to it, it's like it's got weight on it, and you need to be able to move that weight effectively. But there is also a lot of form that's built in. So if you know where your hands are, which is necessary for VR stuff like that.
0:30:12
Alex
It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to basically take those devices, put a solid stick between them, and basically be like, all right, now, what is your form like when it comes to historic European martial arts? And then you could do like a super hot thing where you just put a character up in front of it and just like whack him with a sword and he breaks and falls down or he blocks and you can try that stuff. So then you can actually work on your form without getting sword elbow.
0:30:40
Matt
There you go. Nice.
0:30:42
Alex
And I'm sure with three kids and a wife and a job, I will have nothing but time to write on this particular piece of technology.
0:30:51
Matt
Oh, yeah, that's excellent. I can definitely see how it all comes together now. Very nice. Yeah, we got a VR set for our kids last Christmas or the Christmas before. And I've always tried to work in the activity based stuff, like they like Beat Saver, which is not super active. But I'm like, why don't you do some boxing or something like that? Come on, kids, go outside and play, get some fresh air.
0:31:18
Matt
We'll take the next best thing and get them on the VR.
0:31:35
Alex
I will tell you, the thing that concerns me is technology is getting to the point where I think we can do it, but there are things that just never really take off. Even though the technology exists, they don't take off in our lifetime correctly. Right. I think about 3D movies, right? 3d movies have been hitting off and on since the 1950s. And the thing that makes a 3D movie, good or bad, is whether or not you're using some aspect of the storytelling. And that's where a lot of people use 3D as a gimmick. It fails, and it seems like I guess they're maybe still doing I don't go out for a lot of movies anymore because I don't have to leave my home because of the way the world is. But I feel like they're not doing as many 3D movies, but like five, six years ago, it's like everything was also released in 3D.
0:32:27
Matt
Right.
0:32:28
Alex
And I'm concerned about VR technology because the technology has been floating around for a little bit and it's getting to the point where it's like small. But I'm concerned that no one's going to explore the technology appropriately. At least no one with money. They're all going to try and figure out how to do something short, quick, and make a buck. And people are just going to be like, it'll be like the Power Glove for Nintendo.
0:32:55
Alex
If you ever look into it, the Power Glove is some pretty cool technology and stuff like that, but clearly it didn't transform the way we interacted with computers necessarily, or the way we played games. I'm always worried, like, a technology isn't going to it seems really cool. But it's not going to take off and I'm just going to be like an old, angry man. I was like, in my day, promised man.
0:33:22
Matt
Totally we would go to the moon. That's right. It makes me think of how action movies are done now. Like, everything's green screen and it's all done in CGI and it looks amazing, but at the same time, at some point, it's just sort of eye candy and something in particular, like the MCU movies as a family, I sit down with my kids and we watch all those and really enjoy that. And I was like, hey, they've never seen the original X Men ones from like, the early two thousand s, and they're like, oh, this isn't Marvel. I'm like, well, yeah, it's marvel. It's X men.
0:33:56
Matt
So we watched through it, and the special effects, clearly they look kind of dated now, but the pacing of it and the storytelling is so much different. It's the same with the Spider Man movies, where it's like the special effects are sort of at a minimum, they add a little bit in there, it goes much slower. It seems like the storylines are pretty strong and they don't have to rely on the gimmicky stuff.
0:34:21
Matt
And I like all those Marvel movies, but sometimes it's too much.
0:34:25
Alex
Yeah, well, I think this is a problem that I don't know if it's just like I don't know if this is humans or if this is people who just run movie studios or big studios or something like that. This is going to be a bit of a deep cut when it comes to nerding out a little bit, but I have been going kind of down the rabbit hole of Lo Fi indie horror games. So I'm a big fan of indie games because I like when people can take something and really distill it into its really simple components and still make it something really fun and enjoyable. So the example that I like to give is Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley is like, one dude, and he built a game that people love.
0:35:14
Alex
It's fun to play, it's interesting, it's got a good soundtrack. I think he did it all 100% himself. He did the graphics, he did the coding, he did the music. It was all hims solo project, and it's fantastic. And he keeps adding stuff and he's doing, like, another game. And the thing is, it doesn't have cutting edge graphics, right? It's 2D. It looks like it's something that plays on a Super Nintendo basic, but it works. It's fun.
0:35:37
Alex
So what's fascinating to me is that there are people who are distilling, like they're getting the essence of what it is to make something truly scary, and they're seeing if they can bring that scare into an incredibly simple platform. So there's like, actually this whole subgenre of the Lo Fi horror game, which is meant to be played on a Game Boy emulator. And I've been amazed that people are super low fi. Yeah, people have been actually been able to get not terrible scares out of a Game Boy level of technology.
0:36:13
Alex
And I think that's the thing is, like, the MCU is great. It's fun, and it's nice to see all this expansive stuff. But I wonder, are we going to look down the line in, like, 30 or 40 years and we're going to be like, these movies were fantastic storytelling, or if it's just going to just kind of be, like, fluffy. Almost all of the effects in The Wizard of Oz are practical effects. Right. I don't even know if there's a special effect in the whole thing. And the beauty part is you can put The Wizard of Oz on for a kid, for an adult. It's a good story.
0:36:51
Alex
It's fun to watch, interesting stuff happens. It draws you in. That's good storytelling, right? And I was like, would it be drastically improved if something had dramatically exploded in a weird purple flame and all of this other stuff and blah, blah, blah? It might have helped a little bit, but it wouldn't have fundamentally changed the story. And that's where I think modern movies get a little like they're like, hey, we got a guy with a computer who can make the sun explode. Let's do that. I'm like, yeah.
0:37:27
Alex
Is that necessary for the story? No, but it looks cool.
0:37:31
Matt
Yeah, right? Exactly. Yeah, I know. I wonder. Yeah. Sometimes I go to the movies, or I am starting to feel like the crotchy old man, like, wow, my eyes hurt. That's too loud. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We went back and we watched some of those older Marvel movies, and I'm like, it's so much slower. I can actually follow the storyline. It's not this barrage of information coming at me. I don't know. I'm just getting old, I guess.
0:38:03
Alex
Well, and that's the thing, though, right? At what point in time when you get to a certain age, how do you tell if it's you getting old or if some things actually are worse? Because there's a definitive period in American cinema that's not as good as some of the other periods. Right. There's a fantastic storytelling section of American cinema that starts in the 1970s and kind of goes into the it goes into the then you start to hit that era of the blockbuster.
0:38:30
Alex
The blockbuster is a little bit less on storytelling, but it's still pretty solid. Right? But there are definitely some stuff in the which is kind of like, what were you guys doing? You put this out in front of people to watch. It's like well, it cost. Nickel makes money back. So I don't know. There's a part of me that hopes I'm not getting old. Storytelling actually is just getting worse, and that eventually we're going to have the next Scorsese or Spielberg, who's going to pop up, and they're going to be like, the new master craftsman is going to show up and put all of the other bad guys to shame and be like, behold my masterpiece. It'll be in PR.
0:39:15
Matt
Totally. I have some buddies that work in a creative agency, and their whole thing is they really talk about that there's sort of a cheap way that people talk about storytelling, like in their marketing and stuff, but I think these guys really get it. They go back to really traditional ways of doing storytelling and that it sticks. It just sticks. Sort of like you have an elevator pitch for your company or something like that. If you can't sort of say it in a very short paragraph and get across one idea that you can come back to.
0:39:52
Matt
It's not going to be a classic. It's not going to stick. It's like Shawshank Redemption. What does he say? You better get busy living or get busy dying. And how many times does that theme come across in that movie? Over and over and over again, even visually, like, from light to dark, I mean, it's just a total masterpiece in that way. But you can't make up for that kind of storytelling with just eye candy.
0:40:20
Alex
Yeah, and that's the thing, right? I think we seek both the familiar and the unfamiliar. But if you completely discard the familiar, right, and just give people something completely alien, it's like, I don't know if you've ever had the experience of walking through, like, a modern art gallery, but the whole idea behind early forms of modern art is, what is art? Right? Is this art? Does this count? And the thing is, the question becomes kind of pointless at some point in time.
0:40:49
Alex
Yeah, I'll call that one art. That one no. And eventually I always get to the point where I'm just kind of like, sure, I don't even know if I care anymore, right? You can tell the hero's journey story all over again. You can tell the redemptive story all over again. You can tell the comedy. You can do the romance. You can do all of that stuff, and you can put, like, a little spin on a little bit of a take on it. You can put it in a different thing. You can make it so that you connect in some other way. It's like this one takes place on a fishing boat. I like fishing, or I don't know much about fishing. Oh, that's interesting.
0:41:24
Alex
You can do all that stuff, but we default to the lowest level of storytelling, right? It's like hero good, smite enemy, which is very basic, and people can kind of get on with that. So that gives you this feeling that I'm watching a movie that I understand, but then the rest of it's just like lasers in space. Ship being cut in two. Oh, no, there's no oxygen. But still, basically, at the end of the day, hero good, enemy bad, right?
0:41:54
Alex
Okay. But the enemy is strong in this one. So it's a challenge.
0:41:59
Matt
I'm like, okay, yeah, that guy has muscles. He's strong. He won.
0:42:07
Alex
He's mean. Look how big.
0:42:11
Matt
Funny.
0:42:12
Alex
There might be a bit of a tangent. This isn't really super icony or like, this is what happens when you triple major history, german and computer information, science. Everything's just a jumble of ideas.
0:42:25
Matt
No, it's great, man. But it connects. It connects. That's the beauty of it. Thanks for listening into podcast. Awesome. A special thank you to Alex for coming on the show. If you like what you've heard, please give us a rating and review and share this episode with your nerd friends. This episode was produced and edited by yours truly, Matt Johnson. The Font Awesome. Awesome. Theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin, and audio mastering was done by Chris Ends at Lemon Productions.
0:43:11
Video voice over
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Video voice over
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Video voice over
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Music vocals
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0:43:33
Matt
GI. Joe.
